There are some big changes coming to Facebook, which may have some serious unintended consequences.
In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg indicated that he’s considering allowing users to independently appeal to the content moderation team if their posts get taken down for violating various community policies.
On the surface of it, this seems like it would be a good thing. Zuckerberg said that the move is designed to give people in the Facebook communities what they want, rather than reflecting short-term, profit-driven wishes of the shareholders.
It’s a significant change because as of right now, Facebook only allows for appeals if content was removed for violation of copyright laws. In addition, the appeal must be made via a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notification, which makes it a somewhat daunting process.
Zuckerberg describes the new approach as follows: “So maybe the folks at Facebook make the first decision based on the community standards that are outlined, and then people can get a second opinion. You can imagine some sort of structure, almost like a Supreme Court, that is made up of independent folks who don’t work for Facebook, who ultimately make the final judgement call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world….I think we can build that internally as a first step.”
All of that looks good on paper, but there are some major problems with this approach.
First, the company will struggle to find enough volunteers to monitor content and appeals to keep pace with demand. Given the size of Facebook’s footprint on the web, that’s a very real concern. The new, easier appeal policy is certain to cause the number of appeals to explode.
Second, if not done with great care and forethought, it could further polarize the platform. It could lead to the development of more estranged “information silos,” which runs counter to what the company ultimately wants its global network to be. In addition to that, it could easily lead to a massive backlash against the company.
Time will tell, but the coming months should be interesting indeed.
Another week, another high-profile data breach. This time, it’s Under Armour in the hot seat. Under Armour acquired the MyFitnessPal app back in February 2015, and the company recently announced that their new acquisition was hacked in late February 2018.
There’s a new type of hacking attack to be concerned with, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Called “Crypto-Jacking,” it’s a process by which malicious code is placed on websites. When the sites are visited, the code secretly siphons off a portion of the affected user’s PC, laptop, or smartphone’s processing power and uses it to mine for various cryptocurrencies so that the hackers can profit from it.
If you are a fan of, and regularly use Goo.gl (the URL shortener service), brace for impact. The company has announced that as of March 30, 2019, the service will be shut down for good. Long before then, beginning April 18th of this year, only existing users will be able to shorten links via goo.gl. No new signups will be allowed.
Researchers at Preempt Security recently discovered a critical flaw in Microsoft’s Credential Security Support Provider protocol (CredSSP for short) that impacts every version of Windows in existence. It could allow a hacker to remotely exploit Windows Remote Desktop to execute malicious code and steal any data stored on the machine.
There’s a new threat on the horizon, according to security researchers from Check Point. A group of hackers in China are busy building a massive botnet that so far, totals almost five million Android smartphones. The hackers are quietly taking control of these devices using a strain of malware known as “RottenSys.”
Wearable computing devices from smart watches to glasses are struggling to find an audience, and Google’s Android Wear operating system hasn’t gotten much love in recent years. It has weakened as major players in the tech space have struggled to find a market for these products. On the face of it, these products would seem to be wildly popular, but still haven’t quite captured the imaginations of a critical mass of the consuming public.
By now, you’ve almost certainly heard of “Spectre,” one of two recently discovered security flaws that impact every chip made by Intel in the last ten years.
According to a Microsoft security researcher, a massive malware attack attempted to install a cryptocurrency mining software on more than 400,000 computers in less than twelve hours. The failed campaign is noteworthy because of the attack vector used. It was a supply chain attack implemented by compromising Bittorrent, a highly popular program used to share and download files.
If your company has an incident response plan that you can rely on in the face of a cyber attack, then you’re ahead of most of the world, according to research recently conducted by the Ponemon Institute. Shockingly, more than 75 percent of survey respondents from around the world admitted that they have no formal incident response plan. Even worse, half of the companies that indicated they had an incident response plan said that it was informal.
