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  Geebo 10:15 am on October 1, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: data breach ( 32 ), Facebook, security ( 46 )   

  Another day, another Facebook leak. 50m users this time. 

  

  It must be a day ending in Y because once again, a security breach in Facebook has exposed the user information of some 50 million accounts. It was reported this past Friday, that there was a flaw in Facebook security that potentially could have led hackers to have access to these millions of accounts. What makes matters worse with this latest Facebook security breach is that the information could have led to the hijacking of other accounts outside of Facebook.

  The information exposed is called an access token. Access tokens allow you to login to other services using your Facebook account. Facebook is so entrenched in our lives that our Facebook accounts now act as our logins to a multitude of other platforms including those not owned by Facebook. So potentially, not only could your Facebook account have been taken over but most of your online life could have been assumed if you’re that reliant on your Facebook login.

  Facebook has said they have fixed the problem but once again this is Facebook closing the barn door after the horses have already gotten out. The data breaches are becoming so prevalent that we’ve just accepted them as inevitable. Is this really the platform we want to be trusting with our personal information? We share so much on Facebook that even without access bad actors could determine so much about us that they could use to our advantage. With Facebook leaking our information on top of that it shows that we’ve clearly given up on security for convenience.

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  Geebo 10:24 am on September 28, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Facebook, Instagram ( 17 ), Whatsapp ( 4 )   

  Founder revolts hit Facebook hard 

  

  Instagram is the widely popular photo-sharing app prized by most younger people. Whatsapp is the most popular messaging app in the world even though its popularity is not reflected here in the US. Both apps were developed on their own and eventually were bought by Facebook for billions of dollars. Now, the founders of both apps may be regretting their decisions to sell to Facebook.

  On this past Monday, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced that they would be leaving Facebook in the upcoming weeks. It’s been alleged that they’re leaving Facebook after Facebook reportedly stopped promoting Instagram on the main Facebook site and saw Instagram more as an adversary rather than a partner. Whatsapp founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum left Facebook last year. Earlier this week, Acton took to the media regretting his decision to sell to Facebook by saying “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit.” Acton was said to be so upset with Facebook that he resigned before his stock in Facebook could be fully vested which cost him $850 million.

  So you would think that with these incidents that Facebook may start looking at their internal infrastructure to keep key figures from defecting. You’d be wrong. Instead, a top Facebook executive by the name of David Marcus fired back at Acton calling him low-class…

  “Lastly — call me old fashioned,” he wrote. “But I find attacking the people and company that made you a billionaire, and went to an unprecedented extent to shield and accommodate you for years, low-class. It’s actually a whole new standard of low-class.”

  If this is the official attitude of the Facebook faithful then it’s no wonder why app developers are leaving in droves.

   
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  Geebo 9:10 am on September 26, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BBC ( 2 ), Facebook, hate speech ( 14 )   

  Facebook blames failure to stop hate speech on ‘glitch’ 

  

  Once again, Facebook finds itself in the middle of a PR nightmare when it comes to hate speech. No, I’m not talking about John Oliver’s scathing critique of Facebook (NSFW) when it comes to the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, although he was spot on. No, today I’m speaking about something that hits much closer to home.

  BBC News has published a report that alleges Facebook is mostly paying lip service when it comes to the removal of hate speech on its platform. The BBC found that when hate speech was posted in a group that was dedicated to “Making America Great Again” and that hate speech was reported, Facebook was telling the person who flagged the content that it had been removed. However, the BBC’s investigation showed that the content remained. A spokesperson for Facebook said that there is a ‘glitch’ in their reporting system and they are “looking into it”, which seems to be a typical response for Facebook hoping that things like this just blow over.

  Once again, this is nothing new for Facebook. It has basically become the graffiti-strewn public bathroom wall of the world. With its userbase stagnating, Facebook is looking for any way to keep its users engaged on the platform which includes hate speech. We can’t realistically expect Facebook to do anything about the hate-fueled nonsense that consistently pollutes our news feeds. What should be done is that Facebook should be left to the hate mongers while the rest of us log off of the toxic platform.

   
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  Geebo 9:01 am on September 21, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Facebook, hate speech ( 14 ), Motherboard ( 3 ), white supremacy ( 3 )   

  Is Facebook exhibiting shades of gray when it comes to white supremacy? 

  

  When I first read Motherboard’s expose on Facebook’s policy regarding white nationalism I almost literally raised my palm to my face. Facebook’s current and constant PR disasters remind me of an episode of The Simpsons where erstwhile villain Sideshow Bob keeps walking into a rake no matter which way he turns.

  

  In this latest controversy, Motherboard, the tech arm of Vice News, obtained allegedly leaked documents from Facebook that determines which content is allowed to remain on their platform when it comes to the white supremacy movement that’s been emboldened in our country since a certain official was elected to office. According to Motherboard, Facebook tells its moderators that white supremacy is not allowed on Facebook, however, posts that advocate white separatism and white nationalism are allowed. While those among the goose-stepping set may argue that those are three different philosophies, they’re all cut from the same cloth. A cloth I might add that’s fashioned into a pointy hat with two eye holes.

  After Motherboard brought their findings to Facebook, the social media giant said they were going to review their policies regarding this kind of content in the future. However, the question needs to be asked, why were these kind of semantics allowed to happen in the first place. In my opinion is all goes back to the theory that Facebook thrives on this kind of controversy on their site as it is said to keep Facebook users engaged in their platform. There have been too many examples lately of Facebook harboring hate speech in order to maintain their userbase numbers. Not just in the US but across the world. Facebook has declined from a place where people kept in touch with old friends to become a global hate machine and Facebook likes it that way.

   
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  Geebo 9:33 am on September 20, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ACLU, discrimination ( 5 ), employment ( 36 ), Facebook   

  Facebook accused of discriminating against women in job ads 

  

  Facebook doesn’t seem to be able to stop making headlines for all the wrong reasons. If it’s not for massive data breaches or election meddling, it’s for doing little to nothing to prevent hate crimes and ethnic cleansing. Now Facebook is back in the news once again for allegedly allowing employers to target only men in ads for employment. This practice has been outlawed in the United States since the early 1960s.

  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging that Facebook allowed the option of gender exclusion in their ad platform. For example, when an employer places an ad with Facebook there is an option that allows you to target only male Facebook users. Several employers are also accused in the complaint of actively using this feature.

  With all its faults, I don’t think Facebook purposely looked to violate civil rights laws by actively trying to exclude women from ads for jobs in male-dominated fields. However, this is a gross oversight that Facebook should have been well aware of before this became a legal matter. This is yet another example of how Facebook has lost control of its own power and scope. When the ad platform was designed, someone should have had enough sense to realize that while targeting merchandise ads to specific genders is fine while allowing employers to use the same gender-specific targeting was just asking for more bad PR nightmares than Facebook already has.

   
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  Geebo 9:01 am on September 18, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Facebook, pet adoption ( 9 ), Puppy Mills ( 15 )   

  Even breeders can be puppy mills 

  

  In the past when I’ve posted about purchasing a new puppy for your family I’ve always recommended going to a licensed breeder if you’re looking for a particular breed of dog. Unfortunately, not every licensed breeder is on the up and up. Just because a breeder may be a legitimate business doesn’t mean their breeding their dogs in the most ethical way possible as one family in Tennessee found out.

  An elderly couple from Clinton, Tennessee, put a deposit down on a Yorkshire Terrier puppy they planned to purchase from a breeder that had advertised on Facebook. However, they wouldn’t be able to bring the puppy home until it was old enough to be separated from its mother. Sadly, after the couple put their deposit down the puppy became sick and died. The breeder allegedly told the couple that they would refund their deposit and find them a replacement puppy. According to this article from WTAE, neither has happened. The breeder was said to have had financial hardships and might not be breeding anymore yet advertisements for puppies have supposedly not ceased.

  As has been mentioned before, Geebo does not accept ads for pets as puppies advertised online tend to come from puppy mills where breeders put profit ahead of a puppy’s well-being. In the past, I’ve recommended going to a licensed breeder but even a licensed breeder can be a puppy mill which is actually not a crime. However, thanks to WTAE article we have more tools to find a legitimate breeder as you can use the American Kennel Club’s Breeder Referral Search to try to find a trusted breeder. Once again though, I strongly advise anyone looking to add a four-legged friend to their family to try to adopt a pet from their local shelter. Not only do shelters provide much-needed medical requirements for most pets looking for adoption but some even have services where you can be notified if they receive a certain breed of dog that you may be looking for.

   
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  Geebo 9:08 am on September 17, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: craigslist ( 129 ), customer service ( 50 ), Facebook, Scams ( 1,355 )   

  Most customer service numbers found online are fake 

  

  Seems legit.

  In Memphis, Tennessee, a man found the money emptied out of his online debit account. The man was trying to assist his mother who had the same type of account and called a customer service number he had found online that was supposed to be for the service. As you can probably guess, the customer service number that the man had found online was a fake, and the scammers had taken the man’s login information to take his money. Phony customer service numbers are one of the most prolific scams that can be found online today.

  As you can see from the video above, the customer support scam isn’t just exclusive to money apps. A number of scammers list customer service numbers online for many different services including, Facebook, Google, and many other free online services. This scam tends to target elderly internet users who tend to be more comfortable speaking to someone on the phone to try to solve their online issues. More often than not, most online services do not have any customer service options that can be accessed by phone.

  A lot of these fake phone numbers are listed on free services like craigslist and Facebook. Here at Geebo, we often receive ads for many of these customer service scams, however, since we moderate all of our ads we do not allow these ads to be displayed on our platform in order to better protect our customers.

   
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  Geebo 9:21 am on September 14, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ethnic cleansing ( 8 ), Facebook, Myanmar ( 10 ), Rohingya ( 9 ), VKontakte   

  Russian social media does what Facebook wouldn’t to curb hate speech 

  

  The last time I posted about the persecution of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, Facebook banned the accounts of top Myanmar officials who were allegedly inciting violence against the Rohingya. In Myanmar, Facebook is seen as the de facto internet and is used by many Myanmar nationals to spread lies and misinformation about the Muslim Rohingya minority which has led to accusations of ethnic cleansing against the Myanmar government. Facebook only took down a few offending pages after the UN accused Myanmar of genocide, war crimes, and other atrocities.

  Some of these top Myanmar officials have moved their accounts to a Russian social media network called VKontakte. Now you would think that with its negative connotations on American media that a Russian run website would allow just about any kind of hate speech on their platform but you’d be wrong. According to an interview with Fast Company, a VKontakte spokesperson said they take hate speech very seriously and have taken steps from preventing their platform being used as a tool for hate speech in Myanmar.

  We closely monitor the situation in Myanmar. We have specifically hired Burmese speaking moderators to monitor publications in communities and users pages. Our moderation team delete publications with calls for violence and ban users who host them.

  If a social media network that doesn’t nearly have the global reach of Facebook can stay on top of the situation in Myanmar then why couldn’t Facebook? It’s been posited before that Facebook needs such controversy in order to survive. Facebook is said to allow controversial content like this to proliferate on its network because it keeps people more engrossed in Facebook. This, in turn, is said to increase Facebook’s revenue through advertisements. You know, but what’s the persecution of an entire ethnicity worth when there’s money to be made?

   
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  Geebo 9:28 am on September 11, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: endanagerd animals, Facebook, Thailand   

  Endangered animals for sale on Facebook 

  

  Facebook’s global loss of control isn’t just affecting people around the world but it’s affecting animals as well. In Thailand, both endangered and non-endangered species of animals are being sold openly on Facebook. In too many instances, the animals are not just being sold as pets, but are also being sold in parts as ingredients for high-end restaurant dishes or to ‘collectors’.

  In Thailand, the law doesn’t provide protection to animals that aren’t native to Thailand. So this has allowed the trading of such animals as the rare hornbill bird, black pond turtles, Asiatic black bears, and pangolins just to name a few. Some of these Facebook groups had memberships in the hundreds of thousands where endangered animals were said to have been sold out in the open.

  Facebook has responded to this issue by saying that they remove these groups as soon as they’re aware of them. That’s the problem with Facebook, isn’t it? They never seem to be aware of much of anything that takes place on their platform. Whether it’s the contemptible trade of endangered animals, widespread targeted hate speech, or the sabotage of democracy Facebook is never aware of it until it’s already too late.

  Facebook needs to take responsibility for the problem they created. If they can’t control what’s going in and out of their servers then maybe they don’t deserve to be in control.

   
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  Geebo 9:34 am on September 5, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Congress ( 4 ), Facebook, Libya, Russia ( 9 )   

  Is the outlook for Facebook not so good? 

  

  As I write this, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is set to testify before Congress about Facebook’s role in alleged election meddling by foreign opportunists. She is expected to stay the course set by CEO Mark Zuckerberg when he testified before Congress claiming to right the wrongs that Facebook supposedly allowed. However, this week’s news has not been too kind to Facebook as it faces a crucial point in its history.

  For example, after announcing that Facebook had removed multiple accounts of foreign agitators in Russia and Iran, The Daily Beast is reporting that many of the Russian operatives banned by Facebook have found their way back on to the platform. It appears that Facebook’s protocols from keeping such entities off their network amount to that of a revolving door.

  Speaking of Facebook’s foreign relations, according to the New York Times, Facebook is a major contributing factor to the internal strife and violence affecting Libya. Various armed and violent militias within Libya are using Facebook organize attacks and trade weapons. This is in addition to human traffickers who lure their victims through Facebook with the promise of smuggling them out of the country. Everytime Facebook deletes one of these pages, more pop up in its place.

  Back home in The States, the Pew Research Center has released an unflattering poll about Facebook’s usage in America. According to the poll, 42 percent of US Facebook users said they had taken a break from the platform in the past year while many others have deleted the Facebook app from their phone. While Facebook’s global numbers still far surpass any of their competitors this could show a stagnation in Facebook’s growth.

  Again, all of these are symptoms of the much larger problem of Facebook’s reach that has gotten out of their control. When you try to be the soapbox for the world, you have to be ready for the world’s problems and Facebook has shown time and time again that they are not ready.