Biases in algorithms hurt those looking for information on health

Studies of health literacy, such as the National Assessment of Adult Literacy conducted in 2003, estimated that only 12% of adults had proficient health literacy skills.

YouTube hosts millions of videos related to health care.

The Health Information National Trends Survey reports that 75% of Americans go to the internet first when looking for information about health or medical topics. YouTube is one of the most popular online platforms, with billions of views every day, and has emerged as a significant source of health information.

Several public health agencies, such as state health departments, have invested resources in YouTube as a channel for health communication. Patients with chronic health conditions especially rely on social media, including YouTube videos, to learn more about how to manage their conditions.

But video recommendations on such sites could exacerbate preexisting disparities in health.

A significant fraction of the U.S. population is estimated to have limited health literacy, or the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information, such as the ability to read and comprehend prescription bottles, appointment slips or discharge instructions from health clinics.

Studies of health literacy, such as the National Assessment of Adult Literacy conducted in 2003, estimated that only 12% of adults had proficient health literacy skills. This has been corroborated in subsequent studies.

I’m a professor of information systems, and my own research has examined how social media platforms such as YouTube widen such health literacy disparities by steering users toward questionable content.

Starbucks latest to pause social media ads over call for Facebook's boycott

Facebook's market value dropped Friday by more than 8 per cent, or about $50 billion, as more companies said they would pause ads.

Starbucks is the latest company to say it will pause social media ads after a campaign led by civil rights organizations called for an ad boycott of Facebook, saying it doesn't do enough to stop racist and violent content.

Starbucks said Sunday that its actions were not part of the #StopHateforProfit campaign, but that it is pausing its social ads while talking with civil rights organizations and its media partners about how to stop hate speech online.

The coffee chain's announcement follows statements from Unilever, the European consumer-goods giant behind Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Dove soap; Coca-Cola; cellphone company Verizon and outdoors companies like Patagonia, Eddie Bauer and REI; film company Magnolia Pictures; jeans maker Levi's and dozens of smaller companies. Some of the companies will pause ads just on Facebook, while others will refrain from advertising more broadly on social media.

In response to companies halting advertising, Facebook executive Carolyn Everson said earlier this week the social networking platform is committed to purging hateful content from its services.

Our conversations with marketers and civil rights organizations are about how, together, we can be a force for good, said Everson, vice president of Facebook's global business group.

Facebook's market value dropped Friday by more than 8 per cent, or about $50 billion, as more companies said they would pause ads.

Twitter to label altered photos, videos, remove if it may cause harm

But deciding what might cause harm could be difficult to define, and some material will likely fall into a gray area.

Technology News : Twitter will begin to label and in some cases remove doctored or manipulated photos, audio and videos that are designed to mislead people.

The company said on Tuesday that the new rules prohibit sharing synthetic or manipulated material that's likely to cause harm. Material that is manipulated but isn't necessarily harmful may get a warning label.

Under the new guidelines, the slowed-down video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which she appeared to slur her words could get the label if someone tweets it out after the rules go into effect March 5. If it was proven that it also causes harm, Twitter could also remove it.

But deciding what might cause harm could be difficult to define, and some material will likely fall into a gray area.

"This will be a challenge and we will make errors along the way - we appreciate the patience," Twitter said in a blog post.

"However, we're committed to doing this right." Twitter said it considers threats to the safety of a person or a group serious harm, along with risk of mass violence or widespread civil unrest. But harm could also mean threats to people's privacy or ability to freely express themselves, Twitter said. This could include stalking, voter suppression and intimidation epithets and material that aims to silence someone.

Google, Facebook, Twitter and other technology services are under intense pressure to prevent interference in the 2020 U.S. elections after they were manipulated in four years ago by Russia-connected actors.

On Monday, Google's YouTube clarified its policy around political manipulation, reiterating that it bans election-related deepfake videos. Facebook has also been ramping up its election security efforts.

From Facebook to Twitter: How social media platforms handle political ads

The following is how social media platforms have decided to handle false or misleading claims in political ads.

Technology News : Online platforms including Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google face growing pressure to stop carrying political ads that contain false or misleading claims ahead of the US presidential election.

In the United States, the Communications Act prevents broadcast stations from rejecting or censoring ads from candidates for federal office once they have accepted advertising for that political race, although this does not apply to cable networks like CNN, or to social media sites, where leading presidential candidates are spending millions to target voters in the run-up to the November 2020 election.

The following is how social media platforms have decided to handle false or misleading claims in political ads:

Facebook

Facebook exempts politicians from its third-party fact-checking program, allowing them to run ads with false claims.

The policy has been attacked by regulators and lawmakers who say it could spread misinformation and cause voter suppression. Critics including Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren have also run intentionally false Facebook ads to highlight the issue.

Facebook's Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has defended the company's stance, arguing that it does not want to stifle political speech, but he also said the company was considering ways to refine the policy.

Facebook does fact-check content from political groups. The company also says it fact-checks politicians if they share previously debunked content and does not allow this content in ads.

The company recently said it is making some changes to its approach to political ads, including allowing users to turn off certain ad-targeting tools. In addition, it will also make more ad audience data publicly available.

The expanded ad audience data features will be rolled out in the first quarter of this year and Facebook plans to deploy the political ads control starting in the United States early this summer, eventually expanding this preference to more locations.

Another change will be to allow users to choose to stop seeing ads based on an advertiser's "Custom Audience" and that will apply to all types of advertising, not only political ads.

Facebook's Zuckerberg drops annual challenges to focus on longer-term goals

The move would see him focus more on his role as CEO and the problems that have afflicted Facebook.

Company News : Facebook Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday he was dropping his annual challenges this year to take a longer-term focus on the decade ahead.

Zuckerberg said he plans to work on a new private social platform, decentralised technology, generational issues and new forms of digital governance among others.

The move would see him focus more on his role as CEO and the problems that have afflicted Facebook instead of personal goals such as learning Mandarin and reading two books a month.

"Rather than having year-to-year challenges, I've tried to think about what I hope the world and my life will look in 2030 so I can make sure I'm focusing on those things," he said.

Zuckerberg, whose company is under pressure for failing to adequately police content and protect user privacy on its platform, said he expects governments to come up with clearer rules for the internet over the next decade.

"Platforms like Facebook have to make tradeoffs on social values we all hold dear - like between free expression and safety, or between privacy and law enforcement, or between creating open systems and locking down data and access," he said.

"I don't think private companies should be making so many important decisions that touch on fundamental democratic values."

Over the next decade, Zuckerberg plans to fund and give a platform to younger entrepreneurs and scientists to cure, prevent and manage diseases.

He pointed out that while the internet helped people to connect with each other across the world, it also made people crave for intimacy.

"For the next decade, some of the most important social infrastructure will help us reconstruct all kinds of smaller communities to give us that sense of intimacy again," he said.

Instagram launches 13+ age verification for users to curb underage use

The move aims to help Instagram comply with a US law and its own policies.

Instagram has said that it would require new users to verify they are at least 13 when they join the visually focused, Facebook-owned social network.

The move aims to help Instagram comply with a US law and its own policies that require any user to be at least 13.

"Asking for this information will help prevent underage people from joining Instagram, help us keep young people safer and enable more age-appropriate experiences overall," an Instagram blog said.

The company said the age information would not be visible to others but would help in creating "age-appropriate and safer experiences" on the social network with more than a billion users.

It was not immediately clear how Instagram would protect against young people providing false information, which has been a persistent issue for social media.

The announcement came a day after a TechCrunch article which noted that Instagram did not follow the example of most of its social media peers in checking the ages of users, which could put the network in violation of the Child Online Privacy Protection Act.

The article noted that Facebook and Instagram both employed moderators who may lock the accounts of any users they suspect are under 13.

Business Standard

Facebook-owned Oculus acquires maker of 'Beat Saber', plans expansion

In the virtual game, players use light sabers to slash oncoming, large cubes to the beat of music, sometimes twisting or ducking to avoid oncoming walls.

Business Standard : Facebook-owned Oculus on Tuesday said it is buying the studio behind hit virtual reality game "Beat Saber" as it looks to expand VR technology to wider audiences.

Oculus, which makes Rift and Quest VR headgear, did not disclose financial terms of the deal to acquire Prague-based Beat Games.

"Beat Games is joining us in our quest to bring VR to more people around the world," Oculus director of augmented and virtual reality content Mike Verdu said in a blog post.

"Beat Games' accomplishments are already impressive, but Facebook and the Beat Games team know that there is so much more that can be done across VR, games, and music."

Verdu assured players that the studio would continue to ship content and updates for "Beat Saber" on platforms where it is already available.

In the virtual game, players use light sabers to slash oncoming, large cubes to the beat of music, sometimes twisting or ducking to avoid oncoming walls.

"VR reimagines old genres and invents new ones," Verdu said.

Oculus is exploring ways, including acquisitions, to accelerate the adoption of virtual reality technology, which Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has heralded as the next major computing platform.

"With the resources and know-how that we can offer, Beat Games will be able to accelerate, adding more music and more exciting features to 'Beat Saber' as well as bringing the game to more people," Verdu said.

Facebook is planning a virtual social community where users of its Oculus headgear can "explore new places" via its Horizon virtual world, which is set for a beta launch in 2020.

Oculus users will be able to choose an avatar and interact with others in the virtual community, Facebook said earlier this year.

Horizon will replace earlier versions of the social VR community Facebook Spaces and Oculus Rooms.

Oculus remains a small part of Facebook, whose core social network and other platforms reach more than two billion people worldwide.

Google, Facebook business models threaten people's rights: Amnesty report

Internet giants use 'ubiquitous surveillance' to collect massive amounts of data, says London-based rights group.

The data-collection business model fuelling Facebook and Google represents a threat to human rights around the world, Amnesty International said in a report Wednesday.

The organization argued that offering people free online services and then using information about them to target money-making ads imperils a gamut of rights including freedom of opinion and expression.

"Despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook's platforms come at a systemic cost," Amnesty said in its report, "Surveillance Giants."

"The companies' surveillance-based business model forces people to make a Faustian bargain, whereby they are only able to enjoy their human rights online by submitting to a system predicated on human rights abuse."

With ubiquitous surveillance, the two online giants are able to collect massive amounts of data which may be used against their customers, according to the London-based human rights group.

The business model is "inherently incompatible with the right to privacy," Amnesty contended. The report maintained that the two Silicon Valley firms have established "near-total dominance over the primary channels through which people connect and engage with the online world," giving them unprecedented power over people's lives.

"Google and Facebook dominate our modern lives -- amassing unparalleled power over the digital world by harvesting and monetizing the personal data of billions of people," said Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty International's secretary general.

"Their insidious control of our digital lives undermines the very essence of privacy and is one of the defining human rights challenges of our era." The report called for governments to implement policies that ensure access to online services while protecting user privacy.

"Governments have an obligation to protect people from human rights abuses by corporations," Amnesty maintained.

Business Standard

Pegasus snooping row: Could have done more with govt, says WhatsApp

As many as 1.400 people worldwide were targeted by the spyware, including 121 in India, most of activists and journalists.

WhatsApp has told the government it could have worked better with authorities regarding the use of Israeli spyware, Pegasus, allegedly used to snoop on Indian citizens. The spyware had exploited vulnerability in the messaging application’s code.

In a communication to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), WhatsApp assured the government it would engage more to address issues that impact Indian citizens’ privacy, said sources. A WhatsApp spokesperson said the messaging service was committed to protecting the privacy of its over 400 million users in India.

“The government also plays a critical role here and we are committed to continuing to engage with it in a timely manner on sensitive issues related to user privacy and security. We regret that we have not met the government’s expectations on proactive engagement on these issues and will strive to do better,” the spokesperson added.

According to an official at the MeitY, there could be a delay in the communication coming its way because of the ongoing winter session of Parliament.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology (IT) is scheduled to meet on Wednesday, and will discuss citizens’ data security and privacy issues. It is also expected to discuss the WhatsApp-Pegasus issue.

In response to a question from Lok Sabha member Dayanidhi Maran on the government’s right to intercept citizens’ communications, the Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy said 10 agencies in India are authorised to carry out lawful interception. He added that there was “no blanket permission to any agency for interception or monitoring or decryption and permission from competent authority is required, according to due process of law and rules, in each case”.

“This power of interception is to be exercised according to the provisions of law, rules and the standard operating procedure,” said Reddy.

In May, WhatsApp became aware of NSO Group, an Israeli company, having used a coding glitch in the messaging app that let its customers spy on some people.

WhatsApp fixed the issue, and worked with Citizen Lab, a Toronto-based digital and human rights research group, to reach out to all the affected people and told them what they could do to keep their communications safe.

Business Standard

Seven booked by CBI for peddling child pornography on WhatsApp

Three long months after receiving the information, the CBI registered a preliminary inquiry on May 10, 2019.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has booked seven Indians for being part of international WhatsApp groups circulating child sexual abuse content, a probe triggered by the arrest of a group member in Germany, officials said here Monday.

The agency has carried out searches at several locations across the country after registering an FIR against seven persons who owned the numbers which were part of the WhatsApp groups, they said.

The agency was informed by German Embassy on January 31, 2019 about the arrest and conviction of Sasche Treppke in that country for involvement in sexual abuse of children and distribution of related material between November 24, 2015 and July 8, 2016, according to the FIR.

Three long months after receiving the information, the CBI registered a preliminary inquiry on May 10, 2019 to verify the facts, the FIR said. During their investigation, German sleuths searched the residence of Treppke and found huge data in the form of pictures and videos pertaining to child sexual abuse, officials said.

It also surfaced that Treppke was member of 29 WhatsApp groups, having a total of 483 participants, on which the sexual abuse content was shared. Seven "active" Indian numbers too were found to be part of these WhatsApp groups, they said.

After nearly five months of preliminary inquiry, CBI managed to access the customer application forms and identity proofs submitted by these seven subscribers to establish their identities, they said.

The phone numbers are from Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Trying to contact them failed as none were functioning, they said.

Business Standard

Why boys and girls use tech differently? Here's the likely reason

Emerging research indicates that brain differences between males and females help account for the split.

Business Standard : Many parents of both boys and girls have witnessed striking differences in the way their kids use technology, with their sons generally gravitating to videogames and their daughters often spending more of their screen time scrolling through social media.

Emerging research indicates that brain differences between males and females help account for the split.

“It is entirely plausible from a neurological perspective that there’s an underlying biological component to this difference people are seeing,” said Larry Cahill, a professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent two decades researching gender differences in the brain.

In this column I’ve chronicled the aggression some boys exhibit when they have to shut off videogames and transition to other activities, as well as the problems some young men face when they go to college and have to juggle game time and school work without mom and dad’s help.

That led some readers to question why girls don’t appear to be having these problems. Of course, girls have issues of their own, such as smuggling “burner” phones to keep up with forbidden social media accounts. It’s just that when it comes to videogames, most girls seem to have a better handle on when to stop.

According to a 2017 survey conducted by Pew Research Center, 41 per cent of teenage boys said they spend too much time playing videogames while only 11 per cent of girls said they do.

Marc Potenza, a psychiatry professor at Yale University, teamed up with researchers at universities in China to find out why. Using functional MRIs, which measure brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow, the team studied neural responses in young male and female gamers, particularly in the parts of the brain associated with reward processing and craving—a motivating factor in addiction. When the men and women were shown photos of people playing videogames, those parts of the men’s brains showed higher levels of activation than those parts of the women’s brains.

Brain regions that have been implicated in drug-addiction studies also were shown to be more highly activated in the men after gaming. The researchers said the results suggest men could be more biologically prone than women to developing internet gaming disorder.

Whatsapp monitoring: FB moots 'prospective' solution, fails to appease govt

The issue of traceability has been a flashpoint between the government and WhatsApp.

Facebook global executive Nick Clegg has proposed a "prospective" mechanism for WhatsApp to act on cases flagged by law enforcement agencies, but the government has refused to budge on its demand for traceability of messages.

The issue of traceability has been a flashpoint between the government and WhatsApp, and the Facebook-owned messaging platform has so far resisted India's demand for identification of message originators, arguing that doing so would undermine its policy on privacy and end-to-end encryption.

A senior government official told PTI that Facebook Vice-President, Global Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg, during his meeting with IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad last week mooted alternatives to absolute traceability of messages, including use of 'meta data' and machine intelligence for dealing with the issue, even offering to harness WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook linkages to provide assistance to law enforcement agencies.

When contacted, a Facebook spokesperson said: "Facebook cares deeply about the safety of people in India and Nick's meetings this week provided opportunities to discuss our commitment to supporting privacy and security in every app we provide and how we can continue to work productively with the Government of India towards these shared goals."

A person aware of WhatsApps's position on the matter emphasised that the platform cannot read messages exchanged as they are encrypted.

It is learnt that Clegg in meetings with top authorities, including Home Minister Amit Shah, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval as well as IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on September 12, reiterated the US tech giant's stance that it will abide by any lawful request for information by the Indian government, but it cannot read messages exchanged on its platforms.

Clegg told the officials that the company can provide 'signals' and meta data such as who calls were made to and duration, among others, of lawfully identified users, a source said.

Business Standard

Facebook plans to hire team of editors to help curate your news stories

The Silicon Valley company said that journalists would help curate News Tab, a new section inside of the company's mobile application that will surface the most recent and relevant stories for readers.

Business Standard : Facebook has long relied on algorithms to select news stories for its users to see.

Now the social network wants to rely on something else for the same task, too: humans.

Specifically, Facebook plans to hire a team of editors to work on a news initiative called News Tab, which is its latest venture into the world of publishing.

The Silicon Valley company said that journalists would help curate News Tab, a new section inside of the company’s mobile application that will surface the most recent and relevant stories for readers. Facebook said it planned to hire seasoned journalists from various outlets for the roles and would put up job postings on its employment board on Tuesday.

News Tab is part of the company’s effort to highlight real-time journalism and news. It will exist outside of the News Feed, Facebook’s never-ending stream of status updates and friend requests.

“Our goal with the News Tab is to provide a personalized, highly relevant experience for people,” said Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships. “To start, for the Top News section of the tab we’re pulling together a small team of journalists to ensure we’re highlighting the right stories.”

Facebook has been under pressure for spreading misinformation and disinformation to millions of its users. In 2016, Russian operatives manipulated Facebook and disseminated false news stories across its network to influence the outcome of the American presidential election. On Monday, Facebook also revealed that China was behind Facebook pages and groups that were sowing disinformation about the protests in Hong Kong.

Facebook is now working to restore its reputation as a place where people can find trusted sources of information. The company has scrambled to hire security researchers and third-party content reviewers to deal with the proliferation of bad content.

At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has overhauled the News Feed to focus less on news publishers and marketers, and more on personal interactions between users. As a result, Facebook is looking for other places on its network to show news.

Facebook, Tesla want to read your mind: here's why you should be worried

If mind-reading devices become the normal way to interact with computers, we may end up with little choice but to use them in order to keep up with more productive colleagues.

Not content with monitoring almost everything you do online, Facebook now wants to read your mind as well. The social media giant recently announced a breakthrough in its plan to create a device that reads people’s brainwaves to allow them to type just by thinking. And Elon Musk wants to go even further. One of the Tesla boss’ other companies, Neuralink, is developing a brain implant to connect people’s minds directly to a computer.

Musk admits that he takes inspiration from science fiction, and that he wants to make sure humans can “keep up” with artificial intelligence. He seems to have missed the part of sci-fi that acts as a warning for the implications of technology.

Keep Reading : Business Standard

These mind-reading systems could affect our privacy, security, identity, equality and personal safety. Do we really want all that left to companies with philosophies such as that of Facebook’s former mantra, “move fast and break things”?

Though they sound futuristic, the technologies needed to make brainwave-reading devices are not that dissimilar to the standard MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and EEG (electroencephalography) neuroscience tools used in hospitals all over the world. You can already buy a kit to control a drone with your mind, so using one to type out words is, in some ways, not that much of a leap. The advance will likely be due to the use of machine learning to sift through huge quantities of data collected from our brains and find the patterns in neuron activity that link thoughts to specific words.

A brain implant is likely to take a lot longer to develop, and it’s important to separate out the actual achievements of Neuralink from media hype and promotion. But Neuralink has made simultaneous improvements in materials for electrodes and robot-assisted surgery to implant them, packaging the technology neatly so it can be read via USB.

Facebook and Neuralink’s plans may build on established medical practice. But when companies are collecting thoughts directly from our brains, the ethical issues are very different.

Any system that could collect data directly from our brains has clear privacy risks. Privacy is about consent. But it is very difficult to give proper consent if someone is tapping directly into our thoughts. Silicon Valley companies (and governments) already surreptitiously gather as much data on us as they can and use it in ways we’d rather they didn’t. How sure can we be that our random and personal thoughts won’t be captured and studied alongside the instructions we want to give the technology

Bug creates unified payments interface IDs, Truecaller recalls app update

The firm said a new version with the fix will be available shortly for the affected users.

Call identification app Truecaller on Tuesday rolled back an update to its app after users complained of unified payments interface IDs getting created in their name without their knowledge.

Several users complained on social media about the app’s latest version (10.41.6) automatically sending an SMS from their phones, after which they began getting messages saying “Your registration for UPI app has started”.

“We have discovered a bug in the latest update of Truecaller that affected the payments feature, which automatically triggered a registration post updating to the version.

This was a bug and we have discontinued this version of the app.

so no other users will be affected,” Truecaller said in a statement. “We’re sorry about this version not passing our quality standards.

We’ve taken quick steps to fix the issue, and already rolled out a fix in a new version.”

The firm said a new version with the fix will be available shortly for the affected users.

“However, in the meanwhile they can choose to manually de-register through the overflow menu in the app.”

Business Standard

Yes, privacy crackdowns matter: Facebook is starting to feel the pinch

Analysts have been looking for Facebook's growth rate to come in under 25 per cent for the rest of this year.

It’s easy to believe that Facebook Inc. is an unstoppable advertising force built on pervasive human surveillance and that meek regulatory or legislative efforts do nothing to stop it.

Despite those concerns, the privacy reckoning for Facebook and the rest of the internet is denting the company’s ad machine.

Facebook spooked investors a bit on Wednesday during a conference call to discuss its second-quarter earnings. Executives said revenue growth would slow more than the company previously expected at the end of this year and into 2020, in part because of various restrictions or self-imposed limitations on Facebook’s data harvesting.

Facebook didn’t spill all the details about the scope of this growth sag or the causes. Europe’s strict data privacy rules, imposed last year, require Facebook to obtain explicit permission from people for all sorts of data harvesting that is considered normal in the US, and executives have said that some Europeans are saying no.

Facebook’s revenue growth in Europe is slower than the pace in the US and Canada and in the Asia-Pacific region. Facebook has also said the European data rules are having an impact outside of that continent, perhaps because of more attention on Facebook’s privacy practices.

Companies such as Apple Inc. that control important online gateways are also trying to crack down on the types of broad data collection in which Facebook and others engage. And Facebook itself has imposed limits on types of sometimes-creepy information marketers had used to target ads and closed down some of Facebook’s own ad-targeting categories, including ones that should not have existed.

Facebook has also promised a long-delayed feature that would allow people to decouple their internet browsing history from their Facebook user profiles. The company has warned advertisers that this “clear history” feature will make Facebook’s ads less personalised. (It should be said that Facebook hasn’t done much to limit the kinds of data the company itself harvests on billions of people.)

Business Standard