File Photo
Twitter began purging its platform of millions of suspicious or fake accounts Thursday.
Some of Twitter’s most prominent users, including President Donald Trump, saw their follower counts decrease by hundreds of thousands of accounts.
“Action on this starts today,” Twitter’s chief executive and co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted, adding he lost 200,000 followers.
Tanu had marvelled at her first smartphone when her Indian migrant worker husband gave it to her last November so the couple could stay connected. Before long, she was uploading pictures on Facebook and sending messages on Whatsapp.Then a stranger sent her a Facebook friend request.Tanu accepted, and when her new friend messaged her with promises of a better life she believed him, agreeing to a meeting that would ultimately lead to her being sex trafficked to the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.White House orders greater access to files on FBI informant"He did not touch me. He just handed me over to other people," said Tanu, 21, whose full name cannot be used for legal reasons."I did not fear anything while using the phone," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone on Thursday from the southern state of Kerala, from where she was rescued last week."I did not even know I had to fear getting trapped. I never thought something like this would happen."Blast reported near Cairo’s international airportPolice and campaigners in India say sex traffickers are increasingly using WhatsApp and Facebook to communicate with potential victims, calling it an invisible crime.India's mobile phone users have multiplied on the back of cheap devices and data packs and the country is among the top data consumers in the world, with about a billion wireless connections.That and free wifi in public places are making it easier for traffickers to operate - and harder for authorities to track them down."These cases are emerging nearly every day, particularly of girls from the most vulnerable, remote parts of the country who have no exposure to city life," said Robin Hibu, joint commissioner with Delhi police.Japan struggles to restore water supply to flood-hit towns as temperatures soar'HIDDEN TSUNAMI'Hibu spearheaded an anti-trafficking drive last year and handled the case of a girl from the remote northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh who had befriended a man on Facebook.He bought her an air ticket to Mumbai, where he sold her into a brothel."She was a high school student, very poor. But she had a smartphone with internet. This is a hidden tsunami. Today mobile phones are not that costly," said Hibu.India is only the latest country to experience the grim phenomenon - all over the world, concern is growing over the use of technology by traffickers, who use social media to contact vulnerable teenagers before selling them into sex work.Trump shares 'very nice' letter from North Korea's KimBut with internet penetration at just 18 percent in rural areas, according to a report from the Internet and Mobile Association of India, there is still huge scope for growth.The report said mobile internet was predominantly used by young people, with 46 percent of urban users and 57 percent of rural users under the age of 25.Payments too have gone online, eliminating the money trail, according to Cassandra Fernandes of anti-trafficking charity International Justice Mission."Earlier, traffickers visited the family, convinced them about a job prospect in the city ... they were usually people the family trusted," said Vivian Isaac, programme director of the My Choices Foundation which works with women and girls."Now they sit in their rooms and send messages on Facebook and WhatsApp and girls walk into their trap themselves. They never show hurry. They do it gradually, systematically."For families of migrant workers, the mobile phone is their only connection to their loved one.Tanu now plans to change her number - but says she will keep her smartphone.
Traffickers tap into India’s digital boom to lure girls
On Wednesday, Twitter announced that it would begin deleting “locked” accounts, accounts that were deactivated because Twitter deemed them to be suspicious or fraudulent.
Twitter’s own official account, @Twitter, was one of the purge’s biggest victims. The account lost roughly 10 million followers Thursday, dropping some 12 percent to about 55 million.
Trump lost about 200,000 followers. Former President Barack Obama lost roughly 2.6 million followers. Musician Katy Perry, the most followed account on Twitter, lost about 2.7 million followers in the purge.
A major explosion at a chemical plant in southwestern China has killed 19 people and injured 12, authorities said on Friday, the latest deadly industrial incident in the world's largest producer of chemicals.It comes amid a drive to strengthen industrial safety, with China ramping up checks over the last year, in the wake of some high-profile incidents at coal mines and chemical plants.The cause of Thursday evening's blast at Yibin Hengda Technology in an industrial park several hours southeast of Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, is not yet known, the local government in Jiang'an county said.Japan struggles to restore water supply to flood-hit towns as temperatures soar"I heard seven explosions in ten minutes," an eyewitness told domestic news agency Beijing News. "It took a couple dozen firefighter trucks to put out the fire."The injured are in stable condition and an investigation has begun, state news agency Xinhua said.The company, which makes chemicals for the food and pharmaceutical industries, did not immediately answer telephone calls from Reuters to seek information.Photographs on Chinese social media showed a huge fire and plumes of smoke rising from the facility. The fire, which broke out early on Thursday evening, was put out by 11:30 p.m. (1530 GMT), the government said in its statement.US says reunification of young migrants completed"I heard a big explosion, it was really loud and I felt the ground shaking," Liu Ping, a manager from the industrial park told China Newsweek, who was in his office at the time of the eruption."My first response was that something was wrong and I went the window and saw thick smoke rising from the east."A trio of three-storey buildings were reduced to their steel frames by the explosion, the Sichuan Daily newspaper said, citing eyewitness accounts. Footage on its website on Friday afternoon showed the skeleton of the burnt-out buildings.Video: Blast in chemical plant in China kills 19, injures 12Windows of nearby buildings were shattered by the explosion at the factory, which is surrounded by a sand and gravel plant, it added.The plant has three production lines, making 300 tonnes per year (tpy) of benzoic acid, which is used in food preservatives, and 2,000 tpy of 5-nitroisophthalic acid, for medicines and dyes, the regional environmental protection bureau says.China's breakneck pace of economic growth during the last decade has resulted in a spate of industrial accidents.In 2015, an explosion in a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 165 people. Last year, a blast at a petrochemical plant in eastern Shandong province killed eight people and injured nine.
China chemical plant blast kills 19, injures 12
In the announcement, Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde said the company estimated the average user would lose four followers or fewer.
“We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation,” Gadde said in a statement.
Israel summoned the EU ambassador Thursday to protest European interference in a government-sponsored bill that would allow the establishment of “Jewish-only” communities.The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the premier ordered the Foreign Ministry to summon Emanuele Giaufret to hand him a note of protest.“Apparently Europeans still don’t understand that Israel is a sovereign state,” the statement said, accusing European diplomats of interfering in the bill’s passage.Although no detailed information was given about the decision in the statement, local media reported earlier that it was related to the draft legislation.According to reports, European diplomats told Israeli lawmakers that the draft law includes discriminatory elements incompatible with democratic principles.The draft legislation was approved in its first reading in April.Introduced by Netanyahu's Likud Party, the so-called “National Law” bill says “the land of Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established, and the State of Israel is the national state of the Jewish people, in which they apply their natural, cultural and historical right to self-determination.”It adds that “the right of national self-determination in the State of Israel is specific to the Jewish people. Hebrew is the language of the state, while Arabic has a special status in the state”.Contentiously, the law also appears to allow for the establishment of “Jewish-only” communities in Israel from which Arab citizens would be barred.If the draft law is accepted on its second and third readings and enacted, an objection can be raised against Israeli Arabs living in the towns in question.In Israel, a draft law should be voted on three times in parliament to be legislated.
Israel summons EU ambassador
“Though the most significant changes are happening in the next few days, follower counts may continue to change more regularly as part of our ongoing work to proactively identify and challenge problematic accounts.”
While the general reaction to the loss of followers was relatively calm, the purge was still controversial on social media. Some conservatives on Twitter argued that the purge was politically motivated.
“Look, if they're genuinely fake or dead accounts, I have no problem with it,” tweeted former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. “But how do we know?”
Twitter said locked accounts were accounts that were opened by an authentic person but have likely been hacked, according to the company’s metrics.