According to the recent reports, Facebook, Instagram as well as Snapchat will have to remove the like button and in the case of Snapchat, the streaks for the users under 18. The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) has said that it is going to impose 16 new rules for various social media platforms in order to make those platforms safer for young kids.
Image Source: wsj.com
One of those rules is indicating towards removing the like button from the different social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as according, to ICO the like button nudges the kids to stay online on those platform for a longer time.
“We’ve
launched the draft of our Age Appropriate Design code, which sets the
standards for those designing, developing and providing online
services to children.” a tweet from the official account of ICO
stated.
ICO
is also working on the other rules to stop the social media companies
from nudging the users younger than 18 years old, to reduce the
screen time for them and to control their privacy. According to the
new rules the social media platforms will have to keep the user
information private by default, and until necessary, the kids should
not be asked to share their private information.
The
new guidelines will also prevent the companies to ask the kids under
18 to share their geolocations in any circumstances, as the
geolocations map the accurate location of the phone.
The
initiative of crafting new rules, for keeping the kids under 18 safe,
has been taken by the government of UK, after the MPs and other
public figures criticised those social media platforms for bad
effects on the children. In fact, the Duke of Sussex has called those
platforms more addictive than drugs and alcohol.
Though
it is a great initiative, for now, it has been only taken in the UK.
In fact, in the UK too, the rules will be imposed only in 2020, after
the consultation will be over in May 2019, for the other rules. The
ICO will start working on making the guidelines starting from Monday,
and will consult and take opinions from the public as well as
experts. After the guidelines come into effect, the companies would
need to pay fine in millions and billions, if it failed to follow.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
Almost five years ago, Facebook started pushing its users to use its standalone messaging app, Facebook Messenger, by disabling the chat feature from its social media app. At the time, most of the people were annoyed with this step taken by the company, but in past years they have become apt with the messaging app.
Image Source: hanoitimes.vn
But in recent years, having got the most of the user engagement on the messenger, rather than the social media platform, it might be possible that Facebook is encouraged to bring the chat feature back to its Facebook app. Noticeably, the Facebook messenger is currently serving to over 1.3 billion monthly users, which is huge.
According
to a tweet by the researcher Jane Manchun Wong, Facebook is testing
the basic chat feature on its social media app. Wong tweeted,
“Facebook is bringing the Chats back to the app for preparing
integrated messaging.” In fact, she had tweeted a few hours before
this tweet that she will be uncovering one upcoming feature that most
of the people will like.
About a month ago the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg had mentioned that the company will be having its emphasis more on its messaging unit. He had also expressed his intention for unifying all the messaging app from Facebook, i.e., Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. And, now the testing of the new chat feature for the Facebook app may be the company’s first step towards the very objective.
For
now, the company is testing a basic chat feature for the Facebook
app, and according to reports, there is no support for the video
call, image sharing, the sticker sharing and the other Messenger
options in it.
The company has not commented on the matter yet, and there may be a possibility that the feature remains unreleased for quite some time, as it is still in testing. According to Wong, there has been no mention of dissolving the Facebook Messenger as it will continue to serve the users that are on Facebook solely to use the messaging app and are not active on the Facebook app.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
Last week, Facebook was talking about unifying its all messaging apps into one, such that the businesses can easily access the Instagram direct messages. And now, reportedly, Instagram is testing its direct message feature for the web version of the app.
First spotted by the reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong, she twitted a screenshot of the feature on her official Twitter account.
Currently, only the Instagram mobile app is supporting the DM (Direct Message) feature. The desktop version of the website is a minimal, pared-down version of the same, which only shows the feed and a few other basic features in it. Instagram on desktop only offers its users to scroll down the feed, search for other Instagrammers and follow them and still needs a feature to upload pictures and stories. After all the app is a photograph based social media platform. Noticeably, even the Browser Notification support was added to the web version of the app last September.
There may be a few reasons behind, why Instagram has suddenly started the testing for the DM features for the web.
One being that Instagram started the testing for its standalone messaging app, i.e. DM, in 2017 and after the launch of the DM app, Instagram may have recorded an increase in the messaging app users. So, it may have encouraged Instagram to provide its users with the facility to use the Instagram DM easily, independent of the devices they are using.
Also, Instagram does not have an app for the iPad, and the iPad users have to rely on using the browser to use Instagram. So having the DM feature for the web will also enable the iPad users to access their DMs on the iPad.
But, as Instagram started the testing of the DM feature for the desktop only after Facebook made an announcement about unifying all three messaging apps, i.e. Facebook Messenger, What’s App and Instagram, this can be the prime reason behind the same.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
The Facebook page feature has made people create their business pages, and due to ease of accessibility, many government organisations also have created their own FB pages, where they regularly post news and other daily important announcements.
Image Source: TechCrunch
Now
as FB has been a powerful platform to gather people for some real
potential topics too, starting from today, FB is rolling out a new
Community Action feature on it, to help people request a change from
their local officials and government.
Tech
Crunch reported on Sunday, “Community Actions will be a petition
feature in Facebook’s News Feed and reach users in the US on Tuesday
and other markets later.”
With
the help of this petition feature, people will be able to initiate an
agenda and can discuss the same with a wide community to gather
support from other people too. They can even tag the local
authorities to attract their attention to the subject matter.
People
can create a proper post having a title, image, description, related
to that topic, and others can press the support button as the patron
to the agenda. They can also organise fundraisers as well as events
with the same feature, and the people can discuss the agenda in the
comment section of the post.
Although Facebook already supported similar features before, this time it is entirely focussed on involving the major social concerns relating to the government. The extended the support to the petition the higher the chances of getting the government to the matter sooner.
Facebook right now is working on how to make this feature more authentic and not absurd, so that the real issues will get the attention instead of some fake news or some random stuff. Although the petition might not be able to cause big agendas and tag the President, people can get the state representatives to see through the issue. The feature is currently available to the US citizens only. Facebook has reported that it did a few rounds of testing with the feature and till now, it has done quite well.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
Facebook has been facing a lot due to its data privacy issues for the past few months. This time it has been attacked by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office. According to the UK’s security watchdog, Facebook has supported some major security breaches of the data protection law, in the past. For this, the ICO has fined Facebook for $644,000 (£500,000). Facebook has been imposed with the maximum amount of fine, to be paid for the breach of the data protection law in the UK after it was found guilty in an investigation.
According to the investigation, Facebook is responsible for the stealing of 1 million Facebook users’ personal information, in the UK. Also, between 2007-2014, Facebook carelessly allowed the third-parties to use the data of the Facebook users, without their consent.
Image Source: joshbenson.com
The ICO carried out the investigation after the security breach, by GSR developer, in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, earlier this year. The scandal included the harvesting of private data, from up to 87 million Facebook users, around the world without their knowledge. The report included the stealing and misuse of the personal data of the Facebook users, during the referendum on the U.K.’s membership of the European Union, for the political campaign in 2016.
The UK’s Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, confirming the news, said, “Facebook failed to sufficiently protect the privacy of its users before, during, and after the unlawful processing of this data. A company of its size and expertise should have known better, and it should have done better.”
Before the Cambridge Analytica’s scandal was officially out, the Guardian investigation, in 2016, had already provided a report, on the bases of the statement of a whistleblower from the company who described how the data of the Facebook users was stolen to target the voters.
About the fine imposed on Facebook, the CEO of Mark Zuckerburg has said that they are reviewing the whole situation. “we have a lot more work to do to safeguard personal data,” he added. A spokesperson from Facebook also said, “While we respectfully disagree with some of their findings, we have said before that we should have done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica and taken action in 2015. We are grateful that the ICO has acknowledged our full cooperation throughout their investigation.”
ICO will present further evidence regarding the case in the coming November, in front of the UK government. Also, it has summoned Mark Zuckerberg, to testify about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, that is scheduled for the month of May in 2019.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
The inventive programmer and the youngest billionaire of the world, Mark Zuckerberg needs no introduction. The CEO and the founder of Facebook, the largest social media network, was once the captain of the fencing team of his school. The young entrepreneur was always interested in programming and used to develop games based on the sketches, his artist friends made. Having a few lawsuits in his name and films made on his life story, Zuckerberg is among the few programmers who have established themselves as the smartest entrepreneurs of the world.
Early Life
Mark Zuckerberg aka Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, and grew up in the suburbs of Dobbs Ferry, New York. His father Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist and mother Karen (née Kempner), a psychiatrist, belonged to a Jewish family. He was a bright student and always topped in the class. He completed his schooling from Ardsley High School and Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire. He excelled in mathematics, astronomy, physics and won many prizes in quiz competitions of his school. By the end of his school, he became proficient in French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek.
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Zuckerberg owned his first PC Quantex 486DX, on the Intel 486, when he was in middle school. He, eventually, grew an interest in programming languages and ended up learning Atari BASIC Programming form his father. He also received a private tuition to learn more about programming. Soon, he started developing small applications and developed a program, that connected the computers of his father’s office, through a messenger named ZuckNet. During his final year, at the high school, he joined a company name Intelligent Media Group, that worked to build a music player Synapse Media Player. The media player was developed using AI technology, that enabled it to create a playlist based on the music choice of the user. The music player even grabbed the attention of Microsoft and AOL.
Founding Facebook
After completing his school, due to his outstanding performance, he managed to get admission in one of the top universities of America, the Harvard University. By creating some useful software and games, he had already made his reputation as a programmer. He adopted Computer Science and Psychology as his major subjects. His first software at his college was the CourseMatch. The software helped the students to choose the right course and help others with their choices.
In the summer of 2003, Zuckerberg created a website for the students of the Harvard, named as Facemash. The project was developed during one his insomniac nights. The website was inspired by the college yearbook Facebook, that included the profiles of the students having their personal details and pictures in it. The concept behind Facemash was to compare two students based on their appearance. Most of the students enjoyed using it and the others complained about Zuckerberg, saying that he was using their personal data, without permission. The site got shut down within two days and Zuckerberg had to apologise to the students.
After the failure of Facemash, he started working on his new project, The Facebook. Zuckerberg launched the website after one month, i.e., on 4 February 2004. The website was basically designed for the students of Harvard, to help them connect with each other, easily. The website became an instant hit, and just after a year, it expanded to other colleges and schools, in the city. In the second year of his college, he left his studies in between, to work full-time on The Facebook. The founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, became its first angel investor, by investing $500,000. Soon, Facebook had 50 million registered users, and Zuckerberg started receiving offers to sell Facebook, from large companies, like Yahoo. Even receiving offers worth billions, he never accepted one. Although, he himself acquired many major projects like What’s App and Instagram.
The Lawsuit
On the initial launch of Facebook, three of Zuckerberg ‘s seniors at the University, Divya Narendra, and twin brothers Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. According to them, Facebook was based on their idea, that was to create a platform to connect the students of Harvard. They even claimed that they had hired Zuckerberg to work on their website. Later, they even sued him for the same. In the end, there was a settlement between them, for 1.2 million Facebook shares.
Personal Life
Zuckerberg married his longtime girlfriend and fellow student from Harvard, Priscilla Chan, on 19 May 2012. The couple has two daughters Maxima Chan Zuckerberg and August Chan Zuckerberg.
In July 2018, Zuckerberg became the third richest person in the world $81.6 billion net worth. Although, within a week, his net worth was tumbled nearly $20 billion, eliminating him from the position of the third richest person.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
