There might be a talent shortage globally for IT workers, with employers searching for those skilled in everything from support roles to engineering, but that doesn’t mean you can afford to blend in with the crowd.

Proving you’re the most competent and experienced professional for the role is never easy, but an up-to-date profile on LinkedIn is a great way to get noticed and secure work. As is the case with many industries, networking is critical for landing an IT role.

LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is now 22 years old. It boasts more than one billion members across the world. As much as 70% of IT professionals now use the platform, while 23% of IT professionals consider it their go-to source of industry news, according to research from GWI.

However, what does a successful LinkedIn profile look like? How do you build that personal brand everyone is talking about? What should you post to drive engagement? Let’s look at what makes a profile stand out.

Getting the basics right

Developing an effective LinkedIn profile is a bit like creating clean code. Experts suggest it should be easy to read, structured effectively, and deliver completely on the outcome you intended it to.

LinkedIn Career Expert Charlotte Davies tells ITPro that effective use of the platform largely boils down to three things; developing a proper plan that will help you find new opportunities, connecting with others, and investing in your career.

To get started, she suggests crafting “a compelling headline that goes beyond your job title”.

“This should include relevant keywords like specific programming languages, tools, or methodologies you specialize in. For example, ‘Full-Stack Developer’, ‘Python’, ‘JavaScript’, and ‘Cloud Architecture’. You’re more likely to be found in recruiters’ searches for IT professionals,” Davies explains.

Every profile should also have a high-quality, professional photo that “embodies who you are as a professional”, she says, along with a detailed summary highlighting your key achievements and skills.

Any projects you have been involved with, particularly those you have led yourself, should be detailed in the experience section of your profile. You should also mention any systems you’ve implemented, or technical solutions you’ve developed.

“Highlight soft skills like communications or problem-solving, certifications like AWS, Cisco, or Microsoft, and any coding or technical skills that set you apart – for instance, Agile methodologies, DevOps practices, or relevant IT frameworks,” Davies adds.

Laura Franklin-Hollier, digital account director at MikeWorldWide London, has overseen executive LinkedIn programs for a number of big tech companies. Her advice is to not forget the premise behind it all.

“The most important element to consider is that although LinkedIn is a professional networking site, it is still a social media platform. The key is to be social,” she says. “Yes, fantastic stats and humble brags are great to see but it is always the content that resonates – person to person – that will outperform. Don’t be afraid to have a personality, a strong opinion, or sense of humor to make that happen.”

Consider the industry you're joining

Before we continue, it’s worth evaluating the current state of the industry in order to provide some context to the decisions you might make. Research from the Harnham Group’s salary survey of over 3,500 global data and AI professionals – which has been running for more than 13 years – showed that job security was at a four-year low.

Six in 10 (60%) data and IT professionals said they felt more secure in their jobs than the year before, but this figure has dropped significantly from 88% in 2021.

And while the highest-paid roles include those in data architecture, software engineering, and AI engineering, market instability has candidates taking fewer risks. In 2020, three quarters (74%) told how they “would leave their role for the right opportunity” but that cam down to 59%.

That, of course, means less competition for some roles you might apply for from ads on LinkedIn. In fact, the research found some IT candidates are increasingly moving sideways or accepting pay cuts because they value their job security more than a pay increase elsewhere. But it’s not always a choice. Those looking for a move are doing so due to company downsizing and redundancies.

This all means that IT professionals have to think more carefully about their personal brand and align this with the type of roles they’re hoping to secure. For example, the Harnham Group found that IT professionals frequently list their most used technologies to capture attention (often Python, SQL, Azure, AWS, and Power BI).

Building a personal brand

Building your LinkedIn profile isn’t just about getting a job. “It’s also about being recognized and respected in your current role,” according to Louise Palmer, managing director at Wildfire, a PR agency specializing in IT and tech brands.

“LinkedIn isn’t just a ‘CV’ anymore, it’s an opportunity to show off your personality, share your knowledge, and build your role as a thought leader in the industry.,” Palmer continues.

“Whether it’s sharing advice, linking to articles, or even creating technical ‘how-to’ videos, LinkedIn is increasingly used as a knowledge-sharing forum for the IT community.”

However, Palmer warns it’s vital to check your security settings. “Without the right settings in place, it’s easy for competitors to scrape your profile, collecting information about your connections, including customers, prospects, and employees,” she explains.

It doesn’t have to be a scary task though to get stuck into. Laura Holland, head of digital at Flame PR, offers one left-field and innovative suggestion to get yourself noticed. “Gamify your expertise,” she reveals. “Create a ‘Tech Challenge of the Week’ on your profile and then post a real-world IT problem and invite connections to solve it in the comments.

“Offer a detailed solution in a follow-up post, showcasing your problem-solving skills. This interactive approach not only demonstrates your expertise but also boosts engagement, making you a go-to resource in your network. Plus, it’s a creative way to stay on top of recruiters’ and potential clients’ feeds regularly.”

Leveraging the LinkedIn algorithm

Leigh Anderson, MD at Bis Henderson Recruitment, has more than 30 years of experience across the UK, Europe, and Asia, and suggests that with so many recruiters on LinkedIn, not having a profile could “hinder your career growth”.

An effective profile will be clear and concise, and that even extends to your current job title. “If you have a niche job title, translate it into industry- standard language so you can be discovered,” he explains.

“For instance, instead of ‘Supply Chain Innovator’, say ‘Senior Supply Chain Manager specializing in innovative logistics solutions’. Anderson also cites research by LinkedIn that profiles with photos receive 21 times more views and 36 times more messages. He also advises users to ask colleagues to recommend you – and to make sure you do the same for them. This can “work wonders” if it is an endorsement from an influential IT industry leader.

“Strategic connections are key,” he adds. “Start by connecting with your past and present colleagues and companies. Being connected to a past employer validates the experience and success you’ve had at that company.”

You should also consider making use of LinkedIn powerful multimedia tools, which are proving incredibly effective for creating engagement. “For example, link to a GitHub repository if you’re a developer, or include a SlideShare presentation of your recent work. These additions make your profile more engaging and provide tangible proof of your expertise.”

As for LinkedIn’s Charlotte Davies, she points to a number of optional tools that can make life a little easier - although these are locked behind a Premium subscription. Specifically, AI tools are available that can improve any copy and keywords you have embedded into your profile.

There’s also the built-in chatbot that can distill the information in a job advert and help you figure out whether your profile is a good match or not, or tell you more about the company that posted the advert.

She also points to using LinkedIn InMail private messages to reach out directly to IT industry leaders or potential employers if they are not yet in your immediate network – while recommending free Learning courses like ‘LinkedIn Profiles for Technical Professionals’ and ‘Career Insights for Tech Professionals’.

Whether you’re starting from scratch or wanting a profile refresh, Bis Henderson Recruitment’s Anderson has a simple piece of advice that should be a must for IT professionals.

“Ensure all information is accurate,” he warns strongly. “Consistency can protect your credibility.”

In just a short few months since Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the social media network has undergone dramatic changes. It started with a dramatic wave of layoffs, including all-important content moderation teams along with software engineers. Then came the $8 Twitter Blue subscription tier, which paved the way for a chaotic sequence of events around verification. And that’s just the beginning.

In short, Musk’s purchase has changed everything. For many people, and in particular, the Twitter information security (InfoSec) community, it has all proved to be beyond the pale. Some of the biggest names from InfoSec Twitter, with followers in the hundreds of thousands, have upped and left the platform. Others from that, and other communities, have stayed, watching relatively quietly from the sidelines and hoping for the best.  

There are a variety of alternatives to Twitter. Some have left to devote more of their time to Tumblr or Instagram, and some to Counter.Social, but the biggest beneficiary has been Mastodon. Founded in 2016, the non-profit, federated, minority-friendly network of communities has seen an influx of users. The InfoSec community, for example, saw a surge from under 1,000 to more than 30,000 within a month.

What is Mastodon and how does it work?

Mastodon might seem similar to Twitter. Users, for example, can still post short messages, but with a limit of 500 characters rather than Twitter’s 280, and you can still follow people with no obligation for them to reciprocate. But Mastodon structurally works in a fundamentally different way.  

It’s similar in a way to email, a collection of separate instances (servers) that form a federated network. This is done using the ActivityPub social networking protocol. This provides a server-to-server federation protocol layer to allow decentralized websites to share data, and a client-to-server protocol enabling users to communicate with others. 

Mastodon is part of the “Fediverse”, which is a whole collection of different services, including social networking, photo and video sharing, microblogging, and more. The platform was also established with minority groups and compassionate debate in mind, so you’ll find lots of posts sitting behind content warnings. These exist to protect users from seeing content that could cause offense or recall any trauma (such as something medical), with users choosing for themselves if they want to read such posts. 

Mastodon’s federated nature means social norms and content moderation vary between instances. It’s up to the admin to decide the terms of the debate. While such freedoms can attract unpleasant people, it has positives, too, with admins deciding which instances it shares with and doesn’t. Entire instances can be blocked, for example, while individual users can also block instances. Both admins and users can also block individual users. It will soon become apparent if your local community is the one for you, and if it isn’t, then you can migrate to another. You can even join multiple instances from the get-go. 

How secure is Mastodon?

Security depends on a number of factors including how secure the servers hosting each instance are, how often they’re patched, and whether any vulnerabilities exist. You can be sure hackers and cyber criminals alike will look closely at specific instances, and Mastodon more broadly. There are no large security teams as you’d find at Twitter, and so you’re placing trust in your own abilities if you run an instance, or the admin if not. Certainly do your own due diligence before joining any instance. Check for security and privacy policies, and ask the admin about anything that concerns you.

As for security matters in individual users’ hands, apart from ensuring that you choose a secure password, enable two-factor authentication (2FA) by accessing Preferences, then ‘Account settings’, then ‘Two-factor Auth’. 

User verification is also a security matter, as there’s no official blue checkmark scheme on Mastodon. Impersonation is as much of a problem on the platform as it’s becoming on Twitter. Admins will spot many impersonators and can boot them out of instances. But you can safeguard your own identity by self-verifying. It’s not perfect but does establish some trust. The profile metadata verification feature links HTML on your website to the URL in your profile and vice-versa. Once this link is established, the web entry appears in green with a checkmark. An imposter could yet establish a website with a URL that’s similar-looking to yours, and a link to get a verification key. Mastodon isn’t perfect, but neither is Twitter, and it makes it harder for somebody to scam your brand this way. 

You can also deploy a secondary verification process by using third-party services, such as one called PressCheck, established by the Financial Times (FT) technology reporter Dave Lee. This system allows journalists to create a profile with the necessary embedded code to get a green verification status on Mastodon. There may well be other third-party services for other professions. 

How private is Mastodon?

Privacy on Mastodon is often discussed but misunderstood. Plenty of well-meaning articles and posts suggest there’s no privacy, and that people should stick with Twitter. Much of this discourse, however, centers around direct messaging and the fact the admin can read direct messages, as can the admin of the instance of the recipient, if different. But Twitter admins can read your direct messages too, and admins at your email provider can read your emails. 

Neither Twitter nor Mastodon DMs are end-to-end encrypted, currently. Both are said to be working on introducing this at some point in the future, without any timescale. Mastodon makes it perfectly clear by showing a warning that states posts aren’t encrypted and that you shouldn’t share any sensitive information using the service.

If you want to share sensitive, confidential, truly private messages, then use a service specifically designed to provide that, such as Signal. Mastodon isn’t such an app, but it does provide some post privacy options when creating a new post. 

A public post has visibility across the federated timeline, whereas unlisted ones remain visible to all but are opted out of discovery features of Mastodon, which rely mostly on instances users on your instance also follow. Followers-only is self-explanatory. Mentioned people only is Mastodon equivalent of direct messaging.

There’s one privacy point worth flagging, though, namely that any user you mention in such a message using their @username will also see the message. This is a feature, not a bug. 

More broadly, choose your instances wisely. Check they have privacy policies and you’re aligned with them. “Treat the Fediverse and any Mastodon instance as a place to share information, connect, and collaborate in the same way you'd do those things in person in a town square or public coffee shop,” Melissa Bischoping, a director and endpoint security research specialist at Tanium, says. “In short, don’t use Mastodon to send sensitive, personal, or private information you wouldn’t be comfortable posting publicly anyway.”

Don’t delete your Twitter account

Although the temptation, if leaving Twitter for good, is to delete your account, you really shouldn’t. The process involves deactivating the account, which, if not used for 30 days, then deletes your presence forever. Once the account is deleted, your username is released back into the pool for anyone to snap up. Your name, reputation, brand, and so on, could be taken by someone who then pretends to be you or your organization for whatever purpose. This could be criminal, fraudulent, or for fun, but in each case, your reputation could suffer. 

Twitter says impersonation isn’t allowed, nor is criminal usage, so you’d hope the accounts would get removed quickly. Given the cuts to moderation staff, this won’t work out well in practice. Users may be able to tell it’s not you by the follower count – or post content – but if the impersonator has paid $8 and has a blue checkmark then it could fool enough people.

So what should you do instead? Head to your Twitter account ‘Settings and support’ and look for the ‘Settings and privacy’ option. Select the ‘Privacy and safety’ option, and then ‘Audience and tagging’. Finally, flick the protect switch, and your tweets are now protected. This means only approved followers can see them, and to follow you requires your approval. 

Block all existing followers if you like, delete all your tweets and messages, or just keep it running quietly in the background in case Twitter gets beyond the Musk years and emerges the other side a usable service once more.

Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to resolve a lawsuit which accused the tech giant of allowing Cambridge Analytica to access users' personal information.

The settlement, detailed in a court filing on Thursday, will be the largest ever monetary penalty for a US data privacy class action suit and the largest sum Meta has paid to resolve a lawsuit.

"This historic settlement will provide meaningful relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case," the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, said in a joint statement to Reuters.

Meta will not admit wrongdoing for its involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal as part of the settlement, documents reveal.

The tech giant said in a statement on Thursday that settling the case was in the “best interest of our community and shareholders” and confirmed that it has introduced new organisational processes to avoid similar incidents occurring again.

“Over the last three years we have revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy programme,” a spokesperson said.

This settlement brings to a close a long-running lawsuit against the social media platform in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The UK-based firm was found to have gained access to personal information belonging to millions of Facebook accounts in 2016, which it used to profile and target voters ahead of the 2016 US presidential election and Brexit referendum.

Cambridge Analytica was found to have harvested data on up to 87 million users without consent after Facebook allowed it to deploy an app on the social media platform.

In the wake of the discovery, the social media firm came under intense scrutiny from lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic, and in 2019 agreed to pay a $5 billion fine to settle an FTC probe into its data practices.

Meta was also fined $100 million by the US Security and Exchange Commission amid claims that it misled shareholders over the misuse of user data during that period.

The record settlement also follows a number of recent fines issued by EU-based regulators over the company’s handling of user data.

In November, Ireland’s data Protection Commission (DPC) announced plans to impose a €265 million fine following an investigation into a data breach which saw the personal details of more than 500 million users published online.

The inquiry into the data scraping breach ruled that Meta had infringed two articles of EU data protection laws.

Elon Musk has announced he will tender his resignation as Twitter CEO after a poll he posted concluded that the majority of users on the social media platform wanted him to step down.

Musk, who assumed the role of chief executive in October following a $44 billion acquisition, posted the poll on 18 December asking “should I step down as head of Twitter?”.

In the post, Musk added that he “will abide by the results of the poll” should users urge him to step aside from the lead role. The Twitter chief officially confirmed he would step down on Monday evening.

The poll drew more than 17 million votes from users on the platform airing their views on his decision, which resulted in 57% favouring his exit.

Days after the poll ended and following suspicions that Musk may not abide by its results, he confirmed today his intentions to resign and focus on running the software and servers teams at the social media firm.

He added that this is contingent on whether he can “find someone foolish enough to take the job”.

Exactly who will take over as CEO is yet to be revealed. But in a cryptic follow-up tweet on Sunday, he warned users “be careful what you wish, you might get it”.

In a reply to a user who claimed he “already has the new CEO picked out”, Musk added that “no one wants the job who can keep Twitter alive. There is no successor”.

This latest move follows a consistent pattern since Musk assumed control of the company earlier this year. The entrepreneur has conducted a number of controversial polls seeking user feedback on major decisions in a move to bolster democratisation on the platform.

A poll to re-instate former US President Donald Trump saw users vote for his return after a ban was imposed in the wake of the January 6th riot. The move fell flat, however, when Trump refused to return and stay on alternative social media site, Truth Social.

Behind the scenes influence?

Speculation over Musk’s decision to launch this poll has been rife on the platform over the last three days.

Leonidas Raisini, a self-proclaimed Tesla and Twitter angel investor, claimed to have “overheard” discussions between Musk and Qatari emir Tamim Bin Hamad during the World Cup final in Doha on Sunday.

In a series of tweets, Raisini suggested the decision to launch the poll was influenced by investor pressure on Musk to step down.

“Elon tweeted this [the poll] after he was told by his Saudi and Qatari investors to get his sh*t together. They are not happy with the way he is proving to be an amateur CEO and asked him to step down,” Raisini said in a follow-up tweet.

Following Musk’s takeover in October, Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal became Twitter’s second-largest shareholder after investing $1.89 billion to support the deal.

The Qatar Investment Authority, a subsidiary of the country’s sovereign wealth fund also contributed around $375 million in exchange for shares in the social media platform.

According to reports from CNBC Musk has been actively searching for a replacement CEO for some time. Sources told the publication that the chief executive had signalled his intention to find a replacement prior to the launch of the poll.

Musk has been vocal about his position at the social media company since the takeover, suggesting that his role would only be temporary.

Policy Changes

In the wake of the vote, Musk hinted that the social media firm could implement changes to how users interact with polls on the platform.

Musk suggested that the outcome might have been influence by bot-driven traffic, and confirmed in a tweet that moving forward only Twitter Blue subscribers would be able to participate in the polling feature.

Since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the platform has been hit by a number of controversies, including a recent snap decision to ban a number of high-profile journalists amid claims of ‘doxxing’.

This disruptive period also saw thousands of staff laid off, an overhaul of the platform’s verification system and the scrapping of its Trust and Safety council.

The internet isn’t just for teenagers. When Gen Z hit the web, the social media companies bent and contorted to meet their interests – which seem to be short videos, social justice and lip-syncing. Hence the rise of TikTok, and social rivals desperately stealing its video-focused ideas to keep up with the kids.

Look at Instagram. Once the “nice” social network, it’s floundered of late. First, it was the addition of ads. Then it was a tweak to the algorithm that meant posts no longer showed chronologically, the way most of us experience reality. Finally, Instagram started shoving into my feed ‘suggested posts’ – accounts I choose to not follow – in particular favouring videos, often swiped and reuploaded from TikTok.

It wasn’t just me wondering why Instagram opted for self-destruction. I follow a lot of photographers and artists on the app, and over a couple of days this summer, they all shared messages about the impact of the algorithmic changes, saying their posts were no longer being seen by followers and that was impacting sales of their work.

That complaint picked up steam when the Kardashians got involved. So, thank you Kim and her sister Kylie Jenner – who happen to be the third and seventh most followed people on the platform. You may not like their fashion or life choices, but, in this case, they used their powers for good, sharing a viral post begging developers to “make Instagram Instagram again,” adding the app should “stop trying to be TikTok”.

Shortly thereafter, Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri gave an interview saying the Meta-owned app would relax some of the changes. “I’m glad we took a risk,” he reportedly said. “If we’re not failing once in a while, we’re not thinking big enough or bold enough.”

My friend, mucking up ideas stolen from a rival is hardly bold thinking. Instead, Instagram would do better to have the confidence to ignore the youthful crowds on TikTok and realise we don’t all want the same thing.

Internet companies are obsessed with being number one and with signing up every online person on the planet, as though teenagers in LA have the same wants and needs as 50-year-olds in Tokyo or technology writers in London. Imagine if movies or books or magazines appealed to only the noisiest 25-year-olds – IT Pro wouldn’t exist, all literature would be Sally Rooney knock-offs, and every movie would be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s nothing wrong with overwrought Irish students or Thor – indeed, I enjoy both – but publishers are thankfully willing to take money from people who like crime novels and historical non-fiction, while directors are happy to have critical acclaim without topping the box office. There’s space, and money, for all sorts of stuff.

Sadly, the internet is obsessed with monoliths. Being the second or third most used social network is surely sufficient to make oodles of cash, but an obsession with the network effect – having everyone on a site or app so that everyone feels like they need to be there – seems to cause panic when a rival gets all the attention.

I’m sure Instagram’s data team could show that I’m actually spending more time on the app, as I get sucked in by viral content that’s shoved in front of my eyeballs. But I feel worse for having wasted my time and energy on such nonsense, and that means I’m increasingly more likely to avoid opening the app at all. It’s a short-term gain but a longer-term loss – and all to avoid me running off to TikTok, an app I am not interested in.

It’s a particular shame, as Instagram remained beloved while other social media soured; it was “the good place”. Tired of the constant outrage, I barely touch Twitter anymore. Facebook? Forget it. But my Instagram was full of people I love and carefully curated accounts. A quick scroll let me check in on friends, dip into the Tate Modern’s collection, explore the world through Lonely Planet photographers, and drift into the perfect world inhabited by my favourite photographer, @samyoukilis. Now my reverie is interrupted by memes I don’t understand.

Here’s the wild bit: TikTok has more than a billion users, but so does Instagram. It’s not failing or struggling. It was a well-used app that people love, even if some of those people weren’t Gen Z.

With half the world online, there’s plenty of room for all sorts of spaces and billions of people to sign up for apps. The internet isn’t just for teenagers or younger generations – indeed, all they’re going to do is get older. Stop chasing youth and their short-lived trends, calm down and let online spaces grow organically and thrive. That would be the truly bold move.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the platform will give businesses a new type of verification to differentiate between types of organisations and individuals.

Verified businesses will receive a gold checkmark next to their profile name as opposed to the traditional blue checkmark that has been standard for all verified accounts since Twitter’s inception.

Blue checkmarks will remain for previously-verified individuals before Musk’s takeover, and also for Twitter Blue users - those who pay the Musk-introduced $8 subscription for paid verification.

He said government accounts will be designated a grey checkmark, similar to the grey ‘Official’ tag that the platform is currently trialling to differentiate accounts like genuine news organisations from paid-for Twitter Blue impersonations, for example.

He said the new approach will roll out next week on Friday 2 December and that “all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates. Painful, but necessary”.

Responding to one Twitter user, Musk said that individuals with blue checkmarks can also choose to display a second, smaller logo that indicates they are part of an organisation, providing that organisation verifies their affiliation with it.

This means businesses and other organisations with a verified Twitter presence will also be able to offer their staff the chance to officially show they are part of the organisation.

The development could be especially useful for larger companies that need to ensure their staff aren’t impersonated - an issue that’s been rife on Twitter since Musk introduced paid verification.

A more detailed explanation of the changes is expected to be publicised when the new-look verification rolls out next week, Musk said.

Musk sought to overhaul the platform’s verification system as one of his first of many changes as CEO. The Tesla chief said that introducing paid verification would help limit the success and reach of ‘bot’ accounts, an issue which has led many users to be inundated with scam messages and exposed to misinformation.

Twitter Blue has been heavily criticised since its launch. One issue was that people thought account impersonations would become rife.

The prediction quickly turned to reality as many users impersonated Musk himself, as well as other organisations, posting unsavoury and PR-unfriendly tweets in an attempt to both defame the CEO and draw attention to the issues that 'verification-for-all' could present.

Other figures that were impersonated included senior politicians and former heads of state. The timing of the launch was further criticised for being so close to the midterm elections in the US.

Twitter systems are safe from collapse in the immediate future due to years of infrastructure planning, according to a senior engineer who left the platform in August.

Matthew Tejo, a former Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) at Twitter, explained in a blog post that much of his career at the firm was spent automating systems where possible, and disaster planning where it was not, and that the platform can continue to function providing there are no major changes to the systems in place.

The explanation of how Twitter's infrastructure was designed comes after members of the tech industry questioned whether Twitter would be able to run after new CEO Elon Musk fired large portions of engineering staff.

Tejo said that Twitter relies heavily on cache memory to handle traffic, keep response speeds low across the website, and massively reduce overall server costs.

These caches are then run on the Aurora framework, itself encompassed on the open source Apache Mesos project. While Aurora allocates applications to servers, Mesos aggregates servers, removing them in the case of breaks.

As Mesos is not capable of detecting all hardware issues, Twitter relies on manual monitoring from its IT department to check for problems such as bad disks. If one is found, repair workers in the data centre are automatically sent to rectify the problem.

The small number of Twitter’s remaining workforce - believed to be just 20% of its peak following the most recent round of resignations - could prove problematic, as the same amount of work now has to be completed by fewer engineers.

However, Tejo also revealed that at any given time, Twitter has two concurrently-running data centres capable of handling a total failure of the site, with each capable of running all the core services on the platform. This means that Twitter constantly has 200% capacity, for use in worst-case scenarios, and therefore is incredibly unlikely to die through a lack of server resources.

Twitter also uses custom tools to ensure that servers are safely distributed from the moment they are allocated: “Those tools make sure the team doesn’t have too many physical servers on a rack and that everything is distributed in a way that won’t cause problems if there are failures,” said Tejo.

Unknown problems with the infrastructure, or changes to it made in the wave of alterations brought in by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk, could still destabilise the platform. Reflecting on the amount of effort that has gone into making Twitter at least partially self-sustaining, Tejo nevertheless acknowledged that he is “sure there are some bugs lurking somewhere”.

In the immediate aftermath of Musk taking over, Reuters reported that Musk was seeking to make $1 billion in infrastructure cuts in the coming months. The source reporters spoke to indicated that $1.5 to $3 million in server and cloud services costs had been identified as unnecessary, suggesting that the excessive safety redundancies which Tejo helped establish might not be maintained.

“I don’t want to be using systems or services that are hurriedly assembled under extreme duress, standards will slip, data will get lost,” Jeff Watkins, CPTO at xDesign told IT Pro.

“Worse still is that the likely outcome will be a great brain drain. As a result, the remaining team will likely not be the A-team.

“So the user data impact could be bad, but Twitter isn’t just used by the tweeting users via the website and mobile applications, it also has some interesting side-effect usage through its APIs, like detecting downtime in systems (from tweets mentioning the particular company). Destabilising what has become almost a social shadow-IT could have some unexpected consequences on a global scale.”

It remains unclear if Twitter's infrastructure will sustain the platform in the long term with fewer engineers working on it. Despite the excess server resources available, bugs are rampant in software and experienced engineers are required to address them to ensure the smooth running of services.

Twitter has undergone a period of rapid changes since Elon Musk completed his acquisition of the platform on 27 October. In the weeks since, a number of senior figures at the company left their roles, half its employees were fired overnight amidst chaotic scenes of workers being locked out of their emails, and a large number of remaining workers responded to Musk’s demands of harsher work conditions with a resignation ‘revolt’.

On Monday, The Verge reported that Musk made huge cuts to Twitter staff benefits, slashing company allowances for childcare, home internet, and wellness. The same report stated that staff will now have to provide higher ups with a full rundown of their completed work at the end of each week.

The latest memos sent to staff by Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk revealed that many employee benefits will be cut as the billionaire continues to cut costs across the company.

Allowances for child care, home internet, wellness, personal and professional development, and quarterly team activities have all been gutted.

Musk said the benefits may return when the company starts demonstrating a better financial situation.

The revelations come in the latest round of internal leaks made by employees who remain at the company, as seen by The Verge.

All Twitter staff will also be required to provide the CEO with weekly updates on their work. According to the memos, every Friday staff will be required to send a concise update on what they have been doing throughout the week.

Software engineers and other relevant technical departments will be required to provide examples of code where relevant. Staff in other departments will have to provide written summaries of their respective progress.

At the end of last week, Musk also reportedly required all software engineers to update him personally and provide screenshots of their ten “most salient lines of code”.

The latest overhauls at the platform come after Musk said he would be thrusting an “extremely hardcore” working culture on its remaining staff.

In his short time in charge at the company, the CEO has ordered swathes of layoffs and other policies have prompted remaining staff to resign en masse.

Hundreds of staff walked out on the company last week, rejecting Musk’s ‘Twitter 2.0’. The CEO set a 17 November deadline for staff to agree to his new vision for the company or be fired while receiving three months’ worth of severance pay.

In addition to the mandatory weekly reports and massive personnel cuts - around 50% (around 3,700 total) were fired earlier this month by email - Musk also promised longer working days at a higher intensity.

Next steps for paid verification

Elon Musk confirmed in a Tuesday tweet that one of his first acts as Twitter CEO, implementing $8 paid verification, would be put on hold due to rampant impersonations.

The paid verification feature, called Twitter Blue, was introduced at the start of November and was paused less than a week after its launch.

Numerous accounts impersonated high-profile figures, including Musk, and posted tweets that aimed to damage the genuine individual’s reputation.

Twitter Blue allowed anyone to pay a monthly fee for the platform’s heralded ‘blue tick’ - a symbol applied to an account, previously only available via Twitter’s in-house vetting process.

It meant any account could be ‘verified’ and organisations like news outlets would receive separate ‘official’ badges to demonstrate their legitimacy.

Musk introduced the feature to combat the rampant use of bots and other fake accounts on the platform used to spread misinformation and scams.

Twitter is reportedly switching to a paid model for verification, requiring users to pay $20 per month in order to retain their 'Blue Tick' status.

Internal Twitter sources and correspondence allegedly indicate that the company will increase the cost of its Twitter Blue premium subscription to $19.99 per month, as first reported by The Verge. Verification will then become conditional on subscription to this service, with existing verified users given a 90 day grace period in which to purchase a Twitter Blue plan, or lose their blue tick.

The same report claimed that developers within Twitter have been told that they will be fired unless the relevant changes are implemented in time for a 7 November launch.

Twitter verification was introduced in 2009, as a means of distinguishing real accounts of notable people and companies from imposters. Today, the feature is used to denote accounts including brands and companies, news sources, activists, celebrities, sports or entertainment personalities, and content creators. There is a long list of requirements in order to become verified, but accounts as a minimum must be “authentic, notable, and active”.

It's a favoured feature for many businesses, as it not only ensures consumers can tell real brands apart from fake accounts, but also allows firms to stand apart from competitors or be seen as more ‘trusted’ by virtue of the blue tick.

Verification has also been widely relied upon to curb disinformation on the website, which notably surges whenever national elections are held or during geopolitical events, such as the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Technology newsletter Platformer had claimed that verification would only be available to Twitter Blue subscribers on Sunday, citing individuals with knowledge of Twitter’s plans. However, this report indicated this would happen while Twitter Blue remained at its current price of $4.99 per month. The same day, Musk tweeted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now”.

The claims come just days after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media giant for $44 billion, after months of negotiations sparked by his initial offer of $41.39 billion in April 2022. In July, Musk had attempted to pull out of the deal, asserting that Twitter had failed to provide accurate information on the number of spam accounts and bots on the website. The move prompted legal action from Twitter itself, which sought to hold Musk to his original offer, and led to a public and protracted period of negotiations culminating in Musk’s eventual commitment to buy the company.

On Thursday, 27 October Musk tweeted “the bird is freed”, indicating that the purchase had gone through. Shortly afterwards, several C-suite executives were fired by Musk, including CEO Parag Agrawal and chief financial officer (CFO) Ned Segal.

In addition to promises that his takeover of the company will lead to increased free speech across the platform, Musk also tweeted an open letter to companies who advertise on Twitter, in which he addressed their potential concerns over his goal of increased “dialogue” on the platform:

“I also very much believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain and inform you; it can show you a service or product or medical treatment that you never knew existed, but is right for you. For this to be true, it is essential to show Twitter users advertising that is as relevant as possible to their needs. Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!

“Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise. To everyone who has partnered with us, thank you. Let us build something extraordinary together.”

IT Pro has approached Twitter for comment.

Twitter has seen its largest ever number of legal demands to remove content, as well as the most government legal demands targeting journalists and news organisations, the company has revealed.

In its 20th transparency report, Twitter released information for the period running from July 1 2021 to December 31 2021. Across the period, a record 47,572 legal demands were made regarding 198,931 accounts, comprising a mixture of court orders and other such formal demands by government entities and the lawyers of individuals for content to be taken down.

The largest ever measurement of such reports, it represents a 10% increase compared to the previous six-month period. This is reflective of both the increased user base of the platform and the greater role that Twitter is asked to play in disputes over disinformation and illegal content.

Twitter has credited the proactive removal of tweets that their in-house technology detects as abusive or spam, with keeping the platform clear of content that violates the terms of use even as the user base increases. The company revealed that 71% of tweets removed in this fashion were removed before they reached 100 impressions.

Also revealed in the report was that only 2.6% of Twitter users had put in place any kind of two-factor authentication (2FA) for their account, a low figure in the face of the threat to user passwords posed by phishing and hackers on any social media. Businesses with Twitter could face particularly severe consequences for lacklustre security, with threat actors already targeting Facebook business accounts.

The company's advocacy for greater transparency, bringing in labels for misinformation in the past few years among the aforementioned technology, has pulled the focus of governments and other public bodies, and could set a precedent for other social media giants. Just last month, TikTok announced a new API aimed at greater insight into their platform, and user demand for transparency around data use has already cost companies like Facebook billions of dollars.

Legislation such as the UK government's proposed Online Safety Bill would require platforms to provide far more moderation of the content on their platforms, compelling them to use or develop technology to detect and remove child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) content and take it down. It would also require 'Category 1' companies to transparently identify 'legal but harmful content' on their platforms, such as cyberbullying or disinformation and prevent users from seeing it.

The efficacy of Twitter’s automated system in dealing with spam, bots and fake accounts has been the subject of scrutiny after Elon Musk cited his reservations about the system as his reason to pull out of his $44 billion acquisition of the company. In response, Twitter has sued Musk, and a trial date has now been scheduled for October 17.

The company also revealed that 349 accounts of journalists and news sources were subject to legal demands by governments, representing a 103% increase compared to the previous period.

On the whole, however, government information requests were down 7% in the period, with 11,460 total. Of this, the United States government accounted for 20% of global traffic, closely followed by Japan (24%) and India (11%). Despite the lower number of individual reports, the aggregate of accounts specified by government entities rose by 9%, indicating each government report concerned a larger range of accounts.

Due to US legislation, Twitter does not report on information requests related to national security processes. It is contesting this in court to provide greater transparency in further reports.

When faced with requests, Twitter can ‘narrow’ information, meaning that it selectively discloses some but not all information demanded in the request. It did this in response to 60% of global government information requests.

“This update comes at a time when government requests for account information and content removal continually hit new records, including demands to reveal the identity of anonymous account owners,” said the company in a blog post.

“This is why we continue to advocate for greater transparency from governments themselves about how these powers are used.”

Adverts for Microsoft Teams, Slack or even Zoom usually follow the same format; people working together from the comfort of their own homes, in corporate jobs. There’s obviously nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does target one specific type of business, rather than demonstrate the full range of use cases different organisations can take advantage of, exemplified by the rise in virtual events since the pandemic.

Away from the living room, quizzes and shows, one effect collaboration platforms have had across the business landscape is taking away some of the emphasis of email, especially from an internal perspective.

The argument for removing email for certain members of staff, and replacing it with a collaboration platform, is particularly compelling for workers in the service industry. Waiters, cleaners, and shop floor assistants have little use for a specific email address tied to their job, although will need to be contacted from time to time by their employer.

Honest Burgers is one such business that’s done away with email addresses for their staff on the restaurant floors, instead opting to use the Workplace platform from Meta. This move has allowed the brand to “streamline” communications for employees, according to the head of employer brand at Honest Burgers, Oli Cavaliero.

“We didn't have a communications platform or a central platform before using Workplace. Instead, we had thousands of emails, WhatsApp groups, and messages, as well as different systems where we would hold documents and learning material,” he says.

“Now, we don't have internal emails and everything is done through Workplace. Our entire library of resources can be found on the platform, and we have other platforms that we use connected to Workplace so everything that we do is driven through Workplace, rather than having multiple logins for different platforms.”

Necessary communications

Much has been said about the death of email, and whether there’s a role for the archaic technology in the modern era, especially one that’s saturated with communication and collaboration platforms. Despite several providers building tools intent on superseding the email inbox, such as Slack Connect and Microsoft Teams connect, no company has yet found a silver bullet in the war against email. Using Workplace, though, Honest Burgers claims it’s found a middle ground between wasting resources on unused email accounts and the necessary communications that need to be sent out.

Co-founders Tom Barton and Philip Eeles (pictured) established Honest Burgers in 2010 as a pop-up tent in Brighton

Employees need to have an understanding of the potential dangers they may encounter throughout a restaurant, from the kitchen to the table, for example. Employees, in previous years, would have had to log in to a portal they barely used, often resetting their passwords along the way, before running through mandated courses in order to simply get back to doing their jobs.

By transitioning to the collaboration platform, Honest Burgers has managed to integrate its staff training resources into chatbots that use multiple choice and free-text answers to provide a simple way to complete the course.

“At Honest, we initially used chatbots to share information to get feedback,” Cavaliero says. “From there, we’ve increased the complexity, and our systems engineer has been able to share his knowledge to the wider team, so we can create our own chatbots in our specialist areas.

“When a new member joins the team, they’re educated through chatbots. Initially, they'll be introduced to Workplace, then the chatbots guide them through the process. There are different areas that employees can train in, but the reason for us doing this is to simplify the process, rather than having a huge system with information we wouldn't necessarily need all the time.”

Boosting engagement

As with all collaboration platforms, adoption is key to its success. Being able to create chatbots, after all, isn’t useful if nobody is using Workplace. Cavaliero, however, says engagement has been high amongst its 600-strong employee base, with uptake well within the 90% range.

“Over 99% of our team are activated on Workplace, and 90% of our team log on at least ten times within a 28 day period,” he says. “That shows that employees are engaged, but we also understand that people might not want to be so engaged so we have to be absolutely fine with that.

“Our employees can just use Workplace for the tools they need. We require them to use a chatbot to fulfil the health and safety course, for example. Some may not want to go on to our culture page and look at some of the pictures from some of the celebrations that have been going on.

“That said, as we've used Workplace more and integrated more initiatives, the engagement has certainly increased. Whether it's health and safety training, a bot platform, or our own HR system called the Brain that we’ve built, it all plugs into Workplace, which allows us to be flexible as well make changes when we want to.”

Welcome to IT Pro's News in Review, a weekly bite-sized bulletin of the top tech stories of the week, for the week ending 3 December, 2021.

This week:

• Ikea launches "full-scale investigation" into email-based cyber attack
• Jack Dorsey resigns as Twitter CEO
• CMA orders Facebook to sell Giphy

You can find more videos like this in our video library and even more on our YouTube channel. Let us know what you think of this week's video – you can also find us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey has resigned as CEO of Twitter. His replacement is Parag Agrawal, who joined Twitter in 2011 and has been CTO since October 2017.

In a resignation letter posted to Twitter, Dorsey said that he was leaving because he wanted the company to move beyond the influence of its founders.

"There's a lot of talk about the importance of a company being 'founder-led'," he said. "Ultimately I believe that's severely limiting and a single point of failure. I've worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders."

He pointed to a solid team as the reason for leaving now. His trust in Agrawal runs "bone deep", he said, also citing the appointment of Salesforce president and COO Bret Taylor to the role of Twitter chair as a factor. Taylor joined the Twitter board in 2016 at Dorsey's request.

Dorsey will also leave the Twitter board in or around May this year.

"I want you all to know that this was my decision and I own it," Dorsey said. "There aren't many founders that choose their company over their own ego."

Dorsey founded Twitter in 2006 and left in 2008, founding payments company Square, of which he is still CEO. He returned to Twitter as executive chairman in 2011 and then took over as CEO in 2015. He took the company from revenues of $774.8m in fiscal 2015 to $3.72bn in fiscal 2020.

Along the way, Twitter faced congressional scrutiny over content moderation policies and misinformation. He also pushed an initiative to decentralize Twitter with an initiative called Bluesky.

Twitter has suffered some financial setbacks recently, missing Wall Street expectations with its Q3 results last month. The company, which sold its mobile ad unit last month, reported revenue of $1.28bn for the quarter but an $800 million lawsuit settlement in September pushed losses to $537 million. The lawsuit alleged that the company had misled investors on engagement numbers. Its stock has plunged from $66.11 on October 18 to $48.68.

The stock price ramped 10% early on Monday following reports of Dorsey's resignation.

Twitter will expand free access to its data for software developers so they can create tools and products that promote safer online conversations or curate content.

The move is part of the social media site's efforts to decentralise its operation and put more control into the hands of its users.

Social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook have come under increasing scrutiny for apparent behavioural modification practices. Regulators and authorities are concerned with the types of algorithms they use, which are thought to prioritise negative content to keep users engaged. This is often attributed to hate speech and the spread of misinformation.

Twitter's answer is to offer more control to the users themselves, letting them curate what content they see or have new ways of sharing content on the platform.

Starting Monday, developers will be able to access data on up to two million tweets per month through Twitter's application programming interface (API) at no cost.

Developers already using the Twitter API v2 will automatically see their projects upgraded to 'Elevated' access. Or they will need to apply for Elevated access.

The social media site said it is working on a way to enable developers whose previous applications for a developer account have been declined and said it will share a path soon to enable sign up for Essential or re-application for Elevated access.

Some early examples of apps built with Twitter data include software engineer Tracy Chou's Block Party, which allows users to filter out content they don't want to see. Another app, which was built by software engineer Janique-ka John, lets users easily search for Twitter Spaces, which is the company's live audio chat feature.

"We want to continue to drive value for the developer ecosystem and make it easier for you to build, innovate, and make an impact on the public conversation," the company said in a blog post.

Microsoft and Meta have announced a partnership that will see features from both companies' collaboration platforms integrate into one another to allow for cross-platform capabilities.

Formerly known as Facebook Workplace, Workplace by Meta will soon integrate features from Microsoft Teams into its own platform, such as livestreaming Teams video directly into Workplace groups.

The integration goes both ways and it will see certain Workplace content also becoming available to users on Teams.

Workplace will be integrated into Microsoft's software using an app within Teams which can be pinned to its navigation bar, if a user wishes. Once selected, a Workplace 'pane' will become visible to the side of the UI, which can easily be hidden or re-opened.

The move is a significant step for the two platforms the collaboration software market as a whole. With the launch of Workplace by Facebook in late 2016 being closely followed by Microsoft Teams in March 2017, the two platforms were considered rivals in a contested market that had, up until then, been dominated by the likes of Slack.

Although Workplace is pitched as a much more rounded tool for creating company forums, and Teams is better suited for instant collaboration between smaller teams, the two platforms effectively target the same enterprise audience.

“One thing I learned from the pandemic is that companies don’t just rely on one tool to get their work done, so it is our responsibility as leaders in the space to make sure the tools they use integrate and interoperate with each other,” said Jeff Teper, CVP product and engineering at Microsoft Teams.

Users on both platforms will also be able to interact with meetings hosted on the other, such as commenting and offering emoji-driven reactions, without having to swap apps.

Workplace by Meta said Vodafone, Flight Centre Travel Group, and Lockton - three of its customers - have already been trialling the integration. Flight Centre Travel Group said they use Workplace to foster a cross-company community and use Teams for cross-company collaboration, adding that the integration allows staff to access the information they need quicker.

Ujjwal Singh, head of Workplace at Meta, also said the integration had specifically been requested by Workplace customers Vodafone and Accenture, according to CNBC.

"The way our customers end up using it is customers use the complementary features, not the competing features," he told the broadcaster. "There are customers that are just Workplace shops, and then there are customers that are just Teams shops. This is really for those customers that use both."

The announcement deepens the partnership between the two companies as they vie for market share in the collaboration space. Workplace already supports integration into Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive, and the Office 365 suite.

Workplace can also be integrated into Microsoft Azure AD and was named in the top 15 apps used on the platform in 2020. Additionally, Microsoft Teams will become available on Meta Portal starting in December.

The integration comes as a free update which is available to download now, though customers will have to wait until later in 2022 before they can stream meetings and broadcasts from Teams into Workplace.

Tesla stock plummeted in early trading on Monday after Twitter followers voted for its founder Elon Musk to sell 10% of his shares.

Musk, the world's richest man and largest owner of Tesla stock, asked Twitter whether he should sell the stock on Saturday.

"Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock," Musk said in a tweet on Saturday, adding that he would abide by his Twitter audience's decision. "Do you support this?"

In the poll, 57.9% of respondents supported the sale.

Tesla shares fell 5.9% in pre-hours trading from $1,221.79 to $1,148.96. However, they began picking up shortly after, rising 1.65% in the first 15 minutes of trading.

The poll appears to reference the billionaire income tax, a proposal included to help pay for a Democrat spending bill. It would target those who had over $100 million of income in the last three years in a row or retain over $3 billion in assets.

The tax would require those with tradable assets to pay taxes on investment gains. This would end a long-standard tax-deferral capability in which investors don't have to pay tax on their investment gains until they sell their shares.

The proposal’s author, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore), criticized the move in a tweet on Saturday.

"Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll. It’s time for the Billionaires Income Tax," he said.

Musk responded with a crude tweet criticizing Wyden's appearance.

Musk has criticized the proposal in the past. On Oct 25 he responded to a tweet reproducing a letter template that US citizens opposed to the plan could send to their elected representatives.

"Exactly. Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you," he tweeted.

This is not the first time Musk has generated controversy on Twitter. In September 2019 the SEC accused him of fraud over his Twitter claims of taking the company private. He later stepped down as chairman of the company.

On Saturday, Congress passed a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill with Republican support. The Democratic party's next goal is to pass its larger social spending package.

Facebook has announced that it will shut down its facial recognition programme after more than a decade of use.

The company, which recently rebranded to Meta, also said that it will be deleting all users' facial templates. The move will mark the end of website functionality such as automatic user detection in images and Automatic Alt Text - automatically generated descriptions of images used by visually impaired users that currently identifies people in around 4% of all photos on the site.

An exact date for the company's sunsetting of the technology has not been announced, but Facebook said the programme will end "in the coming weeks".

Acknowledging the situation as a "complex social issue", the social network said it wants to move away from the broad identification approach it previously used with its facial recognition tech and move closer towards focusing on narrower forms of personal identification. Such examples include accessing locked accounts, personal devices, and verifying identity in a financial product.

It added that private, on-device use of the technology may be a more adequate way of deploying it since there will be no communication of biometric data between the device and an external server.

Those who have opted-in for facial recognition on Facebook - more than a third of users - will no longer be automatically identified and their face data will be removed from records. Meta believes this will amount to more than a billion facial templates being deleted.

It's currently unclear if there is any other data associated with the programme that Facebook will be retaining. IT Pro has contacted the company for clarity but it had not responded at the time of publication.

Some corners of the tech industry feel the announcement may be a PR move, perhaps to deflect attention away from the recent stories that have surfaced following former employee Frances Haugen's landmark leak of 10,000 files.

"On one level this is a PR gesture - Facebook has much more invasive information about people than their faces," said Professor Mark Andrejevic, Faculty of Arts, Data Futures Institute at Monash University to IT Pro. "But as a PR move it's still an important one as it highlights the real public concern people have about the development of facial recognition technology."

“The destruction of the faceprints is significant. This is a biometric database that, if breached, would amount to a huge event in terms of the release of biometric data. It's rare that companies whose business is data, destroy such a large and potentially powerful database.

Consulting with outside experts along the way, Facebook will continue to work on facial recognition technology because it believes in its power to be a force for good in areas such as identity verification and prevention of fraud. Though, it said the positives have to be considered against the potential drawbacks.

"The many specific instances where facial recognition can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole," said Jerome Pesenti, VP of artificial intelligence at Facebook in a blog post. "There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use. Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.

"This includes services that help people gain access to a locked account, verify their identity in financial products or unlock a personal device," he added. "These are places where facial recognition is both broadly valuable to people and socially acceptable, when deployed with care. While we will continue working on use cases like these, we will ensure people have transparency and control over whether they are automatically recognised."

Some experts believe the decision to delete its facial recognition data is due to regulatory pressure that may be imposed in the future, potentially harming commercial relationships.

"Part of their reasoning to shut down the system could be that they realised the nature and type of consent gained may not meet the existing, or future, standards that regulators may expect for sensitive biometric data," said Peter Galdies, consultant at data protection firm DQM GRC. "This potentially renders all the data as unusable anyway.

"I imagine that commercial users of such data would also be somewhat sceptical of forming a business relationship with Facebook on these matters - considering the previous litigations that Facebook has been involved in with privacy regulators."

It's a sentiment that's echoed by other corners of the industry too. Alan Calder, CEO at GRC International Group told IT Pro: Facebook has only ever been interested in what profits Facebook, so shuttering its facial recognition options for one billion users will not be something that is intended to harm the company, but rather protect it from privacy regulators."

Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday that the Facebook Company will now be known as 'Meta', with its focus now directed towards bringing the CEO's metaverse vision to life.

The parent company of Facebook, which also covers brands like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus, was officially given a new name at its annual conference Connect 2021, forming a more distinctive umbrella company bearing closer resemblance to the likes of Alphabet.

While still overseeing its portfolio of global brands, Meta will work towards bringing Mark Zuckerberg's much publicised vision of the metaverse to life. The Meta CEO claims the "metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together — and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world".

Zuckerberg also said the metaverse will be a more immersive social media experience, where new environments can be built, virtual and augmented reality will take centre stage, and users will be able to do "almost anything they can imagine". Examples include playing games, working with multiple displays, watching TV, making personal video calls, and even attending concerts with friends.

All of this will be achieved using 'holograms' - virtual representations of physical things that users will no longer have to buy, like TVs and multiple work monitors, as mentioned previously.

Industry reaction

Amid Facebook's ongoing reputational crisis following the leak of 10,000 documents by former employee Frances Haugen, which led to a number of disparaging stories against the company, industry reaction to the news has been mixed.

Some experts feel the timing of the rebrand may be seen as particularly convenient given recent events plaguing the company's reputation.

“While it’ll help alleviate confusion by distinguishing Facebook’s parent company from its founding app, a name change doesn’t suddenly erase the systemic issues plaguing the company," said Mike Proulx, VP and research director at Forrester. "If Meta doesn’t address its issues beyond a defensive and superficial altitude, those same issues will occupy the metaverse.”

“The success of Meta’s metaverse strategy all comes down to trust," he added. "Forrester found that less than half — 41% — of online adults surveyed in the US say they trust Facebook (the company). In the UK it’s just 26%. If the majority of online adults don’t trust Facebook as a social media company, why would they trust it as a metaverse company? Without trust, Meta’s metaverse plans are already at risk.”

Others feel the rebrand will not be enough to restore customer trust in the company, especially given its history with the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

“Big tech companies are taking steps towards consent-led data strategies, such as embracing first-party data and the phasing out of third-party cookies," said Tom Bianchi, VP Marketing, EMEA, at Acquia. "But, given the scale of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the recent whistleblower revelations, it’s clear Facebook has a long way to go before it regains consumer confidence.

"Along with its redirection, Facebook needs to ensure that the positive steps it’s taking to improve data privacy and reduce misinformation need to be properly promoted to its users. While the metaverse is an exciting prospect and one that deserves column inches, Facebook needs to focus on rebuilding its foundations first and foremost."

The news was also met with mockery from certain corners of social media, with both individuals and big businesses competing for 'likes' at the umbrella company's expense.

Some pointed to the fact Meta couldn't secure an optimal handle on Instagram, a platform it owns, having to settle for @wearemeta.

Others took aim at the word 'Meta' itself, with the Wendy's fast food chain changing its account name to 'Meat' after many users claimed to have misread the word on first inspection.

A more positive outlook

Meta's rebrand seems to have made some progress in warming some corners of the industry. For example, prominent consumer technology leaker Jon Prosser announced that he was a fan of the Meta rebranding to his 400k+ following, adding that the Connect 2021 flagship announcement changed the way he felt about the CEO.

The future vision for a commute-less, largely hardware-less world where people can both work and play in a convenient, interactive environment is one that may excite some businesses too, especially now companies are in the early stages of exploring post-pandemic hybrid and fully remote approaches to work.

However, the main focus on the metaverse is the social element and how the gaming world will collide with social. The metaverse has the opportunity to overhaul the way in which people socialise virtually, which may not be a bad thing according to some.

"The 'Metaverse' doubters will be having to rethink after the Facebook rebrand," said Roxanne Harley, director of client strategy at Azerion. "As the gaming and social worlds combine, this is only a further indication that virtual worlds are here to stay and are on a trajectory to completely shake up how brands will interact and engage with audiences."

Facebook's Oversight Board has released its first Transparency Report, slamming the social media giant for not providing enough information on a controversial system called cross-check.

The report, released today, covers Q4 2020 and the first half of 2021. In it, the board complains that Facebook had not been transparent enough about the cross-check system, originally designed as a quality-control measure for actions taken on high-profile accounts. A September report from the Wall Street Journal found the company used the system to exempt high-profile users from its rules.

Practices included using low levels of review on some accounts, effectively whitelisting them.

"Facebook failed to explain that some percentage of this content is not reviewed and remains on the platform despite its initial assessment as violating Facebook policies. This is a good example of how less-than-forthcoming answers from Facebook deprived the Board of critical information and context," the report said.

Whitelisted accounts could spread misinformation and, in one case, nude photos of a privileged account holder’s alleged rape victim, which millions of fans saw before they were taken down.

The board could not properly review the cross-check system due to a lack of information from Facebook, it complained.

"In the Board’s view, the team within Facebook tasked with providing information has not been fully forthcoming on cross-check," the report said. "On some occasions, Facebook failed to provide relevant information to the Board, while in other instances, the information it did provide was incomplete."

Facebook admitted its description of the cross-check system to the board was misleading. The report continued, adding Facebook failed to properly explain how it selected accounts to include in the initiative. The social media company told the board that the system only applied to "a small number of decisions," but the Wall Street Journal found it applied to almost six million accounts.

Former-President Donald Trump's Facebook account was included in cross-check, but the company failed to mention this to the board when it referred a complaint about that account's suspension to the board. The system only came up incidentally, when Facebook employees responded to a question from the board about that case.

The board announced it will review the cross-check system and make recommendations on how it can be changed, at Facebook's request. The social media company will provide more documents relating to the system, it added.

The board received over a half million user appeals in the review period, proceeding with just 17 of them. It decided 11 of those cases by the end of June, overturning Facebook's decision eight times.

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Facebook is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. It’s a great way to reach customers, with a personal feel that you can’t get from a corporate website. It can provide calls to action, ads and promotions, a messaging service and a showcase for products and services, reaching up to three billion users across the platform – without them having to step outside of a familiar service.

At the same time, creating and operating a Facebook presence can bring hazards you might not be aware of. Last year, for example, a bug in Facebook’s code temporarily exposed the accounts of the admins behind Facebook business pages. Private details of the official Banksy page were posted online, as well as those of a host of global political figures. Facebook quickly fixed that bug, but incidents like this raise the question of just how private and secure your business page actually is.

First, the good news: Industry experts agree that Facebook is a net positive for businesses. “The privacy concerns that apply to individuals don’t really apply to businesses,” explains Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate at Comparitech. Unlike individual users, he argues, businesses want exposure and, for the most part, sharing more information is always better.

Natalie Howells, group head of marketing at business growth agency SpiderGroup, agrees. “Being on Facebook means people can learn about your business and buy from you right where they’re already hanging out,” she says. “The privacy issues are, naturally, a concern to business users, but they’re outweighed by the significant advantages of reaching people where they already are.”

“As long as a business is aware of the potential privacy concerns – and, of course, the privacy of their userbase,” says Steven Jupp, CEO at business intelligence outfit High Impact Office, “the benefits certainly outweigh any privacy issues.”

What could go wrong?

There’s a clear consensus: your business ought to be on Facebook. At the same time, it’s important to be aware of what the issues are, and what you’re entrusting to Facebook when starting your business page.

“There are obviously many details that Facebook will collect during sign-up and daily operation,” Jupp says. “A business is effectively signing away anything they are publishing within their page or shop. But in the light of things, they would very likely do the same on their own website.”

“Businesses don’t need to give up any information that they don’t want to when creating a page,” adds Bischoff. “And they only need to give up financial information if they want to run ads or boost posts.”

A bigger privacy concern is Facebook Messenger. “If you use Messenger to communicate with customers, Facebook can access those messages,” Bischoff points out. Facebook says that chats sent through Messenger aren’t used for advertising, but elsewhere it’s made clear that these communications aren’t private: “As with other parts of Facebook, we collect information from Messenger primarily to provide the service, improve the product experience, and keep people safe and secure.”

Then there’s the small matter of giving Facebook a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free worldwide licence to publish your content. This isn’t as dramatic as it may sound: Howells points out that the licence only applies until you remove your content. “However, removed content may still be stored in Facebook’s backup files, and this could be a deal-breaker for some businesses,” she says.

According to Camilla Winlo, director of consultancy at data protection and privacy specialists DQM GRC, privacy issues can often arise from a lack of understanding of the relevant data-protection guidelines. The ICO’s guidance on direct marketing advises businesses to collect individual contact preferences for email, SMS, post and telephone marketing, but doesn’t explicitly specify social media as a channel.

Consequently, warns Wilco, “many businesses don’t collect social media preferences, and assume they are covered by consent to marketing by email or SMS, or not necessary at all”. The ICO has issued separate guidance on social media marketing but Wilco says that, in her experience, many marketers are not aware of it and don’t comply with it.

Another question to consider is what information you might be unwittingly giving away in the course of operating your Facebook page. One potential source of data leaks is Facebook’s Business Manager tool (recently re-branded as Business Suite). As Steven Jupp explains, “the Business Suite allows a company to ‘bind’ its CRM, WhatsApp and Instagram accounts to its page”. The benefits of this are obvious, but “Facebook can see the conversations and the data stream between the page and the connected apps – and an attacker could too, as this continues with any apps that the page may bind to, or that a company may develop itself on the Facebook platform.”

Nor is it easy to audit exactly what information Facebook is holding that could be relevant to your business, as it accumulates data in two different ways. “First, it collects data in an explicit and obvious manner,” says Winlo. “For example, I might add my phone number in the relevant field in my personal profile. But secondly, it can collect data in a less obvious way. For example, a business might upload my email address and my phone number to Facebook so they can advertise to me.”

While Facebook has improved its transparency over the years, Winlo says it’s still “very difficult to truly understand what information it collects and processes, and what the risks associated with that might be”.

The situation gets even more complicated when staff connect their personal accounts to the business. “Staff cannot be required to connect their personal accounts, but they may choose to, in order to help customers to identify and connect with or locate them,” says Winlo. “This may enable Facebook to draw conclusions about the business, based on what it knows about the staff.”

Bischoff advised caution when it comes to tagging employees or customers in posts or photos, so as not to expose them to unnecessary attention. “Be sure to ask employees before tagging them,” he says.

The more the merrier

According to Paul Ducklin, principal research scientist at Sophos, for most firms with a presence on Facebook the biggest risk arises from giving too much access to too many people. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll end up with literally dozens of people, at all levels of responsibility and experience in the company, wired up to your company account 24 hours a day,” he says.

This may help to keep posts and responses lively and frequent, but it also greatly expands the potential for lapses in security or judgement. Some of these employees may be using the Facebook mobile app, which keeps you logged in all the time; others will be storing the company credentials in their browser for easy access.

“If any one of those people gets their phone stolen, has their browser hijacked, makes an honest mistake, or simply decides to post something controversial, that’s your page saying it, loud and clear, to the whole world, right there under your company brand,” Ducklin warns.

And don’t think it can’t happen to you. As Jupp warns, “Facebook is a wild west with regard to hijacking of people’s accounts – and a hijacked team member, especially of a high security rank, can cause leakages of data and other attacks on both staff and clients.” Anything at all that has been used in the Business Suite could be exposed.

Facebook cover

The first step towards protection is limiting access to your page. “Stick to people who need access for their job roles, and manage the access you give each person,” suggests Howells – which, of course, is good security sense for any online resource, not just Facebook. Similarly, “make sure that removing access to Facebook, and any other accounts, is part of your employee off-boarding process so that ex-staff members can’t continue to access the account or any private groups you have set up.”

Don’t go too far in restricting access, though: Facebook reserves the right to ban or block individual users at any time, so CyberSmart’s Jamie Akhtar recommends you create more than one administrator. In this way, “if a personal account is shut down for any reason, you have a second profile that can still access your page”.

On top of that, remember standard practices such as basic password hygiene. “Often a page manager will use the same password for both the Facebook account and the admin login on their website,” Jupp notes. “That could lead to a data leak, or the complete hijack of an associated site.”

Ducklin recommends that, before you “go corporate” on Facebook, you plan out “which apps will be granted access; which individuals will have passwords allowing them to post; what the official company rules of engagement will be, so no one has to guess; what sort of 2FA you are going to use; what privacy settings are right for your corporate account; and who’s going to be responsible for regularly reviewing the list of logged in users and authorised apps in Facebook itself.”

Ad-matching and surveillance

A big reason why businesses love Facebook is that it’s one of the best-performing options for advertisers, outperforming Google on average cost per click, cost per action and conversion rate. “From a business perspective, the benefits are clear,” says Winlo. “And from my personal perspective, Facebook advertising has led me to discover some of my favourite small brands that I would not have found otherwise.”

However, the methods it uses to so effectively match ads to customers are controversial. Facebook creates detailed profiles of users, based not only on what they do while using the site, but on their interactions with other sites too. “These profiles are created, in essence, by following you around everywhere you go and monitoring everything you do,” Winlo explains. “That’s known as ‘pervasive surveillance’, and it’s about the most privacy-intrusive thing it is possible to do.

“People have a human right to privacy, and pervasive surveillance violates that right,” Winlo adds. “In 2013, the Internet Engineering Task Force described pervasive surveillance as ‘a technical attack’ on the internet, leading to RFC 7258, which says that internet protocols should be designed to mitigate the risk of pervasive surveillance wherever possible.”

Of course, few businesses will let that stop them from taking advantage of such a powerful tool. The standard justification is that anyone who uses Facebook has implicitly accepted pervasive surveillance as the price of entry; notably, Apple’s recent changes to iOS inhibit Facebook’s ability to track individuals without their express consent.

As Winlo points out, however, privacy campaigners would argue that “Facebook’s whole approach is fundamentally unlawful, and that any advertiser choosing to make use of their platform is benefiting from the fruit of the forbidden tree.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent a letter of protest to Facebook, warning the company should not have used its consent decree with the FCC to justify banning three researchers’ accounts this week.

The social media platform disabled three New York University academics’ accounts who worked on Ad Observer, which uses browser extensions to watch ads that Facebook and YouTube show users. The project attempts to understand how social media platforms decide which advertisements to show people, especially political content.

The extensions, which only look at what is inside an ad frame and do not collect data about comments or other user details, are installed and used with user consent.

In an August 3 blog post, Facebook accused the researchers of scraping data and said the project violated its terms of service. "We took these actions to stop unauthorized scraping and protect people’s privacy in line with our privacy program under the FTC Order," it said.

Facebook's consent decree with the FTC stemmed from 2012 when the two parties settled over claims the social media giant misled users over its privacy protections. Last year, the FTC amended the privacy order to include additional provisions from a $5 billion settlement that the two parties reached in 2019 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Facebook later clarified its position to Wired magazine, explaining that the violation was of its own privacy terms created in response to the FTC order rather than the FTC order itself.

However, Samuel Levine, acting director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, still took issue with Facebook's original statement citing the FTC privacy order. In a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he said the company's insinuation that the FTC's consent decree required an account ban was inaccurate.

"The FTC is committed to protecting the privacy of people, and efforts to shield targeted advertising practices from scrutiny run counter to that mission," he said. "While I appreciate that Facebook has now corrected the record, I am disappointed by how your company has conducted itself in this matter."

He added Facebook had failed to check with the FTC before making its statement. "Had you honored your commitment to contact us in advance, we would have pointed out that the consent decree does not bar Facebook from creating exceptions for good-faith research in the public interest," he said. "Indeed, the FTC supports efforts to shed light on opaque business practices, especially around surveillance-based advertising."

Other organizations, including Mozilla, criticized Facebook's justification for the move. The organization reviewed the open source Ad Observer code twice before recommending it and was happy it did not violate user privacy.

"It does not collect personal posts or information about your friends. And it does not compile a user profile on its servers," Mozilla said this week.

The rapidly rising number of COVID-19 cases in the US is forcing social media giants like Twitter and LinkedIn to reverse course on previous decisions they’d made.

In the case of Twitter, the company is closing its San Francisco and New York offices, which it had reopened just two weeks ago. It’s also pumping the brakes on plans to reopen its other offices.

“After careful consideration of the CDC’s updated guidelines, and in light of current conditions, Twitter has made the decision to close our opened offices in New York and San Francisco as well as pause future office reopenings, effective immediately,” a spokesperson told ITPro.

In a major shift Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that vaccinated Americans resume wearing masks in indoor public spaces if they live in high-transmission communities or have vulnerable household members.

As for LinkedIn, the company is doing a 180 and will allow most of its 16,000 employees to work remotely, according to Reuters. They’ll have the flexibility to work remotely full-time or work at an office part-time.

With this new policy, LinkedIn is backing off its plans to have employees work from the office 50% of the time when COVID-19 pandemic restrictions are lifted.

“We anticipate that we’ll definitely see more remote employees than what we saw prior to the pandemic,” LinkedIn’s chief people officer Teuila Hanson told Reuters. Hanson adding that some jobs would require in-office work.

The tech sector was one of the first industries to send workers home when coronavirus first hit the US last year.

However, tech giants have had different reactions now that the delta variant is rising, causing another public health crisis.

For instance, LinkedIn doesn’t require employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to return to the office, but Facebook and Google are.

But LinkedIn’s openness to remote work contrasts other tech giants’ hard-line stances on returning to the office. Apple announced it would require most employees to work from the office three days per week, while Google expects 60% of its global workforce to return to the office at least part-time.

Apple has reportedly pushed back its return to the office by at least a month due to the spike in coronavirus variants. The deadline is reportedly now set for October at the earliest. Furthermore, Apple is reportedly going to give its employees at least a month’s warning before ordering them to return to the office.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and TikTok have committed to changing their moderation policies to protect women from abuse online.

The announcement, made at the UN Generation Equality Forum in Paris, was orchestrated by the World Wide Web Foundation (WWWF) in response to rising concerns over harassment online. The social media giants have agreed to a set of commitments developed during WWWF workshops on tackling gender-based abuse online.

The commitments focus on two areas: content curation and online abuse reporting. On the curation side, the workshops found that women needed more control over what they see online and who could comment on their posts. They also highlighted the need for better systems to report abusive content.

Each commitment has four considerations. On the curation side, companies must offer more granular settings over who can see and reply to posts. They must also provide more accessible language throughout the user experience, easy navigation and access to safety tools, and actively reduce the amount of abuse women see online.

The reporting commitment requires companies to offer users the ability to manage and track their reports, increase their capacity to address context and language, provide more policy and product guidance when reporting abuse, and establish additional channels for help and support during the reporting process.

The WWWF said it would measure the companies' performance in these areas and report it annually.

The foundation cited an Economist Intelligence Unit report measuring online violence against women.

The report found that 85% of women reported witnessing online violence against other women, including outside their networks. It also found 38% had personally experienced online abuse.

The most common abuse was misinformation and defamation, as 67% of survey respondents experienced it. The least common types of abuse were violent threats, which an alarming 52% of survey respondents reported experiencing.

Other abuse tactics included publishing personal information, impersonation, sharing damaging information across multiple platforms, image- and video-based abuse, and stalking or hacking.

Some of the tech firms supporting the commitments have some work to do regarding the more equitable treatment of various groups online and offline.

TikTok has drawn criticism for allegedly telling moderators to suppress videos from users deemed not attractive or rich enough and from users with disabilities. Google, which already changed its harassment reporting policies following a mass employee walkout, drew flak late last year for allegedly dismissing AI ethics co-lead Timnit Gebru after she questioned the company’s treatment of women and people of color.

Last year, Plan International sent an open letter to social media platforms demanding action after its survey found that harassment across the most popular platforms is driving girls and young women offline.

Facebook became the fifth US tech firm to surpass a market capitalisation of $1 trillion on Monday.

The social network joins Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google's parent company Alphabet in reaching the milestone.

The company's shares closed up 4.2% at $355.64, according to CNBC, following a legal ruling that dismissed an antitrust complaint brought by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a coalition of 48 state attorneys general.

The case threatened to untie Facebook from its WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions because of the competitive advantage it allegedly holds over rival firms. The FTC sued the social network in December 2020, arguing that Facebook engaged in a systematic strategy to eliminate threats to its monopoly with these acquisitions. However, the Federal Court ruled that the FTC failed to prove the central argument of its case.

"Although the Court does not agree with all of Facebook's contentions here, it ultimately concurs that the agency's Complaint is legally insufficient and must therefore be dismissed," reads the filing from the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

"The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims - namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking Services."

The dismissal led to Facebook shares rising and ultimately pushed its market cap over the $1 trillion mark. The firm makes most of its revenue through targeted advertising but it is starting to reap rewards with its business segments, such as Workplace, its enterprise communications platform.

Despite finally reaching the landmark, Facebook remains far behind the likes of Amazon and Google, which are pushing the $2 trillion mark - a valuation that only Apple and Microsoft have topped, so far.

Despite knowing that social media platforms contribute to poor mental health, an alarming percentage of Americans would not give up their Facebook or Twitter accounts, a new study found.

A survey of social media users by the Reboot Foundation found that 70% said they would not give up their accounts for less than $10,000. Another 40% said they would choose to keep their social media accounts over their cars, TVs, and even their pets.

The research also looked at social media users’ mental health by asking users if they thought their social media use intensified any of the following feelings or conditions: anxiety, depression, difficulty concentrating, loneliness, or low self-esteem.

Over 50% of respondents said social media at least "somewhat" intensified those feelings for each of these conditions. At least 20% of those surveyed said social media use led to “very” or “extremely” intense feelings.

Despite people knowing social media has a detrimental impact on mental health, only about a third said they take steps to limit their social media use.

When asked how much money they would need to permanently cut all their social media accounts, over 70% said it would take $10,000 or more — 20% percent said it would take at least $1 million.

Most survey respondents felt they could use social media without seriously harming their mental health, but they acknowledged its negative impacts.

"These survey results clearly show the deep and somewhat disturbing attachments users have to their social media accounts," said Helen Lee Bouygues, Reboot's founder and president. "Even though users recognize the deleterious effects social media has on their mental health, they're unwilling–or unable–to limit their use of these platforms. It's not unlike a smoker and their cigarettes."

Facebook is rolling out tools for developers to create new ways for businesses to interact with customers on Instagram and WhatsApp.

The social network also unveiled the general availability of Messenger API for Instagram as part of a series of announcements at its F8 Refresh conference that aims to create more business use cases on its platforms.

Facebook has been gradually building out an extensive commercial infrastructure around its social media, WhatsApp, and Instagram users. This was initially its advertising models, but that has extended into marketing, customer services, commerce, and also workplace productivity.

The company is hoping to support more types of messaging on WhatsApp, which will include a business alert for when items are back in stock and a separate way for people to opt into messaging with businesses through a new 'Login Connect' feature.

"Our vision is for messaging to be the primary way people and businesses communicate," the company said in a blog post. "Making it is as convenient, unobtrusive and personalised as possible, using the same familiar apps and features used to communicate with family and friends today."

F8 was originally a hackathon that evolved into a bigger event over time, however, the last two installments have been virtual due to the pandemic. No big products or hardware announcements have featured but developer updates have taken prominence with business-oriented developer tools paving the way for the firm to bolsters its commercial strategy on both WhatsApp and Instagram.

Facebook also announced a new app builder, called "Business Apps", that developers can access from its Business Suite - this was launched last year as a single hub for businesses to manage activity across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.

While the federal government is poised to spend billions expanding broadband service and helping bridge the digital divide, an FCC commissioner is pitching a different idea: Make Big Tech pay for it instead.

Brendan Carr, the senior Republican FCC commissioner, called for tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to help pay for federal efforts to connect more American households to broadband internet.

"It is time to fundamentally rethink how we fund our high-speed networks," Carr wrote in an op-ed published in Newsweek. "We should start requiring Big Tech to pay its fair share."

After the COVID-19 pandemic helped expose the depth of the digital divide in the US, policymakers in Washington, DC are pledging to bring broadband service to more remote regions and low-income households. The Biden administration is calling for $100 billion in spending to connect every American household to broadband internet by the end of the decade.

Meanwhile, Carr is arguing Congress should tax big tech to pay for it.

"Big Tech has been enjoying a free ride on our internet infrastructure while skipping out on the billions of dollars in costs needed to maintain and build that network," Carr said. He pointed to a study showing that online streaming by just five companies — Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, and Microsoft — account for a whopping 75% of all traffic on rural broadband networks.

"Yet Big Tech derives tremendous value from these high-speed networks," Carr added. "Indeed, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google generated nearly $1 trillion in revenues in 2020 alone — an almost 20 percent increase over the prior year."

Who mostly pays for that internet infrastructure? Carr points out that ordinary Americans pay for it, through taxes on their monthly phone bills. Those taxes go into the FCC's Universal Service Fund, which helps subsidize broadband expansion in rural areas.

It's outdated, Carr argues. "This is like taxing horseshoes to pay for highways."

Carr has no power to make any of these changes himself. He's one of five commissioners who oversee the FCC. Instead, he's calling on Congress to do it.

"Legislators could consider a range of potential revenue streams that have a sufficient nexus to the internet, including video streaming services like Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime; online advertising services like those offered by Google and Facebook; Apple's App Store and devices; content delivery networks and cloud services like AWS and online gaming services like Microsoft's Xbox," Carr suggests.

However, lobbying groups such as the Internet Alliance, which represents the world's largest internet companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, argue against "taxing the internet" to fund broadband.

Facebook's enterprise communications platform, Workplace, now has seven million paid subscribers, representing a 40% increase year-on-year.

Launched in 2016, Workplace has traditionally been one of Facebook's lowest-earning business units, often counted alongside the likes of Oculus and Portal under the "other" section of its financial results.

However, its steady growth and brand association has helped it secure some high profile customers, including the likes of Spotify and Starbucks - although it still lags behind market rivals Slack and Microsoft Teams.

"We built Workplace as an internal version of Facebook to run our own company, and it was so useful we started letting other organisations use it too, including everyone from Spotify to Starbucks to the World Health Organisation," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. "More companies are starting to use our virtual reality tools for work as well, and I'm excited to build more new ways for people to work together that weren't possible before."

Microsoft Teams revealed last month that it has surpassed 145 million daily active users - a yearly increase of 93%. Slack no longer reveals user numbers but, as of September 2019, the company recorded 12 million daily active users, almost double that of Facebook's Workplace.

As it looks to continue increasing users, Workplace has also announced a few new features, such as a live Q&A function and an integration with Microsoft 365 and Google G Suite's calendar. There are also 'diversity-focused' updates, such as emojis with different skin tones and a service that allows users to show their colleagues the correct way to pronounce their name.

The feature offers phonetic spellings.

All the major tech giants are going green. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, and IBM have all launched plans to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the next decade.

Now, just in time for Earth Day, Facebook has announced it’s achieved its goal of powering its global operations on 100% renewable energy. It’s also reached net-zero emissions, a goal it set three years ago.

The company has achieved this by investing $8 billion to build a network of 63 new wind and solar plants, all located on the same power grids as Facebook’s data centers.

“Although we’ve reached our latest goal, the work isn’t over,” the company said. “We will contract new solar and wind projects to remain at 100 percent renewable energy, even as we continue to grow.”

“We’ve already set a new goal that in 2030, we will reach net zero emissions across not only our own operations but also our value chain — our suppliers, as well as items like business travel and employee commuting.”

To reach that goal, the social media giant is working with its suppliers to invest in high-quality carbon-removal projects and continue to find innovative ways to reduce emissions.

In the meantime, Facebook has become one of the world’s largest corporate buyers of renewable energy. Today, it has contracts in place for more than 6 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar energy across 18 states and five countries.

In 2020 alone, Facebook contracted for 1 GW of new renewable energy and brought 2 GW of renewable energy projects online to support its operations.

Virtually all the major players in the American tech world have launched large-scale green initiatives in recent years.

Netflix recently announced that it’s pursuing a net-zero carbon strategy. The streaming giant will join IBM, Apple, and Microsoft in their green initiatives, which they aim to complete by 2030.

“We believe that climate change is an urgent issue facing the world today,” Facebook said, “and we are committed to doing our part to address this challenge.”

Facebook is partnering with Google in planning two new undersea cables to connect North America, Indonesia, and Singapore.

The move comes just weeks after Facebook scrapped plans for an underwater data cable between California and Hong Kong because the US government feared China could have used the cable to steal data. Facebook is confident it will win approval for the project this time around.

“We are working with partners and regulators to meet all of the concerns that people have, and we look forward to that cable being a valuable, productive transpacific cable going forward in the near future,” Facebook’s vice president of network investments, Kevin Salvadori, told Reuters.

Underwater cables carry most of the world’s data and are a vital part of global communications. Groups of communications firms typically build these cables and then charge other companies to use them.

Facebook is partnering with Google and regional telecommunication companies on these two proposed cables as part of an ongoing effort to boost internet connection capacity between the regions. The cables will still need regulatory approval before the project goes forward.

The new undersea cables, named Echo and Bifrost, are the first to follow a new route crossing the Java Sea, the company said. Facebook predicted the cables would increase overall subsea data capacity across the Pacific by about 70%.

This new development comes shortly after Facebook canceled plans to install an 8,000-mile-long fiber-optic cable running along the ocean floor to connect Hong Kong and Taiwan with two California sites.

Facebook killed the project because of pressure from US national security officials who raised concerns that an undersea cable to Hong Kong would be vulnerable to Chinese espionage.

That was only the latest cross-Pacific undersea data cable to stall because of US government resistance.

In September, developers canceled plans for a separate underwater cable between Los Angeles and Hong Kong because the US government believed the Hong Kong operators had a relationship with Chinese intelligence and security services.

A third undersea cable between the U.S. and Hong Kong was also canceled last year when Facebook withdrew its proposal to lay a cable between Hong Kong and San Francisco.

All these plans were killed after the US Department of Justice warned the FCC against direct links between the US and Hong Kong because of Chinese crackdowns in the region.

Tech workers think big tech is too powerful and that heavier regulations should be placed on artificial intelligence (AI).

Those are the main findings of a new Protocol survey. The company surveyed employees from large tech firms nationwide, and those surveyed ranged from IT associates to C-suite executives. Nearly 40% of the respondents worked at companies with more than 1,000 employees and over $500 million in annual revenue.

Protocol asked the workers about many burning issues facing the tech industry, and the findings were eye-opening.

Big tech is too powerful

Tech workers think Big Tech is too powerful. In fact, 78% of them said so, and just 11% disagree.

The survey found the same results for the quartet of Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple. More than 77% of tech workers said those companies have too much power, and only 8% disagreed.

However, none of that translates into remedies.

On the other hand, nearly 70% of workers wanted a big tech player to partner with or acquire their companies, and three-quarters said big tech companies should be allowed to acquire other firms.

Only 40% think Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple should be broken up.

Big tech shouldn’t work with law enforcement

After last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, tech giants, such as IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft, announced they were cutting ties or suspending work with police departments. They also halted police use of facial recognition technology.

Now, over 40% of tech employees think big tech should stop working with law enforcement altogether.

However, it’s worth noting that a sizable minority — just under 34% — disagrees with this notion.

Big tech should work more closely with Chinese tech companies

Of those surveyed, 60% said US-based big tech companies should work more closely with Chinese tech companies. Also, 56% agreed that US restrictions on Chinese tech companies had gone too far — 28% were neutral on this topic.

However, 46% of tech workers think the US should ban the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from doing business in the US

The government should regulate AI

Interestingly 73% of tech workers surveyed think the government should regulate AI. Only 9% disagreed, and 18% were neutral on the question.

Twitter has sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for launching an investigation into its content-moderation practices, arguing it violates the company’s First Amendment rights.

The company filed a complaint in Northern California's district court this week, arguing Paxton's investigation was retaliation for its decision to ban former-President Donald Trump's tweets in January.

"AG Paxton may not compel Twitter to publish such content over its objection, and he may not penalize Twitter for exercising its right to exclude such content from its platform," the company said.

Twitter had moderated Trump's content several times, first checking a Tweet about mail-in ballots in California in May 2020 and restricting his tweets repeatedly since.

The company locked Trump's account on January 6 as he encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol, resulting in riots and rioters and police officers’ deaths. At the time, the company requested the removal of three tweets for violating its civic integrity policy. It said if Trump failed to remove the tweets or Trump continued violating its rules, Twitter would make the lock permanent.

Twitter permanently banned Donald Trump's account on January 8, after he posted more tweets the company said violated its Glorification of Violence policy. Facebook also banned Trump posts, and YouTube blocked Trump from new uploads following the Capitol riots. Amazon also discontinued hosting services for conservative social network Parler, and Apple banned the service from its app store.

Paxton launched an investigation into Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google on January 13, five days after the Twitter ban. The Twitter investigation sought documents detailing the company's internal content-moderation process.

When announcing the investigations, Paxton called out "seemingly coordinated de-platforming" of Trump that silenced those with speech and political beliefs that don’t align with Big Tech companies.

Twitter argued that disclosing its content-moderation processes would harm its editorial discretion.

"These moderation policies and procedures are functionally equivalent to the internal editorial decision-making processes of news organizations: just as newspapers and magazines carefully guard their internal deliberations about what news they see as fit to print or what op-eds they will publish, so too does Twitter guard its internal deliberations and procedures for making editorial judgments," Twitter said.

The social media giant added that Paxton's investigation had a chilling effect on its ability to make those decisions.

The company said it attempted to work with Paxton's office to narrow the investigation’s scope, pointing out the request covered documents outside the Trump decision, including policies on posts involving suicide and self-harm. The investigation also explicitly called for information on internal discussions about Parler, even though Twitter has never censored any of Parler's content on its platform.

The lawsuit calls for a restraining order against Paxton's office to stop it from taking the investigation further.

This is not the first investigation to scrutinize content-moderation policies at Twitter and other large tech companies. In December, the FTC launched a wide-ranging investigation calling for information on internal moderation processes at companies including Twitter.

Tech giants Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have frozen political donations as America struggles with its constitutional crisis.

These and other companies, which normally donate to organizations via their political action committees (PACs), have suspended those activities in the wake of last week's riots at the US Capitol.

Speaking to Axios, Facebook said it’s pausing all PAC contributions for at least the first quarter of 2021 after last week’s attacks, which were spurred by president Trump's disinformation about election fraud. The company will also review its spending policies, a spokesperson added.

Microsoft has also suspended political donations while it reviews the implications of the Capitol riots. The company drew criticism from its employees last week, who noted that the company had declared support for a peaceful transition of power while also donating to politicians who challenged the election results.

This is not the first time Microsoft has suspended political donations through its PAC. It usually pauses political contributions during the first quarter of a new Congress, it told reporters, adding it will "take additional steps" this year, consulting with employees. In July 2019, a leaked letter revealed that Microsoft suspended PAC activities for a few months while it took time out to consider employee feedback about its donations.

Google also told reporters it would pause donations for the time being while assessing its policies. “We have frozen all NetPAC political contributions while we review and reassess its policies following last week’s deeply troubling events,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC.

While these companies imposed bans, others limited their actions to specific political factions. Amazon told CNBC it would freeze donations to lawmakers who voted against certifying the election results in Congress last week. Airbnb said the same, as did AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast.

The donation freeze in the tech and communications industry mirrors decisions among other large corporations. Axios noted that investment giant BlackRock, medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific, BP, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase would freeze all PAC donations for the time being. Marriott International, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Dow said they would freeze contributions to those who voted against certification.

In the wake of the Capitol riots that killed five people, Congresspeople are moving to impeach President Trump for incitement of insurrection in his final days in office. The FBI released an advisory this week warning of violent nationwide protests in the coming days as the country prepares for President-elect Biden's inauguration.

The government is proposing a set of punitive measures, including hefty GDPR-like fines, designed to force tech firms and social media platforms into limiting the spread of harmful content that circulates online.

Under the proposals, an evolution of the Online Harms white paper published in April 2019, social media firms and tech giants will face financial penalties of £18 million, or up to 10% of their annual global revenue, if they fail to comply.

Executives of major firms will also face criminal sanctions if their businesses fail to adhere to a duty of care for their users asking them to limit the spread of harmful content, according to Reuters.

The largest platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, will need to assess what may constitute legal but harmful content, such as disinformation, and prevent such posts from spreading where appropriate.

“Today Britain is setting the global standard for safety online with the most comprehensive approach yet to online regulation,” said Oliver Dowden, the secretary of state for Digital, Culture Media and Sport (DCMS). “We are entering a new age of accountability for tech to protect children and vulnerable users, to restore trust in this industry, and to enshrine in law safeguards for free speech.”

The measures are due to be outlined by Dowden in the House of Commons today, and are expected to be formalised and drafted into a bill next year. There may not be any new laws until at least 2022, however.

The government has been keen to introduce a form of mechanism to keep online tech giants in check when it comes to the harmful material that propagates on their platforms, in light of the widening consensus that self-regulation has failed.

The white paper, proposed last year, included even harsher measures, including a provision that would have allowed internet service providers (ISPs) to block some services entirely if the respective companies were guilty of repeated non-compliance.

The EU, too, has been wrangling with this issue for years, suggesting various measures at different stages to address the issue of harmful content circulating on social media. Various iterations of these plans have even included granting companies a one-hour window in which to remove qualifying content or face sanctions. This is despite the EU recognising last year that these companies have become more effective at detecting and acting against hate speech.

In recent days, the European Commission has been putting the finishing touches to its Digital Services Act, according to Politico. Similar to the UK’s plans, these draft proposals will mandate that large online platforms must limit the capacity for illegal material to spread on their networks.

Regulators and outside groups must also be granted more access to internal data, and auditors will be charged with determining whether these platforms are complying with the proposals.

“In recent years, there has been a recognition from governments, society and the tech firms themselves that there is a need to take coordinated action to tackle harmful content online,” said Ben Packer, partner at global law firm Linklaters. “Today’s proposals from the UK and the EU are the most ambitious measures announced anywhere.”

“Though the regimes differ in many ways, both impose new and potentially onerous duties on online platforms to protect their users from harmful content. They also both propose heavy sanctions for those who fail to comply, including fines of up to 10% of a company’s global turnover.”

The UK’s new measures come just days after the government revealed plans to establish a special unit within the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to regulate the industry and market practices of tech companies. The Digital Markets Unit will work to tackle the rising concentration of market power among companies such as Facebook and Google by enforcing an industry code of conduct to govern their behaviour.

"Given our leadership in the application of ethics and integrity in IT, it should be no surprise that the UK is moving decisively to tackle online harms, one of the biggest and most complex digital challenges of our time,” said Stephen Kelly, chair of industry body Tech Nation.

“Equally, it offers the UK the opportunity to lead a new category of tech, such as "safetech", building on our heritage of regtech and compliance, which already assure global markets and economies."

The internet has been one of the most revolutionary technologies of our age, and most agree that the transformation it’s brought to our society has been beneficial. Social media – one of the more recent arrivals on the scene – has also generally been a good thing, allowing us to connect with friends and family across the world, find people who have similar interests to us, and rapidly share jokes, memes and information.

This latter element, however, has slowly turned from a benefit into a problem. Disinformation and what might be termed “fake news” is seeping in everywhere, making it difficult to know what and who to believe.

In this week’s episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we speak to Andy Patel, a researcher with cyber security firm F-Secure, about what disinformation is, how it spreads and the negative effects it could have on businesses.

Footnotes

• QAnon: What is it and where did it come from?
• FBI warns of hackers spoofing its domain
• Dems ask Facebook, Google and Twitter for coronavirus disinformation reports
• WhatsApp restricts message forwarding to curb spread of 5G myths
• What is phishing?
• IT Pro Live: Fighting terrorism with technology
• Fake news 'is killing our minds', says Tim Cook
• Trend Micro's free web-based tool takes on hackers and fake news
• WhatsApp counters fake viral messages with new fact-check tool
• Satirical websites target Mark Zuckerberg with fake news
• Trump confirms US cyber attack on Russia election trolls
• What is hacktivism?
• The IT Pro Podcast: What COVID-19 can teach us about open data
• Biden team signals president-elect may target Section 230 and data privacy
• Dems ask Facebook, Google and Twitter for coronavirus disinformation reports
• Google turns its hand to fighting election abuse
• Facebook facing scrutiny amid claims it encourages spread of misinformation
• The IT Pro Podcast: The truth about 5G

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Instagram is changing some features to adapt to how creators use the service during the pandemic. With more individuals and businesses using Instagram to livestream events, the company has expanded its stream time limit from one hour to four for all users.

The increased time limit will help teachers, musicians, artists, fitness instructors, activists and other creators replace cancelled in-person events with virtual events. Instagram Live use has increased by 70% since government-imposed lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Amid the increased traffic, the site’s seen a boost from artists playing music for fans, celebrities hosting talk shows, trainers running live workouts and live DJ events. Instagram Live creators have been looking to host sessions longer than the previously set 60-minute time limit.

Instagram’s increased time limit matches Facebook’s four-hour cap for livestreams on mobile devices. Facebook, however, offers an eight-hour time limit for livestreaming from a desktop computer or API.

Instagram creators must have an account in “good standing” to qualify for the longer time limit. Accounts with a history of intellectual property or policy violations won’t qualify. Instagram is also updating IGTV’s “Live Now” section and will direct users to additional live content at the end of livestreams.

Instagram announced another pending feature, which will allow creators to archive livestreams for up to 30 days. Today, creators can privately archive Feed posts and Stories but can only save a livestream by publishing it to IGTV after it ends. The new feature for archiving live broadcasts will be similar to archiving Stories and Feed posts, although Instagram will delete live videos after 30 days.

For now, Instagram creators can save or download the video. This will enable users to publish the video on other social media platforms, like YouTube or Facebook, or edit the videos to make them shorter for TikTok. The Archive feature enables creators to download the video at a later date.

BT has rolled out Facebook Workplace to enable enterprise-wide internal communications for 80,000 employees, as businesses put emphasis on new ways of interaction due to lockdown restrictions.

The telecoms giant told IT Pro that it previously used various social networking platforms, including Microsoft's Yammer, before deciding to unify and simplify its communications channels. It started the deployment of Workplace in July 2019.

Facebook Workplace, which was launched in 2016, now connects 80% of BT employees through chats, Groups, and video across all parts of the organisation in 54 countries.

The B2B communications platform is being used to connect BT employees, including external employees at Openreach and engineers, enabling them to stay informed while working in the field.

BT’s director of Internal Communications Helen Willett said that “Workplace was a simple choice for BT”, describing it as “mobile-friendly, easy to use and intuitive”.

“But more than that, it’s culture-enhancing. Leaders can talk to their teams in a matter of seconds and the peer-to-peer benefits include enabling a sense of belonging, instant access to news and a way to solve problems collaboratively.

"Perhaps most importantly, having Workplace has made it so much easier for us to stick to our principle of ‘inside out’ - letting our colleagues know what’s happening, increasing trust and, in turn, advocacy. Sometimes we have a matter of minutes to reach our people - Workplace allows us to do that, and to do it well,” she added.

So far, BT has seen an avalanche of involvement from its employees, with three million reactions and a further 970,000 comments on Workplace.

BT CEO Philip Jansen said that the platform is allowing the company to aim for a “fast-paced, inclusive and empowering” future.

“We’ve seen many benefits including being able to share news instantly, gather feedback on subjects that our people care about, and enabling more authentic leadership communications,” he said, adding that the platform has also “strengthened” the company’s communities across BT and Openreach.

“Through Workplace, colleagues connect with each other on the things that matter, sharing ideas and problem-solving together in real time. That is hugely beneficial to our colleagues and customers, and therefore to BT as a whole."

Entre, a social networking site designed to bring entrepreneurs together, has announced the launch of a new app.

The app’s goal is to help startups find the resources, funding and connections they need to grow a successful business. The app is available for free in the Google Play Store and the iOS App Store.

Entre, founded by Michael Marra in early 2019, boasts 20,000 members and has had over 160 events. “We knew that we needed a way to connect everyone in our network and entrepreneurs around the world online rather than through events alone. That's why we created our app, so we can make entrepreneurship accessible to anyone for free,” said Marra.

The app gained over 4,000 users from over 100 countries while in beta. Users can network with other entrepreneurs and join online workshops. There is also the option to join Entre Pro, a premium membership that offers discounts with various partners and plus access to all Entre events.

In July, Entre held a Black-Led Startup Pitch Competition. Third-place winner, Undock, a New York-based startup, raised $1.6 million in funding from Lightship Capital and other investors.

Entre is raising money through Wefunder to continue growing and already has over $185,000 in funding from angel investors. The brand hopes to continue scaling to create the largest social network for all types of entrepreneurs.

Twitter’s platform lead Nick Tornow tweeted out the news that the social media company has hired Rinki Sethi to be its new chief information security officer (CISO).

Tornow’s tweet read, “Today, I’m thrilled to welcome @rinkisethi as the new CISO of @twitter. An inspiring and experienced leader, Rinki comes to us via Rubrik, IBM, and Palo Alto Networks. At Twitter, she will lead our growing InfoSec team, protecting our customers and our company to earn trust.”

In mid-July, a 17-year-old Florida boy hacked Twitter and hijacked a number of high-profile accounts, including Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Bill Gates. He then used those accounts to post a Bitcoin scam. The hack exposed some serious issues in Twitter’s security, prompting the company to announce it would ramp up security on high-profile accounts.

Mike Convertino, Twitter’s former security chief, left the company in December 2019, and the role has remained vacant since.

As CISO, Sethi will lead the company’s information security policies and practices. As Tornow stated, Sethi has worked with Rubrik, IBM and Palo Alto Networks. She also helps out as an advisor for many startup companies, including Authomize and LevelOps.

WhatsApp is exposing its users' personal data to dozens of third-party apps, according to a report from Business Insider.

These apps are able to track WhatsApp users’ activity, according to the report, including who they talk to, when they are using their devices, and even when they are asleep.

WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging app that boasts “fast, simple, secure messaging and calling for free,” is under scrutiny over the supposedly lax security protocols. The apps hone in on WhatsApps “online” signal feature to track users’ activity, including who they’re talking to, their sleeping patterns and when they’re on their mobile devices without users’ consent.

This isn’t the first time that WhatsApp has been flagged for security issues. In April, we reported the app left its users vulnerable to “shoulder surfing” attacks. In June, the app came under fire for allowing users’ phone numbers to pop up in Google searches.

WhatsApp has a dedicated security advisories page where it posts security issue disclosers in an effort to maintain transparency.

WhatsApp has grown in popularity amid the coronavirus pandemic. There have also been reports of WhatsApp developing a Zoom competitor to take advantage of the growing demand for teleconferencing.

Twitter has announced that it will help secure high-profile accounts ahead of the US presidential election.

According to the announcement, Twitter will require or strongly recommend security updates for certain high-profile accounts that could influence the November 3 election. The hope is to protect them from potential election-influencing hacks.

Twitter plans to inform these accounts of the suggested and required changes via an in-app notification (pictured above). The accounts Twitter plans to target include:

• The US Executive Branch and Congress
• US Governors and Secretaries of State
• Presidential campaigns, political parties and candidates with Twitter Election Labels who are running for US House, US Senate, or Governor
• Major US news outlets and political journalists

Some of the security updates will include:

• Requiring a strong password — those with weak passwords will have to update it on the next login
• Users must verify their email address or phone number to reset their passwords
• Strong recommendations to activate two-factor authentication

Twitter will also implement additional internal security measures, starting with more advanced suspicious activity detection and alerts. It’ll also add additional login defenses and expedited account-recovery support.

This isn’t the first security measure social media companies have taken leading into the 2020 election. Facebook and Instagram launched their Voting Information Center in August, and Twitter released strict election misinformation rules around the same time. In January, Facebook banned deepfakes and manipulated videos.

Then, in September, Facebook announced it would stop approving political ads a week before the election. Finally, later in September, Twitter announced it would remove or label tweets intended to undermine public confidence in civic processes.

These law changes come on the heels of social media manipulation allegedly playing a role in the 2016 presidential election and the increased use of social media in politics.

With the TikTok saga nearing its end, YouTube has officially announced it’s jumping into the short-video business with YouTube Shorts.

YouTube Shorts, which debuted yesterday as a beta test in India, allows users to create 15-second videos using new creation tools, including:

• Multi-segment camera: Allows you to string together multiple video clips
• Record with music: Allows you to choose from a library of songs for your Shorts
• Speed control: Allows you to speed up or slow down your video
• Timer and countdown: Provides a visible timer and countdown so you can record yourself hands-free

These are only the initial features available during the Shorts beta test, and YouTube says it’ll add more robust features before its wider release in a few months.

To help push users to take advantage of Shorts, YouTube has added a large “+” button on the bottom of the YouTube Android app. Simply press that button and follow the prompts to create a Short, add music and upload it.

Users can watch YouTube Shorts via a new row at the top of the YouTube app homepage. They can scroll through videos by swiping up and down in the app.

YouTube Shorts is rolling out slowly, starting on Android devices in India. On top of adding more features over the next couple of months, YouTube will release Shorts in additional countries and add iOS support. Unfortunately, there’s no concrete schedule yet.

Twitter announced it’s expanding its civic integrity policy and will remove or label tweets containing false information intended to undermine public confidence in civic processes, including the 2020 US election.

According to a blog post announcing the expanded policy, this will include:

• Tweets containing false or misleading information meant to confuse election laws or the officials executing them
• Tweets with disputed claims or unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying or election results certification
• Tweets containing misleading claims about election results, including victory claims before the results have been verified or tweets encouraging unlawful tactics to prevent a peaceful transfer of power

Tweets labeled under the policy will also have reduced visibility across Twitter, though anyone following the account in question will still see and be able to retweet the labeled tweet.

“In recognition of the changing circumstances of how people will vote in 2020, and in line with our commitment to protecting the integrity of the election conversation, we’re expanding this existing framework,” explained Twitter.

Twitter added, “The goal is to further protect against content that could suppress the vote and help stop the spread of harmful misinformation that could compromise the integrity of an election or other civic process.”

Twitter will begin applying the policy next week and emphasized it will be “applied equally and judiciously for everyone.” President Donald Trump has already used social media to sow doubts about the election, and Twitter has already labeled several of his tweets as containing false or misleading information.

Facebook made similar changes to its platform last week, as It won’t approve any new political ads during the week leading up to the presidential election. Facebook will also link any candidate’s post declaring an early victory to vote counts from Reuters and the National Election Pool.

Facebook began as a project to connect students at Harvard, the college Mark Zuckerberg attended. Now, the social media goliath is going back to its roots — sort of — by launching Facebook Campus to help connect college students to classmates and college happening.

Facebook Campus is a part of the Facebook app that allows users to create a separate Campus profile. They then link it to their college using their college email address and anticipated graduation year. Students can also add their major, minor, classes and hometown to get even more personalized interaction.

Once Campus is set up, users can find groups and events at their school and connect with other students who share the same interests. Plus, when they share information on their Campus, it is only available to other students on the Campus.

It also offers a Campus-only news feed that keeps all Campus members up to date on events, people and groups on that Campus. Users also have access to a Campus directory to find classmates based on the classes, major, graduation year and more. Finally, students can create Campus chatrooms for their dorm, clubs and groups.

Facebook Campus will start small with the following colleges and universities:

• Benedict College
• Brown University
• California Institute of Technology
• College of William & Mary
• Duke University
• Florida International University
• Georgia Southern University
• Georgia State University
• Johns Hopkins University
• Lane College
• Lincoln University (Pennsylvania)
• Middlebury College
• New Jersey Institute of Technology
• Northwestern University
• Rice University
• Sarah Lawrence College
• Scripps College
• Smith College
• Spelman College
• Stephen F Austin State University
• Tufts University
• University at Albany – State University of New York
• University of Hartford
• University of Louisville
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
• Vassar College
• Virginia Tech
• Wellesley College
• Wesleyan University

Facebook hasn’t mentioned plans to expand Campus to other colleges.

According to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, one of four co-chairs of Facebook’s incoming Oversight Board, heavy-handed regulation will not solve the social media industry’s problems. She also warned that an aggressive regulatory approach could impact freedom of speech.

Thorning-Schmidt told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe,” “If regulation gets too heavy, it actually will impact freedom of speech very heavily. I believe in regulation, I believe that politics has to play a role.”

“I also think we have to be a little bit careful than just demanding regulation, because at some point it will just tip over and be a regulation on our freedom of speech, and I don’t think any of us want that,” she added.

Thorning-Schmidt used recent events in Belarus as an example. Following widespread protests over the results of its most recent presidential election, in which President Alexander Lukashenko declared a landslide victory, Belarus instituted a government-imposed internet outage.

Facebook first announced its oversight board in November 2018. The social media company named Thorning-Schmidt as one of the initial members in May. Before joining the group, Thorning-Schmidt served as the prime minister of Denmark.

The oversight board will reportedly have the power to overrule Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg when it comes to deleting controversial posts. It will also manage appeals from Facebook and Instagram users, as well as questions from Facebook itself.

The board isn’t expected to be operational until later this year. Other oversight board members include Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of The Guardian newspaper, and Andras Sajo, VP of the European Court of Human Rights.

Facebook has come under fire over its handling of hateful content and disinformation this year. In July, Stop Hate for Profit urged Facebook to address hate on the platform. The group called on Facebook to hire a C-suite executive with civil rights expertise and begin participating in third-party audits of identity-based hate and misinformation on the site.

Today, Facebook announced it’ll tighten the clamps down on all political ads the week leading up to the election on Nov. 3. It’ll also forbid other election-related posts moving forward.

In an effort to maintain the integrity of the election, Mark Zuckerberg announced that starting on Oct. 27 — exactly one week before the presidential election — Facebook will stop allowing all new political ads. According to Zuckerberg’s post, the ban is because Facebook may not have “enough time to contest new claims.”

Facebook will, however, allow existing approved ads to run, but nothing new will be approved in that last week.

On top of this limitation, Facebook will also limit COVID-19 claims as they relate to the election. First, it’ll delete any posts that claim you will catch COVID-19 by participating in in-person voting. Second, any post that uses COVID-19 as a deterrent for voting will have a link to authoritative information on COVID-19 attached to it.

Facebook will also attach an “informative label” on any post that attempts to delegitimize the outcome of the election. It’ll do the same to any posts that discuss the legitimacy of various voting methods, like claiming one type of voting is more prone to fraud.

Finally, if either candidate declares they won before the election is final, Facebook will add a label that links back to the official results from Reuters and the National Election Pool.

Why all these changes just two months ahead of the election? According to Zuckerberg, “This election is not going to be business as usual. We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy. That means helping people register and vote, clearing up confusion about how this election will work, and taking steps to reduce the chances of violence and unrest.”

Technology can be a tremendous force for good, but it can also be turned to evil ends in the wrong hands. In this Q&A, we talk to Tech Against Terrorism director Adam Hadley about how bad actors are using technology to accomplish their goals, and what businesses can do to understand and prevent these actions.

Adam Shepherd

Reviews and Community Editor, IT Pro

As reviews and community editor, Adam is responsible for coordinating all of the hardware and software reviews across IT Pro, Cloud Pro and Channel Pro, from laptops and smartphones, all the way up to enterprise-grade data centre servers and network management software. He also runs the IT Pro Panel, a flagship initiative which sees CIOs and tech leaders from the likes of Dominos, Oxfam and GoCompare sharing their experience and insight with the IT Pro community.

Adam Hadley

Director, Tech Against Terrorism

Adam Hadley is the CEO of London-based data science consultancy QuantSpark and executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, a public-private partnership launched by the tech sector and the UN Security Council in 2017.

Twitter flagged a manipulated clip posted by Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) that modifies a question activist Ady Barkan asked Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The tweet has since been deleted from Scalise’s Twitter feed.

The tweet in question spliced quotes together from Barkan, who speaks using computer voice assistance, making it sound as if Biden had expressed support to defund police departments.

In the original interaction, Barkan said to Biden, “We can reduce the responsibilities assigned to police and redirect some of the funding into social services, mental health counseling, and affordable housing.” Barkan followed that up by asking Biden, “Are you open to that kind of reform?”

Democratic presidential nominee replied by stating he suggested that type of reform before and clarified that isn’t the same as defunding the police.

Barkan, looking for a more direct answer, asked, “But do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?” Biden responded with, “Yes, absolutely.”

Scalise’s video shortened Barkan’s question and spliced words between “funding” and Biden’s “absolutely.” In Scalise’s video, Barkan asks, “Do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding for police?” Biden responds with a definitive “Yes, absolutely,” which may lead some to believe Biden supports defunding the police.

Barkan responded to Scalise’s post, tweeting, "I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also criticized the video and urged Scalise to “take his doctored video down and apologize immediately.”

Scalise spokeswoman Lauren Fine told The Washington Post the video had been “condensed… to the essence of what he was asking, as is common practice for clips run on TV and social media, no matter the speaker.” Scalise reiterated this stance on Monday.

“Look, it shouldn’t have been edited,” Scalise told Fox News.

“But at the same time, the comments were always about — in fact, twice in that interview, he asked Joe Biden if he was for redirecting money away from police. And in both times, Joe Biden said yes,” Scalise added.

Biden spokesman Andrew Bates called the Scalise video a “deep fake” in a statement on Sunday. Bates added, “To doctor the words of an extraordinarily courageous and selfless American with a disability who speaks with the assistance of eye gaze technology, and who shows more strength, resolve, and care for others in every millisecond than Donald Trump has in his entire life is both morally abhorrent and a sign of utter panic.”

Though the deadline for TikTok to sell off its U.S.-based business is just around the corner, the company insists it’s not in talks to sell it to rival short-video-sharing app Triller.

“We can confirm that we are not and will not be in talks with them. Still, we are flattered by how much they admire TikTok,” a spokesperson for TikTok told CNBC on Monday.

However, Triller executive chairman Bobby Sarnevesht said a bid was submitted. Sarnevesht also claims to have correspondence to prove it.

“We have confirmation that the chairman (Zhang Yiming) and people pretty high up at ByteDance are aware of it, and, we have correspondence going,” he stated on CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia on Monday.

On Friday, Bloomberg reported Centricus Asset Management and Triller partnered to buy TikTok’s operations in the U.S, Australia, New Zealand and India for $10 billion in cash upfront and $10 billion in profit sharing should the venture be successful. According to the report, the joint bid was submitted directly to ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company.

TikTok has since denied the existence of the bid, and ByteDance directed CNBC to TikTok’s comment on the proposed buyout.

Now, some are calling the bid a publicity stunt. Sarnevesht insists it’s legit.

“We are not crazy, we are not out here just pretending to have a bid and not have a bid. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s perplexing at least, but I think there’s just an aggregate delay on their data and how they share that information,” he explained to CNBC.

Sarnevesht added that Triller submitted its bid late because it was working on an implementation plan if the acquisition was successful. When asked how much the potential deal could be worth, Sarnevesht declined to comment but explained that Triller planned to migrate TikTok’s users, metadata and content onto the Triller platform.

In August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning TikTok in the U.S. The order will go into effect on Sept. 15. In hopes of combatting the ban, ByteDance has been in talks with Microsoft, Oracle and other investors to sell TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.