Free Republic

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A judge in southern Iran has ordered Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear in court to answer complaints by individuals who say Facebook-owned applications Instagram and Whatsapp violate their privacy, semiofficial news agency ISNA reported Tuesday. It quoted Ruhollah Momen Nasab, an official with the paramilitary Basij force, as saying that the judge also ordered the two apps blocked. It is highly unlikely that Zuckerberg would appear in an Iranian court since there is no extradition treaty between Iran and the United States. Some Iranian courts have in recent years issued similar rulings that...

This year, Facebook purchased the mobile-messaging application WhatsApp for $19 billion, or about $350 million per employee and $40 per user, only some of whom even pay the $1 annual fee for the advertisement-free platform. But what was perhaps most remarkable about Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp was that the start-up was making any money in the first place. In recent years, Facebook has shelled out 10-figure sums for Instagram and the virtual-reality headset maker Oculus V.R., both of which had scant or no revenue. Ditto for the safe-sexting-enabler Snapchat, which reportedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Mark Zuckerberg....

The nation’s newest billionaire is a rags-to-riches success story who escaped communist Ukraine as a teen and lived on food stamps in the United States before hitting it big with a messaging app that has become the hottest thing in social media. Meet Jan Koum, the 37-year-old college dropout who, with his partner and mentor, Brian Acton, just sold their startup, WhatsApp, to Facebook for $19 billion in cash and stock. Koum is now worth $6.8 billion. It’s a long way from the government-assisted, two-bedroom apartment in Mountain View, Calif., where he came of age with his mom, and even...

A study of how older teenagers use social media has found that Facebook is “not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried” and is being replaced by simpler social networks such as Twitter and Snapchat, an expert has claimed. Young people now see the site as “uncool” and keep their profiles live purely to stay in touch with older relations, among whom it remains popular. Prof Daniel Miller of University College London, an anthropologist who worked on the European Union-funded research, wrote in an article for the academic news website The Conversation: “Mostly they feel embarrassed even...

Many Israelis were scandalized when documents released by Edward Snowden revealed that their best friend, America, had in 2009 targeted a former prime minister and defense minister for secret surveillance. But their political leaders were not surprised. For years, the United States has been running a complex eavesdropping and surveillance web to spy on friends and foes alike, including Israel. Satellites gather and transmit data to command centers, “informers” operate in the field and the most fertile sources of all are not human but the instruments which bug cell phones, tablets and social networks. The US National Security Agency, NSA,...