Platforms

Public Knowledge Stands with Civil Rights Groups by Refusing Facebook Funding

Public Knowledge announces that it will not accept funding from Facebook for any of the organization’s programs or initiatives. The decision follows a June 1 meeting between Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and civil rights leaders to discuss the company’s choice to leave up without moderation comments made by President Donald Trump, including one in which he posted, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” in reference to protests over George Floyd’s death. Twitter, meanwhile, labeled the content with a disclaimer that it “glorified violence.”

Open Technology Institute is declining further funding from Facebook

As the country confronts its long, deeply rooted history of racism, we must all acknowledge our own role in racist systems and make changes to ensure we are part of the solution, rather than the problem. With over 2.6 billion users, Facebook has a clear responsibility to reckon with its role in these systems or risk continuing to facilitate oppression that imperils Black lives. Despite repeated calls to action from inside and outside the company, Facebook has long struggled with this responsibility.

Ending Our Click-Bait Culture: Why Progressives Must Break the Power of Facebook and Google

This memo briefly explains how Facebook and Google have come to dominate modern communications networks, what that means for American democracy, and how to fix it.

Roadmap for an Antitrust Case Against Facebook

Facebook has a monopoly in social media and/or social networks, whether considered in lay or legal or economic terms. This paper applies an economic and competition policy lens to the following premise: in a competitive market, Facebook’s constituents would enjoy the best social network Facebook can provide.

Sens Rubio, Loeffler, Cramer, Hawley Urge FCC to Clarify Section 230 Protections for Social Media Companies

Sens Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) requested that the Federal Communication Commission take a fresh look at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and clearly define the criteria for which companies can receive protections under the statute.

Doomscrolling: Why We Just Can’t Look Away

Primal instincts often drive our obsession with stressful news, and social-media platforms are designed to keep us hooked. “These algorithms are designed to take and amplify whatever emotions will keep us watching, especially negative emotions. And that can have a real negative impact on people’s mental health,” says David Jay of the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit addressing how social-media platforms hijack our attention.

Zuckerberg: Facebook will review policies after backlash over Trump posts

Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will review its content policies after facing widespread backlash, including from its own employees, over the decision to leave up controversial posts from President Donald Trump. Facebook will look at improving content policies while also building products to advance racial justice, the CEO said in response to the protests in the United States. 

Facebook Sees No Foreign Interference Around Protests

Facebook removed two networks of accounts linked to white supremacy groups, but hasn’t seen any attempted foreign interference on its platforms related to the recent Black Lives Matter protests across the US targeting police brutality. Attorney General William Barr said that the US government has seen evidence of “foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence.” But Facebook officials said  they haven’t detected foreign influence on the social network.

Big tech should create a national service program to make the US more united

No form of modern technology can replace what’s needed to bridge divides that have deepened during decades of disruption in which few have prospered and many have languished. What’s needed is a voluntary, but expected, national service program that allows people to walk a mile in another American’s shoes. This program — let’s call it the American Service Corps — would send eighteen-year-olds to another corner of the country for a year to live in a new community, complete service projects and interact with folks of varied backgrounds and beliefs.

The Complex Debate Over Silicon Valley’s Embrace of Content Moderation

The existential question that every big tech platform from Twitter to Google to Facebook has to wrestle with is the same: How responsible should it act for the content that people post? The answer that Silicon Valley has come up with for decades is: Less is more. But now, as protests of police brutality continue across the country, many in the tech industry are questioning the wisdom of letting all flowers bloom online.

Social media takes on world leaders

Social media companies are finally beginning to take action on posts from world leaders that violate their policies, after years of letting them mostly say whatever they wanted unfiltered to millions of people. Government officials are among the users most likely to abuse the wide reach and minimal regulation of tech platforms. Mounting pressure to stop harmful content from spreading amid the coronavirus pandemic, racial protests and a looming U.S.

Of course technology perpetuates racism. It was designed that way.

Today the United States crumbles under the weight of two pandemics: coronavirus and police brutality. Both wreak physical and psychological violence. Both disproportionately kill and debilitate black and brown people. And both are animated by technology that we design, repurpose, and deploy—whether it’s contact tracing, facial recognition, or social media. We often call on technology to help solve problems.

European Commission launches consultation to seek views on Digital Services Act package

The European Commission launched a public consultation on the Digital Services Act, a landmark package announced by President von der Leyen in her political guidelines and in the Commission's Communication “Shaping Europe's Digital Future” of 19 February.

The virus has brought the digital future closer

The digital future has long been talked about but the pandemic has brought it a big step closer. For millions, technology has been a lifeline in a new, socially-distanced reality. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. For the companies, the crisis has not only cemented their market power but provided an opportunity to show that they can be responsible corporate citizens.

Suit Challenges President’s Executive Order Targeting First Amendment Protected Speech

The Center for Democracy & Technology filed a lawsuit against President Trump’s “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship,” signed May 28, 2020. The suit argues that the Executive Order violates the First Amendment by curtailing and chilling the constitutionally protected speech of online platforms and individuals. 

In YouTube Censorship Case, US Backs Internet Law Trump Scorns

In a censorship case filed against YouTube by LGBTQ content creators, the US Justice Department is defending the law that protects internet companies from lawsuits -- the same statute President Donald Trump has threatened to revoke.

Mark Zuckerberg spoke with civil rights leaders about President Trump's posts. It didn't go well.

Top Facebook executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, spoke with civil rights leaders June 1 as the company confronts a wave of backlash over its decision not to moderate President Donald Trump's controversial posts. But the roughly hour-long call, intended to show the company takes concerns from the black community seriously, only further inflamed tensions. Color of Change President Rashad Robinson, NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Sherrilyn Ifil and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights chief executive Vanita Gupta immediately blasted Zuckerberg following the call. Robinson

FCC Commissioner Carr is President Trump's unexpected ally in the fight against tech

He rails against the "far left's" hoaxes. He says the World Health Organization has been “beclowned” over its response to the coronavirus. And he describes a “secret and partisan surveillance machine” run by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA). Those aren't President Donald Trump's words. They came from Brendan Carr, the junior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, who is embracing a flavor of distinctly Trumpian rhetoric that could help him leapfrog his way to the chairmanship of the five-member regulatory agency.

Trump's Social Media Regulation Push Faces Key Hurdle at the FCC

President Donald Trump's effort to regulate social media companies' content decisions may face an uphill battle from Federal Communications Commission regulators who have previously said they cannot oversee the conduct of internet firms. In August 2018, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said, "The government is not here to regulate these platforms. We don't have the power to do that." Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican, wrote on Twitter that the review ordered by President Trump is "based on political #speech management of platforms.

How President Trump got the FCC involved in his war against Twitter

President Donald Trump is asking the Federal Communications Commission to review Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that gives social media companies their legal protection. The president wants rules that'll let the agency investigate complaints that social media companies discriminate against certain speech on their platforms. Any role in policing social media will be awkward for the FCC, which has cast itself as anti-regulation under Ajit Pai, its Trump-appointed chairman.

Senator Cruz Calls for Criminal Investigation Into Twitter for ‘Blatant and Willful Violation’ of U.S. Sanctions on Iran

Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) called on Attorney General Bill Barr and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to investigate Twitter for willfully violating American sanctions on Iran by providing social media accounts and services to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif. Both officials are designated under Executive Order (E.O) 13876 for connections to the Office of the Supreme Leader of Iran, which is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.

Chairman Pai Challenges Twitter After It Warns About President Trump Tweet

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai challenged Twitter over a bellicose posting from Iran’s top leader hours after the company put a warning about glorifying violence on a tweet from President Donald Trump. “Serious question for @Twitter: Do these tweets from Supreme Leader of Iran @khamenei_ir violate “Twitter Rules about glorifying violence”? Chairman Pai said in a tweet. He attached screen shots of May 22 tweets from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei predicting the eventual elimination of Israel.

Joe Biden doesn’t like President Trump’s Twitter order, but still wants to revoke Section 230

Former Vice President Joe Biden still wants to repeal Section 230, the pivotal internet law that provides social media companies like Facebook and Twitter with broad legal immunity over content posted by their users, a campaign spokesperson said. Still, the campaign emphasized key disagreements with the executive order signed by President Donald Trump May 28.