Current Final

Tag: Facebook

  • WhatsApp to charge business customers for ‘some services’

    WhatsApp has decided to charge its business account users for some of the services it provides to help it “build a business of its own”.

    According to a statement issued by the WhatsApp, it will charge “business customers for some of the services we offer, which will help WhatsApp continue building a business of our own while we provide and expand free end-to-end encrypted text, video and voice calling for more than two billion people”.

    “The global pandemic has made clear that businesses need fast and efficient ways to service their customers and make sales,” the messaging platform said in a press release. “Our research shows people prefer to message a business to get help and they’re more likely to make a purchase when they can do so.”

    “We’ve provided the WhatsApp Business app and WhatsApp Business API to help businesses of all sizes manage their chats. We’ve listened to feedback on what’s worked and believe WhatsApp can help make messaging the best way for consumers and businesses to connect,” read the statement.

    “The global pandemic has made clear that businesses need fast and efficient ways to service their customers and make sales. WhatsApp has become a simple and convenient resource in this time. More than 175 million people every day message a WhatsApp Business account. Our research shows people prefer to message a business to get help and they’re more likely to make a purchase when they can do so.”

  • Pakistani researchers win Facebook’s ‘Integrity Research Challenge’

    Pakistani researchers win Facebook’s ‘Integrity Research Challenge’

    Agha Ali Raza and Ihsan Ayyub Qazi from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) wins Facebook’s Foundation Integrity Research that solves the problem of misinformation on Facebook.

    In February, Facebook asked academic institutions and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) from all over the world to send proposals.

    “Our goal is to support independent research that will contribute to the understanding of the phenomena and, in the long term, help us improve our policies, interventions, and tooling,” said Alex Leavitt, Senior Researcher at Facebook.

    Raza and Qazi’s research tackles the challenges by measuring the role of prior beliefs and analytical reasoning, and how this impacts the beliefs of internet users.

    Raza and Qazi also designed an educational intervention that uses influential public figures to spread awareness about misinformation on the platform.

    “We are thrilled to have our research been awarded the grant by Facebook which would serve as a stepping stone for us to take our project forward.

    Through our research, we aim to understand how non-textual misinformation (e.g. deepfakes) is perceived by internet users with low digital literacy and the role of pre-conceived notions, and analytical reasoning in shaping the beliefs of such users.

    We are hopeful that by the completion of this project, we will be able to make a substantial contribution towards combating the circulation of false and unverified information on the internet,” stated the winning duo.

    The social media giant received around 1,000 proposals out of which 25 awardees have been finalised for Facebook’s research and policy teams.

    The winners’ will be investigating issues across 42 countries including Canada, Denmark, Pakistan, Turkey, and the UK.

  • Indian man travels 1200 kilometres to meet girlfriend in Pakistan

    Indian man travels 1200 kilometres to meet girlfriend in Pakistan

    An Indian man hailing from Maharashtra, Siddiqui Mohammad Zishan, travelled nearly 1200 kilometres to meet a girl from Shah Faisal town in Karachi, Pakistan. According to details, Zishan, who is an engineering student, befriended the girl on Facebook and had been communicating with her over social media including Facebook and Whatsapp. Zishan wanted to cross the border and come to Pakistan using Google Maps.

    However, the 20-year-old’s plans were cut short when the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) caught him in Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch while he was trying to cross over to the other side of the border on foot. The young man revealed that he had travelled nearly 1200-odd kilometres to meet his friend.

    According to reports, he was found by BSF personnel in a dehydrated condition and had fainted.  An ATM card and other documents like Aadhaar card helped security officials identify him.

    During the search operation, the BSF also found a bike that the youth had abandoned when he reached close to the border. He had used the bike to travel from his hometown in Maharashtra. The young man was caught about 1.5 kilometres away from the Indo-Pakistan international border based on information shared by the Crime Branch of Maharashtra Police. The police added that Zishan had started walking towards Pakistan after his motorcycle got stuck in the sand.

    The Maharashtra Police had informed the Gujarat Police about a missing complaint that had been filed by the parents of the man. The Gujarat Police with the help of the Border Security Force personnel traced the young man by tracking his mobile phone.

    The BSF has handed over the young man to the police for further investigation and so that his story can be verified.

  • Girl’s Facebook status ‘robbers at my home’ gets them caught

    Girl’s Facebook status ‘robbers at my home’ gets them caught

    Facebook helped in capturing two robbers, who entered a house in Lahore after a girl posted a status on Facebook that two robbers have entered her house.

    As per reports, two robbers entered a house in Faisal Town, Lahore. A woman named Saba, who was in the upper portion of the house, posted a status on Facebook that two dacoits have entered her house after observing resistance from the family members.

    Reading the post, friends and the other family members of Saba, instantly called police helpline 15, who reached the house in no time and arrested the robbers after negotiations of half an hour.

     Saba said after the robbers broke into the house, she immediately shared a status on Facebook after locking her room in the upper portion of the building.

  • Facebook employees stage walkout after ‘Mark Zuckerberg refuses to take action against Trump’s posts’

    Facebook employees stage walkout after ‘Mark Zuckerberg refuses to take action against Trump’s posts’

    Facebook employees have walked away from their work-from-home desks and taken to Twitter to accuse Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg of not taking a stand against United States (US) President Donald Trump’s hateful posts on social media.

    As per the details, Reuters observed dozens of tweets against Mark in what was a rare case of the social media giant’s staff publicly standing against its CEO. 

    Thousands of people, including seven engineers of teams that maintain the react code library critical for Facebook’s apps, were among those who tweeted.

    “Mark is wrong and I will endeavour in the loudest possible way to change his mind,” said Ryan Freitas, director of product design for Facebook’s newsfeed. He added that he mobilised more than 50 like-minded people to lobby for internal change.

    https://twitter.com/ryanchris/status/1267252760182788096?s=20

    Katie Zhu, a product manager at Instagram, tweeted a screenshot showing she had entered “#BLACKLIVESMATTER” to describe her request for time off as part of the walkout.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CAwHG02JH8P/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

    Facebook Inc will allow its employees to take part in the protest and will not draw down their vacation days, said spokesperson Andy Stone. 

    Talkspace CEO Oren Frank tweeted he would “not support a platform that incites violence, racism, and lies”. The online therapy company also announced that it had ended partnership discussions with Facebook. 

    https://twitter.com/orenfrank/status/1267504648275005440?s=20

    It is worth mentioning here that Facebook CEO landed in hot water when he told Fox News that private social media platforms “shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online”.

    President Trump retweeted the interview that had come after Twitter flagged his tweet about mail-in ballots as misleading.

    https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1265838823663075341

    It wasn’t later that Twitter responded to another Trump tweet pertaining to countrywide riots, for glorifying violence. Twitter covered up the tweet with a message warning it “violated Twitter rules about glorifying violence”.

    The viewers had to click on the message to see the underlying tweet.

    Trump posted the same message on Facebook, but Mark decided to let it stand unchallenged. “I have been struggling with how to respond to the president’s tweets and post all day,” he wrote in a post Friday. 

    “Personally, I have a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric,” he said, adding that the company’s position, however, was that it should enable as much expression as possible unless it would cause an imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelt out in clear policies.

    “I don’t know what to do, but I know doing nothing is not acceptable,” Jason Stirman, a member of Facebook’s research and development team, wrote on Twitter in response to Mark.

    Should Facebook also move towards policing Trump’s posts? Let The Current know in the comments.

  • Indian Home Ministry accidentally posts whiskey pictures while advertising cyclone relief efforts

    Indian Home Ministry accidentally posts whiskey pictures while advertising cyclone relief efforts

    There was panic in the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) after efforts to advertise its relief operations in Cyclone Amphan-hit West Bengal, went awry.

    According to the details, the MHA had taken to Facebook to highlight the work that personnel of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), which falls under the ministry, were carrying out in the Trinamool Congress-governed West Bengal.

    However, with ‘work from home’ having its perils, one of the handlers of MHA’s social media accounts inadvertently posted images of two bottles of whiskey and snacks along with those of the rescue and relief work

    While the photos were posted on MHA’s official Facebook around 9 am and were taken off around 30 minutes later, screenshots of the post started doing rounds over social media. The post sparked exasperation and elation in equal measure as some were enraged by the “irresponsible behaviour” and others saw the funny side of the “accident”.

    The MHA refused to comment on who uploaded the picture but reports quoted officials as saying that the ministry was treating it as a case of human error that should not be shown out of proportion.  

    They added that although most officers were enraged at the “callousness”, many other civil servants laughed off the “disaster”.

  • Facebook, Amazon chiefs’ wealth rose 15pc amid coronavirus pandemic

    Facebook, Amazon chiefs’ wealth rose 15pc amid coronavirus pandemic

    Amid the coronavirus pandemic, wealth of the chief executive officers (CEOs) of Amazon and Facebook increased by 15 per cent.

    According to reports, wealth of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg witnessed the increase within the past two months.

    More than 600 billionaires in the United States (US) became even richer as tech stocks rose during virus lockdowns.
    Between March 18 and May 19, their total net worth went up by $434 billion while coronavirus continued to cause unemployment around the world.

    Bezos’s wealth grew over 30 per cent to $174.6 billion while Zuckerberg’s fortune increased by more than 45 per cent to $80b billion.

    As per a study conducted by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institution for Policy Studies’ Programme for Inequality, Amazon and Facebook stocks have surged following new programmes that pushed their businesses ahead at a time when many consumers are stuck at home.

    Reportedly, job losses in the US have surpassed 36.8 million since business shutdowns began in the middle of March to stop the spread of the deadly new disease.

    Data also shows that housing sale and manufacturing businesses also collapsed during the said time period.

    Coronavirus has killed at least 94,700 people in the US where more than 1.5 million infections have so far been confirmed.

  • Work-from-home causes burnout, isolation: Microsoft CEO

    Work-from-home causes burnout, isolation: Microsoft CEO

    The chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, has said that making remote work permanent can have a deteriorating impact on social interactions and mental health of the workers, whereas virtual conferences cannot replace in-person meetings. 

    “Those who are used to traditional office setting and appreciate social interactions that take place at the office, a sudden shift to remote work will impact their mental health due to isolation and burnout.”

    After the outbreak of coronavirus, companies around the world made work from home mandatory as a safety measure but according to Nadella, this step is not good for the wellbeing of workers.

    Speaking to a private media outlet, Nadella said that remote setup would be “replacing one dogma with another dogma”. 

    “What does burnout look like? What does mental health look like? What do connectivity and community building look like? One of the things I feel is, hey, maybe we are burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remotely. What’s the measure for that?,” Nadella added.

    His remarks come after Twitter allowed its staff to work from home “forever” even after the end of COVID-19 pandemic. 

    Twitter has become the first company to allow employees to work from home indefinitely as the pandemic changes work culture around the world.  

    Tech giants like Facebook and Google have also allowed most of their employees to work remotely until the end of this year.

    Microsoft has also extended its work-from-home policy until October at least, besides, nothing will hinder the operations and progress of Microsoft as the CEO clearly stated, “We’re going to boldly allocate and acquire, build, innovate, partner, whatever.”

    “We are also going to make sure that we have the ability to do credit for small businesses and other organisations that need that help.”

  • Amazon owner likely to become world’s first trillionaire

    Amazon owner likely to become world’s first trillionaire

    While the coronavirus pandemic has racked the global economy with uncertainty, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by the year 2026.

    The business software comparison site used data collected from the last five years of the Forbes Rich List to calculate the yearly wealth growth rate of the world’s richest billionaires.

    The results concluded that Bezos, whose wealth is over $140bn, could become the world’s first trillionaire in 2026, by then he will be 62 years old.

    The study also says that Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, could become the youngest trillionaire in the world in 2036 when he will be 51 years old.

    Physical shopping is not a thing at the moment, therefore, Amazon is doing well at the moment because the demand for online is very high.

    Last month Jeff Bezos donated $100 million to US food banks which are struggling to feed a growing number of Americans who have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus crisis.

    According to the Billionaires Index, Bezos is one of the world’s five richest people who hasn’t lost money in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Amazon has reported $75.5 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2020.

  • Facebook introduces ‘care’ emoji to express support amid COVID-19 crisis

    Facebook introduces ‘care’ emoji to express support amid COVID-19 crisis

    Facebook has launched a new ‘care emoji’ for its 2.6 billion users to express empathy during coronavirus crisis.

    The new ‘care emoji’ is intended to show care and solidarity when commenting on a status update, message, photo or video during the pandemic. The emoji is a smiley face, hugging a heart for the basic Facebook service, while in Messenger app it appears as a pulsating, purplish heart.

    “Even apart, we are in this together,” read Facebook’s official message.

    To insert a reaction, users hold down the Like button on mobile apps or hover over the Like button on the desktop version of the site to see the reaction-emoji options.

    Facebook is also working to connect people to provide accurate information from health experts and keeping misinformation away about the COVID-19 from spreading on their related apps.

    “We’ve now directed over 2 billion people to resources from the WHO and other health authorities through our COVID-19 Information Center and pop-ups on Facebook and Instagram with over 350 million people clicking through to learn more,” read the company’s website.

    Facebook is also planning to share some additional steps to fight COVID-19 related misinformation and make sure people have the correct and credible information they need to stay safe.