Social Media in Vogue

Social media is a web-medium designed to allow people to share content quickly, efficiently and in real-time. Most people today define social media as apps on their smartphone or tablet, but, the truth is this communication tool started with computers. In today’s world, smartphone is a growth enabler, positively influencing various spheres of life of an individual and therefore impacting the evolving knowledge economy.

Recent Developments

Recent Scams Related to Social Media

March 2018

Facebook Trouble Begins

Several reports were unearthed on how Facebook data of 87 million users was illegally harvested by a British firm called Cambridge Analytica.

April 2018

Facebook Data of all Users Scraped

Facebook revealed that the data of nearly all of its 2 billion users was likely scraped, possibly by malicious actors.

May 2018

Twitter Password Fiasco

Twitter had to advise all of its 330 million user base to change their passwords after it managed to expose everyone’s password in a glaring security lapse.

June 2018

Facebook’s Deals with Smartphone Companies

Several investigations revealed that Facebook had special “data sharing partnerships” with over 60 smartphone makers, which were in place for years.

July 2018

Facebook Quiz App

Facebook managed to leak the data of 120 million users thanks to a quiz service site Nametests.com.

August 2018

Facebook-owned Onavo App Removed

Facebook’s Onavo Protect App, a VPN-based data collection app, was pulled from the Apple App Store. The app was violating data collection guidelines.

September 2018

Facebook Resets 90 Million Accounts

Facebook saw a massive security breach and had to reset 90 million accounts.

October 2018

Google Plus Woes

Google Plus had a major security flaw, which had been spotted back in March 2018, and apparently compromised 500,000 accounts.

November 2018

Facebook Strikes Again

Came the news that Facebook data of 120 million users was stolen, this included private chats.

December 2018

Trio Strikes

  • Google announced that it would shut down the Google Plus network in April 2019, instead of August 2019. This was because Google discovered a second bug, which breached the data of 52.5 million users.
  • Popular question and answer website Quora also faced a data breach and asked everyone to reset their passwords. It claimed that over 100 million users were negatively impacted by this breach.
  • Facebook still continued the run of ensuring a crisis in this month.

Recent Developments in Legal Aspect of Social Media

Striking down Section 66A IT Act

March 2015

SC struck down Section 66A of the IT Act which contained provisions for the arrest of those who posted offensive content on the Internet.

Revisting Section 69 of IT Act

December 2018

Under this Section government authorized 10 agencies to monitor on exchange of information between individuals and banned/ militant groups.

Amending the IT Act

December 2018

MeiTY prepared the draft Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines Rules) 2018 to replace the rules notified in 2011.

Social Media in Vogue

Social Networking Sites

Social Networking is an online service that enables its users to create virtual networks with like-minded people akin to social networks in real life. It often offers the facilities such as chat, instant messaging, photo sharing, updates, etc. Currently, social networking sites are the most prominent version of social media. Facebook is one of the most well-known social networking site.

Blogs

Blogs are descriptive content pages created and maintained by individual users and may contain text, photos and links to other web sites. The main interactive feature of Blogs is the ability of readers to leave comments and the comment trail can be followed.

Micro Blogs

Micro Blogs are similar to Blogs with a typical restriction of 140 characters or less, which allows users to write and share content. Twitter is the most well-known microblogging site.

Vlogs and Video Sharing Sites

Video Blogs or Vlogs are blogging sites that mainly use video as the main form of content supported by text. YouTube is the largest video sharing site.

Wikipedia/ Online Encyclopaedia

A Wikipedia/ Online Encyclopaedia is a collaborative website that allows multiple users to create and update pages on particular or interlinked subjects. While single page is referred to as “wiki page” the entire related content on that topic is called a “Wiki”. Wikipedia is the pioneering site of this type of platform.

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