After the hack targeting high profile people on Twitter earlier in the week, social media platforms have come to be in the spotlight.

Hackers gained access to accounts belonging to former US president, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Kanye West and four others, in what seemed to be a Bitcoin scam. The hackers used the accounts to solicit Bitcoins from thousands of Twitter users, and allegedly gained over $100,000 worth in less than 30 minutes.

“I am giving back to my community due to Covid-19! All Bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000! Only doing this for the next 30 minutes! Enjoy.,” Obama’s account tweeted

The incident left millions of social media users in shock, given that the access has been gained internally. Twitter said in response to the attack, that the hackers somehow succeeded to access some administrative privileges.

“We detected what we believe to be a co-ordinated social-engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools,” Twitter said.

This level of security breach comes with enormous consequences that reach beyond social media. Twitter has become a choice platform for powerful people in politics and business. The influence of many users of the app has a significant impact on how political and business world fares.

Twitter stock went down Wednesday, losing $1.3 billion in market value following the incident. But that’s not where the major concern lies; the political implication wields heavier consequences.

On Thursday the FBI launched an investigation into the matter as questions from governments around the world poured in. The Bureau, like many others, believes there is more to the hack than bitcoin scam, and urged everyone to be vigilant.

The US Senate Commerce committee has demanded Twitter brief it about the incident by July 23. The UK’s National Cyber Security Center has also reached out to Twitter and urged users to treat requests for money and sensitive information on social media with extreme caution.

“We are aware of a cyber attack on Twitter and have reached out to the company.

“While this appears to be an attack on the company rather than individual users, we would urge people to treat requests for money or sensitive information on social media with extreme caution,” it said in a statement.

Senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Commerce committee wrote to Twitter expressing concern over the development.

“It cannot be overstated how troubling this incident is, both in its effects and in the apparent failure of Twitter’s internal controls to prevent it,” he said.

Twitter said on Thursday that more than 130 accounts were targeted in the attack, and subsequent findings revealed that hackers were able to initiate password reset for 45 of those accounts. The firm said it is working with the owners of the impacted accounts to determine “whether non-public data related to these accounts were compromised.”

The social media platform has been working with the FBI to determine further intent. On Saturday, it confirmed that there was more than a Bitcoin scam.

“For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved, the attackers took the additional step of downloading the account’s information through our “Your Twitter Data” tool.”

Twitter said the investigation is still ongoing. But with the establishment of information download from users’ accounts, it is becoming clear that the objective of the hackers goes beyond Bitcoin.

With the US election coming in November, the concern is growing there could be a repetition of the 2016 alleged interference by Russia. Social media platforms have been at the center of controversies concerning political misinformation, as it is believed to be a tactic usually deployed by external forces to influence the elections.

Though the Twitter account of Donald Trump was not compromised the sophistication of the security breach exposes how vulnerable the social media platforms are, and how easily they can be used to manipulate people.

The usual suspect, Russia, has been fingered. It is believed that the hack could be a test-run of a major attack to compromise the US elections.

“We already know Russia is planning to meddle in the 2020 election just as they did in the 2016 election,” said Dr. Heather Williams, from King’s College London. “Social media manipulation is one of their favorite tools. So this hack shows just how vulnerable social-media platforms are and how vulnerable Americans are to disinformation.

“If something bigger was at stake, such as the presidency, this could have really disastrous consequences and undermine our democratic process.”

It is not yet known if sensitive information is downloaded by the hackers, but the hack has brought the ability of social media platforms to protect users’ privacy into serious questions.

Dr. Drew who recently co-authored a paper warning about the possibility of Twitter being used for disinformation said the platform has not done enough to protect users.

“Social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook all have a duty to consider the damage and influence their platforms can have on the 2020 election. Twitter actually has a good history of being forward-thinking and proactive in this space. But whatever the source of this attack [it seems they have] still not done enough,” she said.

On the other hand, social media platforms have a reputation that could be marred by what happens to the privacy of users. William Dixon, World Economic Forum cyber lead said of the hack: “Twitter reputation is the cost of this cyber-attack.”

In Barcelona, Spain, the authorities are forcing landlords to fill empty houses with occupants or watch them taken by the government as public housing to lower-income tenants.

The city’s housing department has written to 14 companies that collectively own 194 empty apartments, warning that if they fail to find tenants next month, the city will take possession of their properties, and compensate them with half of their value.

The warning also said that the companies could be fined between €90,000 and €900,000 ($103,000 and $1,003,000) according to local media.

In the Catalonia region of the country, a 2016 law empowers the municipalities to take control of properties abandoned for more than two years. The law gave the cities the right to rent out the properties for a period of four to ten years before returning them to the control of the owners.

In 2019, Barcelona approved a legal tool that empowers the city to purchase the properties at half the market price. The aim is to curtail the crisis in the region’s housing sector.

Bloomberg reported that Spain’s dwindling property market is forcing the country to take drastic measures. The empty houses menace is attributed to the country’s 2007 to 2008 financial crisis that depleted every sector of the economy. As the market struggles to bounce back, homeowners are waiting for the market to revive.

Many housing units were repossessed by banks that think of them as assets to be managed rather than essential public resources. Reports said it has resulted in a high rate of empty houses and neglected properties in the city. Adding to the menace, the abandoned homes have become Narcopisos (Narco-flats), where drug dealers and users trade and consume narcotics.

According to Bloomberg, Barcelona has been devising on how to solve the problem for a while. The tools deployed by the city include levying heavy fines for vacant units, while some empty vacation rentals have also been used as emergency housing during the pandemic.

The new approach is quite wider than others previously used. All properties up for potential expropriation belong to owners with multiple with multiple units.

But a house could only be eligible for forced purchase if it has stayed as long as two years without record of utilities use. Occasionally used houses are exempt.

The city housing commissioner, Lucia Martin said the aim is not to pressure landlords into renting their own units.

“We are not here to expropriate. What we want is for apartments to be rented. If the answer is no, we will open the file and they will go to expand the city’s public housing sector,” she told the local newspaper 20 minutos.

The city is seeking stiffer penalties for abandoned houses. The enforcement is seeking to persuade the Catalonian authorities to expand the program by narrowing the time period of forced sale from two years to six months.

But many house owners are voluntarily handing over their houses to the city. Spain’s national bank SAREB, reportedly handed over rights to rent out 256 squatted apartments they own to the city this week. Just so, they could be rented and the drug dealers and users could be pushed away.

In many other countries in the world, the housing situation is opposite of what is obtained in Catalonia. Though there are still empty houses even though the demand is high.

In the capital city of Nigeria, Abuja, there are over 600 abandoned houses rotting away when there is a huge deficit in the country. Nigeria has 22 million housing deficit, and Abuja contributes 1.7 million to that gap.

The situation has been attributed to many factors ranging from corruption to the cost of rent. Acting Managing Director, Abuja Property Development Company (APDC), Lawal Aliyu Magaji told Guardian earlier in the year that lack of an effective tax system among other things has contributed to this.

“If we have a good property tax system where those houses are being taxed, people would not continue to keep houses unoccupied. When the owners are being taxed for houses they built which is not fetching them any profit, they would have a rethink,” he said.

He added that the unoccupied houses were built by those who have no interest in “getting any income from them,” which poses a morality question. In a city where there is a 1.7 million housing deficit, should over 600 houses be unoccupied?

The call to get occupants into Abuja empty houses have been ringing for long, and the Nigerian government’s plan to use a tax regime to effect it seems far-fetched. The Catalonia housing laws therefore, present a model that the federal government can borrow to solve the Abuja unoccupied houses problem.