How Social media applications like google, facebook, twitter etc are compiling data Uses of data for manipulating elections Military uses of social media data

1. SOCIAL MEDIA IN SHAPING
PUBLIC OPINION
HOW BIG BROTHER MANIPULATES YOU!

2. SOCIAL MEDIA IS ORWELLIAN
NIGHTMARE COME TRUE!
• GEORGE ORWELL ‘S CLASSIC – 1984. (Published in 1949)
• IMAGINED A FUTURISTIC WORLD IN WHICH HIGH TECH SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
CONTINIOUSLY WATCHED & LISTENED TO PEOPLE - EVEN IN THEIR HOMES
•

3. EFFECTS ON INDIVIDUALS
• LOSS OF FREEDOM?
• SLEEP WALKING INTO SURVEILLANCE
SYSTEMS
• CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AFFECTED?
• LOVE IN THE TIME OF MOBILE & INTERNET
• GIVE ME YOUR MOBILE!!!!

4. WHY THE FEAR OF LOSING MOBILE?

5. SOCIOLOGICAL CHANGES
• Every breath you take; every move you make, I’ll be watching you!
• FACEBOOK – EVERYONE IS A CELEBRITY WITH OWN FAN CLUB!
• AN ERA OF SOCIAL MEDIA LIKES – FACEBOOK & TWITTER LIKES
• ALL YOUR ACTIVITIES ARE BEING DATABSED!
• APPLICATIONS BOOKS, ARTICLES, GOOGLE SEARCHES, PLACES YOU VISIT, EVEN
HEART BEAT!

6. • No of internet users in 2018 is 4.021 billion, up 7 percent year-on-year
• No of social media users in 2018 is 3.196 billion, up 13 percent year-on-year
• No of mobile phone users in 2018 is 5.135 billion, up 4 percent year-on-year
• 9 in 10 of social media users are accessing their chosen platforms via mobile devices.
• More than two-thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile, with most people
using a smartphone.
GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE –
INCREASING NUMBERS
7.593 Billion
Total
Population
4.021 Billion
Internet Users
3.196 Billion
Social Media
Users
5.135 Billion Unique
Mobile Users
2.95 Billion
Mobile Social
Users

7. ANNUAL GROWTH IN SOCIAL MEDIA USE
+ 7% + 4%+ 13% + 14%
Internet Users Social Media Users Mobile Users Mobile Social Users
The average internet user now spends around 6
hours each day using internet-powered devices and
services – that’s roughly one-third of their waking
lives.

8. A Comparative Analysis of Social Media Users

9. MOST USED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM
2167 M
1500 M
800 M
794 M
330 M
260 M
Facebook’s core platform still dominates the global social landscape, with total users up 15
percent year-on-year to reach almost 2.17 billion at the start of 2018.

10. FACEBOOK – A SMOKING GUN FOR
PUBLIC OPINION MANIPULATION?

11. FACEBOOK
• Facebook owns the world’s largest pool of personal data
• Facebook has the biggest “social graph”—the list of its members and how they are
connected.
• Facebook collects data about you in order to have ALGORITHMS to determine
what will catch your eye, in an “attention economy” that keeps users scrolling,
clicking and sharing—again and again and again.
• Anyone setting out to shape opinion can produce targeted content, analyze
responses and see actions being initiated.

12. SOCIAL MEDIA – TOOLS OF CYBER
WAR

13. IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE
WORLD DUE TO SOCIAL MEDIA?

14. CYBER WAR-MANIPULATING
ELECTIONS IN TARGET COUNTRIES
• If Russia is accused of interfering in US elections through social media, how
vulnerable democracies in other countries are to foreign interference?
• Facebook acknowledged that before and after 2016 American election; from January
2015 till a little after elections, 146m users may have seen Russian generated
information about US elections on its platform.
• Google’s YouTube admitted to 1,108 Russian-linked videos and Twitter to 36,746
accounts.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin is accused by the West of using social media as
part of campaigns in Ukraine, France, Germany, America and elsewhere. At outfits
like the Internet Research Agency thousands of professional trolls work 12-hour
shifts.

15. AGGRAVATING CONFLICT AND
SCHISMS
• “The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and
the film and radio carried the process further.” George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four.
• The algorithms that Facebook, YouTube and others use to maximise “engagement”
ensure users are more likely to see information that they are liable to interact with.
This tends to lead them into clusters of like-minded people sharing like-minded
things and liable to be manipulated psychologically.
• Targeting of decision making through posts!
• Reading Fake News, Pakistani Minister Directs Nuclear Threat at Israel
(NYTimes)

16. BLAME THY ENEMY FOR LOSING
BATTLE SPACE
• The 2012 Ethnic Conflicts in Assam
• Indian Government claims that “elements based in Pakistan had orches- trated a
fear-mongering misinformation campaign using text messages and social media
that helped set off nationwide panic among migrants from India’s isolated
northeastern states”.
• Indian authorities blamed Pakistan; Government of India had submitted a report,
based on the investigation, showed Pakistan’s involvement in creating the chaos.
• On the other hand, “several reputed international news sites have highlighted that it
is India’s internal element that is involved in spreading hate messages and not the
Pakistan” (SOCIAL MEDIA IN POLITICS, CASE STUDIES)

17. USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA BY
GOVERNMENTS & WORLD LEADERS
Donald trump’s Twitter feed,
which has 51m followers, is a
window not only into his
thoughts and psyche, but into
the kind of messages he wants to
communicate to his supporters.
• Donald Trump admitted he
believes he would not have
won the presidency without
social media.
• The US leader said social media was a “tremendous platform” that allowed him to bypass
what he claimed was unfair media coverage and speak directly to voters.
• Mr Trump regularly uses Twitter to mount vigorous attacks on political opponents, news
outlets and people who have criticized him, often sending out posts in early-morning or
late-evening flurries.

18. USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN DEFEATING
TURKISH COUP
• When the military officers attempted to
topple Turkey’s government, they picked
the state-run television, a satellite
communication link, major bridges,
airports and parliament.
• But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
whose supporters eventually quashed the
attempted coup, convinced the country
he was still in charge.
• He used the Internet and FaceTime on
iPhones. He asked the public to take to
the streets in protest. Erdoğan's staff then
put out a series of tweets, on both his
personal and official accounts, for the
public.
• This was an ironic 21st-century marker for social media and politics, not just in
Turkey but far beyond.

19. SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE ARAB SPRING
• The Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of
demonstrations and protests in the Arab
world that began on December 18, 2010.
• Social media played a significant
role because it facilitated communication
and interaction among participants of
political protests.
• Protesters used social media to organize
demonstrations (both pro- and anti-
governmental), disseminate information
about their activities, and raise local and
global awareness of ongoing events.
• Social media also played a central role in
shaping political debates in the Arab

20. • Social media played a critical role in “mobilization, empowerment,
shaping opinions, and influencing change” during the Arab Spring.
• When Egypt’s President tried to shut down the internet, Google and
Twitter worked together to build a speak-to-tweet service.
• Tech Analysts used programs like ‘Gephi Graph Streaming’ to chart
the speed and growth of communication.
• Twitter played an important role initial role in Tunisia for much of
December.
• As the revolution gathered steam, Facebook became the main
organizing tool for protests and sharing videos. People in Europe
would migrate those videos to Posterous, subsequently uploading
them unto Youtube, and sharing them via Twitter.
• Global audiences tuned in to Al Jazeera (Qatar-based satellite
channel) for live streams and dependable information.
• All these services worked together on top of the platform that the
Internet provided.

21. CARNIVORE- RENAMED DCS1000
DIGITAL COLLECTION SYSTEM
• The value of data is obvious, especially as social media giants push into new areas
that collect more information about consumers while binding them closer to you,
such as the home microphones- called home speakers in Orwellian double speak.
• FBI’s CARNIVORE/DCS1000 can monitor target individual’s internet usage in real
time as well as go back and see the exact history of all internet searches, websites
visited, comments posted on articles or even the files downloaded.
• Every ISP has all your data
• Edward Snowden exposed in 2013 that social media giants helped American and
British intelligence monitor “jihadists.”

22. OWNING CYBER PLATFORMS
• Social media is a mechanism for capturing, manipulating and consuming attention
unlike any other. That in itself means that power over those media—be it the power
of ownership, of regulation or of clever hacking—is of immense political importance.
• The world’s social media dependency is in platforms developed mostly by the US. In
a two way war, that gives immense power of controlling the platforms with data.
And it has military uses!
• 127 BILLION MULTI ROBOT PURSUIT SYSTEM BY PENTAGON MAKES
TERMINATOR COME TO LIFE. - WITH DATA INTEGRATION

23. MULTI ROBOT PURSUIT SYSTEM –
PUTTING DATA TO USE!

24. CYBER COMMANDS AND POLICIES
• US, UK, FRANCE, RUSSIA, CHINA – CYBER ARMIES AND COMMANDS
• OWNING PLATFORMS? WHICH PLATFOMS OWNED BY SOUTH ASIANS?
• THREAT TO SYSTEMS?
• ELECTRICITY BREAKDOWN DUE TO CYBER ATTACK? (ABBOTABAD?)
• BANKING SYSTEMS VULNERABILITY
• WAR IN CYBER DOMAIN TO COMPLEMENT WAR IN OTHER DOMAINS – SEA, LAND,
AIR, SPACE
• WHO ATTACKS WHOM IN CYBER SPACE- KNOW THY ENEMY – SPOOFING
ATTACKS

25. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
• THANK YOU