Google Pledges to Support Business Activities in Saudi Arabia

 The brand logo of Alphabet Inc's Google is seen outside its
office in Beijing. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
The brand logo of Alphabet Inc's Google is seen outside its office in Beijing. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
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Google Pledges to Support Business Activities in Saudi Arabia

 The brand logo of Alphabet Inc's Google is seen outside its
office in Beijing. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
The brand logo of Alphabet Inc's Google is seen outside its office in Beijing. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

The business sector has witnessed a challenging phase during the covid-19 pandemic, and many small businesses and individuals have been affected.

Google unveiled Wednesday an initiative to hasten the economic recovery of the MENA region through digital transformation. The Grow Stronger with Google program will offer tools, training and financial grants worth more than $13 million to empower local businesses and jobseekers, with a special focus in Saudi Arabia on supporting business activities in the fields of retail, tourism, and entrepreneurship.

According to the Arab Monetary fund, around six million jobs are at risk in the Arab world, and the most available vacancies in the Kingdom require applied digital skills.

As part of its regional program, Google pledges to help more than one million people and businesses in the MENA region to learn digital skills and grow their businesses by the end of 2021. The company will provide grants from Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm, and loans worth $4 million, as well as grants and advertising credits of more than $9 million for governments and businesses.

Asharq Al-Awsat attended a special digital meeting with Lino Kataruzzi, general manager of Google in MENA, in which he explained the reasons why Google launched this project, the targeted groups, and how digital opportunities can contribute to a stronger return of people, business activities, and societies in Saudi Arabia and the region.

He stressed that digital tools have become a mean of saving many people during the crisis, and that Google helps people acquire new skills, find jobs, and enhance the presence of commercial activities on the Internet, especially those working in the areas of retail and tourism, because they are most affected by the crisis.

He also stressed that Google is optimistic about the future of the region, and has great confidence that cooperation with local partners will accelerate the pace of economic recovery by taking advantage of digital transformation.

The "Go Strong with Google" program in Saudi Arabia includes 3 main areas, which are digital and cloud skills training, business guidance and direction, and digitization of local business activities.

As for the first area, Google will ink partnerships with local authorities, such as the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (the Digital Giving Initiative), the Ministry of Tourism and Wadi Makkah, through which it will provide training on digital marketing to more than 50,000 students and commercial activities in the Kingdom, and will host digital training for technology companies.

As for the second area (mentoring and directing business activities), Google will launch the Google for Startups Accelerator program to support local entrepreneurs, so that the first group will include up to 15 startups from the region to participate in a 3-month program that provides guidance, direction and assistance from expert advisors. The company will also provide $1.1 million in grants from Google.org to Mercy Corps, the Arab Tourism Organization, and Youth Business International to direct business activities and entrepreneurs across the region.

The third area (digitizing local commercial activities in Saudi Arabia) includes the launch of the Market Finder service to help local businesses identify new markets and acquire global customers. It will also grant all retailers in Saudi Arabia, whether they are Google advertisers or not, the right to access the brand Google Shopping tab to list their products at no cost, which helps them communicate with more customers, in addition to listing 100,000 local businesses in Saudi Arabia on "My Business on Google" and providing the owners of these businesses with digital skills in partnership with Saudi Post.

The listing will also include 50,000 companies in the UAE in partnership with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Google has trained 300,000 students, handicraft artists and commercial activities on digital marketing in the region in partnership with local authorities and institutions, such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Egyptian Federation of Tourist Chambers, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (the Digital Giving Initiative), the Ministry of Tourism in Saudi Arabia, the Nama Foundation for the Advancement of Women, and the Mohammed bin Rashid Foundation for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises in the UAE, in addition to supporting thousands of small businesses with limited resources by providing financial loans worth $3 million in cooperation with the Kiva Foundation, a digital platform to connect lenders and borrowers around the world.

In 2018, the company announced the launch of "Skills from Google," a training program on digital skills for Arabic speakers, from which about one million Arab youth have so far benefited.

You can visit the “Go big with Google” program at grow.google-intl-mena.



Rise in 'Harmful Content' Since Meta Policy Rollbacks, Survey Shows

The logo of Meta is seen at the entrance of the company's temporary stand ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland January 18, 2025. (Reuters)
The logo of Meta is seen at the entrance of the company's temporary stand ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland January 18, 2025. (Reuters)
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Rise in 'Harmful Content' Since Meta Policy Rollbacks, Survey Shows

The logo of Meta is seen at the entrance of the company's temporary stand ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland January 18, 2025. (Reuters)
The logo of Meta is seen at the entrance of the company's temporary stand ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland January 18, 2025. (Reuters)

Harmful content including hate speech has surged across Meta's platforms since the company ended third-party fact-checking in the United States and eased moderation policies, a survey showed Monday.

The survey of around 7,000 active users on Instagram, Facebook and Threads comes after the Palo Alto company ditched US fact-checkers in January and turned over the task of debunking falsehoods to ordinary users under a model known as "Community Notes," popularized by X.

The decision was widely seen as an attempt to appease President Donald Trump's new administration, whose conservative support base has long complained that fact-checking on tech platforms was a way to curtail free speech and censor right-wing content.

Meta also rolled back restrictions around topics such as gender and sexual identity. The tech giant's updated community guidelines said its platforms would permit users to accuse people of "mental illness" or "abnormality" based on their gender or sexual orientation.

"These policy shifts signified a dramatic reversal of content moderation standards the company had built over nearly a decade," said the survey published by digital and human rights groups including UltraViolet, GLAAD, and All Out.

"Among our survey population of approximately 7,000 active users, we found stark evidence of increased harmful content, decreased freedom of expression, and increased self-censorship".

One in six respondents in the survey reported being the victim of some form of gender-based or sexual violence on Meta platforms, while 66 percent said they had witnessed harmful content such as hateful or violent material.

Ninety-two percent of surveyed users said they were concerned about increasing harmful content and felt "less protected from being exposed to or targeted by" such material on Meta's platforms.

Seventy-seven percent of respondents described feeling "less safe" expressing themselves freely.

The company declined to comment on the survey.

In its most recent quarterly report, published in May, Meta insisted that the changes in January had left a minimal impact.

"Following the changes announced in January we've cut enforcement mistakes in the US in half, while during that same time period the low prevalence of violating content on the platform remained largely unchanged for most problem areas," the report said.

But the groups behind the survey insisted that the report did not reflect users' experiences of targeted hate and harassment.

"Social media is not just a place we 'go' anymore. It's a place we live, work, and play. That's why it's more crucial than ever to ensure that all people can safely access these spaces and freely express themselves without fear of retribution," Jenna Sherman, campaign director at UltraViolet, told AFP.

"But after helping to set a standard for content moderation online for nearly a decade, (chief executive) Mark Zuckerberg decided to move his company backwards, abandoning vulnerable users in the process.

"Facebook and Instagram already had an equity problem. Now, it's out of control," Sherman added.

The groups implored Meta to hire an independent third party to "formally analyze changes in harmful content facilitated by the policy changes" made in January, and for the tech giant to swiftly reinstate the content moderation standards that were in place earlier.

The International Fact-Checking Network has previously warned of devastating consequences if Meta broadens its policy shift related to fact-checkers beyond US borders to the company's programs covering more than 100 countries.

AFP currently works in 26 languages with Meta's fact-checking program, including in Asia, Latin America, and the European Union.