Washington Post
For Facebook’s Zuckerberg, FTC settlement could bring a new era of accountability (Washington Post)
Submitted by benton on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 19:23White House summit on social media gave a boost to key Trump supporters. They used it to attack Mueller.
After right-wing influencers and online provocateurs flocked to the White House for a summit on how they’d been suppressed across social media, a remarkable thing happened: Their social media audiences soared. 15 of the event’s invitees have seen their Twitter audiences grow by a combined 197,000 followers — a 75 percent jump over the number of followers they’d gained in the same time span before the event. On July 24, they put that new reach to good use, mobilizing on social media against the testimony of former special counsel Robert S.
Facebook’s latest profits show FTC fine is a blip (Washington Post)
Submitted by benton on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 15:36Analysis: President Trump's threats against Big Tech create the appearance that a new DOJ antitrust probe is political (Washington Post)
Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 11:36Here are the details of the FTC's $5 billion settlement with Facebook
The Federal Trade Commission’s record-breaking settlement with Facebook will slap the company with a $5 billion fine and grant regulators exceptional oversight of the company’s business practices. But the FTC’s two Democratic commissioners, Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, voted against the order and issued a warning that the fine was too small and the remedies should have gone farther. While the settlement winds down the FTC’s sweeping sixteen-month probe, it’s likely to trigger greater examination of whether the country’s top privacy cop is able to hold tech giants accountable.
Facebook deceived users about the way it used phone numbers, facial recognition, FTC to allege in complaint
Apparently, the Federal Trade Commission plans to allege that Facebook misled users’ about its handling of their phone numbers as part of a wide-ranging complaint that accompanies a settlement ending the government’s privacy probe. In the complaint, which has not yet been released, federal regulators take issue with Facebook’s earlier implementation of a security feature called two-factor authentication. It allows users to request one-time password, sent by text message, each time they log onto the social-networking site.
Margaret Sullivan: The media is getting a second chance to cover Robert Mueller’s findings — and this time get it right (Washington Post)
Submitted by benton on Tue, 07/23/2019 - 12:28Attorney General Barr says encrypted apps pose ‘grave threat’ to safety
Attorney General William Barr delivered a blistering critique of encrypted messaging programs, saying they are preventing law enforcement from stopping killings, drug dealing and terrorism, and warned that time may be running out for the tech industry to make changes on its own.