Kuwait to try two over Twitter posts: official

Kuwait will put on trial two citizens for criticizing Gulf Arab ruling families on social media site Twitter, a security official said on Monday.

Nasser Abul, a Kuwaiti Shi'ite Muslim, was arrested for posting criticisms of the Sunni Muslim ruling families in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and Lawrence al-Rashidi posted defamatory comments of Kuwait's emir, he said.

He said both would remain in detention for two more weeks before a hearing is scheduled, where they will likely face charges of harming the Gulf Arab state's interests and defaming the country's ruler after being arrested earlier in June.

Democracy activists have used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to debate, organize and share information in Bahrain, where the kingdom's Sunni rulers crushed a protest movement in March led mostly by the country's Shi'ite majority.

Bahrain called in troops from Sunni-led neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to enforce its crackdown. OPEC member Kuwait, which has a Shi'ite minority, sent naval forces.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/27/us-kuwait-twitter-idUSTRE75Q1UH20110627

Facebook denies losing users

Facebook has denied that it is losing customers, saying it is "pleased" with growth.

Figures from Faceboook monitoring site Inside Facebook suggested that during May, Facebook lost six million users in the US and 100,000 in the UK.

But the social network, which does not usually comment on third party statistics, questioned how it arrived at this figure.

Other net measurement firms said they had seen growth over the same period.

"From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn't designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook," the firm said in a statement.

"We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day," it added.

The figures from Inside Facebook claimed that 1.5 million Canadian users left the social network in May.

But overall it showed that Facebook was growing, to a total of 687 million users worldwide with many new customers coming from countries such as India, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Its figures on customer leakage do not appear to tally with those from net measurement firm comScore.

It told the BBC it had seen a 21% growth for US users on Facebook during May, while the UK gained 368,000 new recruits between February and May.

According to comScore, the average amount of time spent on the site was also up, from 21 minutes per day in December 2009 to 25 minutes per day by December 2010.

Measurement firm Nielsen said its figures also showed growth.

"There are months when figures dip but I'd be very cautious on calling a trend based on two months," said Nielsen spokesman Neil Beston.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13760244

Twitter faces legal action by footballer over privacy

A footballer has launched legal action against Twitter after a number of the microblogging site's users purported to reveal the name of the player who allegedly had an affair with model Imogen Thomas.

The footballer's legal team began the legal action at the high court in London on Wednesday, in what is thought to be the first action against the US social media firm and its users.

The lawsuit lists the defendants as "Twitter Inc and persons unknown". The latter are described as those "responsible for the publication of information on the Twitter accounts" in the court document, according to reports.

Earlier this month, an unknown person or individuals published the names of various people who had allegedly taken out gagging orders to conceal sexual indiscretions on a Twitter account. The account rapidly attracted more than 100,000 followers.

Twitter declined to comment.

The lord chief justice, Lord Judge, on Friday said Twitter and its users were totally out of control when it comes to privacy injunctions and court orders.

Although there was no mention of Twitter in Lord Neuberger's long-awaited report on superinjunctions, published on Friday, Lord Judge said readers placed greater trust in the contents of traditional media than in those "who peddle lies" on websites.

Twitter and other social networks were accused of making "an ass of the law" by culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and politicians after a number of celebrities with injunctions were allegedly exposed online.

The socialite Jemima Khan was among those claimed on Twitter to have obtained an injunction. Khan described rumours, which had suggested falsely she had obtained a gagging order to prevent publication of "intimate photos" of herself and Jeremy Clarkson, as a "bloody nightmare".

Twitter has said that it "strive[s] not to remove tweets on the basis of their content", but that it would remove "illegal tweets and spam".

Mark Stephens, a senior media lawyer at Finers Stephens Innocent, said the lawsuit had little hope of succeeding.

"This is not only scraping the bottom of the barrel, this is beneath the barrel. This [injunction] information is already available on servers outside of this jurisdiction and on website outside this jurisdiction," he said.

"You would have to be a moron in a hurry to suggest to this footballer that he throw good money and publicly excoriate himself yet further."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/20/twitter-sued-by-footballer-over-privacy

Australian police attribute man's death to internet photo trend

A growing internet photo trend is to blame for the death of a 20-year-old Australian man, police in Queensland said Sunday, warning other fans of the dangers surrounding "planking."

The activity has been growing in popularity in Australia as more and more people post photos of themselves "planking" -- or lying prone in various odd or humorous locations -- on various social media sites. A Facebook page called "Planking Australia" has garnered nearly 90,000 "likes" and has inspired similar pages such as "Planking Ireland" and "Planking Norway."

"This morning we have seen a young man take this activity a step further and attempt to plank on a balcony," Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett of the Queensland Police said Sunday. "Unfortunately he has tragically fallen to his death. Police fear that as planking gains popularity there may be more injuries and potentially further deaths."

The danger, according to police, is followers of the trend are trying to "outdo" each other by taking bigger risks on where they try to "plank."

"The potential disaster increases as more and more risks are taken to get the ultimate photo," a statement issued by the Queensland police said.

Acton Beale, 20, died when he lost his footing and fell from the balcony of a high-rise building while attempting to "plank," the country's public broadcaster, ABC, reported.

Last week, a man caught photographing himself face down on top of a Queensland police car was arrested and charged with trespassing on police property, police said, warning that others will be charged "if they attempt the activity in areas that constitute trespass or in dangerous locations."

The trend appears to have been started in 2009 on Facebook as the "Lying Down Game" before reappearing in recent months as "planking."

Read More

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/15/australia.planking.death/?hpt=T2

Google Starts Using Twitter in Search Results

As an update to its Social Search announced yesterday, Google is returning links garnered from Twitter in its search results.

It works something like this: If a friend tweets a link to an article and you search for a related topic, Google “may show that link in your results with a clear annotation”, product management director Mike Cassidy wrote in a blog post.

Social Search results will also be mixed throughout Google’s PageRank results, so users will start seeing more recommended links from friends.

“Relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships,” Cassidy wrote. “Today we’re taking another step forward—enabling you to get even more information from the people that matter to you.”

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http://www.designtaxi.com/news/34074/Google-Starts-Using-Twitter-in-Search-Results/?page=2

WikiLeaks, free speech and Twitter come together in Va. court case

An odd confluence of important issues came together in a federal courtroom in Alexandria on Tuesday: the criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, free speech and social networking.

It all stemmed from the government's attempts to get personal information from the Twitter accounts of three people linked to the WikiLeaks probe. Their lawyers argued that the data - screen names, mailing addresses, telephone numbers, credit card and bank account information, and Internet protocol addresses - are protected by the First Amendment. Prosecutors said the request is a routine part of their criminal probe.

It was the opening salvo in what experts expect to be a long and difficult investigation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others suspected of disclosing thousands of classified documents on the anti-secrecy Web site.

Tuesday's arguments went to the heart of a larger debate about WikiLeaks - whether the posting of the documents was free speech or a violation of national security. They also provided a high-profile test of outdated rules about what data the government can seize in the new world of social networking.

In the courtroom, John Keker, a lawyer representing one of the Twitter clients, said the users' data would give the government a map of people tied to WikiLeaks and essentially halt free speech online. He noted how social networking sites have been used in Egypt and Tunisia, where citizens have pushed for government changes, and suggested that such a broad request by the U.S. government in this case would put a stop to that.

John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor not associated with the case, said the government is using 18th-century arguments with 21st-century technology.

"These are not new arguments, but they're being used in a really interesting and important way that has a twist to them in light of social media," he said.

New details of probe

Until now, there has been little public evidence of the government's criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, a probe Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced in late November.

Information began to come out last week after U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan granted a motion from the three Twitter clients to unseal some filings in the case. Tuesday's hearing was the first public debate in the criminal investigation of Assange and others.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/15/AR2011021506483.html

Tweets are not private, rules watchdog in landmark case

A civil servant who claimed invasion of privacy when her Twitter messages were reprinted in newspapers has had her complaint rejected by the press regulator.

Sarah Baskerville, a Department for Transport manager, last year published a series of tweets critical of the coalition's cuts, attacking Downing Street "spin" and telling her 700 followers that the leader of a training course she attended was "mental". The comments were published in the Daily Mail and The Independent on Sunday in November. Ms Baskerville said this information was only meant to be seen by her followers. Deciding in the newspapers' favour today, the PCC said the fact that tweets are publicly accessible on the web was key.

"It was quite clear that the potential audience for the information was actually much larger than the 700 people who followed the complainant directly, not least because any message could easily be retweeted to a wider audience," the regulator said. The decision also took into account civil service rules on political impartiality, which the newspapers said justified highlighting Ms Baskerville's views.

"The commission is increasingly being asked to make judgments about what can legitimately be described as private information," said PCC director Stephen Abell.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tweets-are-not-private-rules-watchdog-in-landmark-case-2208724.html

Facebook overtakes Google as most-visited in 2010

Facebook Inc.'s social networking site passed Google Inc.'s main site and Yahoo Inc.'s e-mail site as the most visited site on the Web in the U.S. in 2010.

Experian Hitwise published a report that said Facebook was the destination of 8.93 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010. Google.com (Nasdaq: GOOG), which was ranked No. 1 the year before, was No. 2 this year with 7.19 percent of visits, followed by last year's No. 2, Yahoo Mail (Nasdaq: YHOO), with 3.52 percent of visits.

Google's YouTube video site moved up from No. 5 in 2009 to No. 3 this year with 2.65 percent of visits.

When you combine sites owned by companies, Google remained on top with 9.85 percent of all U.S. visits. Facebook's combined sites accounted for 8.93 percent, and Yahoo properties accounted for 8.12 percent.

Experian Hitwise estimated that the top 10 websites accounted for 33 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010, up by 12 percent versus 2009.

The report also said that for the second year in a row, Facebook was the most-searched-for term on the Web in the U.S.


Read more:

http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/news/2011/01/02/facebook-overtakes-google-in-2010-visits.html

Facebook Scam: 'See Who Has Viewed Your Profile'

Curious to see who views your Facebook profile page?

You're out of luck. Status updates, Facebook groups, and pages claiming to let users see who has viewed their Facebook profile pages are scams, often linking users to ad-filled sites.

In recent days, for instance, you may have seen your Facebook friends speaking in bizarrely adolescent chatroom vernacular:

"OMG OMG OMG... I cant believe this actually works! Now you really can see who viewed your profile! on [LINK]."

"If you're tempted to click on the link, you're taken to a webpage that encourages you to go a little deeper and permit an application to have access to your Facebook profile," wrote Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, in a blog post.

According to Sophos, over 60,000 people clicked into the claim in a few hours.

But as Facebook noted in July, there is no way anyone can see who has viewed their profile, and no way others can create such a function.

"We're working hard to block and remove websites, Pages, and applications that claim to do this. If you see one, don't be fooled, and report it to us immediately," the company wrote on its security page.

Clicking into these links usually directs people to ad-filled pages. Others might promise to exchange a profile-viewing feature if a user can generate enough likes and linkshares.

"If you've been hit by a scam like this, remove references to it from your newsfeed, and revoke the right of rogue applications to access your profile via Account/ Privacy Settings/ Applications and Websites," Cluley suggests.

Read More

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373574,00.asp

Government agencies navigate the promises and pitfalls of social media

As law enforcement, transportation agencies and other departments rush to interact with the public through Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, guidelines for using social media have been slow to follow.

When the Orange County Sheriff's Department launched its blog three years ago, the first entry hinted at the department's motivation for venturing into social media.

"The Media's Rush to Judgment," penned by then-Sheriff Michael S. Carona, who was in the midst of a corruption scandal, addressed public perceptions surrounding a police shooting and an inmate's death at a county jail.

With his blog, Carona had made an end-run around the print and electronic media that he felt had sabotaged his career, overlooked the good things his department had done and overreacted to events such as the beating death of an accused sex offender at Theo Lacy jail.

But the ex-sheriff's blog also pointed toward the pitfalls and problems in social media that have left cities and counties across California scrambling.

Fearing liability from posted comments, Redondo Beach put the city's Facebook page on hold in August. Yolo County in Northern California adopted a social media policy in April, and San Francisco abandoned its effort to archive posts on its Facebook page.

"Everybody sees the benefit and there's an early rush and then you begin seeing the problems that come up," said Redondo Beach City Atty. Michael Webb. "Law by its very nature progresses much slower than technology … we need to let the law catch up with the technology."

In a National Assn. of Counties survey of member counties, 41% said they used Twitter and 36% said they had a Facebook page. Yet almost 80% said they had no social media policies. But that may be changing.

In Orange County, where Carona's reign ended with an indictment and the jail beating resulted in a damning grand jury report, officials have adopted a social media policy that discourages hyperlinking, warns against attacking specific groups and asks each department to name a social media coordinator.

The policy, one of the few adopted by a county in California, also directs each department to weigh the use of social media and says it should be a "risk-based decision" that takes into account goals, legal perils, technical capabilities and potential benefits.

What the policy doesn't do is regulate content or distinguish between opinion and fact.

Just a few years ago, municipalities were rushing to get into social media — the talk at conferences was often about which city had started tweeting or joined Facebook. But now, some are beginning to take a more measured look.

In February, California unveiled a Social Media Standard directing that only authorized state employees can use departments' official accounts and that some features, such as instant messaging, should be disabled.

When Orange County began looking into a policy last year, the chief executive's technology office asked other California counties whether they had policies. The overwhelming response was: " 'We don't, but we'd like to see yours when you're finished,' " said Orange County spokesman Howard Sutter.

Just as e-mails can be subject to California's Public Records Act, Facebook status updates, tweets and blog posts can be too, as Orange County's policy repeatedly reminds users.

Webb, Redondo Beach's city attorney, pointed to how San Francisco struggled with this issue — the county began archiving all Facebook posts and comments before finding it prohibitively expensive.

At a League of California Cities conference earlier this year, two presentations illustrated the conflict: one was on the benefits of Facebook, and the other was a blunt reminder that the site falls under the Public Records Act.

Webb had expected that during the conference the league might issue a request to Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown for direction on using social media. That didn't happen, he said, and now cities and counties may have to figure things out on their own.

Like other public information officers around the state, Ted Nguyen of the Orange County Transportation Authority uses Twitter to send out practical, ready-to-use information — in his case, details on bus and Metrolink delays, road detours and freeway construction projects.

Nguyen also spends some of his time giving out information about social media. Several times a day, he is contacted by government agencies from across the country with questions like: Do you need permission to tweet someone's photo?

"I think there's obviously a fear factor, they don't necessarily want to be the first one out the gate," he said. "There is this effort to help each other."

Read More

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-social-media-20101129,0,6793833.story

Zuckerberg: We don't have the answers yet

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answers questions at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO--Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg painted a benign portrait of his company in a talk this afternoon at the Web 2.0 Summit, countering both the concerns about how it handles users' personal information as well as its increasing power to muscle out other companies in an apparent quest to dominate the Web.

"I'm not sure we're 100 percent right on this," Zuckerberg said of Facebook's recent spat with Google in which the latter forbade Facebook users from importing their Gmail contact information because Facebook doesn't let them do the reverse. "The correct answer isn't completely obvious. I'm not sure that we're completely right, but I think it's not completely black and white."

He also returned to a common Zuckerberg talking point: that no matter how much Facebook shows up in the press and how many hundreds of millions of people are using the social network, that business-wise it is still extremely young. When interviewer John Battelle said that at six years old, Facebook is about the same age that Google was when it built its groundbreaking AdSense product, and he wondered if Facebook might do the same with a sweeping, Internet-wide social advertising system, Zuckerberg replied, "I think it's earlier-stage than Google (was)...We're getting started with ads and I think that's ramping up well."

He also obliquely defended Facebook's strategy of expanding through the acquisition small start-ups, like Hot Potato and Drop.io, and potentially snuffing out others by building products that immediately compete with smaller companies through the infusion of Facebook's massive scale--like rehashes of the News Feed that looked quite a bit like Twitter, and more recently Facebook Places, which replicates much of the functionality of Foursquare. On Tuesday alone, news broke that Facebook had made strategic "hires" through the acquisition of some intellectual property from Zenbe (first reported by CNET) and Walletin, which brought former Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka on board.

(Facebook made failed attempts to acquire both Twitter and Foursquare.)

Zuckerberg said that the development of products like Places fits into its strategy of providing a platform on which other companies can build, and not an attempt to snuff out start-ups. "Groups, location, (and) messages are really core parts and either distribution channels, or what we view as foundational building blocks of the social graph," he explained.

Imperfection and a willingness to change and evolve are two things that Zuckerberg frequently brings up in public appearances, applied both to Facebook as a company and to himself as a CEO.

"I've made so many mistakes in running the company so far. Basically, any mistake that you can think of I've made or will make in the next few years," Zuckerberg said. "If you're building a product that people love you can make a lot of mistakes."

Zuckerberg is still only 26. The rhetoric of being young, fallible, and subject to constant change won't always work for Facebook--or for the CEO himself.


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20023027-36.html#ixzz15Vbz7Qp9

Googler Offered $3.5M to Turn Down Facebook

It's a common trick of the trade. You're looking for a raise but your employer won't give you one. So, you tell them you're going to go work for a competitor, hoping they'll so scared of losing you to the competition, they'll offer you more money to stay. Well, I don’t know if that was this Googler's plan when he told his employer that he had been offered a job at Facebook, but he definitely got offered a very handsome bonus to stay in Mountain View.

TechCrunch reports that Google recently offered a staff engineer $3.5 million in restricted stock to stop him leaving for Facebook. It's not clear whether or not this person had already received a job offer from the biggest social network in town, but Michael Arrington writes that he was being "heavily romanced" by Facebook.

TC reports that this isn't the first time this has happened. In fact, though the search giant won't make a nice counteroffer for everyone trying to leave, Google will often go to great lengths to stop staff leaving for the likes of Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn. By the sounds of things, this particular deal is bigger than the rest. That $3.5 million in restricted stock will vest over time, so it's not surprising to learn that the engineer reportedly accepted and stayed at Google. Wouldn't you?

Read more about Google's method of retaining engineers and other valuable members of staff on  

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/google-making-extraordinary-counteroffers-to-stop-flow-of-employees-to-facebook/

Japan Man kills himself during live Internet broadcast

A decision by a Japanese man to stream his suicide “live” online is creating a stir among netizens.

Police in the northern city of Sendai in Japan’s Miyagi prefecture found the 24-year-old’s body in his apartment on Tuesday morning after receiving reports from Internet users, reported Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun.

Investigators believe that at around 3.45am on Tuesday, the man attempted to hang himself on his balcony, apparently using knotted sheets, but the joist buckled under his weight.

The video then showed him finding a new spot and and repeating the attempted at 5.30am, at which point viewers could make out that his body had gone perfectly still.

UStream, an American website that allows users to post images or videos “live”, stopped the broadcast after 6am after a large number of viewers complained about the horrific images. The video was also uploaded to YouTube, but was removed soon after.

The man had been on an extended leave from work since August and the Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported that he worked for a banking institution and that he was facing problems at the office.

Last Sunday, on November 7, in his broadcast on Ustream, he talked about his life and discussed his plan to commit suicide on an online forum.

The broadcast drew a variety of responses, with some users instigating him to kill himself.

Some of the taunts on the forum read “Die now” and “Please die quickly”.

However, others encouraged him to keep on living. “Please live! Please live!” and “It’s OK, please don’t die”, read some of the comments.

His feed went dead on Monday, causing Internet users to question the credibility of his declarations.

However, on Tuesday around midnight, the channel came back online and the man went on to hang himself in his apartment, with the scene playing live.

Local police say no will has been found but they did reveal that a man had posted a message to them around 1.40am to inform them of his intention to kill himself.

The suicide rate in Japan is one of the highest in the world, accounting for more than 32,000 deaths last year, the 12th consecutive year to exceed 30,000. 

Read More

http://sg.yfittopostblog.com/2010/11/11/japanese-man-streams-his-suicide-live-online/

Feds: Woman illegally fired over Facebook remarks

Federal authorities say a Connecticut woman was illegally fired from her job as an emergency medical technician after she posted disparaging remarks about her boss on Facebook.

The National Labor Relations Board alleges that the woman's comments are protected speech under federal law that allows employees to discuss their jobs and working conditions with co-workers.

The case could set a precedent as more workers use social networking sites.

A spokesman for American Medical Response of Connecticut says the employee was fired because of complaints about her work. But the company defends its policy prohibiting workers from depicting the company in any way on the Internet.

An administrative law judge is expected to hear the case in January.

Read more

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9JCQQNO0.htm

Race to become first to 'like' Queen on Facebook

The Queen is said to have personally approved the plans for her page, which will go live tomorrow at 8am

At 8am an official British Monarchy page will be launched on the world’s most popular social networking website, allowing users to connect with the Royal family online.

Although it will not be possible to befriend the Queen or her relatives personally, website users will be able to state that they “like” her page.

There will be a public list of friends of the page, prompting a race to become the first to press the “like” button on Monday morning.

The British Monarchy page will provide a hi-tech version of the traditional court and social announcements, detailing the daily engagements of members of the Royal family.

Fans will also be able to comment on these announcements.

Buckingham Palace says it does not know how many people will look at its Facebook page, although the official @BritishMonarchy account on Twitter already has 70,148 followers.

There is also TheRoyalChannel on YouTube, the video-sharing website, which has 32,418 subscribers and whose films have been watched 8.3million times over the past three years.

However fans eager to look at the Queen’s presence on Facebook bombarded an unofficial page on Sunday, perhaps unaware that the real site was yet to go live.

The number of people who “like” the unofficial page rose from 16,293 to 18,613 on Sunday afternoon, after details of the official page were included in weekend newspapers, with many of them welcoming the Queen to cyberspace.

Buckingham Palace will not attempt to remove unauthorised tributes to the monarchy.

"I don't think that's in the spirit of Facebook," said a spokesman.

Facebook developers exiled for selling user IDs to brokers

Facebook is taking action against developers who flouted company rules by selling unique user IDs to a data broker.

The unnamed developers, which numbered fewer than 12, won't have access to Facebook communication channels for six months, Facebook platform engineer Mike Vernal said on Friday. They also will be required to submit their data practices to a third-party auditor to confirm they comply with Facebook policies.

Facebook has also reached an agreement with data broker Rapleaf, which according to a Wall Street Journal investigation linked Facebook user IDs it got from games developers to its own database of Internet users, which it sells. Rapleaf will delete all the IDs in its possession and has promised not to conduct similar activities in the future.

“In taking these steps, we believe we are taking the appropriate measures to ensure people stay in control of their information, while providing developers the tools they need to create engaging social experiences,” Vernal said. “We look forward to broader cooperation from everyone in the web community to confront issues that impact all of us.”

The action comes after the WSJ caught Facebook transmitting the user IDs of those playing some of the site's most popular games to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies. The disclosure came even as Facebook's terms of service promised that personally identifiable information would never be sold to advertisers or data brokers.

The allegations are now part of a federal lawsuit filed against Zynga, developer of some of the social network's most popular apps. The complaint claims Zynga collected and shared the IDs of 218 million users. Zynga has said the complaint is without merit. A similar lawsuit has been filed against Facebook.

The user IDs by themselves don't reveal personal information, but when combined with other information, they could jeopardize user privacy, critics contend. Facebook recently introduced plans to encrypt user IDs to prevent inadvertent sharing. So-called parameter encryption could make it harder for data brokers, intelligence agencies and other snoops to track the activities of Facebook users.