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  • Five big tech companies that have embarked on massive layoffs in 2022

    Like most companies, technology companies this year have also been hit with the global economic crisis which many experts say is fuelled by the Russian-Ukraine war and the impact of covid 19.

    This has resulted in massive layoffs across the sector with a total of 1138 layoffs at tech companies globally, affecting 182,605 people, according to TrueUps tech layoff tracker.

    Below is a list of top tech giants that have announced job cuts this year or embarked on massive layoffs.

    Twitter

    It didn’t take long for Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk to lay off almost half of the company’s staff. This was just a week after officially closing the acquisition process to take over the company.

    “…the Nov. 4 layoffs only affected “15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.” Twitter’s then-head of content moderation, Yoel Roth said.

    These job cuts also affected the company’s only African office in Ghana’s capital, Accra. According to reports, employees were fired with the exception of one.

    While these layoffs represent the biggest workforce cull Twitter has seen, it’s not the first time this year the company has sought to slim down its employee base. After initially implementing a hiring freeze, in July 2022 the company went on to lay off 30% of its talent acquisition team.

    Amazon

    On Tuesday (November 15), the company notified regional authorities in California that it would lay off about 260 workers at various facilities that employ data scientists, software engineers, and other corporate workers. Those job cuts would be effective beginning on Jan. 17, 2023.

    Amazon would not specify how many more layoffs may be in the works beyond the ones confirmed through California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, also known as WARN, which requires companies to provide 60 days’ notice if they have 75 or more full-time or part-time workers. Amazon employs more than 1.5 million workers globally, primarily made up of hourly workers.

    The online retail giant, like other tech and social media giants, saw sizable profits during the COVID-19 pandemic, as homebound shoppers purchased more items online. But revenue growth slowed as the worst of the pandemic eased and consumers relied less on e-commerce.

     

    Netflix

    In June this year, Netflix announced it laid off 300 employees in the second round of job cuts after losing subscribers for the first time in more than a decade.

    The cuts amounted to about 4% of the streaming giant’s workforce and mostly affected US employees. They came after the company cut 150 jobs last month.

    “While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth,” Netflix said in a statement.

    Netflix said in February it had lost 200,000 subscribers globally at the start of 2022, and projected a decline of 2 million users in the upcoming quarter.

    The company blamed the drop on a range of factors, including increased competition, the economy, the war in Ukraine, and the large number of people who share their accounts with non-paying households.

    Facebook

    On Wednesday, November 9, the CEO of Facebook’s parent Meta, Mark Zuckerberg announced the company is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes.

    Zuckerberg said that he had made the decision to hire aggressively, anticipating rapid growth even after the pandemic lockdowns ended.

    “Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

    Meta, like other social media companies, enjoyed a financial boost during the pandemic lockdown era because more people stayed home and scrolled on their phones and computers. But as the lockdowns ended and people started going outside again, revenue growth began to falter.

    Tesla

    In June 2022, Elon Musk confirmed that the salaried workforce at Tesla Inc. would be cut by about 10% over the next three months, but said the overall reduction in the electric-car maker’s headcount would only be some 3.5% as hourly staff numbers are still expected to grow.

    “We grew very fast on the salaried side,” Musk said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday. “A year from now, I think our headcount will be higher” in salaried and hourly workers, but for now the reduction will be 3% to 3.5%, he said in a report by Bloomberg.

    The comments brought more clarity to the situation with Tesla’s staffing, after Musk made varied internal and public statements about reductions over the past month.

     

  • Days after escalating hunger strike, a British-Egyptian activist is undergoing ‘medical intervention’

    On Sunday, the first day of the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Alaa Abd El-Fattah stopped eating and began refusing water.

    According to his mother, Egyptian prison authorities intervened medically days after jailed British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah escalated his hunger strike.

    The nature of the intervention is unknown, but Mr Abd El-family Fattah’s is concerned that prison officials will force-feed him.

    According to the family, this would be torture.

    She told the Associated Press news agency she asked “if it was by force, and they said no” and told her “Alaa is good”.

    Mr Abd El-Fattah had been on a partial hunger strike of 100 calories a day for the past six months.

    He stopped all calorie intake and began refusing water on Sunday – the first day of the COP27 climate summit held in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.

    His hope was to get the attention of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who attended the UN-led summit this week, and persuade him to take immediate action for his release.

    Mr Abd El-Fattah is now in a prison hospital following the escalation in his hunger strike.

    The activist said in an earlier letter that he was prepared to die in prison if not freed.

    Ms Soueif has called for her son to be transferred to a civilian hospital rather than a prison facility.

    “I need proof for this. I don’t trust them,” she said.

    She has been waiting outside the prison every day this week, asking for proof her son is alive.

    Mr Abd El-Fattah’s sister Mona Seif has said she has now been informed by prison officials that he is undergoing “medical intervention”.

    The activist’s family have been increasingly worried for his health and continuously campaigned for his release ahead of COP27.

    They also organised a sit-in outside the UK Foreign Office.

    Mona Seif (left), the sister of writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a British-Egyptian activist imprisoned in Egypt, at a sit-in outside the Foreign Office in London. Picture date: Tuesday October 18, 2022.
    Image:Mona Seif (left), the sister of writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, outside the Foreign Office in October

    Mr Abd El-Fattah’s younger sister Sanaa Seif said last week in a public address to world leaders at COP27: “You are going to be in the same land as a British citizen dying.

    “And if you don’t show that you care, it will be interpreted as a green light to kill him. My brother can be saved.”

    “If you don’t save him, you have blood on your hands.”

    Mr Abd El-Fattah rose to prominence during the pro-democracy uprisings in 2011 which took place throughout the Middle East and played a role in dismounting Egypt’s long-time president Hosni Mubarak.

    World leaders and activists have repeatedly called for Egyptian authorities to release him.

    At COP27, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz raised the activist’s case in their talks with Mr el-Sissi.

    Celebrities who have spoken out in support of Mr Abd El-Fattah include Dame Judi Dench, Dame Emma Thompson, Mark Ruffalo, Carey Mulligan andKhalid Abdalla.

    Climate activist Greta Thunberg even refused to join the COP27 because she disagreed with the country’s human rights abuses.

    The environmentalist was seen pictured at a protest in solidarity of Mr Abd El-Fattah.

  • Ghana School of Law setting out to invade students privacy – Bawah Mogtari

    Joyce Bawah Mogtari, a private legal practitioner and spokesperson of former President John Dramani Mahama, has reacted to the Ghana School of Law’s request for school media handles of its students.

    The school mandated to train legal practitioners on Wednesday, November 9, 2020, directed students to submit their social media handles for monitoring to ensure that they maintain a character befitting the legal profession.

    Yaw Oppong, Director of the School, speaking during the swearing-in ceremony of the School of Law Students’ Representative Council (SRC) executives explained that the request for social media handles will help many students willing to be called to the bar to maintain a good character.

    “Everybody will have to provide their social media handles. We are going to look at it and you will be monitored in terms of conduct. We are required by law to make recommendations. We don’t want to stampede you.

    “You are going to reapply beyond the pass and submit yourselves for all legitimate checks,” he said.

    But Madam Bawah Mogtari believes the Ghana School of Law must come again on their latest request from students.

    She wrote on her Facebook timeline, “as lawyers, we are enjoined to protect the ideals of the Constitution and demonstrably so. Instructively, the first action before the Supreme Court for the enforcement of the 1992 constitution was initiated by lawyers (Kuenyehia & Others v. Archer & Others [1992-1993] 2 GLR 525).

    “It is therefore surprising that today, and in this age and time, the institution responsible for training lawyers in our beloved country is setting out to invade the privacy of its students by interfering with a right so sacrosanct under the Constitution.”

    Bawah Mogtari continued: “I do hope that the Ghana School of Law will reconsider this decision that so egregiously violates rights protected in our Constitution.

    “The Ghana Bar Association must as a matter of urgency stand up against this. Their silence many hours after the news broke in itself is problematic. The Association cannot continue to fail in its mandate to members of the Association and the public in general.

    “What we need is the reformation of legal education in Ghana to be equitable and accord all those willing and qualified to read law the opportunity to do so.

    “We certainly do not need a backward, draconian and repressive Ghana School of Law.”

    Meanwhile, the Ghana School of Law is set to call over 700 students to join the Ghana Bar Association on Friday, November 11, 2022, at the Accra International Conference Centre.

    As part of the criteria, prospective students who wish to join the Ghana Bar Association, GBA, are to lead an exemplary life by maintaining a good character.

     

  • Meta eliminates over 11,000 jobs -the highest number in its history

    Facebook’s parent company, whose stock has lost more than two-thirds of its value, also announced plans to cut discretionary spending and extend its hiring freeze into the first quarter.On Wednesday, Meta Platforms Inc announced the layoff of 13% of its workforce, or more than 11,000 employees, in one of the largest technology layoffs this year as the Facebook parent company battles rising costs and a weak advertising market.

    The massive layoffs, the first in Meta’s 18-year history, come on the heels of thousands of layoffs at other leading technology companies such as Elon Musk’s Twitter and Microsoft Corp.

    The pandemic boom that boosted tech companies and their valuations has turned into a bust this year in the face of decades-high inflation and rapidly rising interest rates.

    Meta, whose shares have lost more than two-thirds of their value, said it also plans to cut discretionary spending and extend its hiring freeze through the first quarter.

    “Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” the company’s founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to employees announcing the layoffs.

    “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

    Potential recession

    An economic slowdown and a grim outlook for online advertising – by far Meta’s biggest revenue source – have contributed to the company’s woes. This summer, Meta posted its first quarterly revenue decline in history, followed by another, bigger decline in the fall.

    Some of the pain is company-specific, while some is tied to broader economic and technological forces.

    Last week, Twitter laid off about half of its 7,500 employees, part of a chaotic overhaul as Musk took the helm. He tweeted there was no choice but to cut the jobs “when the company is losing more than $4M/day”, though did not provide details about the losses.

    Meta has worried investors by pouring more than $10bn a year into the “metaverse” as it shifts its focus away from social media.

    Zuckerberg predicts the metaverse, an immersive digital universe, will eventually replace smartphones as the primary way people use technology.

    Meta and its advertisers are bracing for a potential recession. There is also the challenge of Apple’s privacy tools, which make it more difficult for social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snap to track people without their consent and show them specially tailored advertisements.

    Competition from TikTok is also an a growing threat as younger people flock to the video sharing app over Instagram, which Meta also owns.

    Meta’s profits fell to $4.4bn in the last quarter, a 52 percent decrease year-on-year.

    “Fundamentally, we’re making all these changes for two reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure we’re operating efficiently,” wrote Zuckerberg.

  • Ghana’s economy moving from crisis to crisis – John Mahama

    Former President John Dramani Mahama has observed that Ghana’s economy has lurched from crisis to crisis.

    In a Facebook post, the former President said the crisis has ultimately resulted in the most debilitating living conditions in several decades.

    He added that within a space of ten months, our currency, the Ghana Cedi, has depreciated by over 62% against the US dollar.

    “In the last few years, our economy has lurched from crisis to crisis, ultimately resulting in the most debilitating living conditions in several decades. Within a space of ten months, our currency, the Ghana Cedi, has depreciated by over 62% against the US dollar, which is the highest in recent memory,” Mahama posted on Facebook today 4th November 2022.

    This statement comes after the Former President John Dramani Mahama on Thursday, October 27, 2022, addressed the nation.

    Speaking at the UPSA Auditorium, Mahama touched on the current economic hardships sweeping across the land, high inflation rates and the depreciation of the cedi.

    Mr. Mahama urged government to cut down on expenditure by reducing the number of appointees and ministers.

    Read Also: 3 teacher unions declare strike over new GES Director

    He also advised government to abolish or realign state institutions with similar functions while suspending non-essential projects.

    The 2020 flagbearer of the NDC also backed calls for the dismissal of the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta from office; adding that his removal will not affect the ongoing negotiations between Ghana and the IMF.

    “Our public debt is projected to hover around GH¢ 522 billion by close of this year, with a corresponding debt to GDP ratio of above100%. The debt service obligation arising from this, is monstrous and, is making it impossible to finance almost all critical sectors of the economy.”

    “The wage bill has gone up due to unbridled recruitment into all sectors of the public service resulting from a poor capacity of the private sector to mop-up the teeming youth graduating from all levels of our educational system.”

    “Worse still, Ghana has been classified as the country with the highest likelihood of debt default, which reflects the multiple downgrades by the international credit agencies. As it stands, we remain firmly shut out of the international bond market,” excerpts of Mahama’s speech said.

    Source: atinkaonline.com

  • I was only cited for a traffic offence – Sosu denies reports of arrest

    The Member of Parliament (MP) for Madina, Francis-Xavier Sosu, has denied reports by some media outlets that he has been arrested for a traffic offence.

    The MP was reported to have been arrested by the Ghana Police Service for reckless and inconsiderate driving.

    “The lawmaker, who broke the law was arrested on November 3 2022 after he was seen driving in the middle of the road around Airport in his vehicle with registration number GB-9776-21 with no regard for law abiding pedestrians and other road users,” one of the reports indicated.

    But Francis-Xavier Sosu, in a post shared on Facebook on Friday, November 4, 2022, said that he was never arrested but rather cited for traffic offences.

    “I have not been arrested nor under Arrest. The reports making rounds are not entirely accurate. I was cited for traffic offences yesterday, Thursday, November 3 2022 on my way from Parliament to an event in the Constituency,” parts of the post read.

    “This morning, I was in the La Court to have the matter dealt with. I am currently in Parliament performing my parliamentary duties. Again, I am not under arrest,” he added.

    The MP also berated the police for the handling of his case.

    “It seems to me that the news of my arrest is more important to the Ghana Police Service than their core mandate. For instance, how many persons were cited for traffic offences yesterday?” he questioned.

    View the MP’s tweet below:

     Source: Ghanaweb

  • Where is your scorecard? – Dzifa Gomashie descends on Afriyie Akoto, Asenso Boakye

    The Member of Parliament for Ketu South, Abla Dzifa Gomashie, has descended on two sector ministers, Owusu Afriyie Akoto and Francis Asenso-Boakye, over their performances in their respective sectors.

    The MP, in separate posts on her Facebook page, questioned the outputs of the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Works and Housing, respectively, asking how they can prove to Ghanaians that they are working.

    In posts, which included photos and videos she captured from Morocco, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP wondered why, in the case of Afriyie Akoto, he was yet to show physical evidence of his successes with the government’s Planting for Food and Jobs.

    “Dear Minister of Agriculture, people are working without the slogan in other African countries. In these pictures and videos are green houses in Morocco… PLANTING FOR FOOD AND JOBS!

    “Where is your scorecard?” she quizzed.

    Dzifa Gomashie also quizzed the Minister of Works and Housing on why he has not allowed Ghana’s Saglemi Housing Project to become operational, regardless of the existing allegations.

    “Dear Minister for Works and Housing,

    “This could be our SAGLEMI after 6 years. Even if what you alleged was true, 6 years is long enough for you to have given Saglemi life.

    “Where is the scorecard?” she wrote.

  • Mark Zuckerberg urged to spend less on metaverse after suffering ‘supersized and terrifying losses’

    When asked why his company is focused on experimental bets, Zuckerberg said: “It would be a mistake for us to not focus on any of these areas that will be fundamentally important to our future.”

    Facebook’s parent company is metaverse under pressure to focus less on the metaverse – as investors say it is an experimental bet causing “supersized and terrifying losses”.

    The tech giant changed its name to Meta last year under plans to build a virtual world that would be used by millions of people.

    But Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse has been beset by technical problems, with user numbers far below the targets set by executives.

    Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, U.S., October 23, 2019

    The latest figures show Reality Labs, the division building the metaverse, lost £3.16bn between July and September, compared with £2.27bn in the same period a year earlier.

    Investors rushed to dump Meta’s stock after the company warned that losses linked to the metaverse “will grow significantly” next year.

    When asked why his company is focused on experimental bets, Zuckerberg said: “It would be a mistake for us to not focus on any of these areas that will be fundamentally important to our future.”

    But analysts have said that the metaverse “feels like one big gamble” – especially given the current economic crisis – and fear the road ahead will be “long and painful”.

    The virtual reality headsets required to get the best experience in Meta’s virtual world are pricy. One costs £1,300 – putting it out of the reach of many consumers.

    Paolo Pescatore from PP Foresight said: “People are not rushing out of their seats to buy a VR headset or even watch 360-degree videos … The new device still feels like an expensive toy.”

    Earlier this week, a fund that invests in Meta called on the company to cut its yearly investment in the metaverse from $10 billion to $5 billion.

    Altimeter Capital’s CEO, Brad Gerstner, warned: “Meta has drifted into the land of excess – too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency.

    “This lack of focus and fitness is obscured when growth is easy but deadly when growth slows and technology changes.”

    Meanwhile, Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Aho Williamson has warned that Meta needs to turn its business around – focusing less on the metaverse and more on fixing its core business.

    “As Facebook Inc, was a revolutionary company that changed the way people communicate and the way marketers interact with consumers. Today it’s no longer that innovative groundbreaker.”

    Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – has other clouds on the horizon as it battles falling advertising sales and stiff competition from TikTok.

    Revenue in the third quarter fell for a second consecutive time to £23.83bn.

    Meta’s share price is in danger of falling to its lowest level in six years – and the stock has plunged by 61.6% since the year began.

    Source: Skynews.com

     

  • Cedi is struggling because of speculation, stop it – NPP tasks media

    Richard Ahiagbah, the National Communications Director of the governing New Patriotic Party, (NPP) is concerned about the continued depreciation of the Ghana cedi.

    He is equally concerned about what he describes as ‘talking down’ the currency which is currently the worst against the US dollar globally according to a Bloomberg report.

    “The widespread talking down of the cedi is contributing largely to the struggle of the cedi. The technical word for it is speculation. The speculation must stop,” he tweeted on Friday, October 21.

    His tweet was in reaction to a description of the cedi as ‘worthless’ in a news reportage by Accra-based TV3.

    Ahiagbah was echoing a similar concern raised by a leading member of the NPP, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, who had in a series of Facebook posts warned against how journalists especially describe the cedi.

    Gabby holds that whenever journalists report negatively on the cedi, they become accessories to fuel speculation about the currency and thus become complicit in its depreciation.

    He wrote in a Facebook post on October 20 thus: “Journalists can report and influence. But where the default mode is to influence negatively, such media houses run the risk of becoming partners in speculation.

    “It is not the job of journalists and analysts to fix the cedi; but fixing it is not helped if they make it more their job to fuel speculations.

    “The cedi may be worth 60% less now than what it was to the US dollar last year. But it is not worthless! My sympathies go to the many, many businesses and consumers out there who simply do not know where to turn,” the post added.

    His comments come a day after Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta appealed against panic and unnecessary rush to get the dollar. he, however, described the depreciation of the cedi as ‘perplexing.’

    The widespread talking down of the cedi is contributing largely to the struggle of the cedi. The technical word for it is speculation. The speculation must stop.#BuildingGhanaTogether #developingghana #Ghana @tv3_ghana pic.twitter.com/lLziWhthAT

    — Richard Ahiagbah (@RAahiagbah) October 21, 2022

  • Sammy Gyamfi vows to challenge Opoku Prempeh’s GH¢500,000 suit against him

    The National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi, has stated that he will be filing a notice of appeal and an application for stay of execution to challenge a decision of the High Court that went against him.

    Sammy Gyamfi had been dragged to court by the Minister of Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, for alleging that one of the suspects arrested in connection with the kidnapping of some two Canadian girls in Kumasi, Seidu Mba, was his (Dr. Prempeh’s) errand boy.

    This was during the period when Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh was the Minister of Education in 2009.

    After years in court, the General Jurisdiction High Court (12) in Accra, presided over by Justice Charles Gyamfi Danquah on Thursday, October 13, 2022, ruled against Sammy Gyamfi, ordering him to pay GH¢500,000 damages to the complainant, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh.

    In his response in a post on Facebook, Sammie Gyamfi stated that while the court ruled against him, he disagreed with the decision, adding that the court erred.

    “After three years of litigation, the court today held that the said comment was defamatory and consequently awarded damages of GH500,000.00 and cost of GH50,000.00 against me.

    “It is my considered view that the honorable court erred as its decision is contrary to the evidence that was put before the court. More importantly, I hold the view that the court’s decision to totally disregard the testimony of my witness, DW1, Mafus Jibril who testified that the said Seidu Mba was in fact the errand boy of Plaintiff and was in his company when he (DW1) was attacked in Manhyia sometime in 2012, constitutes a grave miscarriage of justice,” he wrote.

    He added that he will take up the case in a higher court, hopeful that he will be served justice.

    “Consequently, my lawyers will be filing a notice of appeal and an application for stay of execution to challenge the decision of the High Court forthwith. It’s my hope that justice will be served,” he added.

    Commenting on his victory, the Minister of Energy, who is also the Member of Parliament for Manhyia South, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, issued a statement to express his happiness about the outcome of the case.

    “A declaration that the words complained of and published by the defendant and contained in paragraph 14 herein are defamatory of the Plaintiff’s character.

    “An order of the honourable court directed at the defendant to publish an unqualified retraction and an apology with the same prominence of the defamatory words received within seven days after the judgment.

    “An order of the honourable court for a perpetual injunction restraining the defendant, his agents, assigns, servants and any person claiming authority from the defendant from further making/or publishing any defamatory words against the Plaintiff.

    “The sum of One million Ghana Cedis (GHS1,000,000) in damages for the defamation,” the statement said.

     

  • Facebook And Instagram Are Full Of Violent Erotica Ads From ByteDance- And Tencent-Backed Apps

    Some of the ads include descriptions of sexual violence, paired with images of battered women and photos of male fitness influencers, which were used without permission.

    Apps backed by ByteDance and Tencent have been running hundreds of ads on Facebook and Instagram containing sexually explicit content, descriptions of graphic violence, and content promoting acts of self-harm.

    The ads, which violate Meta’s policies, contain excerpts from erotic web novels featuring young adult fantasy themes like werewolves and vampires, often paired with short videos and images that appear to be taken from influencers, movies, and TV shows. With descriptions of sexual assault and images of distressed women and girls next to muscular men, these ads push users to download apps where they can pay to read stories by the chapter.

    One ad, teasing a story about a “night of terror” where a teen girl will be “mated” to a “creature,” featured a shirtless photo of Brazilian football star Neymar mashed up with a stock image of a beaten woman. A representative for Neymar told Forbes the image was used without permission.

    The ad was for iReader, an app into which TikTok’s parent company ByteDance invested $170 million in 2020. As of Saturday morning, 83 other live ads for iReader featured a story chapter titled “His Personal Cum Bucket” and a graphic description of sexual violence. Multiple requests for comment sent to numerous iReader representatives went unanswered.

    Ads for the Mytopia app, which is owned by ByteDance, contained similarly troubling content. Three ads for the app included a text description of a teen girl being molested by her step-brother, and three other ads contained a romanticized account of a teen girl cutting herself. After being contacted by Forbes, ByteDance paused Mytopia’s ad campaign, and ByteDance spokesperson Billy Kenny said that the ads “do not match our values.”

    Ads paired excerpts of violent erotica with images of distressed women and girls and muscular men, which were sometimes used without permission. Note: some images may be disturbing.

    On Wednesday, an app called Webnovel, which is owned by Tencent subsidiary China Literature, began running ads featuring sexually explicit comics that implied incest between a mother and her son. China Literature stopped the ad campaign when contacted for comment by Forbes. In a statement, spokesperson Maggie Zhou said: “We can confirm these ads were posted by third-party agencies without informing China Literature and in violation of our content policies.”

    ByteDance (which owns TikTok) and Tencent (which owns WeChat and some of the most popular videogames in the world) have long struggled to show that their products do not expose people to content promoting sex, abuse, or self-harm. But while the Chinese tech giants have invested heavily in removing this kind of content from TikTok and WeChat, they have at the same time paid for erotic web novel businesses to create it and promote it to Meta users through ads.

    Meta, for its part, has appeared largely incapable of halting this flood of violent fantasy erotica ads that violate its rules. The company’s Ad Library reveals that while Meta has detected and removed dozens of these ads, advertisers have just put more up. Moreover, Meta’s detection appears weak and haphazard, with weeks-old ads still live featuring text that obviously violates its rules. Before Forbes contacted Meta about the ads, searches of the Ad Library for phrases like “his cock” and “rape me” returned hundreds of results, nearly all of them ads for web novel apps. (Disclosure: in a past life, I held policy positions at Facebook and Spotify.) 

    Ads paired excerpts of violent erotica with images of distressed women and girls and muscular men, which were sometimes used without permission. Note: some images may be disturbing.

    Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the company had removed dozens of ads from web novel companies before it was approached by Forbes, and that it has removed nearly 200 ads and pages since being presented with our findings. Still, five new renditions of the “cum bucket” ad began running last night from a page that Forbes had flagged to Meta, and a quick search of the Ad Library returns hundreds of similar results.

    Apps like Webnovel, Mytopia, and iReader have boomed during the pandemic. The apps first became popular in China, where ByteDance’s Tomato Novel app has been downloaded more than 60 million times. But they have recently become popular in the U.S., too. iReader was downloaded 1.5 million times in 2021, and Webnovel was downloaded more than 2 million times in 2022, according to Sensor Tower. Although Chinese apps dominate the sector, domestic apps offer similar wares: Amazon’s Kindle Vella features identical themes and even some of the same stories featured on other apps. It does not appear to advertise on Facebook or Instagram.

    Earlier this year, the Rest of the World reported that the profit margin for China-based web novels is often very high, with companies making as much as 10 times as much as they pay authors for each story. But that profit margin may depend in significant part on ads: In 2021, Protocol reported that 42.7% of China-based web novels were introduced to overseas readers through advertising.

    This market also extends beyond just apps backed by Tencent and ByteDance. Last week, Forbes identified more than 1,000 ads running from more than 100 Facebook pages representing China-based web novel apps. Some of the ads stayed within bounds, offering largely standard romance novel fare, but others violated Meta’s policies barring explicit sexual content.

    One ad running on Thursday morning promoted an app called MoboReader and described a scene in which a woman’s husband tries to kill her by hitting her with a car, and then another man subsequently rapes her. Moboreader did not respond to a request for comment.

    A text excerpt used in at least 32 other ads on Thursday included a graphic, romanticized description of a teen girl engaging in self-mutilation after being abused. The ads were for Supernovel, an app whose Terms of Service claim it is owned by Cloudary Holdings, a subsidiary of Tencent. When asked about the app, Tencent and Cloudary denied any relationship to it.

    In 2019, the China-based blog TechNode reported that a ByteDance web novel app popular with domestic Chinese audiences was shut down for three months by the Chinese government for distributing “lowbrow and sexually suggestive content.” But as the web novel industry has grown, ByteDance and Tencent have deepened their investments in it.

    In December 2019, ByteDance acquired a majority stake in MyMind Culture, the parent company behind several Chinese-language novel apps. In July 2020, it bought a 10% stake in Beijing Dingtian Culture Entertainment, which runs similar apps, including SweetRead and DmRead. Later that year, ByteDance paid $170 million for 11% of the China-based e-book company Zhangyue, which makes the iReader app, as well as ForNovel, Novelink, Favoread and Noveltells. In 2021, it launched Mytopia, which, like iReader, is targeted to foreign audiences.

    Billy Kenny, the ByteDance spokesperson, said that ByteDance (which invested in Zhangyue through its acquisition arm, Quantum Jump) “doesn’t have any involvement in the product and business strategy of Zhangyue’s global businesses.” Zhangyue, however, told shareholders in April: “Mr. Zhang Chao, head of ByteDance’s novel business department, is a director of the company. The company and Byte have cooperated in various aspects such as content copyright and advertising cooperation.” Kenny did not answer follow-up questions about the nature of this cooperation.

    Tencent owns the conglomerate China Literature, which controls the flagship English-language Webnovel app through a company called Cloudary Holdings. Terms of service for a cluster of other apps running ads on Facebook, including iNovel, eReader, SuperNovel, PopNovel, Mobooks and MyNovel, list Cloudary Holdings as their operator; however, Maggie Zhou, a spokesperson for China Literature, told Forbes that the entities are not owned or operated by China Literature or Cloudary.

    Ads for various apps also used clips from major movies, including Star Wars, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics.

    Many of these ads also appear to rip content from influencers, television shows, and movies. In addition to its Neymar ad, Zhangyue has also featured images of other celebrities, including Kylie Jenner and fitness influencer Chadoy Leon. Leon, whose image was stitched together with photos of frightened women, told Forbes he had never heard of iReader. “Whoever is using my pictures is using them without my permission,” he said. Jenner’s rep declined to comment on the record.

    Ads for Zhangyue apps, as well as iNovel, Supernovel, and others, also used content from major movies, including those from the Twilight movies, Star Wars, DC Comics, and Marvel Studios. A representative from Warner Brothers (which owns DC Comics) said its content had been used without permission; Disney (which owns Marvel and Star Wars) and Summit Entertainment (which owns Twilight) did not respond to a request for comment.

    Many of the Facebook pages running these ads also bore signs of ban evasion, suggesting the companies are intentionally avoiding takedowns by Meta. Some apps used intentional misspellings for words that might lead to flags. One ad for iReader described a character by the “visible V running down to his gen.ita1s.” Other iReader-owned pages, including those promoting Noveltells and Novelink, added a letter to profane terms, including bitcch and whoree.

    Novel apps have also spread their ads out across numerous pages — a tactic often used by networks trying to ensure that one or two takedowns will not cripple an entire campaign. Ads promoting an app called Noveland have been placed from pages labeled Noveland1 through Noveland8, as well as pages with title variations like Noveland App and Noveland Romance Story. Pages called Noveland11, Noveland12, and Noveland13 were created earlier this month, but are not running ads at this time. Requests for comment sent to Noveland were not answered.

    Other ads have come from pages with more colorful names: Some ads promoting iReader were placed from werewolf-themed pages with names like Alpha King, Gamma Fire, and Ugly Mate, as well as pages with nonsense names like Genius Babies and Llj-Hhh. A Philippines-based app called Pinky Novel has been running ads from a page called Kz Car Tint & Accesories [sic], and an app called AhaNovel, has been running ads from a page titled “Raped by Mr. CEO.” (Pinky Novel and Aha Novel did not respond to requests for comment.)

    Despite Forbes reporting the page to Meta on Wednesday morning, at the time of this writing, “Raped by Mr. CEO” is still live on the platform today.

    No longer live, though, is a page Facebook published in 2021, highlighting Webnovel as a “success story” in advertiser partnerships. Stone did not respond to a question about whether Meta still considers Webnovel a model for other advertisers today.

    DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana

    Source: By Emily Baker-White, Forbes Staff

     

  • Africa needs ‘ethical and moral uprightness as guiding principles’ – Mahama

    Former President John Dramani Mahama has shared nuggets that can put Africa on the right footing in seeking to better the lot of people on the continent.

    He identified among others absolute accountability of institutions, ethical and moral uprightness and stoic fidelity to the truth as three such values Africa needs.

    His views were contained in a Facebook post dated October 9 sharing portions of a speech he delivered at the Liberty University’s convocation event last week in the United States.

    “Absolute accountability, not just by government but by the institutions of state in service to the people and not themselves, will go a long way to remedy many of the systemic problems that affect our African people.

    “In Africa, we need ethical and moral uprightness as guiding principles, and a stoic fidelity to the truth and to do right by our people above all other considerations,” his post accompanied by photos of his engagement read.

    Mahama was a special guest of honour at the 2022 Liberty University Convocation in Lynchburg, Virginia where he delivered a speech to a packed auditorium.

    He described Ghana as “an island of religious calmness in a sea of turbulence,” citing how “almost all our surrounding neighbours have in recent times experienced some major form of insurgency, coup d’etats or other conflicts, including religious conflicts.”

    He explained the situation in Ghana’s northern neighbours, Burkina Faso and Mali, where insurgents are running roughshod.

     

  • Social media users condemn Sarkodie for missing Nana Ampadu’s funeral

    Social media users, notably those on Facebook and Twitter, have criticised Ghanaian rapper Michael Owusu Addo, better known in the entertainment industry as Sarkodie, for missing the funeral of Highlife legend Nana Ampadu.

    After apologizing for the incident on both social media platforms, some users took to the comment sections to express their discontentment.

    While some believe Sarkodie deliberately refused to attend the funeral, others indicated that the rapper could have made use of a personal assistant or reminder on his phone to prompt him.

    Others also shared the view that the apology was an insult while others believe Sarkodie should mend his relationship with the family of Nana Ampadu.

    Pac Anokye Lord Knows, a Facebook user, wrote: “Naa…You already have it in mind that u won’t go..we are not children to come tell us stories..Shame to You”.

    “You must honour the MASTERS. This excuse is best left not said. Actually an INSULT to the memory of arguably one of the Greatest Global Musicians of all time,” Lloyd Amoah also wrote on Facebook.

    The situation on Twitter was no different as users also expressed similar sentiments on the matter. Fidelis Banaaleh in a Twitter post said Sarkodie missed the funeral because it was not his priority.

    “You missed it because it wasn’t a priority for you senior.. in an age where phones have reminders? hmm to whom much is given much is expected Mr Sarkodie.. understand that the young are learning from you,” he tweeted.

    Sarkodie apologizes for missing Nana Ampadu’s funeral

    In a Facebook post on October 9, Sarkodie said he was ashamed of himself and hurt for missing Nana Ampadu’s funeral despite being reminded about it by veteran actor, David Dontoh.

    He said even though David Dontoh’s reminder lingered on his mind, it apparently skipped him on the day of the event.

    Sarkodie added that it was bad enough for him to be missing the funerals of legends stressing that he needs to do better.

    He wrote: “Ashamed and hurt for not making it to the Legend Nana Ampadu’s funeral … Uncle David Dontoh told me about it last Sunday… Crazy how I had it on my mind from then and still missed it but all the same Rest In Peace Grandpa May the almighty keep you safe No excuse makes sense to even myself missing all these legends’ funerals… Need to do better”.

    Nana Ampadu died on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, while on admission at the Intensive Care Unit of the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC) in Accra with his funeral slated for October 8.

    A day after his passing, Sarkodie made a post on social media revealing that the late music icon had once given him wise advice about not posting private stuff on social media.

    A state funeral in Accra was organized for the late Nana Kwame Ampadu and he was subsequently transported to his hometown at Obo Kwahu, in the Eastern Region, on Saturday,

    October 8, 2022, where he has been laid to rest.

     

  • Bawumia is a strong tree, he’ll stand through every storm – Kofi Bentil

    Kofi Bentil, Vice President of Imani Africa, has eulogised Vice President Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia on the occasion of his 59th birthday.

    Bentil, who has been a strong critic of the Vice President and the government at large, described the second gentleman of the land as a strong tree that will stand through every storm.

    He noted in a Facebook post with a photo of the Vice President that he [Dr Bawumia] is made of the right stuff.

    “The strongest trees are those that bend in the storm but don’t break. You are a strong tree. You will stand through every storm.

    “When it’s all done you will wave your leaves and branches in victory when the calm comes after the storm.

    “I will be there clapping. I won’t be surprised. I know you’re made of the right stuff.

    “Happy Birthday champ. You are blessed. It is clear,” Kofi Bentil‘s October 7 post concluded.

  • Watch how Awudome gravedigger was busted whiles trying to sell body parts for GHC400

    A gravedigger has been apprehended over allegations that he was selling body parts of the dead.

    The suspect by name Haruna was ‘exposed’ by a Facebook user, Junior Muntari 1, after he was tricked by some residents of Kasoa who had gotten a hint that he was into that ‘trade.’

    In a nearly three-minute video shared on Facebook, Haruna is accosted by some men demanding that he unwraps some black polythene bags he had brought.

    “You are selling bones of people; I have caught you with people’s bones live, unwrap it,” one person is heard saying in Hausa.

    The video shows some material from one polythene, which the commentator says is human flesh and another, as bone from the skull.

    “He is used to doing this at the cemetery for a long time, I raised the issue, but people thought I was exaggerating; here it is, you are all seeing it live. He brought it from Awudome,” the commentator added.

    According to the narrative, Haruna had been asked by someone for body parts of dead people, and another person had confirmed being the medicine man who had demanded it.

    “We tricked you, but if you were a good person, you would have asked how we got your contact, but did you?” the supposed medicine man asked.

    He reportedly charged 400 cedis for the consignment, out of which GHc100 was paid to him via mobile money.

  • Bawku is a war zone – Dr. Adam Bonaa

    Security Analyst, Dr. Adam Bonaa, has said that the situation in the Upper West Regional capital, Bawku has become more precarious and is similar to conditions in war-torn countries.

    According to Dr. Bonaa, the situation has become so tensed that an innocent person who mistakenly crosses to the territory of a different faction is immediately killed.

    In a post shared on Facebook on Monday, September 27, the security analyst added that the once vibrant region has virtually become a ghost town.

    “It’s a needless conflict, the killing of innocent people in Bawku must stop. Mamprusis and Kuasis can’t go into each other’s community/territory, if you cross mistakenly, you will be killed for sure, it’s completely needless and barbaric.

    “The people of Bawku feel very neglected. Bawku remains and will also remain an important part of this country. Once a vibrant thriving commercial hub of this country has now become a WAR ZONE where guns and conflict dominate,” parts of the post read.

    Dr. Bonaa, who made these remarks after attending a peace dialogue to help resolve the impasse, commended the Inspect General of the Ghana Police Service (IGP), Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, the Minister for Defense, Dominic Nitiwul and the Interior Minister Ambrose Dery for the initiative.

    “I must congratulate the ministers of interior, defense, IGP, CDS, UE regional minister, the MCE of Bawku and all the others for the various parts they all played in this peace dialogue initiative, the first of its kind for decades. Hopefully, in October 2022 the second peace dialogue would take place. The guns must be put down,” he noted.

  • Kenyan court readies to hear case against Meta

    A former Facebook content moderator is suing the parent company of the American social networking giant, Meta, for alleged unfavourable working conditions, and a Kenyan court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case.

    Samasource Kenya EPZ, also known as Sama, is a local outsourcing company that has been the target of a petition alleging that its employees who moderate Facebook content are subjected to unfavorable working conditions, including low pay, insufficient mental health support, and invasions of privacy and dignity.

    The court will determine if Meta can be tried in Kenya since the 12 petitioners were working for a third-party firm that it had outsourced for moderation services.

    Meta made an application in June seeking to have the case thrown out arguing that the court had no jurisdiction to determine it – since the company is not based in Kenya.

    Daniel Motaung’ is seeking financial compensation on behalf of current and former employees.

    He also wants Meta and Sama to provide mental health support for moderators who spend hours reviewing graphic content.

    The suit also seeks to compel third-party contractors to have the same benefits as Meta employees.

    Meta has denied wrongdoing saying it takes seriously its responsibility to people who review content for the firm.

    It says it requires its partners to provide industry-leading pay, benefits, and support.

    According to court papers, Sama hosts the largest content moderation location in Africa with more than 200 staff.

    In 2020, Facebook agreed to pay $52m (£46m) to content moderators based in the US after they filed a class-action lawsuit for being exposed repeatedly to graphic content such as beheadings, child and sexual abuse, terrorism, and animal cruelty.

    Update: This case has been adjourned until 25 October

  • Father shares his loss as his daughter drowns while livestreaming on Facebook

    The father of a Kenyan woman who drowned in a swimming pool in Canada while livestreaming on Facebook has spoken of his family’s loss.

    Hellen Wendy Nyabuto could be seen in a video struggling to stay afloat after diving into the deep end of the pool last week.
    The 23-year-old health worker, who lived in Toronto, had earlier responded to comments from viewers before resuming her swim.
    Her body was spotted hours later at the bottom of the pool.

    According to her brother, she drowned in Collingwood, Ontario, the town where she worked.
    Her father Nyabuto John Kiyondi, 56 told CNN from his home in Kenya: “I watched that video. I cried. It is terrible.”
    “She communicated with me two days before she perished. She sounded very fine and I was very happy. She promised me a phone. I didn’t feel anything abnormal,” he said.

    Nyabuto lived with her younger brother Enock in an apartment in Toronto and worked part-time as a health worker while studying nursing, her family said.
    “She has been in Canada for about three years,” Enock, who is one of her five sibling said.
    “All the financial responsibilities (of their family in Kenya) were on her,” he added.

    ‘Back to square one’
    Wendy’s father, a smallholder farmer in Kisii, southwest Kenya, said he is “back to square one” now that his daughter is gone.
    “She was assisting me financially to educate her siblings, particularly in terms of school fees and other expenses. I’m stuck now and back to square one. I’m wondering how her younger siblings will continue schooling,” Kiyondi told CNN.

    All he now wants is his daughter’s body returned to Kenya.
    “According to our tradition, one is supposed to be buried where he or she was born. I’ll not feel comfortable, psychologically, if my daughter is buried away from Kenya,” he said.
    Repatriating Wendy’s body will take a toll on her family’s meager resources and Enock said they’ve started a GoFundMe campaign to raise 50,000 Canadian dollars (around $38,000) to help with her burial costs.
    “The family is going through a rough time now. All we want is for her body to be transported back home for burial,” he said.

    Source: CNN

  • Google to run ads educating users about fake news

    Google plans to show ads that educate people about disinformation techniques, following a successful experiment by Cambridge University.

    Google Jigsaw, which tackles online security dangers, will run adverts on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook.

    Researchers found the videos improved people’s ability to recognise manipulative content.

    They will be shown in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland to combat fake news about Ukrainian refugees.

    Google said the “exciting” findings showed how social media can actively pre-empt the spread of disinformation.

    The research was founded on a developing area of study called “prebunking”, which investigates how disinformation can be debunked by showing people how it works – before they are exposed to it.

    In the experiment, the ads were shown to 5.4 million people, 22,000 of whom were surveyed afterwards.

    After watching the explanatory videos, researchers found:

    • an improvement in respondents’ ability to spot disinformation techniques
    • an increased ability to discern trustworthy from untrustworthy content
    • an improved ability to decide whether or not to share content

    The peer-reviewed research was conducted in conjunction with Google, which owns YouTube, and will be published in the journal Science Advances.

    Beth Goldberg, head of research and development for Google Jigsaw, called the findings “exciting”.

    “They demonstrate that we can scale prebunking far and wide, using ads as a vehicle,” she said.

    ‘Common tropes’

     

    Jon Roozenbeek, the lead author on the paper, told the BBC the research is about “reducing the probability someone is persuaded by misinformation”.

    “Obviously you can’t predict every single example of misinformation that’s going to go viral,” he said. “But what you can do is find common patterns and tropes.

    “The idea behind this study was – if we find a couple of these tropes, is it possible to make people more resilient against them, even in content they’ve never seen before?”

    The scientists initially tested the videos with members of the public under controlled-conditions in a lab, before showing them to millions of users on YouTube, as part of a broader field study.

    The anti-misinformation campaign and prebunking campaign was run on YouTube “as it would look in the real world”, Mr Roozenbeek said.

    “We ran them as YouTube ads – just like an ad about shaving cream or whatever… before your video plays,” he explained.

    Presentational grey line

    How the study worked

     

    Advertisers can use a feature on YouTube called Brand Lift, which tells them if, and how, an advert has raised awareness of their product.

    The researchers used this same feature to assess people’s ability to spot the manipulation techniques they had been exposed to.

    Instead of a question about brand awareness, people were shown a headline and asked to read it. They were told the headline contained manipulation and asked to identify what kind of technique was being used.

    In addition, there was a separate control group who were not shown any videos, but were shown the headline and corresponding questions.

    “What you hope to see is that the group that saw the videos is correct in their identification significantly more often than the control group – and that turned out to be the case,” Mr Roozenbeek said.

    “On average, the group that got the videos was correct about 5% more often than the control group. That’s highly significant.

    “That doesn’t sound like a lot – but it’s also true that the control group isn’t always wrong. They also get a number of questions correct.

    “That improvement, even in the noisy environment of YouTube, basically shows that you can improve people’s ability to recognise these disinformation techniques – simply by showing them an ad.”

    Presentational grey line

    ‘Evidence-based solutions’

     

    Cambridge University said this was the first real-world field study of ‘inoculation theory’ on a social media platform.

    Professor Sander van der Linden, who co-authored the study, said the research results were sufficient to take the concept of inoculation forward and scale it up, to potentially reach “hundreds of millions” of social media users.

    “Clearly it’s important for kids to learn how to do lateral reading and check the veracity of sources,” he said, “but we also need solutions that can be scaled on social media and interface with their algorithms.”

    He acknowledged the scepticism around technology firms using this type of research, and the broader scepticism around industry-academia collaborations.

    “But, at the end of the day, we have to face reality, in that social media companies control much of the flow of information online. So in order to protect people, we have come up with independent, evidence-based solutions that social media companies can actually implement on their platforms.”

    “To me, leaving social media companies to their own devices is not going to generate the type of solutions that empower people to discern misinformation that spreads on their platforms.”

     

    Source: BBC

  • Papa Kwesi Nduom fills eyes of Ghanaians with tears

    Some social media users are in a state of devastation over a recent post shared by the Chief Executive of Groupe Nduom, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, concerning his lost fortunes in the past three years.

    The businessman and politician has taken to his Facebook page to recount the collapse of his GN Bank which had several branches nationwide three years on.

    The Bank of Ghana on August 16, 2019, revoked the licences of some 23 insolvent savings and loans and finance house companies including GN Savings and Loans Ltd which he owned.

    Announcing the closure, the Central Bank indicated that the financial condition of GN Savings and Loans Limited had deteriorated since its reclassification from GN Bank in 2018, with both negative capital adequacy ratio and negative net worth.

    BoG further explained its Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) was -61% in breach of the minimum requirement of 13%.

    But to Dr Nduom, a dream to develop a safe and sound regulated financial institution present everywhere in Ghana was deferred with thousands of young men and women now at home.

    “Hundreds of millions of assets have been lost, abandoned, destroyed or rotting away: 300 branches remain locked up. The unbanked remains unbanked,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

    Quoting inspiration from Jeremiah 29: 11, he stated his faith, however, remains strong in the face of the challenges.

    Papa Kwesi Nduom fills eyes of Ghanaians with tears

    His post has sparked mixed reactions amid prayers for God to restore everything he has lost in the course of the financial sector clean-up.

     

     

  • Google and Facebook give unique insight into how US election is being fought online

    The US presidential election – more than any other before it – has established a battleground online.

    The role of social media companies in monitoring content has drawn controversy from both Republicans and Democrats, especially given the alleged foreign interference in the 2016 election.

    But data from global tech companies, such as Google or Facebook, has also provided a unique perspective on what subjects are most interesting to US citizens, and how candidates have invested in their online campaigns.

    What have voters been searching for on Google?
    In the United States, there was a 362% increase in users searching for the term “postal voting” compared to other election years, according to Google Trends.

    Meanwhile, there was a 366% increase in searches for “electoral fraud” and the phrase “fact check” had peaked in search interest long before November.

    The US President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned mail-in ballots, tweeting in May they would lead to a “fraudulent” election.

    In a first, Twitter labelled the tweet and directed social media users to fact checks and news stories about Trump’s unsubstantiated claims.

    The tech giant said the tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labelled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots”.

    Google Trends also showed that users have searched for “how to vote” and “early voting” more now than any other time on record.

    Meanwhile, other political search terms with especially high interest in the US in 2020 included “unemployment”, “vaccine” and “racism”.

    The US economy and growth experienced a historic drop in the second quarter of the year during the COVID-19 pandemic, while demonstrations against social injustice have raged across the country following the death of George Floyd on May 25.

    Who spent the most on online ads?
    Discussion about the availability of political ads presented a different headache for tech companies in the lead up to the election.

    Unlike rivals Twitter, Facebook decided to allow political ads on its platform and Instagram in the lead up to election day.

    However, CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the social network would ban new political adverts in the week before November 3.

    Rob Leathern, director of product management at Facebook, added the company would also ban adverts that tried to delegitimise the outcome of the election, such as calling a method of voting fraudulent or corrupt.

    But aside from these exceptions, both Trump and Joe Biden have heavily invested in Facebook advertising, more than doubling ad spending on the social network compared with the presidential candidates in the 2016 race.

    Since January 1, Biden has narrowly outspent his Republican rival, investing $101 million (€86 million) on Facebook advertising on his dedicated campaign pages, compared to Trump’s $93.5 million (€80 million).

    In the last week of October, the difference was even more dramatic, with the Democrat candidate more than doubling the investment of Trump.

    From October 25 to October 31, Biden’s pages spent $9.01 million (€7,68 million) to Trump’s $4.50 million (€3.84 million).

    Meanwhile, campaign pages for Democrat vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris have also outspent incumbent Vice-President Mike Pence on Facebook advertising in 2020.

    Google decided to limit the reach of political adverts on the search engine in November 2019, preventing campaigns from targeting ads based on users’ internet search preferences and viewing history on YouTube.

    On Google, it is Trump who has invested more in ads, while the two campaigns have spent a combined $215.5 million (€183.7 million) since May 2018.

    Where were these ads targeted?
    In the last month, both parties have heavily invested their campaign funds into online ads for specific US states, many of which are seen as crucial swing states.

    Trump and Biden have each spent more than $1.50 million (€1.28 million) on Facebook ads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and Arizona since October 1.

    Unsurprisingly the most lucrative US state is Florida, where many critics are hinging the election result on, with just a few points predicted to separate the two candidates.

    In the last month, political ads on Facebook in Florida have cost Biden $6.0 million (€5.1 million) and Trump $4.8 million (€4.1 million) respectively.

    Euronews has found that many of these adverts are also individually focused on political issues that had been searched for on Google.

    Trump’s most interacted advert on Facebook – 15% of which was released in Florida – issued a clear message to encourage unity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The ad featured the US president speaking after he had left Walter Reed Hospital following his own treatment for COVID-19.

    Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign has run ads with pledges to tackle social injustice and unemployment, alongside a straightforward message that the Democrats “have to get this guy out of [the White House”.

    While these figures provide only an indication of the campaigns, experts agreed that Trump outperformed Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton online in 2016, and the online campaign has been a central focus for both parties in the race for the White House.

    Source: africanews.com

  • Facebook and Twitter punish Trump for virus claim

    Facebook and Twitter have penalised Donald Trump and his campaign for posts in which the president claimed children were “almost immune” to coronavirus.

    Facebook deleted the post – a clip from an interview Mr Trump gave to Fox News – saying it contained “harmful Covid misinformation”.

    Twitter followed by saying it had frozen a Trump campaign account until a tweet of the same clip was removed.

    US public health advice makes clear children have no immunity to COVID-19.

    What did Facebook and Twitter say?

    A Facebook spokesperson said on Wednesday evening: “This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation.”

    It was the first time the social giant had taken action to remove content posted by the president based on its coronavirus-misinformation policy, but not the first time it has penalised Mr Trump over content on his page.

    Later on Wednesday, Twitter said it had frozen the @TeamTrump account because it posted the same interview excerpt, which President Trump’s account shared.

    A Twitter spokesman said the @TeamTrump tweet “is in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation”.

    “The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again.”

    It later appeared to have been deleted.

    Twitter last month temporarily suspended Mr Trump’s son, Donald Jr, for sharing a clip it said promoted “misinformation” about coronavirus and hydroxychloroquine.

    But in March, Twitter said a tweet by entrepreneur Elon Musk suggesting children are “essentially immune” to coronavirus did not break its rules.

    What did Trump say in his TV interview?

    Speaking by telephone to morning show Fox and Friends on Wednesday, Mr Trump argued it was time for all schools nationwide to reopen.

    He said: “If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – almost immune from this disease.

    “So few, they’ve got stronger, hard to believe, I don’t know how you feel about it, but they’ve got much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this.

    “And they don’t have a problem, they just don’t have a problem.”

    Mr Trump, who is running for re-election in November, also said of coronavirus: “This thing’s going away. It will go away like things go away.”

    Source: bbc.com

  • Facebook removes Trump post over false & virus claims

    Facebook said Wednesday it had removed a video post by US President Donald Trump in which he contended that children are “almost immune” to the coronavirus, a claim the social network called “harmful COVID misinformation.”
    This was the first time the leading social network has pulled a post from the president’s page for being dangerously incorrect, although it did remove a post from his campaign’s page for using a Nazi symbol.

    The video clip from a Fox News interview “includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” a Facebook spokesperson told AFP.

    The move came as Facebook faces pressure to prevent the spread of misinformation while simultaneously being accused of silencing viewpoints by calling for posts to be truthful.

    Trump defended his comments when questioned about them during a White House press briefing.

    “I’m talking about (being immune) from getting very sick,” Trump said.

    “If you look at children I mean they are able to throw it off very easily.”

    Health officials have urged people of all age groups to protect themselves against exposure to the virus, saying everyone is at risk.

    Trump last week unleashed a burst of misleading medical speculation, criticism for his own top virus expert and praise for an eccentric preacher-doctor touting conspiracy theories.

    That put an end to a brief period during which Trump sought to get his shaky reelection campaign back on track by addressing national criticism of a leadership void in a crisis that has already killed nearly 160,000 Americans and wreaked havoc on the world’s biggest economy.

    Trump said it was unfair that leading US infectious diseases specialist Anthony Fauci was more popular than him.

    He pushed his pet theory — counter to advice from his own government and most doctors — that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine can be used to treat COVID-19 patients.

    And he took pains to praise Stella Immanuel, a doctor and preacher who believes in witchcraft and a plot being carried out to vaccinate people against being religious, calling her “spectacular.”

    Facebook placed an informational disclaimer last month on a post from Trump claiming mail-in voting would lead to a “corrupt” election.

    The move appeared to follow through on the social network giant’s pledge to step up efforts to fight misinformation, including from world leaders, shifting slightly from its hands-off policy on political speech.

    Facebook has largely held firm to a policy that it would not fact-check political leaders, but it has pledged to take down any post which could lead to violence or mislead people about the voting process.

    A coalition of activists has pressed Facebook to be more aggressive in removing hateful content and misinformation, including from the president and political leaders. Some 1,000 advertisers have joined a boycott aiming to ramp up pressure on Facebook.

    Source: Pulse Ghana

  • Facebook hopes to help millions of Americans register to vote

    Facebook said Tuesday it plans to help four million Americans register to vote, and insists it can be a positive force in the presidential election later this year.

    The move comes amid renewed scrutiny of the social media giant for failing to stem foreign interference in the 2016 US election and after a heated debate over how the network handles misinformation and inflammatory posts – including from Donald Trump.

    Mark Zuckerberg has been strongly criticized for his company’s decision to not moderate controversial, incendiary and inaccurate posts by US President.

    Zuckerberg, in an opinion piece published by USA Today, announced a Facebook campaign “to help 4 million people register to vote.”

    He said the social network was creating a new hub for users, allowing them to access “authoritative information, including how and when to vote, as well as details about voter registration, voting by mail and information about early voting.”

    Addressing foreign interference, Zuckerberg wrote that the threat “is real and ongoing, but our systems are more prepared than ever.”

    Facebook first announced the voter hub at the beginning of June, as well as promising to review its policies that led to the decision to not moderate controversial messages.

    But in the USA Today piece, Zuckerberg again defended the network’s guidelines.

    Facebook has “rules against speech that will cause imminent physical harm or suppress voting, and no one is exempt from them,” he wrote.

    “But accountability only works if we can see what those seeking our votes are saying, even if we viscerally dislike what they say.”

    The best way to ultimately hold politicians accountable is by voting, Zuckerberg wrote.

    But for Facebook users who have already made up their minds “and just want the election to be over,” the network is “also introducing the ability to turn off seeing political ads.”

     

    Source: france24.com

  • Facebook to pay $52m to content moderators over PTSD

    Facebook has agreed to pay $52m (£42m) to content moderators as compensation for mental health issues developed on the job.

    The agreement settles a class-action lawsuit brought by the moderators, as first reported by The Verge.

    Facebook said it is using both humans and artificial intelligence (AI) to detect posts that violate policies.

    The social media giant has increased its use of AI to remove harmful content during the coronavirus lockdown.

    In 2018, a group of US moderators hired by third-party companies to review content sued Facebook for failing to create a safe work environment.

    The moderators alleged that reviewing violent and graphic images – sometimes of rape and suicide – for the social network had led to them developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

    The agreement, filed in court in California on Friday, settles that lawsuit. A judge is expected to sign off on the deal later this year.

    The agreement covers moderators who worked in California, Arizona, Texas and Florida from 2015 until now. Each moderator, both former and current, will receive a minimum of $1,000, as well as additional funds if they are diagnosed with PTSD or related conditions. Around 11,250 moderators are eligible for compensation.

    Facebook also agreed to roll out new tools designed to reduce the impact of viewing the harmful content.

    A spokesperson for Facebook said the company was “committed to providing [moderators] additional support through this settlement and in the future”.

    Moderating the lockdown In January, Accenture, a third-party contractor that hires moderators for social media platforms including Facebook and YouTube, began asking workers to sign a form acknowledging they understood the job could lead to PTSD.

    The agreement comes as Facebook looks for ways to bring more of its human reviewers back online after the coronavirus lockdown ends.

    The company said many human reviewers were working from home, but some types of content could not be safely reviewed in that setting. Moderators who have not been able to review content from home have been paid, but are not working.

    To offset the loss of human reviewers, Facebook boosted its use of AI to moderate the content instead.

    In its fifth Community Standards Enforcement Report released on Tuesday, the social media giant said AI helped to proactively detect 90% of hate speech content.

    AI has also been crucial in detecting harmful posts about the coronavirus. Facebook said in April that it was able to put warning labels on around 50 million posts that contained misleading information on the pandemic.

    However, technology does still struggles at times to recognize harmful content in video images. Human moderators can often better detect the nuances or wordplay in memes or video clips, allowing them to spot harmful content more easily.

    Facebook says it is now developing a neural network called SimSearchNet that can detect nearly identical copies of images that contain false or misleading information.

    According to the social media giant’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer, this will human reviewers to focus on “new instances of misinformation”, rather than looking at “near-identical variations” of images they have already reviewed.

    Source: bbc.com

  • Facebook update crashes TikTok and other rivals

    Facebook has apologised after its latest software update crashed rival apps on iPhones and iPads.

    Popular apps such as dating service Tinder, music-streaming app Spotify and video platform TikTok were among those rendered unusable.

    The problem affected apps that had integrated the “login with Facebook” feature, which eliminates the need for a separate username and password.

    Facebook said it had “identified the issue quickly and resolved it”.

    It had updated the software development kit (SDK) used by app developers to integrate its services, on Wednesday.

    But independent developers were soon warning, on coding site Github, it was crashing their apps.

    And on Thursday, Facebook said: “Yesterday, a new release… included a change that triggered crashes for some users in some apps using the Facebook iOS SDK.

    “We apologise for any inconvenience.”

    Source: BBC

  • Facebook and Google allow work from home for rest of year

    Facebook and Google have announced plans to reopen their offices but say they will let employees continue working from home for the rest of the year.

    Google originally said it would keep its work-from-home policy until 1 June but is extending it for seven more months, while Facebook intends to reopen its offices on 6 July as lockdowns are gradually lifted.

    Google chief executive Sundar Pichai says employees who need to return to the office will be able to do so from July with enhanced safety measures in place, but those who can carry out their jobs from home can do so until the end of the year.

    The announcement coincides with Facebook’s, as more companies start rolling out their post-lockdown strategies.

    “Facebook has taken the next step in its return-to-work philosophy. Today, we announced anyone who can do their work remotely can choose to do so through the end of the year,” a spokesman said.

    Source: bbc.com

  • Nigerian woman put up for sale in Lebanon rescued

    A Nigerian woman put up for sale on Facebook in Lebanon has been rescued – days after a man suspected of involvement in the advert was arrested.

    The advert caused an outcry in Nigeria.

    Chairperson of the Commission for Nigerians in the Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa told the BBC that the 30-year-old woman is now safe at the Nigerian embassy in Beirut after she was rescued by the Lebanese authorities.

    Mrs Dabiri-Erewa did not give details of how the woman was rescued but said the lockdown imposed by the Lebanese authorities to fight the coronavirus pandemic helped in tracing her.

    The man was arrested last week for allegedly putting the Nigerian domestic worker for sale for $1,000 on Facebook.

    A passport photo of the woman was included in the advert which caused widespread social media condemnation.

    The UN says thousands of women and girls from Nigeria and other African countries are being trafficked every year – often lured with false job promises in Europe and Asia – but usually end up being exploited as domestic maids or forced into prostitution.

    Source: bbc.com

  • Facebook and Twitter suspend troll accounts

    Twitter and Facebook say they’ve suspended a small network of accounts linked to Russia, but based in Ghana and Nigeria, for attempting to sow discord.

    The social media firms said the profiles targeted American users by talking about social issues such as race and civil rights.

    Pages have also been removed from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

    The company said more than 260,000 people followed one or more of the Instagram accounts.

    Facebook said the profiles didn’t appear to focus on elections.