“Bias-Riddled” Facebook Comments Attributed to NYPD Officers Surface
December 7, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
In September, Benjamin Moore, a Brooklyn attorney defending Tyrone Johnson from gun possession charges found “No More West Indian Day Detail,” a then-public Facebook group whose members were, presumably, actual New York City police officers venting about Brooklyn’s annual West Indian American Day Parade. The comments made by the group were vitriolic and openly racist. The group disappeared a few days after Moore encountered it, but he had already made a copy of the postings that went on for 70 pages.
Sgt. Dustin Edwards, the officer responsible for Tyrone Johnson’s arrest, belonged to the group. Subsequent journalistic fact-checking showed that group members’ names had a 60 percent match with those of registered police officers. After wielding his social media findings to acquit his client, Benjamin Moore gave a copy of them to the New York Times, arguing that the comments “raised broad questions about police attitudes.”
The disturbing commentary included statements like “Let them kill each other,” in reference to parade participants. With ominous echoes of last century’s and this one’s painful war history, one commenter declared: “I say have the parade one more year, and when they all gather drop a bomb and wipe them all out.” “Filth,” “savages,” “animals,” and “ghetto training,” were part of the documented hate speech.
Social media encourages casual, personal, and private conversations, but it really constitutes a new public record of everyday people’s lives and thoughts. The officers in question are now being investigated by the N.Y.P.D.’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
Above, women participate in the 2011 West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, NY.
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Facebook Increases Status Update Limit to 63,000 Characters
December 1, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
On Facebook, the company team posted an image whose graphic text announced a new limit for status updates: 63,206 characters. It’s rather staggering if compared to Twitter’s or even Facebook’s own from a few years back. Nevertheless, Google weighs in as the heavyweight champ in this matter; it currently boasts a peerless 100,000 character limit.
It’s still a very nice try from Facebook. The graphic also displays a nifty timeline of Facebook’s rapid progression into the character limit stratosphere with shaded box visualizations and all to compare the limit increases. Originally, FB’s updates could not exceed 160 characters, but that changed in 2009 to 420 characters. This past July it reached 500; two months later 5,000, and less than three months afterwards it’s at 63,206. Is there a reason for the accelerating limit?
There’s no clear info on that besides Mark Zuckerberg and Co. not wanting to let Google out-edge it in any important factor. If that’s solely the case, then another value increase may be in the works. Although, the final value seems to not have been completely random. According to Bob Baldwin, the software engineer who “chose” the number, he reached it through the following “nerdy” way: “Facebook … Face Boo K … hex(FACE) – K … 64206 – 1000 = 63206.” Go figure.
Read More:
https://www.facebook.com/schrep/posts/203969696349811
Facebook to Settle with the Federal Trade Commission Regarding Broken Privacy Promises
November 29, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
In a press release, today, the Federal Trade Commission gave news that it had reached a settlement with Facebook regarding charges of consumer deception and broken privacy promises. Although the document noted that the charges fell under the umbrella category of “administrative complaint,” and did not constitute a ruling with respect to the violation of the law, the commission believes that Facebook transgressed federal law when it told users that their information would remain private and unavailable to third parties like advertisers or the general public, which was not the case. The FTC called Facebook’s claims “unfair and deceptive.”
With the settlement, which is open to public comments until December 30th of this year, Facebook will agree to henceforth give “clear and prominent notice and obtai[n] consumers’ express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established.” Another part of the deal is that for the coming twenty years, Facebook will undergo regular audits, about every two years, to assess its privacy practices.
Jon Leibowits, the FTC’s chairman, said that “Facebook is obligated to keep the promises about privacy that it makes to its hundreds of millions of users,” and that “Facebook’s innovation does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy.” Adding, “The FTC action will ensure it will not.”
Read More:
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/11/privacysettlement.shtm
Facebook Researchers Say It’s 4.74 Degrees of Separation, Not Six
November 22, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Facebook teamed up with the Università degli Studi di Milano to revisit Stanley Milgram’s 1967 experiment concerning the number of social connections separating any two people. The results from the new investigation point to there being a separation of 4.74 degrees between individuals instead of six. The Italian and American team’s conclusions were published Monday on Facebook. The two research papers can be read at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4503 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4570.
During the original Milgram experiment, data obtained from a mere 296 volunteers was used. By comparison, Facebook and U. degli Studi di Milano looked at data from all 721 million of Facebook’s users. As everyone is mentioning, that number is more than one-tenth of the entire world’s population.
The notion of “six degrees of separation,” has had a long history. It first appeared in 1929 in the Hungarian short story “Chains,” by Frigyes Karinthy. More recently, the idea was popularized in United States by the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which players attempt to connect anyone within the movie industry to the Footloose actor. The premise is that anyone can be connected to Bacon within six degrees.
Via Twitter, Bacon himself agreed with those opining that the new figure lacks the sonorous ring of the old one.
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On Facebook, Rihanna’s Entire New Album is Streaming for Free
November 21, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Shakira and Barack Obama may currently be besting Rihanna in Twitter rankings, but the Barbadian songstress is doing her part on the social media scene to change the status quo. Last week, RiRi, as she’s known to her fans, let pop music lovers everywhere get a compete earful of her newest album, “Talk That Talk,” through her Facebook page. The free Facebook streaming came four days before the official November 21st release date.
Today, you can head over to the most impossibly retro-cool record shop around to get your hands on the disc, download it from iTunes, or continue streaming it for free to save some money for Thursday’s feast. The pre-release Facebook streaming of Rihanna’s sixth album was part of “Unlocked,” a big publicity campaign that so far has proved successful.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that since “Unlocked” began, Rihanna has gained a million new Twitter followers and over 700,000 Facebook fans. The campaign, which got underway in September, involved delegating “missions” to fans; upon their completion, information about Rihanna’s new studio material was revealed.
As of this writing, the first single off “Talk That Talk,” “We Found Love,” is at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100. On the left is the cover of the album’s deluxe edition.
Read More:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/11/rihanna-streams-talk-that-talk-on-facebook.html
Salman Rushdie Overturns Facebook’s Decision to Call Him “Ahmed Rushdie”
November 15, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Like many people, Salman Rushdie goes by his middle name, even on Facebook, which prefers, apparently, that folks go by their first. This Monday saw the two sides come to a head-to-head public battle. After unceremoniously deactivating Salman Rushdie’s account until he complied with a passport copy request to verify his identity, Facebook reinstated his active status but changed the name on his profile: “Salman Rushdie,” as it appears on the cover of the gazillions of books he’s sold, to “Ahmed Rushdie,” as an airport customs official might greet him. Yikes! would be an understatement.
Rushdie did not waste time in seeking a rectification. After getting nowhere with Facebook’s tech support, he decided to change his medium and put his appeal out on Twitter.
Maybe @MarkZuckerbergF is a phony. Is the real#Zuckerberg on Twitter? Where are you hiding, Mark? Come out here and give me back my name!
That worked. Just two hours into his plucky online campaign Rushdie, informed his followers that Facebook had relented:
Facebook has buckled! I’m Salman Rushdie again. I feel SO much better. An identity crisis at my age is no fun.
Along the way, Mr. Rushdie managed to get the #MiddleNameUsers hashtag going and to bring to the world’s attention the fact that both James “Paul” McCartney and William Bradley “Brad” Pitt go by their middle names. That’s Rushdie at the far right, standing next to Voltaire and Christopher Hitchens.
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Highbrow Socialbots Infiltrate Facebook
November 2, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Scholars at the University of British Columbia created 102 fake Facebook profiles to analyze security weakness of the world’s super social network. The fake profiles were socialbots or “automated software” that once introduced into Facebook could make friend requests and maintain a steady stream of updates. The droid activity is what conferred the guise of authenticity to the profiles. The academics published an interpretation of the experimental data obtained in a paper titled: “The Socialbot Network: When Bots Socialise for Fame and Money“; the credited authors are Yazan Boshmaf, Ildar Muslukhov, Konstantin Beznosov, and Matei Ripeanu.
So what did the learned folk find out about Facebook’s security? That it was quite susceptible to socialbot “infiltration.” The Canadian bots were able to friend a great number of people and gain access to users’ and the friended users’ friends’ personal intel: email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and even home addresses. In other words, they stated that identity theft was possible through Facebook reconnaissance missions.
In all, the researchers’ socialbot network tallied 8,570 outgoing friend requests, 3,055 friends, 46,000 email addresses, and 14,500 home addresses. Through the initial 3,055 friends made, the researchers gained access to details of 1,085,785 separate Facebook profiles.
Facebook responded to the publication stating that they had “serious concerns about the methodology of the research by the University of British Colombia,” and would be “putting these concerns to them.”
Read More:
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/11/01/socialbot-network-harvest-data-facebook/
http://allthingsd.com/20111102/researchers-infiltrate-facebook-through-mutual-friends/
On Facebook, Israel Writes in Arabic to Engage a Contentious Public
November 1, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
The men and women in charge of branding and marketing for Israel’s military are known for their active engagement in social media, but something they had not been particularly known for, at least not until very recently, was the generation of content written and produced in Arabic. Incredibly, this week didn’t just see Palestine voted into full membership at UNESCO, it also saw the public unveiling of the Israeli army’s first bona fide Arabic Facebook page. It’s set to join the ranks of the army’s official Arabic Twitter, YouTube channel, and the Israel Defense Forces’ official Arabic website.
The army’s updates on the world’s largest social network are intended to supply “approved public information” about its “activities in the Palestinian territories” and spark off interactive engagement with its readership — something the Israelis don’t expect to have much trouble with.
That Israel is providing military dispatches in the language of its famously disputatious brethren is being viewed by many as the country reaching out to the domestic and international Arabic-speaking community — most especially the great numbers that find themselves under new, if unresolved, leadership on account of this year’s phenomenal Arab Spring uprisings.
Maj. Avichay Adraee, spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, is credited with championing Arabic social engagement. He has referred to the need for Israel’s military to build a relationship of trust with the Arabic-speaking public — one that is “maintained on a daily basis” and that extends beyond times of crisis.
Read More:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/10/israeli-army-launches-arabic-facebook-page.html
Concerns Raised About Children’s Use of Facebook
October 13, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Federal laws, the Federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 comes to mind, prohibit websites from collecting personal info from children younger than 13 without parental consent, but these laws are consistently flouted left and right. Last spring, Consumer Reports did the math and found that 7.5 million minors younger than 12 had Facebook accounts, which compromised, illegally, their personal information.
Facebook, of course, thrives on information gathering — Share! is its mandate and, like its tech peers (Google), it has been beefing up for increased political influence, in the form of lobbyists and a political action committee, to contest legal restrictions on its business model. Upon hearing the Consumer Reports news, Facebook had no qualms about making its position on the matter known: “That will be a fight we take on at some point,” declared its founder Mark Zuckerberg in a slightly muted rebel yell.
Facebook can provide a wonderful medium for young people to interact with friends and family, but if they lack guidelines for practicing safe engagement in social media, they risk being exposed to cyberbullying and other forms of harassment. So far, Facebook has proved to not completely dismissive of the issue — it is, after all, a proud partner of the police’s Amber alert system.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/why-facebook-is-after-your-kids.html?ref=technology
Facebook Gets Friend.ly, But Will It Also Get Sweet?
October 10, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
At just two years old, Friend.ly has entered the whale’s mouth that is a Facebook acquirement. It seems like a fitting cap for a very eventful sophomore showing — this was the year, after all, that the startup experienced a robust growth spurt in user numbers, clinched $5 million in venture funds, and scored a magnate-ish deal with the Palo Alto/Menlo Park young folk.
The media has already gotten in a few jabs, pointing out that calculations from AppData suggest that although the number of registered users has grown — there are currently 25 million of them — the number of active users has seen a phenomenal decline: 6.9 million earlier in the year and only a measly 300,000 today.
In Friend.ly-speak, Why the drop? Perhaps it’s growth cycle is normalizing; the first jump in numbers was a prompted by successful infrastructural changes designed to improve the sharing rate of Friend.ly content on Facebook.
Friend.ly is supposed to strengthen bonds with old friends and spark new acquaintanceships through online posing and answering of questions, some with a good heaping of mawkishness. Recent questions featured on the Friend.ly blog included “What made you smile today?” and “When was the last time you walked barefoot through the grass?”
Concerning the big news, Team Friend.ly issued a statement thanking users and investors “from the bottom of [their] hearts,” while Facebook praised its new addition for the “really compelling way” it created “for people to express themselves and meet others through answering questions.”
Read More:
http://blog.friend.ly/2011/10/facebook-friends-friend-ly/
http://allthingsd.com/20111010/facebook-acquires-qa-site-friend-ly/
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/15/friend-ly-question-answer-connect/
