Tech-News
How to Avoid Mobile Data Leakage and Data Breach
Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have become an integral part of our daily lives. We use them for communication, entertainment, online shopping, and many other purposes. However, the convenience offered by these devices also brings certain risks, particularly concerning the security of our data. Mobile data leakage and data breaches have become prevalent, making it crucial for individuals and organizations to take necessary precautions to safeguard their sensitive information
What are Mobile Data Leakage and Data Breaches?
Mobile data leakage refers to the unauthorized disclosure or exposure of data stored on a mobile device. It can occur due to various reasons, including software vulnerabilities, malicious apps, weak passwords, or even physical theft of the device. On the other hand, data breaches involve unauthorized access or exposure of data stored in a system, network, or database. Mobile data breaches can result from cyberattacks, hacking attempts, or security vulnerabilities in mobile applications.
Common Causes of Mobile Data Leakage
Insecure Mobile Applications
One of the leading causes of mobile data leakage is the use of insecure mobile applications. Some developers may not prioritize security measures, leading to vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit. These vulnerabilities may allow unauthorized access to sensitive data stored within the application.
Weak Device Security
A lack of robust device security measures can make mobile devices vulnerable to data leakage. Weak passwords, lack of biometric authentication, and outdated security patches can allow attackers to gain unauthorized access to the device and its data.
Read more: Understanding VPN: The Comprehensive Guide
Phishing Attacks
Phishing attacks targeting mobile devices have become increasingly common. Attackers may use deceptive techniques, such as fraudulent emails or text messages, to trick users into providing sensitive information or downloading malicious apps. Falling victim to a phishing attack can result in data leakage.
Malware and Spyware
Mobile devices are also susceptible to malware and spyware infections. These malicious programs can be installed through untrusted apps or compromised websites, allowing attackers to monitor and collect sensitive data without the user's knowledge.
Unsecured Wi-Fi Networks
Connecting to unsecured Wi-Fi networks exposes mobile devices to potential data leakage. Attackers can intercept data transmitted over these networks, compromising the confidentiality of the user's information. It is essential to avoid connecting to untrusted or public Wi-Fi networks whenever possible.
Lost or Stolen Devices
The loss or theft of a mobile device can lead to significant data leakage. If the device is not adequately protected with passwords or encryption, anyone who gains access to it can potentially access the sensitive information stored on the device.
Read more: How to Protect Your YouTube Channel from Getting Hacked
Lack of Data Encryption
Data encryption plays a vital role in protecting sensitive information. Without proper encryption, unauthorized individuals can easily access and exploit data stored on mobile devices.
Insider Threats
Insider threats refer to individuals within an organization who have authorized access to sensitive data but misuse it for personal gain or with malicious intent. Insider threats can lead to intentional or unintentional data leakage.
Skoot-Walton to work on production of high-tech e-bikes
Skoot, a startup in the Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy (iDEA) project portfolio, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Walton Digi-Tech Industries to collaborate on the manufacturing of e-bikes in Bangladesh.
The signing ceremony took place at Walton Digi-Tech Industries Ltd’s corporate head office in Bashundhara on Thursday, according to a press release.
Also read: Walton Mobile opens smart point at Shyamoli
Skoot directors Sihab Khan and Parth Roy, and Walton Digi-Tech Industries Ltd Head of Marketing Md Taufiq Imam, Deputy Assistant Director of Sales Fuad Rahman and Deputy Director – Ebike Kaikobad Siddiquie were present at the ceremony, among others.
The MoU outlined the commitment of Skoot and Walton to produce high-quality and advanced e-bikes that enhance the riding experience for customers. This partnership aims to revolutionize the e-bike industry in Bangladesh by introducing eco-friendly and technologically advanced products, said the release.
Also read: Walton to hold first-ever mega 'International Advanced Components and Technology Expo' in August
In addition to financial grants, the iDEA project provides startups with essential resources such as mentoring, training, networking opportunities, and access to co-working spaces.
The collaboration between Skoot and Walton holds great potential for the e-bike industry in Bangladesh. By combining their expertise and resources, both companies aspire to create a better future for e-bike enthusiasts, offering them innovative and sustainable transportation options, added the release.
Also read: Walton Plaza inaugurated in two new districts
Reluctant Twitter users, influencers and others are flocking to Meta's new Threads app
Celebrities, lawmakers, brands and everyday social media users are flocking to Meta's freshly minted app Threads to connect with their followers, including many Twitter refugees tired of the drama surrounding Elon Musk’s raucous oversight of that platform.
But the real question is: Will they stay?
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a Threads post Monday that in the five days since its launch, 100 million people have signed up for Threads, which was rolled out as a companion app to Instagram.
Ann Coleman is among them. The 50-year-old, who lives in Baltimore, said she joined Threads after hearing about the platform from a comedian she follows on social media. She said she loves Twitter and has been using it for more than 10 years. She even met her husband on there.
READ: 'Clone' or competitor? Users and lawyers compare Twitter and Threads
But Coleman, who is politically progressive, has been looking to switch to a new platform because of Musk’s political views and changes he’s made to Twitter, like upending its verification system. She previously joined the decentralized social network Mastodon, but found it a bit confusing to use.
She said she likes Threads but wishes she could easily follow all her Twitter friends there. Threads gives Instagram users the option to automatically follow the same accounts they do on the photo-sharing app, which makes it easier for active Instagram users to replicate a similar type of engagement on Threads. But others starting from the ground up will have to do more work.
“If I’m going to leave Twitter entirely, I’m going to have to try and find some of these people” from Twitter, Coleman said.
While she said she has her own concerns about Meta — specifically pointing to the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, among other things — "it’s not with the depth of concern that I do with Musk.”
Michael Evancoe, 28, said he hasn't used Twitter much since his personal page was suspended years ago for what the platform attributed to violations of its rules on spam. Evancoe, who now works in production, said he agrees with some of the changes Musk has been making on Twitter and he created a new account earlier this year. But he wasn’t able to gain many followers or interactions.
READ: Twitter threatens legal action against Meta over Threads: Report
He joined Threads last week, and says he’s been able to interact more with other users. But he hopes that Meta does not moderate the platform overly aggressively.
“I think that would be a deterrent to both interest and engagement as well,” Evancoe said.
For its part, Meta has said it will moderate using Instagram’s content guidelines. In the past few days, the company has been positioning the much-hyped platform as a new digital town square that’s a less toxic version of Twitter, with some executives indicating their aim isn’t to replace Twitter but to offer something more palatable to a vast array of users.
“The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations,” Mosseri said Friday.
In the first two full days that Threads was broadly available — Thursday and Friday of last week — traffic on Twitter was down 5% compared with the same period a week ago, and down 11% compared with the same period a year ago, according to the web analytics company SimilarWeb. But it also said Twitter traffic has experienced an overall decline even in the absence of Threads.
To Jennifer Billinson, a professor of media studies at Nazareth University in New York, the first days of Threads have highlighted a potential culture clash -- specifically one between Twitter refugees and what is likely a much larger number of people just clicking over from Instagram.
READ: What is Threads? All your questions about Meta's new Twitter rival, answered
The idea that Threads will just become a Twitter clone, she says, is running headlong into the reality that the Twitterites are going to be “vastly outnumbered” on the new platform by those from Instagram, which has more than 2 billion monthly users. By comparison, Twitter has more than 237 million daily users, according to the most recent figures from the company's earnings report last year.
Among other things, those used to the more abrasive culture of Twitter could easily annoy more laid-back Instagram users. Of course, such tensions might be alleviated by potential platform changes that give people more control over what they’ll see in their Threads feed. At the moment, users are largely at the mercy of the Threads algorithm.
Despite the influx of users, Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at the creative agency Mekanism, stressed it's too early to know how successful Threads will be. He further questions whether the rapid growth of Threads is even a good thing, pointing out some other successful platforms began with a focused approach and expanded more gradually.
There’s also the question of how influencers will use Threads and whether they can replicate the same following as on other platforms. Most notably, Jimmy Donaldson — a popular YouTube video maker who goes by MrBeast — has already amassed more than 4 million followers on Threads.
By integrating the new app to Instagram, Meta made it very easy for content creators to convert their Instagram followers to Threads followers. But that can also create a situation where popular content creators gain more influence while crowding out emerging talents from cultivating their own culture on a new platform, Gahan said.
READ: Meta unveils Threads, targeting users looking for an alternative to Twitter
Creators might also face other challenges.
“Somebody who is purely video and photo-based may have trouble translating to a text-focused platform,” Gahan said. “That said, a lot of them I see reposting the same content. Time will tell whether or not that's a successful strategy.”
Asante Madrigal, a content creator who makes his living off of social media posts about pop culture, said he’s been trying out the Threads app and reposting some videos he’s made recently on actress Keke Palmer, among other things.
But at least for now, the 22-year-old said he doesn’t plan to make Threads a priority because he can’t monetize his content on there. Instead, he said he’s going to focus on apps where he’s actually earning money, like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, where he more than 2 million followers combined.
Madrigal said the Threads algorithm is a black box, and pointed to some things that are still lacking in the app, including hashtags and direct messaging between users. And figuring out what to do on there will take more work.
“I have a lot of friends that do pop culture as well,” Madrigal said. “And they were just like, ‘Oh, my God, not another app’.”
TechCrunch says Bangladesh govt website has leaked citizens’ personal data
TechCrunch, an American online news platform focusing on high tech and startups, says that a Bangladeshi government website has leaked the personal information of citizens.
The data leak includes full names, phone numbers, email addresses, and national ID numbers of millions of Bangladeshi citizens, TechCrunch quoted a researcher who discovered the leak.
Read: Personal data hack of 100s of German politicians, celebs
The leak was “accidentally discovered” by Viktor Markopoulos who works for Bitcrack Cyber Security. He then contacted the Bangladeshi e-Government Computer Incident Response Team.
Markopoulos said, finding the data “was too easy.”
“It just appeared as a Google result and I wasn’t even intending on finding it. I was Googling an SQL error and it just popped up as the second result,” he told TechCrunch, referring to SQL, a language designed for managing data in a database.
Read: 8 arrested in Hong Kong for posting personal data on police
TechCrunch said it was able to verify that the leaked data was “legitimate” through using a portion to query a public search tool on the affected website. The government website apparently returned other data contained in the leaked database, such as the name of the person who applied to register, as well as — in some cases — names of their parents.
TechCrunch, in the report published on July 7, 2023, said it attempted the process with 10 different sets of data, and all returned correct data.
The US news platform, however, did not name the government website as data is still available online.
It also said it has not heard back from any of the Bangladeshi government organisations that were emailed, asking for remarks and alerting of the data leak.
Read more: Facebook: Hackers accessed personal data from 29M accounts
TikTok and 5 content creators ask federal judge to block Montana from banning app
TikTok Inc. and a group of five content creators who are suing the state of Montana over its first-in-the-nation law to ban the video sharing app are now asking a federal judge to block implementation of the law while the case moves through the courts and before it takes effect in January.
The separate requests for preliminary injunctions were filed Wednesday in federal court in Missoula. The cases challenging the law were filed in May and have since been consolidated by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen had the bill drafted over concerns — shared by the FBI and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken — that the app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, could be used to allow the Chinese government to access information on U.S. citizens or push pro-Beijing misinformation that could influence the public. TikTok has said none of this has ever happened.
Also read: What is Threads? All your questions about Meta's new Twitter rival, answered
The motions for injunctions make the same arguments as the cases against the state — that the ban is an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights and that the state has no authority to regulate foreign affairs.
Attorneys on both sides have agreed to a schedule that calls for the state to respond to the motions by mid-August and for the plaintiffs to file their replies by mid-September, court records state.
The company and the Montana content creators argue a preliminary injunction should be granted because the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their challenges to the law and if the ban took effect it would cause irreparable harm by depriving them of the ability to express themselves and communicate with others.
TikTok has safeguards to moderate content and protect minors, and would not share information with China, the company has argued. But critics have pointed to China’s 2017 national intelligence law that compels companies to cooperate with the country’s governments for state intelligence work.
Also read: What is Threads? All your questions about Meta's new Twitter rival, answered
“TikTok users don’t use the app – the app uses them and turns them into a spying apparatus for the Chinese Communist Party," Emily Flower, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, said in a statement that also noted recent reporting that TikTok is paying for the lawsuit filed by the content creators. "TikTok’s ‘support’ is bought and paid for – Montanans recognize the threat that the app poses to their privacy and national security.”
More than half the U.S. states, including Montana, and the federal government have banned TikTok from government-owned devices.
Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the bill into law in May, saying Montana was taking "the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Also read: TikTok now 2nd biggest social media platform in South Africa: Study
As of June 1, Gianforte also prohibited the use of any social media apps tied to foreign adversaries on state equipment and for state businesses. Among the apps he listed are WeChat, whose parent company is headquartered in China; and Telegram Messenger, which was founded in Russia.
Meta unveils Threads, targeting users looking for an alternative to Twitter
Meta unveiled an app to rival Twitter on Wednesday, appearing to target users looking for an alternative to the social media platform owned — and frequently changed — by Elon Musk.
Called Threads, the new offering is billed as a text-based version of Meta's photo-sharing app Instagram that the company says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
Also read:Meta is set to take on Twitter with a rival app called Threads
The app went live just after midnight Wednesday in the U.K. in Apple and Google Android app stores in more than 100 countries including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Early celebrity users include chef Gordon Ramsay, the pop star Shakira and Mark Hoyle, better known as the YouTuber LadBaby.
Users get a Twitter-like microblogging experience, according to screenshots provided to media, suggesting that Meta Platforms has been gearing up to directly challenge the platform after Musk's tumultuous ownership has resulted in a series of unpopular changes that have turned off users and advertisers.
There are buttons to like, repost, reply to or quote a “thread,” and counters showing the number of likes and replies that a post has received.
Also read: Musk's Twitter disbands its Trust and Safety advisory group
“Our vision is that Threads will be a new app more focused on text and dialogue, modeled after what Instagram has done for photo and video,” the company said.
Posts are limited to 500 characters, which is more than Twitter's 280-character threshold, and can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.
Instagram users will be able to log in with their existing usernames and follow the same accounts on the new app. New users will have to set up an Instagram account.
Meta emphasized measures to keep users safe, including enforcing Instagram's community guidelines and providing tools to control who can mention or reply to users.
Meta's new offering, however, has raised data privacy concerns.
Also read: Twitter relaunching subscriber service after debacle
Threads could collect a wide range of personal information, including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases and “sensitive info,” according to its data privacy disclosure on the App Store.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pointed it out in a snarky tweet saying, “All your Threads are belong to us” that included a screenshot of the disclosure. Musk replied “yeah.”
One place Threads won't be rolled out is in the European Union, which has strict data privacy rules.
Meta has informed Ireland's Data Privacy Commission that it has no plans yet to launch Threads in the 27-nation bloc, commission spokesman Graham Doyle said. The Irish watchdog is Meta's main privacy regulator for the EU because the company's regional headquarters is based in Dublin.
While Meta had teased Threads with a listing on Apple’s U.K. App Store earlier this week, it could not be found in the French, German or Dutch versions. The company is working on rolling the app out to more countries but cites regulatory uncertainty for its decision to hold off on a European launch.
Analysts said its success is far from guaranteed, citing Meta's track record of starting standalone apps that were later shut down.
Also in question is whether it's the right move for Meta, which has announced tens of thousands of layoffs over the past year amid a tech industry slowdown.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg also has been focusing on the metaverse, investing tens of billions of dollars in the virtual reality concept.
Meta risks “spreading itself too thin,” said Mike Proulx, a research director at Forrester, a global market research company. “Meta is banking on a moment in time amidst peak Twitter frustration. However, this window of opportunity is already flooded with Twitter alternatives including Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill, Post.News and Hive, which are all competing for Twitter’s market share."
Even so, Threads could be a fresh headache for Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion.
He's made a series of changes that have triggered backlash, the latest being daily limits on the number of tweets people can view to try to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data. He also is now requiring paid verification for users to access the online dashboard TweetDeck.
Musk’s rivalry with Zuckerberg could end up spilling over into real life. In an online exchange the two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a cage match face-off, though it’s unclear if they will actually make it to the ring.
Meta is set to take on Twitter with a rival app called Threads
Meta is poised to unveil a new app that appears to mimic Twitter in a direct challenge to the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
A listing for the app, called Threads, appeared on Apple's App Store, indicating it would debut as early as Thursday. It is billed as a “text-based conversation app" that is linked to Instagram, according to the listing, which teased a Twitter-like microblogging experience.
“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what'll be trending tomorrow,” it said.
Instagram users will be able to keep their user names and follow the same accounts on the new app, according to screenshots displayed on the App Store listing.
Meta declined to comment on the app, and Twitter sends a crude automated reply to most media queries.
Threads could be the latest headache for Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion and has been making changes to the platform that have unnerved advertisers and turned off users.
In the latest such tweak, Twitter said Monday that it will require users to be verified before they can use the online dashboard TweetDeck. The new policy takes effect in 30 days and appears to be aimed at raising extra revenue because users need to pay have their accounts verified under Musk's changes.
TweetDeck is popular with companies and news organizations, allowing users to manage multiple Twitter accounts.
Twitter is already facing backlash after Musk announced that Twitter has limited the number of tweets users can view each day — restrictions that the billionaire Tesla CEO described as an attempt to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data.
Musk's rivalry with Meta Platforms also could end up spilling over into real life. In an online exchange between Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a cage match face-off, though it's unclear if they will actually make it to the ring.
Elon Musk imposes daily limits on reading posts on Twitter
Twitter owner Elon Musk has limited the amount of tweets that most users can view each day — restrictions he described as an attempt to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the social media platform.
The site is now requiring people to log on to view tweets and profiles — a change in its longtime practice to allow everyone to peruse the chatter on what Musk has frequently touted as the world’s digital town square since buying it for $44 billion last year.
The restrictions could result in users being locked out of Twitter for the day after scrolling through several hundred tweets. Thousands of users complained Saturday of not being able to access the site.
Twitter users run into service issues after Elon Musk imposes daily limits on reading tweets
In a Friday tweet, Musk described the new restrictions as a temporary measure that was taken because “we were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!”
Musk has pushed back on what he calls misuse of Twitter data to train popular artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT. They scour reams of information online to generate human-like text, photos, video and other content.
Musk elaborated on the limits Saturday, saying unverified accounts will temporarily be restricted to reading 600 posts per day, while verified accounts will be able to scroll through up to 6,000.
After facing backlash, he tweeted that the thresholds would be raised to 800 posts for unverified accounts and 8,000 for verified accounts before later settling on 1,000 and 10,000 tweets, respectively.
Tech billionaires' cage match? Musk throws down the gauntlet and Zuckerberg accepts challenge
The crackdown began to have ripple effects, causing more than 7,500 people at one point Saturday to report problems using the social media service, based on complaints registered on Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages.
Although that's a relatively small number of Twitter's more than 200 million worldwide users, the trouble was widespread enough to cause the #TwitterDown hashtag to trend in some parts of the world.
The higher threshold allowed on verified accounts is part of an $8-per-month subscription service that Musk rolled out earlier this year in an effort to boost Twitter revenue. It has fallen sharply since the billionaire Tesla CEO took over the company and laid off roughly three-fourths of the workforce to cut costs and stave off bankruptcy.
Advertisers have since curbed their spending on Twitter, partly because of changes that have allowed more sometimes-hateful and prickly content that offends a wider part of the service's audience.
EU official says Twitter abandons bloc's voluntary pact against disinformation
Musk recently hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter's CEO to try to win back advertisers.
An Associated Press inquiry about Saturday's access problems triggered a crude automated reply that Twitter sends to most media queries without addressing the question.
Facebook’s importance as source of news sees significant decline in 2023: Reuters Institute Report
A new report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism suggests that Facebook is becoming significantly less important as a source of news.
The report titled “Digital News Report -2023” found that only 28% of people surveyed accessed news through Facebook in 2023, compared to 42% in 2016.
The figures were based on interviews with some 94,000 people across 46 countries, conducted for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, part of Britain's University of Oxford.
“Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news,” Lead author Nic Newman said in a press release.
Also read: CNN head Chris Licht is out at the global news network after a brief, tumultuous tenure
Newman highlighted that Facebook now faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok.
“The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America,” he said.
Meanwhile, the report found that influencers and celebrities are increasingly taking over from journalists as the main source of news for young people across almost all social media platforms except for Twitter and Facebook.
A new report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism suggests that Facebook is becoming significantly less important as a source of news.
Also read: Lack of transparency exposes Bangladeshi news sites to disinformation risks: new report
The report titled “Digital News Report -2023” found that only 28% of people surveyed accessed news through Facebook in 2023, compared to 42% in 2016.
The figures were based on interviews with some 94,000 people across 46 countries, conducted for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, part of Britain's University of Oxford.
“Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news,” Lead author Nic Newman said in a press release.
Newman highlighted that Facebook now faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok.
Also read: Trial begins in case against Fox News for false election claims
“The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America,” he said.
Meanwhile, the report found that influencers and celebrities are increasingly taking over from journalists as the main source of news for young people across almost all social media platforms except for Twitter and Facebook.
According to the report, 55 percent of TikTok and Snapchat users and 52 percent of Instagram users get their news from "personalities" — compared to 33 percent of Tiktok, 36 percent of Snapchat and 42 percent of Instagram users who get it from mainstream media and journalists on those platforms, which are most popular among the young.
“We find that, while mainstream journalists often lead conversations around news in Twitter and Facebook, they struggle to get attention in newer networks like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, where personalities, influencers, and ordinary people are often more prominent, even when it comes to conversations around news,” Newman said.
Also read: Tucker Carlson leaves Fox News
Trust and interest in news
Among other indicators, the news industry has seen a sharp decline in terms of trust and interest.
According to the report, trust in the news has fallen across markets by further 2-percentage points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made at the height of the pandemic.
“On average, 40% of our sample say they trust most news most of the time,” the lead author of the report said.
Meanwhile, around 36% of the interviewees said they actively avoided the news sometimes or often, seven points above the figure in 2017 but two points lower than last year.
Read more: Journalism award to recognize outstanding reporting on Bangladesh-China trade, investment ties
In interviews, many said that news stories are too repetitive or too “emotionally draining”.
According to the report, 55 percent of TikTok and Snapchat users and 52 percent of Instagram users get their news from "personalities" — compared to 33 percent of Tiktok, 36 percent of Snapchat and 42 percent of Instagram users who get it from mainstream media and journalists on those platforms, which are most popular among the young.
“We find that, while mainstream journalists often lead conversations around news in Twitter and Facebook, they struggle to get attention in newer networks like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, where personalities, influencers, and ordinary people are often more prominent, even when it comes to conversations around news,” Newman said.
Trust and interest in news
Among other indicators, the news industry has seen a sharp decline in terms of trust and interest.
Read more: Women’s participation in journalism still very low: Dialogue
According to the report, trust in the news has fallen across markets by further 2-percentage points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made at the height of the pandemic.
“On average, 40% of our sample say they trust most news most of the time,” the lead author of the report said.
Meanwhile, around 36% of the interviewees said they actively avoided the news sometimes or often, seven points above the figure in 2017 but two points lower than last year.
In interviews, many said that news stories are too repetitive or too “emotionally draining”.
Read more: Russian House lauds growing presence of online journalism in Bangladesh
UK to host global AI Summit to assess 'most significant risks'
The United Kingdom will hold a global artificial intelligence (AI) summit this autumn to assess the technology's "most significant risks."
A number of alarming warnings have been issued concerning the possibly existential threat that AI poses to humans, reports BBC.
Regulators throughout the world are trying to create new laws to mitigate that danger.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stated that he wants the United Kingdom to lead efforts to guarantee that the advantages of artificial intelligence are "harnessed for the good of humanity."
Also read: Regulation must to control AI for surveillance, disinformation: rights experts
"AI has an incredible potential to transform our lives for the better, but we need to make sure it is developed and used in a way that is safe and secure," he said.
The summit's attendees are currently unknown, but the UK government stated that it will "bring together key countries, leading tech companies, and researchers to agree on safety measures to evaluate and monitor the most significant risks from AI."
Speaking to reporters in Washington, DC, where Sunak is meeting with President Biden on the matter, the prime minister stated that the UK was the "natural place" to lead the discourse on AI.
Downing Street pointed to the prime minister's recent talks with the CEOs of key AI businesses as proof of this. It also mentioned the 50,000 individuals engaged in the sector, which is worth £3.7 billion to the UK.
Also read: UNESCO reveals new AI roadmap for classrooms
'Too ambitious'
Some have questioned the UK's ability to lead in this sector.
According to Yasmin Afina, a research fellow at Chatham House's Digital Society Initiative, the UK "could realistically be too ambitious."
She stated that the EU and US had "stark differences in governance and regulatory approaches" that the UK would struggle to reconcile, as well as a number of existing global efforts, such as the UN's Global Digital Compact, that had "stronger foundational bases already."
Afina went on to say that the UK was home to none of the world's most innovative AI startups.
Also read: How to Use AI Tools to Get Your Dream Job
"Instead of trying to play a role that would be too ambitious for the UK and risks alienating it, the UK should perhaps focus on promoting responsible behaviour in the research, development and deployment of these technologies," she told the BBC.
Deep unease
Since the chatbot ChatGPT first came on the scene in November, astounding people with its ability to answer complicated queries in a human-sounding manner, interest in AI has skyrocketed.
It can do so because of the enormous processing capacity of AI systems, which has sparked widespread concern, the report said.
Geoffrey Hinton and Prof Yoshua Bengio, two of the three so-called godfathers of AI, have been among those to issue concerns about how the technology they helped design has a high potential for disaster.
Read more: China warns of artificial intelligence risks, calls for beefed-up national security measures
These concerns have fueled calls for effective AI legislation, while many uncertainties remain about what that would include and how it would be implemented.
Regulatory race
The European Union is drafting an Artificial Intelligence Act, but even in the best-case scenario, it will take two and a half years to become law.
Last month, EU technology head Margrethe Vestager said it would be "way too late" and that the EU was working on a voluntary code for the industry with the US, which they anticipated would be completed within weeks.
China has also taken the lead in developing AI rules, including ideas requiring corporations to notify users anytime an AI algorithm is employed, the report added.
Read more: ChatGPT's chief to testify before US Congress as concerns grow about artificial intelligence's risks
The UK government published their opinions in a White Paper in March, which was criticized for having "significant gaps."
However, Marc Warner, a member of the government's AI Council, has suggested a stricter approach, telling the BBC that some of the most powerful kinds of AI may eventually have to be outlawed.
According to Matt O'Shaughnessy, visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there was nothing the UK could do about the fact that others were leading the charge on AI legislation - but it could still play an essential role.
"The EU and China are both large markets that have proposed consequential regulatory schemes for AI - without either of those factors, the UK will struggle to be as influential," he said.
Read more: AI & Future of Jobs: Will Artificial Intelligence or Robots Take Your Job?
But he added the UK was an "academic and commercial hub", with institutions that were "well-known for their work on responsible AI".
"Those all make it a serious player in the global discussion about AI," he told the BBC.