Platforms

Twitter recently rolled out a new policy aimed at “manipulated media.” Its first target: a 13-second clip tweeted by Dan Scavino, White House director of social media, featuring [out of context words from Joe Biden]. The Biden campaign quickly denounced the video as “disinformation” and pressured both Twitter and Facebook to take it down. Twitter slapped the manipulated-media label on it. Facebook put a “partly false” screen over it. The debate that followed helped earn the clip millions of views.

Twitter recently rolled out a new policy aimed at “manipulated media.” Its first target: a 13-second clip tweeted by Dan Scavino, White House director of social media, featuring Joe Biden. The Biden campaign quickly denounced the video as “disinformation” and pressured both Twitter and Facebook to take it down. Twitter slapped the manipulated-media label on it. Facebook put a “partly false” screen over it. The debate that followed helped earn the clip millions of views. Imagine going after President Lyndon B.

While quarantined in her Wuhan apartment for days on end, the woman who calls herself “Sister Ma” suddenly found herself blocked from her account on WeChat, a platform used by more than 1 billion people in China. Without WeChat, she was cut off from communication with friends and family, the ability to order critical supplies, and contact with her children’s school. “My life is falling apart,” she wrote on a now-deleted but archived message on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

If we have to suspend or otherwise modify political campaigning because of coronavirus, social media will become even more important and the fissures it creates even more painful. We should expect the platform companies such as Facebook and Google to step up to this national emergency—but can we?

A new Knight Foundation and Gallup study confirms that, for Americans, the techlash is real, widespread, and bipartisan. From concerns about the spread of misinformation to election interference and data privacy, we’ve documented the deep pessimism of folks across the political spectrum who believe tech companies have too much power — and that they do more harm than good. Some findings:

The Senate Judiciary Committee met to discuss tech companies unfairly favoring their own products. And Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) announced the "Anticompetitive Exclusionary Conduct Prevention Act" to limit “exclusionary conduct” where a big company locks out smaller competitors, among other changes to antitrust law. It increases the burden of proof on monopolists to prove they’re not suppressing competition, and it discourages courts from granting immunity from antitrust enforcement.

Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sens Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced new legislation to deter anticompetitive abuses that distort the competitive process and harm consumers, innovation, and new business formation. The Anticompetitive Exclusionary Conduct Prevention Act prohibits anticompetitive exclusionary conduct that risks harm to the competitive process.

A federal appeals court grappled March 5 with whether average consumers know the difference between the ads and the organic search results that appear on Google. Arguing before the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, 1-800 Contacts — which is seeking to reverse a Federal Trade Commission decision that its trademark agreements violated antitrust law — contended that they don’t understand.

A Q&A with Sen Mark Warner (D-VA). 

Government oversight of tech companies is one thing, but in the 2020 election year, Sen Warner is also thinking about the various ways technology is being used to threaten democracy itself. The interview covers election interference, misinformation, cybersecurity threats, and the government’s ability and willingness to deal with such problems.

In 2020, lawmakers have lots of ideas about how to regulate tech companies. New bills are introduced every day, creating a sea of regulatory threats that’s difficult to keep straight as time goes on. A majority of these measures will never make their way into a committee hearing, and even fewer will be signed into law. But taken as a whole, they give us a sense of what a major tech regulation bill might look like this Congress. And as the 2020 election season takes off, that picture is more urgent than ever.