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Revelation of the Exploitation of Facebook Data by Trump Administration

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Revelation of the Exploitation of Facebook Data by Trump Administration

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How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions (Published 2018)

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Cambridge Analytica harvested personal information from a huge swath of the electorate to develop techniques that were later used in the Trump campaign.

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Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion

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Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion

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Understanding Digital Culture, Everyone is watching: Privacy and Surveillance In Digital Life

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In this chapter of his book 'Understand Digital Culture', Vincent Miller studies the position privacy and surveillance hold in the technological age. He begins by outlying what privacy means, saying that it is a concept ingrained in society and culture centred around three ideas; solitude, secrecy and anonymity.

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Digital news and social media continue to grow, with mobile devices rapidly becoming one of the most common ways for Americans to get news. As journalists and media practitioners gather for the annual Online News Association conference, here are 10 key findings from recent Pew Research Center reports about today's digital news media landscape:

1 The gap between television and online news consumption is narrowing. As of August 2017, 43% of Americans report often getting news online, a share just 7 percentage points lower than the 50% who often get news on television. The gap between the two news platforms was 19 points in early 2016, more than twice as large. The share of Americans who often get news from TV - whether from local TV news, nightly network TV news or cable news - has fallen, while the portion of Americans often getting news online - either from news websites/apps or social media - has grown.

2 Use of mobile devices for news continues to grow. As of spring 2017, 45% of U.S. adults often get news on a mobile device, up from 36% in 2016 and 21% in 2013. The use of desktop or laptop computers for news remains steady, with 31% saying they often get news this way. In all, 85% of Americans ever get news on a mobile device, the same proportion who do so on a desktop computer. And, among those who get news both ways, mobile devices are increasingly preferred. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of U.S. adults who get news on both mobile and desktop prefer mobile, up from 56% in 2016.

3 Older adults are driving the growth in mobile news use. More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (85%) now get news on a mobile device, up from 72% in 2016. The recent surge has mainly come from growth among older Americans. Roughly two-thirds (67%) of those ages 65 and older now get news on a mobile device, a 24-percentage-point jump from 2016 and about three times the share in 2013. Mobile news use also grew among those ages 50 to 64, with about eight-in-ten (79%) now getting news on mobile, about double the share from 2013. Large increases in mobile news use also occurred among those in lower-income households.

4 Two-thirds of Americans (67%) get at least some news on social media. This represents a modest increase from 62% in 2016, but similar to mobile, this growth was driven by substantial increases among older Americans. For the first time in Pew Research Center surveys, more than half (55%) of Americans ages 50 and older report getting news on social media sites, a 10-percentage-point jump from 2016. Three of the social media sites measured - Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat - grew their shares of users who get news on their site. Twitter saw the largest growth in 2017 (up 15 percentage points) and had the largest share of users to report getting news there (74%).

5 Nonwhites and the less educated increasingly say they get news on social media. About three-quarters of nonwhites (74%) get news on social media sites, up from 64% in 2016. This means that nonwhites (including all racial and ethnic groups, except non-Hispanic white) are now more likely than whites (64%) to get news on social media. Social media news use also increased to 69% in 2017 among those with less than a bachelor's degree, surpassing those with a college degree or higher (63%).

6 Many Americans believe fabricated news is sowing confusion, and about a third (32%) say they often see made-up political news online. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (64%) say fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events. About a third of U.S. adults (32%) say they often see made-up political news online, while 39% sometimes see such stories and 26% hardly ever or never do. About half (51%) say they often see political news online that is at least somewhat inaccurate - a higher proportion than those who say they see news that is almost completely made up (32%). About a quarter (23%) say they have ever shared made-up news stories themselves, with roughly equal shares saying they have done so either knowingly or unknowingly. A large majority (84%) of Americans say they are at least somewhat confident in their ability to recognize fabricated news.

7 Americans have low trust in information from social media. Just 5% of web-using U.S. adults have a lot of trust in the information they get from social media, nearly identical to the 4% who said so in 2016. This level of trust is much lower than trust in national and local news organizations, and in information coming from friends and family. In fact, in a separate study focusing on science news about twice as many social media users distrust science posts on social media as trust them (52% compared with 26%, 21% of social media users do not see any science posts).

8 Social media and direct visits to news organizations' websites are the most common pathways to online news. When asked how they arrived at news content in their most recent web interaction, online news consumers were about equally likely to say they got news by going directly to a news website (36% of the times they got news, on average) as they were to say they got it through social media (35%). They were less likely to access news through emails, text messages or search engines.

While social media is a common pathway to news, when people follow news links, source recognition is lower for news accessed through these platforms than it is when the link comes from a news organization.When news links came directly from a news organization's emails, texts or alerts, the individual could name a source for that link 78% of the time. That far outpaced source recall when a link came through social media (52% of such instances) or a friend's email or text (50%).

9 Online news that comes via emails and texts from friends or family is the type of news encounter most likely to result in a follow-up action. Among the five pathways studied, news instances spurred by emails and texts from friends or family elicited the most activity; nearly three-quarters (73%) of these instances were acted upon in some way. That outpaced social media and direct visits to a news organization's website, where a follow-up action occurred in about half of news instances (53% and 47%, respectively). Overall, talking with someone offline, whether in person or over the phone, was the most common action taken with digital news.

10 An analysis of nearly 2,700 different search terms associated with the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, shows that online searches can be a good proxy for the public's interests, concerns or intentions. The data revealed that residents of Flint were searching for information about their water before the government recognized the contamination and before local and regional news media coverage intensified beyond a handful of stories related to the initial switch of the water supply. While news was the first type of information people searched for, questions about personal and public health implications soon came to the forefront. The politics of the water crisis - which involved the governor of Michigan, the city of Flint and several agencies - did not resonate as a local search topic until President Barack Obama reacted, when the story spread nationally.

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Key trends in social and digital news media

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Digital news and social media continue to grow, with mobile devices rapidly becoming one of the most common ways for Americans to get news. As journalists and media practitioners gather for the annual Online News Association conference, here are 10 key findings from recent Pew Research Center reports about today's digital news media landscape: 1 The gap between television and online news consumption is narrowing.

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What Exactly Are We Trying to Protect?

People may assume it is all about what they are doing, which is a small piece of the picture. However, online privacy has less to do with what you are doing, and more to do with who you are AND what you are doing. On the Internet, data has high value. It's stolen, sold, collected and analyzed.

There are many facets to privacy. There's what you do, and who you are. Who you are is your personally identifiable information (PII), which is as it sounds--your name, date of birth, address, Social Security number, phone numbers and more. What you do are the searches you perform, the websites you visit, the articles you read, even what you buy online.

Whenever you download an app, visit a website or use a social media platform, chances are that company is collecting data on you. People are doing so much more online through their computers and mobile devices today. We make purchases, look up medical conditions, arrange vacations, interact with friends and relatives, just about anything imaginable. With these actions, people are inadvertently creating a huge digital paper trail of data about themselves. While it may not be PII, these companies still track what you do on the Web and collect that data in order to get a clearer picture of you.

What Can Be Done With My Data?

A complete data set on an individual can fetch a pretty penny, completely legally, too. There are now companies known as "data brokers" that collect and maintain data on millions of people, which they analyze, package, and sell without the user's knowledge or permission. Data brokers collect and sell information to other companies for many reasons, including targeted advertising, credit risk assessment, and direct marketing. Luckily, this data is usually anonymized, and does not contain PII.

Why Is Privacy Important?

We all have things to hide. It could be how much money you make, your medical records or your bank account number. Hiding things is not bad. I don't think these are the types of things you'd like broadcasted on your social network for the entire world to see. This is why we must strive to protect our right to privacy.

Earlier this year, a young woman purchased a few nondescript items such as cotton balls, unscented lotion and some vitamins. Based on what the company already knew about her, they were able to correctly predict that she was pregnant, and began targeting her for baby items by sending her coupons in the mail. The issue? She was a teenage girl, and these coupons alerted her father (much to his dismay) that she was indeed pregnant.

The most important thing to remember about your privacy is that it is YOURS. It is your information, your habits and patterns, and your actions. Therefore you should want to protect it in any way possible.

12 Tips to Help You Protect Your Privacy:
1. Secure your passwords.
Passwords are the keys to our digital lives. Cybercriminals employ many tactics to try and crack them. To make this task difficult for them, use strong, complicated passwords.

A good password should be at least eight characters long, and use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. Don't use full words, names, addresses, phone numbers or any other easily identifiable personal information. Be sure to avoid using the same password across multiple websites as well.

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), if available, is another way of verifying your identity other than just a username and password. 2FA is comprised of something you know (such as a password), something you have (a mobile phone that a code can be sent to), or something you are (such as a fingerprint).

Never save passwords on your device. Yes, it's convenient. Yes, it saves time. But if you need to safely store passwords, look into a secure password manager. Criminals are getting smarter and need just one chink in the armor to get into the system to rob you blind.

2. Be conscious of all privacy settings.
Most apps offer privacy settings for users. This gives you the freedom to know how much and what kind of information is shared. Always choose the least amount of data sharing. Always be cautious when sharing your name and location. Turn off location services and deny access to your camera.

When it comes to social media, be sure to review your privacy settings. Most social media sites will give you options to select who you are sharing your information with. Be sure those settings are set for trusted individuals and friends, rather than set to public for the whole world to see. You can check your privacy settings (link is external) on popular websites via the Data Privacy Day website.
3. Be aware of your digital footprint.
Whatever you post online is there forever, even if you delete it from where it was originally posted. A digital footprint is somewhat of a digital paper trail. Forum registrations, videos, photos, just about anything you post will all leave traces of information about yourself online.
4. Get reliable security for all of your devices.
In addition to protecting your computer from malware, a good security software program such as Norton Security will protect you from other threats on the Internet landscape. There are still many vulnerabilities out there such as phishing, spyware, rogue websites, adware, keyloggers and more.

Don't forget: Phones need as much protection as any other device, if not more. There are many security providers that offer free services. These can be risky as they mine data from your phone. Always go for a well-known service provider. Norton Mobile Security has a gamut of features that can protect your phone from most threats.
5. Back up your data.
Backing up data is often over looked. But it is a very important aspect of data protection. Ransomware is a type of attack where hackers hold your data hostage for a ransom. There are cloud-based services that offer backup. Or you can opt for Norton Security Premium, which includes backup.
6. Anti-theft your device.
If your gadget is lost or stolen, tracking apps will help you find it. But how do you protect your confidential data before it gets into the wrong hands? Norton Mobile Security allows This includes your , , , , and a
7. Be careful what you do with your phone.
While being cautious with what you do with you phone is always recommended, it can get tiresome. With the vast amount of malware, Trojans, and worms finding sneaky ways to get into your device, it is better to stay protected with a security system that does the work for you. App Advisor (link is external) is a special feature provided by Norton Mobile Security. It prompts privacy risks, intrusive behavior of apps, excessive battery drainage and data plan usage. It also has call/SMS blocking, anti-theft, contacts backup and protects your mobile phone from malware.
8. Watch out for Bluetooth vulnerabilities.
Bluetooth technology offers incredible convenience. It also opens doors for security weaknesses. Make sure you turn off your Bluetooth when you are not using it. While there are options to place your Bluetooth activity in an invisible or undetectable mode, there are some malicious apps that can change that mode and expose your device to threats. That's one more reason to have a security system in place.
9. Keep your operating system up to date.
Software updates perform a myriad of tasks. They are available for both our operating systems and individual software programs. Performing these updates will deliver a multitude of revisions to your computer, such as adding new features, removing outdated features, updating drivers, delivering bug fixes, and most importantly, fixing security holes that have been discovered.
10. Wise up to Wi-Fi
Secure your home network. Change the default username and password on anything that connects to your network, especially your Internet router. Use Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), which will encrypt the data traveling through your network. Turn on all firewalls on both hardware and software programs.

While most home Wi-Fi connections are encrypted, some public Wi-Fi connections are not. This Norton WiFi Privacy
11. Delete data that you no longer use.
If you haven't used a program in months- uninstall it. If you have a lot of old documents that you don't access anymore, you can delete those as well, or store them offline on an external hard drive. These can be repositories of personal information that you may have forgotten about. If you haven't used a program in a while, chances are it is outdated.
12. Familiarize yourself with phishing.
Phishers generally attempt to impersonate a well-known organization, such as a banking or financial institution, in order to try to obtain your user credentials, or deliver malware to your computer via suspicious links or attachments in email messages. Never click on attachments or links from unknown senders or from suspicious looking emails. Instead, if you think your account is in jeopardy, go directly to the website in question by typing the address into the URL bar in your browser rather than clicking the link in the message.

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People may assume it is all about what they are doing, which is a small piece of the picture. However, online privacy has less to do with what you are doing, and more to do with who you are AND what you are doing. On the Internet, data has high value.

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Ads from over 300 companies and organizations -- including tech giants, major retailers, newspapers and government agencies -- ran on YouTube channels promoting white nationalists, Nazis, pedophilia, conspiracy theories and North Korean propaganda, a CNN investigation has found.

US tax dollars may have gone to the channels, too. Ads from five US government agencies, such as the Department of Transportation and Centers for Disease Control, appeared on the channels.

Many of the companiesthat responded to CNN said they were unaware their ads had been placed on these channels and were investigating how they ended up there. (Fuller responses from these companies are collected at the bottom of this article.)

One of the companies, Under Armour, is pausing its advertising buy on the platform after CNN notified the company its ads appeared on a white nationalist YouTube channel called "Wife With A Purpose."

"We have strong values-led guidelines in place and are working with YouTube to understand how this could have slipped through the guardrails. We take these matters very seriously and are working to rectify this immediately," a spokesperson for Under Armour said.

Related: Advertisers flee InfoWars founder Alex Jones' YouTube channel

This is not the first time YouTube has put major companies' ads up against controversial or extremist content, despite settings meant to protect advertisers.

The incidents have raised questions about whether YouTube can adequately safeguard ads and brands' integrity, or whether its automated systems mean that advertisers will always be at risk of such ad placements.

After past incidents, some companies temporarily paused ads on YouTube, but then resumed advertising later on.

"YouTube's bottom line hasn't been hit," said Nicole Perrin, a senior analyst at eMarketer who covers advertising and marketing technology. "If brands want to make sure this stops, the only way for that to happen is for them to stop spending [on YouTube] until it's fixed."

Brands continue advertising on YouTube to reach its huge audience, especially younger generations. YouTube says it has over a billion users, and that every day those users watch a billion hours of video.

"We have partnered with our advertisers to make significant changes to how we approach monetization on YouTube with stricter policies, better controls and greater transparency," a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement.

"When we find that ads mistakenly ran against content that doesn't comply with our policies, we immediately remove those ads. We know that even when videos meet our advertiser friendly guidelines, not all videos will be appropriate for all brands. But we are committed to working with our advertisers and getting this right," she added.

However, the YouTube statement does not address why the issue keeps happening.

How YouTube places ads

Almost anyone can create a YouTube account and upload videos, but the company decides which content and channels it puts ads on.

YouTube channels with 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months can apply to make money from ads. Monetized channels are given a portion of YouTube's ad revenue from the ads running on their videos. Videos can have ads even if the channels that posted them are not monetized.

Earlier this year, YouTube restricted which channels can generate revenue from advertisements, part of its broader effort to "prevent potentially inappropriate videos from monetizing."

Advertisers entrust YouTube to decide -- and define -- what content is sensitive or extremist and not appropriate for their ads.

Companies can set broad targets for ads based on demographics and user behavior. While they don't necessarily know where the commercials will end up, companies can blacklist certain channels and use a "sensitive subject exclusion" filter that is designed to stop ads from appearing on specific channels or content.

Many of the companies CNN contacted said they used the sensitive subject exclusion filter and expected their ads would appear on content that was "brand safe," but the ad placements still happened.

This isn't the first time YouTube has faced backlash about that definition difference.

In 2015, major companies' ads appeared on ISIS videos. Last year, some advertisers pulled their ads after YouTube placed ads on videos that included hate speech and extremist content.

"YouTube has once again failed"

YouTube continues to place ads on channels run by the online and digital network InfoWars, which is notorious for promoting conspiracy theories, despite the backlash it got from advertisers in the wake of CNN's reporting in March. CNN has since found that YouTube also put ads for Mozilla and 20th Century Fox Film on a Nazi YouTube channel.

The company's ad ran on Brian Ruhe's Nazi channel. YouTube subsequently deleted the channel for violating its community guidelines against spreading hate speech. Before its deletion, ads ran frequently on the channel.

Ruhe -- who, when contacted by CNN for comment, emphasized that he did not want to be referred to as a "neo-Nazi," because he thinks of himself as a "real, genuine and sincere Nazi" -- confirmed to CNN that his channel was monetized before its deletion.

"YouTube has once again failed to correctly filter channels out of our marketing buys," a 20th Century Fox Film spokesperson told CNN.

Ads for Jewish and Zionist groups, such as Jerusalem's Friends of Zion Museum and the Jewish National Fund -- a non-profit organization that owns land and plants trees in Israel -- ran on a Ruhe video titled "David Duke on Harvey Weinstein exposing Jewish domination. Black/White genetic differences."

The Friends of Zion Museum told CNN that it will not be advertising on YouTube "until we can be certain that incidents such as these will not repeat, and until we will be guaranteed that earnings from our campaign will not be forwarded to any channel glorifying Nazism or the Nazi crimes."

In one video on Ruhe's channel, former KKK grand wizard David Duke discussed what he said are racial and genetic differences between whites and blacks. YouTube placed a co-branded ad from Nissan and Disney that promoted the Nissan Leaf and the release of the film, "A Wrinkle in Time."

The co-branded ad featured Disney executive VP of production Tendo Nagenda discussing diversity in the film industry. Even though the video bore an offensive content warning, which disabled certain features on it, like sharing, ads were still placed on the video.

"We are shocked Nissan advertising has been served next to inappropriate and disturbing content by one of our partners. We employ safeguards to keep digital advertising from appearing next to offensive content and have agreements in place with our partners to strictly adhere to our brand safety guidelines," a Nissan spokesperson, commenting on behalf of both Nissan and Disney, told CNN. "Effective immediately, we are freezing all of our advertising on YouTube until we resolve this issue."

The Genius of Play -- a campaign by the Toy Association promoting play in child development -- has also pulled its ads from YouTube after CNN found that ads for the campaign were placed on Amos Yee's channel, which he has used to promote pedophilia.

Yee gained notoriety in 2015 for his YouTube video that praised the death of Singapore's first prime minister. After he was granted political asylum in the US in 2017, he began using his YouTube channel to promote decriminalizing pedophilia.

After CNN reached out to YouTube about this story, the platform removed ads from most of Yee's video. After that, Yee told CNN that YouTube had decided to entirely remove his channel's ability to monetize.

Other ads appeared on several channels posting North Korean propaganda like Red Star TV.

Red Star TV says it is an "information project of the DPRK Solidarity Group in which truthful information about North Korea is translated and disseminated." A representative for the group told CNN that it is officially recognized by North Korea and receives "information support" from the regime.

Advertisements potentially funded by US tax dollars also appeared on the channels promoting North Korean propaganda. They also ran on channels connected to InfoWars, Yee's channel and far-right channels.

The Centers for Disease Control, Department of Transportation, Customs and Border Protection, Veterans Affairs and the US Coast Guard Academy had ads on the channels. The Coast Guard Academy, the Centers for Disease Control, DOT and VA all told CNN they are working to investigate why the ads were placed on the channels.

Meanwhile, ads from the Washington Post and New York Times appeared on far-right and conspiracy channels like Black Pigeon Speaks and some run by InfoWars. The companies are investigating how their ads appeared on the channels.

"It appears that YouTube did not follow its own protocols and categorize these videos properly," the New York Times told CNN. The paper said its ads should only appear on a list of pre-approved sites.

If the channels are monetized -- which InfoWars has previously claimed they are -- the major newspapers could have unknowingly supported disinformation and conspiracy.

Ads also appeared on The Jimmy Dore Show channel, a far-left YouTube channel that peddles conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Syrian chemical weapons attacks are hoaxes.

Update: This article has been changed to note that Nissan was commenting on behalf of both itself and Disney.

What the companies said

Amazon said it has filters in place for advertising. Facebook said it was working with YouTube to address the situation.

Adidas: "We were unaware of this situation on YouTube, and we are working closely with Google on necessary steps to avoid any reoccurrences."

Cisco: "Cisco reviews our advertising placements periodically, including when potential issues are brought to our attention. Our brand safety guidelines mandate that Cisco branded advertisements do not appear on sites with content that does not align with our corporate values."

Hilton: "We pay careful attention to where, and how our brands are represented, to ensure alignment with our strong company values. We have guidelines, using filters and other controls, to ensure our advertising appears on sites that align with our brand values. I can confirm that we have moved quickly and that our advertisement is in the process of being removed from this channel. We are also working with the relevant parties to investigate this matter and ensure all appropriate follow up actions are taken."

Hershey: "At Hershey, we deeply care about how and where our brands show up in advertising. We work very hard to target the right consumers and ensure our ads appear within the appropriate content. We were not aware that our ads were appearing within this specific programming on YouTube. All of our programmatic ads use filters to ensure that they are appearing in the right place and right time. Given our current control systems, our ad should not have run in this program or any other program with political or news views -- even if it is rooted in comedy. Our internal media team and our media partners are looking into why our ad our appeared within this YouTube channel. It was not our intent and we are taking immediate steps to remedy this situation."

Jewish National Fund: "It's very upsetting to learn. More should be done to protect those folks who are putting up ads or campaigns so they aren't put in places where they don't belong. We take this very seriously. We're going to look into this. We're going to first investigate it on our end."

LinkedIn: "One of our ads ran on an unapproved YouTube placement. The ad in question has been taken down and we are working with YouTube to understand why this happened to prevent a repeat occurrence."

Mozilla: "This newly revealed incident where our advertisements ran alongside clearly objectionable content that does not reflect our brand or our values is deeply concerning to us, especially given steps we've taken to prevent this from occurring. We take this new report very seriously and are investigating how and why this happened, and what we need to do to fix it."

Netflix: "We employ numerous filters to avoid having our content appear on sites or videos that clearly don't represent us or our values. While that works well most of the time, there are a small number of instances where it doesn't and we are working closely with Google to close that gap further."

Nordstrom: "We have parameters that guide where our ads appear online, and aim to prevent them from showing up near certain types of content. We're looking into this situation."

CNNMoney (New York) First published April 19, 2018: 5:15 PM ET

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Paul P. Murphy, Kaya Yurieff and Gianluca Mezzofiore

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Exclusive: YouTube ran ads from hundreds of brands on extremist channels

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US tax dollars may have gone to the channels, too. Ads from five US government agencies, such as the Department of Transportation and Centers for Disease Control, appeared on the channels. Many of the companiesthat responded to CNN said they were unaware their ads had been placed on these channels and were investigating how they ended up there.

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Collection of User Messaging Data from Facebook

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Collection of User Messaging Data from Facebook

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You might assume that chats sent on Facebook Messenger are completely private. But you'd be wrong.

Facebook confirmed Thursday that it uses automated tools to scan Messenger chats for malware links and child porn images. It also allows users to report chats that may violate community standards.

The company's moderators can review any messages that are flagged by users or the automated systems.

Facebook has long been clear that its workers can review posts to ensure they comply with its community standards. But many users had assumed their chats on Messenger were private.

Facebook said in a statement on Thursday that keeping messages private is its priority, but it also defended the automated tools as being "very similar to those that other internet companies use today."

"The content of messages between people is not used for ads targeting," a company spokesperson said. "We do not listen to your voice and video calls."

Facebook has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks after news broke that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to President Donald Trump's campaign, may have had information on millions of Facebook users without their knowledge.

The episode has sparked questions over privacy on the social media platform, and led to calls for tough new regulation. It has also prompted calls for Facebook to be more transparent about how it handles user data.

Messenger, which allows users to chat amongst themselves, became a point of interest this week after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company had "detected" that "sensational messages" were being sent via Messenger in Myanmar.

Human rights advocates and journalists have made the case that Facebook was being used to spread misinformation in the country, adding fuel to ethic violence against a Muslim minority group called the Rohingya.

"In that case, our systems detect that that's going on," Zuckerberg said during an interview with Vox. "We stop those messages from going through."

Related: Facebook says Cambridge Analytica may have had data on 87 million people

Facebook clarified in a statement on Thursday.

"In this particular instance, a number of people reported receiving these messages which prompted us to begin investigating," a spokesperson said.

In recent weeks, Facebook has made changes to the platform and its policies regarding access to user data and transparency.

Facebook's data policy -- which was updated on Wednesday -- states that it collects "the content, communications and other information you provide when you ... message or communicate with others."

Related: Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress twice next week

Zuckerberg also told reporters on Wednesday that the company could do a better job of explaining what it does with user data.

"[There are] many misperceptions about what we actually do," he said.

Zuckerberg is scheduled to face questions from two US congressional panels next week about how his company handles its users' data.

CNNMoney (London) First published April 5, 2018: 12:51 PM ET

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Facebook confirmed Thursday that it uses automated tools to scan Messenger chats for malware links and child porn images. It also allows users to report chats that may violate community standards. The company's moderators can review any messages that are flagged by users or the automated systems. Facebook has long been clear that its workers can review posts to ensure they comply with its community standards.

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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Facebook and YouTube dominate the social media landscape. But younger Americans, especially those ages 18 to 24, stand out in using a variety of platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter.

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Top Trends to Look Out For in Social Media

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Top Trends to Look Out For in Social Media

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There's so much on the horizon in the social media arena in 2018, and indeed it's poised to be one of the larger single annual departures we've seen for a while.

Social media platforms have now been adopted on a large enough scale, and for a long enough time, that companies are really starting to hit their stride, settle in, and manifest into some sort of measurable final form. Time spent on social platforms is set to increase, with social media marketing following in concert.

1. Instagram Stories Drive Upcoming Instagram Trends

Instagram Stories is a big deal and they're not going away. We wrote about it here; check it out if you missed it. Daily viewers of Instagram Stories surpassed daily SnapChat viewers just one year after launch, and the growth isn't stopping.

Instagram Stories was likely the biggest single change in the Instagram UX, and its marketing implications are huge.

A huge deal with Instagram Stories is this: accounts with over 10,000 followers can now add a link within the feature. Considering the fact that the only other place you can put a link on Instagram is just the one buried on your profile page, this is a huge deal, as it multiplies buying or inquiry opportunities by orders of magnitude.

Instagram Stories in particular will be relevant from a marketing perspective because, compared to other transitory video platforms, Instagram metrics are eminently trackable.

A final note on Instagram Stories: Their foundation is social media engagement gold. Video drastically outperforms all other forms of content on every test.

2. Influencer Marketing Makes Major Contributions to Social Media Engagement

Influencer marketing is big business - a billion dollar industry by some counts. There is an exhaustive list of micro-celebrities who earn six figure incomes. And this isn't a fluke. Influencer marketing is uniquely keyed to exploit certain facts about a growing number of buyers.
As Millennials advance their careers, and Generation Z starts theirs, an enormous population's purchasing power is increasing swiftly and starkly. These two groups - who, combined, literally comprise most of the world's population - are uniquely influenced by this marketing method.

3. Generation Z to Decide Social Media Trends

We've mentioned Generation Z in both of the previous topics for good reason.

RetailDive had this to say about Generation Z and their associated social media trends:

"Gen Z is two- to three times more likely to be influenced by social media than by sales or discounts - the only generation to value social media over price when it comes to making purchase decisions..."

Furthermore, 81% report watching at least one hour of online video per day, or more, according to a study by Fluent, covered by AdWeek. Combine these facts and realize that droves of Generation Z will graduate college and/or start careers next year, and you start to see the powder keg.

4. Messaging Platforms Make Companies Accessible

This is a department where overseas is leagues ahead of the United States.

What do you know about WeChat? They're a wee little Chinese messaging company . . . errr, one that's looking to cross 1 billion users this quarter. WeChat and WhatsApp are absolutely ubiquitous across either ocean, reaching across many different functions to dominate social media, direct messaging, and even purchasing and commerce.

There's a simple reason this is going to catch on in the US: It's good for business. Every year more and more buyers are Millennials and Gen Z, and fewer and fewer are older. In case you're not aware of these people's overwhelming preferences when it comes to talking to a company, we'll illustrate in their native language:

5. Live Streaming Explodes

Live streaming isn't about live streaming. At least not in the way we're going to be talking about it. You're going to see a lot more of it in 2018, and the people who do it well will be fully with the times and accelerating. Its prevalence will increase because it works.

But there's something more at work here.

It's actually about technology. We get better phones every year. Does that mean that we're running the same apps better? Sometimes. But once the technological baseline of the average user has clearly moved up a notch, it becomes about making more robust apps that do more and fully take advantage of that new technology.

The smartphones of today are better than what we used to have by orders of magnitude. Furthermore, our data speeds are better, and are poised to make yet another insane leap in the next few years when 5G becomes the standard.

Live streaming is a medium or implementation of social technology that's uniquely positioned to take advantage of hardware improvements for the next several years. The resolution of an image the size of a phone screen can only get so good before you have to zoom in to see a difference.

But better video processing across the board means all devices involved can handle more streaming at a better quality across more channels at the same time. This is such a huge change that it's possibly unclear that anyone is even capable of fully understanding the ramifications.

There's so much on the horizon in the social media arena in 2018 - get prepared now! Click To Tweet

6. Twitter is Going to Change

And they themselves might not even know how just yet.

Twitter has been slowly circling the drain, in some respects, for a long time now. 2017 pulled no punches with the social network, either. Twitter needs to make some big changes to stay relevant, as its growth is the slowest of all the major social media platforms.

7. Online Hangouts Become the Norm

Online hangouts go hand-in-hand with the live streaming trend, and with Generation Z. Consider Houseparty - an app for multiple friends to essentially FaceTime with each other in a group setting.

Houseparty made quite a wave in 2017 with rapid growth, and hit its stride well enough to inspire copycats, including perhaps an effort on the way coming from (no surprise here) Facebook.

The online hangouts trend is also going to intersect with VR. Sure, everyone promised everything this year with VR and AR, and all that ultimately came of it was two weeks of Pokemon GO. (That is, two AWESOME weeks! Man, wasn't it awesome?)

But this year actually has the potential to be different. Many promising programs have another year of beta testing still left under their belts, but the technologies are improving in exciting ways. Once again, Facebook is at the epicenter, with Facebook Spaces.

8. Social Platforms See More Hardcore Moderation

The last year or so has forced the hand of several tech and social media titans to intervene and play a more active role in content moderation. Those maneuvers, in retrospect, felt more like damage control than any sort of final solution.

We're likely going to see companies revisit this in a more significant or longer-lasting way, and definitely more proactive than reactive.

As leveraging social media outlets for marketing first took flight, some were dubious of their staying power. The years since have changed skeptics into believers, and what's on the forefront will clearly and easily amplify the channels' relevance even further.

2018 is almost here... are you ready?

2018 social media trends predict that time on social media platforms will increase. This means you will need to improve your online presence in the year to come.

Tip: Plann can help you create your dream Instagram feed and schedule your posts weeks in advance.

Download Plann for iOS and Android and run your Instagram like a pro.
AUTHOR
Christy Laurence is the multi award-winning founder of Plann, an app she created after watching hugely talented people around the world give up on making an income from their passion due to lack of marketing help.

Plann was designed to help give more freedom and a stronger understanding of Social Media to anyone wanting to create their own business.

She was recently awarded 'Australasian Startup Founder of The Year' for her achievements helping businesses grow on Instagram.

She also loves a good chat and has a strong pun game, connect with Christy on Instagram @Plannthat

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8 Top Social Media Trends to Look Out for in 2018

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There's so much on the horizon in the social media arena in 2018, and indeed it's poised to be one of the larger single annual departures we've seen for a while. Social media platforms have now been adopted on a large enough scale, and for a long enough time, that companies are really starting to hit their stride, settle in, and manifest into some sort of measurable final form.

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rivacy is necessary for human society to function. The problem is not that the information exists but that it reaches the wrong people. Information on the internet could bring great benefits to society, and to individuals, when huge datasets can be refined to yield information otherwise unavailable. But once the information is gathered, a precautionary principle has to apply. It is too much of a stretch to agree with John Perry Barlow, the internet rights pioneer who died this week, when he quipped that "relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds"; but it does not help when it appears that everything the public sector does with the huge datasets it has will be overseen by the minister for fun.

Governments need to keep our trust; but technology erodes privacy in two ways. The first is simply smartphones. Most Britons - 70% - now carry around with them devices which record and report their location, their friends and their interests all the time. The second is the ease with which two (or more) datasets can be combined to bring out secrets that are apparent in neither set on its own, and to identify individuals from data that appears to be entirely anonymised. By the beginning of this century researchers had established that nearly 90% of the US population could be uniquely identified simply by combining their gender, their date of birth and their postal code. All kinds of things can be reliably inferred from freely available data: four likes on Facebook are usually enough to reveal a person's sexual orientation.

Underlying such problems is human psychology. No one forces anybody to reveal their preferences on Facebook: the like button is genuinely popular. The latest spectacular breach of privacy came when the exercise app Strava published a global map of the 3 trillion data points its users had uploaded, which turned out to reveal the location of hitherto secret US military bases around the world. But the chance to boast about where you have been and how fast you were moving is exactly what makes Strava popular. Psychology, as much as technology, made this a massive security breach. The users gave enthusiastic consent, but it was fantastically ill-informed. Then again, how could anyone give informed consent when not even the firms that collect the data can know how it will be used?

The protection of private data from malevolent hackers is a technical arms race one cannot leave. But the protection of privacies from inadvertent disclosure is primarily a social or psychological problem. The solution cannot just be one of informed consent from the data providers, because in most situations no one has the information necessary to give their consent. What's needed instead is a change of attitude among those who harvest and process the data. They need constantly to ask themselves - or to be asked by society - how this information could be used for harm, and how to prevent that from happening.

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The Guardian view on internet privacy: it's the psychology, stupid | Editorial

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rivacy is necessary for human society to function. The problem is not that the information exists but that it reaches the wrong people. Information on the internet could bring great benefits to society, and to individuals, when huge datasets can be refined to yield information otherwise unavailable.

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Social media analytics - Challenges in topic discovery, data collection, and data preparation

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Since an ever-increasing part of the population makes use of social media in their day-to-day lives, social media data is being analysed in many diffe...

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here's the truth about online predators - cnn

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Parents, here's the truth about online predators

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Talking to kids and teens about online predators gives them the tools they need to handle themselves in a web-based world.

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The Growth of Social Media is Decreasing Unemployment 

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The Growth of Social Media is Decreasing Unemployment 

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https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/22/africa/nigerian-bloggers-social-media/index.html

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In this bustling Nigerian metropolis of an estimated 23 million people, around 10 million are under the age of 25 and their numbers are rising rapidly.

According to global research firm We are social, more than 15 million Nigerians use social media.

Over 80% of that number are young people between the ages of 13 and 39.

With mass unemployment in Nigeria reaching a peak of 18.8% in the third quarter of 2017, tech savvy and increasingly well connected young people have embraced social media and, in the process, a new generation of high profile and highly paid personalities have emerged.

Below are some of the women who have struck social media gold.

Linda Ikeji: From gossip blogger to media mogul

Smart, focused and passionate about her work, Ikeji says she wants to be the Oprah Winfrey of Africa.

Ikeji, who started her social media career with gossip blogging, is now building one of Nigeria's biggest private TV stations with Linda Ikeji TV.

"One of the things that drives a business to succeed is passion and I am so passionate about what I do," she says.

"People like gossip because it is extremely personal," she says. "They like the honesty, how real it is, how human..."

But Ikeji wants to do much more than gossip blogging or owning a media empire. She wants to inspire other young girls to believe in themselves.

"There's still so much I want to do that I haven't done but I'm hoping my story, my life can inspire other young girls to go out there and fight for their dreams."

Sisi Yemmie: The vlogger inviting her viewers into her home

She offers her audience a glimpse into her home life, sharing her favorite recipes and her families likes and dislikes. She has cultivated a large following that has brands reaching out for collaboration.

It's a delicate business, making her personal life so public. But it's one that Sisi Yemmie understands very well.

"I'm a lifestyle blogger," she says. "What I show is what it is. I don't have time for fakeness. I don't have time to create what is not there."

But with this vulnerability comes a sense of responsibility. Sisi Yemmie knows she has to be strategic about what she shares; she has to think about her audience all the time.

"I realize there's a responsibility that comes with this platform I have, and now I am always very careful what I say.

"I have to think about not just my audience; I have to think about brands and collaborations."

Chiamaka Obuekwe: The travel blogger who goes off the beaten track

When it comes to visiting Nigeria's most interesting and exciting places, Chiamaka Obuekwe, founder of travel company 'The Social Prefect,' knows exactly where to go.

She says her presence on social media has made it a lot easier to connect with people who are looking for exciting places to go in Nigeria.

"Ten years ago, we had to go door-to-door sharing our fliers...Now all we have to do is to put a post out on Instagram and in ten minutes people are dm'ing us."

She's one of the many Nigerians who, inspired by Linda Ikeji, seek to cash in on the abundant opportunities on social media.

Media mogul Linda Ikeji thinks the secret of their success can be found in one thing: their gender.

"Women are better storytellers," Ikeji says.

"We are very real with our stories."

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how these nigerian women are cashing in on social media - cnn

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Tom Bouchier Hayes and Munachim Amah, CNN

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How these Nigerian women are cashing in on social media

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In this bustling Nigerian metropolis of an estimated 23 million people, around 10 million are under the age of 25 and their numbers are rising rapidly. According to global research firm We are social, more than 15 million Nigerians use social media. Over 80% of that number are young people between the ages of 13 and 39.

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Today's Update: Four Billion People are Connected

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Today's Update: Four Billion People are Connected

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The new 2018 Global Digital suite of reports from We Are Social and reveals that there are now more than 4 billion people around the world using the internet.

Well over half of the world's population is now online, with the latest data showing that nearly a quarter of a billion new users came online for the first time in 2017. Africa has seen the fastest growth rates, with the number of internet users across the continent increasing by more than 20 percent year-on-year.

Much of this year's growth in internet users has been driven by more affordable smartphones and mobile data plans. More than 200 million people got their first mobile device in 2017, and two-thirds of the world's 7.6 billion inhabitants now have a mobile phone.

More than half of the handsets in use today are 'smart' devices too, so it's increasingly easy for people to enjoy a rich internet experience wherever they are.

Social media use continues to grow rapidly too, and the number of people using the top platform in each country has increased by almost 1 million new users every day during the past 12 months. More than 3 billion people around the world now use social media each month, with 9 in 10 of those users accessing their chosen platforms via mobile devices.

You'll find the key insights from this year's reports in our more detailed analysis below, but here are the essential headlines for digital in 2018:

Just before we dig into those essential findings, we'd like to say a big thank you to the data partners making this year's reports possible:

So, what does all of their valuable data tell us?

1. A billion years
It's not just the number of people using the internet that has increased this year; the amount of time that people spend on the internet has also gone up over the past 12 months.

The latest data from GlobalWebIndex shows that the average internet user now spends around 6 hours each day using internet-powered devices and services - that's roughly one-third of their waking lives.

If we add this together for all 4 billion of the world's internet users, we'll spend a staggering 1 billion years online in 2018.

2. Distributing the future
As we noted in last year's analysis report , internet access isn't evenly distributed around the world.

That's still true in 2018, but things are starting to change.

Internet penetration rates may still be low across much of Central Africa and Southern Asia, but these regions are also seeing the fastest growth in internet adoption.

Users in Africa are up by more than 20 percent year-on-year, with the reported number of internet users in Mali increasing by almost since January 2017. The number of internet users in Benin, Sierra Leone, Niger, and Mozambique has more than doubled over the past year too.

This isn't just a story about 'the next billion', though.

Accelerating access in developing economies will impact the internet experience for users everywhere, as companies like Google, Facebook, Alibaba, and Tencent strive to deliver scalable global products that address the needs and contexts of these new users.

These changes will have a profound influence on the future of the internet, so we'll explore this topic in more detail in a separate blog post over the next few days.

3. Connections to go
More than two-thirds of the world's population now has a mobile, with most people now using a smartphone.

The number of unique mobile users around the world is up by more than 4 percent year-on-year, although penetration rates remain below 50 percent across much of Central Africa.

Smartphones are the world's preferred choice for going online too, accounting for a greater share of web traffic than all other devices combined.

What's more, this data is just for web use. The latest data from shows that people now spend longer using mobile apps compared to mobile web browsers, so mobile's 'share of internet' is likely even higher than the figures above suggest.

The latest data from Facebook reinforces this finding, with just 5 percent of the platform's global user base not accessing the platform via a mobile device.

4. Eleven new users a second
Almost 1 million people started using social media for the first time every day over the past year - that's equivalent to more than 11 new users every second .

The global number of people using social media has grown by 13 percent in the past 12 months, with Central and Southern Asia recording the fastest gains (up 90 percent and 33 percent respectively).

Saudi Arabia has posted the fastest individual country growth rate across our 40 focus economies at 32 percent, but India is only just behind, with 31 percent annual growth in social media users.

As part of this growth, we're seeing larger numbers of older users joining social media too. On Facebook alone, the number of users aged 65 and above has increased by almost 20 percent in the past 12 months.

The number of teenagers using Facebook has also increased, but the number of users aged 13 to 17 has only grown by 5 percent since January 2017.

Gender ratios remain a concern across the internet though, with the latest data from Facebook suggesting that women are still significantly underrepresented across much of Central Africa, the Middle East, and Southern Asia.

5. The Philippines keeps its crown
For the third year in a row, Filipinos spend the greatest amount of time on social media, with the average user in the country spending almost 4 hours on social every day.

The Brazilians are catching up though, and the Indonesians and the Thais have overtaken the Argentinians to take the third and fourth spots in this year's rankings.

6. Facebook still dominates
It's been another good year for Mark Zuckerberg and team, with all of Facebook Inc.'s platforms posting impressive growth during 2017.

Facebook's core platform still dominates the global social landscape, with total users up 15 percent year-on-year to reach almost 2.17 billion at the start of 2018.

WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger both grew twice as fast as the core Facebook platform though, with the number of people using each messenger app up by 30 percent year on year.

Both apps are still tied in terms of user numbers, but the latest data from SimilarWeb shows that WhatsApp has the stronger geographic position. WhatsApp is now the top messenger app in 128 countries around the world, compared to Facebook Messenger's 72.

There are now only 25 countries around the world where a Facebook-owned app isn't the top messenger platform.

Despite these impressive messenger stats though, Instagram managed to claim Facebook Inc.'s standout growth story over the past 12 months, with the number of global users up by a third.

To help businesses everywhere quantify the Instagram opportunity in their respective countries, we've included local numbers for Instagram use across more than 230 countries in this year's regional reports. You'll find links to those at the end of this post.

7. Organic reach continues to fall
For this year's reports, we've teamed up with to share details of Facebook reach and engagement for 179 countries around the world.

As expected, organic reach and engagement have both dropped over the past year, with average reach down by more than 10 percent year-on-year.

Despite the depressing trends, these numbers will be valuable benchmarks for marketers everywhere - especially because they offer insights into the number of brands using paid media (note that the chart below is a summary of slides 69 and 72 in the Digital in 2018 report).

8. Mobile connection speeds increase
Mobile data connections are getting faster all over the world, with GSMA Intelligence reporting that more than 60 percent of mobile connections can now be classified as 'broadband'.

However, there are significant differences in mobile connection speeds between countries. Mobile users in Norway enjoy average download speeds of more than 60 Mbps; almost three times the global average.

Mobile users in 6 countries - including the Netherlands, Singapore, and the UAE - now enjoy average connection speeds of more than 50 Mbps. At the other end of the spectrum, mobile users in 18 countries - including India and Indonesia - still suffer from average connection speeds of less than 10 Mbps.

There is good news, though: average mobile connection speeds increased by more than 30 percent over the past year.

This isn't just good news for the impatient, either; faster connections may also help to reduce stress. has shown that delays of just a few seconds while buffering video content can trigger the same increase in anxiety levels as watching a horror movie on your own, or trying to solve a complex maths problem.

Partly thanks to these faster download speeds, the average smartphone user around the world now consumes almost 3GB of data every month - an increase more than 50 percent since this time last year.

9. E-commerce spend jumps
The latest data from 's Digital Market Outlook shows that the total value of the e-commerce market for consumer goods grew by 16 percent over the past year. Total annual spend in 2017 reached almost US$1.5 trillion, with fashion products representing the largest single category.

Worldwide, the number of people using e-commerce platforms to buy consumer goods (e.g. fashion, food, electronics, and toys) grew by 8 percent, with almost 1.8 billion people around the world now buying online.

Roughly 45 percent of all internet users now use e-commerce sites, but penetration varies considerably between countries.

The amount that each person spends on e-commerce is also growing, with average revenues per user (ARPU) up by 7 percent year-on-year to reach US$833. The British are the biggest e-commerce spenders, with annual spend in the UK now greater than US$2,000 per user.

It's worth highlighting that these are just the figures for consumer goods too; if we add spend on other categories such as travel, digital content, and mobile apps, total global e-commerce value is likely to be closer to US$2 trillion.

10. 5,000 charts
This post only includes a small selection of the data you'll find across the 5,000 charts in our complete suite of 2018 Global Digital reports.

In particular, you'll find in-depth data for more than 230 countries and territories in our various regional reports, including all the essential numbers you need to understand internet, social media, and mobile behaviours all over the world.

The full suite of reports is available . for free today: you'll find everything you need by clicking here The Global Overview report is available for download here.

If you'd just like to take a quick look at the local headlines though, our 2018 Digital Yearbook is a particularly useful reference:

That's all for our Digital in 2018 summary though. I'll be back over the coming days with some of the richer insights behind this year's numbers, but in the meantime, I wish you all another successful year in digital.

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Digital in 2018: World's internet users pass the 4 billion mark - We Are Social UK

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The new 2018 Global Digital suite of reports from We Are Social and reveals that there are now more than 4 billion people around the world using the internet. Well over half of the world's population is now online, with the latest data showing that nearly a quarter of a billion new users came online for the first time in 2017.

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Digital news and social media continue to grow, with mobile devices rapidly becoming one of the most common ways for Americans to get news. As journalists and media practitioners gather for the annual Online News Association conference, here are 10 key findings from recent Pew Research Center reports about today's digital news media landscape:

1 The gap between television and online news consumption is narrowing. As of August 2017, 43% of Americans report often getting news online, a share just 7 percentage points lower than the 50% who often get news on television. The gap between the two news platforms was 19 points in early 2016, more than twice as large. The share of Americans who often get news from TV - whether from local TV news, nightly network TV news or cable news - has fallen, while the portion of Americans often getting news online - either from news websites/apps or social media - has grown.

2 Use of mobile devices for news continues to grow. As of spring 2017, 45% of U.S. adults often get news on a mobile device, up from 36% in 2016 and 21% in 2013. The use of desktop or laptop computers for news remains steady, with 31% saying they often get news this way. In all, 85% of Americans ever get news on a mobile device, the same proportion who do so on a desktop computer. And, among those who get news both ways, mobile devices are increasingly preferred. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of U.S. adults who get news on both mobile and desktop prefer mobile, up from 56% in 2016.

3 Older adults are driving the growth in mobile news use. More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (85%) now get news on a mobile device, up from 72% in 2016. The recent surge has mainly come from growth among older Americans. Roughly two-thirds (67%) of those ages 65 and older now get news on a mobile device, a 24-percentage-point jump from 2016 and about three times the share in 2013. Mobile news use also grew among those ages 50 to 64, with about eight-in-ten (79%) now getting news on mobile, about double the share from 2013. Large increases in mobile news use also occurred among those in lower-income households.

4 Two-thirds of Americans (67%) get at least some news on social media. This represents a modest increase from 62% in 2016, but similar to mobile, this growth was driven by substantial increases among older Americans. For the first time in Pew Research Center surveys, more than half (55%) of Americans ages 50 and older report getting news on social media sites, a 10-percentage-point jump from 2016. Three of the social media sites measured - Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat - grew their shares of users who get news on their site. Twitter saw the largest growth in 2017 (up 15 percentage points) and had the largest share of users to report getting news there (74%).

5 Nonwhites and the less educated increasingly say they get news on social media. About three-quarters of nonwhites (74%) get news on social media sites, up from 64% in 2016. This means that nonwhites (including all racial and ethnic groups, except non-Hispanic white) are now more likely than whites (64%) to get news on social media. Social media news use also increased to 69% in 2017 among those with less than a bachelor's degree, surpassing those with a college degree or higher (63%).

6 Many Americans believe fabricated news is sowing confusion, and about a third (32%) say they often see made-up political news online. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (64%) say fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events. About a third of U.S. adults (32%) say they often see made-up political news online, while 39% sometimes see such stories and 26% hardly ever or never do. About half (51%) say they often see political news online that is at least somewhat inaccurate - a higher proportion than those who say they see news that is almost completely made up (32%). About a quarter (23%) say they have ever shared made-up news stories themselves, with roughly equal shares saying they have done so either knowingly or unknowingly. A large majority (84%) of Americans say they are at least somewhat confident in their ability to recognize fabricated news.

7 Americans have low trust in information from social media. Just 5% of web-using U.S. adults have a lot of trust in the information they get from social media, nearly identical to the 4% who said so in 2016. This level of trust is much lower than trust in national and local news organizations, and in information coming from friends and family. In fact, in a separate study focusing on science news about twice as many social media users distrust science posts on social media as trust them (52% compared with 26%, 21% of social media users do not see any science posts).

8 Social media and direct visits to news organizations' websites are the most common pathways to online news. When asked how they arrived at news content in their most recent web interaction, online news consumers were about equally likely to say they got news by going directly to a news website (36% of the times they got news, on average) as they were to say they got it through social media (35%). They were less likely to access news through emails, text messages or search engines.

While social media is a common pathway to news, when people follow news links, source recognition is lower for news accessed through these platforms than it is when the link comes from a news organization.When news links came directly from a news organization's emails, texts or alerts, the individual could name a source for that link 78% of the time. That far outpaced source recall when a link came through social media (52% of such instances) or a friend's email or text (50%).

9 Online news that comes via emails and texts from friends or family is the type of news encounter most likely to result in a follow-up action. Among the five pathways studied, news instances spurred by emails and texts from friends or family elicited the most activity; nearly three-quarters (73%) of these instances were acted upon in some way. That outpaced social media and direct visits to a news organization's website, where a follow-up action occurred in about half of news instances (53% and 47%, respectively). Overall, talking with someone offline, whether in person or over the phone, was the most common action taken with digital news.

10 An analysis of nearly 2,700 different search terms associated with the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, shows that online searches can be a good proxy for the public's interests, concerns or intentions. The data revealed that residents of Flint were searching for information about their water before the government recognized the contamination and before local and regional news media coverage intensified beyond a handful of stories related to the initial switch of the water supply. While news was the first type of information people searched for, questions about personal and public health implications soon came to the forefront. The politics of the water crisis - which involved the governor of Michigan, the city of Flint and several agencies - did not resonate as a local search topic until President Barack Obama reacted, when the story spread nationally.

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Key trends in social and digital news media

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Digital news and social media continue to grow, with mobile devices rapidly becoming one of the most common ways for Americans to get news. As journalists and media practitioners gather for the annual Online News Association conference, here are 10 key findings from recent Pew Research Center reports about today's digital news media landscape: 1 The gap between television and online news consumption is narrowing.

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Filter Bubbles: Preventing the Development of Holistic Knowledge

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Filter Bubbles: Preventing the Development of Holistic Knowledge

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Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

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As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.

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Technology's Ability to Disconnect People in the Real World 

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Technology's Ability to Disconnect People in the Real World 

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As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other? Sherry Turkle studies how our devices and online personas are redefining human connection and communication -- and asks us to think deeply about the new kinds of connection we want to have.

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Social Media Causing Misconceptions in the Political World 

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Social Media Causing Misconceptions in the Political World 

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On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," host Brian Stelter said GOP-Rep. Devin Nunes' intelligence memo hasn't just divided politicians -- it's created a deep fissure within the American media.

The memo in question, which was released to the public Friday, accuses the FBI of abusing its surveillance authority while investigating potential ties between President Trump's campaign and Russia.

"Let's be honest," Stelter said. "This week, Sean Hannity won and the rest of America lost."

Fox New's Hannity won, he said, because coverage of the memo confused the public and distracted from serious questions about Russian interference.

Pro-Trump TV and radio hosts have "circled the wagons around President Trump" and "distracted people from the truth about Trump's Russia ties," he said.

However, the actual memo did not live up to Hannity's "Watergate times 1,000" hype. Stelter said Hannity is now promising further revelations, while his rivals on MSNBC are "already making fun of it."

CNN reporter Hadas Gold told Stelter on "Reliable" that the "memo has reminded me of sometimes when you go to museums in other countries, and they portray a war that we learned about from the other side, and you just see these two alternate realities."

Related: Epic week of reporting challenges pro-Trump media's counter-narrative

Julia Ioffe of The Atlantic agreed with Gold, saying "people feel like they're tuning in, in the middle, and they've missed the first three episodes of the season."

"People are just getting, I think, the overarching narratives from their side, from the media that they watch, that they believe," Ioffe added.

Some of the confusion comes from complex and dueling narratives about who and what should be investigated. Stelter said America is "one country" with "two narratives."

Meanwhile, Trump is locked in a standoff with his own FBI -- and Americans who tune into Fox News are being told to question the agency's integrity.

David Zurawik, a media critic for The Baltimore Sun, said the right-wing media is floating conspiracy theories that are becoming talking points for politicians.

"I think we are in an incredibly dangerous place right now," he said, adding he was "shocked at the traction this Hannity narrative has gotten."

Gold added that the FBI vs. conservative narrative was "stunning."

"Typically the conservative party and the Republican party have been so supportive of the FBI and what they do," she said. "We've flipped it on its head."

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 4, 2018: 2:29 PM ET

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Stelter: One country, two media narratives about Russia

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The memo in question, which was released to the public Friday, accuses the FBI of abusing its surveillance authority while investigating potential ties between President Trump's campaign and Russia. "Let's be honest," Stelter said. "This week, Sean Hannity won and the rest of America lost."

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Understanding Digital Culture, Everyone is watching: Privacy and Surveillance In Digital Life

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In this chapter of his book 'Understand Digital Culture', Vincent Miller studies the position privacy and surveillance hold in the technological age. He begins by outlying what privacy means, saying that it is a concept ingrained in society and culture centred around three ideas; solitude, secrecy and anonymity.

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If you would like to authenticate using a different subscribed institution that supports Shibboleth authentication or have your own login and password to Project MUSE, click 'Authenticate'.

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The Effect of Big Data on the Use of Social Media

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The Effect of Big Data on the Use of Social Media

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For marketers and other companies that are heavily involved in data, keeping up with the latest trends is necessary to ensure maximum efficiency and profits.

Big data is undoubtedly going to be a major point of focus in the coming years. Big data and social media are a match made in heaven for companies but what does that mean for the average consumer?

What exactly is big data?

Anyone who is confused by this term should simply look at the name for an answer. Big data is exactly what it sounds like: massive volumes of data.

Businesses are concerned with big data because it requires new methods of interaction. Every part of the process including collecting, storing, and analyzing requires a new approach. There are three main things to consider whenever big data is concerned:

Volume: There are huge amounts of data to be collected.

Variety: Structured and unstructured data has to be considered.

Velocity: Data can come in archived forms but also in real-time.

Social media is important for both businesses and people

While big data is concerned with all kinds of sources, it is estimated that the majority of it comes from unstructured sources. As one might imagine, social media constitutes perhaps the biggest source of unstructured sources for big data.

Likes, tweets, views, comments, favorites, and everything else that users can do and interact with in any social media platform can be collected and analyzed by interested parties.

In the digital age, social media is important for any business. Maintaining a presence on platforms like Facebook and Twitter is essential because it allows people to interact with the company on a seemingly personal level which aids businesses across multiple fronts.

It is also important for the average consumer. Facebook alone boasts 2 billion monthly users, about 26% of the world's entire population. It is vital then to consider that big data from social media can arrive in an incredible number of forms.

Social media interactions will play a vital role

Imagine the following scenario. You wish to purchase a new life insurance policy and you start shopping around at all the usual companies, asking some questions and answer a lot more in return.

Then, they enter your name in their system and reject you, despite the fact that you thought of yourself as a very viable candidate with a steady job, a good medical history, and everything else that might make you appealing in their eyes.

The reason why you were rejected, however, was not as obvious. It was because every weekend you post on Facebook about getting drunk. You upload Instagram pictures of your favorite junk food weekly. There are no records of you ever been on a gym or a fitness platform of any kind.

That kind of information might seem like a massive invasion to privacy but many of the things you upload online are part of public record. While you can certainly change some of your settings to private, the cold hard truth is that the Internet is not only forever but also painfully transparent.

In a few years, laws may well exist that will allow companies to peer into your social media and your Internet usage in order to gauge your viability for anything from life insurance to a mortgage and everything in-between.

Companies will find new ways to make sense of big data

Right now, big data and machine learning AI are two parts of technology which are still very much evolving. Businesses have already found ways of interacting with big data but this is merely the beginning.

For instance, a marketing business which is focused on promoting new brands and people may utilize a machine learning algorithm that allows it to collect data from people who match certain characteristics.

Elisa Chan, Marketing Director of Macquarie Cloud Services - an Australian based hybrid IT and data center operations business told us big data helps her team make better advertising decisions, such as what content to post, when to post it and how to promote viral growth.

A colleague of mine once said that capturing a good photo is all about being at the right place, at the right time and I will say the same applies to social media, it's all about capturing the audience with the right content at the right time - how do we know what this content and timing is? It all comes from a lot of unstructured data about our audience we've collected and analyzed through time, Chan said.

Then, with the assistance of AI technology, they will be able to analyze data from hundreds of thousands of users in order to come up with a campaign that will have laser-precision focus, a very specific reach, and a fantastic chance of reaching the target audience and appealing to its tastes.

There has been no other time where user habits, wants, and needs could be so excessively collected and analyzed in such excruciating detail. New pathways have been opened up for businesses that require access to large amounts of data in every part of the process.

Users must learn to use social media safely

The average consumer has little to no idea about big data or how advertising and marketing companies gather and use their information. Lawmakers and businesses should make user education a top priority in order to avoid challenging situations in the future.

For example, users may not understand that whatever they post on Facebook may be used by advertisers in order to learn about their habits for targeted ads.

Such processes should be clearly explained so that users are conscious of what is happening when they use social media. Otherwise, future processes that will be far more automated and will collect even more data may be seen as deceitful.

This post is part of our contributor series. The views expressed are the author's own and not necessarily shared by TNW.

Read next: Should robot artists be given copyright protection?

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Will big data change how you use social media?

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For marketers and other companies that are heavily involved in data, keeping up with the latest trends is necessary to ensure maximum efficiency and profits. Big data is undoubtedly going to be a major point of focus in the coming years. Big data and social media are a match made in heaven for companies but ...

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Hacking activity is still commonplace, but is now less so. This overview describes what hackers are, and the threats they pose.

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'Black Mirror' Series as the Epitome of the Dangers of Digital Culture

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'Black Mirror' Series as the Epitome of the Dangers of Digital Culture

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[Warning: spoilers ONLY on Black Mirror episodes before this season.]

The ultimate goal of technology is to find a workaround for cheating death. But on the tech-focused British anthology series Black Mirror, the idea that we'll find a way to digitally live forever is the ultimate fear.

We may not know how close Calico, the Google company focused on health and aging, has come to expanding the human lifespan or whether Elon Musk is making headway toward injecting our brains into robot skulls. In the world of Black Mirror, though, humans can upload their consciousness directly to the cloud-which appears to be located somewhere far from heaven.

Technology is about solving problems. Black Mirror, which returned to Netflix for a fourth season December 29, is about how tech solutions create nightmarish new problems that-whoops-cannot be solved. The show's first two Channel 4-produced seasons explored the dark terrain of where surveillance, social media, and reality TV might be headed in the nearish future. It wasn't until the post-second season Christmas special that we got a glimpse of co-creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones' ultimate prognostication: that our consciousness will one day be digitally extractable.

In that episode, "White Christmas," Jon Hamm can transfer a copy of your consciousness from your brain into a remote, egg-shaped module, like an MP3 in a USB port. That module now contains the essence of you, everything that makes you "you"-your very soul-and turns it into a tiny butler for the "real" you. Hamm's character convinces MP3-you to perform butler-y tasks through a terrifying form of torture: altering time so that MP3-you must experience six months locked away in a tiny module with zero distractions, in the span of a minute. By the end of the episode, we've seen the threat of this technology carried out at the speed of a thousand years per minute. Infinite time spent as a ghost in a machine. Welcome to digital hell.

"White Christmas" aired in 2014, and since then, the show has only become more interested in transferred consciousness. And it's not always a raw deal. The most popular episode in Black Mirror's history, last season's Emmy-winning, formula-busting "San Junipero," takes an optimistic look at the digital afterlife. Two elderly women meet as avatars of their young, ideal selves while sampling immersive afterlife software. They must each then decide whether to let their consciousness die with their bodies, or if they should become each other's reason to grant their souls extended digital life. The episode ends with the two speeding off into a shimmery, simulated sunrise together. Although the juxtaposition of their drop-top, windy hair frolic and the cold silicon wires in which they actually "exist" as code is a bit jarring, the episode suggests that technology may provide us with the heaven religion could never guarantee.

The new season of Black Mirror doubles down on "San Junipero's" extractible consciousness, if not its optimism. The concept comes up in episodes "USS Callister" and "Black Museum," and both instances recall the more torture-y aspects of "White Christmas" over the beachside joyriding of "San Junipero." (That said, the tech used in both new episodes is an aesthetic callback to "San Junipero.") So what is it about this idea of captured consciousness that has captured Brooker and Jones' consciousness? Why now?

It's probably not because we're moving closer to implementing similar tech in real life. According to a 2015 BBC article on immortality, we're still three key breakthroughs away from backing up one's brain like a hard drive: "Scientists must first discover how to preserve, non-destructively, someone's brain upon their death. Then the content of the preserved brain must be analyzed and captured. Finally, that capture of the person's mind must be recreated on a simulated human brain."

Exactly none of those things is happening anytime soon. Even if such a breakthrough were imminent, though, there's a big difference between preserving one's knowledge and memories, and preserving their actual consciousness, as Black Mirror has depicted. The closest we've come is merely simulating consciousness with services like Eternime, which sponge up a deceased person's social media residue to create a chatbot-like digital avatar. (Not unlike the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back," which beat Eternime to market by a couple years and takes its conceit to the ultimate conclusion: a chatbot-like digital avatar inserted into a clone body.)

Perhaps the idea of a torturous digital afterlife stuck in Brooker's craw-he gets sole writing credit on most episodes-not because it seems like that's where we'll soon be heading, but because it's what we're experiencing right now.

The prevailing fear that Black Mirror exploits with its digital hell episodes is the idea of being hopelessly trapped forever, unable to control anything that happens, unable to look away. The totality of 2017 felt a lot like that.

How many of us lost what felt like whole days last year, relentlessly scrolling through Twitter to find out if healthcare was still a thing? How many of us called our representatives in Congress so many times that, five seconds into a call, we could discern the voices of specific assistants and what kind of mood they were in-only to see whatever we were calling to prevent from happening still happen? How many of us came to know Donald Trump's thoughts so well, it felt like we were stuck as passengers in his brain, à la Being John Malkovich, Get Out, or any number of Black Mirror episodes? In 2017, purgatorial ennui was the new black. We might as well have been stuck on the deck of the USS Callister, the idea of escape impossible.

For their part, the creators have kept mostly quiet about whether Donald Trump or Brexit had much influence on the new season, or what led them to include transferred or simulated consciousness in multiple new episodes. According to a recent Variety interview with Jones, the team was careful not to rely on any one particular area of technology too much: "We don't want anyone to feel like they're getting a season theme because our job is to say you don't quite know what you're going to get so lean in and pay attention and hopefully you'll enjoy the ride."

There are indications, however, that the frenzied mood of America and of post-Brexit Britain has weighed on the team's minds-even if the writing had already begun in the lead-up to 2017. Charlie Brooker just before the election that he "wouldn't be 1 percent surprised [if Trump wins]. I don't want it to happen; I might have to build a bunker. But if I'm honest, it's what I expect."

When Brooker's expectation proved out, even he did not seem ready for it. On the eve of the US election, as the tide turned Trump's way, Brooker tweeted, "This isn't an episode. This isn't marketing. This is reality."

Just because what he thought might happen did happen doesn't mean it didn't turn out worse than he thought. Social media culture had already served as the basis for two Black Mirror episodes in season three-the excellent "Nosedive" and "Hated in the Nation" -but Brooker and his team may still not have been prepared for the experience of being on social media in 2017. Many of us were more Extremely Online than ever, constantly angry at what we were seeing, and despondent over our inability to do anything about it. We were prisoners to our devices for an interminable duration. We could technically log off and walk away at any time, but it felt pointless. The news would find you anyway, and it would be Bad.

In the 2017 movie The Circle, the only popular entertainment more blunt in its tech criticism than Black Mirror, a Luddite eventually feels so trapped by technology that he kills himself. While a bit on the nose, the movie did reinforce the notion that if you're not on social media, you cease to exist. And that was before Trump's nuclear-grade goading of Kim Jong-Un made it feel like if you were off social media for even one second, you might miss the moment that led to you physically ceasing to exist.

These new episodes recognize that feeling of being trapped forever, providing both catharsis and terror by showing how it could be so much worse. Black Mirror's fourth seasonfeels entirely tuned into the moment. The show about our dark future has become more than ever a reflection of our dark present.

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"Black Mirror" Is Obsessed With Digital Hell Because We Are Living In It

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Warning: spoilers ONLY on Black Mirror episodes before this season.] The ultimate goal of technology is to find a workaround for cheating death. But on the tech-focused British anthology series Black Mirror, the idea that we'll find a way to digitally live forever is the ultimate fear.