We are anonymous, we are legion

Facebook, my boyfriend is lousy

praskrishna — 2011-07-25T10:07:37Z

While a sizeable chunk of users do not mind living their life in public, oversharing can have nasty repercussions in real life. This article by Sahana Saran was published in the Bangalore Mirror on 24 July 2011.

A wife wrote a bitchy remark about her mother-in-law on Facebook when her husband was out of town. A happy homecoming turned sour when the husband saw the comment. There was a huge showdown which finally led to divorce.

On the flip side, when Savita and Vinay’s (name changed) baby was about to be born a couple of years ago, the couple’s friend live-tweeted the whole childbirth process and the proud parents didn’t mind.

Oversharing on social networks by young people can have damaging results, say internet experts. Why does it happen?

"These days youngsters hook on to social networking sites, and you cannot blame them for seeking each other’s company because that is how they are at that age. There are more restrictions on children these days because of security and abuse issues which the earlier generation may not have encountered. For example, sleepovers which were much common earlier may now not be readily allowed. Their time outside their house is also monitored. Many schools these days have surveillance cameras or some form of curbs that might restrict students from having a private interaction. That is why they seek such interactions through the internet and social networks. Still in India, there is not really a need to press the panic button saying that they are becoming Facebook addicts," says Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, who is an internet behaviour expert.

Sunil quotes an analysis done in Poland to show how much social networking has become a part of young people’s lives. It showed that teenage girls who meet every day in school, go back home and immediately switch on their PCs and start interacting with each other again. And all through the day, they are on Skype and can see every single thing that each one of them are doing in their rooms in their respective homes. Studies done in the Philipines demonstrate how personal life is becoming public. A study by the Institute of Philippine Culture showed that many of those assessed were on Friendster and allow full access to information on their accounts and readily share details of activities, interests and contacts.

Is the situation different in India? Bhavana, a business management graduate in her 20s, says that what she puts up on her social networking account depends solely on her state of mind. But she ensures that messages are not too personal because earlier she had put up posts which backfired.

"Sometime ago we were celebrating my brother’s birthday and some misunderstanding happened during the celebrations and I was heaped with blame by friends and relatives on FB when I tried to justify myself. I was taken aback. Now, I am more careful about posting messages about sensitive topics," she says.

And when you let people know where you are through Google Latitude, you need to watch against saying offensive things.

"There have been instances of people gate-crashing parties following a Twitter or FB post; in China, mobs of people have attacked those whose views they oppose," adds Sunil.

What makes some people, who would never dream of whipping up controversies in the real world, so reckless when they are online?

"Most often, it is a way of being noticed, of getting attention. Everyone wants to have a popular public profile and telling the world about your opinions and your activities is a way of gaining attention. But new forms of communication are being invented every other day and each has an etiquette of its own," says Sunil.

According to Dr Thomas M J, there are two kinds of people who are the net — attention-seeking and anonymous. The anonymous generally never put personal details about themselves on social networks. "But the other group consists of those who are externally controlled. For such people any open media acts as a place to talk about themselves and they love being in that public space. Moreover, social networks give internet users the courage to say whatever they want because they can avoid face-to-face contact. Even if there is a response, it is muted because because it is not direct and they can escape confrontation," says Thomas.

Read the original article published in Bangalore Mirror here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/facebook-my-lousy-boyfriend

Facebook, Google tell India they won’t screen for derogatory content

praskrishna — 2011-12-07T05:25:52Z

In the world’s largest democracy, the government wants Internet sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google to screen and remove offensive content about religious figures and political leaders as soon as they learn about it. But those companies now say they can’t help.

India’s minister of communications Kapil Sibal began discussions with the online companies in September. On Tuesday, he told reporters the government will have to create new guidelines to disable such content from the Internet sites on its own.

"We will not allow intermediaries to say that ‘we throw up our hands, we can’t do anything about it,’" Sibal said.

Sibal had shown company executives derogatory images of the Prophet Mohammed and morphed pictures of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi that appeared on their platforms. Sibal said these images would offend "any reasonable person" and also hurt religious sentiments of Indians.

But on Monday, according to Sibal, the company executives said they cannot do anything.

Soon after Sibal’s news conference, Facebook said in a statement: “We will remove any content that violates our terms, which are designed to keep material that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity off the service.” Those parameters are unlikely to include all the images the government of India wants screened out.

Sibal’s move did not come as a surprise for some observers in India, which has the third-largest Internet-user community in the world--more than 100 million people. Earlier this year, India introduced new rules that called on Web sites, service providers and search engines to not host information that could be regarded as “harmful, “blasphemous” or “disparaging.” The rules also called on Web sites to remove offensive material within 36 hours of a complaint.

"I can’t believe a democracy is doing this," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of India’s Center for Internet and Society. He said recent, unpublished research conducted by the group showed that "such rules have a chilling effect on the freedom of expression on the Internet." Researchers sent mock take-down notices to seven sites, complaining about their content. Abraham said six sites immediately deleted content. "They did not even verify the validity of our flawed complaint. They over-complied," he said.

Sibal’s announcement also sparked a debate on Twitter, where Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor and Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah weighed in:

The Streisand effect is an online phenomenon in which an attempt to censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information further. (It is named after Barbara Streisand, who attempted in 2003 to hide pictures of her giant home; that only created more interest.)
But a blogger who calls himself the “Pragmatic Desi” argued that India had its own constraints:

But Member of Parliament Varun Gandi said that’s precisely why the Internet shouldn’t be censored:

The article written by Rama Lakshmi was originally published in the Washington Post on 6 December 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this. Read it here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/facebook-google-tell-india-they-won2019t-screen-for-derogatory-content

Facebook, Google face censorship in India

praskrishna — 2012-01-09T05:10:37Z

Religious leaders in India are on a collision course with social media websites including Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Two Indian courts recently asked these American companies as well as 19 other websites to take down “anti-religious” material. They are now required to report their compliance by February. Betwa Sharma's blog post was published in SmartPlanet on 5 January 2012. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in it extensively.

Information technology minister Kapil Sibal also met with a delegation of different faith groups who are worried that certain internet content could lead to communal discord. India’s 1.2 billion people are made up of majority Hindus but it also has the third largest population of Muslims as well as large number of Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and other faiths.

India has an estimated 100 million internet users–the third largest in the world after U.S and China. The proposed restrictions are not at all comparable to China’s but is the internet free enough for the world’s largest democracy?

Some observers are suspicious that promoting religious or social harmony is a front for censoring the internet. Sunil Abraham, head of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), said that "traditional intellectual property rights holders like movie studios, music companies and software vendors are trying to protect their obsolete business models by pushing for the adoption of blanket surveillance and filtering technologies."

"They have found common cause with both totalitarian and so-called democratic regimes across the world interested in protecting the political status-quo after upheavals like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous and the Pirate Party," he said.

The Indian government has tried to reassure the public that it is not trying to censor. Google’s Transparency Report, however, recorded that out of the 358 items requested to be removed by the Indian government from Jan-June 2011, 255 had to do with government criticism and only a handful with hate speech.

Sibal has also been speaking to executives from Facebook, Yahoo and Google in India. But no agreement has been reached on taking down hate speech. New rules, issued in April, require internet intermediaries like Facebook and Yahoo to check for “unlawful” material and take it down.

CIS will soon be releasing a report called “Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet 2011." For the report, CIS conducted a sting operation by sending flawed takedown notices to seven intermediaries. The results showed that six intermediaries over-complied with the notices. "From the responses from the intermediaries don’t have sufficient legal competence or unwilling to dictate resources to determine legality of an online expression," Abraham said.

"Various pretexts like national security, protection of children, crackdown on online crime and terrorism, defense against cyber war etc are used to compromise civil liberties and clamp down on freedom of expression," he added.

(Photo-facebook24h.com/Google images)

Read the original published by SmartPlanet

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/facebook-google-face-censorship-in-india

Facebook, Google deny spying access

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T10:18:48Z

The CEOs of Facebook and Google on Saturday categorically denied that the US National Security Agency had "direct access" to their company servers for snooping on Gmail and Facebook users. But both acknowledged that the companies complied with the 'lawful' requests made by the US government and shared user data with sleuths.

The article by Javed Anwer was published in the Times of India on June 9, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

In a post titled "What the ...?" Google's official blog, CEO Larry Page wrote, "We have not joined any program that would give the US governmentâ€”or any other governmentâ€”direct access to our servers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday."

A few hours later, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded. "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers... We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday," he wrote on his page at the social media site.

According to a few PowerPoint slides allegedly leaked by an NSA official, nine technology companies - Google, AOL, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Skype, Facebook, YouTube and PalTalk - are providing the US government easy access to user data. While all companies have denied being part anything called PRISM, Facebook and Google have been most vocal about it.

A few hours after Facebook and Google statements, the New York Times said in a report that technology companies had "opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users".

"In some cases, they (companies) changed their computer systems to do so," noted the NYT report.

The statements by the CEOs have done little to allay privacy fears. "The denials from the companies look highly coordinated, including similar phrases in all their responses. I don't think they are lying outright, though the NYT report suggests that they are telling a half-truth. They may not provide the US government 'direct access' to all their servers, but may be providing indirect access, or may just be responding to very broad FISA orders," said Pranesh Prakash, a policy director with Centre for Internet and Society in India.

On Friday US president Barack Obama had tacitly acknowledged NSA surveillance programmes aimed at non-US citizens. "You can't have a hundred per cent security and also then have a hundred per cent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we're going to have to make some choices as a society," he told reporters in the US.

Page and Zuckerberg also called on the governments to be more open about surveillance programmes. "The level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish," wrote Page.

Added Zuckerberg, "We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. It's the only way to protect everyone's civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-javed-anwer-june-9-2013-facebook-google-deny-spying-access

Facebook's Fall from Grace: Arab Spring to Indian Winter

sunil — 2016-02-11T15:51:34Z

Facebook’s Free Basics has been permanently banned in India! The Indian telecom regulator, TRAI has issued the world’s most stringent net neutrality regulation! To be more accurate, there is more to come from TRAI in terms of net neutrality regulations especially for throttling and blocking but if the discriminatory tariff regulation is anything to go by we can expect quite a tough regulatory stance against other net neutrality violations as well.

The article was published in First Post on February 9, 2016. It can be read here.

Even the regulations it cites in the Explanatory Memorandum don’t go as far as it does. The Dutch regulation will have to be reformulated in light of the new EU regulations and the Chilean regulator has opened the discussion on an additional non-profit exception by allowing Wikipedia to zero-rate its content in partnership with telecom operators.

Bravo to Nikhil Pahwa, Apar Gupta, Raman Chima, Kiran Jonnalagadda and the thousands of volunteers at Save The Internet and associated NGOs, movements, entrepreneurs and activists who mobilized millions of Indians to stand up and petition TRAI to preserve some of the foundational underpinnings of the Internet. And finally bravo to Facebook for having completely undermined any claim to responsible stewardship of our information society through their relentless, shrill and manipulative campaign filled with the staggeringly preposterous lies. Having completely lost the trust of the Indian public and policy-makers, Facebook only has itself to blame for polarizing what was quite a nuanced debate in India through its hyperbole and setting the stage for this firm action by TRAI.

And most importantly bravo to RS Sharma and his team at TRAI for several reasons for the notification of “Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, 2016” aka differential pricing regulations. The regulation exemplifies six regulatory best practices that I briefly explore below.

Transparency and Agility: Two months from start to finish, what an amazing turn around! TRAI was faced with unprecedented public outcry and also comments and counter-comments. Despite visible and invisible pressures, from the initial temporary ban on Free Basics to RS Sharma’s calm, collected and clear interactions with different stakeholders resulted in him regaining the credibility which was lost during the publication of the earlier consultation paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTTs) services. Despite being completely snowed over electronically by what Rohin Dharmakumar dubbed as Facebook’s DDOS attack, he gave Facebook one last opportunity to do the right thing which they of course spectacularly blew.

Brevity and Clarity: The regulation fits onto three A4-sized pages and is a joy to read. Clarity is often a result of brevity but is not necessarily always the case. At the core of this regulation is a single sentence which prohibits discriminatory tariffs on the basis of content unless it is a “data service over closed electronic communications network”. And unlike many other laws and regulations, this regulation has only one exemption for offering or charging of discriminatory tariffs and that is for “emergency services” or during “grave public emergency”. Even the best lawyers will find it difficult to drive trucks through that one. Even if imaginative engineers architect a technical circumvention, TRAI says “if such a closed network is used for the purpose of evading these regulations, the prohibition will nonetheless apply”. Again clear signal that the spirit is more important than the letter of the regulation when it comes to enforcement.

Certainty and Equity: Referencing the noted scholar Barbara Van Schewick, TRAI explains that a case-by-case approach based on principles [standards] or rules would “fail to provide much needed certainty to industry participants…..service providers may refrain from deploying network technology” and perversely “lead to further uncertainty as service providers undergoing [the] investigation would logically try to differentiate their case from earlier precedents”. Our submission from the Centre for Internet and Society had called for more exemptions but TRAI went with a much cleaner solution as it did not want to provide “a relative advantage to well-financed actors and will tilt the playing field against those who do not have the resources to pursue regulatory or legal actions”.

What next? Hopefully the telecom operators and Facebook will have the grace to abide with the regulation without launching a legal challenge. And hopefully TRAI will issue equally clear regulations on throttling and blocking to conclude the “Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top Services” consultation process. Critically, TRAI must forbear from introducing any additional regulatory burdens on OTTs, a.k.a Internet companies based on unfounded allegations of regulatory arbitrage. There are some legitimate concerns around issues like taxation and liability but that has to be addressed by other arms of the government. To address the digital divide, there are other issues outside net neutrality such as shared spectrum, unlicensed spectrum and shared backhaul infrastructure that TRAI must also prioritize for regulation and deregulation.

Without doubt other regulators from the global south will be inspired by India’s example and will hopefully take firm steps to prevent the rise of additional and unnecessary gatekeepers and gatekeeping practices on the Internet. The democratic potential of the Internet must be preserved through enlightened and appropriate regulation informed by principles and evidence.

The writer is Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. He says CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/first-post-february-9-2016-sunil-abraham-facebook-fall-from-grace-arab-spring-to-indian-winter

Facebook's Delicate Dance With Delhi On Censorship

praskrishna — 2012-09-03T04:39:45Z

At the end of last week, a hashtag briskly rose across India: #Emergency2012. It was a reference to the 21-month stint, beginning in the summer of 1975, when then PM Indira Gandhi determined democracy an inconvenience.

Contributed by Mark Bergen, the post was published in Forbes on August 29, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

This time around, the government launched a jumbled attempt, following ethnic violence in the northeast, to stem rumors behind a panicked exodus. They blocked over 300 sites and axed at least 16 Twitter accounts, including those of political opponents and journalists. Many of us found our cell phone texts suddenly, with no announcement, cut off after five missives.

It was hardly the Emergency of 1975. The government’s actions were far less draconian than three decades ago. But, back then, there were no foreign internet companies to complicate matters—and, it seems, absolve the government.

In response to the recent charges, Delhi claimed that there was “no censorship at all.” As the communications minister, Kapil Sibal, put it, “Facebook and Google are cooperating with us.”

Under the circumstances, shutting down the incendiary hate speech online was warranted, explained Sunil Abraham, the director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore. The process was just incredibly inept. “There were so many things they did wrong,” he told me when I asked about the government’s response. And the reaction can be tacked onto a very recent history of Delhi issuing sweeping, usually empty, threats of censoring U.S. internet companies.

“Perhaps the Indian government has wasted, frittered a way goodwill,” Abraham continued. “It has cried ‘wolf’ so many times that this time the internet intermediaries are not taking them as seriously as they should.”

His group analyzed the sites shut down last week, pointing out the “numerous mistakes and inconsistencies that make blocking pointless and ineffectual.” It’s clear that the censorship was also opportunistic—used to stamp out political parody Twitter accounts—and counterproductive. Among the sites blocked was a Pakistani blog debunking the rumors behind the whole exodus episode.

Abraham criticized the government for coming to the intermediaries with broad demands first, rather than directly to Twitter, Facebook and Google. That approach, coupled with earlier censorship demands, may strain the trust between the ruling coalition and the web giants.

Still, Facebook has every reason to keep Delhi happy. This year, the number of users in India hit 32 million—a 85 percent jump from the last. The total is expected to nearly double next year, leap-frogging Indonesia for the title of second largest market. An overwhelming chunk of that growth will come from mobile users. As this solid report from Forbes India shows, the company is still struggling here, as it is in the U.S., to turn those new users into ad revenue:

Indian businesses spent Rs 2,850 crore on digital advertising as of March 2012, a number that’s expected to grow to Rs 4,391 crore next year, according to a report by the Internet Mobile Association of India/Indian Market Research Bureau (IAMAI/IMRB).

…But Facebook has not been able to capture much of this share. Mahesh Murthy reckons that businesses spent about Rs 150 crore on Facebook marketing, but only a third went to Facebook’s own kitties in the form of ad revenues. The rest went to social media marketing firms which handle Facebook accounts.

That’s not to say that the company will discontinue its aggressive efforts. It likely will not be deterred by policies that attack free speech—Zuckerberg’s empire has long been accused of complacency with censorship. It’s India’sinfamously unpredictable tax policies toward foreign entities that would conceivably slow the company’s expansion.

There’s little reason to suspect, then, that Facebook, Google and the western web behemoths will not continue to cooperate with Delhi moving forward. And much of that cooperation should come not as blatant censorship but covert surveillance. According to the Google Transparency Report, India has made over 2,000 data requests and 100 removal requests, third only to the States and Brazil. As the mobile revolution soars, that number will surely rise.

On Monday evening, Christopher Soghoian, a D.C.-based privacy analyst, spoke at the CIS before a crowd of young Indian law students and activists. Despite the shoddy security default of internet firms, he said, they can impose limits on government surveillance. “When these companies receive requests from where they don’t have an office,” he claimed, “they refuse.” Two years ago, Facebook India opened its first office in Hyderabad.

Soghoian advised his audience to push for privacy and transparency standards in India. He shared the story of the long-fought battle for encryption protection with Facebook in the U.S. Yet, he admitted that security provisions can falter when a government is bent on policing the internet—and a company is bent on cooperation. “If you can force companies to hand over the keys,” he said, “then encryption is useless.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-forbes-com-mark-bergen-aug-29-2012-facebooks-delicate-dance-with-delhi-on-censorship

Facebook to pay Indians to give up privacy: Experts raise questions

Geetika Mantri — 2019-06-22T04:01:26Z

Facebook has launched a voluntary, opt-in program, which monetarily compensates users in exchange for their data.

The blog post by Geetika Mantri was published in the Newsminute on June 14, 2019. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

On June 11, 2019, Facebook announced ‘Study,’ its market research app for Android users in US and India, which pays users who allow it to monitor how they use the applications on their phone.

The Study app will collect data on the apps installed on a participant’s phone, the amount of time spent using those apps, the participant’s country, device and network type and app activity names, which may show Facebook the names of app features the participants are using. It promises not to collect user IDs, passwords, or any of the participant’s content, such as photos, videos or messages and has assured that the information will neither be sold to third parties nor used to target ads. Facebook says it also won’t add the data collected to the user’s Facebook account if they have one. Read more about it here.

It’s clear that this is a voluntary, opt-in program, which monetarily compensates users in exchange for them giving up some of their privacy. A Facebook spokesperson told TNM that the payments will be made on a monthly basis through PayPal, but the amount and the rate were not disclosed. “Our partner, Applause, will handle all compensation,” Facebook said.

And while experts point out that Facebook is certainly not the first company that wants to do market research by collecting user data, the new proposal raises some pertinent questions about privacy and consent.

Not illegal, but what’s the end goal?

“It is clear that market research apps invade people’s privacy,” states Pranesh Prakash, a fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society. “However, asking people to opt-in for market research is not uncommon. And if consent is given, it is legal. There is nothing wrong with people participating in this as long as they are aware.”

That being said, Pranesh also points out that in many cases, market research such as this has led to useful insights about user behaviour and can contribute to public policy as well. However, in Facebook’s case, it is likely that the findings will be used internally and will not be made public.

When asked about the purpose of this data collection, Facebook said it was to make better products.

“Like many companies, we use market research to help us understand trends and build better products. This information is incredibly important to us because knowing how people use apps helps us prioritise and build better experiences for people,” a Facebook spokesperson said, adding that they are maintaining complete transparency.

No strong data privacy laws in India

While there is a requirement for participants to consent to share data with Study app, what makes Indian users vulnerable is that the country does not strong data privacy laws. The Data Privacy Bill 2018, modelled on the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) of the European Union, is yet to become a law and is riddled with loopholes in its present form.

Nitish Chandan, a cyber-security specialist, points out that though the Supreme Court deemed privacy a fundamental right of Indian citizens last year, the jurisprudence itself has not evolved – no major company or entity has been punished so far for a data breach.

“Had the Data Protection Bill been passed, there would have been a clear mandate for companies who want to process personal data as well as purpose limitation, meaning they can only process data for certain purposes and not others,” Nitish says.

And while the data collection is legal because consent is obtained, Nitish points out a strong data protection law would have barred from it being used for unethical purposes such as mass profiling. The Data Protection Bill for instance, under section 33 (1), bars large-scale profiling or any processing which carries the risk of “significant harm to data principles” unless the data fiduciary undertakes a data protection impact assessment in India.

Further, while purpose limitation breaches can be picked up by watchdogs, common people are unlikely to realise this and read the fine print, Nitish adds.

What conditions is consent being sought in?

Nayantara R, Programme Manager–Freedom of Expression at the Internet Democracy Project, tells TNM that Facebook’s decision to launch Study raises some very important questions.

"With calls for informed consent while giving away data, something like Study seems to satisfy many requirements. The app will clearly state what data is collected when a user opens it, etc. But the problem is approaching consent in an individualised manner, without questioning if there are structural conditions that enable giving consent. A useful parallel to draw is conversations on consent in the context of sexual relations. We question the power dynamics and surrounding circumstances in the giving of consent there. The Study app is a good case to confront what is the kind of consent we are after," she explains.

Nayantara argues that consent has to be situated in the larger ecosystem of power play. The situation is made complex by the monetary incentive. If a person needs the money and therefore consents to give up their privacy to a large company – how freely is that consent given? And is it a fair trade?

“These questions don’t have easy answers but are the conversations that we need to start having,” Nayantara states. “This is not so much about whether Facebook's motives are bad. The more important question it raises is about the demands that civil society has been making: consent, compensation in exchange for the labour on platforms etc,” she observes.

The Facebook spokesperson’s response indicated that the company has been aware of these debates and demands: “We’ve learned that what people expect when they sign up to participate in market research has changed and we’ve built this app to match those expectations.”

Not Facebook’s first time collecting data

This is not the first time that Facebook has launched an app for market research – its now-defunct Research app, launched in 2016, was rolled back after an investigation by Tech Crunch that revealed the app had violated Apple’s policies. The app had asked users to download a VPN onto their devices, ‘trust’ it (requiring users to give it permission), and could, if it wanted, access personal information of users, including private messages on social media apps, chats from instant messaging apps (inclusive of photos and videos), emails, web browsing history and even the present location of the person, by tapping into another app using the location feature.

This app – that also paid users up to $20 per month in gift cards to share their data – came under even more fire because it didn’t just target adults. People from age 13 to age 35 were eligible to download this app. Investigations also revealed that Facebook had ended up collecting some non-targeted data as well.

Additionally, it also bought the Onavo Protect app in 2014, which projected itself as a privacy app providing free VPN to users and allowing them to minimise their data plan usage. However, the app was collecting information on users, providing Facebook with deep analytics about which apps the users were using. The app was eventually discontinued after the data snooping was discovered.

Facebook seems to have learnt from these experiences. “We’re offering transparency, compensating all participants and keeping people’s information safe and secure,” a company spokesperson said. However, Tech Crunch reportedthat Study – which is only for users above the age of 18 – too could give Facebook crucial insights into competitors and features it could invest in on its own platforms based on what was popular on other apps users are using.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/geetika-mantri-june-14-2019-the-news-minute-facebook-to-pay-indians-to-give-up-privacy

Facebook Shares 10 Key Facts about Free Basics. Here's What's Wrong with All 10 of Them.

sunil — 2015-12-25T14:59:10Z

Shweta Sengar of Catch News spoke to Sunil Abraham about the recent advertisement by Facebook titled "What Net Neutrality Activists won't Tell You or, the Top 10 Facts about Free Basics". Sunil argued against the validity of all the 'top 10 facts'.

Facebook has rebranded internet.org as Free Basics. After suffering from several harsh blows from the net neutrality activists in India, the social media behemoth is positioning a movement in order to capture user attention.

Apart from a mammoth two page advertisement on Free Basics on 23 December in a leading English daily, we spotted a numerous hoardings across the capital.

Unlike Facebook, Wikipedia has a rather upfront approach for raising funds. You must have noticed a pop-up as you open Wikipedia when they are in need of funds. What Facebook has done is branded Free Basics as 'free' as the basic needs of life.

The newspaper advertisement by Facebook was aimed at clearing all the doubts about Free Basics. The 10 facts highlighted a connected India and urging users to take the "first step towards digital equality."

In an interview with Catch, Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of Bangalore based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society, shared his thoughts on the controversial subject. Abraham countered each of Facebook's ten arguments. Take a look:

01 Free basics is open to any carriers. Any mobile operator can join us in connecting India.

Sunil Abraham: Free Basics was initially exclusive to only one telecom operator in most markets that it was available in.

The non-exclusivity was introduced only after activists in India complained. But now the arrangement is exclusive to Free Basics as a walled garden provider. But discrimination harms remain until other Internet services can also have what Facebook has from telecom operators ie. free access to their destinations.

02 We do not charge anyone anything for Free Basics. Period.

SA: As Bruce Schneier says "surveillance is the business model of the Internet". Free basics users are subject to an additional layer of surveillance ie. the data retention by the Facebook proxy server. Just as Facebook cannot say that they are ignoring Data Protection law because Facebook is a free product - they cannot say that Free Basics can violate network neutrality law because it is a free service. For ex. Flipkart should get Flipkart Basic on all Indian ISPs and Telcos.

03 We do not pay for the data consumed in Free Basics. Operators participate because the program has proven to bring more people online. Free Basics has brought new people onto mobile networks on average over 50% faster since launching the service.

SA: Facebook has been quoting statistics as evidence to influence the policy formulation process. But we need the absolute numbers and we also need them to be independently verifiable. At the very least we need the means to cross verify these numbers with numbers that telcos and ISPs routinely submit to TRAI.

Theoretical harms must be addressed through net neutrality regulation. For example, you don't have to build a single, centralised database of all Indian citizens to know that it can be compromised - from a security design perspective centralisation is always a bad idea. Gatekeeping powers given to any powerful entity will be compromised. While evidence is useful, regulation can already begin based on well established regulatory principles. After scientific evidence has been made available - the regulation can be tweaked.

04 Any developer or publisher can have their content on Free Basics. There are clear technical specs openly published here ... and we have never rejected an app or publisher who has me these tech specs.

SA: Again this was only done as a retrospective fix after network neutrality activists in India complained about exclusive arrangements. For example, the music streaming service Hungama is not a low-bandwidth destination but since it was included the technical specifications only mentions large images and video files. Many of the other sites are indistinguishable from their web equivalents clearly indicating that this was just an afterthought. At the moment Free Basics has become controversial so most developers and publishers are not approaching them so there is no way for us to verify Facebook's claim.

05 Nearly 800 developers in India have signed their support for Free Basics.

SA: I guess these are software developers working in the services industry who don't see themselves as potential competition to Facebook or any of the services within Free Basics. Also since Facebook as been completely disingenuous when it comes to soliciting support for their campaigns it is very hard to believe these claims. It has tried to change the meaning of the phrase "net neutrality" and has framed the debate in an inaccurate manner - therefore I could quite confidently say that these developers must have been fooled into supporting Free Basics.

06 It is not a walled garden: In India, 40% of people who come online through Free Basics are paying for data and accessing the full internet within the first 30 days. In the same time period, 8 times more people are paying versus staying on just

SA: Again, no absolute numbers and also no granularity in the data that makes it impossible for anyone to verify these numbers. Also there is no way to compare these numbers to access options that are respectful of network neutrality such as equal rating. If the numbers are roughly the same for equal rating and zero-rating then there is no strong case to be made for zero-rating.

07 Free Basics is growing and popular in 36 other countries, which have welcomed the program with open arms and seen the enormous benefits it has brought.

SA: Free Basics was one of the most controversial topics at the last Internet Governance Forum. A gratis service is definitely going to be popular but that does not mean forbearance is the only option for the regulator. In countries with strong civil society and/or a strong regulator, Free Basics has ran into trouble. Facebook has been able to launch Free Basics only in jurisdictions where regulators are still undecided about net neutrality. India and Brazil are the last battle grounds for net neutrality and that is why Facebook is spending advertising dollar and using it's infrastructure to win the global south.

08 In a recent representative poll, 86% of Indians supported Free Basics by Facebook, and the idea that everyone deserves access to free basic internet services.

SA: This is the poll which was framed in alarmist language where Indian were asked to choose between perpetuating or bridging the digital divide. This is a false choice that Facebook is perpetuating - with forward-looking positive Network Neutrality rules as advocated by Dr. Chris Marsden it should be possible to bridge digital divide without incurring any free speech, competition, innovation and diversity harms.

09 In the past several days, 3.2 million people have petitioned the TRAI in support of Free Basics.

SA: Obviously - since Free Basics is better than nothing. But the real choice should have been - are you a) against network neutrality ie. would you like to see Facebook play gatekeeper on the Internet OR b) for network neutrality ie. would you like to see Free Basics forced to comply with network neutrality rules and expand access without harms to consumers and innovators.

10 There are no ads in the version of Facebook on Free Basics. Facebook produces no revenue. We are doing this to connect India, and the benefits to do are clear.

SA: As someone who has watched the Internet economy since the first dot com boom - it is absolutely clear that consumer acquisition is as important as revenues. They are doing it to connect people to Facebook and as a result some people will also connect to the Internet. But India is the last market on the planet where the walled garden can be bigger than the Internet, and therefore Facebook is manipulating the discourse through it's dominance of the networked public sphere.

Bravo to TRAI and network neutrality activists for taking Facebook on.

Originally published by Catch News, on December 24, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-shares-10-key-facts-about-free-basics-heres-whats-wrong-with-all-10-of-them

Facebook Privacy Design Sprint

Admin — 2018-12-04T16:28:41Z

Pranav Bidare and Saumyaa Naidu participated in the Facebook Privacy Design Sprint on Friday, November 30, 2018.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-privacy-design-sprint

Facebook offers free but limited access to the Internet in India

praskrishna — 2015-03-08T07:42:19Z

Facebook-backed Internet.org is extending its offer of free but limited Internet access to India via a mobile app.

The blog post was published in PC World on February 10, 2015. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The launch of the app in India follows similar introductions in Ghana, Zambia, Colombia, Kenya and Tanzania, despite criticism from activists that the program does not meet its stated objective of providing free and unfettered Internet access to all.

The common thread in all these launches is that the app is available only to subscribers of one operator in the country. In India, for example, Internet.org has tied with Reliance Communications, the country’s fourth-largest mobile services provider.

Internet.org is a collaborative effort, launched in 2013 by Facebook and other tech companies including Ericsson and Samsung Electronics, that aims to provide Internet access to those who don’t yet have it.

“Connectivity can’t just be a privilege for some of the rich and powerful,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last year at the first meeting of Internet.org. “It needs to be something that everyone shares, and an opportunity for everyone.”

But the way the free service has been offered has come in for criticism from some social activists.

“This is a walled garden approach that undermines the infrastructure of free expression in India,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based organization focused on research and policy advocacy, who pointed out that the app does not offer truly free access to the Internet.

Prakash is also critical that the service will only be available to subscribers of Reliance Communications, defeating the stated aim of Internet.org of providing free Internet access to all.

The free access is limited to 38 websites, including Facebook and its Messenger service, Bing Search, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, BBC News, Reuters Market Lite for crop and farming information, and local jobs and news sites.

The service will only cover a few Indian states in South India. Reliance customers in the six states can access the free services through the Android app, from the start screen of the Opera Mini mobile web browser, and using the Android app UC Browser for Internet.org. The services will be available in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati and Marathi.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/pc-world-john-riberio-february-10-2015-facebook-offers-free-but-limited-access-to-the-internet-in-india

Facebook launches Internet.org in India

praskrishna — 2015-03-13T02:27:14Z

Joins hands with Reliance Communications. Move spurs neutrality concerns.

The article by Lalatendu Mishra and Sriram Srinivasan was published in the Hindu on February 11, 2015. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Facebook on Tuesday announced a tie-up with Reliance Communications to launch Internet.org in India, bringing to the land of a billion-plus people a service that the social media giant says helps affordable Internet access but whose critics disapprove its restrictiveness.

India now becomes the sixth destination for Internet.org, a Facebook-led initiative envisaged about a year-and-a-half back with six other founding partners, including Samsung and Qualcomm. The service has already been launched in Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Colombia and Ghana.

Facebook’s 30-year-old founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the development on his social network. He posted, “More than a billion people in India don’t have access to the internet. That means they can’t enjoy the same opportunities many of us take for granted, and the entire world is robbed of their ideas and creativity.”

The tie-up gives subscribers of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications who have Internet-enabled handsets free access to 38 Websites – a mix of news, music, education, weather and health sites. The list includes Facebook, Wikipedia, and Reliance Astrology. The lone search option available is Microsoft’s Bing. They can be accessed via an Android app.

For the time being, the service has gone live in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. The pan-India launch is planned in three months. Nearly 70% of Reliance’s customers who have Internet-enabled phones but are now offline are expected to avail themselves of this service.

Gurdeep Singh, CEO, Consumer Business, Reliance Communications, said during the launch in Mumbai, “This partnership will not only accelerate internet penetration In India, it will also open new socioeconomic opportunities to users in fields like education, information and commerce.”

Chris Daniels, Vice President of Internet.org at Facebook, said, “This is a big step forward in our efforts to connect every one in India to the internet and help people discover new tools and information that can create more jobs and opportunities.”

Critics, however, see little altruism in Internet.org. Rather, what they see is a huge challenge to the neutrality of the Internet. Their point is that a selective access to the Internet makes it extremely difficult for rivals not part of the service.

Lawyer Prashant Reddy said, “It will be interesting to see how Trai (the regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) handles such deals, and whether the market will accuse both these players of violating network neutrality.”

He said, “Also one needs to see how public understands the principles of Net neutrality.” His point is: there is no outcry when data packs are offered free but controversy erupts when a service provider tries to charge subscribers for services, as in the case of Airtel recently.

Internet activist and director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, Ethan Zuckerman, told The Hindu in an email interview that "If Facebook were donating millions or billions to upgrade infrastructure - or even to lobby mobile phone carriers for cheaper data services for all - it would be less troubling. But instead, they're offering a limited version of the internet, one that centers on Facebook, to low-income internet users. That raises real concerns that this is not a charitable effort, but a customer acquisition strategy."

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director of the Bengaluru-based research and advocacy organisation The Centre for Internet & Society, said he is worried about the long-term consequences. “The Internet.org model violates most definitions of net neutrality, as it provides access to a limited menu of services claiming to be the Internet — being based on a cable TV model — rather than providing actual access to the Internet at a low cost.”

He said, “Since it is an exclusive deal with a single mobile service provider, it also calls into question the genuineness of Mark Zuckerberg’s publicly-stated motive of bringing the Internet to a billion people and bridging the digital divide.”

It isn’t clear how Facebook and Reliance would bear the cost of the free service. What Facebook said in its annual report of 2013 is that it would continue to invest in projects even if it doesn’t have a clear path to monetisation, “such as our commitment to the Internet.org initiative to increase global Internet access.”

Even prior to the internet.org initiative, companies such as Facebook and Twitter have individually worked out deals with telecom companies in fast-growing markets to make their services free for subscribers. Research firm eMarketer had forecast India to be the fastest-growing geography for Facebook in terms of users in 2014.

(With inputs from Sanjay Vijayakumar)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindu-lalatendu-mishra-sriram-srinivasan-february-11-2015-hindu-facebook-launches-internet-org-in-india

Facebook launches India tech scholars programme for law students

praskrishna — 2021-06-26T04:55:39Z

Facebook India on Friday announced a new initiative - the Facebook India Tech Scholars (FITS) programme - for law students in the country.

The article was published in the Times of India on June 4, 2021.

The novel programme aims to provide students from select leading law schools in the country a platform for research and mentorship on topics related to technology law and policy.

The first edition, the FITS programme 2021-2022, will offer eight law students an opportunity to work on a research project with leading Indian thinktanks who will also extend mentorship support to the students. It will be open to 4th and 5th year students from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, the WB National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, the National Law University, Delhi, and the National Law University, Jodhpur.

"With rapid advancements in technology and the evolution of technology law and policy in India, the programme is designed to encourage students to develop an independent voice on pressing topics that will have a bearing on future policy discussions in this area," the social networking giant said in a statement.

"We hope to expand the FITS programme to more students in coming years," it added.

The FITS programme 2021-2022 will see the Centre for Internet and Society, the Observer Research Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace India, and the Software Freedom Law Center participating as mentoring institutions. Facebook is also guided by an experienced and expert Advisory Committee for the duration of the programme. Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co. will be a knowledge partner.

Applications will close on June 20. The FITS programme will run for a period of nine months, commencing in Summer 2021.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-june-4-2021-facebook-launches-india-tech-scholars-programme-for-law-students

Facebook launches FB Newswire for journalists; loses part of its immunity under IT Act 2000

praskrishna — 2014-05-06T05:41:03Z

A bus accident in California, a fire in New Jersey and another in Vasant Kunj, NASA's successful test flight of its vertical take-off and landing craft, a ceremony to honour the sherpas who died during an avalanche at the Everest last week, and, Israel's suspension of talks with Palestinian authorities. These were some of the news that were disseminated on the first day of Facebook's newest social tool: a newswire to aid journalists and newsrooms.

The article was published in DNA on April 26, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

In a tie-up with News Corp's Storyful, Facebook launched the Newswire late on Thursday to function as a tool to aid journalists and newsrooms to "find, share and embed newsworthy content from Facebook in the media they produce". Apart from Facebook, the tool is also accessible on twitter at @FBNewswire.

"FB Newswire aggregates newsworthy content shared publicly on Facebook by individuals and organisations across the world for journalists to use in their reporting. This will include original photos, videos and status updates posted by people on the front lines of major events like protests, elections and sporting events," said Andy Mitchell, director of news and global media partnerships at Facebook, via a Facebook blog post.

Facebook has been in the centre of the internet security debate for a while; claiming immunity from legal provisions citing its non-curatorial approach and also denying responsibility for the news the social media network produces. "With the launch of this new tool, Facebook is not only curating information, it also directs knowledge of the content its produces through the newswire. That makes it legally responsible under the Information Technology Act (2000)", says Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

The move is also seen as Facebook attempting to reach out to journalists, and eat away into the space that Twitter has occupied in the dissemination of information. Facebook has largely been operating as a social media network; and its move into the new-making space is seen as an expansion in that direction.

"There might be some competition for journalists and traditional media outlets. But largely, Facebook's tie-ups with broadcasters and political parties, where it has been promoting content in exchange for compensation, has not been transparent," says Abraham.

With more than a billion users, Facebook is considered the largest social media network. In a statement on April 24, Facebook revealed that more than half of the world's internet population now uses the social media network and recorded a 72% increase in its revenues in the first quarter of the year.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dna-amrita-madhukalya-april-26-2014-facebook-launches-fb-newswire-for-journalists-loses-part-of-its-immunity-under-it-act-2000

Facebook is no charity, and the ‘free’ in Free Basics comes at a price

praskrishna — 2016-01-30T11:32:47Z

Who could possibly be against free internet access? This is the question that Mark Zuckerberg asks in a piece for the Times of India in which he claims Facebook’s Free Basics service “protects net neutrality”.

Free Basics is the rebranded Internet.org, a Facebook operation where by partnering with local telecoms firms in the developing world the firm offers free internet access – limited only to Facebook, Facebook-owned WhatsApp, and a few other carefully selected sites and services.

Zuckerberg was responding to the strong backlash that Free Basics has faced in India, where the country’s Telecom Regulatory Authority recently pulled the plug on the operation while it debates whether telecoms operators should be allowed to offer different services with variable pricing, or whether a principle of network neutrality should be enforced.

Not content to await the regulator’s verdict, Facebook has come out swinging. It has paid for billboards, full-page newspaper ads and television ad campaigns to try to enforce the point that Free Basics is good for India’s poor. In his Times piece, Zuckerberg goes one step further – implying that those opposing Free Basics are actually hurting the poor.

He argued that “for every ten people connected to the internet, roughly one is lifted out of poverty”. Without reference to supporting research, he instead offers an anecdote about a farmer called Ganesh from Maharashtra state. Ganesh apparently used Free Basics to double his crop yields and get a better deal for his crops.

Zuckerberg stressed that “critics of free basic internet services should remember that everything we’re doing is about serving people like Ganesh. This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests”.

Zuckerberg’s indignation illustrates either how little he understands about the internet, or that he’s willing to say anything to anyone listening.

This is not a charity

First, despite his claims to the contrary Free Basics clearly runs against the idea of net neutrality by offering access to some sites and not others. While the service is claimed to be open to any app, site or service, in practice the submission guidelines forbid JavaScript, video, large images, and Flash, and effectively rule out secure connections using HTTPS. This means that Free Basics is able to read all data passing through the platform. The same rules don’t apply to Facebook itself, ensuring that it can be the only social network, and (Facebook-owned) WhatsApp the only messaging service, provided.

Yes, Free Basics is free. But how appealing is a taxi company that will only take you to certain destinations, or an electricity provider that will only power certain home electrical devices? There are alternative models: in Bangladesh, Grameenphone gives users free data after they watch an advert. In some African countries, users get free data after buying a handset.

Second, there is no convincing body of peer-reviewed evidence to suggest internet access lifts the world’s poor out of poverty. Should we really base telecommunications policy on an anecdote and a self-serving industry report sponsored by the firm that stands to benefit? India has a literacy rate of 74%, of which a much smaller proportion speak English well enough to read it. Literate English speakers and readers tend not to be India’s poorest citizens, yet it’s English that is the predominant language on the web. This suggests Free Basics isn’t suited for India’s poorest, who’d be better served by more voice and video services.

Third, the claim that Free Basics isn’t in Facebook’s commercial interest is the most outrageous. In much the same way that Nestlé offered free baby formula in the 1970s as development assistance to low-income countries – leaving nursing mothers unable to produce sufficient milk themselves – Free Basics is likely to impede commercial alternatives.

By offering free access Free Basics disrupts the market, allowing Facebook to gain a monopoly that can benefit from the network effects of a growing user base. Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, in India, has aptly noted that expanding audience and consumer bases have long been as important as revenues for internet firms. Against Facebook’s immensely deep pockets and established user-base, homegrown competitors are thwarted before they even begin.

Poverty consists of more than just no internet

India will not always have low levels of internet access, this is not the issue – in fact Indian internet penetration growth rates are relatively high. Instead the company sees Free Basics as a means to establish a bridgehead into the country, establishing a monopoly before other firms move in.

There is decades of research about how best to help farmers like Ganesh: access to good quality education, healthcare, and water all could go a long way. But even if we see internet access as one of the key needs to be met, why would we then offer a restricted version?

In presenting Free Basics as an act of altruism Zuckerberg tries to silence criticism. “Who could possibly be against this?”, he asks:

What reason is there for denying people free access to vital services for communication, education, healthcare, employment, farming and women’s rights?

That is the right question, but Free Basics is the wrong answer. Let’s call a spade a spade and see Free Basics as an important part of the business strategy of one of the world’s largest internet corporations, rather than as a selfless act of charity.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-conversation-january-11-2016-facebook-is-no-charity

Facebook is censoring some posts on Indian Kashmir

praskrishna — 2016-07-28T03:03:53Z

Film makers, activists and journalists accused Facebook of blocking their accounts this week after they posted messages and images related to the violence in the trouble-torn province of Kashmir. In recent weeks, the India administered, Muslim-majority Kashmir state has been facing violence and curfews after protests erupted against the killing of a popular leader of a terrorist group.

The article by Rama Lakshmi was published by Washington Post on July 27. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

As people posted images, videos and stories about police violence and people injured by pellet wounds on Facebook, some discovered their accounts were disabled. On Monday, the account of Arif Ayaz Parrey, an editor with an environmental magazine in New Delhi, was disabled for more than a day. He administers the Facebook account of a discussion group called the Kashmir Solidarity Network, whose page was also removed.

“The Kashmir Solidarity page was started by a Kashmiri anthropology student in New York. This is not a hate forum, we share stories,” Parrey said. More than 47 people have died and hundreds injured in angry clashes between the police and protesters in Kashmir this month, the worst outbreak of bloody violence in six years in the region claimed by both India and neighboring Pakistan.

“Our Community Standards prohibit content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organizations or terrorism, and we remove it as soon as we’re made aware of it,” said a Facebook spokesman in India. “We welcome discussion on these subjects but any terrorist content has to be clearly put in a context which condemns these organizations or their violent activities.”India and the United States topped the list of governments that requestFacebook for details of accounts in the second half of 2015.

India has more than 340 million mobile Internet users and has the second largest number of Facebook users after the United States. The company is seeking to expand its footprint here by introducing a pared down version called “Free Basics.” But earlier this year, New Delhi shot it down, saying service providers cannot charge discriminatory prices for Internet users.

A journalist in Kashmir said that many who shared stories about a new band of militants and videos of police brutality have been blocked. “It looks more like Facebook censorship rather than something initiated by the government. Maybe they are trying to please the government proactively,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Center for Internet and Society. “Nevertheless it will have a chilling effect. You will think twice before exercising free speech on Facebook now.”

Ather Zia, a political commentator from Kashmir who teaches anthropology at the University of Northern Colorado, said after her account was disabled on Tuesday: "It is safe to assume creating awareness for Kashmir using social media or writing about the ground reality is under severe threat." Meanwhile, users struggled to restore their accounts on Wednesday as they uploaded new documents requested by the company.

“I use my Facebook account not as a personal page to tell people about my last haircut or last holiday. I use it for work, I share media stories about whatever bothers me in the universe,” said Sanjay Kak, a documentary film maker whose account was disabled Tuesday. “Nothing I shared can be considered inflammatory or incendiary.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-july-27-2016-rama-lakshmi-facebook-is-censoring-some-posts-on-indian-kashmir