Instagram post previews to return on Twitter

Instagram has brought back support for Twitter card previews after removing the feature nine years ago.

Now, when users share an Instagram link on Twitter, a small preview of the post will be displayed.

Instagram controversially removed the feature shortly after being acquired by Facebook in 2012.

Twitter card previews started for some users on Wednesday and will eventually be available to everyone. Instagram and Twitter are both promoting the change.

“If you want to share your latest Instagram post on the Twitter timeline too, you’re in luck: now when you share a link to an IG post in a tweet, it’ll show up as a card with a preview of the photo,” read a tweet on Twitter’s official support account.

Instagram sparked controversy with users when it removed support for Twitter cards in 2012.

The platform said that it wanted to take back control of its content following its merger with Facebook.

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom insisted at the time that the mandate came from himself, and not Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg.

He said Instagram was attempting to grow its web platform and shared hopes that the move would help increase traffic.

NSO Group: Israeli spyware company added to US trade blacklist

The Israeli company behind the controversial Pegasus spyware has been added to a US trade blacklist.

Pegasus has reportedly been used by nation states to target the phones of rights activists and journalists.

The US has now put its maker, NSO Group, on its “entity list”, banning business dealings with them.

NSO Group said it was “dismayed” by the decision, adding that its technology helped maintain US national security by “preventing terrorism and crime”.

It has long maintained that its software is sold only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies from countries with good human rights records.

But earlier this year, it was accused of having sold its technology to authoritarian governments, which then targeted innocent people.

“We look forward to presenting the full information regarding how we have the world’s most rigorous compliance and human rights programs that are based on the American values we deeply share, which already resulted in multiple terminations of contacts with government agencies that misused our products,” the company said in a statement.

However, US officials said that NSO Group and another Israeli firm, Candiru, had acted “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States”.

On the face of it this is a surprising move by the US government.

The US and Israel are close allies, with their respective cyber-experts having co-operated, for example, to restrain Iran’s nuclear programme.

But the Pegasus military-grade spyware developed and sold by Israel’s NSO Group has emerged as a formidable cyber-weapon, used by some of its more autocratic customers in the Middle East to target a wide range of people, not just criminals and terrorists.

Journalists, lawyers, peaceful activists and even a member of the UK’s House of Lords have all had their phones secretly infected with malware that allows the customer to read every message, access all their data and even remotely turn on the microphone without the owner’s knowledge.

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The US Commerce Department said the decision was “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, business people, activists, academics and embassy workers.

“These tools have also enabled foreign governments to conduct transnational repression, which is the practice of authoritarian governments targeting dissidents, journalists and activists outside of their sovereign borders to silence dissent. Such practices threaten the rules-based international order,” it said.

It also said the announcements were part of President Biden’s efforts to “stem the proliferation of digital tools used for repression”.

A Russian and a Singaporean company – which created hacking tools – were also added to the US trade blacklist.

Separately, the US State Department said it would not be taking action against Israel, Russia or Singapore, based on the actions of the individual companies.

Clegg: Facebook is mainly ‘barbecues and bar mitzvahs’

Sir Nick Clegg, Meta’s head of global affairs, has defended the firm formerly known as Facebook at the Web Summit.

Only the day before, whistleblower Frances Haugen had opened the conference in Lisbon by calling on boss Mark Zuckerberg to resign.

Sir Nick said she was entitled to her views but that there were “two sides to the story”.

And he claimed most of Facebook’s content was user-generated “barbecues and bar mitzvahs”.

“Whistleblowers are entitled to blow whistles and describe the world as they see it,” he told Matthew Garrahan, news editor of the Financial Times, in an interview on the Web Summit stage, which he joined via a live link-up to California.

But “the fundamental assertion that Meta algorithmically spoon-feeds hateful content because that increases our profits” was wrong, he said.

The former UK deputy prime minister reiterated the $14bn (£10.3bn) the company had put into keeping the community safe and the 40,000 moderators it employs.

And he said that at just 16 years old, the firm was “young” and still learning.

User-shaped
Sir Nick also tried to distance the company from the idea that Facebook’s recommendations formed the majority of content on the platform.

“The caricature in the media is the idea that people are helplessly receiving a content menu served up by the Facebook algorithm,” he said.

He said less than 10% was recommended. The other 90% of content was “shaped heavily” by user choices, based on friends, groups and pages they follow. And he said less than 4% of content was of a political nature.

But he acknowledged that the firm had been hit with “trenchant criticism” and needed to be more transparent.

Coming clean
Sir Nick said the firm had considered delaying the Meta rebrand and the new focus on the metaverse in the wake of Frances Haugen’s appearance before politicians in the US and the UK, and subsequent media coverage.

“We considered whether we move the announcement, as there was plenty of attention on us already and this would create more,” he said.

But he added: “We thought it was the right moment to come clean about the focus of the company, building towards the Metaverse.”

Asked if Meta would be acting on the criticism raised by Ms Haugen, he cited the example of how its use of a cross-check program – a system that looked at the content of high-profile accounts – had been referred to its oversight board.

Apple swipe
He denied a key early claim from the leaks that internal research suggested the firm knew that Instagram harmed teenagers, saying Meta’s attitude was “mischaracterised”.

But, he added, Meta had nevertheless decided to rethink its plans for a version of Instagram for children.

At the end of the interview he took a swipe at Apple, which earlier this year made updates to its operating system, allowing users to choose whether to share data with apps – in turn knocking billions off of Facebook’s ad revenue.

Given that Apple takes a cut of the revenue of apps on its store, he said the decision was “a flagrant example of double standards”.

“Apple merits a considerable amount of scrutiny, too,” he suggested.

This year’s Web Summit has strict Covid measures in place and a reduced audience of 40,000.

Organisers were unsure whether people would return to the event, which was forced to go virtual last year, due to the pandemic, but tickets have sold out.

Facebook’s metamorphosis – will it work?

The corporation formerly known as Facebook has a new name Meta.

There will still be a Facebook, and an Instagram and all the familiar platforms, as this is simply a renaming of the parent company alone.

The new name also invites people to participate on its “next chapter” – a 3D journey into the metaverse, which it sees as the future of the internet.

But some analysts wonder if the public will trust the firm enough to take part in Mark Zuckerberg’s new vision.

Does Meta matter?
The new name produced millions of online searches for the specific query Meta in the UK and US combined, analysts say.

Popular questions included:

What is Meta?
What does Meta mean?
What does Meta stand for?
Dive into the Oxford English Dictionary and various definitions of meta are available – as a prefix it “denotes change, transformation, permutation, or substitution”, or “beyond, above, at a higher level”.

The company says it favours “beyond”, but it is also seeking a metamorphosis of sorts.

A chance perhaps too to welcome a new brand untainted by leaks and negative press, though an analyst with Forrester noted “a name change doesn’t suddenly erase the systemic issues plaguing the company”.

Officially though it’s about the future.

“Our new company brand captures where our company is going and the future we want to help build,” Meta said.

That destination is the metaverse.

What on earth is the metaverse?
The company believes the metaverse will be the next evolution in the way we use the internet.

“In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up.” chief executive Mr Zuckerberg wrote.

Some of that may seem familiar to those who have spent the pandemic in video conference calls, but the vision for the metaverse will remind others of earlier virtual worlds, such as Second Life.

However, Meta stresses this is not a virtual world, but a new three-dimensional space to be used and accessed in various ways, saying: “Augmented reality glasses to stay present in the physical world, virtual reality to be fully immersed, and phones and computers to jump in from existing platforms.”

The company says it is: “A social, 3D virtual space where you can share immersive experiences with other people, even when you can’t be together in person – and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world.”

Azeem Azhar, author of Exponential, says: “It’s not going to be something that will be contained in a VR headset that sits in the corner of the living room. It will be a set of things that will show up across our different applications and across our devices, as those devices get better and better.”

Will it work?
Writing in The Times, technology analyst Benedict Evans characterised Facebook’s motivation this way: “If there is something after smartphones, Facebook wants to be landlord, not a tenant.”

But is the metaverse the right real estate?

Mr Azhar says the “crunch point” is answering the question for the general consumer: “What is the thing that we will actually need to do with this?”

He says at the moment: “We’re still looking for that absolute killer application of these virtual reality and augmented reality technologies.”

And if it does succeed, rather than replacing existing tech, the metaverse will sit alongside it. “It may be 20-odd years since text messaging became popular and people still send text messages, even though there are so many other richer ways we can communicate with each other.”

Great, when will it happen?
Meta already owns virtual reality headset maker Oculus.

And the firm launched experimental versions of two metaverse projects last year – Horizon World, which lets friends meet virtually, and Horizon Workrooms, which enables virtual work meetings.

At the Facebook Connect event where Mr Zuckerberg spoke about the metaverse he also teased a new high-end headset dubbed Project Cambria.

But the metaverse is a work in progress, and the company says fully realising the idea will take another 10 to 15 years.

Meta will spend billions of dollars to bring it to life. The company recently announced it is hiring 10,000 people in the European Union to work on the project.

Mr Zuckerberg also said the metaverse would be the work of more than one company, and that “open standards and interoperability” will need to be part of it.

How safe and private is the metaverse?
After all the leaks, and accusations levelled at Facebook of late, will people trust the world that Mr Zuckerberg built to keep them safe, and their data private?

The Guardian suggested that advertisers might target ads based on “your body language, your physiological responses, knowing who you are interacting with and how”.

Mike Proulx, research director at research company Forrester, said: “Without trust, Meta’s metaverse plans are already at risk.”

Mr Zuckerberg and Meta colleague Nick Clegg, Britain’s former deputy prime minister, have sought to address concerns.

Mr Clegg noted there were years to get regulation and technology right, while Mr Zuckerberg said: “Privacy and safety need to be built into the metaverse from day one.”

Whistleblower Frances Haugen told the BBC that “over and over again, we see Facebook prioritising expansion and growth”. She felt the resources could be better used on improving the safety of Facebook.

Facebook responded that it has no commercial or moral incentive to do anything other than give the maximum number of people as much of a positive experience as possible.

Meta: Facebook’s new name ridiculed by Hebrew speakers

Facebook’s announcement that it is changing its name to Meta has caused quite the stir in Israel where the word sounds like the Hebrew word for “dead”.

To be precise, Meta is pronounced like the feminine form of the Hebrew word.

A number of people have taken to Twitter to share their take on the name under the hashtag #FacebookDead.

The emergency rescue volunteers Zaka even got involved, telling their followers on Twitter: “Don’t worry, we’re on it”.

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Another Twitter user said: “Thank you for providing all Hebrew speakers a good reason to laugh.”

Facebook isn’t the only company to be ridiculed over translations of its branding.

Here are a few examples of when things got lost in translation.

‘Eat your fingers off’
When KFC arrived in China during the 80s, its motto “finger lickin’ good” didn’t exactly go down well with the locals.

The motto’s translation in Mandarin was “eat your fingers off”.

But it didn’t harm the company too much. KFC is one of the largest fast food chains in the country.

‘Manure’
Rolls-Royce changed the name of its Silver Mist car as mist translates as “excrement” in German.

The car was named Silver Shadow instead.

Meanwhile when Nokia released its Lumia phone in 2011, it didn’t exactly get the reaction it was expecting.

In Spanish, Lumia is a synonym for a prostitute, although it apparently only appears in dialects with a heavy gypsy influence.

Honda however had a lucky escape. It almost named its new car the Fitta, which is a vulgar description for vagina in Swedish. It apparently did not translate well in a number of other languages.

Apparently the issue was detected early on and a decision was made to name the vehicle Jazz in most countries.

Inside the controversial US gunshot-detection firm

ShotSpotter’s incident-review room is like any other call centre.

Analysts wearing headsets sit by computer screens, listening intently.

Yet the people working here have an extraordinary responsibility.

They make the final decision on whether a computer algorithm has correctly identified a gunshot – and whether to dispatch the police.

Making the wrong call has serious consequences.

ShotSpotter has garnered much negative press over the last year. Allegations that range from its tech not being accurate, to claims that ShotSpotter is fuelling discrimination in the police.

In the wake of those negative news stories, the company gave BBC News access to its national incident-review centre.

ShotSpotter is trying to solve a genuine problem.

“What makes the system so compelling, we believe, is a full 80-95% of gunfire goes unreported,” chief executive Ralph Clark says.

People don’t report gunshots for several reasons – they may be unsure what they have heard, think someone else will call 911 or simply lack trust in the police.

So ShotSpotter’s founders had an idea. What if they could bypass the 911 process altogether?

They came up with a system.

Microphones are fixed to structures around a neighbourhood. When a loud bang is detected, a computer analyses the sound and classifies it as either a gunshot or something else. A human analyst then steps in to review the decision.

In the incident-review room, former teacher Ginger Ammon allows me to sit with her as she analyses these decisions in real time.

Every time the algorithm flags a potential shot, it makes a “ping” sound.

Ms Ammon first listens to the recording herself and then studies the waveform it produces on her computer screen.

“We’re looking to see how many sensors picked it up and if the sensors made a directional pattern, because, in theory, a gunshot can only travel in one direction,” she says.

Once confident a shot has been fired, Ms Ammon clicks a button that dispatches police officers to the scene.

It all happens in under 60 seconds.

“It kind of feels like you’re playing a computer game,” I say.

“That is a comment that we get frequently,” she replies.

ShotSpotter’s successes
There are clear examples of ShotSpotter working.

In April 2017, black supremacist Kori Ali Muhammad went on a murderous rampage in Fresno, California.

Trying to kill as many white men as possible, he walked around a suburban neighbourhood, picking off targets.

The police were receiving 911 calls – but they were delayed and unspecific.

Yet ShotSpotter was able to indicate to officers Muhammad’s route.

After three minutes – and three murders – Muhammad was apprehended.

Fresno police believe without ShotStopper, he would have killed more.

“ShotSpotter gave us the path he took,” says Lt Bill Dooley.

The company has been hugely successful at convincing police forces to adopt its technology.

Its microphones are in more than 100 cities across America – and for years, the technology was considered uncontroversial.

That all changed with George Floyd’s murder, as people became more interested in the technology so many police forces were using.

ShotSpotter is too expensive for the police to roll out across a city.

Instead, microphones are often placed in inner-city areas – areas with higher black populations.

So if the technology isn’t as accurate as claimed, it could be having a disproportionate impact on those communities.

Suddenly, ShotSpotter was in the spotlight.

Accuracy Concerns
ShotSpotter claims to be 97% accurate. That would mean that the police can be pretty confident that when a ShotSpotter alert happens – they are almost certainly responding to a gunshot.

But that claim is exactly that, a claim. It’s hard to see how ShotSpotter knows it’s that accurate – at least not with the public information it has released.

And if it isn’t, it could have wide consequences for American justice.

The first problem with that accuracy claim is that it’s often difficult to tell, on the ground, whether a shot has been fired.

When Chicago’s Inspector General investigated, they found that in only 9% of ShotSpotter alerts was there any physical evidence of a gunshot.

“It’s a low number,” the city’s Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety, Deborah Witzburgh, says.

That means in 91% of police responses to ShotSpotter alerts, it’s difficult to say definitively that a gun was fired. That’s not to say there was no gunshot, but hard to prove that there was.

Gunfire sounds very similar to a firecracker, or car backfiring.

So how is ShotSpotter so confident that it’s nearly 100% accurate? It’s something I ask Mr Clark.

“We rely on ground truth from agencies to tell us when we miss, when we miss detections or when we miss-classify,” he tells me.

But critics say that methodology has a fundamental flaw. If the police are unsure whether a gunshot has been fired, they are not going to tell the company it was wrong.

In other words, say critics, the company has been counting “don’t knows”, ‘”maybes”, and “probablys” as “got it rights”.

Chicago defence lawyer Brendan Max says the company’s accuracy claims are “marketing nonsense”.

“Customer feedback is used to decide whether people like Pepsi or Coke better,” he says.

“It’s not designed to determine whether a scientific method works.”

Conor Healy, who analyses security systems for video-surveillance research group IPVM, is also deeply sceptical about the 97% accuracy figure.

“Putting the onus on the police to report every false positive means you expect them to report on stuff, when nothing’s happened… which they’re unlikely to do,” Mr Healy says.

“It’s fair to assume that if they [ShotSpotter] have solid testing data to back up their claims, they have every incentive to release that data.”

Gun crime on the rise
Back in Fresno I join the police on a night-time ride-along with police officer Nate Palomino.

Fresno has some of California’s worst gun crime, and just like many other cities in America it’s been getting worse in the last two years.

Sure enough, a ShotSpotter alert comes through. However, when we reach the scene, no casings are found and there’s no physical evidence of a gunshot.

Officer Palomino tells me the audio recording sounds like a gunshot – and it seems more than possible it was – but it’s difficult to prove.

He says that scenario is typical.

ShotSpotter’s accuracy should be beyond doubt.

It has been used in courts up and down the country as evidence for both defence and prosecution.

The worry is that if it isn’t as accurate as is claimed, ShotSpotter is sending officers into situations wrongly expecting gunfire.

Alyxander Godwin, who has been campaigning to get rid of ShotSpotter in Chicago, summarises the concern.

“The police are expecting these situations to be hostile,” she says.

“They expect there to be a gun, and because of where this is deployed, they’re expecting a black or brown person to be holding a gun.”

But ShotSpotter says there is no data to back this theory up.

“What you’d be describing is a situation where officers get to a scene and they’re basically shooting unarmed people,” Mr Clark says.

“It’s just not in the data – it’s speculation.”

Yet he seems to also accept that the company’s own accuracy methodology has its limitations.

“It might be a fair criticism to say, ‘Hey, look, you’re not getting all the feedback that you might possibly get,'” Mr Clark says.

“That might be a fair criticism.”

Mr Max, the Chicago lawyer, says ShotSpotter reports should not be allowed as evidence in court until the company can better back up its claims.

“In the last four or five months, I’m aware of dozens of Chicagoans who have been arrested based on ShotSpotter evidence,” he says.

“I’m sure that has played out in cities across the country.”

He also says the company should open its systems up to better review and analysis.

For example, who is independently reviewing the quality of the analysts? And how often does the algorithm disagree with the human analyst?

Certainly, from my time at the ShotSpotter incident review centre, it’s common for analysts to disagree with the computer classification.

“It’s just filtering out what we see,” Ms Ammon says.

“But I honestly don’t even look at it [the classification], I’m so busy looking at the sensor patterns.”

It’s an interesting admission. Sometimes, the technology is viewed as all seeing, all knowing – the computer masterfully detecting a gunshot.

In practice, the analysts have a far greater role than I expected.

Lawyers such as Brendan Max are interested in trying to establish more information about how the technology works in court.

Saving lives
ShotSpotter has had a lot of criticism over the past year – not all of it fair.

And much of the coverage casually skips over the fact that police forces often give glowing reviews of the technology’s effectiveness.

The company is keen to highlight cases where ShotSpotter has alerted police to gunshot victims, for example, saving lives.

In several cities across America, activists are trying to persuade cities to pull ShotSpotter contracts.

But in other places, ShotSpotter is expanding.

In Fresno, police chief Paco Balderrama is looking to increase its coverage, at a cost of $1m (£0.7m) a year.

“What if ShotSpotter only saves one life in a given year? Is it worth a million dollars? I would argue it is,” he says.

The debate around ShotSpotter is hugely complex – and has important potential ramifications for community policing in America.

It’s unlikely to go away until the tech’s accuracy is independently verified and the data peer reviewed.

Start-up launches £495,000 hoverbike in Japan

A Japanese start-up is hoping to convince motorists to swap their cars for a $680,000 (£495,000) hoverbike.

ALI Technologies’ XTurismo Limited Edition went on sale in Japan, earlier on Wednesday.

Electronics giant Mitsubishi and footballer Keisuke Honda are two backers of the Tokyo-based company.

ALI Technologies says the hoverbike can fly for 40 minutes at up to 100km/h (62mph) on a single charge.

The company aims to have manufactured 200 single-rider 300kg (47-stone) hoverbikes by mid-2022.

Each is equipped with a conventional engine and four battery-powered motors.

“Until now, the choice has been to move on the ground or at scale in the sky,” ALI Technologies chief executive Daisuke Katano said.

“We hope to offer a new method of movement.”

Overcrowding is a big problem for Tokyo’s 13.5 million residents.

The high-tech city is the most populous metropolitan area in the world.

But current laws will prohibit the hoverbikes from flying over Japan’s busy roads.

Although, Mr Katano hopes rescue teams will use them to reach inaccessible areas.

‘Science fiction’
Ben Gardner, of Pinsent Masons, told BBC News vehicles that once seemed like the far-distant future were becoming more tangible every year.

“Ultimately, there is scope for us to see the vehicle being deployed in the UK,” he said.

The hoverbike would not be considered roadworthy under current UK law.

But Mr Gardner said a focus on new technologies in recent years could be signalling a change.

“The current trialling of emerging technologies such as driverless cars, autonomous robots and drones shows there is a blueprint for new forms of transport to move out of the realms of science fiction and into the real world,” he said.

Venture capitalists, aviation corporations and even rideshare company Uber, with its ambitious Uber Elevate, are staking claims on the burgeoning flying automotive industry, which analysts say could be worth as much as $1.5tn by 2040.

Frances Haugen says Facebook is ‘making hate worse’

Whistleblower Frances Haugen has told MPs Facebook is “unquestionably making hate worse”, as they consider what new rules to impose on big social networks.

Ms Haugen was talking to the Online Safety Bill committee in London.

She said Facebook safety teams were under-resourced, and “Facebook has been unwilling to accept even little slivers of profit being sacrificed for safety”.

And she warned that Instagram was “more dangerous than other forms of social media”.

While other social networks were about performance, play, or an exchange of ideas, “Instagram is about social comparison and about bodies… about people’s lifestyles, and that’s what ends up being worse for kids”, she told a joint committee of MPs and Lords.

She said Facebook’s own research described one problem as “an addict’s narrative” – where children are unhappy, can’t control their use of the app, but feel like they cannot stop using it.

“I am deeply worried that it may not be possible to make Instagram safe for a 14-year-old, and I sincerely doubt that it is possible to make it safe for a 10-year-old,” she said.

The committee is fine-tuning a proposed law that will place new duties on large social networks and subject them to checks by the media regulator Ofcom.

Asked if the law was “keeping Mark Zuckerberg awake at night”, Ms Haugen said she was “incredibly proud of the UK for taking such a world-leading stance”.

“The UK has a tradition of leading policy in ways that are followed around the world.

“I can’t imagine Mark isn’t paying attention to what you’re doing.”

British English problem
Ms Haugen also warned that Facebook was unable to police content in multiple languages around the world – something which should worry UK officials, she said.

“UK English is sufficiently different that I would be unsurprised if the safety systems that they developed primarily for American English were actually under-enforcing in the UK,” she said.

And she said that dangerous misinformation in other languages affects people in Britain.

“Those people are also living in the UK, and being fed misinformation that is dangerous, that radicalises people,” she warned.

Ms Haugen also urged the committee to include paid-for advertising in its new rules, saying the current system was “literally subsidising hate on these platforms” because of their algorithmic ranking.

“It is substantially cheaper to run an angry hateful divisive ad than it is to run a compassionate, empathetic ad,” she said.

And she also urged MPs to require a breakdown of who is harmed by content, rather than an average figure – suggesting Facebook is “very good at dancing with data”, but pushes people towards “extreme content”.

“The median experience on Facebook is a pretty good experience,” she said.

“The real danger is that 20% of the population has a horrible experience or an experience that is dangerous,” she said.

“Accept under-resourcing”
She warned that employees were unable to report internal concerns at Facebook – something she called a “huge weak spot”.

“When I worked on counter-espionage, I saw things where I was concerned about national security, and I had no idea how to escalate those because I didn’t have faith in my chain of command at that point,” she told the committee.

And she warned: “We were told to accept under-resourcing.”

Similar problems plague Facebook’s Oversight Board, which can overturn the company’s decisions on content, she said. She repeated her claim that Facebook has repeatedly lied to its own watchdog, and said this is a “defining moment” for the Oversight Board to “step up”.

“I don’t know what the purpose of the Oversight Board is,” she said.

It comes as several news outlets published fresh stories based on the thousands of leaked documents Ms Haugen took with her when she left Facebook.

Facebook has characterised previous reporting as misleading, and at one point referred to the leaked documents as “stolen”.

“Contrary to what was discussed at the hearing, we’ve always had the commercial incentive to remove harmful content from our sites,” a spokesperson said, after Ms Haugen finished giving evidence.

“People don’t want to see it when they use our apps, and advertisers don’t want their ads next to it. That’s why we’ve invested $13bn (£9.4bn) and hired 40,000 people to do one job: keep people safe on our apps. “

The company said that over the last three quarters it has halved the amount of hate speech seen on Facebook, which it claims now accounts for only 0.05% of all content viewed.

“While we have rules against harmful content and publish regular transparency reports, we agree we need regulation for the whole industry so that businesses like ours aren’t making these decisions on our own,” the spokesperson said.

“The UK is one of the countries leading the way and we’re pleased the Online Safety Bill is moving forward.”

An avalanche of information emerged on Monday from leaked Facebook documents – and it was hard to keep up.

Allegations include that the social media giant is aware of its role in inciting violence all around the world, or causing harm to its users from US and UK to India and Ethiopia.

A common theme runs through each of the stories. They all suggest a tension between employees raising the alarm about their concerns and a corporate machine that does not appear to be using this to inform its policies.

Reporters and journalists have been highlighting many of these same concerns, especially for the past 18 months. I’ve investigated the human cost of online disinformation and abuse again and again and exposed the damage being done to real people offline using these sites.

But until these documents were released by Ms Haugen, it was very difficult to know how aware Facebook was of that damage.

These latest leaks reinforce the idea that it is conscious of it – although it refutes a number of the claims.

And it means pressure is mounting on policymakers around the world to do something about it.

Digicel Pacific: Australia’s Telstra buys Pacific firm ‘to block China’

The Australian government and telecoms giant Telstra are buying a Pacific telecoms company in a joint venture.

The move is being viewed as a political block to China’s influence in the region.

Telstra called the A$2.1bn ($1.6bn; £1.2bn) deal a “unique and very attractive commercial opportunity to boost our presence in the region”.

Digicel Pacific employs 1,700 people across Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu and Tahiti.

The company’s future has been the focus of speculation for months.

Last year Digicel denied a report that it was in talks to sell its Pacific arm to state-owned China Mobile.

According to Telstra, the Australian government approached it “to provide technical advice in relation to Digicel Pacific” which is “critical to telecommunications in the region”.

The government then agreed to finance the bulk of the bid, Telstra said.

Strategic move
Analysts say the company would otherwise be attractive to China as it seeks to assert greater authority in the region.

“Digicel is the primary player in the Pacific and Australia sees it as a strategic asset that they can’t allow to fall into the hands of China,” said Jonathan Pryke of the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank.

“They are keen to get Australian business back into the Pacific and they’ve come to the realisation that they are going to have to underwrite.”

A spokesman for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told newswire Reuters: “Partnering on infrastructure development is a key part of our Pacific step-up.”

Amid escalating tensions with China, Australia has ramped up its presence in the Pacific.

This includes allocating $1.5bn to investment in infrastructure projects in the region as well as joining the Quad group, with the US, India and Japan, and the Aukus security pact, with the US and UK.

It also largely funded a 4,700km (2,900-mile) Coral Sea cable in 2018 to prevent Chinese telecoms company Huawei Technologies from laying it.

It is also now helping to finance an undersea optic fibre cable for Palau.

Chinese control of telecommunications networks has long been a concern for Washington and its allies.

This has led many countries to ban Huawei and other Chinese companies from supplying phone lines and 5G networks, including the US, UK and Australia.

Ofcom orders phone networks to block foreign scam calls

Major phone networks have agreed to automatically block almost all internet calls coming from abroad if they pretend to be from UK numbers, Ofcom has confirmed.

Criminals have been using internet-based calling technology to make it look like a phone call or text is coming from a real telephone number.

Almost 45 million consumers were targeted by phone scams this summer.

Ofcom said it expected the measures to be introduced at pace as a “priority”.

So far, one operator has already implemented the new plans, the regulator told the BBC, while other phone networks are still exploring methods of making it work.

“We’ve been working with telecoms companies to implement technical solutions, including blocking at source, suspicious international calls that are masked by a UK number,” said Lindsey Fussell, Ofcom’s networks and communications group director.

“We expect these measures to be introduced as a priority, and at pace, to ensure customers are better protected.”

She added that tackling the phone scams issue was a “complex problem” that requires a coordinated effort from the police, government, other regulators and industry.

The move follows months of discussions between Ofcom and the UK telecoms industry.

Will the plans work?
Internet-based calling technology, also known as Voice Over Internet Protcol (VoIP), is used by millions of consumers globally to make phone calls free or cheaply every year.

Popular services you might recognise that use VoIP include WhatsApp, Skype, Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

The Telegraph, which first reported the story on Sunday, cited Whitehall sources that have cast doubt on Ofcom’s plans.

They say blocking traffic from foreign VoIP providers won’t work to stop scam texts and calls, because much of the UK is still relying on old copper-based ISDN networks dating back to the 1970s.

Security experts the BBC spoke to disagree, however.

Apart from consumers, many businesses also use the VoIP technology for internal corporate phone networks.

Whenever a corporate phone network makes a call, a VoIP provider hands over the call from the internet to the phone networks – a technology called “SIP trunking”.

According to Gabriel Cirlig of US cyber-security firm Human, telcos are not inspecting the traffic they receive from VoIP providers – they just let it through onto the network.

“Recently, because of the ease in implementing your own private enterprise telephone system, everybody can have access to critical telephone infrastructure,” Mr Cirlig told the BBC.

“Because of this lower barrier of entry, it is very easy for scammers to build their own systems to spoof mobile numbers – the cybercriminals are essentially pretending to be legitimate corporate telephone networks in order to have access to legitimate telco infrastructure.”

He adds that right now, it is up to the VoIP provider to check whether the calls it is handing over to telecoms networks are actually legitimate.

“This is not a regional problem or restricted to one type of infrastructure, this is a systemic issue that allows crime to cross any borders,” said Mr Cirlig.

“This feature is enabling the VoIP business model so they don’t want to stop it.”

Matthew Gribben, a former consultant to GCHQ, the UK government intelligence agency, agrees. He used to see ongoing scams while monitoring networks for GCHQ.

“It’s fundamentally the foreign VoIP providers that are technologically enabling these gangs to operate, so it will make a huge dent in this,” he told the BBC. “It doesn’t fix everything but it’s an excellent step in the right direction.”

What else can be done?

Overall, the experts agree that the only way to completely fix the problem is to implement new telephone identification protocols that enable phone networks to authenticate that all calls and text messages actually come a real telephone number.

The new protocols, known as “Stir and Shaken” in a nod to James Bond, were developed by an international standards body, the US-based Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

US authorities have ordered mobile operators to implement the protocols by the end of 2021, but Ofcom told the BBC in August that introducing full authentication in the UK will only be possible when the underlying technology that supports voice services is upgraded to become internet protocol-based (IP) networks, which is due to be completed by 2025.

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) told the BBC it can require mobile operators to block, on a case-by-case basis, access to numbers or services in case of fraud. However, it cannot impose Stir and Shaken on EU operators.

“Nevertheless…these protocols are currently [being] discussed at the level of the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations,” said a Berec spokesman.

There are also efforts being made by the UK to invest in technologies that improve overall telecoms cyber-security.

Startup Arqit was asked by BT and the government in 2017 to develop quantum encryption for satellites.

The firm, which listed on the Nasdaq in June, has developed a solution that creates “unbreakable” software encryption keys, delivered via satellite, to secure any device or cloud server.

“The encryption keys we create would take even a quantum computer more than the age of the universe to crack,” said Arqit’s founder and chief executive David Williams.

Arqit recently signed agreements with BT, Northrop Grumman, Juniper Networks and Babcock. It merged with US firm Centricus in September, following approval by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which consulted with quantum scientists as part of its vetting process.