Ex-employee reveals Facebook's dark, sexist side

July 2, 2012

FB

New Delhi, July 2: Facebook developed an experimental feature called “Dark Profiles” which would give secret accounts to people who did not even sign up, a new book by a former employee of the social networking site has claimed.

Engineers wanted to create shadow pages for those who were tagged in photos by their friends in the hope they would cave-in and join the social networking website, Katherine Losse, the author of “The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network,” said.

Nobody at Facebook “even flinched” when staff raised this disturbing new twist as they were so blinded by their mission to take over the world.

The book also claimed that in 2007 Facebook technicians worked on a programme called “Judgebox,” which would let users compare and rate women in echoes of founder Mark Zuckerberg's sexist “Facemash” app he developed at Harvard.

It confirms for the first time that Facebook staff have a programme called “Facebook Stalker” which lets them track who has been visiting their profiles, the Daily Mail reported. And in the early days of the social networking website, employees were given the “master” password with no security checks at all and allowed to do as they pleased.

These claims have been made in the new book by Losse who worked for Facebook between 2005 and 2010 and worked her way up from customer relations to be the speechwriter for its founder Mark Zuckerberg.

She claimed that in autumn 2006 everyone at the company was “so convinced that Facebook was something that everyone should have that when the product team created an experimental feature called dark profiles in 2006, nobody even flinched.”

People can be tagged in Facebook photos even if they do not have a profile, and the idea was to create a “dark” version which could apparently be activated if they finally signed up. “It reminds me now of the way members of the Mormon church convert dead people, following the logic that if they had know about Mormonism when they were alive they would have been believers,” Losse wrote.

The claims come at a difficult time for Facebook, it recently sparked yet another backlash after being caught out trying to force its 900 million users to adopt its own email service. It was accused of “hijacking” users' contact details and deleting their personal email addresses without asking them.


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Agencies
May 6,2020

New Delhi, May 6: The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has extended the validity of electronic way (E-way) bills, whose expiry date fell between March 20 and April 15, till May 31.

"Notification No. 40/2020-Central Tax issued to extend the validity of e-way bills till May 31 for all those e-way bills which were generated on or before March 24, 2020 and had expiry between the period from March 20 to April 15, 2020," the CBIC tweeted on Tuesday.

E-way bill is produced by transporters and businessmen before a Goods and Services Tax (GST) inspector for moving goods worth over Rs 50,000 from one state to another.

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Agencies
June 30,2020

Seventy-seven per cent children below five years of age in Jammu and Kashmir were not able to access basic healthcare services like immunisation during the lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19, CRY said on Monday citing a study.

The 'Rapid Online Perception Study about the Effects of COVID-19 on Children' was conducted during the first and second phases of the lockdown based on responses of parents and primary caregivers from all across the country, including Jammu and Kashmir, the NGO said in a statement.

It said a total of 387 respondents from Jammu and Kashmir participated in the study.

"Seventy-seven per cent children of age 0-5 years were not able to access basic healthcare services such as immunisation during lockdown - necessarily imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in Jammu and Kashmir," Child Rights and You (CRY) said.

It said as immunisation programmes witnessed a major setback during the lockdown across the country, the results of the survey across 23 states and Union Territories found nearly 50 per cent of parents with children below five years of age unable to access immunisation services.

"Worryingly, the figure was considerably high in Jammu and Kashmir with 77.14 per cent children below five years unable to get immunisation services," it added.

According to the study, in Jammu and Kashmir, nearly 35 per cent of the respondents said their children did not receive medical help during the lockdown, resulting in difficulties to cope with their children's illnesses and health hazards.

The study also talks about more systemic arrangements and logistical preparedness to ensure that children with no or compromised digital reach are not deprived from their Right to Education.

With online classes introduced as a substitute of schools during the lockdown, access to education for children remained a major issue of concern, as many of them, especially the ones from marginalised and financially poorer backgrounds found it difficult without smartphones and internet access.

The survey's findings revealed that nationally only 41 per cent households with children of school-going age could access online classes on a regular basis.

"Almost 90 per cent parents and primary caregivers reported that the lockdown has increased the screen time of their child to great or some extent. About half of the households recorded an increase of children's exposure to online activities during lockdown," it said.

The NGO said around 76 per cent parents agreed that they could keep a watch of their children's online activity to some extent.

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News Network
January 18,2020

Mumbai, Jan 18: Maharashtra Tourism Minister Aaditya Thackeray on Friday said shops, restaurants, malls and pubs will remain open 24 hours on an experimental basis in a few areas of Mumbai from January 26.

The areas where these establishments will remain open all night are Fort and Kala Ghoda in south Mumbai and Bandra Kurla Complex in the west.

Thackeray had batted for all-night-open eateries and other establishments in the city during the earlier BJP-Shiv Sena regime too.

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