Mediaboss Marketing

Social Networking Software Market

The detailed market intelligence report on the Social Networking Software marketapplies the best of both primary and secondary research to weighs upon the competitive landscape and the prominent market players expected to dominate the Social Networking Software market for the forecast period, 2019 2026. The study not only scans through the company profile of the major vendors but also analyses their winning strategies to give business owners, stakeholders and field marketing personnel a competitive edge over others operating in the same space. A detailed evaluation of the major events such as acquisition and mergers, collaborations, product launches, new entrants, and technology advancements offer a complete overview of what the future of the Social Networking Software market will be like in the years to come.

We provide you a thoroughly inspected Competitive Analysis against the global landscape by looking at our Sample Report: https://www.marketexpertz.com/sample-enquiry-form/43587

The report highlights the key players and manufacturers and the latest strategies including new product launches, partnerships, joint ventures, technology, segmentation in terms of region and industry competition, profit and loss ratio, and investment ideas. A precise evaluation of effective manufacturing techniques, advertisement techniques, market share size, growth rate, size, revenue, sales and value chain analysis.

Key Competitors of the Global Social Networking Software Market are:

HivebriteZohoeXoSprout SocialYammermooSocialMangoAppsJive SoftwareHoneyIBM

Major Product Types of Social Networking Software covered are:

Type 1

Type 2

Type 3

Others.

Major Applications of Social Networking Software covered are:

PC TerminalMobile Terminal

Market segment by Region/Country including:

North America (United States, Canada, Mexico)South America ( Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile)Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, Korea)Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy)Middle East Africa (Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran) And More.

Have specific requirements for the Social Networking Software market report? Consult with our Industry Expert regarding the coverage of the report @ https://www.marketexpertz.com/checkout-form/43587

The study works as a boon for all business owners trying to identify the exact size of the target audience in a specific geographic location. Social Networking Software enables entrepreneurs to determine the regional market for their business expansion. The study answers the questions below:

Global Social Networking Software Market Overview:

The global demand for Social Networking Software has undergone a steady rise in the past and is predicted to do so for the next few years. The report gives an analysis of the historical data and the trends observed to identify the major driving factors behind the growth of the business. The regions included in the analysis are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This study offers a comprehensive perception of the global economy and the competitive landscape to give the investors all the vital business information. Further, it also provides expert insights to help the reader work on their competitive strategy and make better executive decisions.

The research provides answers to the following key questions:

Continued here:
Global Social Networking Software Market Size and Prediction by Leading Manufacturers According to Its Application and Types Till 2026 - Alpha News...

The latest Cyber Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland for the years 2019-2024 mentioned disinformation on the web only once. Two sentences are devoted to defence against disinformation and manipulative actions, in one of the numerous specific objectives. At the same time, it was noted that the Polish government thinks that a free and open Internet is an important element in the functioning of modern society.

It is true that we need a free Internet, but it cannot mean arbitrariness and anarchy. We need clearly defined rules of using the Internet and system thinking about information space. Without them, we are, also as a state, fully dependent on the ways in which the networks can be used by others.

It is not about restricting freedom of expression. If it is possible to lay down rules in the legal codes for using this freedom in such a way that it does not affect the rights of other people, it is all the more possible to lay down rules for using the networks that will increase the security of users, while at the same time ensuring freedom of expression for them. This is also necessary to protect democracy.

Disinformation in Poland is still talked about little, and certainly, there is no question of a systemic approach to this threat. During the last parliamentary elections, this subject did not appear on the agenda of any party, although research shows unequivocally that Poles are afraid of network manipulation. In 2018, the EUs Eurobarometer published a survey which shows that as many as 66 per cent of Poles are afraid of disinformation. Also, 57 per cent believe that the most serious threat to the election results comes from the possibility of cyberattacks, and 55 per cent are afraid of the influence of external entities or even criminal groups.

Nevertheless, the only agreement concluded so far between the Polish government and the most popular social media platform in Poland (i.e. Facebook) only concerns the creation of an additional appeal option for users who have been blocked by FB. Now, users can use the help of a special point in the Ministry of Digitisation in case of such a blockade. Unfortunately, one year after the signing of the agreement, it is not clear how this point works, how many times the interventions were undertaken, whether they were successful journalists from many media tried to obtain such data in the Ministry, but so far without success.

Only one case of successful intervention is known, said Deputy Minister of Digitisation Adam Andruszkiewicz. Well, thanks to the ministerial assistance, the fan page Sebizm Osiedlowo-Radykalny was unblocked. Today, it functions as Sebizm Osiedlowa Dilerka Prawdy (ed. Housing Estate Dealer of Truth). It is a fan page that posts radically ironic, often offensive comments on the political situation. Posts on this fan page are useful to the ruling party in Poland, but not friendly to the Polish opposition.

The activity of the Polish government in this area points to the priorities of the current authorities. Unfortunately, the fight against disinformation is not one of them. A different approach was presented by the European Commission, which, before the European Parliament (EP) elections, realised the threat of external influence and negotiated with social platforms so intensively that they applied new rules and tools.

In April 2019. Facebook has made it compulsory to label political advertisements and created an advertising library (Ad Library) which displays all paid posts on political, social and environmental issues, including details of who finances them. Although there are many voices saying that the advertising library is more about creating appearances of advertising transparency than real transparency, we know little about it.

We can see, for example, how much political parties spend on online advertising. Facebook earned almost 20 million euros on the campaign to the European Parliament in the whole Union. Advertisements in Poland cost less than 450,000 euros, i.e. almost 2 million zlotys. At that time, the Confederation Liberty and Independence allocated the highest amount of any central party campaign in Poland 184.4 thousand zlotys to Facebook advertising, closely followed by the European Coalition in the ranking 140 thousand zlotys. PiS spent only 43,000 zlotys on Facebook, while it spent 386,000 zlotys on Google (including YouTube).

Greater advertising expenditure was incurred by politicians during the autumn campaign for the parliamentary elections. Civic Coalition spent a record-breaking 1.6 million zlotys on Facebook alone and another several hundred thousand zlotys on Google advertising.

Thanks to the principle of marking political advertisements, we also know who in Poland tried not to comply with it and these are cases that make us think. In the EP campaign, the first one after the introduction of the new regulations, at the beginning a lot of candidates had problems with the proper marking of posts.

However, the candidate of the Law and Justice party, now an MEP, and then Deputy Minister of Justice Patryk Jaki, bypassed the new rules many times. His promoted posts did not have any indication that they were a form of political advertising. Also, the posts were prepared in such a way that they did not contain any of the keywords: elections, voting, list, campaign or candidate based on which the Facebook algorithm could recognise the post concerning politics. You could only see a picture of the politician, his name and surname and the number with which he stood as a candidate.

Only after the case was publicised and reported to Facebook, after some time the platform reacted and started blocking unmarked advertisements, which finally forced the politician (or rather the people involved in his advertisement) to add a proper label to the posts.

For three months, from July to September 2019, the official fan page of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister also violated Facebook regulations, placing advertisements promoting the No personal income tax for young people campaign without a label. By 18 September, when the case was publicised, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister spent 22 thousand zlotys on this promotion. This time the advertisements were blocked by the FB from the hill for the lack of a proper label, which did not prevent the fan page users from publishing further paid posts, still without signs.

It is hard to guess where the reluctance to add a label came from. Undoubtedly the money for this purpose came from an obvious source, i.e. the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and such information finally appeared in the advertisements when the matter became public.

Perhaps in both cases Patryk Jakis candidacy and fan pages action the situation was caused only by the ignorance of the people responsible for advertising on the web, but it is impossible not to notice that the accounts violating these Facebook rules, which (although only to a minimum) are to regulate the political advertising market and prevent external influence, were accounts belonging to representatives of the Polish authorities: the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and the Deputy Minister of Justice.

If it was supposed to be a sign of freedom on the net, it was apparent. Facebook administrators could at any time block not only advertising but also the accounts themselves.

It is neither the users nor the state, who have sovereignty over information, but social networking platforms: Facebook, Google, Twitter. They are the ones who make the decisions concerning the information space in a given country, and they also decide whether and how to apply sanctions against those who violate the rules.

At the same time, they are commercial entities, i.e. profit-oriented. Although, after the high-profile data sharing scandals, these companies have clearly stated that they represent democratic values, no rational thinker can count on them to put democracy, human rights and the protection of users personal data above their profits. Unless they are forced to do so by law.

For such a right to be established, politicians must make a great deal of effort, because it is they who must take on the obligation to establish rules for citizens participation in the information space.

This understanding has already appeared both in NATO and in the European Union, and the first steps are being taken. I would like to stress once again: this is not about blocking freedom of expression or introducing censorship, but as in the real world about establishing principles for the legal use of information space.

The resolution adopted in October by the new European Parliament shows that there is a growing awareness at European level that the lack of such principles is a real threat to democracy. In the resolution MEPs called, among others, for making the fight against disinformation a key goal of foreign policy and for the preparation of possible legislative actions, which will force on social platforms both the marking of content disseminated by bots and the liquidation of accounts of people involved in illegal activities. With these positions, the EP expresses the need to protect online democracy, just as it is protected in the real world.

Interestingly, this resolution was voted for, among others, by MEPs from the Law and Justice Party, which governs Poland. It was adopted on 10October. Less than two weeks later, the Law and Justice government adopted a national Cybersecurity Strategy for the next five years, in which two sentences were devoted to protection against manipulation and disinformation.

Social networking platforms themselves are also aware that at least to some extent they need to adapt to the expectations of political authorities. In the United States, in particular, this is a hot topic today. It is known that the Kremlin influenced the US presidential election of 2016 and there is widespread concern that the forthcoming presidential campaign may see a repeat of the situation.

Twitter has recently declared that it is giving up all paid political advertising on its platform. Facebook is taking a different path. It decided that it would not block the content of the promoted political posts, even if they were to contain lies. At the same time, in other posts, this is going to mean fax news.

False information will be marked unless it appears in paid political ads Facebook does not want to take on the role of a censor. This surprising diversity has caused obvious controversy, but despite the criticism, Facebook has not yet modified its ideas.

For solace, Facebook informed that it would mean media controlled by the state. The fan pages would contain information about the confirmed owners of the sites, and would also be a new tool to facilitate the tracking of advertising expenditure during the campaign.

In the US, they have found that the presidential campaign in social media should be subject to special protection. This is a different perspective than the one we can observe in Poland. Although the Polish presidential campaign will begin in a moment, it is not visible that parties or potential candidates are afraid of external interference, nor are they worried about possible internal manipulations.

Yet it is precisely the presidential election, which is the most personalised, which offer enormous opportunities to influence voters through the use of the Internet. Therefore, there are grounds to assume that disinformation strategies will also be used in the Polish campaign and if any of the parties to the political dispute believes that they can be used only for their own benefit, they may experience a big surprise.

Polands sovereignty in the information space does not exist today. What is more, it does not seem that politicians care about changing this state of affairs. Is there a need for a strong shock to change their views? It is possible. However, after such a shock it may turn out that it is too late to build ones own sovereignty in this new space.

This article is part of the #DemocraCE project. It originally was published in Res Publica Nowa.

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Are We Sovereign? - Visegrad Insight

Finally, I figured it out: Its a feature, not a bug.

That old Silicon Valley bromide was at the center of the finale this week of HBOs satire Silicon Valley, the show that has perfectly and hysterically skewered tech and all its weirdness for six seasons.

Silicon Valley from executive producers Mike Judge and Alec Berg was always prescient and topical, but the last episode, Exit Event, nailed the most important point that the series and its motley crew of geeks has made throughout its run. Its a point that explains a lot about where we are today with tech: You cant build a safe internet, even when you try your hardest.

The punch line of the series was the perfect metaphor for todays real-life digital landscape: A groundbreaking artificial-intelligence platform called Pied Piper (the actual product is called PiperNet) had become potentially dangerous and rats got activated to destroy the creation. (I should mention that Ive made guest appearances on the show, playing myself.)

So if you want to know why so much of tech has seemed to become ever scarier whether you read the report out last week from Uber about sexual assaults taking place across its car-hailing business, or the multipart series in The New York Times on how services like gaming or video platforms have become hunting grounds for pedophiles, or listened to numerous Republican politicians spew propaganda online about Ukraine meddling in American elections let me break it down for you.

Simply put, far too many of the people who have designed the wondrous parts of the internet thinking up cool new products to make our lives easier, distributing them across the globe and making fortunes doing so have never felt unsafe a day in their lives.

Theyve never felt a twinge of fear getting into a strangers car. Theyve never imagined the pain of privacy violations, because rarely have they been hacked or swatted or doxed. Theyve not been stalked or attacked or zeroed out because of their gender, race or sexual orientation. Theyve never had to think about the consequences of bad choices, because there have been almost no consequences of failure. They have never worried about losing their high-level status, living lives defined by the line on their company growth charts: up and to the right.

Literally, up and to the right. Despite all the mishegas over everything from election interference to hate speech to disinformation to screen addiction to President Trumps toxic tweets, after a tough 2018, tech shares in the S&P 500 are up more than 40 percent as 2019 comes to a close, way above the overall index.

Amazon is up 16 percent. Alphabet has soared close to 29 percent. Microsoft is zeroing in on a 50 percent gain, while Apple is killing it at 70 percent. And Facebook, the social networking giant that has attracted the ire of so many for so much? Up 53 percent.

Big tech includes the most valuable companies on the planet, with two in the trillion-dollar valuation club (Apple and Microsoft), one coming close (Amazon) and another closer (Alphabet).

Which is why I found it striking and laudable that it was Uber whose shares have plummeted since its I.P.O. in May that was out front as the year ends by delivering on its promise to publicly reveal all of the unsafe incidents on its platform.

The report the company delivered last week noted that it had more than 3,000 incidents of sexual assault of varying degrees in 2018, a small number compared to the overall ride volume, even though thats a higher number than reported on other transportation systems.

Among the problems were shoddy background checks. How well or not the company vetted its drivers has been a long-running problem that its more recently appointed managers have been trying to fix.

The numbers are jarring and hard to digest, said Ubers chief legal officer, Tony West, in an interview last week in The New York Times. What it says is that Uber is a reflection of the society it serves.

While Mr. West has a point humans often do act like beasts its one that tech companies often rely on as a go-to explanation for misdeeds. When things go wrong, executives often point to the cruel world and say that they cannot control how their inventions are used by the teeming masses and the inevitable malevolents. Also often pointed out: The bad acting is just a tiny sliver of the massive use of their products.

All true, but thats actually the bug, not the feature. The real problem, which was perfectly depicted on Silicon Valley, is that thoughtlessness is a feature, lack of reflection is a feature, a drive to grow at all costs is a feature and, most of all, the sloppy and lazy ways in which tech too often designs and deploys its inventions are the ultimate features.

Uber had been the poster child for this, of course, with its go-go-damn-the-torpedoes ethos under the co-founder and former chief executive Travis Kalanick. While creating a product that hit the bulls-eye of a market need, it did so by flouting regulations meant to protect customers, like doing those pesky background checks and crowing about how you had to drive fast to win big.

Even now, Ubers chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi who replaced Mr. Kalanick after he was ousted for hit-and-running over a lot of stuff is still cleaning up the mess and trying to put in place safety features that should have been there in the first place. Hes had to awkwardly bolt them on, of course, because the idea of thinking of safety first has never been at the heart of anything Uber or most of Silicon Valley does.

So, kudos to Uber for at least putting a mirror to the ugly parts of its face and not looking away. Like all of tech whether it is around issues of privacy, disinformation, hate speech, screen addiction or the abuse of children online the company probably should have thought of it at the beginning, rather than after damage was done.

There is no law, regulation or lawsuit that is forcing Uber to make this data available, Mr. West said to The Times. We are doing this, frankly, because the public has a right to know.

The truth is, we always did.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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There Is a Reason Tech Isnt Safe - The New York Times

With all eyes on tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google, the Liberal government appears to have overlooked another key contributor to the spread of disinformation as it prepared for the 2019 election.

The Canadian government thought Pinterest wouldnt be vulnerable to political disinformation, in part because government officials believed the image-sharing platform doesnt use an algorithm to promote content, according to a briefing obtained by National Observer.

But as National Observer recently reported, Pinterest does use an algorithm, by means of which, Pinterest users were steered toward misleading content, extremist memes and conspiracy theories about Canadian politics ahead of the Oct. 21 federal election, researchers studying the platform found.

Ultimately, the best disinformation campaigns are the ones people dont know about, said John Gray, a visiting research fellow at the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensics Research Lab (DFRLab), who conducted the analysis of Pinterest alongside research associate Kanishk Karan.

Canadian government officials held a discussion with Pinterest staff on March 29, according to a briefing note prepared in May for former democratic institutions minister Karina Gould and obtained by National Observer through freedom-of-information. (Gould is now the minister of international development.)

The memo also details discussions with Reddit and the ephemeral-image-sharing service Snapchat. It refers to the three platforms as second-tier, as opposed to first-tier companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Though the memo notes that Pinterest has struggled with health-related disinformation, it also concluded that the platforms business model makes it not particularly useful for co-ordinated disinformation campaigns and it does not have issues with false information going viral.

But researchers say this simply isnt the case.

Pinterest is an avenue for visual disinformation, Karan told National Observer. Its just too bold to suggest that the platform doesnt have a problem with disinformation.

Users barely had to engage with Pinterest to be pointed towards misleading political content, the DFRLab researchers found.The platforms algorithm started recommending far-right propaganda after users clicked on just one post opposing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

A second click on an anti-Trudeau post thrust users into a far-right meme ecosystem, ultimately creating a feedback loop of increasingly extreme content.

Pinterest didnt respond to a request for comment by deadline.

Liberal cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc whose role as president of the privy council now encompasses Goulds former Democratic Institutions role didnt answer questions about whether the government plans to include Pinterest in future work on the file, and redirected to the Privy Council Office.

The PCO didnt answer questions about the extent to which bureaucrats who spoke with Pinterest were familiar with the platform. In a statement, it said that the note summarized what government officials heard from Pinterest, and that Gould later wrote to Pinterest in June 2019 along with Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Snapchat and Reddit to ask the company to update the public on its election integrity efforts.

The government will continue to explore all reasonable options for ensuring that social media platforms contribute to building not hindering a healthy Canadian democracy, the statement said.

The briefing note made similar conclusions about the social media platform Reddit, National Observer previously reported in October. The memo showed that the government thought that disinformation and hate speech are not major problems on Reddit, In fact, hate speech has thrived on the platform for years, and Reddit played an outsized role in the spread of misinformation during the election.

The precise degree to which Pinterest or Reddit enabled the spread of hyperpartisan memes and disinformation during Canadas election campaign isnt clear, as influence is difficult to measure. The federal government has said there was no election interference that met its threshold for notifying the public.

As an image-based platform, Pinterest functions differently than text-based platforms like Facebook and Twitter. However, this doesnt mean its not vulnerable to manipulation it just means it may play a different role in the cycle of disinformation.

Most information operations involve multiple platforms, Gray said, and the interconnected nature of social networking sites is a key feature that cant be ignored.

If we look at this strictly on a platform-by-platform basis, were failing to see the entire ecosystem, said Gray. Weve got to talk about the relationships between platforms [and] how things are moving between them.

Karan said any discussion of disinformation needs to look at all platforms as part of the same ecosystem, rather than relegating certain platforms to lower-priority or lower-risk discussions.

Disinformation is not platform-specific, Karan said. Our conversations shouldnt be, either.

As memes spread between users and across platforms, they become independent of their creators. Unless theyre branded with a logo or other identifying signature, it can be difficult to trace the meme back to its original source, which could make visual platforms like Pinterest particularly appealing for bad actors looking to cover their tracks.

However, the April 2019 memo appears to downplay the role of Pinterest as a vehicle for sharing content, claiming that the platform is not designed to allow large-scale re-sharing.

This stands in stark contrast to the description offered by Gray, who said Pinterest actually makes it relatively easy to share content not just to re-pin it [on the platform], but to share it to [other platforms] as well.

Many accounts on Pinterest are anonymous, which makes the platform more vulnerable to disinformation campaigns, Gray said. A single person can operate numerous anonymous accounts, which can then be used to manipulate algorithms or create the illusion of popularity, so that an idea or position without much public support appears more mainstream than it actually is.

Pinterest has played a key role in other disinformation operations, including Russias 2016 influence campaign targeting the U.S. election.

According to expert testimony delivered before the U.S. Senate, Russian operatives created, tested, and hosted content on Pinterest before pushing it to other platforms like Twitter and Facebook. In other instances, unwitting Americans picked up Russian-generated content from one platform and shared it on their own Pinterest pages.

The memo notes that Pinterest said it would actively block searches and links to political or divisive issues ahead of the Canadian vote. However, the DFRLab analysis shows that searches for Trudeau were not blocked in the days leading up to the election, nor were conspiratorial content or extremist memes featuring Islamophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Links to hyperpartisan content on other social media platforms like YouTube appear within the search results for Trudeau.

According to the web analytics company Stat Counter, Pinterest is the second-most popular social media platform in Canada, accounting for 22 per cent of all traffic from Canadian social media users. Research on Pinterest users in the U.S. shows that the platform is among the most conservative of all social networking sites, and also one of the least demographically diverse a finding that generally holds true among Canadian users, as well.

According to Gray, as long as political disinformation and inflammatory memes have a home on platforms like Pinterest, the site will remain vulnerable to being used as part of domestic and foreign disinformation operations. The very presence of such content in such large quantities on a major social media platform is likely to catch the attention of bad actors, he said.

I see these meme boards as a weapons cache if you leave it around, people are going to use it, he warned.

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Exclusive: Canada's government underestimated Pinterest's disinformation problem - National Observer

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