Deactivating your Facebook account by Brenda Zulu - ITREALMS

Commentary@ITREALMS ... making leadership SENSE with digital news!

When there is fire in the room and you cannot quench it, it is wise to leave the room.

If as a Facebook (FB) account holder something happens to you that brings you in the lime light of everyone and you cannot handle it, the best is to leave FB for a while.

FG demands Facebook ban on IPOB, check subversive YouTube channels - ITREALMS

ITREALMS ... making leadership SENSE with digital news!


The Federal Government has demanded that Facebook ban the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), from using its platform, reports ITREALMS.

This is coming as FG seeks to collaborate with Google to curb the excesses of subversive YouTube channels which it claimed are used to spread hate and disinformation against the country.

SMEDAN partners Google, Facebook on youth empowerment, trains 150 PWD in Lagos - ITREALMS

ITREALMS ... making leadership SENSE with digital news!

The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has entered into partnership with Google and Facebook to train Nigerian youths on small businesses, especially on doing business online, reports ITREALMS.

This is coming as SMEDAN said it has trained some 150 Persons With Disability (PWD) as part of its empowerment for small businesses in Lagos State.

Facebook enters battle over vaccine misinformation - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

Facebook has advanced strategies to combat vaccine misinformation, reports ITREALMS.

According to the Vice President, Global Policy Management at Facebook, Ms Monika Bickert they are looking at reducing the ranking of groups and pages that spread misinformation about vaccinations in news feed and search.

"We are working to tackle vaccine misinformation on Facebook by reducing its distribution and providing people with authoritative information on the topic. We are starting by taking a series of steps," she said.

These groups and pages, she said, will not be included in recommendations or in predictions when people type into search.

"When we find ads that include misinformation about vaccinations, we will reject them. We also removed related targeting options, like 'vaccine controversies.' For ad accounts that continue to violate our policies, we may take further action, such as disabling the ad account," she said.

Facebook, she insisted would not show or recommend content that contains misinformation about vaccinations on Instagram Explore or hashtag pages.

Further, she revealed that they are exploring ways to share educational information about vaccines when people come across misinformation on this topic.

"Leading global health organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have publicly identified verifiable vaccine hoaxes. If these vaccine hoaxes appear on Facebook, we will take action against them," she declared.

Chuks Egbune/DoP

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Facebook, Dubawa partner on Fact-Checking - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

In the wake of recent launch of its Third-Party Fact-Checking programme to help assess the accuracy of news and reduce the spread of misinformation, Facebook has partnered with Nigerian fact-checking website, Dubawa, reports ITREALMS.

Dubawa, ITREALMS gathered, is an online platform which provides factual information to its readers so they can make informed decisions, whether political, economic, security or mainstream decisions, based on the truth.

Facebook's fact-checking programme, ITREALMS also gathered, improves the quality of news people find on its platform, relies on feedback from the Facebook community, as one of many signals it uses to raise potentially false stories to fact-checkers for review.

A press statement available to ITREALMS, Facebook said that local articles would be fact-checked alongside the verification of photos and videos. 

"If one of our fact-checking partners identifies a story as false, Facebook will show it lower in News Feed, significantly reducing its distribution," part of the press statement read.

Nenye Dom/DoP

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Entrepreneurship: Facebook set to partner Nigerian hubs - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

Facebook has advanced plans to launch a new incubation programme in partnership with satellite hubs across Nigeria to help local start-ups and upcoming entrepreneurs, reports ITREALMS.

Participating hubs in the 8-week programme, ITREALMS gathered include Colab, Roar Nigeria, nHub, Ken Saro Wiwa Innovation Hub, Ventures Platform, Di-Hub, Start Innovation Hub, and NG_Hub. 

ITREALMS also gathered that the programme slated for official launch on Monday, February 4, the programme has begun accepting applications from interested candidates, with successful applicants graduating with those from the ongoing Facebook Accelerator Programme.

Designed and run in collaboration with the satellite hubs spread across Nigeria, the programme aims to help new start-ups and entrepreneurs-to-be to take their respective solutions from ideation stage to prototype through mentorship with industry experts and practical training sessions - providing foundational skills necessary for building a successful business.

Speaking on the initiative, Facebook Developer Program Manager, Kendra Nnachi, said “Our aim for these kind of initiatives is to empower entrepreneurs. We believe that this programme will increase the quality and longevity of the Nigerian startup scene by not only providing specialist knowledge and mentoring to the participants, but also by creating a community that gives them room to share and grow.”

Commenting on the programme and the partnership with Facebook, the Partnership Director of Ventures Platform, Mimshach Obioha, commended Facebook for its commitment to the growth and development of startups across the continent, saying that this coincides with objectives of the hub.

“Ventures Platform backs Africa’s boldest entrepreneurs and helps them grow great companies around their ideas. We have always been in the business of incubating ideas and bringing them to life and we are excited that this partnership will give us an opportunity to do more. We are certain that the young people of this country will take due advantage of the opportunities the program will offer and we are willing to nudge them along,” he said.

Also speaking, CEO of Di-hub, Alhaji Idris A. Dangana, said that with the program, more young people will be given an opportunity to showcase their ideas.

“Young people, especially in Nigeria, are known to be bursting with the entrepreneurial spirit and we are only too glad to provide the needed boost with this workshop. As we have always done, we would be providing support services for the duration of the training, and we are very thrilled to see what the participants have to offer,” he said.

Chuks Egbune/DoP

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Nigeria: Facebook bans foreign electoral adverts for 2019 - ITREALMS

Exclusive@ITREALMS:

Beginning from today, Facebook has banned foreign electoral advertisements for the forthcoming Nigeria’s general elections 2019 on the platform, reports ITREALMS.

According to public statement made available to ITREALMS, Facebook said this was in continuation of its attempt to ensure build political transparency around elections and across the globe.

This ban on foreign electoral advertisements equally applies to Ukraine.

“We'll temporarily expand enforcement and not accept foreign electoral ads around their elections, starting with Nigeria on January 16,” official declared.

In the coming months, Facebook also said it intends to roll out additional protections ahead of upcoming elections.

Stressing that these efforts are to prevent foreign interference and avail people more information about the ads they see across Facebook platforms.

“We're continuing our focus on preventing foreign interference and giving people more information about the ads they see across our platforms.”ITREALMS gathered that this had been implemented in the US, UK and Brazil.

As gathered, Facebook said, political advertisers in these countries must confirm their identity and location before they can run ads, and their ads are housed in a public, searchable Ad Library for up to seven years.

Further to this effect, Facebook said that in February, it would launch similar Ad Library and enforce authorizations ahead of the Indian’s general elections this spring.

While in the European Union (EU) “We plan to roll out ad transparency tools before May elections.”

Globally, ITREALMS reported that by the end of June, Facebook said it will provide a set of these tools for advertisers around the world.

Pointing out that by shining a light on political ads, news organizations, regulators, watchdog groups and people anywhere in the world can hold advertisers and Facebook more accountable.

Chuks Egbune/HO

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Facebook, CC-Hub & JAN join forces on online safety for students - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

Facebook has announced it has teamed up with Co-Creation Hub (CcHub) and Junior Achievement Nigeria to launch an Online Safety Programme for students in Nigerian secondary schools across the country including in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Ibadan and Kaduna, reports ITREALMS.

A 12-week workshop, the programme is designed to introduce and challenge teenagers between the ages of 14-17 in understanding the fundamentals of online safety and digital literacy. Covering topics such as Managing an Online Presence, Social Media and Sharing, Public Wi-Fi Safety, Building Healthy Relationships Online, Understanding Password Security and Privacy Settings, as well as Identifying Misinformation Online.

Speaking on the initiative, Sherry Dzinoreva Facebook’s Policy Programmes Manager, Sub-Saharan Africa commented: “Collectively, we all have a responsibility to help teach the fundamentals of staying safe online to our future generations. With the youngest aged continent, we’re seeing more young people come online in Nigeria, and understanding how to identify and filter misinformation, managing their online presence and how to stay safe online are just some of the core skills we need to equip them with. Facebook's Digital Literacy Library has been designed to make it easy to integrate these lessons into the curriculum or on their own as part of after-school programmes.”

Aimed to empower youths, these will be run as after-school clubs through a network of specially trained safety educators. Using select modules from Facebook's Digital Literacy Library, a new online resource tool developed by Youth and Media (YaM) researchers at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, the Facebook Digital Literacy Library is currently available for teachers and youth facilitators to access free of charge, and consists of over 18 lessons covering a range of topics in both English and Hausa.

Developed for educators, the lessons incorporate over 10 years of academic research by the Youth and Media team and reflect the diverse voices of young people from around the world.

"In our work raising young digital makers, we have seen the enthusiasm with which they use the internet to access knowledge and tools to develop their skills. With this, we have realized that now more than ever it is important to also empower them with the skills to stay safe as they explore the online world. SafeOnline has been designed to teach concepts that address online habits of the target group in a series of fun and interactive sessions using resources from the Facebook Digital Literacy Library. We believe that this programme lays the foundation for building young digital safety champions across Nigeria," said Nissi Madu, Programme Manager, re:learn by CcHub

Commenting, Simi Nwogugu, Executive Director, Junior Achievement Nigeria said: "Junior Achievement Nigeria embarked on a digital transformation strategy in 2015 to take advantage of new technologies and tools for reaching our thousands of students across Nigeria. We realized the opportunities afforded by the Internet also came with some challenges, particularly for young students who may be more vulnerable online, so when Facebook approached us about SafeOnline, it was exactly what we needed to insure our students against those vulnerabilities. We are proud to be a partner in this initiative and look forward to taking SafeOnline to all our schools across all regions of Nigeria."

Next year, the programme will extend to Enugu, Port Harcourt, Jos, Aba and Uyo.

Nenye Dom/GEE

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Facebook unveils powerful tools, resources for Africans - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

FacebookAfrica has unveiled powerful new tools and resources to help youth, professionals and entrepreneurs in South Africa to access new career opportunities, reports ITREALMS.

This, ITREALMS gathered to include the new Learn with Facebook career development site, an enhanced Mentorship tool, and an improved jobs on Facebook product.

"Together with partners such as CcHub, Livity, She Leads Africa and Digify Africa, we are training thousands of people in Africa with the digital skills they need to compete in the modern workplace," a public statement made available to ITREALMS.

With the updated career resources, "we are furthering our commitment to training business owners across Africa, and helping people access new career opportunities."

Nenye Dom/GEE

#FacebookAfrica #Mentorship #Digitaltraining

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Every day fight against false news according to Facebook - ITREALMS

MidWeek Commentary@ITREALMS:

In this new series, we'll look at some pieces of false news that recently circulated on Facebook — both those we've caught, and some we caught too late. 

Every day, our team fights the spread of false news through a combination of technology and assessments from independent third-party fact-checkers. With every false story that surfaces, we learn a bit more about how misinformation takes shape online and, hopefully, how we can detect it earlier. In this new series, we'll look at some pieces of false news that recently circulated on Facebook — both those we've caught and some we missed.

What we saw
This summer, a video featuring CCTV footage was re-shared by multiple accounts across several social networks. In the video, a man wearing a white robe and a shemagh, or head scarf, spits in the face of a blonde woman in what appears to be a hospital reception station. The accompanying caption reads, “Man from Saudi spits in the face of the poor receptionist at a Hospital in London then attacks other staff.”

Was it true?
While the video is real, the AFP reports, the incident occurred in a veterinary hospital in Kuwait in 2017 and was being recirculated this summer with a falsified caption.

What to know
One of the primary types of video- and photo-based misinformation involves old images or videos paired with captions or commentary that misrepresent their context . These posts are often used to fuel xenophobic sentiments and are often targeted at migrants and refugees, as the International Fact-Checking Network — the association that certifies the third-party fact-checkers we partner with — has explained. On Facebook, we've seen years-old images of violent acts, protests and war zones reposted and used to inflame current racial or ethnic tensions.

How we found it
There are two primary ways we find stories that are likely to be false: either we use machine learning to detect potentially false stories on Facebook, or else they're identified by our third-party fact-checkers themselves. In this case, the AFP found the out-of-context video.

Once a potentially false story has been found — regardless of how it was identified — fact-checkers review the claims in the story, rate their accuracy and provide an explanation as to how they arrived at their rating. The AFP investigated this video and its caption and submitted a “false” rating and explainer article, which led us to reduce its distribution in News Feed.

What we saw
Following the September 6 stabbing in Juiz de Fora, Brazil, of Representative Jair Bolsonaro, a candidate in Brazil’s presidential election, a photo circulated on Facebook of a man next to Senator Gleisi Hoffmann. The caption claimed that the man in the photo was Bolsonaro's attacker.

Was it true?
Brazilian fact-checker Aos Fatos reviewed the photo and found that not only was the man standing next to Hoffman not Bolsonaro's attacker, the photo was taken at an event in a completely different city, Curitiba.

What to know
Violent events like the attack on Bolsonaro can lead to a wave of misinformation about perpetrators, with fabricated posts making false claims about an assailant's identity and ideological motivations. Similar internet memes have circulated in the US following events like the Las Vegas shooting in 2017 and the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018.

How we found it 
Our machine learning model identified this photo as being potentially false, and Brazilian fact-checker Aos Fatos reviewed the photo. They determined that the man pictured was not the attacker and that the event depicted was not in Juiz de Fora.

Based on Aos Fatos' “false” rating, we demoted the image in News Feed. We were also able to use photo detection technology to identify and demote thousands of identical photos that had been natively uploaded to Facebook. Using machine learning to find duplicates of debunked stories is an important technique for both photo-based and article-based misinformation. Because so much content is posted to Facebook every day, automation helps make the duplication detection process much more efficient, allowing us to find more instances of misinformation, faster.

What we saw
This story, published by the website World Facts FTW, claimed that NASA was looking to compensate volunteers up to $100,000 to participate in 60-day "bed rest studies.” The headline certainly seemed enticing — the post racked up millions of views on Facebook.

Was it true?
US-based fact-checker Politifact investigated this story and while they found that NASA has paid people to stay in bed for long periods of time, the headline of this particular story was misleading. The photos in the World Facts FTW article came from a 2015 Vice article about a NASA medical research study for which the author stayed in bed for 70 days but was only paid $18,000, not $100,000. (Politifact used a reverse image search to find the Vice article.) Politifact couldn't get verification for the $100,000 claim from either NASA and World Facts FTW, so they rated the article's central claim as false.

What to know
We're getting better at detecting and enforcing against false news, even as perpetrators' tactics continue to evolve. And while we caught and reduced the distribution of many pieces of misinformation on Facebook this summer, there are still some we miss. This can happen when:

• We fail to identify the misinformation at all
• We identify a piece of content as misinformation, but after it's already gone viral
• We identify a piece of misinformation early, but it goes viral in the time it takes for fact-checkers to research it and provide a veracity rating

In this particular case, we were able to identify this older article than had been circulating on Facebook for months, using an improved similarity detection process we've implemented. It took us too long to enforce against this piece, and we continue to develop new technology to catch these kinds of stories in the future, before they go viral.

How we found it
This article was originally posted in September 2017. In July 2018, US-based fact-checker Politifact investigated the story and, as described above, determined the central claim was false.

Our similarity detection process matched the “false” verdict from the investigation article on Politifact's website to the instance of the World Fact FTW article that was circulating on Facebook. Based on this potential match, our system enqueued the version of the story that was circulating on Facebook to our network of fact-checkers and The Weekly Standard reviewed it and also assigned it a “false” rating. Based on this rating, we demoted all Facebook posts linking to the article.

*Contributed by Antonia Woodford, Product Manager, Facebook

ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!

Internet Society partners Facebook to expand IXPs in Africa - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

An international non-profit organization dedicated to the open development, evolution and use of the Internet, the Internet Society has revealed its partnership with Facebook to develop more Internet Exchange Points (IXP) in Africa, reports ITREALMS.

An Internet Exchange Point is where multiple local and international networks, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and content providers interconnect their networks together to efficiently exchange Internet traffic through an arrangement commonly referred to as Peering.

ITREALMS gathered that currently, 42 per cent of countries in Africa lack IXPs, which means that most of their domestic Internet traffic is exchanged through points outside their respective country, usually through satellite or submarine fiber across multiple international hubs to reach their destination.

This, experts say result in poor end-user experiences and discourages hosting content locally, which are some of the key factors towards the development of the local Internet ecosystem.

Peering at IXPs helps keep domestic Internet traffic local by offloading traffic from relatively expensive international links onto more affordable local links. As a result, ISPs are able to offer improved Internet experiences for end-users and spur interest in hosting content locally.

The Internet Society and Facebook will collaborate in promoting IXP infrastructure development, training and community engagement with the objective of increasing the number of IXPs and supporting the expansion of existing IXPs to meet the growing demand in Africa. Studies have shown that Internet users throughout Africa benefit from peering as it enables faster, more affordable and reliable access to content.

“The Internet community adopted the goal of having at least 80 per cent of the Internet traffic consumed in Africa being locally accessible, and only 20 per cent sourced outside the continent by the year 2020,”explains Dawit Bekele, Africa Regional Bureau Director for the Internet Society, stressing Africa is getting closer to that target thanks to the many activities that promote interconnection and hosting in Africa and to partnerships such as this one with Facebook.

According to the Africa IXP Association (Af-IX), there are approximately 44 active IXPs located across 32 countries in Africa. This has resulted in a 275 per cent growth of locally exchanged Internet traffic over the last 10 years, just as there were 16 IXPs in 2008. During the same period, traffic exchanged at the African IXPs increased from 0.16Gbps to 412Gbps with over 800 networks now connected at these IXPs.

“We admire the Internet Society's important work to improve connectivity in Africa by supporting IXPs,” said Kojo Boakye, Head, Connectivity and Access, Africa at Facebook. “Our partnership with the Internet Society will help develop Africa's IXP ecosystem by deploying resources like training and equipment to the areas where they are most urgently needed.”

Chuks Egbune/GEE

ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!

Facebook rolls out video service globally - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

With the aim of giving people around the world a new way to discover great videos and interact with friends, content creators and other fans, Facebook has made its video-on-demand service, Facebook Watch available globally while also expanding its Ad Breaks program so more partners can make money from their videos.

According to social media giant’s management, taking Facebook Watch global also means new opportunities for creators and publishers around the world.

Facebook Watch enables users discover new videos spanning entertainment, sports, news and more in a personalized Watch feed, catch up with creators and publishers they love by keeping a watchlist, or a collection of recent videos from Pages they follow, save videos to watch later in Watch as well as participate in videos.

“Over time you'll be able to find new video experiences in your Watch feed, like watch parties, premieres, and videos focused on audience participation — like the new trivia game show, Confetti. And we'll make it easier to find live videos so you can discuss the big moments as they’re happening,” a statement from Facebook reads.

The service was launched in the US a year ago to give people a place on Facebook to find shows and video creators they love and to start conversations with friends, other fans, and even creators themselves. Over the past year, Facebook has made the experience more social — like making it easier to see which videos your friends have liked or shared, creating shows that have audience participation at their core, and opening Watch to videos from Pages.

“These updates have helped people discover and engage more deeply with videos they love — from Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith, to beauty mogul Huda Kattan’s behind-the-scenes show Huda Boss, to live Major League Baseball games. Every month, more than 50 million people in the US come to watch videos for at least a minute in Watch — and total time spent watching videos in Watch has increased by 14x since the start of 2018. We're excited to bring Watch to everyone around the world and invite you to join in the action in our new video destination,” the statement adds.

To access Watch on iOS and Android, users are urged to look for the Watch icon in their shortcuts bar or the “More” bookmark. Watch is also available on Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Xbox One, and Oculus TV. 

Meanwhile, the company’s Ad Breaks service, which is designed to allow companies monetize their content, will roll out in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand on Thursday, August 30, and launch in another 21 countries including France, Germany, Spain and across Latin America and Asia on September 21.

ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!

Don’t just delete Facebook, poison your data first

Commentary@ITRealms:

If you're savvy with code, you can employ a script that repeatedly alters your Facebook posts with nonsense, making it more difficult for the social media site to collect user data.

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there’s a widespread movement for people to #DeleteFacebook. But even when you go through all the steps to wipe your account, the odds are high that Facebook still has deep caches of all your user data, which is can still use. Better than simply deleting your account is to replace all that data with nonsense, and if you’re savvy with code, you can do just that.

Kevin Matthew, a former systems administrator who owns a small web development company, shared a script he created that replaces existing Facebook posts with randomly-generated nonsense. With a little coding know-how, you could use this script to repeatedly mangle all your Facebook posts over a period of several months, to make the bulk of Facebook’s data on you virtually unusable (though it doesn’t do anything for the data that’s already been scraped by third-parties, like the kind Cambridge Analytica allegedly gained access to).

Matthew said his script is simply a proof of concept, because actually doing this may be in violation of Facebook’s terms of service (so use at your own risk).

“My background is as a systems administrator, I’ve been doing that for 20 years, and everyone has data retention policies and backups,” Matthew told me over the phone. “Facebook, with its infinite amount of resources, I can only begin to imagine how that data is being held and retained.”

Matthew’s script automatically opens Facebook posts to edit and replaced them with randomly-generated text. The idea is that if you ran the script 100s, or 1000s of times, over the course of several months, on all of your data, it would likely make it more difficult for Facebook’s algorithms to pull useful data it uses to build a profile of you, including your political leanings and sexual orientation.

“Every little bit of information contributes to that invisible profile that they’re building of everyone,” Matthew said. “If we can obfuscate it even a little bit, that at least puts the power back into your hands as an end user.”

Though so far he’s only done a proof of concept for posts, going forward Matthew said it would be possible to build similar scripts to “poison” the rest of your Facebook data, such as tracking which websites you visit by having a script visit thousands of random sites while you’re logged into your account. To make it more accessible for non-coders, it would also be possible to create a desktop-based app that would run all the scripts for the average user.

We don’t know how far back Facebook’s history of data on its users extends, how that data is stored and backed up, but this is one way to at least make an attempt at sticking it to the platform before you leave it forever.

Matthew told me his main goal, though, is to raise awareness and to draw attention to the fact that the US and Canada have virtually no “right to be forgotten” laws, something that would protect a users right to have their data purged if they want to leave a site.

“Maybe my script won’t make a huge impact on a global scale, but maybe it will get us talking about protecting our privacy,” Matthew said. “If I want my data to be purged, I should have the right to do that.” 

Courtesy: Kaleigh Rogers of MOTHERBOARD.com

ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!

Cambridge Analytica scandal: CSEAN urges NASS to investigate Facebook, enact data protection law

ITREALMS:

The CyberSecurity Experts Association of Nigeria (CSEAN) has urged the National Assembly (NASS) to investigate the ongoing scandal of data-mining by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica as revealed by a whistle-blower, Christopher Wylie, reports ITRealms.

CSEAN also NASS to as matter of urgency, enact data protection law, according to its President, Mr. Remi Afon, at the weekend.

He told ITRealms that CSEAN is highly concerned at the news that millions of Nigerians data were allegedly harvested from Facebook and used in a targeted online campaign with the aim of influencing the outcome of 2015 election.

He noted that Cambridge Analytica, the analytics and marketing firm based in United Kingdom (UK) has been implicated in this scandal that also involved allegation of hacking of President Muhammadu Buhari’s email who was at that time the Presidential Candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC).

The firm was allegedly paid £2 million ($2.8 million) by an unnamed Nigerian billionaire to “orchestrate a ferocious campaign” against President Muhammadu Buhari.

While it is now becoming common to use data analytic software to perform targeted online marketing campaign, CSEAN President noted that the recent revelation by Christopher Wylie the whistle-blower and former research director for Cambridge Analytical, is to say the least worrisome.

Wylie alleged while testifying before a committee of British Parliament that an Israeli company called Black Cube was engaged to hack private health data from President Muhammadu Buhari email.

ITRealms gathered that Black Cube has however debunked this assertion, while AggregateIQ (AIQ) a software development firm based in Canada was said to have handled the hacked data and also distributed threatening anti-Islamic videos that showed people’s throats being cut in an effort to intimidate voters and dissuade Nigerians from voting during the 2015 presidential election.

According to Wylie the “AIQ was handed material about Nigeria from Cambridge Analytica to distribute online - that is distribution of kompromat (compromising material) and of incredibly threatening and violent video content,”  AggregateIQ has meanwhile denied this allegation.

CSEAN president, equally noted that the Facebook Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has taken out a full-page advert in some selected print media in the United States (US) and UK to apologise for the Cambridge Analytica scandal but despite Nigeria being also a victim of the misuse of data, no such apology has been tendered in Nigeria.

“Such is the kind of treatment Nigeria has always received and will continue until we begin to hold organisations accountable for personal data of Nigerians they hold. While UK and US are busy investigating the key actors in this scandal, Nigeria is yet to react officially,” he said.

In order to continue to give Nigerian citizens assurance that their data will be managed securely and safely by organisations that hold and process their personal data, CSEAN therefore call on National Assembly as a matter of urgency to initiate robust investigation of Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, AggregateIQ and Black Cube to ascertain whether Nigerian Cyber Crime law has been breached and also look at the present gaps in the law with the aim of enacting a strong data protection law.  As 2019 general election is fast approaching, we will continue to witness online targeting using social media to influence voters.

“The time has come for the Federal Government to set up a Cyber Security Unit that will have capability of defending government systems from cyber threats and provide support to the existing security agencies in terms of cybersecurity investigations,” he said.

CSEAN, Mr. Afon said, has put together a technical session and table-top  exercise during its forth coming Cyber Secure Nigeria 2018 Conference scheduled to take place in Lagos on the 9-10th May 2018, to discuss “Election Manipulation Using Social Media Data to target Nigerians in 2019”.

A communique, he said, will be issued at the end of the conference and shared with relevant authorities, which has the theme for this year as “Mitigating Cyber Threats in Digital Age”.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!

Facebook data controversy: Mark Zuckerberg promises developers hardtime, reassures users

Commentary@ITREALMS:

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook shares an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation -- including the steps we've already taken and our next steps to address this important issue.

"We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it.

Here's a timeline of the events:

In 2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social. Your calendar should be able to show your friends' birthdays, your maps should show where your friends live, and your address book should show their pictures. To do this, we enabled people to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them.

In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends' data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends' data.

In 2014, to prevent abusive apps, we announced that we were changing the entire platform to dramatically limit the data apps could access. Most importantly, apps like Kogan's could no longer ask for data about a person's friends unless their friends had also authorized the app. We also required developers to get approval from us before they could request any sensitive data from people. These actions would prevent any app like Kogan's from being able to access so much data today.

In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people's consent, so we immediately banned Kogan's app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications.

Last week, we learned from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified. We immediately banned them from using any of our services. Cambridge Analytica claims they have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm we hired to confirm this. We're also working with regulators as they investigate what happened.

This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that.

In this case, we already took the most important steps a few years ago in 2014 to prevent bad actors from accessing people's information in this way. But there's more we need to do and I'll outline those steps here:

First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well.

Second, we will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers' access to your data if you haven't used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in -- to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We'll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we'll have more changes to share in the next few days.

Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you've allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you've used and an easy way to revoke those apps' permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it.

Beyond the steps we had already taken in 2014, I believe these are the next steps we must take to continue to secure our platform.

I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I'm responsible for what happens on our platform. I'm serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.

I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together. I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we'd like, but I promise you we'll work through this and build a better service over the long term.

*Contributed by Facebook CEO, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg

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Facebook data controversy: Cambridge Analytica used in Nigeria election – Whistleblower

ITREALMS:

The Cambridge Analytica whistleblower over the use of Facebook generated data, Christopher Wylie has revealed that Nigeria may have benefited from their services during the 2015 general elections, reports ITRealms.

Speaking to Hola Gorani Tonight on Cable News Network (CNN) monitored in Lagos by ITRealms on Monday night, Wylie said the Facebook data collected from unsuspecting users have been used to influence elections in various countries of the world including Nigeria and United States of America.

ITRealms gathered that following Wylie exposure of Facebook role in the data controversy rocking both United Kingdom and America, his Facebook account has been suspended.

"Suspended by Facebook. For blowing the whistle. On something they have known privately for two years," Wylie tweeted on Sunday. Just as his account on Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, had also been suspended.

Facebook equally said it would be conducting its review without Wylie's help.

Responding to why suspending Wylie’s accounts, a lawyer at Facebook, Paul Grewal, said, "Mr. Wylie has refused to cooperate with us until we lift the suspension on his account,

He told CNN on Sunday that "Given he said he 'exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles,' we cannot do this (lift suspension) at this time."

ITRealms recalls that this has been the latest twist in a complicated story that has played out over the last few days via statements from Facebook (FB), an investigative report by The New York Times and London's The Observer, and revelations from the people involved.

Wylie was a data analyst for Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data firm that worked for President Donald Trump's campaign. He shared evidence of the company's activities with the two newspapers, as well as reportedly with cybercrime investigators in the United Kingdom. Over the weekend, he also spoke on British television about how the company was reportedly able to harvest data from 50 million Facebook profiles.

Wylie told UK’s Channel 4 at the weekend, that getting those data "allowed us to move into the hearts and minds of American voters in a way that had never been done before."

In addition, Facebook also suspended Cambridge Analytica from its platform on last Friday, saying in a blog post that the company had learned in 2015 that user data was shared with a political data group in violation of Facebook's terms. Facebook said they received certifications at the time that all copies of the data had been destroyed.

In a statement, Cambridge Analytica maintained "that all Facebook data and their derivatives" was deleted. It also says it did not use any of that data in its work for Trump's campaign.

According to the CNN, the revelations prompted renewed scrutiny of how Facebook was used to reach and influence voters ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.

Under fire from politicians in the United States and the United Kingdom, Facebook said on Sunday afternoon it was conducting an internal and external review to determine if Facebook data provided to Cambridge Analytica still existed.

The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica still possesses most or all of the data, according to interviews with a half-dozen former employees and contractors.

Facebook acknowledged in the blog post it has "received reports that, contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted."

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office said in a new statement on Monday that it was investigating the use of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

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