Stories from Abroad

Apparently, associates of President Donald Trump and his company have turned over documents to federal investigators that reveal two previously unreported contacts from Russia during the 2016 campaign. In one case, Trump’s personal attorney and a business associate exchanged emails weeks before the Republican National Convention about the lawyer possibly traveling to an economic conference in Russia that would be attended by top Russian financial and government leaders, including President Vladi­mir Putin, according to people familiar with the correspondence. In the other case, the same Trump attorney, Michael Cohen, received a proposal in late 2015 for a Moscow residential project from a company founded by a billionaire who once served in the upper house of the Russian parliament, these people said.

The previously unreported inquiry marks the second proposal for a Trump-branded Moscow project that was delivered to the company during the presidential campaign and has since come to light. Cohen declined the invitation to the economic conference, citing the difficulty of attending so close to the GOP convention, according to people familiar with the matter. And Cohen rejected the Moscow building plan.

Rep Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, wants Facebook to release at least some of the controversial political ads purchased by Kremlin-backed sources.

Facebook turned over those ads — roughly 3,000 of them in total, valued at more than $100,000 — to investigators on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees earlier Oct 2. Some of the posts specifically sought to stoke racial, religious or other social tensions by stirring conflict around issues like Black Lives Matter, gun control and gay rights. Rep Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House’s panel, said he planned to work with Facebook to release “a representative sampling” of the ads to the public — just in time for a hearing slated for October on the extent to which Russia spread misinformation through social networks. The goal, Schiff said, is to “inoculate the public against future Russian interference in our elections.”

The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook in 2016 tried on quite an array of disguises. There was “Defend the 2nd,” a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with firearms and tough rhetoric. There was a rainbow-hued page for gay rights activists, “LGBT United.” There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads.

Federal investigators and officials at Facebook now believe these groups and their pages were part of a highly coordinated disinformation campaign linked to the Internet Research Agency, a secretive company in St. Petersburg, Russia, known for spreading Kremlin-linked propaganda and fake news across the web. Under intensifying pressure from Congress and growing public outcry, Facebook on Oct 2 turned over more than 3,000 of the Russia-linked advertisements from its site over to the Senate and House intelligence committees. The material is part of an attempt to learn the depth of what investigators now believe was a sprawling foreign effort spanning years to interfere with the 2016 United States presidential election.

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a major Washington (DC) technology trade association which represents the likes of Amazon, Google and Apple, is ramping up its focus in Europe as the continent increases its grip on technology companies. The ITI will announce its hiring of Guido Lobrano to launch a permanent European policy outpost. Lobrano will serve as the trade association’s senior director of global policy in Europe.

Lobrano will be based in Brussels, the unofficial capital of the European Union. Though the EU has no official capital Brussels holds the seats of European Commission, Council of the European Union, and European Council, as well as one of the most important seats in the European Parliament. “The reason for the hire is reflective for broader changes that are taking place. The world is becoming increasingly horizontal,” says ITI President and CEO Dean Garfield. “It is becoming more global and integrated, in spite of what you hear in the political domain in the US.”

Mobile-only users are usually perceived as a consequence of fixed-mobile substitution. This study uses a unique dataset based on a survey in France, combined with interviewee's telecommunications billing data, to reveal heterogeneous consumer preferences for fixed services.

With the same mixed logit model we estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for fixed communications services and fixed-mobile relationship. Results show a very large heterogeneity of WTP for fixed services among consumers. In addition, we show that fixed and mobile data are complement for all consumers. Mobile-only consumers have a much lower but non-zero WTP, and higher price sensitivity compared to fixed-mobile consumers. Consequently, an increase in the fixed offer price would reduce the demand for fixed service. Heterogeneous preferences for fixed services constitute an alternative explanation for the existence of mobile-only users, despite the complementary nature of fixed and mobile broadband. Counter-factual simulations show that the share of mobile-only could also be driven by the way to subsidize mobile handset. For instance, making the handset subsidy only available to fixed-mobile quadruple play subscribers could reduce the share of mobile-only by half.

Russia is warning the US not to take action against its government-backed media outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, threatening retaliation. "When it comes down to a fight with no rules, when the law is twisted and turned into an instrument for the destruction of a TV company, every step against a Russian media outlet will be met with a corresponding response," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. "And whom this response will be aimed at, that is what Washington needs to figure out as well," she added. "The clock is ticking."

Zakharova did not how Russia would retaliate to protect its media outlets. The spokeswoman has previously threatened that Russia would take "reciprocal measures" against the US if it did not return Russian diplomatic facilities seized in 2016. The Justice Department sent a letter earlier in Sept demanding the company that runs state-funded television network RT — formerly Russia Today — to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), treating its content as propaganda.

A social media campaign calling itself "Blacktivist" and linked to the Russian government used both Facebook and Twitter in an apparent attempt to amplify racial tensions during the US presidential election, apparently. The Twitter account has been handed over to Congress; the Facebook account is expected to be handed over in the coming days. Both Blacktivist accounts, each of which used the handle Blacktivists, regularly shared content intended to stoke outrage. "Black people should wake up as soon as possible," one post on the Twitter account read. "Black families are divided and destroyed by mass incarceration and death of black men," another read. The accounts also posted videos of police violence against African Americans. The Blacktivist accounts provide further evidence that Russian-linked social media accounts saw racial tensions as something to be exploited in order to achieve the broader Russian goal of dividing Americans and creating chaos in US politics during a campaign in which race repeatedly became an issue.

Most of Australia’s newspapers, radio stations and television broadcasters are controlled by only a handful of owners, like Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, making it one of the most concentrated media markets in the developed world. Soon, even more Australian media properties could be in fewer hands.

New legislation backed by Australia’s governing Liberal party would eliminate restrictions separating broadcast media from print and would allow media companies to own more outlets in a city. The legislation, which has cleared Australia’s Senate and could come before the lower house of Parliament as soon as next month, is widely expected to pass. Media owners say the rules are relics of a less digital era. Like media companies around the world, Australia’s newspaper and television station owners are contending with the rise of internet companies like Facebook and Google, which are drawing away advertising dollars, eyeballs and eardrums. But in an echo of debates raging in other countries, opponents say the changes would lead to a less diverse media market, with Murdoch’s company among those likely to benefit the most. They also contend the legislation’s backers are simply helping their political allies.

“We may have in America the best 20th-century military that money can buy, but we’re increasingly in a world where cyber vulnerability, misinformation and disinformation may be the tools of conflict,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Co-Chair Mark Warner (D-VA). “What we may have seen are the first tools of 21st-century disinformation.” He believes Russia’s use of social media to influence 2016’s election demonstrated how warfare has moved away from the battlefield and toward the internet. And the U.S. has been slow to adjust.

Earlier this summer we outlined some of our work to combat bots and networks of manipulation on Twitter. Since then, we have received a number of questions about how malicious bots and misinformation networks on Twitter may have been used in the context of the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. Sept 28, Twitter Vice President for Public Policy Colin Crowell met with staff from Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss these issues.

Of the roughly 450 accounts that Facebook recently shared as a part of their review, we concluded that 22 had corresponding accounts on Twitter. All of those identified accounts had already been or immediately were suspended from Twitter for breaking our rules, most for violating our prohibitions against spam. In addition, from those accounts we found an additional 179 related or linked accounts, and took action on the ones we found in violation of our rules. Neither the original accounts shared by Facebook, nor the additional related accounts we identified, were registered as advertisers on Twitter. However, we continue to investigate these issues, and will take action on anything that violates our Terms of Service.