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Twitter and Facebook intervene once again after Trump suggests double voting

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2020 17:21:14 +0000

President Trump on Saturday once again prompted Twitter and Facebook to each intervene after he posted on their platforms that people should vote by mail and then potentially again in person.

Twitter and Facebook both acted on identical posts made on their platforms by Mr. Trump that encouraged voters in North Carolina to vote twice in the presidential election.

“To make sure your Ballot COUNTS, sign & send it in EARLY. When Polls open, go to your Polling Place to see if it was COUNTED. IF NOT, VOTE!” Mr. Trump posted in part on the platforms.

Twitter added a notice to Mr. Trump’s post, or tweet, saying it violates the company’s rules for civic and election integrity but will remain on the platform with certain restrictions in place.

Users cannot “like” or reply to the tweet, and it can only be shared, or retweeted, if being quoted, according to the restrictions Twitter put in place.

Mr. Trump’s tweet encouraged “people to potentially vote twice,” Twitter explained, adding: “Voting twice is illegal in North Carolina.”

“To protect people on Twitter, we err on the side of limiting the circulation of Tweets which advise people to take actions which could be illegal in the context of voting or result in the invalidation of their votes,” explained Twitter.

Facebook was also letting Mr. Trump’s post remain on its social network, but it placed a notice alongside it telling users that voting by mail “has a long history of trustworthiness.” Users can still comment and share it.

The latest actions Twitter and Facebook each took in response to the president are identical to how they handled a similarly-worded attack on mail-in voting he posted on the platforms Sept. 4.

Millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail in the race between Republican incumbent Mr. Trump and Democratic rival Joseph R. Biden as a result of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.

The president has repeatedly attacked voting by mail in recent weeks, and he has claimed it will result in widespread fraud contrary to election officials saying those fears are unfounded.

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Facebook will block new political ads in the final week before the US presidential election

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 13:22:14 +0000

Facebook will block new political ads in the final week before the U.S. presidential election, the social network announced on Thursday.

The move was announced in a Facebook post by the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

“We’re going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign,” Zuckerberg wrote. “It’s important that campaigns can run get out the vote campaigns, and I generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims.”

HEALTH MISINFORMATION ON FACEBOOK VIEWED NEARLY 3.8B TIMES IN LAST YEAR

In this Oct. 25, 2019 photo Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Paley Center in New York City.
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

“So in the week before the election, we won’t accept new political or issue ads,” Zuckerberg added. “Advertisers will be able to continue running ads they started running before the final week and adjust the targeting for those ads, but those ads will already be published transparently in our Ads Library so anyone, including fact-checkers and journalists, can scrutinize them.”

The move is part of Facebook’s attempt to clamp down on misinformation ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Facebook, which had 2.7 billion monthly active users at the end of its second quarter, is locked in a long-running battle to stop so-called fake news.

In his post, Zuckerberg explained that Facebook will also be extending its work with election officials to remove misinformation about voting.

“We already committed to partnering with state election authorities to identify and remove false claims about polling conditions in the last 72 hours of the campaign, but given that this election will include large amounts of early voting, we’re extending that period to begin now and continue through the election until we have a clear result,” he wrote.

Zuckerberg also wrote a blog post obtained by Fox News to employees, mentioning his concerns “about the challenges people could face when voting.” He also expressed worries election results could potentially take days or weeks before they are finalized, leading to “an increased risk of civil unrest across the country.”

“This election is not going to be business as usual,” Zuckerberg wrote in the post to employees. “We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy. That means helping people register and vote, clearing up confusion about how this election will work, and taking steps to reduce the chances of violence and unrest.”

The 36-year-old Zuckerberg also noted that he and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, have donated $300 million “to non-partisan organizations supporting states and local counties in strengthening our voting infrastructure.”

The announcements come just days after Facebook announced that the Russian-based Internet Research Agency was targeting Black Lives Matter and left-leaning voters online, going so far as to create a fake left-wing news outlet complete with fictional editors.

Facebook has now removed the accounts, and the FBI is investigating.

The Internet Research Agency was indicted, along with 13 Russian nationals and two other Russian entities, by a grand jury for influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Fox News has reached out to Facebook with a request for comment.

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Fox News’ Hillary Vaughn contributed to this story. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers

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Facebook to ban new political ads ahead of election, remove ‘misinformation’ about voting

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 12:21:06 +0000

Facebook on Thursday said it won’t accept new political ads the week before the November election and will clearly label content that seeks to “delegitimize” the election’s outcome.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will extend its work with election officials to remove “misinformation about voting.”

“We will remove posts with claims that people will get COVID-19 if they take part in voting,” he said. “Given the unique circumstances of this election, it’s especially important that people have accurate information about the many ways to vote safely, and that COVID-19 isn’t used to scare people into not exercising their right to vote.”

Analysts have predicted that President Trump and the Republicans could build a lead immediately after polls close on Election Day but that Democrats could make up ground in the days and weeks after Nov. 3 because of the party’s emphasis on voting by mail during the coronavirus pandemic.

“There could be a period of intense claims and counter-claims as the final results are counted,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

The company said that if any candidate or campaign tries to declare victory before the final results are in, they’ll add a label to their posts directing people to official results from Reuters and the National Election Pool.

Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook will use its Voting Information Center “to prepare people for the possibility that it may take a while to get official results” and said the information will help people understand that “there is nothing illegitimate about not having a result on election night.”

He said Facebook has strengthened its enforcement against “militias, conspiracy networks like QAnon, and other groups that could be used to organize violence or civil unrest in the period after the elections.”

Mr. Zuckerberg said they took down a network of 12 accounts and two pages last week trying to “mislead Americans and amplify divisions.”

“We’ve removed more than 100 networks worldwide engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior over the past couple of years, including ahead of major democratic elections,” he said. “However, we’re increasingly seeing attempts to undermine the legitimacy of our elections from within our own borders.”

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Facebook takes down Russian operation that recruited U.S. journalists, amid rising concerns about election misinformation

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 19:21:25 +0000

Facebook took down a small network of fake accounts and pages associated with Russian operatives that had recruited U.S. journalists to write articles targeting left-leaning readers on topics such as racial justice, the Biden-Harris campaign and President Trump’s policies, the company said Tuesday.

Facebook said it caught the network of 13 fake accounts and two pages early, before it had a chance to build a large audience — an action that the company said was evidence of its growing effectiveness at targeting foreign disinformation operations ahead of the 2020 election. The takedown emerged as a result of a tip from the FBI and was one of a dozen operations tied to the Russian Internet Research Agency or individuals affiliated with it that Facebook has disrupted since the last presidential election, when IRA-backed pages amassed millions of views on the platform. The pages had about 14,000 followers.

“They’ve gotten better at hiding who they are, but their impact has gotten smaller and smaller,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said of the foreign operations.

In addition, Facebook also took down a disinformation network associated with a U.S. public relations firm, CLS Strategies, that the company said had spent millions of dollars to target users primarily in Latin America. The firm had previously advised foreign clients that used Facebook, according to news reports and its own website.

CLS did not immediately response to voice-mail and emailed queries.

Facebook said the Russian operatives created fictitious personas on Facebook to direct people to a new site called Peace Data, which billed itself as a “global news organization” whose goal was “to shed light on the global issues and raise awareness about corruption, environmental crisis, abuse of power, armed conflicts, activism, and human rights.”

One article posted on Facebook about the far-right militia movement known as the “boogaloo” movement featured a headline that read, “USA Far Right is Growing Thanks to President Trump,” according to a report provided by Facebook.

In 2016, Russian operatives tied to the Internet Research Agency ran widespread disinformation campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, garnering huge audiences with content that attempted to sow division among U.S. voters. The technology platforms faced significant blowback from Congress and the public for failing to prevent foreign interference and since then have invested significant resources in countering such activity.

As the 2020 election draws near, experts say technology companies have become more skillful at getting ahead of foreign interference, even as the threat has broadened beyond Russia to countries such as China and Iran. But social media platforms are still rife with misinformation and abuse, often emerging from domestic actors that have caused false stories about current events to go viral.

A report Tuesday by Graphika, a network analysis firm based in New York that received the Facebook data in advance, found that the Russian effort was small but echoed past efforts to undermine support for Democratic Party candidates by appealing to left-wing U.S. voters. Among the targets were Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), who were criticized by the phony network as immoral tools of political conservatives. Some posts also criticized Trump, but the target audience in the United States was democratic socialists, environmentalists and disaffected Democrats, the report found.

Some of the fake content focused on racial justice and unrest in the United States since the killing of George Floyd in May.

“The English-language content on Biden and Harris was noteworthy for its hostile tone,” Graphika reported. “One article by a guest writer accused the pair of ‘submission to right-wing populism […] as much about preserving careers as it is winning votes.’”

The co-option of unwitting locals is part of a growing strategy used by foreign disinformation operatives.

“Hiring people who are fluent in the language and culture avoids the kind of tells that can expose an operation,” said Renée DiResta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, which has tracked the strategy.

Most of the content for Peace Data was in English, with 500 articles overall. About 5 percent were explicitly aimed at the U.S. election and candidates. There were also 200 articles in Arabic, Graphika found.

“The operation seemed designed to divide Democratic supporters and to depress support for Biden and Harris,” said Camille François, chief innovation officer for Graphika.

Disinformation researchers do not consider the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg-based operation indicted by U.S. officials for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, as still functioning in the same way it did years ago. Researchers instead see numerous operations by Russian people and groups that appear to have some previous affiliation with the IRA, using an updated playbook that typically involves more targeted — but less viral — efforts to affect political debates and elections.

Avoiding detection is a key goal of these operations, experts say. Facebook and Twitter, for example, took action against a Russian-linked operation in March that worked with a nonprofit group in Ghana and sought to influence Black voters in the United States with targeted messages. The IRA in 2016, by contrast, pushed viral messaging on social media platforms designed to reach large numbers of voters based on political interests and affiliations. The Russian operations in 2016 paid for ads aimed at U.S. voters using rubles, the Russian currency, signaling a lack of concern regarding detection.

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Facebook’s dilemma: How to police claims about unproven COVID-19 vaccines

admin — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 13:21:03 +0000

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Since the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus an international health emergency in January, Facebook Inc (FB.O) has removed more than 7 million pieces of content with false claims about the virus that could pose an immediate health risk to people who believe them.

FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed Facebook logo is seen in front of displayed coronavirus disease (COVID-19) words in this illustration taken March 24, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

The social media giant, which has long been under fire from lawmakers over how it handles misinformation on its platforms, said it had in recent months banned such claims as ‘social distancing does not work’ because they pose a risk of ‘imminent’ harm. Under these rules, Facebook took down a video post on Wednesday by U.S. President Donald Trump in which he claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.

But in most instances, Facebook does not remove misinformation about the new COVID-19 vaccines that are still under development, according to the company’s vaccine policy lead Jason Hirsch, on the grounds that such claims do not meet its imminent harm threshold. Hirsch told Reuters the company is “grappling” with the dilemma of how to police claims about new vaccines that are as yet unproven.

“There’s a ceiling to how much we can do until the facts on the ground become more concrete,” Hirsch said in an interview with Reuters, talking publicly for the first time about how the company is trying to approach the coronavirus vaccine issue.

Tom Phillips, editor at one of Facebook’s fact-checking partners Full Fact, sees the conundrum this way: “How do you fact check about a vaccine that does not exist yet?”

For now, misinformation ranging from unfounded claims to complex conspiracy theories about the developmental vaccines is proliferating on a platform with more than 2.6 billion monthly active users, a review of posts by Reuters, Facebook fact-checkers and other researchers found.

The worry, public health experts told Reuters, is that the spread of misinformation on social media could discourage people from eventually taking the vaccine, seen as the best chance to stem a pandemic that has infected millions and killed hundreds of thousands worldwide, including 158,000 people in the United States alone.

At the same time, free speech advocates fret about increased censorship during a time of uncertainty and the lasting repercussions long after the virus is tamed.

Drawing the line between true and false is also more complex for the new COVID-19 vaccines, fact-checkers told Reuters, than with content about vaccines with an established safety record.

Facebook representatives said the company has been consulting with about 50 experts in public health, vaccines, and free expression on how to shape its response to claims about the new COVID-19 vaccines.

Even though the first vaccines aren’t expected to go to market for months, polls show that many Americans are already concerned about taking a new COVID-19 vaccine, which is being developed at a record pace. Some 28% of Americans say they are not interested in getting the vaccine, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted between July 15-21. Among them, more than 50% said they were nervous about the speed of development. More than a third said they did not trust the people behind the vaccine’s development.

The U.K.-based non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate reported in July that anti-vaccination content is flourishing on social media sites. Facebook groups and pages accounted for more than half of the total anti-vaccine following across all the social media platforms studied by the CCDH.

One public Facebook group called “REFUSE CORONA V@X AND SCREW BILL GATES,” referring to the billionaire whose foundation is helping to fund the development of vaccines, was started in April by Michael Schneider, a 42-year-old city contractor in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The group grew to 14,000 members in under four months. It was one of more than a dozen created in the last few months which were dedicated to opposing the COVID-19 vaccine and the idea that it might be mandated by governments, Reuters found.

Schneider told Reuters he is suspicious of the COVID-19 vaccine because he thinks it is being developed too fast to be safe. “I think a lot of people are freaking out,” he said.

Posts about the COVID-19 vaccine that have been labeled on Facebook as containing “false information” but not removed include one by Schneider linking to a YouTube video that claimed the COVID-19 vaccine will alter people’s DNA, and a post that claimed the vaccine would give people coronavirus. (See Reuters fact-check: reut.rs/30t1toW]

Facebook said that these posts did not violate its policies related to imminent harm. “If we simply removed all conspiracy theories and hoaxes, they would exist elsewhere on the internet and broader social media ecosystem. This helps give more context when these hoaxes appear elsewhere,” a spokeswoman said.

Facebook does not label or remove posts or ads that express opposition to vaccines if they do not contain false claims. Hirsch said Facebook believes users should be able to express such personal views and that more aggressive censorship of anti-vaccine views could also push people hesitant about vaccines towards the anti-vaccine camp.

‘IT’S KIND OF ON STEROIDS’

At the crux of Facebook’s decisions over what it removes are two considerations, Hirsch said. If a post is identified as containing simply false information, it will be labeled and Facebook can reduce its reach by limiting how many people will be shown the post. For example, it took this approach with the video Schneider posted suggesting the COVID-19 vaccine could alter people’s DNA.

If the false information is likely to cause imminent harm, then it will be removed altogether. Last month, under these rules, the company removed a video touting hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure – though only after it racked up millions of views.

In March 2019, Facebook said it would start reducing the rankings and search recommendations of groups and pages spreading misinformation about any vaccines. Facebook’s algorithms also lift up links to organizations like the WHO when people search for vaccine information on the platform.

Some public health experts want Facebook to lower their removal standards when considering false claims about the future COVID-19 vaccines. “I think there is a duty (by) platforms like that to ensure that they are removing anything that could lead to harm,” said Rupali Limaye, a social scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who has been in talks with Facebook. “Because it is such a deadly virus, I think it shouldn’t just have to be ‘imminent.’”

But Jacob Mchangama, the executive director of Copenhagen-based think tank Justitia who was consulted by Facebook about its vaccine approach, fears the fallout from mass deletions: “This may have long-term consequences for free speech when this virus is hopefully contained,” he said.

Misinformation about other vaccines has rarely met Facebook’s threshold for risking imminent harm.

However, in Pakistan last year, the company intervened to take down false claims about the polio vaccine drive that were leading to violence against health workers. In the Pacific island state of Samoa, Facebook deleted vaccine misinformation because the low vaccination rate was exacerbating a dangerous measles outbreak.

“With regard to vaccines, it’s not a theoretical line … we do try to determine when there is likely going to be imminent harm resulting from misinformation and we try to act in those situations,” Hirsch told Reuters.

To combat misinformation that doesn’t meet its removal criteria, Facebook pays outside fact-checkers – including a Reuters unit – who can rate posts as false and attach an explanation. The company has said that 95 percent of the time, people who saw fact-checkers’ warning labels did not click through to the content. [bit.ly/33z7Jh6]

Still, the fact-checking program has been criticized by some researchers as an inadequate response to the amount and speed of viral misinformation on the platforms. Fact-checkers also do not rate politicians’ posts and they do not judge posts that are exclusively in private or hidden groups.

Determining what constitutes a false claim regarding the COVID-19 shot is much harder than fact-checking a claim about an established vaccine with a proven safety record, Facebook fact-checkers told Reuters.

“There is a lot of content that we see and we don’t even know what to do with it,” echoed Emmanuel Vincent, founder of Science Feedback, another Facebook fact-checking partner, who said the number of vaccines in development made it difficult to debunk claims about how a shot would work.

In a study published in May in the journal Nature, physicist Neil Johnson’s research group found that there were nearly three times as many active anti-vaccination groups on Facebook as pro-vaccination groups during a global measles outbreak from February to October 2019, and they were faster growing.

Since the study was published, anti-vaccine views and COVID-19 vaccine conspiracies have flourished on the platform, Johnson said, adding, “It’s kind of on steroids.”

Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford and Gabriella Borter, editing by Ross Colvin and Edward Tobin

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Facebook removes pro-Trump ad aimed at Joe Biden, claiming false information

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 18:21:19 +0000

A pro-Trump ad was removed from Facebook after claims that it contained false information, Fox News has learned.

America First Action PAC on Tuesday told Fox News that Facebook removed one of its ads, titled “On Hold,” which was placed in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on July 24. The ad was flagged by Politifact on July 29, according to the PAC.

“Facebook’s decision to take down this ad shows its anti-conservative bias,” America First Communications Director Kelly Sadler told Fox News. “America First Action has logged an appeal, but the threat of anti-conservative bias, targeting, and censorship remains ahead of Election Day in November and we must be vigilant in holding big tech, like Facebook accountable.”

TWITTER EXEC IN CHARGE OF FACT-CHECKING MOCKED TRUMP SUPPORTERS, CALLED MCCONNELL ‘BAG OF FARTS’

Sadler, during an interview on Fox Business on Tuesday, added that this “is just more bias from these social media companies.”

“We’re going to file an appeal, but there’s really little we can do about it,” she told host Stuart Varney. “These social media giants are monopolies, and ultimately they make the decision of what runs on their platform.”

Facebook confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday that the ad had, in fact, been fact-checked. A Facebook spokesperson told Fox News that ads that are fact-checked and found to contain false information are not eligible to run as a paid ad on the social media platform.

The spokesman added that the videos can, instead, run as original content on the group’s page.

America First Action, though, said certain versions of the ad were removed in particular states, but the Facebook spokesman said that once the ad was fact-checked as false, all versions would be removed from the platform.

The Facebook spokesperson said that if any version of the ad was still running on the platform, it would be due to a lag in Facebook’s fact-checking system.

The ad in question was titled “On Hold,” and shows a woman calling 9-1-1 and being put on hold. The ad moves to show Democratic nominee former Vice President Joe Biden saying “yes,” with a “defund the police?” banner.

The ad is currently marked on Facebook with a label saying: “False Information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.”

Facebook’s fact-checking comes as members of the Trump administration and prominent Republicans have claimed that social media platforms have censored right-leaning viewpoints.

Attorney General William Barr told Fox News in June that social media platforms are “engaged in censorship” and are acting more like “publishers.”

“They originally held themselves out as open forums where people, where the third parties could come and express their views and they built up a tremendous network of eyeballs,” Barr said on “Special Report” in June.

“They had a lot of market power based on that presentation,” the attorney general added. “And now they are acting much more like publishers because they’re censoring particular viewpoints and putting their own content in there to diminish the impact of various people’s views.”

Twitter, earlier this summer, slapped a warning label on one of President Trump’s tweets for the first time, cautioning readers that despite the president’s claims, “fact checkers” say there is “no evidence” that expanded, nationwide mail-in voting would increase fraud risks — and that “experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.”

Within minutes, Trump accused Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election,” that the platform “is completely stifling FREE SPEECH” and vowing: “I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”

Two days later, the president signed an executive order that interprets Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 as not providing statutory liability protections for tech companies that engage in censorship and political conduct. It also cuts federal funding for social media platforms that censor users’ political views.

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Facebook removes Roger Stone from Instagram after linking him to fake accounts

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 21:22:02 +0000

(CNN)Facebook announced Wednesday it had shut down pages and accounts linked to Roger Stone and Proud Boys, a far-right group Facebook has banned under its hate policies. Stone’s own Instagram accoun…
Read More

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Google, Facebook And Twitter React To Hong Kong Security Law By Suspending Cooperation With Police, While TikTok Withdraws

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 16:21:31 +0000

TOPLINE

US tech companies Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Zoom and Twitter have said that they would temporarily stop processing requests for Hong Kong authorities on user data, while ByteDance’s TikTok has pulled its app from the region as the companies review the Hong Kong’s new national security law which gives local authorities sweeping online censorship and surveillance powers.

Riot police hold up a warning flag during a demonstration in a mall in Hong Kong, in response to a … [+] new national security law introduced in the city.

AFP via Getty Images

KEY FACTS

Facebook has paused their review of government requests for user data from Hong Kong until the National Security Law is further assessed, the company said in a statement adding that its review also includes “formal human rights due diligence and consultations with international human rights experts.”

The social media giant added, “We believe freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and support the right of people to express themselves without fear for their safety or other repercussions.”

Twitter said in a statement that had “grave concerns” about the intention of the law adding that the company’s teams were “reviewing the law to assess its implications, particularly as some of the terms of the law are vague and without clear definition.”

Google began its pause on data sharing last Wednesday and said it will “continue to review the details of the new law,” the Verge reported.

TikTok, which is owned by the Beijing-headquartered ByteDance went a step further than other companies and has decided to pull its app from Hong Kong, Reuters reported, with a source stating that the company made the decision because it is unclear if Hong Kong will “fall entirely under Beijing’s jurisdiction under the new law.”

The video-sharing app, which has faced scrutiny due to its Chinese ownership, had previously stated that it would not comply with any requests made by the Chinese government to censor content or for access to TikTok’s user data.

Other companies including Microsoft, video conferencing platform Zoom and messaging service Telegram have also said they would pause sharing of user data, BBC reported.

Apple hasn’t clarified its formal stance on the issue but the company’s transparency page on Hong Kong notes that “Government and private entities are required to follow applicable laws and statutes when requesting customer information and data from Apple.”

Key BackGround

On Monday, Hong Kong released new rules that gave the city’s police sweeping powers to take down content on the internet and punish internet companies for not complying with data requests. Under these new rules, authorities can jail employees of internet companies for up to six months if they fail to comply with requests for user data. Various reports noted that the new rules along with the security laws that went into effect last week could serve as a turning point for internet users in the city where the web has not been as severely censored as it has in mainland China. The New York Times notes that US tech companies have a lot to lose by exiting the region, with the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter having large advertising businesses in Hong Kong.

tangent

Unlike its American peers, ByteDance’s TikTok has decided to pull out of Hong Kong altogether, reportedly because of its concerns that Hong Kong internet may fall under Beijing’s jurisdiction under the new law. TikTok’s connections with Beijing have been under scrutiny, despite the company’s claims that it doesn’t share user data with China. On Monday evening U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that the Trump administration is “certainly looking at” restricting United States’ users’ access to TikTok over concerns it is potentially being used by China as a means of surveillance and propaganda. Last week TikTok was banned in India, its largest market, along with 58 other Chinese apps.

Facebook vehemently condemned in report it commissioned into its civil right record

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 15:22:36 +0000

Facebook has been vehemently condemned in a two-year report it commissioned into itself.

The audit found a series of “serious setbacks” that led to failures on issues including hate speech, misinformation and bias.

The 100-page report catalogues a “seesaw of progress and setbacks” on a wide variety of issues.

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Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said in a blog post that the company recognised it still had much to do on civil rights and in response to the problems raised in the report. She described the report as “the beginning of the journey, not the end”, though Facebook had already said that it would not take on every recommendation in the report.

Facebook hired the audit’s leader, former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy, in May 2018 to assess its performance on vital social issues. It was commissioned soon after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg faced sharp questioning in front of Congress.

The audit recommends that Facebook build a “civil rights infrastructure” into every aspect of the company, as well as a “stronger interpretation” of existing voter suppression policies and more concrete action on algorithmic bias. Those suggestions are not binding, and there is no formal system in place to hold Facebook accountable for any of the audit’s findings.

“While the audit process has been meaningful, and has led to some significant improvements in the platform, we have also watched the company make painful decisions over the last nine months with real world consequences that are serious setbacks for civil rights,” the audit report states.

Those include Facebook’s decision to exempt politicians from fact-checking, even when President Donald Trump posted false information about voting by mail. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has cited a commitment to free speech as a reason for allowing such posts to remain on the platform, even though the company has rules in place against voter suppression it could have used to take down — or at least add warning labels to — Trump’s posts.

Last month, Facebook announced it would begin labeling rule-breaking posts — even from politicians — going forward. But it is not clear if Trump’s previous controversial posts would have gotten the alert. The problem, critics have long said, is not so much about Facebook’s rules as how it enforces them.

“When you elevate free expression as your highest value, other values take a back seat,” Murphy told The Associated Press. The politician exemption, she said, “elevates the speech of people who are already powerful and disadvantages people who are not.”

More than 900 companies have joined an advertising boycott of Facebook to protest its handling of hate speech and misinformation.

Civil rights leaders who met virtually with Zuckerberg and other Facebook leaders Tuesday expressed skepticism that recommendations from the audit would ever be implemented, noting that past suggestions in previous reports had gone overlooked.

“What we get is recommendations that they end up not implementing,” said Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color for Change, one of several civil rights nonprofits leading an organized boycott of Facebook advertising.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

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Facebook’s own civil rights auditors said its policy decisions are a ‘tremendous setback’

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 14:23:15 +0000

The civil rights auditors Facebook hired to scrutinize its civil rights record on Wednesday delivered a long-awaited and scathing indictment of the social media giant’s decisions to prioritize free speech above other values, which they called a “tremendous setback” that opened the door for abuse by politicians.

The report criticized Facebook’s choice to leave several posts by President Trump untouched, including three in May that the auditors said “clearly violated” the company’s policies prohibiting voter suppression, hate speech and incitement of violence.

The conclusions by Facebook’s own auditors are likely to bolster criticism that the company has too much power and that it bends and stretches its rules for powerful people. Though Facebook frequently says it listens to experts when making judgment calls, the company’s decisions on recent posts by Trump and others suggest that is not always the case on critical matters of free speech.

“When you put free expression on top of every other consideration, I think civil rights considerations take more of a back seat,” said Laura Murphy, a civil rights lawyer and independent consultant who led the two-year audit.

The report potentially carries more weight than the other criticisms of Facebook on civil rights — including a widespread advertiser boycott — because Facebook commissioned it. However, it carries no guarantee that Facebook will make major changes to its policies or practices.

“Being a platform where everyone can make their voice heard is core to our mission, but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable for people to spread hate. It’s not,” Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a blog post in response to the report. “We have clear policies against hate — and we strive constantly to get better and faster at enforcing them.”

The report comes on the heels of a meeting Facebook held with the organizers of a fast-growing boycott of over 1,000 advertisers, who have several demands of Facebook, including hiring a top-level executive who will ensure the global platform does not fuel racism and radicalization. The timing of the publication of the long-anticipated report led the civil rights groups organizing the boycott to argue Facebook was attempting to use it to draw attention away from their demands, which also include ending exceptions for politicians. The organizers called the Tuesday meeting “disappointing.”

Facebook denied it was trying to deflect attention from the boycott.

Facebook’s auditors faulted the social network for making policy decisions that undermine civil rights progress. They said Facebook failed to improve the experience of people of color who use the platform and provides a forum for white supremacy and white nationalism. They also said the company had delayed acting on calls to hire experts in civil rights to senior leadership positions, noting recent decisions over hate speech were made by senior executives who lacked specific civil rights expertise and nuanced understandings of race.

Facebook has made some concessions, including adding fact-checking labels to certain posts. The auditors praised the concessions but said they did not go far enough.

Civil rights leaders said the release of the report is by no means an “end game” in their efforts to change the social network. Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that work is increasingly critical in light of the intense polarization sweeping the country amid the pandemic and widespread protests against racism.

“There is so much at stake in this moment for the platform to get it right, for our democracy and for our communities,” she said. “The work is going to continue. We’re going to continue to press, to push to make these changes even after the final report comes out.”

It remains to be seen what changes Facebook will make in light of the report. Murphy said she’s hopeful Facebook will adopt some of the audit’s recommendations, but she noted it will take continued advocacy and pressure to ensure that happens.

“I just can’t predict which issues are going to make it across the finish line,” she said.

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