Amrit's MEST3 Exam Blog

Facebook and Google were conned out of $100m in phishing scheme https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/28/facebook-google-conned-100m-phishing-scheme   Summary: "Not even two of the biggest US technology firms are safe from fraud, as the social network and the search company named as victims of sophisticated attack"" " Last month it was reported that two major tech companies were tricked by a Lithuanian man into sending him over $100m (£77m). Evaldas Rimasauskas, 48, was  charged with wire fraud , money laundering and aggravated identity theft for impersonating Quanta Computer – a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer that includes Google, Facebook and Apple as clients." " The case shows just how big an issue phishing and online fraud has become, with phishing attacks conning people and companies all over the world out of significant sums of money."  Key facts/ statistics:  The National Audit Office warned in Dece...

 How Much Would Facebook Be Worth Today If It Hadn't Bought Instagram? https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2017/04/30/how-much-would-facebook-be-worth-today-if-it-hadnt-bought-instagram/#2f582af69d77  Summary: post in regards to the anniversary Key facts/ statistics: Facebook just did an update last week that Instagram is now up to 700 million monthly active users. A little over 5 years ago, Kevin Systrom - Instagram's founder - agreed to sell his company to Mark Zuckerberg for $1 billion of cash and stock. At the time of the deal, Instagram had 30 million users. I've often made the argument that Instagram was/is a generational company - is there a better poster child for a "mobile" company than them? - and that they made a huge mistake selling out to Facebook.  Flickr was yesterday's photo-sharing app. Instagram was today's. It also had all the major celebrities using it. Not only was it clear that they were going to be the dominant mob...

Ladan: Twitter Society, politics, news  online news and social networking  campaigning and oversimplification government surveillance of audience  global connection  #blacklivesmatter social media revolutions  Malcolm Gladwell - activism but not revolutionary change  citizen journalism  "black twitter" - presentation of black identities 15 million active users in the UK 65% under 34  Fake news and politics  echo chamber  terrorism     Twitter seems to be having increased power in terms of its audience influence. Even though it doesn't directly influence audience opinion within the platform due to the existence of echochambers but it does cause them a false sense of support. Therefore audience audiences to feel they are supported when they are not and therefore don't do much campaigning outside of social media and the internet therefore limiting the amount of social change they could potentia...

Teenage hackers motivated by morality not money, study finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/21/teenage-hackers-motivated-moral-crusade-money-cybercrime  Summary: " Young people attack computer networks to impress friends and challenge political system, crime research shows"  Teenage hackers are motivated by idealism and impressing their mates rather than money, according to a study by the National  Crime  Agency. Children as young as 12 are being arressted in regards to computer based crimes. The average age seems to be 17 for these types of crimes. It is either to make political systems or  Others were motivated by a desire to tackle technical problems and prove themselves to friends, the report found. Key facts/statistics: Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Hoare said: “They don’t understand the implications on business, government websites and individuals.” Young hackers could profit from their skills if they avoided cybercr...

Facebook has 60 people working on how to read your mind https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/19/facebook-mind-reading-technology-f8  Summary: "Social network says it’s assembled a team to build technology that allows you to ‘think’ commands at your smartphone. But what if you think that’s scary?"  According to  Facebook  it’s developing technology to read your brainwaves so that you don’t have to look down at your phone to type emails, you can just think them. H iring a  brain-computer interface engineer  and a  neural imaging engineer . Its goal? To create a system capable of typing one hundred words per minute – five times faster than you can type on a smartphone – straight from your brain. In order to support her argument and suggest that this is very possible to do She highlighted the example of a woman with ALS who had a pea-sized implant that could pick up on signals in her brain to allow her to type eight words per minute usin...

Facebook's key to building communities in divided times: augmented reality  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/18/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-f8-speech-augmented-reality   Summary: "Mark Zuckerberg at the F8 conference hinted that AR encourages people to interact with others – although that experience is still mediated by a screen" Zucherberg is outlining that the camera app planned to be released makes it easy for people to build augmented reality experiences (digital objects and overlaid information enhancing physical space) Facebook  has developed some clever tools to turn a two-dimensional camera image into a three-dimensional model into which animated effects can be added. Key facts/ statistics: We live in a time when society is divided and work is needed to bring people together, but Facebook CEO  Mark Zuckerberg  thinks it has the solution: augmented reality “AR is going to help us mix the digital and physical in all new ways, and ...

Facebook killing video puts moderation policies under the microscope, again https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/17/facebook-live-murder-crime-policy Summary: "Question of the social network’s role in amplifying crime has intensified after it took several hours to remove a brutal video seen millions of times" The shooting of Grandfather Robert Godwin in a first person view of the shooting was uploaded to Facebook (remaing there for 2 hours before being taken down) by that time it had been saved, and shared and viewed millions of times. This therefore caused a lot of distress to his grandson who took to twitter to ask for everyone to stop sharing the video to show some respect to his grandfather. This therefore brought into question again social medias ability to moderate content especially when it is the unfolding of a crime. " The incident comes on the eve of Facebook’s F8, an annual event for developers, and at a time when the company is working h...

Case study research tasks The basics Your chosen industry: Social Media Your chosen case study (i.e. text/institution etc.): Instagram (Facebook and Snap chat) Have you received approval for this case study from your teacher? Yes Research and answer the following tasks on your MEST3 exam blog: Audience 1) How has new and digital media changed the audience experience in your chosen industry? There is much more of an audience interaction with the institution creating more power for the audience to demand a particular service in a way they desire. This thus shifts the power dynamics slightly going from the hypodermic needle model in regards to a completely passive audience, however now it is much more like the two-step flow model where the audience is much more active but it creates ‘opinion leaders’ as audiences are more likely to identify and agree with these institutions that post online. The rapid growth of social media has meant the audience size has increased massi...