Tech legislation's 2022 scorecard
A bevy of proposals to limit Big Tech firms' power gave up their last gasp as Congress released the text of its year-end spending bill. But the following major tech-related b
A bevy of proposals to limit Big Tech firms' power gave up their last gasp as Congress released the text of its year-end spending bill. But the following major tech-related b
The European Commission has made commitments offered by Amazon legally binding under European Union antitrust rules. Amazon's commitments address the Commission's competition concerns over Amazon's use of non-public marketplace seller data and over a possible bias in granting sellers access to its Buy Box and its Prime program. Amazon's practices raised three competition concerns:
Twitter will no longer allow users to promote their presence on certain social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post. Twitter says it will take action against users that violate this policy “at both the Tweet level and the account level.” This means users can no longer include links to their profiles on other social networks in their Twitter bio, nor can they send out tweets directing users to check out their Instagram or Facebook accounts.
Elon Musk said that Twitter was reinstating the accounts of several journalists whose accounts were suspended after he had accused them of violating the social media platform’s rules on personal privacy. Musk said he was restoring most of the accounts, which had been deactivated on Dec 15, after a majority of respondents in his informal Twitter survey voted that the suspensions should be lifted immediately.
Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists without publicly specifying why, the latest instance of the platform making content or user decisions under Elon Musk without much transparency. The accounts belonged to journalists from publications including CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Mashable.
The House Commerce Committee voted 28-23 along party lines not to recommend a Republican-backed resolution of inquiry to the full House.
Samuel Levine, director of the Federal Trade Commission's bureau of consumer protection, said the agency won't hesitate to sue companies that play fast and loose with customers' data.
Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), who will chair the House Judiciary Committee next Congress, gave a hint of what is to come with letters sent to five big tech companies requesting information about conservative material removed from their platforms. In letters sent to large online platforms, Rep Jordan requested the top executives at Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook provide any information they have about contact with President Joe Biden's administration regarding "the moderation, deletion, suppression, restricting, or reduced circulation of content." Rep Jordan and other Rep
Rep Andrew Clyde (R-GA) led 10 of his colleagues in introducing the Free Speech Defense Act to eliminate government-by-proxy censorship. The legislation:
Lawmakers ended what had been an effort to allow media organizations to band together to negotiate revenue sharing deals with tech giants, leaving the provisions out of a massive spending bill amid intense pushback from industry and advocacy groups. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) was omitted from a bicameral agreement on Congress’s sprawling defense-spending legislation.
The inaugural Telco Giants Scorecard reveals that telecommunications companies, despite being gatekeepers of the internet for most of the world, are less transparent overall and more susceptible to government demands than their Big Tech peers. It’s time to renew our scrutiny of these companies and hold them accountable for respecting our rights online. None of the 12 telecommunications companies evaluated earned a passing grade.
Elon Musk is the latest patron for an alternative-media ecosystem — right-leaning but not conventionally Republican — that has emerged in the last two years. Feeding on resentment against mainstream media, new media players have established a power base via Substack newsletters, podcasts and other independent channels. Writers Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Glenn Greenwald are getting new attention with Musk's ownership of Twitter. And they're reigniting long-simmering debates about what constitutes journalism in the internet era.
Twenty-five years ago, on Dec.
The jokes and memes about Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase as proof of a massive midlife crisis are at least partly on point. The internet, for one, is having its own midlife crisis. And as with any midlife crisis, the internet can spiral into the abyss, continuing its own self-destructive pathway, or we can seize the moment to build a better internet founded on the essential principle that the internet belongs to all of us. Twitter isn’t just a platform. It’s how some of us live, work, and survive.
Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day. Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day. And antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61 percent in the two weeks after Mr.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, said several factors led to his decision to leave the platform after almost eight years, including the disruptions created by
UltraViolet, GLADD, Kairos, and Women's March commissioned YouGov to conduct a study of attitudes about hate speech, harassment, and misinformation among Americans. The research finds that respondents are broadly positive about a variety of aspects of the online experience—from the internet providing them a way to stay in touch with family and friends, space to pursue hobbies, and a voice. However, the plurality of respondents across all comparison groups are ambivalent about the risks of being online as well as on the internet's impact on mental health.
Twitter faces a mass of forces abroad and in Washington that aim to compel the company to obey privacy rules, speech limits and other regulations as Elon Musk remakes the service. Musk's word is law inside Twitter now, but his disdain for rules will encounter tough pushback from governments around the world — just as the company has lost most of the people who managed its relationships with regulators and legislators. Twitter's biggest challenges lie abroad, particularly in Europe, which has been steadily tightening tech regulations for years.
Major tax filing services such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have been quietly transmitting sensitive financial information to Facebook when Americans file their taxes online. The data, sent through a widely used code called the Meta Pixel, includes not only information like names and email addresses but often even more detailed information, including data on users’ income, filing status, refund amounts, and dependents’ college scholarship amounts. The information sent to Facebook can be used by the company to power its advertising algorithms and is gathered regardless of whether
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is fueling a partisan clash in Washington, as Democrats raise concerns about the platform’s security and Republicans counter that the criticism is a thinly veiled attempt to stamp out conservative voices on the site.
Nothing new Twitter owner Elon Musk has done and undone is nearly as concerning as his decision to suddenly reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account. As someone who has been studying Trump’s Twitter use since before he was elected president, I believe that his return would mean the heightened spread of both misinformation and disinformation, the proliferation of degrading and dehumanizing discourse, the further mainstreaming of hate speech, and the erosion of democratic norms and institutions.
Our changing climate threatens the very services we rely on to keep our businesses online and stay connected with friends and family. As our world warms up, power outages and water shortages have ravaged many parts of the planet. Data centers may be among the first to feel the resource pinch.
Many election deniers on the ballot, particularly for the crucial secretary-of-state roles, lost their races. This is because platforms, governments, and the media took countermeasures that were at least partially effective, based on their lessons from 2016, 2018, and 2020. Though misinformation remains present in large quantities, this time it had less reach, was more spread out, and was harder to find.
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