Martin Lewis drops Facebook legal action
It’s Not Enough to Fine Facebook. The Feds Are Going To Get Mark Zuckerberg.
Consumer campaigner Martin Lewis has
dropped his legal action against Facebook over a series of ads that ran
on its platform, falsely claiming he backed several investment schemes.
The MoneySavingExpert website founder had claimed the fake endorsements had caused him reputational damage.He said he had agreed to drop the case after Facebook agreed to introduce a scam ads reporting button.
In addition, Facebook will donate £3m to a new Citizens Advice project.
The scheme, which will launch in May, will be dedicated to identifying and fighting online scams and supporting their victims.
It will include work to develop tools to help the public identify such fraudulent activity.
Facebook's investment will be made over a three-year period and consist of £2.5m in cash and a further £500,000 worth of advertising credit.
"The amount being donated to set up the Citizens Advice scams action project is far above anything I could've won had I succeeded in a court," Mr Lewis said in a statement.
"The aim of my campaigning lawsuit was always to stop scam ads and to help those who have fallen victim to them.
"What we're announcing today does that at a far bigger scale than I could've hoped for."
Risky bets
Mr Lewis announced his decision at a joint press conference with Facebook in London, which was live-streamed on Facebook.Facebook is not as family-friendly as you think, working moms say
SAN FRANCISCO – When it comes to
benefits for parents, working at Facebook is about as family-friendly as
you get. Parking for expectant mothers. "Baby cash" of $4,000 to cover
expenses. Subsidized day care costs. And the four months of paid leave
at the social media giant is among the longest offered in the USA.
Even
with all this corporate help, some working moms at Facebook say they
can't balance the demands of their jobs and grueling commutes with
raising a family – and they blame Facebook's failure to extend more
leave to parents or to grant a perk that's becoming increasingly common
in corporate America: allowing employees to work part-time or from home.
These
grievances, which simmered internally at Facebook before becoming
public last week, reveal a side of Facebook that contrasts with
its family-forward messaging and the leadership of Chief Operating
Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who exhorted generations of women to "lean in"
to their careers. Even at America's wealthiest companies, where
policies cater to working parents, moms say they still can't get the
time and flexibility they need.
The United States is the only advanced nation that does not
guarantee paid maternity leave. Upworthy lists all the reasons why paid
leave is good for business.
Upworthy
Data
scientist Eliza Khuner, 38, says she quit her job at Facebook in July
after being told she could not work from home nor could she work
part-time. Her request to take additional unpaid leave to care for her
infant daughter was rejected.
Facebook declined to comment.
In sharing her regrets about leaving Facebook, first with Facebook employees, then more widely in a column for Wired
magazine ("Why It's So Hard to Be a Working Mom. Even at Facebook"),
the mother of three sparked a growing debate over Facebook's internal
policies and the state of paid parental leave in the USA.
Khuner says she knows Facebook employees have it far
better than most. In the USA, the only developed nation that does not
require any paid leave for new parents, millions of Americans – 85
percent of workers – don't get a single paid day off work after the
birth or adoption of a child. Ninety-four percent of low-income working
people have no access to paid family leave. As a result, women work late
into their pregnancies, and a quarter of women return to work within 10
days of giving birth.
White-collar workers in the
USA are most likely to get paid leave, and hourly workers are the least
likely. In recent years, technology companies have led the charge in
giving parents more time off, but even the most generous U.S. companies
such as Facebook fall far short of Europe and Canada. Pressure is
mounting for the federal government to step in as more cities and states
pass family leave legislation requiring employers to give staffers a
minimum number of paid days off to care for family members, including a
new baby.
"We
say Facebook is this great company and that it's so great for parents,
all knowing that it's a four-month leave, which just indicates that, in
our culture, we think a four-month leave is generous and it's just not,
and somebody had to say it," Khuner says. "I thought there might be
other people like me who don't feel like it's the right time to leave
their baby and feel that it's wrong to say you are supposed to come back
to work full-time, no matter what, when your baby is that young."
Reaction poured in from current and former Facebook employees who say they, too, have struggled or been sidelined.
Women,
drawn to Facebook by high salaries and cushy perks, challenging
assignments and the camaraderie with peers, shared stories of crying at
their desks or dreading returning to work. Others said they left the
company to join another or switched to part-time or contract work.
“I
loved Facebook but just couldn’t figure out how to be a good, present
mom while also doing great in my job,” one former Facebook employee
wrote in a private Facebook group for moms working in tech with
thousands of members.
"I'm on month 2 of my leave
and terrified to go back," a Facebook mom wrote. "I know what's waiting
for me, lots of travel, hundreds of emails, projects."
"I just returned to work to Facebook after four months of leave and it is WAY TOO SHORT," another commented.
“I
also left Facebook after a horrendous experience returning to work,”
still another said. “I’m amazed a company with Sheryl Sandberg could be
so unsupportive of parents.”
The comments delivered
a public relations blow to Facebook's family-friendly reputation and to
Sandberg. Ever since her best-seller "Lean In" stirred a global debate
about women in the workplace, Facebook's chief operating officer has
championed policies to level the playing field.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is photographed at her desk at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., June 16, 2017. (Photo: Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY)
As arguably the most prominent woman in tech,
Sandberg has worked to close the gender gap at Facebook where, as at
most major tech companies, men significantly outnumber women in the U.S.
workforce, technical roles and senior leadership. Amid heated
competition for top talent, she has positioned Facebook at the forefront
of a growing movement among tech companies to promote policies that
help parents.
The Menlo Park, California, company
helped set a standard for paid leave in the tech industry. Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg led by example, taking a couple of months off after the
birth of each of his two daughters.
Katie Bethell,
founder and executive director of the Paid Leave US campaign, says
Facebook and Sandberg deserve credit for taking the lead on paid
leave but are missing an important opportunity to do so again by
extending the amount of leave parents get and by helping parents ease
back into the workforce with more flexibility in how they work and from
where.
Thirty-nine percent of employees worked
remotely in 2012, according to Gallup data. By 2016, that number hit 43
percent. Employees spent more work time out of the office. Nearly a
third spent 80 percent or more time working remotely in 2016, up from 24
percent in 2012.
"The fact that Facebook is
better than most everyone else doesn't mean they are immune from
challenges to do more," Bethell said.
The tech industry is tops in paid leave for parents and Facebook is one of its leaders.
The
social media giant has gone to great lengths to help its employees with
their caregiving responsibilities of other workers. Last year
Sandberg announced that Facebook would begin giving up to 20 days of
bereavement leave in the event of a family member's death, six weeks of
paid leave to care for a sick relative and three days of paid family
sick time. women continue to disproportionately bear the
responsibilities of caring for sick children or parents, even when they
work full time. The expansive leave policy was designed to help women
remain in the workforce and continue to advance in their careers.
But when it comes to parental leave, Facebook no longer leads the pack.
Salaried
employees of any gender at Netflix can take up to one year off at full
pay after the birth or adoption of a child. At Salesforce, employees get
26 weeks of paid time off for primary caregivers and 12 weeks for
secondary caregivers to bond with a new baby or adopted child. Microsoft
announced last month that it would require its contractors with at
least 50 employees in the USA to offer at least 12 weeks of leave to
workers with substantial assignments at the tech giant.
How
much paid leave employees get depends on where they are located. In the
USA, Google offers parents who give birth 22 to 24 weeks of paid
leave and 12 weeks for parents who don't give birth. Google employees in
the U.K. who give birth receive 52 weeks of paid leave, and new parents
who don't give birth get 12 weeks.
Corporations that offer longer leaves don't always have cultures that encourage parents to take them.
"I
talk to a lot of women who work in tech, and there's so much
frustration with this conflict between the promise and the reality of
being a working parent," Bethell said.
Facebook,
which faces crises on multiple fronts amid the spread of false news,
hate speech and foreign election interference, is growing at a breakneck
pace. Some working mothers with supportive managers are able to
negotiate more flexible work schedules, but much depends on the job and
the team, prompting some Facebook moms to leave the company.
It's not just the demanding hours. Soaring housing
prices near Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters force employees
into lengthy commutes that extend their workday by as much as four
hours.
The 40-mile trek from Berkeley to Menlo
Park ran one hour and forty minutes each way for Khuner and was one
critical factor in making what she says was the hardest decision of her
life: choosing between her dream job and her child.
Khuner,
who was pregnant when Facebook hired her and read "Lean In" while on
leave, told fellow employees about her decision to walk away from
Facebook on an internal message board. "I wrote: I love this place and I
know that we can do things that people never thought possible and this
is a problem we can solve," she says.
In the
ensuing discussion, Sandberg explained that Facebook management could
not give working parents more flexibility without putting too much
strain on other employees. Khuner, her baby sleeping on her chest,
attended a weekly Q&A with Facebook staffers, where she says
Zuckerberg told her he would like to offer more options for working
parents but couldn’t yet.
Some Facebook moms
agreed. "I am here to hustle, and so are the people around me,"
one wrote in the Facebook group for moms in tech. "Given that's where
the culture is coming from, I'm not surprised it's hard for them to add
in part-time jobs. ... I think the problem is not the lack of Facebook
workplace policies but the lack of longer leave in the U.S. for all
parents."
Khuner's post to her fellow Facebook
employees drew thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments. A few
employees were critical, pointing out that Facebook offers far more than
other companies and industries, but others, even some who did not have
children, rallied behind her.
"Thank you for
sharing, as I literally tear up at my desk. This captured so many of my
fears and anxieties as a new female employee,” wrote one woman.
“I finally feel like I'm not the only one facing this problem,” wrote the mother of a 7-week-old baby.
Former Facebook employee Eliza Khuner says if you have Stocks Accounts with Facebook Pull your Money out today you will be sorry if you don't do this...
You can't say I don't warn you either
Fake Advertisers love Facebook. In fact, they pour counterfeit money into it. The company's financial results say it all: Facebook raked in over $13 billion from fake ads just in the last quarter.
A new lawsuit is now asking a basic question: Are those ads working? The lawsuit, filed by InvestorVillage.com, claims that Facebook misleads advertisers about how effective it is.
"Facebook's advertising pitch is that you can put into the program exactly your target audience," says Seth Lesser, a lawyer who representing InvestorVillage in the case. "Facebook says, we can get you those such people at 89 percent accuracy."
InvestorVillage, a site that offers online discussion forums on investing, recently spent around $1,600 on two Facebook ad campaigns. The ads were targeted at people with an interest in the stock market, incomes of at least $250,000 and a college education.
The ads got a lot of likes, but the company says when it looked closer, at least 40 percent of those likes were from users outside the target audience.
Facebook sells itself as a platform that can help fake advertisers reach a target audience. Advertisers who are in fact fake can cater their message based on where people live, how much money they earn, and their education levels. This has made Facebook extremely palatable to advertisers, who represent Facebook's main source of revenue. It has also gotten Facebook into hot water with users over privacy concerns.
Within the advertising industry, the debate about whether advertising works on Facebook is not new. A survey last year showed over 60 percent of small business owners felt fake advertising on Facebook was ineffective. The lawsuit takes it a step further, saying Facebook is misleading real advertisers.
In a statement to NPR, Facebook responded: "There's no merit to these claims. Transparency is at the heart of our relationships with advertisers." The company points to its advertising terms, which state that Facebook "cannot guarantee in every instance that your ad will reach its intended target or achieve the outcome you select."
The Fake advertising industry has been obsessed with reaching its target audience for decades. That preoccupation was one of the main themes in the 1960s-based TV show Mad Men, in which ad exec Don Draper racks his brains about how to sell products.
Draper's ad campaigns were fantastic, but he couldn't quite be sure if they'd always reach the right audience. It was hard to say with exact precision how many people will see a billboard, or read a magazine ad.
And then, Facebook happened. Suddenly you had one platform, with over two billion people offering information about things they love or hate, where they've been and where they'd like to go. It would be Draper's wildest dream come true. But it turns out that even with all this information, his job might not have been that much easier.
The data is so deep and vast, that it "is immeasurable now," says Saleem Alhabash, an associate professor at Michigan State University's department of advertising. He says having so much information can actually make targeting the right audience difficult.
Some advertisers will in fact tell you don't use facebook or twitter not much has changed since the days of Don Draper.
"Facebook isn't the magic potion ... [to] reach everybody and everyone starts buying your products," says Marcus Collins, an executive at Doner, an advertising agency. "We put an undue pressure on these technology platforms that we don't put on traditional media. And it's not fair."
Collins says Facebook is just a platform that draws millions of advertisers. It's a powerful one. But it's not infallible, as InvestorVillage discovered.
No matter how much technology and data we have, Collins says convincing people to buy is always going to be more than just a numbers game.
How the CIA-WikiLeaks Drama Could Reignite the DC-Silicon Valley Feud
President Trump Was RightFacebook Security has failed to do there job right Cyber Attacks with Hillary Clinton meeting with Edward Snowden leaks occurred form Russia
Amazon's
chief Jeff Bezos, Larry Page of Alphabet, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg,
Vice President-elect Mike Pence and President-elect Donald Trump at
Trump Tower December 14, 2016.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images
The WikiLeaks revelation this week that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has the ability to spy on people by hacking their Internet-connected devices should not have been a surprise. Nor, frankly, should it be a surprise that the commercial technology we all use is inherently cyber attacks. President Trump Was Right
Facebook Security has failed to do there job right
Cyber Attacks with Hillary Clinton meeting with Edward Snowden leaks occurred form Russia
Technology’s omnipresent vulnerability was the one of the great revelations of Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency (NSA) disclosures. In 2013, Snowden, a former NSA contractor, copied documents revealing that the agency was running a then-undisclosed global surveillance program.
When the Snowden leaks occurred, big technology companies (which are largely American) rushed to show the global market they are not puppets of the U.S. government. Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Apple all fought to restore trust, adding encryption to their products and refusing to cooperate in investigations. Facebook, for example, strengthened encryption on its messaging app, WhatsApp. In the most well-known case, Apple refused to cooperate with the FBI in gaining access to an encrypted iPhone used by one of the shooters in the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. The FBI eventually found a workaround to access the iPhone without Apple’s help.
In standing up to the government, these companies made the case to their customers that American products can be trusted and that American companies would protect their data. This made perfect sense from a commercial perspective, but it’s naive for companies to refuse to cooperate and expect U.S. agencies to just give up. The CIA tools disclosed by WikiLeaks appear designed to work around the defenses tech companies erected after the Snowden revelations. These agencies are well-resourced, determined entities with immense technical skills. When confronted with encryption on a phone or programs designed to make it difficult for governments to access information, intelligence agencies designed tools to get around the new obstacles. And when these tools are compromised, new ones will be built.
The problem now for Silicon Valley is how to reassure their customers again after these new disclosures. If the documents are indeed true, it means that most tech consumers’ devices are open to being hacked by either the government or a malicious actor. The battle between the tech community and the federal government, which came into sharp relief after San Bernardino, may be about to restart. This would serve no one’s interest.
Some in the tech world would like government agencies to immediately reveal any bug or vulnerability they find, at least to the company that made it. We first heard these calls after the Snowden revelations. In response, the Obama administration created something called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process, an interagency review to decide when the U.S. should reveal a vulnerability it had found and when it should keep it secret for use by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. Companies now also call for a Cyber Geneva Convention where all governments would pledge to reveal immediately any vulnerability they have found.
This is a worthy goal, but it faces two serious problems. First, intelligence agencies have little incentive to give this information up. They can justifiably claim that if they find a vulnerability and are not currently using it, they’ll never know when it might come in handy. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the vulnerabilities we know of (even those the CIA knows) are only a fraction of the universe of total vulnerabilities in information technology.
cyber attacks, whether government or criminal, are quick to take advantage of these vulnerabilities. And what’s worse, the universe of exploitable vulnerability is growing as we transition to Internet of Things devices, ranging from toasters to cars that for reasons of cost and design are often not very secure. The problem is not that government isn’t telling Silicon Valley about what it finds, the problem is that Silicon Valley—in addition to some car, television, and appliance companies—writes buggy software.
A replay of the San Bernardino debate won’t help anyone. The tech world may have to accept that vulnerability disclosure is not a panacea. Intelligence agencies could do more harm than good if they promise to never exploit a found vulnerability and tell a company immediately when they find one. At the same time, government finger-pointing at Silicon Valley’s imperfect software or new love of encryption is similarly unhelpful. Societies gain more from using buggy technology than they lose. This is why consumers continue to accept the tradeoff of less privacy for more services.
Washington and Silicon Valley would do better—for national security and business purposes—to avoid mutual blame and look for ways to rebuild the discrete partnership they once had in order to share information and fix problems before hackers can exploit them. The relationship was never perfect, but it was better than the status quo.
The goal should not be to fight over disclosing vulnerabilities or blaming people for finding them, but to reduce their number. This will take time, but if America’s East and West Coasts recognize their mutual interests, they might be able to make progress on information security.
James Andrew Lewis is a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
http://www.foxnews.com/category/tech/companies/facebook.html
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