Electron Native

Facebook and a consortium of African and global telecom firms have agreed a deal to build one of the world’s largest underwater or subsea cable networks. This will boost Internet availability across three continents, it focus on Africa, Middle East and some parts of Europe they said in a joint statement on Thursday. 2Africa Source: Tech Africa The partners in this project are South Africa’s MTN GlobalConnect and Mauritius-based infrastructure provider WIOCC are partners in the project, along with China Mobile International, French telecoms major Orange SA, Saudi Arabia’s stc, Telecom Egypt, and Vodafone. The project, called 2Africa, aims to build 37,000 kilometres of subsea cable infrastructure which will directly connect countries around the African coast to Europe and the Middle East, according to its website. The network will have a design capacity of up to 150 terabytes per second (Tbps) on key parts of the system, according to the site . The 11 new cables rolled ...

Facebook says it will fight fake news on its platform, using Nigeria’s Yoruba and Igbo languages. According to Facebook’s Head of Public policy, Africa, Kojo Boakye, the two languages are in addition to the Hausa language, already supported by the platform. The social media platform is collaborating with Africa Check, an independent fact-checking organisation to add new local language support for several African languages as part of its Third-Party Fact-Checking programme. The programme intends to assess the accuracy of news on Facebook and reduce the spread of misinformation. Launched in 2018, the programme has also expanded its local language coverage across Kenya in   (Swahili), Senegal in (Wolof), and South Africa in (Afrikaans, Zulu, Setswana, Sotho, Northern Sotho and Southern Ndebele). Senegal and Cameroon are also included in the coverage

Facebook could become a gamers hub very soon. Considering, Facebook's decision to  s introduce Gaming Tab Feature, in the main navigation bar, for users to have fun. Facebook new Gaming Tab Feature. Facebook’s Vice President, Gaming, Vijaye Raji, said that the gaming feature was with the aim of making it easier for people to find and connect around their favourite games, streamers and groups, among others. Raji said that “The gaming tab is part of Facebook’s recent design update to provide personalised shortcuts for people to easily access the communities and content they interact with most. “The Facebook Gaming tab is a feed where users can quickly and easily find content that matters most to them, play games, watch gaming videos, as well as connect with gaming groups. ”New features in the Facebook Gaming tab expand on the gaming video destination we announced last year. ”As we learn from the community, we will test new experiences in the tab, add more type...

Facebook is still in the eye of the storm. As a result of dissemination of fake news on its platform. UK lawmakers are accusing the Tech giant of intentionally breaching data privacy and competition law with other big tech companies. Now the British lawmakers are seeking a new regulator to protect democracy and citizens’ rights. The recent damning report singled out Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for what has been described as a failure of leadership and personal responsibility, the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said tech firms had proved ineffective in stopping harmful content on their platforms. This included disinformation, attempts by foreign countries to influence elections, and risks to personal data. “We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people,” Committee Chairman, Damian Collins, said. Collins said the age of inadequate self-regulation must end, following an 18-month investigation that conc...

An academic from Cambridge University who harvested data on millions of Facebook users said he has been made a scapegoat by the social network and a UK-based political consultancy that have been accused of trying to sway public opinion for Donald Trump. Courtesy, Betanews Facebook has been rocked this week by a whistleblower who said that Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based political firm hired by Trump for the 2016 campaign, had improperly accessed information on 50 million Facebook users. The company has lost 60 billion dollars of its stock market value over the last two days over fears that its dealings with Cambridge Analytica might damage its reputation, deter advertisers and invite tougher regulation. Facebook has said the data was harvested by Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology academic, who created an app on the platform that was downloaded by 270,000 people. It says he then violated its policies by passing the data to Cambridge Analytica. “The events of the past week ...

Facebook Inc Chief Executive Officer, Mark Zuckerberg, sold nearly 500 million dollars in the company’s shares in February to fund his philanthropic investment vehicle, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), regulatory filings showed. The move is not a surprise, being part of Zuckerberg’s plan to expedite stock sales to fund the initiative he set up in December 2015 with his wife Priscilla Chan. Two security filings on Thursday showed that Zuckerberg sold 685,000 shares worth 125.4 million dollars in the last three days of February. This had taken his total sales in the month to about 2.7 million shares worth 482.2 million dollars. Zuckerberg said in September he would sell 35 million to 75 million shares of Facebook over the next 18 months. That would amount to up to 13 billion dollars, based on Facebook’s current share price. The Silicon Valley billionaire has said he will donate 99 per cent of his Facebook shares to CZI – worth about 45 billion dollars when the init...

The Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC) says it trained 1000 students on how to be safe online between 2017 and 2018. Its Communications Officer, Adeyemi Odutola, said that the training was in line with the celebration of the 2018 Safer Internet Day (SID). According to a statement issued by him, there is need to strengthen knowledge and skills of Nigerian youths on ways to engage and use the internet positively towards socio-economic growth of the country. “The `Safer Internet Day’, marked on Feb. 6, is a day set aside to raise awareness for the empowerment of more people to using internet technology towards community development. “The focus of Facebook for the Safer Internet Day is making the internet safer for the youth. “To this effect, to mark the day in Nigeria, Facebook partnered with W.TEC to host a day of workshops and fun activities for secondary school students. Odutola said that the global theme for SID 2018 was “Create, Connect and Share Respect: A b...

Facebook plans to double its staff working on reviewing and deleting illegal material in an effort to further crack down on hate speech and terrorist propaganda, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said in Brussels on Tuesday. During her first ever speech in the capital of the European Union, Sandberg aimed to demonstrate her company’s willingness to cooperate with the bloc, where the company has run into troubles due to the EU’s strict standards on data protection and illegal hate speech. “We have not done enough to stop the abuse of our technology.. “We have done a lot to maximize the benefits of our platforms, but we need to do more to minimize the negatives,” she said. Sandberg noted that Facebook was already employing 10,000 people working on safety and security issues and added that the company will double the number to 20,000 by the end of this year to better monitor and eliminate illegal material posted online. She said the issue was “complicated”...