Tony Romm

Free-speech advocates are challenging the Trump Administration’s policy of requiring foreigners to list their social media accounts as part of their visa applications, alleging in a lawsuit filed Dec 5 that the policy violates federal law and runs afoul of the Constitution.

Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) led Sens Biran Schatz (D-HI), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Amy Klobuarch (D-MN) in unveiling the Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act (COPRA), which proposes tough new punishments for Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley tech giants that mishandle their users’ personal data. The sweeping new online privacy bill aims to provide people their “Miranda rights” for the digital age. Rights consumers would gain from COPRA include:

The Trump campaign lashed out at Facebook after company executives said they were considering changes to rules around political ads that could affect the campaign’s ability to target its supporters on the platform. The outcry came as Trump’s reelection team has undertaken a massive spending blitz on Facebook aimed at countering the House’s impeachment inquiry. Trump’s page alone promoted more than $830,000 worth of ads in the seven days ending on Nov 17, according to Facebook’s ad archive.

Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s top antitrust enforcer, warned tech giants that amassing vast quantities of consumers’ data could create competition concerns in the eyes of federal regulators, marking the US government’s latest shot across the bow at Silicon Valley.

Facebook acknowledged another privacy mishap: some app developers may have wrongly accessed names and profile photos of users in certain groups. Roughly 100 “partners” may have accessed this information — including 11 that had done so within the past 60 days. Otherwise, Facebook declined to offer specifics, including who exactly might have seen the data and how many users had been affected. The trouble appears to stem from a functionality in Facebook’s groups service.

The Texas-led antitrust investigation into Google has already spilled into court, after the company told a judge that two experts retained by the states raise serious “confidentiality” concerns given their past work with rivals, such as News Corp.

Twitter will ban all advertisements about political candidates, elections and hot-button policy issues such as abortion and immigration, a significant shift that comes in response to growing concerns that politicians are seizing on the vast reach of social media to deceive voters ahead of the 2020 election. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said paying for political speech has the effect of “forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.” “While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politi

Forty-six attorneys general have joined a New York-led antitrust investigation into Facebook, raising the stakes in a sweeping bipartisan probe of the tech giant that could result in massive changes to its business practices.

Facebook initially mounted an aggressive legal offensive against federal regulators who sought to fine the tech giant billions of dollars for privacy abuses, arguing in newly revealed documents that the company did not harm consumers or profit from mishandling users’ data — and that it would have prevailed in court if it had come to that.

Congressional lawmakers are drafting a bill to create a “national commission” at the Department of Homeland Security to study the ways that social media can be weaponized — and the effectiveness of tech giants’ efforts to protect users from harmful content online. The draft House bill is slated to be introduced and considered next week. If passed, the commission would be empowered — with the authority to hold hearings and issue subpoenas — to study the way social media companies police the Web and to recommend potential legislation.