Daily Archives: March 14, 2020

Some content moderators working at Facebook offices in Dublin are not being allowed to work remotely during the coronavirus crisis due to the sensitive nature of the work they are reviewing.

The social media giant has confirmed that while it is encouraging as many employees and contractors as possible to work from home, some are restricted from doing so currently.

Facebook has said some of the work that content reviewers are engaged in must be done from the office for safety, privacy and legal reasons. However, it said that it is exploring work from home options on a temporary basis for moderators engaged in work that falls outside of these categories and has already enabled it in some of its locations.

The news comes as some moderators working contracted to work for Facebook through Dublin-listed recruitment company CPL said requests to work remotely had not been met.

The Irish Times reported last week that Facebook had temporarily split a number of teams of subcontracted moderators from Accenture and CPL to other offices in the city to minimise the potential impact of Covid-19 on its operations.

Facebook employs thousands of moderators through agencies to review graphic material posted on its various platforms, with many of them based in Dublin.

For those full-time employees and contract workers whose work cannot be done from home we have taken steps to ensure their health and safety by limiting social contact in the office and conducting regular deep cleaning, a Facebook spokeswoman told The Irish Times.

Twitter didnt confirm if content moderators were restricted from working from home. On Wednesday last, the company announced mandatory remote working for all employees after previously strongly encouraging people to work from home where possible.

Google, which owns YouTube, did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. However, the company is believed to be working extensively to ensure workers that have to be in the workplace are sufficiently spread out.

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Coronavirus: Facebook moderators must work in the office for now - The Irish Times

Like other tech firms scrambling in the face of theCovid-19 pandemic, Facebook is encouraging staff worldwide to work from home, part of a so-called social distancing strategy to slow the new coronaviruss spread. But some in the social networks army of contract workers, already often treated like second-class employees, have complained that they have no such luxury and are being asked to choose between their jobs and their health.

Discussions from Facebooks internal employee forum reviewed by The Intercept reveal a state of confusion, fear, and resentment, with many precariously employed hourly contract workers stating that, contrary to statements to them from Facebook, they are barred by their actual employers from working from home, despite the technical feasibility and clear public health benefits of doing so.

The discussions focus on Facebook contractors employed by Accenture and WiPro at facilities in Austin, Texas, and Mountain View, California,including at least two Facebook offices. (In Mountain View,a local state of emergency has already been declared over the coronavirus.) The Intercept has seen posts from at least six contractors complaining about not being able to work from home and communicated with two more contractors directly about the matter. One Accenture employee told The Intercept that their entire team of over 20 contractors had been told that they were not permitted to work from home to avoid infection.

A Facebook spokesperson told The Intercept that for both our full-time employees and contingent workforce there is some work that cannot be done from homefor content reviewers, some of this work must be done from the office for safety, privacy and legal reasons, adding that were exploring work from home options on a temporary basis, and have already enabled it in some locations. The spokesperson added that Facebook is taking additional steps to limit contact for those in the office, like physically spreading people out, limiting in-person meetings, eliminating social visitors, making changes to food service, increasing office cleaning and encouraging people who dont need to be in the office to stay home.

In some cases, workers said theyve been told that the only way they can stay home is by using the finite paid time off days theyre allotted each year.

Most people here are sick, coughing, and sneezing. The office ran out of Clorox wipes.

Despite guidance from Facebook, reads one contractor post, contractors are being asked to come into the Mountain View office to work, unless they have been diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2. This employee added that We are being told that if we choose not to come in, whether it be for health concerns or out of an abundance of caution, that we will have to use PTO, and its unclear if our absence is going to be counted against us.

Some of the contract workers in question are moderators, tasked with reviewing the most graphic and traumatizing content across Facebooks apps. Large tech companies have for decades relied on two distinct tiers of workers: full-time employees lavished with generous pay and perks, and contractors with far fewer benefits who, like many American workers, can count on little job security even as they are pinched by rising housing and health care costs. Decisions about who is allowed to work from home underscores this divide: While Facebook has said it will allow anyone whose job allows them to do so to voluntarily work remotely through at least April 10, posters in the employee forum said that Facebook contracting vendors are enforcing very different policies.

According to a post from an Austin Facebook contractor, Accenture is only sending home people who exhibit flu like symptoms in the work place.' This contractor added that they just saw 3 people get sent home and were all still in the office trying to focus on our work like cross contamination doesnt exist for 14 days prior to symptoms showing upAt this point, Im at a loss.

These contractors said the information theyve received from both Facebook and Accenture is confusing and contradictory. A post from a Facebook employee who manages Accenture staff said that During this time period caused by Covid-19, if any contingent worker falls ill and needs to take time to recover, they do not need to use their sick or PTO time. But Accenture employees said in the forum that this is not the case: This is not what Ive been told, replied one contractor. Ive been informed by [Accenture] that contingent workers can choose either unpaid sick leave or use PTO. They are not, however, allowed to have paid sick leave.

Posts from an Accenture manager seem to confirm this policy contradiction: The current state for PTO has not changed from whats has [sic] previously put out by your team leads, reads one internal post. After another contractor asked this manager why working from home wasnt an option, they explained that Currently [Facebook] does not allow us to work from home. This is due to the content we review. That is the current state. Will it change? Im not sure but will continue to keep you informed.

I have a chronic respiratory disease, wrote another Accenture contractor, and while my team lead has been supportive, [there] hasnt been guidance on what Im supposed to do now that Ive run out of PTO. I am going in tomorrow because Im not sure what to do at this point. A co-worker added that Accentures human resources staff had asked anyone requesting sick leave to provide a note from any immunocompromised family members to show that we have a legitimate concern. This all seems quite unreal.

Most people here are sick, coughing, and sneezing, wrote a Facebook contractor in Mountain View. The office ran out of Clorox wipes and hand sanitizers, there are no masks or thermometer. At this office, the disparity between Facebooks full-time employees and their hourly support staff is particularly galling: Some employees who work in the same building got paid 2 weeks of staying home! So how is that fair? Why their lives matter more than others? Why some of us have to choose between risking their work or their health?

Neither Accenture nor WiPro could immediately comment. After The Intercept contacted Facebook, sources said the company deleted at least once lengthy thread on the PTO grievances, with one Facebook employee saying in the online workplace forum that the deleted post contained false and misleading information about COVID-19 that was causing unnecessary panic for some people working in the [Mountain View] office. This employee added that going forward, the company will remove any posts or comment about COVID-19 flagged to us that contains misinformation.

Updated: Thursday, March 12, 4:54 pm PT

This article was updated to include a statement from a Facebook spokesperson.

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Facebook Contractors Forced to Work in Office Despite Coronavirus Threat - The Intercept

Facebooks latest colonization of Instagram has begun. Facebook is testing the option to cross-post Stories to Instagram, instead of just vice-versa. Hopefully, that means the two apps will finally sync up the already viewed status of cross-posted Stories so we dont have to watch re-runs any more, as I harped about in January.

If fully launched, the cross-posting feature could save social media managers and average users time while letting them maximize the views on the content they create. It could also give a little boost to the total Stories available on Instagram so its algorithm has more to choose from when ranking what it shows first.

But the change could also been seen as the most invasive injection of parent company Facebooks identity into Instagram which has been steadily increasing since Instagrams co-founders left the company in late 2018 as their autonomy dwindled. Facebook has already pasted an Instagram From Facebook title screen into the photo-sharing apps boot-up phase, and added an Open Facebook button to its settings menu. Instagram added cross-posting of its Stories to Facebook in October 2017, allowing its parent to piggyback on the popularity of its ephemeral content.

Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status all had 500 million daily users as of a year ago, while Snapchat as a whole has just 218 million users.

The screenshot of the Facebook-to-Instagram cross-posting feature was generated from theFacebook for Androidapp code by Jane Manchun Wong. Shes the renowned reverse engineering expert who has furnished TechCrunch with tips on dozens of unreleased features that went on to officially launch. When youve shot a Facebook Story and are about to post it, you can tap Privacy to review who youre sharing with. In addition to the Public, Friends, Custom and Hide From options, Facebook is testing a Share To Instagram toggle that appears to turn on continuous cross-posting of that post and future ones.

A Facebook spokesperson tells me that the company is now formally testing the cross-posting feature to make it easier to share moments with the people who matter to you, as people might have different audiences and followers on Facebook versus Instagram. Facebook will continue to explore options for simplifying and improving how Stories work across its apps. That means its out of the internal-only prototyping phase and is now being tested with users in the wild.

With any luck, Facebook and Instagram will eventually sync up data about which Stories youve watched on either app, and avoid showing you exact copies of ones youve already seen. I made my case for this to Instagrams leadership at a recent press dinner, noting how reruns waste hundreds of millions of peoples time and lead them to close Stories or the app altogether. I asked Facebook about that specifically; they declined to comment.

Creating two-way interoperability of Stories is a precursor to Facebooks efforts to unify its Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct chat features. That could extend end-to-end encryption across the apps, protecting messages from prying eyes. But theres been government grumbling about how encryption could hide the activity of criminals, and some see intertwining the chat features as a way to make it harder for regulators to break up Facebook.

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Facebook Stories tests cross-posting to its pet, Instagram - TechCrunch

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus.

In March 2019, a shooter livestreamed on Facebook as he attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing more than 50 people and injuring many more. The livestreams slipped through the platforms content moderation systems, allowing thousands of people to view, download, and redistribute the horrific footage. In the aftermath of the attacks, Facebook and YouTube removed millions of copies of the videos in an effort to stifle their viral spread, but platforms struggled to keep the videos offline.

It was just one of a series of horrific violent episodes that have circulated on social media platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram, and even Amazons gaming platform, Twitch, in the past year. In response, governments and tech companies are forming new partnerships and strategies to keep violence from going viral online and to prevent it from being broadcast in the first place. But the strengthening of relationships between tech companies and law enforcement agencies illustrates the risk of content moderationhistorically a zone of private regulationbeing co-opted to facilitate law enforcement and digital surveillance.

As platforms develop more robust ways of identifying and ferreting out violent content, they also whet the appetites of police and intelligence agencies that might benefit from thosecapabilities.

Facebook, Twitch, and most other mainstream social media platforms ban the dissemination of violent content, but their content moderation systems arent always able to keep up. Once a video proliferates, its nearly impossible to entirely remove it from the internet and the world. Current content moderation entails chasing after prohibited content, rather than preventing its upload in the first place. And many content moderation workers are underpaid contractors working under abysmal conditions, as the scholar Sarah Roberts has documented. When moderation workers have to look at dozens of horrific photographs and videos each minute, they will inevitably make mistakes, and some banned content will slip through. Facebook and other big social media platforms are working on artificial intelligence and machine learning methods to detect and prevent violent content from ever being posted, but those techniques are still fairly rudimentary.

One response is the call for more collaboration between platforms and government actors. In May 2019, a group of dozens of nations, tech companies (including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter), and civil society organizations adopted the Christchurch Call, committing to accelerate research into and development of technical solutions to prevent the online dissemination of terrorist and extremist violence. These collaborative arrangements bring together a mix of enhanced content moderation efforts, automated technologies, and law enforcement input.

The tech industrys hope is that by developing new techniques and technologies to comply with government pressures, the sector can stave off strengthening calls for harder regulation. The tech industry is touting its private development of automation and artificial intelligence as a promising answer to the proliferation of online violence. But private sector investment is driven in no small part by government pressure. As platforms develop more robust ways of identifying and ferreting out violent content, they also whet the appetites of police and intelligence agencies that might benefit from those capabilities.

Accordingly, the tech sector is doubling down on investments in automated technology to address the challenges of moderation at scale. A separate tech industry consortium, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, has created a shared database of hashesdigital fingerprintsto identify violent terrorist videos and keep them from being shared across social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, as well as other online services.

New automated moderation techniques will create ripe new sources of information for both private and public sector surveillance of users. The more platforms automate their content moderation techniques, the more data they can easily and quickly aggregate about users who attempt to post prohibited contentmapping their relationships, associations, and networks. For example, New Zealand police could ask Facebook to provide a list of all the users who attempted to repost the Christchurch video, or a list of all the users who watched one of the streams. Platforms could be asked to share this information with law enforcement in response to subpoenas, warrants, or other less-formal demands.

Consider, for example, social medias response to the changing relationship between the United States and Iran. Soon after the United States designated Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization, Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram began deleting the pages and profiles for IRGC officials and associates. In the wake of the United States killing of IRGC commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a January 2020 strike, Facebook and Instagram also began deleting posts that expressed support for Soleimani.

From a platform perspective, deleting these posts and pages is the quickest and easiest way to ensure that companies are not punished for hosting unlawful content. And if the chief policy goal is to stop dangerous ideas from spreading, then Facebook and Instagrams approach offers a highly effective silencing technique.

But from a law enforcement perspective, deleting these posts and pages might also deprive authorities of useful sources of intelligence. As Instagram and Facebook build out their capacity to automatically identify support for terrorist organizations, law enforcement might want to use these pages as honey pots, ensuring access to key information about those who engage with this content. This information could be used to map networks of terrorist sympathizers or help shed light on the diffusion of dangerous propaganda. Or it might simply help law enforcement identify and monitor those who have viewed dangerous content.

Information from social media platforms has long been a critical asset for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Using search warrants and subpoenas, law enforcement agencies frequently get access to user data in the course of investigations. These demands are limited by privacy laws and the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals against unreasonable government searches and seizures. As platforms redesign their content moderation rules and systems, law enforcements influence is equally widespreadbut less constrained by formal rules.

In some cases, police needs and automated content moderation systems are converging. London police, for instance, have partnered with Facebook to provide images from body-worn cameras in order to train Facebooks artificial intelligence system to detect first-person footage of shootings. If we want Facebook to be able to identify and filter out unlawful violent content, as the consensus seems to hold, then this kind of cooperation is critical.

But law enforcement also influences the design and implementation of content moderation systems in more subtle and alarming ways. In 2016, Israeli authorities attributed a wave of violence in part to Palestinian incitement on Facebook and sharply criticized the platform for sabotaging law enforcements efforts to take down posts from Palestinian users. The Knesset considered a law that would have required Facebook to take down inflammatory content. According to the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, Facebook responded to the rising pressures by cracking down on Palestinian posts and pages. While the law ultimately was shelved at the eleventh hour, Facebook has reportedly continued to work closely with Israeli law enforcement to identify violations of its community standards. Or some of them. Last year, the Jerusalem Post reported that incitement by Israeli posters against Palestinians has remained a major problem on the platformone that neither Facebook nor Israeli law enforcement appears eager to address.

Even as the relationships between policing and platforms grow more embedded, they have remained pretty opaque to the public. Surveillance technologies are rarely subject to the same public oversight and control mechanisms as other government contracts, as Catherine Crump has shown. And when these relationships are unofficial, informal pressures on platforms tend to take place through backdoor channels that are less amenable to public scrutiny.

Though we often think of content moderation and surveillance as two entirely separate issues, the extent of law enforcement pressure on private content moderation shows how entwined they are. Together, platforms and law enforcement are capable of identifying individualsboth online and offfor monitoring and surveillance to an unparalleled degree. And the push for automated content moderation adds to these capabilities, expanding the wealth of data about users, their relationships, their interests, and their engagement with online content and creating new sources of data that are highly relevant to law enforcement investigations. Platforms abilities to identify, track, and control our online behaviors might be unsettling, but they are a gold mine for law enforcement. The good thing is that the tech sector might do more to limit the spread of horrific content on social media. But it would be wise to remember that its users interests might be different from law enforcements preferences.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Why Police Love the Idea of Automated Content Moderation - Slate

If youve opened Facebook or Twitter in the past few days, you might have come across a post with alarming information about the coronavirus attributed to Stanford University.

The post goes something like this: People with coronavirus may not show symptoms for several days, but if you can comfortably hold your breath for more than 10 seconds, youre probably not infected. You should sip water every 15 minutes to wash the virus into your stomach, where stomach acid kills it, to prevent the virus from entering your windpipe and lungs. And if you have a runny nose, you have a cold, not the coronavirus.

Most of this is false.

I emailed Stanfords office of communications to check the posts authenticity. The post is not from Stanford, Lisa Kim at Stanford Health Care wrote back. She directed anyone who is confused to the universitys actual coronavirus information page.

Then I called Loren Rauch, a community ER doctor at Antelope Valley Hospital in Los Angeles with a masters degree in epidemiology, to dispel some of the rumors circulating online. The statements in bold are quotes from the viral Facebook post, and Rauchs responseslightly edited for length and clarityfollow.

The new coronavirus may not show signs of infection for many days. By the time you have fever and/or cough and go to the hospital, the lung is usually 50 percent fibrosis.

That doesnt mean anything. Fibrosis is a late scarring process. You may have 50 percent of your lung affected by the virus, causing pneumonia or fluid in your lungs. But fibrosisthat is not correct.

If you can breathe fine, do not go to the doctor. Only go if you cannot breathe or are very ill.

Taiwan experts provide a simple self-check that we can do every morning: Take a deep breath and hold it for more than 10 seconds. If you do this successfully without coughing, without discomfort, stiffness or tightness, there is no fibrosis in the lungs; it basically indicates no infection. In critical times, please self-check every morning in an environment with clean air.

Thats not true. That can check if you are anxious or have respiratory compromise.

Everyone should ensure your mouth and throat are moist, never dry. Take a few sips of water every 15 minutes at least. Even if the virus gets into your mouth, drinking water or other liquids will wash them down through your throat and into the stomach. Once there, your stomach aid will kill all the virus. If you dont drink enough water regularly, the virus can enter your windpipe and then the lungs. Thats very dangerous.

Totally bogus. Thats not real.

Drinking warm water is effective for all viruses. Try not to drink liquids with ice.

No.

If you have a runny nose and sputum, you have a common cold. Coronavirus pneumonia is a dry cough with no runny nose.

Editors note: On this one, we thought new research might help: A pre-print study by a group of German researcherssuggests that upper respiratory tract symptoms like runny nose may be more common than previously thought.

However, the CDC still emphasizes fever, cough, and shortness of breath as the main symptoms. And Whitney Adams, a former pandemic preparedness coordinator and programs manager for CARE, issued a word of caution when considering the deluge of non-peer-reviewed research information relating to the coronavirus. While its really important for the research community, the medical community, public health community keep sharing these findings, we should take those with a grain of salt, she said.

Its not necessarily helpful for people to try to self diagnose based on these things that are really hard for even clinicians to understand, Adams said.

So the short answer is: Its complicated.

This new virus is not heat-resistant and will be killed by a temperature of just 26/27 degrees Celsius (about 77 degrees Fahrenheit). It hates the sun.

If somethings in sunlight, its going to get disinfected pretty quickly, because thats ultraviolet light, just the same type of sanitation we use in hospitals. The temperature in a dryer, for example, would kill everything. But just, like, Its gonna be a warm day today. We dont have to worry about coronavirus, I dont think thats gonna work.

If someone with coronavirus sneezes, it goes about 10 feet before it drops to the ground and is no longer airborne.

The general rule of thumb were using is about six feet.

The bottom line is that theres a lot of misinformation floating around, said Adams, who noted she received an email containing the text of the false viral Facebook post last week. So to prevent the spread of rumors, do the information equivalent of social distancing: If someone posts something that sounds even the slightest bit fishy, dont pass it on.

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There's a Facebook coronavirus post going viral claiming to be from Stanford. Don't believe it. - Mother Jones

SAN FRANCISCO First, there were conspiratorial whispers on social media that the coronavirus had been cooked up in a secret government lab in China. Then there were bogus medicines: gels, liquids and powders that immunized against the virus.

And then there were the false claims about governments and celebrities and racial unrest. Taiwan was covering up virus deaths, and the illness was spiraling out of control. Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who now runs a philanthropic organization, was behind the spread of the virus. Italians were marching in the streets, accusing Chinese people of bringing the illness to their country. None of it was true.

As the coronavirus has spread across the world, so too has misinformation about it, despite an aggressive effort by social media companies to prevent its dissemination. Facebook, Google and Twitter said they were removing misinformation about the coronavirus as fast as they could find it, and were working with the World Health Organization and other government organizations to ensure that people got accurate information.

But a search by The New York Times found dozens of videos, photographs and written posts on each of the social media platforms that appeared to have slipped through the cracks. The posts were not limited to English. Many were originally in languages ranging from Hindi and Urdu to Hebrew and Farsi, reflecting the trajectory of the virus as it has traveled around the world.

Security researchers have even found that hackers were setting up threadbare websites that claimed to have information about the coronavirus. The sites were actually digital traps, aimed at stealing personal data or breaking into the devices of people who landed on them.

The spread of false and malicious content about the coronavirus has been a stark reminder of the uphill battle fought by researchers and internet companies. Even when the companies are determined to protect the truth, they are often outgunned and outwitted by the internets liars and thieves.

There is so much inaccurate information about the virus, the W.H.O. has said it was confronting a infodemic.

I see misinformation about the coronavirus everywhere. Some people are panicking, and looking to magical cures, and other people are spreading conspiracies, said Austin Chiang, a gastroenterologist at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.

In Taiwan, virus-related misinformation on social media has fed concerns that China might be using the crisis to undermine the government of the self-ruling island.

In recent weeks, there have been posts on Facebook and other sites claiming that Taiwan has concealed large numbers of coronavirus infections. There have been fake but official-looking documents promising giveaways of face masks and vaccines. A screen capture from a television news broadcast was doctored to say that President Tsai Ing-wen had contracted the disease and was in quarantine.

In a statement to The Times, Taiwans foreign minister, Joseph Wu, blamed Chinas internet armies for the deluge of falsehoods, though his office declined to elaborate on how he came to that conclusion. Chinas Taiwan Affairs Office didnt respond to a faxed request for comment.

The Communist Party claims Taiwan as part of Chinas territory, and Taiwanese officials have long accused Beijing of manipulating both traditional news media and social platforms to turn Taiwanese citizens against President Tsai, who opposes closer ties with China.

Summer Chen, the editor in chief of Taiwan FactCheck Center, a watchdog group that debunks online rumors and hoaxes, said her team had been busier since the outbreak began than it was ahead of Taiwans presidential election in January, when the island was on high alert for potential Chinese meddling.

Throughout this whole epidemic, people have really liked conspiracy theories, Ms. Chen said. Why is it that during epidemics people dont choose to believe accurate scientific information?

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter all said they were making efforts to point people back to reliable sources of medical information, and had direct lines of communication to the W.H.O. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Facebook said it bans content that could cause people harm, such as claims that discourage treatment or taking appropriate precautions against the coronavirus. Posts and videos that shared conspiracy theories were clearly marked as false, once they had been reviewed by fact checkers.

When Facebook users attempt to share them, a message pops up alerting the user that the post includes information that has been deemed false by fact checkers.

Those measures, however, have not stopped people in private Facebook groups from linking to and sharing misinformation surrounding the virus. In private Facebook groups, including one that totals over 100,000 members, conspiracy theories spread that the coronavirus was an invention of the pharmaceutical industry, intended to sell the public on more expensive drugs and more vaccines.

While many posts simply encouraged people to take vitamins and eat a balanced diet to boost their immune system, others offered promises of immunity or cures if certain combinations of powders and drinks were consumed. Some were even more dangerous. The Food and Drug Administration referred to one miracle mineral solution posted many times on Facebook and Twitter as the same as drinking bleach.

Dr. Chiang, the gastroenterologist, recently helped start the Association for Healthcare Social Media, a group dedicated to encouraging more health care professionals to post on social media so that they can dispel some of the misinformation.

People are looking for good sources of information because a lot of what they see, when they log into their social media platforms, is just scaring them, he said.

While Twitter acknowledged the presence of some of this content on its network, Del Harvey, Twitters vice president of trust and safety, said the company has not seen large-scale, coordinated efforts to misinform people about the coronavirus. After The New York Times contacted Twitter with examples of tweets containing health misinformation about coronavirus, some owners of the accounts were suspended for spam.

Facebook said that in addition to working closely with health organizations, it was offering W.H.O. free ad space to try and point people toward accurate information on the coronavirus. The company said that it was removing posts that discouraged people from seeking treatment or suggested remedies that could cause physical harm and that it was placing warning labels on posts that were rated false by their fact checkers.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, also said it was working closely with W.H.O. to help combat misinformation. YouTubes spokesman, Farshad Shadloo, said the company had policies that prohibited videos that promoted medically unsubstantiated methods to prevent the coronavirus in place of seeking medical treatment.

Dozens of YouTube videos, however, included titles that suggested the video offered a cure for the virus. In others, the comment sections below the videos included links to pages offering a range of alternative, unsubstantiated treatments.

In some cases, those links have led people to websites that lure people in with the promise of a cure, but actually steal credit card information and other personal details.

The cybersecurity firm Check Point said more than 4,000 coronavirus-related websites that include words like corona or covid have been registered since the beginning of the year. Of those, 3 percent were considered malicious and another 5 percent were suspicious.

Research by Sophos, a cybersecurity company, has shown an uptick in these so-called spear-phishing messages targeting people in Italy, where coronavirus infections have surged in recent weeks. Those messages included a link to a Microsoft Word document that claimed to list cures for the virus. When downloaded, it installed malicious malware on peoples computers.

Last month, W.H.O. also put out a warning about fake emails from apparent W.H.O. representatives. The emails carried malicious code aimed at breaking into someones computing device.

John Gregory, the deputy health editor for NewsGuard, a start-up that tries to stop false stories from spreading on the internet, said the medical element to coronavirus misinformation made it different from other conspiracies the public has dealt with.

Because the information about the virus is playing out in real time, its always going to be easier for someone to make a false claim, Mr. Gregory said. Then, theres a separation of a few days before anyone with a scientific background, or journalists, are able to debunk the claim.

Sheera Frenkel reported in San Francisco and Davey Alba reported in New York. Raymond Zhong reported from Beijing. Chris Horton contributed reporting from Taipei, Taiwan.

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Surge of Virus Misinformation Stumps Facebook and Twitter - The New York Times

Some members of the Libra Association are now backing a rival project called Celo, which has its own blockchain and cryptocurrency. Over 50 major companies have pledged their support, each pursuing a diverse set of use cases. The project claims that the combined reach of all members exceeds 400 million people.

Also read: Bitcoin Legal in India Exchanges Resume INR Banking Service After Supreme Court Verdict Allows Cryptocurrency

The Celo Foundation announced on Wednesday 50 founding members of the Celo Alliance for Prosperity. Celo is an open platform that makes financial tools accessible to anyone with a mobile phone, its website describes. The project offers a way for developers to build mobile apps based on Celos Ethereum-based blockchain with a stablecoin.

The effort is designed to deliver humanitarian aid, facilitate payments and enable microlending through a cryptocurrency called the Celo Dollar, which is scheduled to launch in April, Bloomberg reported. Chuck Kimble, who heads the Alliance for Prosperity, said in a phone interview with the publication:

The value of the Celo Dollar will be pegged to the U.S. dollar and backed by a reserve of other cryptocurrencies It will be available in the U.S., but the alliances focus is on Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Citing that Today less than .5% of global citizens benefit from the speed, transparency, utility, and low cost of using blockchain technology, the foundation detailed, The Alliance members have a plan to change that and are committed to leveraging the power of Celos innovative blockchain technology to create solutions that work across devices, carriers, and countries.

Alliance members are pursuing a diverse set of use cases, including powering mobile and online work, enabling faster and affordable remittances, reducing the operational complexities of delivering humanitarian aid, facilitating payments, and enabling microlending, the foundations announcement explains. Their combined reach is over 400 million people.

The project is dubbed by some as a rival to Facebooks Libra project, which has been scrutinized by regulators worldwide since it was first announced. The Libra project is currently considering redesigning as several key members have left the project, including Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Mercado Pago, Ebay, and Vodafone.

Kimble claims that There are some similarities [with Libra] in terms of mission, which is why there are some people who have joined both alliances. Some Celo Alliance for Prosperity members that are also Libra supporters include Anchorage, Bison Trails Co., Coinbase Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Mercy Corps. However, the Celo project does not have the massive userbase that Facebook has.

Payments in the Celo Dollar stablecoin can be sent to peoples phone numbers rather than complicated addresses, Tech Crunch noted, asserting that The goal is to make delivering utility via blockchain easier by building a flexible network of applications that doesnt scare regulators like Libra has.

Kimble claims, We have met with governments around the globe as well as central banks, we are continually engaging with governments in the many countries which we hope to serve. Diogo Monica, president of Anchorage, which is a part of both the Libra project and the Celo Alliance for Prosperity, said in a statement:

Celo and Libra each have unique focuses and approaches, but they share a goal that Anchorage strongly believes in: banking the unbanked.

What do you think of the Celo project? Do you think regulators worldwide will have a problem with it like they do Facebooks cryptocurrency? Let us know in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and the Celo Foundation.

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A student of Austrian Economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open-source systems, network effects and the intersection between economics and cryptography.

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50 Companies Back New Cryptocurrency Project Competing With Facebook's Libra - Bitcoin News

A Facebook page purporting to be a Beaver County pandemic response is not affiliated with the county. In the wake of concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, Commissioner Chairman Daniel Camp said the county will put out information about its response through its website, three social media accounts and reputatable news outlets.

BEAVER Beaver Countys Board of Commissioners wants you to check your sources before you panic.

In the wake of concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, Commissioner Chairman Daniel Camp said the county will put out information about its response through its website, three social media accounts and reputable news outlets. His comments followed reports of a fake Facebook page purporting to prepare the community in case the coronavirus becomes an issue.

We just want to caution the public that if they see information on the internet that isnt from one of our pages, its not an official Beaver County announcement, Camp said.

Camp was referencing a Facebook page called Beaver County Pandemic Preparedness. The page includes a series of memes and infographics about COVID-19 and suggests that residents should be concerned.

I'm not saying that the majority of us should panic, but we should make sure our most vulnerable citizens are protected, the author wrote Wednesday afternoon in a post sharing the percentage of senior citizens in Beaver County along with other health statistics. The page, which acknowledged in a post on Thursday that it is not related to the county, also advertises a phone number.

When called, a voice with a British accent delivers a 28-second message, informing callers of the risk of coronavirus in Beaver County and encouraging them not to panic. The Times was unable to leave a voicemail at the number.

Camp reiterated Thursday that the county will share any news about how the county is impacted by the coronavirus via its website and Facebook page, through Beaver County Emergency Services Facebook and Twitter accounts and through local media outlets.

The county is still reviewing its plans for the next few weeks, he said, and is in regular contact with the state Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control. He said he encourages county employees to make common-sense hygiene decisions.

We always urge employees to wash hands and if they feel sick, dont come to work, he said.

Commissioner Tony Amadio reiterated Camps directive.

Wash your hands, cover your face, Amadio said. My hands are peeling from it.

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Beaver County Commissioners warn of Facebook page - News - The Times - The Times

Read: What happens if you get sick

Densely populated areas like New York have had trouble keeping hand sanitizer in stock for the past week, so the For Sale categories on local Craigslist pages have started to look like super-expensive sanitation-themed yard sales. In New York, single eight-ounce bottles of Purell are listed for as much as $25 apiece. A listing from Brooklyn advertises 78 bottles of industrial sanitizer for $750, while a California man is offering to ship 25 single-ounce bottles to New York for $150which works out to $6 an ounce. Fight the COVID-19 with easy [sic] and protect yourself and your love ones [sic], a listing in Queens reads. It also suggests that the buyer use a contactless form of payment, as cash is a vector of disease.

Russ, a 43-year-old IT specialist in Michigan, listed his stock of hand sanitizer on the Craigslist pages for six major cities. I agreed to identify him and others in this story by only his first name because it was the only way he would agree to explain his decision to price-gouge antibacterial gels. Russ offers to ship bottles and accepts cryptocurrency payments. (His area is not yet experiencing a shortage.) When he first heard there might be a demand in some cities, he told me in a phone call, he bought just five bottles and listed them on eBay for $15 each. They sold out within 30 minutes, so he bought 15 more bottles and upped the price to $20. He sold eight of them before eBay announced the ban on hand-sanitizer sales, so now hes selling the rest of his stock on Craigslist for $25 each.

I know what you want to ask me. I weighed whether or not this was a moral thing, he said. My conclusion was: If I dont do this, someone else is going to. That allowed me to do it.

Not everyone shares his assessment. Somebody on eBay messaged him and called him a dick, he said, in addition to informing him that God is watching. Im not trying to sell someone an eight-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer for $100, which Ive seen. Im not a bad person, Russ said. He argued that the people who are going online to buy hand sanitizer are the same people who are buying out grocery stores, spending thousands of dollars on supplies. If he can make a little money off someone whos willing to spend any amount to make herself feel safer, who really loses?

Personally, Russ washes his hands and is now avoiding handshakes, but as for hand sanitizer, you can buy a bottle of vodka and pour it on your hands and it will do the same thing. (It wont. Dont buy a bottle of vodka and pour it on your hands.) If hand sanitizer somehow became a miracle cure, I would give it away, he said.

Read: 20 seconds to optimize hand wellness

I contacted half a dozen Craigslist hand-sanitizer sellers, and not all of them were so relaxed. David, a 35-year-old Brooklyn man, told me in a phone call that he had been buying face masks in early January specifically to sell on eBay, but that business dried up after his suppliers stopped being able to fulfill his orders. Hes a little bit of a prepper, he said, adding that hed bought a second freezer so that he could stock up on food in case of a coronavirus lockdown.

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The Hand-Sanitizer Hawkers Arent Sorry - The Atlantic