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NAKHON SI THAMMARAT, Thailand (Kyodo) -- Social media is increasingly being used as a means of smuggling endangered otters, and Thai authorities say that is making it difficult to crack down on secret networks.

Illicit trade in the Asian small-clawed otter, an animal that has seen booming demand as pets in Japan, has been on the rise.

Police in Phatthalung, a province in southern Thailand, arrested two people in connection with a recent case, including a 27-year-old man who, in late October, admitted to charges of trying to smuggle the otters to customers inside cardboard boxes.

Authorities said that 18 of the otters, including 11 newborns, each with a street value of 3,500 baht ($116), were discovered at a clothing shop run by the man during an investigation. The suspect also admitted to smuggling such otters in the past.

Calls for preserving rare species of animals are increasing worldwide. A ban on the international commercial trade of the otters found in Southeast Asia, designated as a species threatened with extinction, will take effect on Nov. 26 under the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

In Thailand, one of the supply nations of the otters, unauthorized trading and possession of the fish-eating mammals is banned, but demand for them as pets remains strong.

Otters used to be traded in secret in Bangkok until a few years ago. With some fetching over 1 million yen ($9,200) each in Japan, smuggling has increased sharply, prompting Thai authorities to heighten surveillance on the trade.

Otter cafes have been springing up across Japan, with one in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district reportedly keeping about 15 otters imported legally from Indonesia.

A Japanese man, who operates two otter cafes in Tokyo and Fukuoka, said he has been approached a number of times about purchasing the animals.

In the summer of 2018, he contacted authorities about a man who tried to sell him two emaciated otters. The police later arrested the man on suspicion of smuggling them.

According to Traffic, a wildlife trade watchdog, a total of 59 otters, smuggled from Southeast Asia, were taken into protective custody between 2015 and 2017, of which 32 were headed to Japan.

Indeed social networking sites have become the main conduit for smuggling activities, Thai authorities said.

In the case in Thailand, in an exchange that began over Facebook, a police officer disguised as a customer was able to gather enough information, leading to the two arrests.

But an official in charge at the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation in Thailand suggested the case is simply the tip of the iceberg.

"This is not even close to a full-scale investigation" of the illicit trading of otters, the official said.

The arrested man admitted that he had been asked by unknown "customers" to find otters and procured them via unknown "suppliers," reaching out to people on social media. He planned to ship most of the animals to Bangkok.

The otters could have possibly been resold and shipped abroad from the capital city, but as smuggling networks are loosely connected with many of the participants on the social networking sites using fake names, investigations often hit a dead end, authorities said.

In Thailand, otters inhabit the southern region, including Nakhon Si Thammarat, where they come to feed in fish-breeding ponds. But a 54-year-old neighborhood resident said the number of otters seen there recently has dropped considerably due to habitat loss caused by the expanding construction of houses.

Hence, illicit trading in "bred otters" is increasing due to the decreasing population of wild otters. "There must be secret breeding places, but we cannot pinpoint them," a senior official at the wildlife conservation department said.

A group dubbed "the society of otter owners" has a page on Facebook. After a series of email exchanges, it admitted that it breeds the animals in Malaysia and sells them for 2,500 baht each in Thailand.

Thailand has extended the maximum prison term for illicit trading of endangered animals to 10 years from four -- the strongest evidence the Thai government is serious about stamping out the trade.

Asked if the group is concerned about the Thai government stepping up efforts to crack down on the smuggling of otters, it responded, "There is a mountain of deals unknown to authorities and, it is impossible to eliminate smuggling."

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Illicit trade of otters via social networking on the rise - The Mainichi

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Social networking site Twitter initially said it would be wiping accounts that hadn't been accessed within the past six months.

A link has been sent to your friend's email address.

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.

Twitter.(Photo: Thinkstock)

Twitter is rethinking its plans to purge inactive accounts, including those started by users who have died.

Soon after saying that it will get rid of some accounts that go unused, Twitter decided to put a pause on the plans after receiving backlash frompeople who didn't want to lose tweets from users whohave passed away.

Weve heard you on the impact that this would have on the accounts of the deceased. This was a miss on our part," Twitter said in a statement Wednesday.

The social networking site initially said it would be wiping accounts that hadn't been accessed within the past six months. The cleanup was set to happen Dec. 11.

On the surface, it was a good idea because the purge would free up coveted usernames that were held up by inactive users.Typically the only way to get a username from someone is through a trademark case.

Target Cyber Monday 2019: Deals on iPads, AirPods, and more

The proposed move by Twitter also spotlighted the fact that there's no way to memorialize deceased users' accounts. "We will not be removing any inactive accounts until we create a new way for people to memorialize accounts," Twitter said in a statement.

On Facebook, dead users' friends and family have the option to report them as deceased. Once the social networking site has verified the loss, a designated contact personcan create a special profile honoring the user.

Follow Dalvin Brown on Twitter: @Dalvin_Brown.

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/11/29/twitter-wont-removing-unused-accounts-after-all/4330204002/

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Twitter won't be removing inactive accounts after backlash over profiles of dead users - USA TODAY

Its Thanksgiving in the United States, and you know what that means: slide into the holiday weekend hack clich premise that we should be able to wrap up with lunch. (Interface will be back on Monday.) And, with that in mind, let the end of November in a thank you note. Heres something to be grateful about for each of our major social networks as we close the year.

Facebook is making rapid progress in its development of the Supervisory Board, an independent group that will serve as a kind of Supreme Courts decision moderation. I was told that the board early will be named within the next month or so, and will begin to hear the case next year. Im rooting for the Supervisory Board because it can give a veneer of social networking accountability. For the first time, people who are unfairly removed it will be able to get a fair hearing from interested third parties. Of course, it is not possible to work but not any regulations that mean, Im grateful that Facebook is trying.

YouTube already has such a rough year I struggled to come up with a product or policy of a big win. (60 Minutes did a piece about the struggle seems to YouTube on Sunday.) Fortunately, the parent company placed unreasonable limits on political advertising restrict the candidates ability to micro-target voters in the ad. This has the effect of limiting the overall number of political advertising, making it easier for citizens, journalists, and academics to understand in real time the argument that politicians and their supporters make. It would also be likely to encourage politicians to aim their messages at a wider part of the electorate, so as to maximize the reach and impact of their message. It was one of the very few things have been done this year platform that may reverse a trend that worries me the most accelerating the political polarization here and around the world. Thats one reason I predict Facebook will adopt similar restrictions in the next year.

Twitter woke up from a nap for a decade and start delivering new products on a regular basis again. your favorite of these may be different from mine, but really there are a bunch to choose from. As I wrote here earlier this month: Under the leadership of head Kayvon Beykpour products, the company began to remove coarse tweet faster; submitted the original application for the MacOS; adding a search feature to direct messages; turns the list into Swipable schedule; and begin to let you hide the replies to your tweets. And that is what the company has shipped since September. I also have enjoyed the new ability to follow a topic, which has been great to follow niche interests. It is hard to see this as anything other than progress, and this is much more than that in 2020.

Snap is the most creative companies in consumer technology, but until now looks like the business behind it in freefall. But against the odds, CEO Evan Spiegel seems to have turned it around this year. A redesigned Android app and the surging use of foreign aid for the company returns the user growth, C-suite executives managed to survive the new company without quitting or being fired, and the stock rose 189 percent. The company has even found a sympathetic ear among antitrust regulators investigate Facebook. I am grateful that the company is now in a strong position to continue to do what it always did best: creating innovative new tools for creating and communicating.(Source)

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Four social networking gives us reason to be thankful this year - Herald Journalism 24

25 years of digital advertising is an era of different generations if you take a look at it. No matter how good a product or a service is, to attract potential customers advertising plays a vital role. Since the early 1990s, Digital advertising changed the concept of marketing for all sorts of businesses. We all have seen the era of billboards, flyers and various posters used to advertise products but dont see much of it anymore. Do you ever think about why it changed over the past years? We think one of the major factors that led the advertisements through billboards change to digital advertising is the launch of so many analytical technologies. The innovation of technology over the past years is increasing and very less likely to slow down anytime soon. From banner ads to artificial intelligence, digital advertising has been through an eventful journey to deliver the right content to the right potential customer at the exact time of their needs.

Recently, Adobe did some deep research on all the milestones achieved in digital marketing over the past 25 years and displayed it as a short highlight of the events that took place during that time, and the folks at Grazitti Interactive gave those insights a better visual look in the form of an infographic.

Heres a trip down memory lane of 25 years of digital marketing:

Read next: 2020 will be the year for Marketers and Consumers, heres why

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This infographic highlights how Digital Advertising changed in the past 25 years - Digital Information World

ROMEThe tattoo of a Nazi eagle above a swastika that spans the back of Francesca Rizzi leaves no doubt about her political ideology. The 36-year-old winner of an online beauty pageant in which she was crowned Miss Hitler was one of 19 people across Italy put under formal investigation this week for illegally forming a Nazi political party. Her co-collaborators include a 50-year-old female civil servant named Antonella Pavin from Padua who dubbed herself Hitlers Sergeant Major, and a former mobster from the Calabria Ndrangheta mafia who was allegedly in charge of militant training.

Italys anti-mafia and anti-terrorism forces spent two years investigating the group, which has ties to a number of other far-right clusters across Europe, including the U.K.s Combat 18 and similar hate groups in Portugal, Spain and Greece.

Armed special forces carried out the sting operation dubbed Black Shadows in 16 cities from Palermo to Milan Thursday morning after someone alerted Miss Hitler that police were monitoring the group. Fearful she and others involved might destroy or hide evidence, they swooped in.

What they found was more than troubling. In 16 of the homes searched, they found similar caches of weapons including grenades and semi-automatic rifles and explosives. They also found Nazi and fascist memorabilia adorned with swastikas and the faces of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, alongside militant training texts designed to teach new members how to target Jewish people and gays. Their party motto, Invisible, Silent and Lethal, was scrawled on the material.

Prosecutors who led the investigation from Caltanissetta, Sicily, said Thursday that the suspects were creating an openly pro-Nazi, xenophobic, anti-Semitic group called the Italian National Socialist Workers Party. Pavin posted a notice with the groups logo on her Facebook page in July 2018, saying the group would start military training in August.

Forming a Fascist or Nazi party is against the law in Italy under post-World War II legislation passed in 1952, when Italy was recovering from the destruction caused by Mussolinis decision to follow Hitlers ideology. More than 7,500 Italian Jews died during the Holocaust.

But the resurgence of such hate groups has become increasingly troubling in recent months. In November, 89-year-old Holocaust survivor and senator for life Liliana Segre, was put under armed police protection after receiving more than 200 anti-Semitic messages and death threats a day. Her name reportedly appeared in some of the hate messages found at the homes in Thursdays raids. Last week, new street signs that had just been erected in Rome to honor persecuted Italian Jews were desecrated.

Last summer, police found a cache of weapons including a French-made air-to-air missile in the hands of two Nazi sympathizers in the northern town of Turin. It is not clear if they were part of this particular group.

In November, Segre called for a parliamentary committee to combat hate, which passed even though Italys far-right former Interior Minister Matteo Salvinis Northern League party abstained from the vote.

The arrests this week have uncovered an intricate network of hate across the country, with group members communicating on a closed group called Militia on the Russian social networking service VK. Among the messages were calls for the mass castration and extinction of Jews and gays.

Police say they anticipate more arrests.

The rest is here:
Italy's 'Miss Hitler' Among 19 Investigated for Starting New Nazi Party in Italy - The Daily Beast