“Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone,” Musk wrote in a post on Wednesday, in response to a report in The Information.

The online outlet said that X, formerly known as Twitter, was cutting half of its global team dedicated to monitoring and limiting disinformation and fraud around major elections.

There are more than 50 major elections expected around the world next year, including the US presidential election, but also in India, Africa and the European Union.

The cut came just after X was found by EU regulators to have the biggest proportion of disinformation of major social networks scrutinized in an analysis by Brussels.

A new EU regulation compels tech companies to better police content to protect European users against disinformation and hate speech, and those that breach the law could face fines.

The job cuts appear in contradiction with recent statements by X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who told the Financial Times this week that the platform was expanding its teams around the world ahead of the busy election season.

Asked about the report in a separate interview at the Vox Code Conference on Wednesday, Yaccarino said election integrity was “an issue we take very seriously.”

“Contrary to the comments that were made, there is a robust and growing team at X that is wrapping their arms around election integrity,” she added.

In her conversation, Yaccarino also said X would turn a profit early next year.

She also refused to confirm that X would start charging money to all its users, implying that it was an “idea” and not a plan.

During a talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Musk said that introducing a “small monthly payment” for X was the only way to combat the legions of automated accounts, known as bots, that plague the site.

The post Musk guts X’s election integrity teams ahead of major votes appeared first on Digital Journal.

Calls had grown in recent months for a regulation governing social media and e-commerce, with offline sellers seeing their livelihoods threatened by the sale of cheaper products on TikTok Shop and other platforms.

Indonesia is one of the world’s biggest markets for TikTok Shop and was the first to pilot the app’s e-commerce arm.

“Now, e-commerce cannot become social media. It is separated,” Trade Minister Zulkifli Hasan told a news conference in the capital, Jakarta, adding that the trade regulation came into force on Tuesday.

Hasan said social commerce platforms would have a week to comply with the new rule.

“Any government would protect local small businesses,” he said, describing the regulation as a way to ensure “equality in business competition”.

The regulation means social commerce companies are now “prohibited to facilitate payment transactions in its electronic system”, according to the regulation document seen by AFP.

“Social commerce can place ads like TV, but it mustn’t be transactional. (They) can’t open shop, can’t directly sell,” Hasan said, without mentioning TikTok by name.

Companies that did not comply would be warned first and would finally have their license to do business in Indonesia revoked, he said.

Laws in the archipelago nation did not cover direct transactions through social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook or Instagram before the new regulation.

The new regulation is yet another setback for TikTok, which has faced intense scrutiny in the United States and other nations in recent months over users’ data security and the company’s alleged ties to Beijing.

“Other countries are banning, we don’t, we’re regulating,” Hasan said.

Indonesia is now the first country in the region to act against the platform’s growing popularity in social media commerce.

The ministerial-level regulation — an amendment to a trade regulation issued in 2020 — did not need approval by lawmakers.

Chinese technology giant and TikTok owner ByteDance and TikTok Indonesia did not respond immediately to a request for comment Wednesday.

But a TikTok Indonesia spokesperson told AFP on Monday the ban would harm as many as six million local sellers who market their products on the platform.

Meta — which owns Facebook and Instagram — did not respond to a request for comment.

– ‘Markets are quiet’ –

Hasan appeared to confirm the companies would have to choose between separate social media and e-commerce licences.

“It’s clear… there are no permits for social commerce. If (they) want social commerce, please, only for promotion and ads. If (they) want to sell, there are e-commerce (permits).”

The regulation also sets a minimum price of $100 for certain foreign goods bought from Indonesian sellers on e-commerce platforms, according to the regulation document seen by AFP.

Some offline sellers at the Tanah Abang market in Jakarta applauded the government’s decision.

“The government should… dare to innovate given the current situation, where markets are quiet like this,” said Stevanie Ahua, a 60-year-old wholesale denim jeans seller.

She said her revenue had dropped by 60 percent in recent months as buyers turned to online shops.

Others such as 29-year-old cookie baker Panji Made Agung in Bali said he was disappointed by the ban.

“For sellers like me, TikTok can be used for soft selling. We can become influencers and sellers at the same time,” he said.

Experts said the transaction ban would hit the coffers of social media platforms such as TikTok, which takes a commission from every sale.

“They will definitely incur losses,” said Tauhid Ahmad, executive director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Development of Economics and Finance.

Indonesia’s e-commerce market is dominated by platforms such as Tokopedia, Shopee and Lazada but TikTok Shop gained a significant market share since launching in 2021.

Indonesia, with 125 million users, is TikTok’s second-largest global market after the United States, according to company figures.

TikTok’s chief executive Shou Zi Chew visited Jakarta in June, pledging to pour billions of dollars into Southeast Asia in the years ahead.

The post Indonesia bans goods transactions on social media platforms appeared first on Digital Journal.

Esha Shukla is a distinguished Senior Product Management leader with over a decade of training and experience building social technology products. She currently leads the effort to help billions of users around the world engage safely in online communities on WhatsApp.

Prior to WhatsApp, Esha has led development of large consumer social platforms like Facebook and MeetUp. Esha has been recognized as one of the top 100 emerging women leaders and has received multiple awards including the Globee Product Developer Award for her contributions in the field.

In the rapidly changing world of online social platforms, certain individuals stand out as extraordinary trailblazers who are shaping the next evolution of this industry. One such leader in this space is Esha Shukla, a prominent figure who has played a pivotal role in ensuring that billions of people can continue to privately and safely engage online as the landscape evolves.

In this Q&A, we leverage Esha Shukla’s past experiences and innovations to learn how social platforms are evolving, the implications to privacy and user safety and what we can do to ensure that privacy is safeguarded through this evolution in social and messaging platforms.

Q1: What are some of the recent trends in online social platforms ?
Esha Shukla: The last 2 to 3 years have been particularly exciting in terms of the evolution of the industry. Three key new industry trends have emerged – a) new platforms have come up around new verticals particularly in the messaging space and have gained rapid popularity, b) existing platforms across verticals ranging from finance, education, productivity and more are making social a component in their ecosystems and c) new technologies like large language models and Generative AI are rapidly making their way into large online consumer platforms and in many cases providing tremendous benefit to billions of users.

Q2: What implications is this having to privacy?
Esha Shukla: I have seen two very interesting themes emerge. The first one is that many of these existing and new platforms are more open and public by default. This ranges from social platforms like X and TikTok to fintech platforms like Cash. By default users need to engage socially in these communities and the engagement tends to be more public than private which intrinsically means privacy is not the default.

The second one is that novel technologies like large language models intrinsically require using more and more user data to provide the promised benefit of the technology. These two themes intrinsically mean that users have less privacy online.

Q3: What aspects of privacy are relevant to this?
Esha Shukla: The two key aspects of privacy that get impacted by this are privacy of a user from the billions of other people on the platform and privacy of a user from the platform itself (or bad actors who could attack the platform and compromise the data). 

Q4: What’s at stake here?
Esha Shukla: In the extreme case, the consequences may be dire. We have seen numerous instances where lack of proper privacy in both of the aspects I referenced above could lead to real world harm. There have been instances where user’s profiles on social dating platforms were used to identify their location and cause them real world harm, where financial data the platform had was compromised and valuable information like credit card and social security numbers were and more.

Q4: Who is responsible to ensure that privacy and safety is safeguarded?
Esha Shukla: The short answer is – everyone. Individual users, the platforms and even governments and regulatory bodies all play an important role in ensuring that user’s privacy and safety is always protected.

Q5: Do platforms care about protecting user privacy and safety?
Esha Shukla; In my experience working on big platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook and Meetup, absolutely yes. All platforms care about their user’s privacy. The less safe and private users feel, the more likely they are to leave the platform for good.

At WhatsApp where I currently lead the effort to build online communities, privacy is a core principle of our product – to the extent that WhatsApp encrypts messages so that even WhatsApp does not know the contents of the message. WhatsApp community groups are ‘private’ by default, meaning members can request to join, but a group admin has to approve or reject the request, empowering them to manage safe and thriving communities. It’s in the best interest of the platform to keep their users safe. 

Q6: What can platforms do to ensure that privacy is safeguarded?
Esha Shukla: I encourage platform builders to think of both prevention and protection. On the prevention side, be very cognizant of what metadata the user is putting on the platform and who can see it. For every piece of metadata, think about whether it’s truly necessary. Once metadata is uploaded to the platform, ensuring that there are robust controls available to ensure that access to that metadata can be limited.

A classic example here is the ‘Lock your Profile’ product I led at Facebook which provided users with a seamless way to protect all their metadata on Facebook. Another example is how the work I led on WhatsApp helped group owners protect their online communities from bad actors.

On the protection side, ensuring that platforms are helping users make a good judgment. An example here is the Group Reputation System I led on Meetup which helped tens of millions of users understand the legitimacy and relevancy of a group before they chose to attend an in-person event hosted by the group. 

Q7: Are these measures enough?
Esha Shukla: No system is perfectly private and safe. Bad actors will strive and in some cases likely find ways to find loopholes in a system. This is where I recommend a 3rd measure: detection or learning when the preventions and protections are failing. This is where some of the novel technologies like large language models can help us understand if there is harassment, unwanted contact or other types of privacy harm happening on the platform. I have commonly seen use of these methods to identify gaps and further improve privacy.

Q8: What should users do?
Esha Shukla: The first thing I’d recommend is to know what controls the platform has to offer to help you safeguard your privacy. An educated user base is a powerful user base. At Facebook, we had both product and Help Center articles to help users understand how they can easily use the protective and preventive tools we have. The second thing I’d recommend is to be very thoughtful of what they are even putting on the platform.

Q9: Would taking all these measures actually help?
Esha Shukla: While no measures are foolproof, these measures go a long way. We have repeated evidence of how platforms and users have jointly implemented the measures I prescribe above to bolster digital privacy.

The best example I can give is with ‘Lock your Profile’ again. This product was used to protect millions of users on Facebook during periods of intense complicated geo-political environments – protecting citizens during the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the military conflict in Ukraine and the military coup in Myanmar.

Q10: What do you think the digital social media landscape will look like 10 years from now?
Esha Shukla: Social platforms are no longer a luxury and are now a necessity to connect us with our friends, family, interests, communities and more in this day and age. I expect to see a continued proliferation of social platforms in both existing markets as well as in completely novel one’s like AR and VR. As these technologies evolve, we will continue to see bad actors leveraging new types of technologies.

However, I believe that the right structure is in place for platforms to innovate even faster on protecting and safeguarding privacy. While no system is perfectly safe, the increased focus on privacy and adoption of novel technologies in safeguarding it will lead us to an even safer environment for online social platforms. The last thing we need to do is ensure that the next generation of leaders are continuing to be trained to think about privacy as a core part of the product. And I look forward to working with and leading this group to further the mission of digital privacy.

In conclusion, the significant advancements in both advocating for online privacy at the forefront and building new technologies and products to deliver on the promise of privacy are a testament to the transformative leadership of pioneers like Esha Shukla. Their visionary leadership continues to ensure that privacy is advancing in lock step with the evolution of online social platforms and is not getting left behind.

The post Exploring the evolution of privacy in digital social platforms with product leader Esha Shukla appeared first on Digital Journal.

Brandon Stanton launched “Humans of New York” in 2010, sharing interviews with city residents alongside their photos.

It was a runaway success and three years later, Karishma Mehta started “Humans of Bombay” in her home city of Mumbai, which now has 2.7 million followers on Instagram.

This month, Mehta filed a copyright infringement suit against the “People of India” Instagram account, claiming it had “replicated a large number of images and videos” from her page.

The case has sparked a social media storm with many chiding Mehta, including Stanton.

“I’ve stayed quiet on the appropriation of my work because I think @HumansOfBombay shares important stories, even if they’ve monetized far past anything I’d feel comfortable doing on HONY,” Stanton wrote Saturday on X, formerly Twitter.

“But you can’t be suing people for what I’ve forgiven you for.”

And in an apparent swipe at Mehta — who receives a fee for subjects appearing on her page — Stanton said he admired the “Humans of Amsterdam” project because its creator does not treat people’s stories as “the ‘front end’ of a business”.

In response, “Humans of Bombay” said the lawsuit was over its rival stealing content.

“Perhaps, before jumping the gun on this matter, you ought to have equipped yourself with information about the case,” it said in a statement posted on X.

“HOB is all for the power of story telling”, it added. “But it should be done honestly and ethically.”

The post ‘Humans of New York’ creator slams Indian version for suing rival appeared first on Digital Journal.

To assess what could be out there, one attempt is to “Google” yourself. Here, input your personal information such as your full name, address, and phone number into a search engine, and work backwards by deleting any public accounts that appear, or contact the website directly asking to be removed.

The Uswitch Broadband have conducted a study asking people to conduct an online search of their own name. This discovered the details of what people found and whether they were happy about the information that’s out there. The output of the assessment has been shared with Digital Journal.

Those most intrigued by what information can be found online about themselves are those aged 25-34 with 63 percent having performed a Google search. Almost 40 percent of both Gen Z and Millennials were concerned that online information about themselves could affect their future prospects.

The assessment revealed that over one-third of adults were surprised by information they found out about themselves. It also stands that 40 percent of those aged 18 – 34 wished content about themselves found online was not available. Overall, this extends to almost a quarter of people expressing regrets about posting things online in the past.

In terms of the seriousness and impact of this content, three out of ten people discovered online information that they believed could negatively impact their future job prospects.

One of the most frequent concerns was in relation to social media. Here almost 30 percent of people had their Facebook profile appear when inputting their name into a search engine such as Google. Other social media sites appearing included Instagram appearing and LinkedIn.

In terms of social media content, more personal details were discovered by some, including one in ten finding photographs of themselves. More alarmingly 5 percent found their home address to be in the public domain, with 4 percent finding their date of birth when inputting their name into an online search.

Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are the three most popular social media accounts that users most often try to make more private in an attempt to clean up an online presence.

As the Internet has evolved, it is becoming more apparent how permanent our online actions are, and that everything we do adds to our “digital footprint”. How significant this is depends on individual attitudes to privacy and based on the actual content.

The post What’s out there? Social media and the unwanted digital footprint appeared first on Digital Journal.

Now revenue is a major issue. Advertising revenue is claimed to have fallen by 60%. Subscriptions may be a way of offsetting the loss of revenue, although it’s hard to see how subscriptions are going to make that sort of money.

The user base is in no mood for further executive tantrums from anyone.  Especially not on social media. People used to complain about Twitter quite a lot under its former management, but this series of wrong moves is far more objectionable.

Reinstating rightly banned obnoxious users has certainly not helped.

Rebranding to X hasn’t impressed anyone.

Twitter used to be a particularly good real-time newsfeed, but now it’s anything but.

Twitter is now seen as a corporate platform, not a people platform.

The main reason Twitter is still around is because there’s a lack of competition. That won’t last forever.

Paywalls are very unpopular. At a time when the cost of living is going up drastically, there is no reason to believe that a Twitter subscription is going to be a high priority.

Who wants to pay to be attacked by trolls?

Not much has gone right. The overall impression of Twitter in its current form is that the platform is losing credibility. These are self-inflicted problems. The better business option would have been to do nothing and simply rake in the money.

The news on Twitter revenue is suspiciously polarised. That’s not a good sign. Some of this information looks very much like mercenary journalism to me.  That’s more likely to be a sign of desperation than a sign of actual revenue growth.

If revenue is going down, it means that user and advertiser engagement is going down. If revenue is going up, you’d think there’d be some verifiable hard numbers to go with that information. Where is it? What are the numbers? Why the need for subscriptions?

One of the reasons for subscriptions is given as paying for fighting bots. This is the most bot-prone platform on Earth, and all of a sudden, it’s a big issue?

There’s far too much verbiage and far too many holes in these arguments. As overall policy goes, “Antagonize users and then charge them for it” leaves rather a lot to be desired.

Elon Musk is not a social media native. He obviously doesn’t know this market. The management also seems to have been bitten by the American post-hypnotic corporate culture motif of Get Everything Wrong All the Time. He’s doing his own reputation serious damage.

He wasn’t like this before he took over Twitter. Erratic, yes, sometimes ill-advised, but not consistently wrong all the time. Maybe the question we should be asking is “Where is Elon Musk?”

_____________________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

The post Op-Ed: Subscription fees for Twitter are probably the last nail in the coffin appeared first on Digital Journal.

The search engine juggernaut has for years discreetly developed AI powers, but was caught off guard when OpenAI late last year released ChatGPT and teamed up with Microsoft to make its capabilities available to users worldwide.

Google then raced out its own Bard chatbot earlier this year, making it available in more than 40 languages and overcoming data privacy concerns from regulators in Europe.

The company said its beefed up chatbot would allow users to carry out new tasks such as summarize a confusing string of emails into its main points or tap into Google Maps to find the best way to a holiday destination.

These so-called Bard Extensions would also be available to retrieve key points from content across Google Docs and Google Drive, including PDFs, the company said.

The new powers would also help expose incorrect answers with a new button that would compare Bard output with the results of a Google search query on the same topic, flagging discrepancies.

This would hopefully give comfort to those put off by the so-called “hallucinations” or bad responses that are a constant danger when using Bard, ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Bing.

Bard’s new capabilities closely match offerings from Microsoft that infuse its Office 365 apps with AI powers, though those come at an extra cost to customers and are not available through the Bing chatbot.

To assuage privacy concerns, a pop-up on the Bard webpage said the new powers would only access personal data “with your permission.”

Any scraping of personal content from Google’s workplace tools — such as Docs, Drive or Gmail —  would not be used to target ads, train Bard, or be seen by human reviewers, it said.

“You’re always in control of your privacy settings when deciding how you want to use these extensions, and you can turn them off at any time,” the company said in a blog post.

The new product comes as the staying power of generative AI chatbots is yet to be confirmed, with usage of ChatGPT trending lower over the past several months, according to industry data.

Moreover, the integration of the Bing chatbot into Microsoft’s search engine earlier this year failed to make an impact on Google’s overwhelming dominance of search.

Governments and tech companies however insist that generative AI is technology’s next big chapter and have ramped up spending on new products, research and infrastructure.

The post Google’s AI chatbot goes personal tapping into Gmail appeared first on Digital Journal.

During a talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Musk said that introducing a small monthly payment for X would combat the “armies of bots” on the site.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion but has since admitted its value has plunged after he gutted its workforce and allowed right-wing conspiracy theorists back on the site, sending advertisers fleeing.

X users united in dismay at his latest plan, suggesting it could finally put an end to the site, and analysts questioned the logic of a move that would make the platform even less appealing to advertisers.

Musk said in July the platform had lost roughly half its advertising revenue, though he has also claimed that almost all advertisers had returned.

Bots — accounts run by computer programs rather than humans — are common on X, where they can be used to amplify political messages or racial hatred.

Netanyahu asked Musk about anti-Semitism, and how X could “prevent the use of bots — armies of bots — to replicate and amplify it”.

Musk replied that the company was “moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system”.

“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” he said, explaining that even a small fee would make it expensive to run bots.

– ‘Network effect’ –

The conversation, which was broadcast on X, came as the Tesla tycoon is mired in a row with the Anti-Defamation League, a US-based Jewish organization.

Musk has threatened to sue the ADL for making unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism that have scared away advertisers and hurt his company’s revenue.

Musk has long been accused of promoting anti-Semitic tropes.

Just a day before meeting Netanyahu, Musk responded to a post blaming Jewish billionaire George Soros for encouraging immigration to Europe, saying: “The Soros organization appears to want nothing less than the destruction of western civilization.”

His move to make users pay sparked thousands of critical messages and memes on Tuesday.

“RIP X/Twitter! It’s been REAL and it’s been FUN but since you took over, it ain’t been REAL FUN,” a user called Jesi T wrote.

James Cooper, director of the Business of Apps agency, said introducing a blanket paywall would crush the “network effect” of having millions of people interacting on the site, one of its biggest appeals for both advertisers and users.

“Universal charging for the service would decimate the user base and therefore destroy the value in the network and the reason to take part in the platform as a contributor,” he told AFP.

The post Musk considers charging all X users monthly fee appeared first on Digital Journal.

The conversation, which was broadcast on Musk’s X platform (formerly Twitter), came as the Tesla tycoon is mired in row with the Anti-Defamation League, a US-based Jewish organization.

Musk has accused the ADL of making unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism that have scared away advertisers and hurt his company’s revenue, and has threatened to sue for billions of dollars.

The ADL has for years accused the social media site of amplifying anti-Semitic hate speech, and has charged that problematic and racist speech has risen sharply on X after Musk completed his $44 billion takeover in October.

“I know your commitment to free speech,” Netanyahu told Musk, who has branded himself a free speech absolutist and welcomed back tens of thousands of banned accounts to the platform when he took over.

“I respect that because it’s foundational to democracies, but I also know your opposition to anti-Semitism…” the prime minister said.

“I hope you find within the confines of the First Amendment, the ability to stop not only anti-Semitism, or rolling it back as best you can, but any collective hatred of people that anti-Semitism represents,” Netanyahu said.

Musk said while his website couldn’t stop all hate speech before it was posted, he was “generally against attacking any group, no matter who it is.”

“I’m in favor of that which furthers civilization and which ultimately leads us to become a space-faring civilization, and where we understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said.

“We can’t do that if there’s a lot of infighting and then hatred and negativity,” he added.

– ‘Blessing and curse’ –

The main topic of the conversation was the potential fallout from AI.

“I think in many ways, we stand today at a juncture for all humanity, where we have to choose between a blessing and a curse,” Netanyahu told Musk.

Musk, who founded his own AI company this year, said he was optimistic that international powers would see the wisdom of setting common rules for AI in order to avoid any catastrophic outcomes that would affect humanity.

“Every sport has a referee of one kind or another so that’s the rationale for AI safety,” Musk argued, saying a repeat of a nuclear arms race on AI was unwise.

Musk said he recently warned senior officials in China that if AI “is sufficiently powerful, and care is not taken, that digital super intelligence could be in charge of China, instead of the CCP (the Chinese Communist Party).”

“The CCP prefers to be in charge” and took action on regulation, he added.

The post Israeli PM Netanyahu urges Musk to fight anti-Semitism appeared first on Digital Journal.

This craze and has participants consuming a single potato chip containing Naga Viper Pepper, and Carolina Reaper Pepper spices. Content creators advocating this trend on TikTok ask challengers to eat the chip with no relief from milk or water.

This practice can present physical health risks. Furthermore, the peer pressure to complete these challenges, the possibility of offensive comments being made, and the potential for the video to go viral can negatively impact a person’s mental health.

AI-led digital family safety app, Canopy.us has explored the dangers threaten people using TikTok and the safety precautions needed. Especially for more vulnerable young people and their concerned parents.

While the ‘one chip challenge’ has been circulating TikTok for the past three years, data suggests that the popularity of the challenge is still on the rise. In the last 120 days, there have been 46 million views on videos with the hashtag #onechipchallenge in the U.S. and 10 million views in the U.K.

A spokesperson from Canopy.us indicates: “According to new data findings, TikTok is the most worrying social media app. While there are many risks posed to young users of the platform, parents can do several things to protect their kids from dangerous content. As a parent, you know if TikTok will be a safe choice.”

The guidance continues: “As you protect and guide your kids at various ages, you know what they can handle and how they will handle themselves, putting in place guardrails that are appropriate for their maturity, such as the family safety mode. As kids return to school following the summer break, parents may begin to let down their guards, allowing children to find loopholes to spend more unsupervised time using the app.”

In terms of further advice, parental oversight is recommended: “Parents should remain vigilant even when their children are back in school, as additional time spent on the app can make them more susceptible to the dangers detailed above. As for the ‘one chip challenge,’ parents whose children are sensitive to spicy foods should be especially vigilant to any mentions of the challenge and should monitor any online purchases of the spicy chip.”

This leads to some of the concerns that are commonly expressed about TikTok. These include the app being addictive, offering never-ending content. This is facilitated by TikTok learning from the users’ habits, through its algorithm, and continually creating a personalized experience that seeks to become more and more enjoyable. This includes exposure to dangerous challenges and there have been countless TikTok challenges that have spread across the platform. This included the recent borax trend.

The post Why TikTok is the app that users are most worried about appeared first on Digital Journal.