Turkey Charges Twitter With A Fine Of $51,000 For Terrorism Content

Twitter becomes a victim of charge of terrorist propaganda and has to pay a fine of $51,000 to Turkey
World known micro blogging giant faces a huge fine from Turkey’s communications regulators of $51,000 (150,000 Turkish liras) due to the failure of removing terrorist propaganda from its social media platform; however this is not the first time the business is dealing with a fine of such context. Publicizing and supporting content that provides justification to terrorism is unethical in its own way, the social media giant was unable to block such content and take action against it.

Twitter Inc.  now has to pay $51,000 of fine which has been filed by Turkey’s Information and Communication Technology Authority. The business has faced problem earlier with the authorities who have asked numerous times to open its offices in the country so that they can be able to take advantages of the company paying taxes and also for the refusal of removing the unethical content witnessed on its platform.

Even though the social media network has dealt with fine before, this is the first time it has faced a fine from Turkey, who has also blocked the organization social platform  before for being unable to follow court orders and not removing content that promotes terrorism.  Details regarding the nature of the offensive and unethical content have not been revealed by the authorities, and the business has refused to make any comment regarding the issue. It has faced problem earlier with Turkish authorities , Facebook and Twitter, both were blocked by Turkey this year in April because of a court order that prohibited users from sharing images and other content of a prosecutor who was held at gunpoint at that time, was going viral, however Facebook removed the content within the period of 24 hours.The social media advertising and entertainment company was also blocked by Turkey in March. 

Seckin said, “The government has step by step increased legal control over not only the internet but written press and TV, and for this purpose, we saw the adoption of several laws in 2014 that provided legal powers to do so, it’s difficult to draw the line.” Social and media freedom is definitely necessary but offensive and unethical content especially after the Paris attack regarding terrorism cannot be taken lightly and ignored. Actions by the right authorities have to be taken in order to function as a normal humane society.

Twitter stock closed at $24.92, after green by 0.32% on Monday December 14.

Coca Cola Pull Off Racist Ad From The Internet After Receiving Heavy Criticism

The carbonated beverage company has been accused of airing an advert that is very offensive for many people of Mexico.

Coca Cola aired an ad promoting its brand earlier last month and received heavy criticism from the audience who labeled it as ‘racist’. The ad shows a group of white people who are bringing the brand to an ‘indigenous village’ in Mexico. The ad further shows that these visitors from the city who are trying to introduce the brand into the village help these locals build a Christmas tree from wood and plastic coke bottles caps.

The main reason for the criticism that the ad received was because it showed that over 81.6% of the people living in Mexico are colonial and not unity. This campaign is known as “Open Your Heart” that has been brought forward to these villages.

Elvira Pablo, a native lawyer at a press conference held in Mexico stated that such an activity for mere publicity in clear terms promotes racism and discrimination. He added that such promotion is putting a form of label on the standard of life that we are living and furthermore putting a culture of consumerism there.

The advertisement was pulled off by the carbonated soda company on Tuesday after it was heavily promoted on YouTube and later trashed on social media. However the video can still be found on different web pages with various names.

In a statement a spokesman from Coca Cola told Eater, a food news website, that the company’s intention was never to promote such an insensitive act of discrimination and racism or even underestimate such native/ indigenous group. He added that the video that created such fire is now off the television and the internet and they have apologized for if they caused anyone trouble or hurt anyone’s feeling.

The video has falsely stated that over 81.6% of the people living in Mexico who are part of the indigenous group do not speak the language Spanish and feel left out about it although the source for this statistic has not been cited in the advertisement.

Furthermore, to send a response to the company’s comments on the matter, Alliance for Food Health made a video that include a number of Mexican people who are speaking in various languages and are talking about the carbonated drink’s influence on the community. One of these people stated that over 50 years ago the concept and cases of Diabetes type 2 was very rare but now that has changed drastically over the past few decades and has now become an epidemic.

Another person added his view to the video saying that since Diabetes type 2 is happening more frequently now, so the people of the community to stay united, tend to preserve their dignity and take care of their health and culture and to do so the people of Oaxaca, drink tea, clean water and tejare.

Google Accused of Collecting Student Data

The search engine giant has been accused for using student information to improve its experience.

On December 1, 2015, a non-profit privacy organization, The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked the Federal Trade Commission to conduct an investigation against Google’s education services. The non-profit organization believes that Google Apps which is merely for educational purposes saves and collects student’s data which is a violation of their privacy.

 According to the complaint that was lodged by EFF, the sync settings feature of Google’s web browser, Chrome saves the passwords, bookmarks and search history on to its servers. The company that runs under Alphabet, Inc. signed a Student Privacy Pledge earlier in 2015. Under the pledge signed by the Google, as well as 200 other companies, they made a row to now collect any information that the students provide apart for educational purposes.

On Wednesday however the search engine giant completely denied these accusations of tracking and storing student data in a public post. According to the director of Google Apps for Education, Jonathan Rochelle, the company is appreciating the effort that EFF has made and its concern but the company says that it is fairly confident that its tools comply with the terms and conditions and do not violate any privacy of any student.

The complaint also suggested that the search engine ‘collects, maintains and uses records’ of whatever information that is provided by the student whoever uses the Google Apps tool for educational purposes. This usually happens when the student is logged in on to their Google accounts and it usually does not matter which device they are on. Furthermore, it added that the information that the students put on the web, google uses that to enhance the customers experience along with finding better ways to conduct advertisements.

The website uses this data provided by the students to choose the best advertisements for them and post them onto other websites such as YouTube and Bloggers, which are not for educational purposes, to attract that specific target market.

According to Google News, the company stated to FoxNews.com, that their service is helping the students learn and keep their personal information private and secure. The EFF staff attorney Nate Cardozo stated that these minors who are using the educational services should not be tracked or used in anyway and if google wants to improve its advertisement experience and products then it needs to get the consent of their parents before using that information.

These Chromebooks are very popular at schools as some of them cost less than $300 and are very used for the students because it can be easily maintained by Google over the internet.

The social media giant is working on a number of objectives but might not be able to grow more than it has already achieved. Year 2015 has been an exceptionally good year for Facebook stock. The social media company is one of the companies who will be in the top gainers of the day on the trading session that will be held on Monday. Despite of the fact that many businesses, as per the S&P 500 index, had a disappointing year, it had been amongst the top and best performers of the year. The year to date stock performance of the social media giant’s stock is at 2% as per the S&P 500 rating but the social media’s stock itself has climbed 45%. Even in the fourth quarter, the performance of Facebook’s stock has been impressive. The stock of the company is up by more than 30% in the current year. The analysts think that it is the perfect time to sell the stock of the dominant social media network. Investorplace.com believes that Facebook is going to be around for a very long time and even its share price will not be going to zero any time soon but what the analysts believe now is that the social media’s stock is overpriced and overvalued. The trading of the stock if valued at more than 36 times forward while Wall Street is valuing it more than twice at 17.5 forward earnings. After the third quarter, Facebook stock went through its all-time high share price of $110. Since it hit the 52-week high of the share price, the stock of the social media website has been slightly slopping down. During the previous trading session, the stock price was called off at $105.45, which was quite close to its 50-day moving average of $102.78. In case the stock of the company manages to cross its downward slopping 50-day average, it will be bringing the shares even lower than they already are. In a financial thinking, the investors do need to look at the prospectus as to where the social media company will grow now. The social media giant already has over 1.5 billion daily active users even if this number increases a little bit it will not be able to bring growth to the company as it will entirely incremental. Furthermore, the less difference that will be made from more users will also be because this number will come from more remote areas. The new users now who will be joining Facebook will be from the less developed with less money in their pocket crowd which would mean less advertisers.

Facebook's App Indexing Might Also Help Google Inc

The social media giant is currently working on app-indexing, which is expected to help the search engine giant in a lot of ways. Facebook Inc is reportedly working towards adopting the app-indexing idea that tech rival Google Inc is famous for carrying out to make its search engine platform a more reliable one for the users. Only recently it was seen that the social media giant has decided to turn on the indexing tool to make its search results appear in a much better way on the search engine which is used by the a large number of its users. This step has been taken by the company to make the experience of searching improved on Android smart phones. The app-indexing tool helps the software company to direct users to particular apps, and the same will now be done for the Facebook app, which will be getting it more users than before. Previously, Google directed the users to the web page of the social media giant but since Facebook business is looking for Android users to start using the social media app more than before, this step will help bring more traffic to it. Analysts in the market are looking at this idea in a different light and believe that the giant could be carrying out this to slowly come in line with the search engine dominance that Alphabet holds in the industry. Recently, Facebook management also rolled out a massive indexing task to cover a huge 2 trillion social media posts made on its platform, and it was done to strike up better numbers where the monthly active users are concerned. Analysts believe that by using the indexing tool, the social media giant might be making things great for Google as well as for itself. The search engine company might also be in a much better position now that the media company is indexing apps too, and analysts have informed the industry that this will be helping the tech giant to get more app publishers towards its business. This situation for the tech giant Google has been deemed as a very positive one by the analysts, as this simply shows that the giant has managed to succeed in making app producers to start using the indexing tool, which it has reportedly been trying to do since 2014. The reason most of the companies were not taking up the option was basically because the process of app indexing has been recognized as one which is not comprehensive enough to be taken up without a backup plan, as it also takes more time to create an app than it does to develop one without indexing.

Facebook And Google Join Hands In Mobile App Search

Google and Facebook collaborate for Mobile app search.

Nothing is better when your core rival becomes your biggest ally. Alphabet Inc. is trying its best to bolster its search engine business particularly in the world of mobile apps. However, now things are different since Facebook Inc. has joined hands with the giant to push it to newer heights.

Facebook is the largest operator of social media across the globe. Recently the company allowed the search engine giant to index and crawl its mobile application as reported by a spokeswoman belonging to Google.

As per the agreement, the results that will be obtained via Google searches on the cellular devices will have the ability to showcase exclusive content from the application of Facebook encompassing the public profile data. These searches will show as “deep links” that will navigate the user to the part of the app which is relevant reported the spokeswoman.

This is a mirroring of how Google will index the information obtained from the Facebook profiles that are public over the Internet. Moreover, the company will also get access to the business platform of FB like Events, Groups and Pages.

Google has been restricted to display the shared content that is via private or logged in session. This clearly means that the tech giant can only get its hands on the public content and is catually restricted from going close to the secure content. In case the users want those searches then they will have to use Facebook’s search platform to achieve that data.

At this point of time, it is actually a major breakthrough since the cooperation by Google is a sign that the company is making ways to cope up with a massive challenge which is searching the insides of an app. Google, is the uncrowned king in the world of search engine on the web but it still faces immense difficulty when it comes to categorizing the data inside the app. It is important to get hands on this data as mobile users spend a great chunk on this platform.

Google now needs to motivate the app developers to peep inside their apps.

According to the Co-founder of Button- a mobile app discover startup, “In mobile their position as the online starting point is at risk.” He further added, “If people lose faith that they will find things they need by searching on Google, that’s bad for the company. Anything Google can do to maintain that position is good.”

So the alliance between the two tech giants is actually fruitful.

Facebook All Set To Make A Blockbuster Entry In The AI Sector

Facebook will soon introduce M to compete against Microsoft, Google, and Apple.

Facebook Inc. has finally entered the Artificial Intelligence (AI) market where it wants to compete against the big shots Microsoft, Google, and Apple that are currently not only leading but dominating the sector. Facebook is surely not the first unusual company which has entered this market. The uncrowned king of the Smartphone industry, Apple, came up with Siri at the launch of iPhone 4S back in 2011. Siri is smart enough to not only perform functions of reading, listening, and finding information from the internet but can also type out narrated messages and emails.

Furthermore, through Siri a user can make calls, search for contacts, and get answers to various questions. But, it is not a perfect AI product. Apple’s Siri lacks a lot of efficiency in finding relevant results as well as its listening is not good enough. Hence, searching and interpretation are the two weak points at the moment which the company is trying to improve. Whatsoever, Apple does have a competitive edge over its rivals, whether new entries or existing, because of the time span in the AI sector.

Apple currently rivals with Microsoft, Google, and now Facebook. All these companies have now ample time to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of Siri in order to incorporate the better things in their own offerings. A year later after Siri launch, Google came up with Google Now which is ‘an around the clock assistance that could help users have greater control over their device and information, compatible with both iOS and Android.’ Microsoft also introduced Cortana in 2014.

But Facebook will not be copying the ideas of already existing AI technologies which other companies offer. The social media giant’s AI technology is known as ‘M’ which is different in terms of functionality if compared to Siri or Cortana. According to a source, “it is designed to perform multiple tasks such as looking up items, purchasing and even delivering them to a specific person. M will also be able to make restaurant reservations and even travel arrangements for users, unlike its rivals.”

It is believed that the smartphone company would do better than its rivals in the market because of various reasons. One of the reasons is that the social media giant has a massive user base, nearly 2 billion or so. Hence, the high number of users will help the company to do wonders in the AI market.