Facebook Bots are hurting Local Restaurants

Social media bots have been troublesome ever since people started using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The are basically accounts that are solely made for a single purpose. Whether it’s to anonymously troll other accounts, or to simply boost the amount of followers of a single person nonetheless, they are annoying.

Since the early 2000s the caliber of these bots have amped up a notch. They used to be easy to spot: a picture less profile with no posts and probably follow a weird amount of people. Unfortunately, bots can sometimes look exactly like real accounts, and may even have posts on their pages.

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Facebook has recently found itself in some more hot water concerning a local restaurant who reported have low ratings due to Facebook users. A whopping 71 one-star reviews showed up in their feed. But the question is: are these genuine reviews from dissatisfied customers? Well, probably not.

All 71 of the one-star reviews, were all posted on the same day and time. Which leaves the Facebook to believe that they had been rated by random bots on Facebook.

The restaurant owners are upset about this because it makes their service look bad and now when people search to see if they want to eat there, they’ll likely completely over look it because of a 2.5 star rating.

Although technology has progressed over the years, it seems as though it is still extremely hard to pin down people who create these bot accounts. Especially since these individuals are working to make sure these bots mimic the accounts of real individuals.

https://thetakeout.com/71-one-star-facebook-restaurant-reviews-single-day-1833156587

YouTube Deactivates All Comments Under Minors’ Content to Fight Predators

Lately, the talk of children’s safety while using online platforms like YouTube has been debated. This is due to the fact that many minors find themselves being targets to adult predators online. Recently YouTube has been the platform for small predatorial rings, where content creators share videos and images of minors that are sexually charged.

YouTube has quite a history concerning content moderation, and has come under hot water for many content creators who have posted illegal content. So far, YouTube has decided to disable the comments under content made by minors.

For some, this isn’t a great idea because it gets rid of both good and bad engagement with posts. For those who make money off of the platform, this lowers their engagement stats, and will keep them from knowing what their subscribers think.

For others, they see this as a small step in the right direction while the social platform updates more efficient ways of filtering and monitoring comments. So far, around 400 accounts have been disabled through this method. This is not a lot in comparison to the billions of YouTube channels that exist globally, however, the company claims that they are working to filter using “trigger” words or language.

It’s unfortunate that one has to worry about the exploitation of children on the internet, but there has to be steps towards stopping it. We cannot allow views, likes, comments, or subscriptions keep us from remembering the safety of children.

For the individuals who think disabling comments are too much, I happen to disagree. I believe that the safety of any individual especially those who are minors- are worth much more than any comment on a video.

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/youtube-deactivates-comments-on-videos-featuring-minors-to-combat-predatory/549469/

Co-founder of Twitter Steps Down from Platform after 12 years

Twitter despite having self-proclaimed user count of 321 million, has been under questioning concerning the stepping down of co-founder Evan Williams. It was announced through a series of tweets by Evan Williams, explaining his gratitude while working as a co-founder for so many years.

I’m very lucky to have served on the @Twitter board for 12 years (ever since there was a board). It’s been overwhelmingly interesting, educational—and, at times, challenging.

— Ev Williams (@ev) February 22, 2019

Ironically, Twitter has an interesting background concerning the stepping down of co-founders. Nick Bilton accused Twitter for having some backstabbing traits, based on some observations of people being forced to step down in the past. At first Williams served as the CEO of twitter in 2008, by replacing Jack Dorsey. Dick Costolo replaced Williams, who was then replaced by the orginal CEO Jack Dorsey.

Because of the power struggles from the past, users believe that his stepping down was probably a result of being pushed out of the company as a whole.

Throughout this whole announcement made by Evan Williams, Twitter has declined for any commentary concerning the matter.

Despite Twitter not getting involved, it is clear that Williams does not have all of his eggs in one basket. He is currently the CEO and founder of a publishing platform company called medium. He also states in his series of tweets that he mentions that he will now be focusing on other projects as he leaves the company by the end of this month.

Below the tweets are a series of replies from multiple employees of the company, thanking him for his leadership and mentorship during his work with the company.

I’m going to ride off into the sunset (or…down Market Street), so I can focus on some other things. I will always be rooting for the team (and, if someone lets me in, come by for lunch).

— Ev Williams (@ev) February 22, 2019

Reference: https://deadline.com/2019/02/twitter-evan-williams-leaves-board-co-founder-1202563497/

UK Lawmakers Attacks Facebook for Privacy Misuse

Since 2015, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been in hot water with users and the privacy of their data when using Facebook. This has caused Facebook to buckle down on their privacy policies, as well as assure users that their information is not being sold or stored.

Unfortunately, though Facebook has reconciled with its users about data privacy, the company still has to answer to many international lawmakers. Particularly, UK lawmakers are reporting that after investigating, Facebook has been found to be misusing data and information obtained by its users. The lawmakers claim to have documents showing the unlawful transfer of data, and also evidence of Facebook purposefully running other developers out of business.

Facebook has responded to the allegations to say that there are more documents that give a fuller story for what is going on. Facebook also claims that they have not violated any law or policy.

The UK Parliament has requested to meet with Zuckerberg and other businessmen of Facebook to discuss the issue, but Zuckerberg refuses to show up to any of the meetings. This makes the situation even more heated, because Parliament wants a statement when presenting the evidence against his company.

Instead Facebook sent in representatives to speak on behalf of the company. Even though they answered many of the questions asked in the meeting, they chose to skip some of the questions, this has led lawmakers to believe that they chose people who weren’t qualified to answer questions of the caliber of the offense.

Furthermore, there are other countries who have accused Facebook of the same offenses. There has been conversations of having all of the international countries come together to fight against Facebook’s privacy violations.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/17/tech/facebook-fake-news-disinformation-report/index.html