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My Facebook Account Has Been Hacked: Sibal

By LokMarg 24th December 2023

Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal said on Sunday that his Facebook account has been hacked for the last 10 days.

“My Facebook account has been hacked for the last 10 days,” Sibal said in a post on ‘X’.

Earlier in November, the Rajya Sabha MP hit out at the central government after Opposition party leaders received an ‘Apple warning message’ claiming a privacy breach attempt on their devices.

“The government itself has people who are compulsive wrongdoers. Why talk of the opposition? Everything that this government has done since it came to power has been contrary to the Constitution. Actually, they have subverted every provision of the Constitution. People belonging to the BJP, against whom serious cases are pending, are out on bail. This is a complete misuse of the system,” Kapil Sibal told ANI.

Several political leaders also reported receiving alerts from Apple in November. Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge and party’s General Secretary organisation KC Venugopal, Congress’ Pawan Khera, Shashi Tharoor, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra, BRS working president KT Rama Rao and AAP MP Raghav Chaddha are among others who reported receiving alert messages from Apple.

The leaders of the opposition parties have alleged that the government was behind the attempt to breach their devices. The leaders also shared screenshots of the warning received on their devices.

After a major controversy erupted between the ruling party and the opposition leaders over the alleged hacking of their phones, Apple officially announced that it does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.

“State-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time. Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete. It’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms or that some attacks are not detected,” Apple said in a statement. (ANI)

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Meta To Announce Fresh Round Of Job Cuts In Facebook, Instagram

By LokMarg 19th April 2023

Facebook parent company Meta is all set to commence the companywide new job cuts on Wednesday as part of reorganising teams and management hierarchies, The Washington Post reported.

According to the internal memo that a US-based newspaper read, Meta’s head of human resources, Lori Goler, wrote Tuesday evening that the company will begin notifying employees regarding the downsizing of technical teams.

Meta is also poised to announce newly reorganized teams and management hierarchies as the social media giant seeks to become leaner and more efficient.

This new layoff will affect the teams working on Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and the virtual-reality division Reality Labs among others, according to Goler.

According to the memo, Goler advised some employees not to go into the office if it wasn’t critical for their role. Senior leaders made layoff decisions as part of the wider restructuring effort, Goler added.

“This will be a difficult time as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues who have contributed so much to Meta,” she wrote. “It will take time for everyone — both those leaving and those staying — to process tomorrow’s news, and I know teams will show up for each other with compassion, support and care,” she added.

The company is expected to lay off what probably will be thousands of highly skilled employees — such as engineers and other technical staffers — who help build the company’s products, according to people familiar with the matter.

Earlier, in March, Meta said that they will remove 10,000 employees from their team.

“we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement published on Meta.

He further stated, “This will be tough and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success. They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission and I’m personally grateful for all their efforts.”

“We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve,” he added. (ANI)

New Twitter Policy To Follow, Question Science: Musk

By LokMarg 29th December 2022

Talking to Social media, Elon Musk on Wednesday announced that the new Twitter Policy will not only follow science but also question science, reasonably.

“New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science,” Musk tweeted.

Musk stated, “Anyone who says that criticizing them is doubting science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist,” in a follow-up tweet to his initial policy statement.

No further details of the plan are released as of yet.

Since Elon Musk has taken charge of Twitter as its CEO, he has been under the spotlight for his social media presence.

The Twitter CEO has finally spoken up about his promised resignation from his post after Monday’s poll. Taking to the microblogging site, Elon Musk tweeted, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”

The multi-billionaire added that subsequently, he will only run ‘the software & servers teams’.

The post garnered a number of reactions from netizens.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Monday, December 19, started a poll on the microblogging site, asking users if he should step down as head of the social media platform and also promising to abide by the result.

Taking to Twitter, Elon Musk said, “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.”

Within a few minutes of Musk’s cryptic tweet, asking users if he should step down as head of the social media platform and also promising to abide by the result, the ‘yes’ votes started edging ahead, reaching up to 57.5 percent.

In reaction, Musk said, “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”

This poll comes after Twitter Sunday announced it would ban accounts used to promote other accounts on other specific social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Mastodon.

Moreover, Twitter said that it still allows cross-posting content from any social media platform. “Posting links or usernames to social media platforms not listed above are also not in violation of this policy.”

The change in Twitter rules comes at a time when Musk has faced some criticism for major policy changes on the platform. (ANI)

Irish Regulator Fines Meta 265 MN Euros Over Data Breach

By LokMarg 28th November 2022

Ireland’s data regulator on Monday slapped Facebook owner Meta with a 265-million-euro (USD 275 million) fine after details of more than half a billion users were leaked on a hacking website.

The penalty resulted from an investigation, started in April 2021, related to the discovery of a collated dataset of Facebook personal data that had been made available online. Facebook was also ordered to take a range of corrective measures, reported Euronews.
Meta said it had cooperated fully with the investigation by Ireland’s Data Privacy Commissioner (DPC) and made changes to its systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape its features in this way using phone numbers.

Monday’s fine is the fourth that Ireland’s Data Privacy Commissioner (DPC) has levied against one of Meta’s companies. It is Meta’s lead privacy regulator within the European Union and has 13 more inquiries into the social media group outstanding.

The DPC regulates Apple, Google, Tiktok, and other technology giants due to the location of their EU headquarters in Ireland. It currently has 40 inquiries open into such firms, including the 13 involving Meta, reported Euronews.

The regulator has the power to impose fines of up to 4 percent of a company’s global revenue under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR) “One Stop Shop” regime introduced in 2018.

The DPC said mitigating factors in Monday’s decision – which had been approved by all other relevant EU regulators – included Facebook’s actions.

In September the watchdog hit its Instagram subsidiary with a record fine of 405 million euros, which Meta plans to appeal.

The Irish regulator said in a statement that other relevant EU regulators agreed with the decision issued on Monday after it shared a draft ruling with them last month under the bloc’s “one-stop shop” system of regulating large multinationals. (ANI)

Meta Prepares For Large-Scale Layoffs This Week

By LokMarg 7th November 2022

Facebook parent Meta is preparing for large-scale layoffs this week which is expected to affect many thousands of its workforce.

In a recent spate of tech job cuts after the industry’s rapid growth during the pandemic, Meta Platforms Inc is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week, according to people familiar with the matter, reported The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Meta reported having more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company officials already told employees to cancel non-essential travel beginning this week, the people said.

The planned layoffs would be the first broad head-count reductions to occur in the company’s 18-year history. The number of Meta employees expected to lose their jobs could be the largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech-industry retrenchment, reported WSJ.

The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Meta was planning to cut expenses by at least 10 percent in the coming months, in part through staff reductions.

The cuts are expected to be announced this week following several months of more targeted staffing reductions in which employees were managed out or saw their roles eliminated.

“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Mark Zuckerberg told employees at a companywide meeting at the end of June.

Meta, like other tech giants, went on a hiring spree during the pandemic as life and business shifted more online. It added more than 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021 combined and added a further 15,344 in the first nine months of this year–about one-fourth of that during the most recent quarter.

A spokesman for Meta declined to comment, referring to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s recent statement that the company would “focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas.”

“So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year,” he said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call on October 26.

“In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today,” he added.

Meta’s stock has fallen more than 70 per cent this year. The company has highlighted deteriorating macroeconomic trends, but investors have also been spooked by its spending and threats to the company’s core social-media business, reported WSJ.

Growth for that business in many markets has stalled amid stiff competition from TikTok, and Apple Inc.’s requirement that users opt into the tracking of their devices has curtailed the ability of social media platforms to target ads. (ANI)

Hate Spreading On Social Media Won’t Be Tolerated: MoS Chandrashekhar

By LokMarg 1st October 2022

Union Minister of State Rajiv Chandrashekhar reacted to the Pakistan government’s Twitter handle being blocked in India and said that any account that spreads hate on social media will be blocked by the Indian government.

While talking to ANI, the MoS said, “Any account on Twitter or any other social media platform, which spreads fake news, propagates hate, and violates the law, won’t be allowed to function in the country.”
“There are 80 crore users connected to the Internet in the country, and we want it to grow to 120 crores. We want our Internet to be trusted. So if any handle is telling lies, or putting unlawful content, then we will definitely try to block it. We believe that the Internet should be used for people’s welfare and not for misguiding them,” Chandrashekhar said.

Earlier today, the Twitter account of the Pakistani government was withheld in India. This is reportedly the second such incident in recent months.

This account was withheld earlier in July as well but had been reactivated and was visible. Today, again the account displayed the message of being withheld in India.

“@GovtofPakistan account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand,” is seen while accessing the Twitter handle.

According to Twitter guidelines, the microblogging site takes such action in response to a valid legal demand, such as a court order.

Currently, the Twitter feed of the Pakistan government “@GovtofPakistan” is not visible to Indian users.

Previously, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had blocked 16 YouTube news channels including six Pakistan-based channels for spreading disinformation related to India’s national security, foreign relations, and public order.

So far, the central government has blocked over 100 YouTube channels, 4 Facebook pages, 5 Twitter accounts, and 3 Instagram accounts for spreading hate content against India. (ANI)

Meta Shuts Down Russia, China-Based Influence Campaigns

By LokMarg 28th September 2022

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, on Tuesday took down two separate covert influence networks operating from China and Russia.

Meta publicly detailed the takedown as it remains on high alert for foreign interference in the US midterm elections, a Meta spokesperson told CNN.
The Chinese network was small and received barely any attention, but it did include some accounts that posed as Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, according to a Meta report.

Ben Nimmo, Meta’s global threat intelligence lead, told CNN it was the first time the company had seen Chinese accounts targeting Americans in this way.

“They were running fake accounts that pretended to be Americans and try to talk like Americans and they were talking about really divisive domestic issues like abortion and gun control,” he said.

The company has shared details of the Chinese accounts with the FBI, a Meta spokesperson said.

The Russian campaign, on the other hand, was vast. It pushed pro-Kremlin narratives about the war in Ukraine, included thousands of accounts and pages across multiple social media platforms and spent more than USD 100,000 on ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta did not attribute either campaign to specific entities within China or Russia, or to the Chinese and Russian governments, instead saying only the accounts that were part of the campaigns were run out of the respective countries, reported CNN.

Meta said the network of Russian accounts it had taken down was the “largest and most complex Russian operation we’ve disrupted since the war in Ukraine began, it ran a sprawling network of over 60 websites impersonating news organizations, as well as accounts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Telegram, Twitter,” and other sites, according to the report.

The operation included websites that were designed to mimic real Western news outlets, including The Guardian. According to a list of website addresses included in the Meta report, the Russian campaign also registered fake sites designed to look like The Daily Mail and the German outlets Bild and Der Spiegel, reported CNN.

The sophistication of the effort was demonstrated in its attempts to promote disinformation about the Bucha massacre.

The Chinese effort only consisted of about 80 Facebook accounts and barely had any following. Meta said the accounts primarily targeted audiences in the United States and the Czech Republic but posted during working hours in Beijing.

Meta said, “these accounts largely stuck to a shift pattern that coincided with a nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday work schedule during working hours in China — 12 hours ahead of Florida and six hours ahead of Prague,” according to the report. (ANI)