Breaking big stories requires support.
SAN FRANCISCO — On the same day Facebook announced that it had carried out its biggest purge yet of American accounts peddling disinformation, the company quietly made another revelation: It had removed 66 accounts, pages and apps linked to Russian firms that build facial recognition software for the Russian government.
Facebook said Thursday that it had removed any accounts associated with SocialDataHub and its sister firm, Fubutech, because the companies violated its policies by scraping data from the social network.
“Facebook has reason to believe your work for the government has included matching photos from individuals’ personal social media accounts in order to identify them,” the company said in a cease-and-desist letter to SocialDataHub that was dated Tuesday and viewed by The New York Times.
Facebook gave the companies until Friday to detail what data they had taken and then delete it all.
The case illustrates a new reality for Facebook. SocialDataHub and Fubutech have been around for at least four years, relying in part on Facebook data to build products that might alarm some civil-liberty advocates.
As Facebook is taking a closer look at its own products amid increasing scrutiny and public outcry, it is finding more examples of companies that have been exploiting its global social network for questionable ends.
SocialDataHub and Fubutech also present another challenge because, Facebook said, at least some of their data collection occurred through web scraping. Scraping is a rudimentary technique in which computer programmers can pull information off a website. It is difficult to detect and prevent, Facebook said. Scraping can pull any data that’s left public on a Facebook profile — and, theoretically, more private data about the user’s Facebook friends.
Artur Khachuyan, the 26-year-old chief executive of SocialDataHub and Fubutech, said in an interview Friday that Facebook had deleted his companies’ accounts unfairly.
Fubutech does build facial-recognition software for the Russian government and uses Facebook data, but it scrapes Google search results for that information — not Facebook, he said. And SocialDataHub’s main product — a system that assigns scores to Russian citizens based on their social-media profiles for insurers and banks — required permission from the users it rates, he said. Mr. Khachuyan said that he taught Russian journalism students how to scrape the web and that two of them had scraped Facebook for the public profiles of their classmates. He believes Facebook mistook the students’ activity for his companies’ work. “Maybe it’s a reason to deactivate our accounts,” Mr. Khachuyan said. “But I don’t know why Facebook deletes Instagram account of my dog.” That account, for “Mars the Blue Corgi,” had 176 followers.
Katy Dormer, a Facebook spokeswoman, rejected Mr. Khachuyan’s claim that Facebook had conflated his students’ activity with the actions of his companies.
“We don’t take these actions lightly,” she said. “The fact we took the action and sent the letter means we saw enough evidence.”
Facebook’s removal of SocialDataHub and Fubutech reflects a larger problem for the social media company as it evaluates its relationship with third-party apps that have access to people’s Facebook data.
In the wake of reporting by The New York Times and others that the political firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the data of more than 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app, Facebook announced that it was reviewing its data-sharing policy with apps. After an audit, the company said it was suspending 200 apps. Some have since had their access to Facebook restored.
Mr. Khachuyan said the letter from Facebook had surprised him, particularly because his companies have been operating the same way for years.
SEATTLE — Last week, Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president in charge of operations, stood on a ladder in a warehouse near Los Angeles and announced to employees that Amazon was raising pay for its vast blue-collar work force.
As soon as he said “new Amazon minimum wage of $15 an hour,” Mr. Clark was drowned out by more than 10 seconds of cheers and high-fives.
Mr. Clark posted a video of the meeting on Twitter, where it since has been viewed more than 400,000 times. Senator Bernie Sanders, who had repeatedly criticized Amazon for how it treated its workers, praised the raise and shared the clip, adding another half-a-million views.
But in Amazon warehouses across the country, many longtime workers are fuming that — based on the information they have received so far — they may end up making thousands of dollars less a year.
Yes, Amazon is increasing wages, which will benefit most employees. But it will no longer give out new stock options and monthly bonuses. Some workers believe that means their total compensation will shrink.
Whether Amazon finds a way to close that gap will be closely watched in Washington. On Oct. 4, Mr. Sanders, an independent from Vermont, sent a letter to Jay Carney, who runs Amazon’s public policy, “asking Amazon to confirm how the total compensation of employees who would have received stock options — those with the company for two or more years — will be affected as a result of the recent changes,” according to a copy provided to The New York Times.
Mr. Sanders, who was alerted to the issue by workers, has not yet received a response from Amazon, a spokesman for the senator said.
The New York Times spoke to about a half dozen workers around the country, from Texas to Kentucky, and viewed numerous employee discussions on Facebook. All of the workers shared their pay stubs, but few would allow their names to be used.
Near Minneapolis, Katy Iber, who handles returned products at an Amazon warehouse, works the night shift. Her region has a tight local labor market, so she already makes more than $15 an hour.
In an “all hands” meeting at the start of her shift on Thursday — her first day at work since the pay raise was announced — she learned Amazon was raising her base pay by $1 an hour
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento