The Nation Newspaper

Tag: twitter

  • Trump, Obama, Katy Perry, others lose Twitter followers

    U.S. President Donald Trump, his predecessor Barack Obama and American singer Katy Perry , the most followed celebrities on Twitter, lost an astonishing number of followers on Thursday following Twitter’s account purge.

    Twitter announced on Wednesday that users would see a drop in their follower accounts on Thursday as the company clamped down on ‘problematic’ and ‘fake’ accounts.

    Trump, who is well known for his controversial twitter account @realDonaldTrump, saw his follower count drop by about 300,000, from 53.4 million to 53.1 million.

    Also, Barack Obama’s, who tweets @barackobama, saw his total followers shrink by 2.1 million, from 103.63 million to 101.5 million.

    Meanwhile, Singer Katy Perry, who has the most-followed account on Twitter, lost 1.5 million followers, dropping from 109.61 million to 108.1 million followers.

    Follower counts for Justin Bieber fell from 106.71 million to 101.50 million while Rihanna was down to 88.44 million followers from 89 million.

    Television host Ellen DeGeneres dropped from 78.09 million to 76.10 million followers and Taylor Swift fell from 85.57 million to 83.27 million, while Lady Gaga’s followers declined from 78.97 million to 77.47 million.

    Twitter’s official account on the social network was not spared from the purge as it shed 7.5 million fake accounts to drop from 62.85 million to 55.35 million as at press time.

    According to its official statement, Twitter will begin removing tens of millions of suspicious accounts from users’ followers signalling a major new effort to restore trust on the popular platform.

    The affected accounts will include those that have been hijacked to spread abuse, misinformation and propaganda.

  • Twitter suspends over 70 million accounts

    Twitter Inc. suspended more than one million accounts a day in recent months to reduce the flow of misinformation on the platform, the Media reported.

    Twitter and other social media platforms such as Facebook Inc. have been under scrutiny by United States lawmakers and international regulators for doing too little to prevent the spread of false content.

    The companies have been taking steps such as deleting user accounts, introducing updates and actively monitoring content to help users avoid being victims to fake content.

    Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June and the pace has continued in July, the media reported on Friday, citing data it obtained.

    “It’s hard to believe that 70 million accounts were affected when Twitter has only 336 million monthly active users (MAU),” Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said.

    Twitter’s MAU is expected to grow nearly three per cent to 337.06 in the second quarter, according to media.

    “My guess is that a large number of these suspended accounts were dormant … it should have little impact on the company,” Pachter told the media.

    If the 70 million were mostly active accounts, the affected accounts would have been “screaming bloody murder”, added the analyst.

    According to a Washington Post source, however, the aggressive removal of unwanted accounts may result in a rare decline in the number of monthly users in the second quarter.

    “Due to technology and process improvements during the past year, we are now removing 214 per cent more accounts for violating our spam policies on a year-on-year basis,” the company said in a blog post last month.

    In May, it identified and challenged more than 9.9 million “potentially spammy” or automated accounts per week, compared with 6.4 million in December 2017.

    Shares of Twitter fell marginally to 46.50 dollars after the bell on Friday.

     

  • Thieves should have their hands chopped off – Jaime Rodriguez

     

    Jaime Rodriguez, a Mexican presidential candidate said in a televised debate on Sunday,that thieves should have their hands chopped off, provoking disbelief from a moderator and setting off a storm of comments and jokes on Twitter.

    Rodriguez, an independent known as “El Bronco,” who is trailing in opinion polls, made the proposal during a discussion about corruption in the first televised debate among the five presidential candidates ahead of the July 1 election.

    “We have to cut off the hands of those who rob. It’s that simple,” said the 59-year-old, adding that he would ask Congress to pass a law backing his idea.

    Taken aback, the moderator Denise Maerker twice asked him if he was speaking literally, before checking again that he really meant what he had said.

    “That’s right. That’s right,” he replied.

    Memes based on Rodriguez’s comments rapidly spread through Twitter, among them an image of his face superimposed on a picture of what appeared to be an Islamist militant chopping off a man’s hand.

    “El Bronco” was trending ahead of the other candidates on Twitter during the debate.

    Crime and corruption are top issues in the election campaign, with candidates under pressure to offer a way to end massive public graft and lower the number of murders from historic highs.

    Rodriguez’s comments followed a long discussion about a proposal by election front-runner Andres Obrador to explore a vaguely defined amnesty to end a drug war, in which about 200,000 people have been killed in a decade.

    The idea is unlikely to gain much support in Congress, but if it were adopted would be a major shift in approach for Mexico, which prohibits the death penalty and torture.

    “It is not a bad thing, countries that have left corruption behind have done it,” said Rodriguez, without giving details.

    Saudi Arabia and Iran are among a handful of countries in the world that permit amputation as a punishment.

    It was not immediately clear if the punishment envisaged by Rodriguez would be limited to public officials convicted of graft or apply to criminals generally.

    Elected in 2015 as Mexico’s first independent governor, Rodriguez has taken leave from the job to run for president.

    He is in fifth place in most opinion polls.

    NAN

     

  • Twitter to ban cryptocurrency adverts on its platform

    Twitter Inc is to ban most advertising of cryptocurrencies on its platform, joining Facebook and Google in a clampdown on the nascent industry, the company said in a statement.

    The San Francisco-based firm will this week launch a policy that prohibits advertising of initial coin offerings ( ICOs ), a form of crowd funding used to raise cash by creating new coins.

    Also adverts that promote token sales and crypto wallet services, the company said in a statement.

    The policy will also ban adverts from crypto-exchanges, with some limited exceptions.

    Twitter said this month it was taking measures to prevent crypto-related accounts from “engaging with others in a deceptive manner”, but it has faced calls to go further after bans by Facebook and Google.

    Facebook restricted crypto-related adverts in February, while Google announced a ban on March 14 that comes into force in June.

    Reuters/NAN

  • Facebook under pressure as U.S., EU call for probes into data practices

    British privacy regulators are seeking a warrant to search the offices of the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, following reports that the company may have improperly gained access to data on 50 million Facebook users.

    The move came as U.S. and European lawmakers demanded an explanation of how the consulting firm, which worked on President Donald Trump’s election campaign, gained access to the data.

    In the U.S., members of Congress called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about Facebook’s actions.

    Facebook said on Monday it had hired forensic auditors from the firm Stroz Friedberg to investigate and determine whether Cambridge Analytica still had the data.

    “Auditors from Stroz Friedberg were on site at Cambridge Analytica’s London office this evening,” the company said in a statement late Monday.

    “At the request of the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which has announced it is pursuing a warrant to conduct its own on-site investigation, the Stroz Friedberg auditors stood down.”

    Facebook shares closed down nearly 7.0 per cent on Monday, wiping nearly $40 billion off its market value as investors worried that new legislation could damage the company’s advertising business.

    “The lid is being opened on the black box of Facebook data practices, and the picture is not pretty,” said Frank Pasquale, a University of Maryland law professor who has written about Silicon Valley’s use of data.

    Also on Monday, a source said that Facebook head of security, Alex Stamos, plans to leave the company over disagreements about the company’s policies on misinformation.

    He had been a strong advocate for an aggressive approach to alleged Russian activity on the platform aimed at manipulating elections.

    His departure was first reported by the New York Times. Facebook declined immediate comment.

    In a tweet, Stamos did not deny he was leaving but said: “Despite the rumors, I’m still fully engaged with my work at Facebook. It’s true that my role did change.”

    The criticism of Cambridge Analytica presents a new threat to Facebook’s reputation, which is already under attack over Russia’s alleged use of Facebook tools to sway U.S. voters with divisive and false news posts before and after the 2016 election.

    London-based Cambridge Analytica said it strongly denied the media claims, and that it deleted all Facebook data it obtained from a third-party application in 2014 after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules.

    However, further allegations about the firm’s tactics were reported late Monday by British broadcaster Channel 4 which said it secretly taped interviews with senior Cambridge Analytica executives in which they boasted of their ability to sway elections in countries around the world with digital manipulation and traditional political trickery.

    Cambridge Analytica rejected the allegations, saying in a statement that the Channel 4 report “is edited and scripted to grossly misrepresent the nature of those conversations and how the company conducts its business.”

    Facebook was already facing calls on Saturday for regulation from the U.S. Congress after the reports in the New York Times and London’s Observer over the weekend.

    Republican Senator John Kennedy called on Zuckerberg to testify before Congress, and Democratic Senator Ron Widen sent a letter to Zuckerberg asking about company policies for sharing user data with third parties.

    Facebook usually sends lawyers to testify to Congress, or allows trade organizations to represent it and other technology companies in front of lawmakers.

    Facebook and other social media companies including Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube have taken voluntary steps to restrict possible foreign interference and combat false news, but they have not been forced by law or regulation to make changes and legislation on the issue has stalled.

    Late on Monday, the Connecticut Attorney General said the office will initiate an inquiry into Facebook data policies.

    The Senate was expected to move forward on Monday with a bill that would chip away at the internet industry’s legal shield, a decades-old law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, with a bill intended to address online sex trafficking.

    The measure has already passed the House and is expected to soon become law.

    Reuters/NAN

  • BBNaija: You’ve got no game- Twitter user to Khloe

    Shots have been fired this morning between Ex-Big Brother housemate and Twitter user, @badgalblaze1.

    Recall that yesterday during the live show, Biggie made a new announcement that accommodates two evicted housemates back into the house.

    Ever since this announcement several evicted housemates have eyed a return back to the house. Inclusive of Anto, Ahneeka and Khloe. Clamour has also gone round that Ifu wanted a pleasant return.

    Things went awry when in a bid to up the ante, Khloe gave reasons for her return to the house which is to put Cee-C in her place based on a popular demand basis.

    Khloe also went further to state she was going to bring more drama into her house while also admitted she wasn’t scared of anyone.

    Read Also: BBNaija: Two evicted housemates to return to show

    This resulted in an epic clapback by @badgalblaze1 saying Khloe’s got no game and her disqualification shall stand.

    Of course Khloe got angry and described her entry into the house as an achievement asking @badgalblaze1 what hers was.

    This constituted into another reply but Khloe would have none of it, so she chose to block @badgalblaze1 from Twitter page.

     

  • Twitter to let users make tweet threads more easily

    Twitter to let users make tweet threads more easily

    Twitter said it would add a pair of buttons that will allow users to more easily see and add new tweets to existing ones on the same topic.

    With the new feature, users who create threads, stitching tweets together to tell a longer story, need no longer reply to previous tweets to do so.

    It is the latest instance of the social network altering or adding a feature after reviewing feedback to keep its more than 300 million monthly active users engaged.

    In November, it doubled the character limit for tweets from 140 to 280, in a major shift.

    Read Also: Why Twitter eased 140-character pain

  • Ex-Twitter worker claims responsibility for Trump’s account shutdown

    Ex-Twitter worker claims responsibility for Trump’s account shutdown

    A German man has come forward as the former Twitter Inc employee who shut down the account of U.S. President Donald Trump for 11 minutes this month on his last day of work at the social network.

    The technology news website TechCrunch published an interview on Wednesday with Bahtiyar Duysak, whom it called a 20-something with Turkish roots who was born and raised in Germany.

    The website said he was a temporary contract worker in San Francisco for Twitter.

    Duysak, who had not previously been identified as the person behind the takedown, told TechCrunch that he considered Trump’s temporary silencing a “mistake” and never thought the account would get deactivated.

    He said it was not a planned act.

    Rather, he said, the chance to shutter the account fell into his lap near the end of his scheduled final shift, and he decided to take it.

    “There are millions of people who would take actions against him if they had the possibility.

    “In my case, it was just random,” Duysak said in a video of the interview posted online. He wore a gray sweater emblazoned with the American flag.

    Twitter on Wednesday would not confirm whether Duysak was the ex-employee in question or answer other questions. Reuters could not immediately reach Duysak.

    BuzzFeed News, citing two anonymous sources, reported separately that Duysak was the ex-employee responsible.

    Duysak is a former volunteer security guard at a Muslim community center in California, BuzzFeed reported.

    Trump has been critical of Muslims, calling during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States.

    The takedown of Trump’s account on Nov. 2 sparked concerns among Twitter users over how much power employees have over sensitive accounts and whether abuse of their power could lead to international incidents.

    Twitter said in a statement on Wednesday: “We have taken a number of steps to keep an incident like this from happening again.”

    He said Duysak did not shed much light on the incident. Near the end of his last day at the San Francisco-based company, an alert came to him that someone had reported Trump’s account for an unspecified violation.

    Duysak put the wheels in motion to deactivate it, TechCrunch said, although the account did not go offline until hours later.

    Neither Duysak nor TechCrunch explained the delay.

    “I didn’t hack anyone. I didn’t do anything which I wasn’t authorised to do,” he said.

    Reuters/NAN

  • Why Twitter eased 140-character pain

    Why Twitter eased 140-character pain

    Twitter is giving you more characters to express yourself. The social media platform increased its characters limit from 140 to 280 with effect from November 7, 2017.

    According to Aliza Rosen, Product Manager for Twitter: “Trying to cram your thoughts into a Tweet – we’ve all been there, and it’s a pain”.

    Earlier in the year, Twitter carried out a research which shows that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for English-speaking users while it is not a problem for the Japanese. “This is because in languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese you can convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French,” said Rosen.

    Understanding that Twitter is all about brevity, the company however believes that 280 words will help users better to express themselves, without editing sentences and using abbreviations often. However, Twitter users are emotional about the change and believe that the app will become cheesy when more words are used. People are expressing their disappointment at the change, which Twitter called: “new, still brief, constraint”.

    English novelist and author of Harry Porter, JK Rowling’s reaction was devoid of optimism.

    She said: “Twitter’s destroyed its USP. The whole point, for me, was how inventive people could be within that concise framework.”  The entrepreneur and public speaker, Scott Eddy lamented: “Hey #Twitter, instead of giving us 280 characters, how about giving us a few more characters in the bio?”.

    In a mocking tweet, a South-African user, Lwazilwaphesheya K. said: “Twitter went from 140 characters to 280.Then from 20 characters in the space given for a name to 50 characters. Next thing we’ll be sending PDF’s up in here.”

    Here in Nigeria, Twitter users and social media influencers are also complaining over the extension of Twitter characters to 280 words. In a tweet, popular blogger and influencer Japheth Omojuwa wrote: “Twitter was confused on the business side but got the technical side right. With 280 characters, convergence on confusion is imminent.”

    From the research carried out by Twitter, only 0.4 per cent of tweets written in Japanese exhausted the 140 characters space; while nine per cent of tweets sent out in English exhausted the same space. The implication is that more of people who tweet in English need more than 140 characters as more characters are needed to compose words.

    In the month of September when the 280-character extension was tested with few users, Twitter discovered some advantages. Some of the findings are: more space makes it easier for people to express themselves; users are still able to keep twitter’s brevity; and more room to tweet results in more engagement.

    In response to users’ outrage, Alan Rosen wrote last week: ”We’ll continue listening and working to make Twitter easier for everyone while making sure we keep what you love.”

  • Why Lai Mohammed urgently needs social media accounts

    Why Lai Mohammed urgently needs social media accounts

    While denying the false report of President Muhammadu Buhari purported plan to travel to the United States on Sunday, Information and Culture Minister, Alhaji Lai Muhammed disclosed that he does not have social media accounts.

    “Numerous parody accounts have been opened in my name on the two platforms, when indeed I have no Twitter or Facebook accounts,” he stated while urging Nigerians to disregard what was credited to him.

    The minister also recalled how the same parody Twitter account, @MohammedLai used to disseminate the fake news about the President’s purported trip was employed to circulate a fake report that he sharply criticised Senator Dino Melaye for attending the Notting Hill Carnival in the UK.

    He said these two instances highlight the dangers posed to the polity by the purveyors of fake news and disinformation, and vowed that the Federal Government would soon fish out those behind the shenanigans.

    I sympatise with the minister that the false sensitive information was credited to him by some faceless individuals who create parody accounts in the name of others, especially top government officials to misinform the public.

    I totally agree with the minister that “Fake news, disinformation and hate speech are the antics of the naysayers, those who are pathologically opposed to this administration.” Everyone on the internet, including Nigerians as he counseled need to be more discerning and should double check any information emanating from the social media.

    However, notwithstanding the wrong use to which social media accounts are being deployed, the minister cannot continue to justify not having Twitter or Facebook handles.

    The accounts are too important in the present information age for information dissemination for any government official like the country’s information minister not to have.

    If President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and many other top officials of the federal government have social media accounts, why should the spokesman of the government not have verified handles?

    Parody accounts will always be created by mischief makers, but when the real ones exists and are used regularly, it will be easy to distinguish between fake and real information.

    Alhaji Mohammed should take a cue from many members of this administration who are effectively using the social media to disseminate information to prevent the naysayers from taking advantage of his absence on the too-important to ignore platforms.

    He doesn’t need to operate them himself like most top dignitaries do. He can get tech savvy assistants to keep Nigerians informed through the platforms and match the naysayers tweets for tweets.