Tag Archives: Twitter

MNA Science & Technology Desk: Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc said on Monday they had dismantled a state-backed social media campaign originating in mainland China that sought to undermine protests in Hong Kong. Twitter said it suspended 936 accounts and the operations appeared to be a coordinated state-backed effort originating in China. It said these accounts were just the most active portions of this campaign and that a “larger, spammy network” of approximately 200,000 accounts had been proactively suspended before they were substantially active. Facebook said it had removed accounts and pages from a small network after a tip from ...

MNA Science & Technology Desk: Twitter has removed nearly 4,800 accounts, which were allegedly being used by Iran to spread misinformation, in a continuing effort to prevent election interference and misinformation on the platform. The company revealed the decision on Thursday as it said the accounts were deleted alongside others from several different groups as Twitter tries to tackle interference, reports BBC. It also removed accounts which were reportedly used for Russian, Catalonian and Venezuelan propaganda. Social manipulation The 4,800 accounts were not a unified block, said Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity in a blog detailing its actions. ...

MNA Science & Technology Desk: Twitter co-founder Evan Williams has said that he is leaving the board of directors of the US social networking giant at the end of the month. “I’m very lucky to have served on the @Twitter board for 12 years (ever since there was a board). It’s been overwhelmingly interesting, educational-and, at times, challenging,” Williams tweeted. While expressing his appreciation for almost 4,000 Twitter employees “who are doing the hard work every day,” “I will continue rooting for the team as I focus my time on other projects,” he added. Williams succeeded Twitter founder Jack Dorsey ...

MNA International Desk: Pakistan reacted angrily Monday to criticism by President Donald Trump that the country had not done enough in return for years of US military aid and that the government had harboured Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida. In an interview with “Fox News Sunday” this weekend, Trump defended his decision early this year to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid to Pakistan. “I ended it because they don’t do anything for us, they don’t do a damn thing for us,” he said. Trump also alleged that the Pakistani government had known bin Laden ...

MNA Tech Desk: Twitter still remains a hotbed for accounts spreading fake news, suggests a new study that looked into how fake and conspiracy news flourished on the microblogging site both before and after the 2016 US presidential election. More than 80 per cent of the Twitter accounts linked to spread of disinformation during the 2016 election are still active, said the study by the Knight Foundation on Thursday. These accounts continue to publish more than a million tweets in a typical day, the study said. Using tools and mapping methods from Graphika, a social media intelligence firm, the researchers ...

MNA Tech Desk: Top Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc executives will defend their companies before US lawmakers on Wednesday, with Facebook insisting it takes election interference seriously and Twitter denying its operations are influenced by politics. But no executive from Alphabet Inc’s Google is expected to testify, after the company declined the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request to send one of its most senior executives, frustrating lawmakers, reported news agency. Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, appearing alongside Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, will say that her company’s efforts to combat foreign influence efforts have improved since the 2016 US election, ...

MNA Tech Desk: Twitter is planning to roll out threaded conversations like Facebook along with status indicators — showing who else is online among your followers — on its platform. In a tweet, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said on Friday that the micro-blogging platform will soon get interesting updates. ‘Playing with some new Twitter features: presence (who else is on Twitter right now?) and threading (easier to read convos),’ Dorsey tweeted, along with some samples. The ‘presence’ feature will make it easier to engage with those you follow who are online at the moment. The ‘threading’ feature would allow users ...

MNA Tech Desk: Aiming to tackle abuse and hate trolls, Twitter has teamed up with two researchers from Harvard and Princeton Universities to study online abuse. In an experiment that began on Friday, Twitter will publicise its rules to users to test whether this would improve civility, the researchers wrote on Medium. “We proposed this idea to Twitter and designed an experiment to evaluate it. This project also pioneers an open, evidence-based approach to improving people’s experiences online, while protecting their privacy,” said Susan Benesch, faculty associate at Harvard University and J Nathan Matias, Post-doctoral research associate at Princeton University. ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: Twitter announced Tuesday it would double the limit for tweets to 280 characters, a bid to draw in more users and boost engagement at the social network. Giving users twice the space to voice their thoughts ushers in a new era for the online platform, whose hallmark 140-character cap had encouraged users to craft succinct missives. “We’re expanding the character limit! We want it to be easier and faster for everyone to express themselves,” tweeted the site, which started testing an increase to its limit in most languages in early September. The changes will be ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: Former President Barack Obama’s tweet reacting to the attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, is the most liked tweet ever on the social network. Obama tweeted a quote from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom” Saturday that said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” The quote was split into three tweets, ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: A free-speech institute on Tuesday sent a letter to President Donald Trump demanding the prolific tweeter unblock certain Twitter (TWTR.N) users on grounds the practice violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Trump’s @realDonaldTrump account recently blocked a number of accounts that replied to his tweets with commentary that criticized, mocked or disagreed with his actions. Twitter users are unable to see or respond to tweets from accounts that block them. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York said in its letter that the blocking suppressed speech in a public ...

MNA Culture & Entertainment Desk: Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui on Monday released a new video in which he says that he has got his DNA test done to know his religion and discovered that he is a 100 per cent artiste. Nawazuddin took to Twitter to release the 55-seconds video, where the actor was seen holding placard in which he has written that he has got the DNA test done. “Hi I am Nawazuddin Siddiqui. I had got my DNA test done and when the reports came in, I found that…I am 16.66 per cent Hindu, 16.66 per cent Muslim, ...

MNA Science & Tech: Micro-blogging social media website Twitter has blocked more than six lakh terror-related accounts in last one and a half years, reported news agency. According to a report in CNET on Tuesday that quoted Twitter’s ‘Transparency Report’, the micro-blogging site has suspended a total of 636,248 terror-related accounts since August 1, 2015. In the last six months of 2016, Twitter suspended 376,890 accounts for promoting terrorism. It had announced the blocking of more than 125,000 accounts earlier in 2016 which were primarily related to the Islamic State (IS) extremist group. In addition to the account suspensions, Twitter’s ...

MNA Culture & Entertainment: Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput Kapoor have been blessed with a baby girl. Mira delivered the baby at Hinduja Healthcare Surgical hospital, Mumbai on Friday. The 35-year-old actor took to Twitter to share the exciting news with his fans as soon as the baby arrived. “She has arrived and words fall short to express our happiness. Thank you for all your wishes,” Shahid tweeted. Mira was rushed to the hospital on Friday evening after she experienced labour pain. It was a normal delivery and Shahid, being the dotting husband, was by Mira’s side all throughout her ...

MNA Technology Desk: Twitter has closed 360,000 accounts for threatening or encouraging terror activities since the middle of 2015, the twitter authority confirmed it on Thursday. The micro blogging stage has formerly come under fire from Washington and third-party groups for not doing enough to stop accounts linked to Islamic State militants. Since February, it has closed an additional 235,000 accounts, after halting 125,000 accounts since the middle of 2015, most of which were linked to Islamic State. Though it said an algorithm cannot recognize terrorist propaganda, it relies on spam-fighting tools to help identify repeat offenders, including those who ...

MNA Technology Desk: Twitter has protected millions of accounts of users by taking several steps, after passwords were posted for sale. The social network responds to username and password leak by locking affected accounts after spate of hacks targeting Katy Perry, Mark Zuckerberg and NFL. Twitter failed to state exactly how many accounts were affected, but the number is thought to be in the millions. The site has been forced to lock millions of users’ accounts after 33m purported account details were posted for sale on the dark web. The details, which were exposed and made accessible by security site ...