Morning Tidings

Tag: documents

  • Uber Files: Leaked Documents Reveal How The Cab Aggregator Broke Laws, Lobbied With Governments To Expand Globally

    San Francisco, July 11: A sensational leaked trove of internal Uber documents has revealed the dark side of the ride-hailing platform, that allegedly broke laws and secretly lobbied governments as it planned to expand globally.

    According to The Guardian that accessed ‘Uber Files’ with over 1,24,000 documents from 2013 and 2017, the data “shows how Uber tried to shore up support by discreetly courting prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media barons”.

    In addition to memos, presentations, notebooks, and other telling documents, the Uber leak includes “emails, iMessages and WhatsApp exchanges between the Silicon Valley giant’s most senior executives”. The leaked data is from a period when Uber was run by its controversial co-founder Travis Kalanick, and includes more than 83,000 emails, iMessages and WhatsApp messages, “including often frank and unvarnished communications between Kalanick and his top team of executives”. Ola, Uber Get Warning from Govt of Strict Action For Unfair Trade Practices.

    Leaked data suggests that Uber executives were at the same time under no illusions about the company’s law-breaking, with one executive joking they had become “pirates” and another conceding: “We’re just fucking illegal,” the report mentioned late on Sunday. In a statement, Uber said that there has been no shortage of reporting on Uber’s mistakes prior to 2017. “Five years ago, those mistakes culminated in one of the most infamous reckonings in the history of corporate America. That reckoning led to an enormous amount of public scrutiny, a number of high-profile lawsuits, multiple government investigations, and the termination of several senior executives,” the company said.

    It’s also exactly why Uber hired a new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, who was tasked with transforming every aspect of how Uber operates. “He was guided from the start by the recommendations of Eric Holder, a former US Attorney General hired by the company to investigate and overhaul our business practices,” said Uber. Khosrowshahi apparently rewrote the company’s values, revamped the leadership team, made safety a top company priority, implemented best-in-class corporate governance, hired an independent board chair, and installed the rigorous controls and compliance necessary to operate as a public company.

    “When we say Uber is a different company today, we mean it literally: 90 per cent of current Uber employees joined after Dara became CEO,” the company added. According to the report, Uber executives expressed “barely disguised disdain for other elected officials who were less receptive to the company’s business model”.

    When the then US vice-president, Joe Biden was late to a meeting with the company at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Kalanick texted a colleague: “I’ve had my people let him know that every minute late he is, is one less minute he will have with me.” The Guardian led a global investigation into the leaked Uber files, sharing the data with media organisations around the world via the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). “More than 180 journalists at 40 media outlets, including Le Monde, Washington Post and the BBC will in the coming days publish a series of investigative reports about the tech giant,” said the report.

    Uber said that “We have not and will not make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with our present values”. “Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come,” it added.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Jul 11, 2022 01:13 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • WhatsApp To Roll Out ETA While Sharing Documents: Report

    San Francisco: Meta-owned WhatsApp is likely now releasing a feature that lets us understand when a document is fully downloaded on our devices or uploaded to their servers. After testing the ability to share media files up to 2GB in size to some users in Argentina – and which is still limited to those people, the messaging platform is rolling out the new feature to some beta testers, reports WABetaInfo. WhatsApp Bans Over 1.4 Million Bad Accounts in India in February 2022.

    The latest versions of WhatsApp beta for Android, iOS, Web and Desktop bring the ability to view the estimated time of arrival when sharing documents, so when the document will be completely downloaded on your phone or Desktop.

    The same information is also shown when uploading a document. The feature has been already released on WhatsApp Desktop last month, and this information has been rolled out to some beta testers on Android and iOS this week.

    The report mentioned that if users do not see the feature, it means it has not been rolled out to their WhatsApp account. A recent report said that WhatsApp is likely turning off the ‘media visibility’ option for disappearing chats. The new move is to ensure a better privacy experience when using disappearing messages and to help keep media more private in disappearing chat threads.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Apr 11, 2022 09:11 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Facebook Profits Rise Amid Revelations From Leaked Documents

    Menlo Park, October 26: Amid fallout from the Facebook Papers documents supporting claims that the social network has valued financial success over user safety, Facebook on Monday reported higher profit for the latest quarter.

    The company’s latest show of financial strength followed an avalanche of reports on the Facebook Papers — a vast trove of redacted internal documents obtained by a consortium of news organisations, including The Associated Press — as well as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s Monday testimony to British lawmakers. Also Read | Elon Musk-Run Electric Car Company Tesla Hits $1 Trillion Market Cap for First Time.

    Facebook said its net income grew 17 per cent in the July-September period to USD 9.19 billion, buoyed by strong advertising revenue. That’s up from USD 7.85 billion a year earlier. Revenue grew 35 per cent to USD 29.01 billion. The results exceeded analyst expectations for Facebook’s results. Also Read | Pakistan Wants to Take Cricket Forward with India, Says PM Imran Khan After T20 World Cup Victory.

    The company’s shares rose 2.5 per cent in after-hours trading after closing up 1 per cent for the day. “For now, the revenue picture for Facebook looks as good as can be expected,” said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson. But she predicted more revelations and described the findings so far as “unsettling and stomach-churning.”

    CEO Mark Zuckerberg made only a brief mention of what he called the “recent debate around our company.” Largely repeating statements he made after Haugen’s October 5 testimony before a US Senate subcommittee, he insisted that he welcomes “good faith criticism” but considers the current storm a “coordinated effort” by news organisations to criticise the company based on leaked documents.

    Haugen, meanwhile, told a British parliamentary committee Monday that the social media giant stokes online hate and extremism, fails to protect children from harmful content and lacks any incentive to fix the problems, providing momentum for efforts by European governments working on stricter regulation of tech companies.

    While her testimony echoed much of what she told the US Senate this month, her in-person appearance drew intense interest from a British parliamentary committee that is much further along in drawing up legislation to rein in the power of social media companies.

    Haugen told the committee of United Kingdom lawmakers that Facebook Groups amplifies online hate, saying algorithms that prioritize engagement take people with mainstream interests and push them to the extremes.

    The former Facebook data scientist said the company could add moderators to prevent groups over a certain size from being used to spread extremist views. “Unquestionably, it’s making hate worse,” she said.

    Haugen said she was “shocked to hear recently that Facebook wants to double down on the metaverse and that they’re gonna hire 10,000 engineers in Europe to work on the metaverse,” Haugen said, referring to the company’s plans for an immersive online world it believes will be the next big internet trend.

    “I was like, Wow, do you know what we could have done with safety if we had 10,000 more engineers?’” she said. Facebook says it wants regulation for tech companies and was glad the UK was leading the way.

    “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,” Facebook said Monday.

    It pointed to investing USD 13 billion (9.4 billion pounds) on safety and security since 2016 and asserted that it’s “almost halved” the amount of hate speech over the last three quarters.

    Haugen accused Facebook-owned Instagram of failing to keep children under 13 — the minimum user age — from opening accounts, saying it wasn’t doing enough to protect kids from content that, for example, makes them feel bad about their bodies.

    “Facebook’s own research describes it as an addict’s narrative. Kids say, This makes me unhappy, I feel like I don’t have the ability to control my usage of it, and I feel like if I left, I’d be ostracised,” she said.

    The company last month delayed plans for a kids’ version of Instagram, geared toward those under 13, to address concerns about the vulnerability of younger users.

    Haugen said she worried it may not be possible to make Instagram safe for a 14-year-old and that “I sincerely doubt it’s possible to make it safe for a 10-year-old.”

    She also said Facebook’s moderation systems are worse at catching content in languages other than English, and that’s a problem even in the UK because it’s a diverse country. “Those people are also living in the UK and being fed misinformation that is dangerous, that radicalizes people,” Haugen said.

    “And so language-based coverage is not just a good-for-individuals thing, it’s a national security issue.” Pressed on whether she believes Facebook is fundamentally evil, Haugen demurred and said, “I can’t see into the hearts of men.” Facebook is not evil, but negligent, she suggested.

    “It believes in a world of flatness, and it won’t accept the consequences of its actions,” pointing to its mammoth one-level, open-plan corporate office as an embodiment of the philosophy.

    It was Haugen’s second appearance before lawmakers after she testified in the US about the danger she says the company poses, from harming children to inciting political violence and fueling misinformation. Haugen cited internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in Facebook’s civic integrity unit.

    The documents, which Haugen provided to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, allege Facebook prioritised profits over safety and hid its own research from investors and the public.

    Some stories based on the files have already been published, exposing internal turmoil after Facebook was blindsided by the January 6 US Capitol riot and how it dithered over curbing divisive content in India. More is to come.

    Representatives from Facebook and other social media companies plan to speak to the British committee Thursday.

    UK lawmakers are drafting an online safety bill calling for setting up a regulator that would hold companies to account when it comes to removing harmful or illegal content from their platforms, such as terrorist material or child sex abuse images.

    Haugen is scheduled to meet next month with European Union officials in Brussels, where the bloc’s executive commission is updating its digital rulebook to better protect internet users by holding online companies more responsible for illegal or dangerous content.

    Under the UK rules, expected to take effect next year, Silicon Valley giants face an ultimate penalty of up to 10 per cent of their global revenue for any violations. The EU is proposing a similar penalty.

    (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, Morning Tidings Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)

  • Delay in issuing property related documents leads to e-faith

    Delay in issuing property related documents leads to e-faith

    Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palik (BBMP) is in the process of implementing the e-Aastha system in 97 wards in the core zone. However, the roll-out is having an impact on the issuance of sour extracts and khata certificates and collection of property tax arrears by 2007-2018.

    In a press release on Saturday, BBMP Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad urged the citizens to cooperate with the civic body and bear with the delay in issuing the requisite property documents. The reason for the delay is attributed to the transfer of the data set of properties from the old system to the E-Aastha system.

    In November last year, the BBMP implemented the e-Aastha pilot in three wards – Nilasandra, Shantinagar and Shantinagar – in the Shantinagar division. The project is being implemented with the aim of bringing more transparency, preventing illegal transactions and cutting out middlemen, besides giving a digital avatar to the property documents.

    BBMP officials said that the benefits of e-Aastha are manifold. Impersonation is avoided during registration because property documents will bear the owner’s photograph and illegally created property documents can be easily identified. For example, a Khata certificate issued under the new system would contain 46 different types of information. The documents will be digitally signed, barcoded and uploaded to DigiLocker.

    The release said that under the first phase, e-Aastha system is being implemented in all the 100 wards of the core zone. Under the second phase, it will be implemented in wards falling under the newly added areas – Mahadevapura, Yelahanka, Dasarahalli, Bommanahalli, Rajarajeswaranagar.

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