Monthly Archives: November 2019

With the general elections closing in, attention is being brought to the influence of social media on voting within the UK.

It has been suggested that Facebook and Google should temporarily ban political ads until citizens have been allowed to vote. A group of researchers, technologists, digital rights defenders and internet users from Mozilla, Doteveryone, the Open Data Institute and Sheffield University wrote to the chief executives of Facebook and Google, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, highlighting the concern of political advertising.

It is noted that the UK Electoral Commission, Information Commissioner and the cross-party DCMS Select Committee – alongside Facebook – are calling for urgent legislative action to address the issue of political ads. However, with the election on the 12th December, there is no time for new regulations to be put in place.

In October, it was found that Facebook had rescinded a policy banning false claims in advertising. Thus leaving political adverts open in regards to how they could potentially mislead or deceive the public. Twitter recently announced that it will ban all political advertising, coming into effect on November, 22nd – in time for the UK elections. This will be applied to all electioneering ads, as well as ads related to political issues. Twitter’s announcement adds pressure to other social media platforms, particularly Facebook, to change their current stance.

Twitter and Facebook both permit the use of sensitive user information to be gathered by political parties to target users using specific criteria such as their political leanings, further adding to the question of the release and use of personal information online. Recently, Google announced a worldwide ban on this form of targeting in political adverts.

There has been no response as yet from Facebook. Interestingly, last week Facebook posts with the word ‘vote’ were blocked, however, it was subsequently reported that this was a mistake. A spokesperson for Facebook said it was likely due to a “bug”. Alex Krasodomski-Jones, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media – a joint research venture of the University of Sussex and Demos – stated “Whether bug or policy experiment, sudden changes to platforms can have disproportionate effects on their users. Platforms are under huge pressure to do more towards electoral integrity, but moments like this should remind us of the real crisis in legitimacy and oversight we still need to resolve.”

It is important to note that both Facebook and Twitter are US companies, and therefore regardless of the ethical, moral and social implications of the services they provide and how they supply these, they are free to do whatever they want under the current laws in the territories in which they operate, plus their own Terms and Conditions, which they can indeed alter themselves. This is why there is such a focus on users making their own decisions as to what platforms and services they make use of, and understanding what is going on behind the scenes when they do so. Social media networks are of course not nationalised or government run; they are private enterprises.

Virgin Media is switching from BT’s infrastructure, transferring their 3 million mobile customers over to Vodafone’s network. The contract will begin in late 2021 and run for five years, although Virgin Media have promised to offer 5G services through Vodafone sooner than this.

Virgin Media currently uses EE, the mobile network that BT now owns, and when their contract ends in 2021, Vodafone will be replacing BT. Vodafone has pitched at a lower price for the contract with Virgin Media – resulting in a loss of a two million pound contract for BT.

The loss of this contract with Virgin Media will put a strain on BT’s market share. BT’s shares dropped by 4.7%, whilst Vodafone’s increased by 1%. BT is also having to spend billions of pounds to upgrade its network to full-fibre and has the threat of Sky also joining forces with Liberty Global, Virgin Media’s owner.

Virgin Media merged its cable and mobile networks with Vodafone in 2016 in the Netherlands. This year, Vodafone completed an €18.4bn takeover of Liberty Global’s German and eastern European cable networks. Virgin Media joining forces with Vodafone in the UK make a powerful partnership which could rival BT. Lutz Schüler, Virgin Media’s chief executive, said the deal “will bring a host of fantastic benefits and experiences to our customers, including 5G services in the near future”.

Instagram announced in May that “Likes” would be hidden from other users. This was first rolled out in Canada and has since expanded to several more countries, including Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand.

Recently, hidden likes have been brought to the US and are currently being tried on test groups. It hasn’t been announced how big the test groups are in the US, nor how many users will be affected. However, in Canada hidden likes has been rolled out to nearly all Canadian users over the course of three months.

Users will still be able to see how many likes they have received. But, crucially, followers will not. Followers can still see who has liked the post and, if they so wish, add up the number of likes themselves.

Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, stated that hidden likes are part of their mission to become the “safest place on the internet”. It is certainly positive that Instagram is taking steps to prevent harm and protect mental health— there is a known correlation with social media affecting users’ mental health and by hiding likes Instagram could prevent competition, superiority and bullying.

It is notable that Facebook, which owns Instagram, after increasing criticism regarding user privacy, is making this change to Instagram but not Facebook itself. It could be that Facebook is trying to create distance between their products to retain Instagram’s better standing in the public eye.

Hiding likes could make it difficult for brands and companies to work with Instagram as soon there will be no way of easily evaluating engagement rates through the likes on a post. This may have a positive impact on Influencer Marketing Platforms, which normally have access to influencers’ Instagram analytics and can share that with brands looking to find creators to partner with. Nevertheless, brands are moving away from solely focusing on engagement rates and therefore hidden likes may not make a difference. Ryan Detert, CEO of influencer marketing company Influential, stated that most clients have abandoned the idea of engagement rates and are focusing on in-store or online sales.

Hiding likes may help improve the mental health of users and reduce negativity online. Nevertheless, not a lot has yet been disclosed in regards to how many users will be impacted and when this change will hit the UK.

It has been reported that over 150 of the world’s most popular websites use a hidden method called Fingerprinting. Fingerprinting creates a digital fingerprint of your device by gathering information such as the resolution of the screen, operating system, the fonts that have been installed, and many more characteristics. This enables individual devices to be recognisable and thus trackable – regardless of their standard privacy settings.

These sites can then use this information in a variety of ways, for example, to know if you have visited before and to create advertising around your usage. Mainly the risk is to anonymity, which fingerprinting completely destroys. It is even possible for sites to use Fingerprinting if you are in “private browsing” mode (where cookies are disabled) or when using a virtual private network (where your IP address is hidden). Fingerprinting can even distinguish users that have set “do not track” in a browser and use this as a recognisable feature.

Large renowned websites such as CNN.com, BestBuy.com, Nytimes.com and Costco.com all use Fingerprinting. It has been shown the most common reason is for marketing, however, how exactly the data is used is unclear. The New York Times stated: “We don’t use fingerprinting to track our readers and have internal rules forbidding it,”. Other websites implicated in this discovery, for example US federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and State Department, responded that they will remove this code from their sites.

Google, Apple and Mozilla have identified Fingerprinting as a growing threat. Google’s Chrome browser engineers commented, “Because fingerprinting is neither transparent nor under the user’s control, it results in tracking that doesn’t respect user choice”. The Chief Technology Officer of privacy software company Disconnect also confirms the concern of Fingerprinting: “Your browsing history, the apps you use and the data you give companies can lead to voter manipulation, targeted behaviour modification, and further aids the mass surveillance of our activities on and offline.”

Being conscious of the browser you use can be beneficial. Apple’s Safari is likely the most protected as it actively reduces the amount of information it shares, such as only revealing a list of built-in fonts (instead of custom ones). For non-Apple devices, Firefox is a good consideration. Firefox has aggressive default protection from cookies and is nearing completion in adding default Fingerprinting protections. An early version of these protections can be turned on now by going to the “Custom” tab under privacy and security settings.

Google’s Chrome browser is one of the most used browsers. Currently Chrome doesn’t do much to stop fingerprinting by default, however, privacy extensions such as Canvas Blocker or Jackson’s Disconnect can be added to help stop some fingerprinting. Despite the lack of protection, Google has promised it will reduce the ways in which browsers can be passively fingerprinted.

It has been announced that Openreach will enact major changes to its services, permanently switching off some significant communications networks.

In 2025, analogue phone lines (both PSTN and ISDN types) will be turned off. These will also no longer be available for sale after 2020, in preparation for this. After this point, there will be no maintenance or recovery of phone lines, and any data sent will no longer be carried through PSTNs or ISDNs.

PSTN (The Public Switch Phone Network) is a system that enables landline connectivity, and which most of us have in our homes. ISDN (Integrated Service Digital Network) is typically a business service, which can carry both voice and data.

This decision is said to come due to cost-saving efforts. The current method of using a copper wire system is considerably out-dated (having been conceived in the 1800s!), and, although it has been improved throughout its lifespan, the core technology relied upon was devised centuries ago. It is costly to maintain these systems, and these costs are only increasing – ultimately resulting in higher costs for consumers.

It is estimated that around 2.4 million businesses will be affected, as 42% of SMEs and 33% of larger firms still use analogue lines. Those most impacted will be organisations using landline telephones and fax machines. Businesses need to look for alternative methods to maintain their communications services. Options for voice services including switching to Voice over IP (VoIP) or cloud phone systems. And for data services you should consider fibre optic connections or leased lines.

This could be an opportunity for businesses to improve their systems by updating to use modern technologies. We are providers of both VoIP and cloud phone systems. Contact us for advice on how to upgrade your business or for what to do if you are affected by the switch off.