Australian Minister for Communications and longstanding member of the far-right pressure group the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is up in arms because Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman tells some home truths

On Tuesday 17 April the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman (TIO) sent out the media release in this post.

That same day the Australian Minister for Communications and longstanding member of the far-right pressure group the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Liberal Senator for Victoria Mitch Fifield, came out fighting after the TIO report showed: complaints about services delivered over the NBN surged by 204% in the second half of 2017, compared with the same period a year earlier…. Fifield said the way the information regarding the 22,827 complaints about services delivered over the NBN was presented in the TIO report, released Tuesday, “could give the impression that responsibility for this figure rests with NBN Co”.

It looks suspiciously like the Minister is now approaching a scheduled review of telecommunications consumer protections and the complaints process with a view to quash an inconvenient truth –  that transfers to the version of the National Broadband Network (NBN) cobbled together by Tony Abbott and MalcolmTurnbull are a dismal failure for far too many Australian businesses and households.

Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman (TIO), media release, 17 April 2018:

Report highlights increase in complaints about landline, mobile and internet services

Australian residential consumers and small businesses made 84,914 complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman in the last six months of 2017 (1 July 2017 to 31 December 2017). In this period, complaints about landline, mobile and internet services, increased by 28.7 per cent compared to the same six month period in 2016.

Publishing the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman’s Six Monthly Update today (Tuesday 17 April, 2018), Ombudsman Judi Jones said “The telecommunications industry in Australia continues to experience significant change. An increasing range of products and services are being offered to consumers, expectations for the quality of phone and internet services are high, and the rollout of the National Broadband Network is changing the way we use telecommunications services.

“However, consumers still seem to be facing the same problems, particularly with their bills and the customer service they receive. Confidence in services being updated or transferred reliably, faulty equipment, and poor service quality were also recorded as key issues. Additionally, the wider issues relating to phone or internet problems such as debt management are concerning.”

Jones added, “Complaints about services delivered over the National Broadband Network continued to increase compared to the same six month period in 2016. This indicates the consumer experience is still not meeting expectations for all. Recent changes to regulation and an increase in our powers to resolve complaints are positive steps that will help improve the consumer experience.”

Highlights for the period 1 July 2017 to 31 December 2017 include:

* 84,914 total complaints were received

* 74,729 complaints (88 per cent) were from residential consumers

* 9,947 complaints (11.7 per cent) were from small businesses

Landline, mobile, internet, multiple services and property

Complaints for the period increased 28.7 per cent compared to the same six month period in 2016.

* 9,447 complaints (11.1 per cent) were recorded about landline phone services

* 24,923 complaints (29.4 per cent) were recorded about mobile phone services

* 23,785 complaints (28 per cent) were recorded about internet services

* 26,112 complaints (30.8 per cent) were recorded about multiple services*

* 647 complaints (0.8 per cent) were recorded about property*

* Charges and fees, unsatisfactory response from the provider (provider response), and poor service quality were the most common issues.

Small Businesses

Between 1 July and 31 December 2017 complaints from small businesses increased 15.6 per cent to 9,947 compared to the same period in 2016.

* Complaints from Small Businesses accounted for 11.7 per cent of total complaints for the period

* 2,178 complaints (21.9 per cent) were recorded about landline phone services

* 2,074 complaints (20.9 per cent) were recorded about mobile phone services

* 1,716 complaints (17.3 per cent) were recorded about internet services

* 3,937 complaints (39.6 per cent) were recorded about multiple services*

* 42 complaints (0.4 per cent) were recorded about property

*       The main issues affecting small businesses were charges and fees, unsatisfactory response from the provider (provider response), and no service.

Complaints by State

All states and territories in Australia saw a growth in complaints in the last six months of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016.

Queensland recorded the highest growth in complaints, an increase of 39.3 per cent, followed by Western Australia with 36.5 per cent.

Complaints by state (in alphabetical order) are as follows:

* Australian Capital Territory made 1,184 complaints, an increase of 11 per cent

* New South Wales made 26,914 complaints, an increase of 27.9 per cent

* Northern Territory made 504 complaints, an increase of 20 per cent

* Queensland made 16,418 complaints, an increase of 39.3 per cent

* South Australia made 6,552 complaints, an increase of 22.7 per cent

* Tasmania made 1,614 complaints, an increase of 33.1 per cent

* Victoria made 23,954 complaints, an increase of 30.5 per cent

* Western Australia made 7,381 complaints, an increase of 36.5 per cent

* The main issues affecting Australian states and territories were charges and fees, unsatisfactory response from the provider (provider response), and poor service quality

Services delivered over the National Broadband Network

Complaints about services delivered over the National Broadband Network increased 203.9 per cent to 22,827 on the same period in 2016.

* 14,055 complaints were recorded about service quality

* 8,757 complaints were recorded about delays in establishing a connection

*       The main issues affecting residential consumers and small businesses were unsatisfactory response from the provider (provider response), poor service quality, and connecting a service (connection/changing provider)

NOTES TO EDITORS

*From 1 July 2017, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman changed the recording of complaints. There are now five complaint service categories: landline phone services, mobile phone services, internet services, multiple services (where the consumer is complaining about more than one phone or internet issue), or a complaint about damage or access to property. The changes mean data will more accurately reflect the description of complaints given by residential consumers and small businesses.  The changes also make it easier to see the issues facing the telecommunication industry, helping providers improve the delivery of phone and internet services. Trend analysis will build over time from the start of this reporting period.

Liberals continue to behave badly in 2018 - Part Four

Just five months after Australian voters signalled their widespread acceptance of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) members of the community by voting for the introduction of same sex marriage, a number people in the Victorian Liberal Party want to turn back the clock in the name of sheer bigotry.

The Age, 14 April 2018:

A motion by a conservative Liberal branch linked to Federal MP Kevin Andrews has called for state legislation allowing health practitioners “to offer counselling out of same sex attraction or gender transitioning to patients who request it''.

With seven months before the Victorian election, it also urges Mr Guy to advocate for laws ensuring “parents and young people are all given full information about the psychological harms of social, medical and surgical gender transitioning”.

It further states that any claims supporting prescribing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender re-assignment surgery as safe and reversible, are in fact "both false and harmful".

The motion was drafted by the Victorian Liberal Party’s Menzies-Warrandyte branch and will be one of dozens debated when rank-and-file delegates meet on April 28 and 29 for the party’s annual state council meeting….

Other motions to be debated at state council include:

* Calls for the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act to re-insert "man" and "woman" in the place of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity". The aim is that a person will define their gender as either male or female, according to their biological and reproductive function.

* Calls to ban the Safe Schools program from Victorian schools and any other curriculum teaching a person's gender may be different from their biological sex or that people can transition.

On 16 April 2018 it was reported that the 'gay conversion therapy' motion along with those other nasty motions were removed from the agenda for the Liberal's annual state council meeting - apparently the party's state president didn't like the negative publicity these motions was gathering ahead of the November 2018 Victorian state election.

More reports showing that 'trickle up' economics is at work in Australia

Here is just a little of what Liberal & National party members - and their governments - refuse to understand as they support a far-right economic platform which is built on a reduction in corporate tax rates, high business profits and large management salaries in conjunction with employee wage supression, erosion of workers' rights, an increase in employment insecurity based on casual, part-time and/or employees as sham contractors and, further restrictions on eligibility for a number of basic welfare payments.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 2018:

Last year, as the government prepared another round of welfare crackdowns, Minister Michaelia Cash said she expects “that those who can work should work and our welfare system should be there as a genuine safety net, not as something that people can choose to fund their lifestyle.”

The subtext was clear – those who need help are a drain on the rest of us.

This rhetoric is familiar, but it is wrong. It is the wealthiest Australians who enjoy the most support.

Research commissioned by Anglicare Australia shows that each year, a staggering $68 billion is spent keeping the wealthiest households wealthy. That is greater than the cost of Newstart, disability support, the age pension, or any other single welfare group.

The Cost of Privilege report, prepared by Per Capita, models four household types to show how these concessions and tax breaks work. One of the couples we modelled, Tim and Michelle, own their own home. They have two children in private schools, top health insurance, and two investment properties. Michelle doesn’t work, and Tim runs a small business. Each year, Tim and Michelle get $99,708 in concessions from the taxpayer, or $1917 per week. That is well over twice as much as a couple with two children on Newstart, and nearly three times as much as a family with one parent on the Disability Support Pension. Tim and Michelle do this by getting concessions on their superannuation, negatively gearing their investment properties to minimise their taxable income, and getting tax breaks for private schools and private health insurance. They also get generous Capital Gains Tax exemptions.

Each year, thousands of Australia's wealthiest households profit from these loopholes and subsidies. Our report finds that tax exemptions on private healthcare and education for the wealthiest 20 per cent cost more than $3 billion a year. 

Superannuation concessions to them cost over $20 billion a year, and their Capital Gains Tax exemptions cost an astonishing $40 billion a year. Compare that to the annual cost of Newstart, which comes in at just under $11 billion a year.

Importantly, nothing that Tim and Michelle are doing is wrong or illegal. This is not a broken system. It is a system working exactly the way it was designed to work, supporting the wealthiest at the expense of the rest of us.

These numbers tell us that something has gone badly wrong. The eighties were the decade of trickle-down economics, where taxes were cut for the richest with the promise that everyone else would soon feel the benefits. But now it’s worse – we’re in an era of trickle-up economics where subsidies, tax breaks and concessions for the richest are paid for by everyone else.....

Anglicare Australia, 26 March 2018:

Cost of Privilege Report (.pdf)

Cost of Privilege - overview (.pdf)

Cost of Privilege - households (.pdf)

ABC News, 15 April 2018:

One in every five Australian children has gone hungry in the past 12 months according to a new report, with some even resorting to chewing paper to try to feel full.

The survey of 1,000 parents commissioned by Foodbank shows 22 per cent of Australian children under the age of 15 live in a household that has ran out of food at some stage over the past year.

One in five kids affected go to school without eating breakfast at least once a week, while one in 10 go a whole day at least once a week without eating anything at all.

"I think that's a very sad indictment on us as a society," said Foodbank Victoria chief executive Dave McNamara…..

"Some kids were eating paper. Their parents had told them 'There's not enough food, if you get hungry you'll need to chew paper.'"

"This isn't made up. This is a story we heard setting up one of our school breakfast programs down in Lakes Entrance, which is a beautiful part of the country."

"No-one's spared. It's not people on the street; it's people in your street. It's in every community across Australia."

Foodbank Victoria graphic below based on its Rumbling Tummies Report, April 2018:

Fair Work Ombudsman begins another weary audit which will inevitably discover more employers behaving like criminals

Despite wage growth falling to record lows last year, the Australian Minister for Jobs and Innovation WA Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash continues to talk down any need for a substantial national minimum wage increase and praises the good will of employers big and small.

It seems she just refuses to accpet the evidence of her own eyes.......

The Guardian, 11 April 2018:

On Wednesday the Fair Work Ombudsman announced an audit targeting the fast food, restaurant and cafe sector which will penalise businesses exploiting vulnerable workers, including students, casual staff and immigrants.

It follows numerous high-profile cases of workers being exploited, including a cook who was employed by Bar Coluzzi in Sydney on a 457 skilled worker visa who was told by her boss to repay $13,952 of her wages to cover tax and superannuation contributions. She was also working excessive unpaid overtime.

The convenience story chain 7-Eleven was found by a Senate inquiry to have been forcing workers to go to ATMs to withdraw and pay back wages. The panel investigating 7-Eleven told the inquiry it had made 188 determinations that 7-Eleven was liable to pay workers a total of $4.36m, with workers being underpaid an average of $23,000 each.

A Fair Work Ombudsman spokesman told Guardian Australia that intelligence from a range of sources found failing to pay the correct hourly base, penalty and overtime rates, and ignoring record-keeping and payslip requirements were consistent issues.

In 2016–17, 44% of the hospitality workers assisted by the ombudsman to resolve workplace disputes were aged under 26, and 31% were visa holders. Despite the hospitality industry employing around 7% of Australia’s workforce, it accounted for the highest number (17%) of disputes. It was also the industry with the highest number of anonymous reports received (36%), infringement notices issued (39%) and court actions commenced (27%).

While workers under the age of 25 account for about 15% of the Australian working population, they were involved in 28% of workplace disputes the ombudsman took on in 2017. Migrant workers make up 6% of the Australian workforce, however 18% of workplace disputes involved a visa holder.

The ombudsman has begun auditing 1,000 businesses across the country and investigators will check the time and wage records of randomly selected businesses, especially those employing a large numbers of vulnerable workers. Companies involved in serious contraventions will face penalties of up to $630,000 per contravention. The maximum penalty for individuals is now $126,000 per contravention. Failing to keep employee records or issue pay slips attracts a penalty up to $63,000 for a company and $12,600 for an individual.

Yamba basks in the reflected glow of gold

Area News, 14 April 2018:

Cousins Donna Urquhart (right) and Cameron Pilley have won gold in the mixed doubles squash.

They already shared family, a hometown and their childhoods - but now cousins Donna Urquhart and Cameron Pilley share a mixed doubles squash title at the Commonwealth Games.

Urquhart and Pilley won gold after defeating Indian pair Dipika Pallikal Karthik and Saurav Ghosal on the Gold Coast on Saturday.

Both a product of Yamba in northern NSW, the Australian duo grew up together but only began dreaming of sharing a home gold after competing as a doubles pairing last year.

"I watched Cameron become a professional player while I was still at school but I knew that's what I wanted to do from seeing him do it," a speechless Urquhart said.

"It wasn't until later on that we ended up playing together, but it's worked out alright."

Dozens of friends and family had travelled up for the Games, while Pilley also had a group of ten in-laws fly all the way from his wife's home in Denmark as part of a capacity Oxenford Studios crowd.

It is the third Commonwealth gold of his career, having won doubles in Delhi and Glasgow.

"Every other gold I've won is so special but to play in front of such a great Aussie crowd, we never get the opportunity to," Pilley said.

"To do it in front of friends and family that never get to see you play, and we walk away with a gold medal, it makes it even better.".....

In Febuary-March 2018 there were 63 Notifiable Data Breaches in Australia involving the personal information of up to 341,849 individuals

In the 2016–17 financial year, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) reported that it received 114 data breach notifications on a voluntary basis.

On 22 February the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme came into force.

Between 22 February and 31 March 2018 there were 63 mandatory notifiable data breaches reported involving the personal information of up to est. 341,849 individuals, with 55 of these breaches reported in March alone.

Of these breaches:

24 were the result of criminal or malicious attack;

32 were the result of human error;

2 were system fault; and

1 was classified as “Other”.

The type of personal information involved in the data breaches:

Three of these data breaches involved the personal information of between 10,000 and 999,999 people in each instance.

At least 15 of the 63 data breached involved personal information held by “health service providers”. Health service providers are considered to be any organisation that provides a health service and holds health information.

Every individual whose personal information was breached was supposed to be notified by the entity holding their information, however the OAIC Quarterly Statistics Report: January 2018 - March 2018 did not specifically state that this had occurred. 

One of those asssociated with the company behind the second push for a Yamba Mega Port allegedly used an alias when giving sworn evidence before a NSW parliamentray committee

An open secret finally hit the headline this month......

The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 April 2018:

Disgraced former senior tax official Nick Petroulias gave sworn evidence to a parliamentary inquiry under a fake name, it has been alleged in State Parliament - and seven MPs sitting across the table never twigged.

The Greens are now demanding a formal inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the appearance at the inquiry into Crown land, held in August 2016.

Mr Petroulias' face was splashed across the country's media about eight years earlier, when he was imprisoned for corrupt conduct during his stint as assistant tax commissioner.

But in Parliament on Thursday, Greens MP David Shoebridge alleged that Mr Petroulias used the alias "Nicholas Peterson" to give sworn evidence before the upper house committee, of which Mr Shoebridge was a member.

If the allegations are proven, it will mean Mr Petroulias was able to pull the wool over the eyes of seven politicians, including inquiry chair Paul Green of the Christian Democrats.

Mr Shoebridge pointed out that in his verdict handed down in 2008, Justice Peter Johnson found Mr Petroulias had refused to acknowledge his "clear and gross wrongdoing" and "clear impropriety and deceit".

The standing committee was tasked with looking at a range of issues relating to Crown land in NSW, including Aboriginal involvement in its management.

"Mr Peterson" appeared before the committee with three other men who all identified as members of an organisation called "United Land Councils".

The organisation, they explained, was focused on the economic development of Aboriginal land by linking land councils across Australia and attracting "large-scale international and domestic investment".

Described as the organisation's "strategy and legals executive", Mr Peterson gave evidence about a property deal he was working up with an Aboriginal land council near Newcastle.

The same deal was the subject of a Fairfax Media special investigation last year. It is now being probed by the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which has been told that Mr Petroulias played a "central role" in the transaction.

At the inquiry, Liberal MP Catherine Cusack questioned Mr Peterson about his relationship to the land council, asking whether it was a "mediation role".

"Yes, we are trying to bring them together to try to get it on a massive scale," he said.

"Could you come back to us on notice as to which land councils in NSW are part of your organisation?" asked Liberal MP Scott Farlow.

"Sure," Mr Peterson replied.

The ICAC inquiry has separately heard that Mr Petroulias has gone by several names - including Nicholas Piers, Pearson and Peterson - since his release from prison.

Fairfax Media obtained bankruptcy forms from 2015 in which he described himself as a "disabled pensioner", with his debts estimated at an eye-watering $104 million.

It is getting harder and harder to believe Facebook Inc's denials of intentional harm

The fact that Facebook Inc. re-named the street in which it is headquartered "1 Hacker Way" should have been a clue to this social media giant's business ethos but it obviously didn't register with national governments and everyday Internet users. 

By the time All tech reported this on 11 November 2016 we were all a little more informed, but Facebook was still trying to pull the wool over our eyes:

Mark Zuckerberg says the notion that fake news influenced the U.S. presidential election is "a pretty crazy idea."

The Facebook CEO is finding himself in a unique position in this election cycle. Many news organizations have come under fire for their coverage of the campaign. Now Facebook is getting it too, as a modern media company that does not vet fake news from its News Feed and that, critics argue, allows users to stay in information bubbles that reinforce existing prejudices.

Zuckerberg took both these criticisms head-on yesterday, at a conference called Techonomy. (You can find the full interview on his Facebook feed.)

He says hoaxes existed before his platform was created. They aren't new, and people who say misinformation is why Donald Trump won simply do not get it. "There's a profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason why someone could have voted the way that they did is because they saw some fake news," Zuckerberg says.

He also says his company has studied fake news and found it's a "very small volume" of the content on Facebook. He did not specify if that content is more or less viral or impactful than other information.

Denials of a dangerously lax attitude to risk in Facebook Inc.'s business model continued to be made as more information surfaced......

BuzzFeed, 30 March 2018

The Age, 31 March 2018:

In a 2016 employee memo that was leaked this week, a Facebook executive defended the company's questionable data mining practices and championed the growth of social media at any cost - apparently even death.

Users in the US sue Facebook for not protecting personal data of the 50 million social network account owners whose data ended up at the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

"Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies," company vice president Andrew Bosworth wrote in the memo, according to BuzzFeed News, which published it Thursday. "Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good."….

Bosworth, who oversaw Facebook's advertising and business platform at the time and is now in charge of the company's virtual reality department, has acknowledged writing the message but said he intended only to start a debate. "I didn't agree with it even when I wrote it," he wrote on Twitter after BuzzFeed published its report.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who is already facing a public relations crisis over accusations that the company mishandled millions of users' private data, disavowed the memo.

"Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things," Zuckerberg said in a statement, using Bosworth's nickname. "This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. We've never believed the ends justify the means."…….

The 418-word memo is framed around Zuckerberg's often-stated mission to connect the entire world through Facebook, which Bosworth cites as the company's ultimate and unchangeable goal - whether those connections let users fall in love, attack each other or, in the memo's most extreme example, coordinate a terrorist attack.

"That's why all the work we do in growth is justified," Bosworth wrote. "All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it."

BuzzFeed noted that the memo was written almost immediately after a man was shot to death while streaming live video of himself with Facebook Live, and a few days before a Palestinian teenager was accused of killing an Israeli girl after praising terrorists on Facebook.

These deaths were a prelude to a string of other gruesome and violent incidents that appeared in videos and live streams on the social network. A man posted a Facebook video of himself killing someone last April. A month later, a man soaked himself in kerosene, lit himself on fire and used Facebook Live to stream video of his self-immolation.

Then we saw Zuckerberg donning a suit as he did the rounds in Washington DC. Appearing before a Joint Senate Committees on the Judiciary & Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s  Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data hearing and a House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee's Facebook: Transparency and Use of Consumer Data hearing.

There was an expectation that during these hearings Zuckerberg would reveal the full extent of Facebook's data collection and retention, as well as explain why he allowed third party apps to collect data without the knowledge and/or fully informed consent of up to est, 2 billion Facebook users.

His disingenuous witness statement published ahead of his appearances contains this gem:

Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring.....

But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here. So now we have to go through every part of our relationship with people and make sure we’re taking a broad enough view of our responsibility.

However, if one reads through the full witness statement it is clear that Facebook Inc. is not responding out of a genuine realisation of its ethical failures or wrongdoing, but is essentially responding to the sharp fall in its stock value which began last month.

It clearly intends to still allow third party apps access to Facebook user accounts and there is no guarantee that the amount of personal data that can be extracted by these apps will be limited to a digital version of 'name, rank and serial number' or that Facebook users will have given fully-informed consent for this data extraction.

This reading of Facebook Inc.'s intentions was reinforced by Mark Zuckerberg testimony before both the Senate and House committees.

He came obviously rehearsed by lawyers and tightly scripted......

Time Magazine, Facebook aide closing notes during hearing recess,11 April 2018

Brief summary of Mark Zuckerber notes here.

Although in his spoken testimony Zuckerberg commenced with yet another apology, in my opinion he frequently dissembled, mislead, misdirected, contradicted a number of his own and Facebook management's public previous statements, lied by omission and sometimes almost defiantly told what appeared to be bald-faced lies.

NOTE: Readers can form their own opinion of Zuckerberg's testimony courtesy of The Washington Post at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/10/transcript-of-mark-zuckerbergs-senate-hearing/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.032d3cf2a0e8 
& https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/11/transcript-of-zuckerbergs-appearance-before-house-committee/?utm_term=.cd5f1228fec4.

However Facebook Inc. is not just relying on its founder and CEO's recent testimony to ward of further regulation of its businss practices.

Since 2011 Facebook Inc. has had a registered Political Action Commttee (PAC) which has donated to the 2012, 2014, and 2016 US election campaigns. 

As well as in-house and paid lobbyists who spent in total US$11.5 million in 2017 alone fighting against further Internet regulations including any proposed strengthening of privacy protections. Add that to the company's US$8.6M lobbying spend in 2016, $9.8M in 2015, $9.3M in 2014, $6.4M in 2013, $3.8M in 2012, $1.3M in 2011, $351,390 in 2010 and $207,878 in 2009 and one can see that Facebook Inc. is increasingly determined to have the ear of US lawmakers.

Although how successful the social media giant's lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill will be in 2018, it is clear that in has been partially successful in protecting the market value of its shares.

To date this year Facebook Inc.'s ordinary share price has gone from a closing high of US$193.09 (01.02.18) to a low of $152.22 (27.03.18) in the wake of revelations about the company's business practices and, then gradually climbed over the course of 17 days by $12.3 to close at $164.52 (13.03.18), according to Yahoo! Finance.

As for the number of active Facebook users - only time will tell if current figures hold over time. With trust in Facebook Inc. at a new low it will not be surprising to find the number of accounts showing daily activity falling over time as users become more wary of this platform.

Tweets of the Week

I guess they did say 'starting on April 9', so I guess anytime between now and the entire future https://t.co/UI0TFgjnog pic.twitter.com/JIE5iIryaU

— Ketan Joshi (@KetanJ0) April 10, 2018

PLZ RT: Yamba NSW has only one dedicated taxi rank. In afternoon 10.4.18 a white Range Rover NSW DKC06Y pulled into that rank & proceed to load business files. From arrogance displayed by blonde driver it seems they were your Yamba staff @rainehorne #lawbreakingcanbecomesahabit

— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) April 10, 2018

Quotes of the Week

“We have the right to store a copy of your  [personal e-health] record and we are the only ones in the market to have this level 4 certification.”  [Romain Bonjean, co-founder Tyde, app developer registered portal operator with Australian Government Digital Health Agency & My Health Record, quoted in the Australian Financial Review on 6 April 2018]

“Life is short and shorter for smokers. Just legalise vaping.”  [Andrew Laming MP, Dissenting Report, submitted to Australian HoR Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport, March 2018]

“When we kick their ass they all like to claim we’re drunk. I’ve been hanging out getting ready to ram a hot poker up David Hogg’s ass. Busy working; preparing.”  [St. Louis radio host Jamie Allman threatening anti-gun activist & highschool student David Hogg, as reported by Snopes, 9 April 2018]

“They promised us a grilling. We got PR.”  [UK journalist Carole Cadwalladr tweeting about US Senate hearing at which Facebook founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on 10 March 2018]

“I start to wonder if, in fact, how the developers mine money for Facebook has become a bit of a mystery to Zuck.”  [IT journalist Richard Chirgwin opining on Facebook founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter, 12 April 2018]