Twitter to Remove Images of the Deceased Upon Families’ Request

Twitter said on Tuesday it will remove images of deceased individuals at the request of family members, a move that comes a week after Robin Williams’s daughter said she is quitting the platform after being sent disturbing photo-shopped images of her father’s death.

“In order to respect the wishes of loved ones, Twitter will remove imagery of deceased individuals in certain circumstances,” said a statement tweeted by Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler on Tuesday.

The statement instructed immediate family members and other authorized individuals who would like to “request the removal of images or video of deceased individuals, from when critical injury occurs to the moments before or after death” to email privacy@twitter.com.

The change gives grieving family members a way to scrub the social media outlet of images or videos of their loved ones–whether the content itself breaches Twitter’s rules or not. The new policy is a slight pivot for Twitter, a champion of freedom of speech since its founding and where sensitive content such as nudity and other graphic images have proliferated compared with other social media sites.

Twitter doesn’t allow obscene or pornographic images in user profiles, abusive behavior and threats of violence and the posting of private identifiable information. The company doesn’t actively monitor the half a billion tweets that flood its website and mobile apps for questionable content. Instead, it is up to the users to flag such content, which Twitter will then review.

While its relatively open policy has made Twitter a powerful communication medium, it has also led to plenty of corrosive content and behavior.

This insensitive side of Twitter—though not new—gained widespread attention when Zelda Williams, the daughter of the recently deceased Robin Williams, was harassed on Twitter last week. Williams was reportedly sent fake photo-shopped images of her father’s death and other insulting messages. Williams then said she would no longer use Twitter as well as Instagram and Tumblr. The two Twitter accounts who sent the images were suspended.

In a rare statement responding to the incident, Del Harvey, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, said last week: “We are in the process of evaluating how we can further improve our policies to better handle tragic situations like this one. This includes expanding our policies regarding self-harm and private information, and improving support for family members of deceased users.”

The new policy also comes hours after gruesome photos and videos depicting the beheading of an American photojournalist were circulated on the platform. The account that tweeted the images has since been suspended.

Twitter, however, included a caveat on the removal requests. It added that in its review “Twitter considers public interest factors such as the newsworthiness of the content and may not be able to honor every request.”




Source : blogs.wsj.com

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Does Facebook think users are dumb? “Satire” tag added to Onion articles [Updated]

Facebook is already an unbearable enough place as of late, at least in my case. Awful national and international news stories continue to appear in my personal feed alongside friends' amateur political commentary and personal quibbles, and that mix makes the occasional ray of satirical, hilarious sunshine from off-kilter sites like The Onion welcome. Sadly, Facebook has begun trying to ruin even these fun articles by appending their titles with a "satire" tag.

The major catch to this auto-tagging is that it only appears in a "related articles" box. Here's how it works: If a friend posts an Onion link to his or her Facebook feed, click on it for a laugh. Once you're done at The Onion and come back to your desktop or laptop browser, Facebook will have generated three related articles in a box directly below whatever you'd clicked on. In the case of an Onion link, that box will usually contain at least one article from the same site, only that article's headline will begin with the word "satire" in brackets. As of press time, we were able to duplicate this result on three different computers from different accounts, one of which is shown above.

We can only assume this was implemented as a reaction to users believing that Onion links are nonfiction reports (you can lose hours flipping through Literally Unbelievable, a site that catalogs such boneheaded moments), but we're not sure what compelled Facebook to go so far as to assert editorial control. Maybe the company still feels bad about how users reacted to its intentional News Feed manipulation from 2012.

What's more confusing is this limited implementation, which itself takes a while to explain. Original posts on friends' feeds and The Onion's official Facebook page don't come with a tag. If users save the article to a read-later list, the tag will vanish as well. And other satiric sites, particularly The Onion's newest sibling site, Buzzfeed-spoof Clickhole, are immune to the tag.

We reached out to Facebook to find out how long this practice has been in effect, whether we should expect to see it spread further across the site, and if any other sites fall under the "satire" tag umbrella. The company's PR team responded by asking us for screengrabs of the "satire" tag, but we've received no further response since then. We've also reached out to The Onion for a statement, but mostly because we can't wait to laugh at the article it prepares in response.

Update: A Facebook representative issued the following statement to Ars Technica: "We are running a small test which shows the text '[Satire]' in front of links to satirical articles in the related articles unit in News Feed. This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units." That test has been ongoing for over a month, and while we were told other satirical sites' links have received the same tags, we were not given a list of those sites. Our question about whether the tag would ever appear in other places on Facebook remained unanswered.





Source : arstechnica.com

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Twitter video ads enter beta, are heading to your feed

Video advertisements are heading to your Twitter feed, with the company announcing that after months of testing, it is pushing its so-called Promoted Video platform into beta mode. Fortunately, the ads won't auto-play when you scroll past them.

Twitter announced this on its blog earlier today, saying that its Promoted Video efforts over the past months have shown that native video tweets have higher views and better engagement than past options, and as a result it is kicking off a beta test.

Advertisers will be getting tools to upload their video advertisements to Twitter and keep tabs on how they perform through analytics and such. Some unspecified verified users and "select content publishers" are said to be on-board for the expansion.

The company sums up what you can expect in a statement about its ambitions, saying, "The overall goal is to bring more video into our users' timelines to create a richer and more engaging Twitter." There's no word about when you'll be seeing these advertisements pop up.










SOURCE: slashgear.com

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Google Video Quality Report to grade how well ISPs deliver YouTube

If you've ever tried to use YouTube as a practical measure of how fast your Internet connection is, then you might be in for a surprise. Apparently, Google has the same idea and has launched its Video Quality Report service to gauge an Internet Service Provider's performance based on how well they are able to stream videos from YouTube.

It might seem almost strange for Google to offer such a kind of service that would virtually pit ISPs against each other. After all, it can turn into a virtual hall of shame really quick. But Google's motives are more or less benign and want users to have a more understandable criteria for evaluating an ISP's offer, as well as making sure they're getting their money's worth.

Being Google, there is a bit of science and math behind the service. For sure, it isn't going to rely on users' feedback or comments, which will be very subjective. It also won't simply base its results from a single person's Home connection. Instead, it analyzes how fast billions of hours worth of YouTube videos are slurped over a span of 30 days. This is then categorized by service provider and location. It also properly considers the density of users on that network per region and adjusts the scores accordingly.

The result is a grading system, indicated by none other than badges, that Google believes can help users and service providers communicate better with each other. A "YouTube HD Vertified" badge tells users that the ISP in that area is able to load videos in 720p HD most of the time. "Standard definition", on the other hand, is given to those that can load at least 360p 90% of the time. And "lower definition" is reserved for those that cannot guarantee even standard quality or, worse, a stable connection.

The website for Google's Video Quality Report is already up but currently only contains informational material on what Google is trying to accomplish and how. For the moment, Google's first test subject is Canada, since Google considers the ISPs there to be exemplars of quality YouTube streaming. Google is so far keeping mum on when it plans to start rolling out to other regions as well. It will be interesting to see how much its badges will be adopted as a way of measuring quality of service in the future.







SOURCE: Financial Post

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Facebook Trending brings popular topics to light, rolling out now

Following the inclusion of hashtags, Facebook began testing a Trending box during the late summer last year, showing popular topics in the upper corner of one's account much in the same way the aforementioned microblogging site does. Fast-forward a handful of months, and Facebook has now begun rolling the new feature out in certain (yet unspecified) countries, while mobile users will have to keep waiting as testing is still underway.

The idea behind Trending is simple, and could be handy for those who want to see the bigger social picture rather than live in the bubble of their friend's list. Trending items, which are topics popular in the moment, whether recent events, news, or something else entirely, are listed in a small box in the top-right corner of one's main page -- not quite in the News Feed, but close enough.

Not all will be seeing the same trending topics, however, with the list -- which is slight in nature with only a handful of topics -- being personalized for each user. Some topics displayed with on Facebook-as-a-whole trends, but others will be trends within topics you're interested in, as determined by your past Facebook activity, likes, and other applicable settings.

With each trending topic comes a small blurb that explains what the topic is about, and clicking it will then pull up posts related to the topic, making the social network altogether Twitter-esque. If you're not seeing the box yet, hang tight -- Facebook hasn't said which regions are getting it, and when it will roll out to others, nor when it'll be showing up on mobile.










SOURCE: Facebook Newsroom

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Google+ Local hit with thousands of compromised hotel links

Yesterday, news surfaced of an annoying and somewhat unanticipated so-called hijacking of hotel links within Google+ Local accounts by yet-unknown spammers. When clicked, the compromised links took prospective customers to a third-party book service. Whether the third-party services were responsible for the compromised accounts or another entity entirely -- someone operating under an affiliate account sees most likely, in that scenario -- also isn't yet known.

The compromised links were first reported on by the folks over at Search Engine Land. It would seem thousands of hotel-based Google+ accounts were compromised, with the only change taking place being an alteration to the URL under its avatar in the main profile box -- the URL in the "Links" section also seems to have been changed. Further adding to the element of obfuscation was the nature of the compromised URLs in and of themselves.

The hijacked links, if they can be appropriately called that, upon first glance appeared legit enough, usually starting with the name of the hotel before the third-party's domain. The links pointed to RoomsToBook[dot]info, as well as a .NET variation, and HotelsWhiz[dot]com. The folks behind the report tried to contact the sites' owners without success.

Both RoomsToBook domains point to servers for a HotelWhiz offshoot, however, called HotelWhiz[dot]info. At this point, there's no word on whether the company is responsible or someone else entirely, and Google hasn't been forthcoming in details, though it is working on fixing the problem. Some pages have been removed, and the Internet giant has confirmed it is both aware and cleaning up the mess.





SOURCE: Search Engine Land

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Wickr founder details FBI request for backdoor

In December, it was reported that security firm RSA -- according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden -- was paid millions by the NSA to put a back door into its encryption products. A couple days later, the company denied having a secret contract with the government agency, and said that it never knowingly put a back door in its offerings. That didn't stop some companies from gravitating away from RSA, however, and one such company was Wickr. The company's founder, Nico Sell, announced this change at an RSA Security Conference, during which she made it clear her company would not have a back door and that users' security was important. Immediately after, an FBI agent approached her with a request -- to add a backdoor on behalf of the agency.

Wickr is a self-destructing message service akin to Snapchat, and it's company tagline is "Leave No Trace". The company touts the use of military-grade encryption for all video, picture, audio, and text messages, with secure file-shredding features for users and the ability to control who, where, and for how long one's own messages are available. Security, obviously, is the company's biggest point of focus.

According to Sell, immediately after exiting the stage at the conference where she detailed the service's security elements, an FBI agent casually approached her with a request that her company introduce a backdoor into the service that would give the FBI access to users' messages. The approach was said to be casual, something Sell states is apparently how such approaches are commonly done. "Always casual, testing, because most people would say yes."

Reportedly, Sell's response was an ear-full for the agent on the Constitution, a bit about George Washington, and followed up with a request for details on his part. Said Sell, "I asked if he had official paperwork for me, if this was an official request, who his boss was. He backed down very quickly." Sell has suggested the NSA revert to a surveillance model that involved the targeting of individuals rather than the mass surveillance of communications. "I'm not against helping law enforcement, but the most important thing to me is protecting my friends and family the best way I know how. There are plenty of ways to track people without trampling human rights."




SOURCE: PC Magazine

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Facebook slapped with lawsuit over ads reportedly displaying false endorsements

Facebook has been hit with another lawsuit this month, this one by a user who states the social network falsely showed that he "Liked" USA Today when, in fact, he never had. Such an advertisement appeared to the people on his friends list, showing them an endorsement from him that he states he never performed. The user is seeking financial compensation for this action, as well as compensation for all other users who experienced the same phenomenon.

Facebook user Anthony Ditirro has filed a class-action lawsuit against Facebook in a San Jose court for displaying his endorsement of a publication he claims to have never visited or "Liked," in the actionable sense of the word. Though, according to the lawsuit, Ditirro has nothing against USA Today, it is also not something he has endorsed and so he takes umbrage with the falsely-generated "Like" on the advertisement.

The false use of his endorsement, according to the class-action lawsuit, runs afoul of various federal and state-level privacy and related rights, and the $750 in damages comes by precedent of a California law allowing for such a figure in the event a personal image is used in the manner specified without the owner's permission. As mentioned, this isn't the first privacy-related lawsuit the social network has received in recent weeks.

During the last days of December, two Facebook users filed a lawsuit against the social network under claims that it reads the contents of private messages that contain a link to a third-party, doing so to mine data for advertisers and marketers. That claim -- which Facebook has called "without merit" -- is said to be in violation of the Electronics Communications Privacy Act and related California laws. In that instance, the plaintiffs are seeking $10,000 in damages for all users who allegedly fell prey to these claimed privacy violations.






SOURCE: GigaOm

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Google patents process for turning chats into comic strips

If you're a Bitstrips aficionado or a fan of flicking open an old-school newspaper funnies section, a patent Google has been awarded might be right up your alley: turning conversations into digital comic strips. The information turned up in a patent detailing a process that, in terms of the social element, at least, sounds very similar to the aforementioned Bitstrips: the ability to share on social networks, with at least two users being involved in the comic.

The patent details a process that uses pre-existing conversations, such as chats, and turns them into comic strips. This conversion process can be manually initiated, it would seem, or it can take place automatically, and it must involve at least two individuals (hence, the conversation conversion aspect of it). The strip can then be opened to editing by other parties to further its life span, so to speak.

There's a bit social aspect to the comic generation idea, with Google's process detailing ways to socially share the created comics: over instant messaging, on a social network a la Facebook, a profile page, perhaps like one's Google+ profile page, or over email. The image above is one example of a sample generated chat by the process -- hopefully if this comes to fruition, the resulting creations will be of a more entertaining persuasion.

Of course, this may never actually surface. There's no information about whether this is something that Google plans to create and bring to its users or just have tucked away silently in its I-own-this-patent folder, which arguably seems more probable. What do you think? Does the patent bring up flashbacks of the last batch of Bitstrips cluttering your Facebook feed, or do you look forward to sharing your knee-slapping conversations with the wider world?




VIA: Engadget

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Fraudulent Web traffic makes up 51% of all US web traffic in Q3

A company called Solve Media has issued its quarterly update on the traffic generated on the web from fraudulent sources. The report is called the Quarterly Bot Traffic Market Advisory. The latest report looks at Q3 2013.

The report shows that fraudulent web traffic in the US has hit an all time high during the quarter. According to the report, 51% of all traffic on the web is made up from fraudulent sources. The 51% number represents an 8% increase in fraudulent web traffic compared to Q2 2013.

The amount of suspicious mobile activity in the US is also up significantly in the US growing from 22% in Q2 2013 to 27% in Q3. As high as the percentage of fraudulent web traffic is in the US, it's even worse elsewhere in the world. In Estonia 83% of all web traffic is fraudulent. In Singapore, 79% of all web traffic is fraudulent with 77% of all traffic in China being fraudulent.

In the UK, suspicious web activity reached 47% of all traffic, a marked increase from 44% the previous quarter. Across the world, bot traffic was 22% to 29% for web advertising, 11-14% for mobile advertising, and suspicious web traffic was 43-47% globally.







SOURCE: Solve Media

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'Facebook' dead and buried to teens, research finds

Facebook is 'dead and buried' to older teenagers, an extensive European study has found, as the key age group moves on to Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat.

Researching the Facebook use of 16-18 year olds in eight EU countries, the Global Social Media Impact Study found that as parents and older users saturate Facebook, its younger users are shifting to alternative platforms.

"Facebook is not just on the slide - it is basically dead and buried," wrote Daniel Miller, lead anthropologist on the research team, who is professor of material culture of University College London.

"Mostly they feel embarrassed to even be associated with it. Where once parents worried about their children joining Facebook, the children now say it is their family that insists they stay there to post about their lives."

Teens do not care that alternative services are less functional and sophisticated, and they also unconcerned about how information about them is being used commercially or as part of surveillance practice by the security services, the research found.

"What appears to be the most seminal moment in a young person’s decision to leave Facebook was surely that dreaded day your mum sends you a friend request," wrote Miller.

"It is nothing new that young people care about style and status in relation to their peers, and Facebook is simply not cool anymore."

In part of the study's research with Italian Facebook users, 40% of users had never changed their privacy settings and 80% said they "were not concerned or did not care" if their personal data was available and accessed, either by an organisation or an individual.

Information that people choose to publish on Facebook has generally been through a psychological filtering process, researchers found - unlike conversations, photos and video shared through more private tools such as Skype, or on mobile apps.

"Most individuals try to present themselves online the way they think society is expecting them to," wrote contributing anthropologist Razvan Nicolescu on Thursday.

"It seems that social media works not towards change – of society, notions of individuality and connectedness, and so on – but rather as a conservative force that tends to strengthen the conventional social relations and to reify society as Italians enjoy and recognise it.

"The normativity of the online presence seems to be just one expression of this process."



SOURCE: The Guardian

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Yahoo reclaims top web property spot from Google in ComScore US report

For the first time in over two years, Yahoo came in at number on on ComScore‘s list of Top 50 US Web Properties. The list, which was just released today, is a bit of a surprise, as Yahoo hasn’t claimed the top position since May 2011. While initial speculation made it seem like the acquisition of Tumblr had something to do with this boost, that is not the case.

Yahoo has still held on strong at the top of the list, claiming position two or three, several times in the past few months but they hadn’t reclaimed the top spot until this month. Yahoo also currently has the top Ad Focus ranking score, which measures a site’s reach online.

It’s hard to pin down why the sudden increase in Yahoo’s popularity. Marketing Land initial speculated that the Tumblr acquisition had a lot to do with it and that some of the site’s traffic was counting underneath the Yahoo umbrella. However, Tumblr is actually on the list on its own, claiming the 28th spot.

Later on, a statement from ComScore noted that none of Tumblr’s traffic has been combined with Yahoo’s and that another unknown factor is playing into the sudden boost. They added that it is likely just a normal seasonal fluctuation, as both Google and Yahoo have had very close numbers over the past few months.





VIA Marketing Land

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Zuckerberg introduces Internet.org partnership, wants to connect the world

Facebook‘s founder Mark Zuckerberg has introduced Internet.org, a partnership that spans the globe with a goal of connecting the entire world to the Internet. The collective encompasses many big name members, among them being Samsung, Nokia, and Opera, all of whom will work together to connect the two-thirds of the world that don’t have access to the Internet.

Presently, a tad over a third of the world’s population is connected the Internet, a number that comes in at 2.7 billion. That leaves another two-thirds without connection, with the reasons for this varying based on location and such. The rate of Internet adoption is said to be less than 9-percent per year, a number those behind Internet.org hope to see increase as a result of their efforts.

Said Zuckerberg: “Everything Facebook has done has been about giving all people around the world the power to connect. There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it.”

Under the initiative, members will work together to develop technologies – and their adoption – that make it cheaper for individuals to connect to the Internet while reducing the cost of data delivery. Among this effort will be the development of higher-quality smartphones that come with a smaller price tag, and partnerships to expand access in what Facebook calls areas that are lacking.

The technologies being development will also focus on more efficient use of data, decreasing the amount that apps and such use to help keep over all data use – and thusly costs – down. This will include things like cache systems and compression tools. And finally, the members will work towards creating and sustaining business models that facilitate Internet access.





SOURCE: Facebook Newsroom

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Gmail gets full-screen compose option by popular demand

In October, Google rolled out a new Gmail compose box that would allow users to reference past emails and other content in the account while composing. While it was a handy change and addressed issues many had complained about, others weren’t happy when it became the default option. Now, by popular demand, a full-screen option has been added.

Google announced the new feature today on Google+, saying that it was prodded to add a full-screen compose window by feedback it received from users. The option doesn’t do away with the current pop-out compose window, which is fixed to the right side of the inbox, instead giving a second option for those who prefer it.

With the new full-screen mode, the compose window expands to fill most of the center of the user’s display, with the outer margins dimming gray for a proper writing session. This can be achieved either temporarily, depending on need, or set as the default way Gmail’s compose box shows up when a new message is started.

The full-screen option can be triggered by clicking the Expand button on the menu bar. To make the expanded view your default option, the More Options menu on the bottom of the box holds the “Default to full-screen” option, which can be toggled on and off as desired. Those who don’t see it yet should be seeing it within the next couple days, since it is happening in waves.

In addition to the full-screen compose window, the formatting toolbar is also now on by default, making it easier to get to the formatting tools that, upon a quick glance, had seemed to disappear when the design change first took place.

SOURCE: Google

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