Daily Archives: November 13, 2020

In mid-October, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a long-expected antitrust lawsuit against Google, one of the worlds largest and most influential companies. Claiming that Google has used deals with phone makers to keep its web search engine as the default on Android and Apple smartphones, the DOJ is being joined by various US states (all with Republican attorney generals) in the suit. Many other states are also running their own investigations of the company.

Google, along with the rest of Big Tech, has become a political target due to its rising power and wealth (the company is now worth over a trillion dollars). With House Democrats calling for action against the tech platforms and Donald Trump also angry at them, the company appears to be in hot water.

But US antitrust law is notoriously weak sauce, only able to bring suit against companies in specific situations. Having a full-on monopoly is not one of them. Previous US cases, in particular against Microsoft in the 1990s, suggest that the government may struggle to beat its well-financed opponent in court. And even if it did, the search market would only see somewhat more market share going to giant rivals like Microsofts Bing or Verizons Yahoo. Theres no path that leads to the rich, free competition that capitalisms defenders insist it creates.

The DOJs case mainly concerns the deals Google has made placing its search engine as the default in various computing environments a crucial advantage since many users dont change their factory settings. As a Google design ethicist once commented, If you control the menu, you control the choices. Since 2005, Google has paid Apple enormous sums, estimated today at $10 billion a year, to keep Google Search pre-loaded in Apples Safari web browser.

The traffic acquisition cost yields as much as half of its search volume. The stakes are big for Apple too. Googles payments make up roughly a fifth of the companys entire yearly profit. On smartphones running Googles Android mobile operating system, Googles licensing arrangements require the phone makers (like Samsung and Huawei) to set its engine as the default and to keep its apps un-deletable.

The dramatically higher search traffic not only feeds Googles online ad business its main revenue source but also provides fresh inquiries for continued training of its search algorithm. The relationship with Apple in particular has been so important to Google that they internally referred to the possibility of losing iPhone search traffic as Code Red.

The fact that Google has a near-monopoly in search, including an 80 percent market share for desktop and about 88 percent for mobile, is not in itself illegal. Googles dominant position arises from the economics of online search, which is driven by a classic network effect more users of a search engine help strengthen the algorithm, making its search results more relevant to the user.

Under the USs very limited antitrust system, gaining a monopoly through such economic forces isnt against the law only using your monopoly to take over another industry (monopolization) is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Googles various exclusivity deals likely do constitute monopolization, separate from other power-mongering practices like search bias, where Google has used its dominance to crush competing specialized or vertical search services like Yelp, Foundem, and Tripadvisor by down-ranking them in Googles search results or by scraping their content onto Googles own result pages.

The DOJ is still fighting an uphill battle due to the farcically limited nature of US antitrust law, which in its modern interpretation tends to also require likely consumer harm, usually in the form of higher prices. Since Google offers its services mostly for free (along with other likely imminent antitrust targets like Facebook), its unclear if Justice will be able to convince a judge that consumers are harmed by Googles traffic acquisition arrangements after all, consumer goods companies like cereal makers pay retailers for special product placement all the time.

If the DOJ does succeed and forces Alphabet to end its exclusivity/default setting deals with phone markers and service providers, it would likely only mean more traffic for the one serious rival to Google Search in the market, Microsofts Bing. Started in 2009 to try to wrest some market share from Google, Bing has just 2.83 percent of the market share for mobile search and a slightly higher 13.48 percent on desktop (due to it being the default on Windows, the desktop operating system that still runs three-quarters of the worlds computers).

The third-place Yahoo search uses Bing to produce its results and place its search ads. And while Bings wimpy market share looks inconsequential, Google takes its potential threat seriously the New York Times has reported that Google unfairly hinders the ability of search competitors and Microsofts Bing is almost the only one left from examining and indexing information that Google controls, like its big video service YouTube, with Bing unable to examine and index up to half the videos on YouTube.

So even in the best-case scenario, a monopolized industry would become more of a two-company or oligopoly industry, with few likely benefits to users as both siphon up user data and use whatever exclusive carve-outs they can retain as defaults, like on the Edge and Chromebook devices the companies produce. The companies are unlikely to make serious plays against one anothers search territory: the companies are already cooperating on several fronts, including Microsoft planning to use Googles Android on its new line of smartphones. The companies settled their long-running multiple patent-infringement suits and countersuits in 2016.

But will the DOJs case succeed? We can look to previous tech monopoly investigations for clues.

Microsofts own antitrust odyssey is the most instructive. Much like Google Search, Microsofts Windows had a near-total monopoly in a crucial tech market the operating systems that run desktop computers (the entire industry until the mobile era). The company had a history of taking ruthless actions to crush or copy competitors for its related products, including its Office suite of business applications like Word and Excel.

But it was only when Microsoft elected to use its existing OS monopoly to take over the new market for web browsing software that it got into trouble. The company bundled its own lousy browser, Internet Explorer, with versions of its Windows 95 and later updates, which were installed on most computers worldwide. Large payments followed to Apple, AOL, and other computing platforms to make Explorer their default browser rather than Netscape, with a senior VP alleged to have said Microsoft had cut off Netscapes air supply.

It was an open-and-shut instance of monopolization. The Federal Trade Commission and the DOJ got involved.

The case went to trial, and the company suffered deep public embarrassment as claims by the company and by Gates during his notorious video deposition were directly contradicted by the companys internal email trail. (It was during this period that Gates discovered the reputation-laundering powers of publicly posturing as a philanthropist.) After an arbitration attempt failed, the company was, in a rare development, formally declared a monopolist under the law and ordered broken up. Luckily for Microsoft, its appeal continued through the stolen 2000 election, and the George W. Bush administrations DOJ dropped its goal of splitting up the company.

Instead, the federal government told the company to make various behavioral reforms, including allowing computer manufacturers to hide from view the Windows-bundled Explorer logo and include a ballot screen, later called a choice screen, where users could select among various commercial internet browsers.

The shortcomings of these behavioral changes were seen in 2011, when Microsoft released a Windows 7 update without the browser choice screen software. Hilariously, no one noticed for almost seventeen months, when the company was reported to the European Commission (EC). The commission would go on to fine Microsoft $733 million, about one percent of its revenue that fiscal year.

Microsofts outcome is likely a harbinger of Googles eventual settlement indeed, its reminiscent of the European Commission judgment against Alphabet in 2018. That case was based on similar charges of requiring Android operating systemusing phone makers to pre-install the companys search engine and browser as defaults, without which Google would not allow them to include the Google Play store for mobile apps, the main way Android users get applications. The EC fined Google and forced it to end the practice, and EU regulators then pressured Google to include choice screens for users in every EU country.

However, for a browser to appear alongside Google on the ballot, they must bid in an auction for a slot (reflecting the companys love of using them in its advertising technology and elsewhere). Browsers like Bing and Yahoo, which collect user information to serve ads have far greater profits and resources to bid for ballot spaces, unlike smaller, privacy-centered browsers like DuckDuckGo. But this kind of wonkish policy outcome is quite possible for the US investigation of Alphabet.

Google was also investigated in the United States by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2013. That probe focused on search bias, meaning Googles abuse of its dominant search position by down-ranking competing vertical search engines for trips and shopping. Considered a close call by FTC staff, no charges were brought, perhaps due to the companys long-standing closeness to the Democratic party in general and the Obama administration in particular.

For all the rivers of digital ink being spilled over the Trump administrations suspect Justice Department going after Googles very real power-mongering, the limited scope of the suit, the constrained nature of US antitrust law, and Alphabets ocean of lobbying cash all suggest the chances of a dramatic outcome are vanishingly small. Alphabets stockholders have laughed off the suit so far. And its not hard to see why: it will likely take years, and the result will almost certainly be modest behavioral leashes.

Googles market power over the flow of information in our society, along with that of its Big Tech rivals/partners, isnt going anywhere not unless we start to entertain bolder steps beyond the weak tea of antitrust.

See the original post:

It's Going to Take More Than Antitrust Law to Rein in Big Tech - Jacobin magazine

As with many others in Britain, lockdown hit Rachel and her husband, Philip, hard. Almost overnight, the couple, both in their early 50s, found themselves cut off from friends, family and colleagues. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, they had both been working every day; now Philip found himself furloughed, while Rachel was put on rotation with other essential staff, working fewer shifts at odd hours. They were unable to meet up with their four adult sons and daughters. They had to attend a family funeral while remaining socially distanced.

Initially, Rachel coped in the way many others did. She played more video games than normal, and felt stressed at work, but as far as possible she managed. Her husband didnt. For him, it seemed there must be more to it than the authorities struggling to cope with a novel virus and evolving expert advice. The regularly changing and conflicting information that was coming from the government added to the feeling in him that they were making things up or covering something up, Rachel says now.

Initially, Philip and Rachel (their names have been changed for this article) discussed his fears, but as lockdown went on, their conversations stopped. Philip was frustrated that Rachel wasnt taking his concerns seriously: someone had to be benefiting from the situation, he insisted, and events such as Dominic Cummings Barnard Castle eye test only increased his belief that they knew the pandemic was fake, and the nation was being kept indoors for a more sinister purpose. Philip began to research what this sinister purpose might be. That, Rachel says, is what led him to QAnon.

Its hard to describe the movement that Philip fell into. QAnon has its roots in the pizzagate conspiracy, which emerged four years ago after users poring over hacked Democratic party emails on the message board 4chan said that, if you replaced the word pizza with little girl, it looked as if they were discussing eating children. That claim whether it was made in jest or sincerity is impossible to tell spiralled into allegations of a vast paedophilic conspiracy centred on Comet Pizza, a restaurant in Washington DC.

A year later, a 4chan user with the handle Q Clearance Patriot appeared, claiming to be a government insider tasked with sharing crumbs of intel about Donald Trumps planned counter-coup against the deep state forces frustrating his presidency. As Qs following grew, the movement became known as the Storm as in, the calm before and then QAnon, after its founder and prophet. At that point, QAnon was a relatively understandable conspiracy theory: it had a clear set of beliefs rooted in support for Trump and in the increasingly cryptic posts attributed to Q (by then widely believed to be a group of people posting under one name).

Now, though, its less clearcut. Theres no one set of beliefs that define a QAnon adherent. Most will claim some form of mass paedophilic conspiracy; some, particularly in the US, continue to focus on Trumps supposed fightback. But the web of beliefs has become all-encompassing. One fan-produced map of all the revelations linked to the group includes references to Julius Caesar, Atlantis and the pharaohs of Egypt in one corner, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and 5G in another, the knights of Malta in a third, and the Fukushima meltdown in a fourth all tied together with a generous helping of antisemitism, from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to hatred of George Soros. QAnon isnt one conspiracy theory any more: its all of them at once.

In September, BuzzFeed News made the stylistic decision to refer to the movement as a collective delusion. Theres more to the convoluted entity than the average reader might realise, wrote BuzzFeeds Drusilla Moorhouse and Emerson Malone. But delusion does illustrate the reality better than conspiracy theory does. We are discussing a mass of people who subscribe to a shared set of values and debunked ideas, which inform their beliefs and actions.

At first, QAnon was a largely US phenomenon, with limited penetration in the UK. The pandemic, however, has changed that. According to recent polling by Hope Not Hate, one in four people in Britain now agree with some of the basic conspiracies it has promulgated: that secret satanic cults exist and include influential elites, and that elites in Hollywood, politics, the media are secretly engaging in large-scale child trafficking and abuse. Nearly a third believe there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together, and almost a fifth say that Covid-19 was intentionally released as part of a depopulation plan.

For Philip, trapped at home and searching for an explanation for a global pandemic, when all he could find was a void of information, QAnon was fertile territory. He already spent most of his time while furloughed on his phone looking for answers. What was the real reason for everyone being forced inside? How did the virus start? Who started it?

In his mind, there had to be a reason for it, Rachel says. Inevitably, his search took in Facebook, where the sites recommendation algorithms were quick to connect him to individuals on similar quests. Ultimately, it led to him becoming brainwashed, she says.

For many, the existence of Facebook and its sister products, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger has been a lifeline in this period. The social network has always prided itself on connecting people, and when the ability to socialise in person, or even leave the house, was curtailed, Facebook was there to pick up the slack.

But those same services have also enabled the creation of what one professional factchecker calls a perfect storm for misinformation. And with real-life interaction suppressed to counter the spread of the virus, its easier than ever for people to fall deep down a rabbit hole of deception, where the endpoint may not simply be a decline in vaccination rates or the election of an unpleasant president, but the end of consensus reality as we know it. What happens when your basic understanding of the world is no longer the same as your neighbours? And can Facebook stop that fate coming to us all?

Since its foundation, in Mark Zuckerbergs Harvard dorm room, Facebook has tackled its share of challenges. Some have stayed fairly constant: no social network gets many users without needing to tackle spam, for instance, though the Facebook of 2004 would struggle to remove the 3.3bn junk posts that the company took down in the first half of this year.

Others are unique to a company with 2.7 billion users that operates in almost every country in the world. Facebook has become a centre point of civil society. Its more than just a place to share photos and plan parties: its where people read news, arrange protests, engage in debate, play games and watch bands. And that means that all the problems of civil society are now problems for Facebook: bullying, sexual abuse, political polarisation and conspiracy theorists all existed before the social network, but all took on new contours as they moved online.

And this year they really moved online. As the initial lockdown was imposed across much of the world, peoples relationship to the internet, and to Facebook in particular, evolved rapidly. Stuck socially distancing, people turned to social networking to fill an emotional void.

Suddenly, the company found itself staring at unprecedented demands. Our busiest time of the year is New Years Eve, says Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebooks vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, over a Zoom call from her London home. And we were seeing the equivalent of New Years Eve every single day. It was, she says, the inevitable result of having almost the entire planet at home at the same time.

Rachel agrees. I believe the lockdown played a huge part in altering peoples perception of reality, she says. When Covid restrictions came in, the rules of social interaction were rewritten. We suddenly stopped meeting friends in pubs, at the coffee point or by the school gates, and our lives moved online. And for many of us, online meant on Facebook.

I first heard Rachels story from QAnonCasualties, a forum on the social news site Reddit where she, and thousands like her, have congregated to seek advice and support after their loved ones fell into the cult. Her first post, in July this year, was titled: Ive finally reached the end of my tether. She described a marriage of 25 years, and a family with four grownup children, being shattered by a husband who had sunk further and further into this conspiracy.

Its got the stage where I no longer understand him or even recognise him, she wrote. Others echoed her story. Posts with titles such as Grieving my dad while hes still alive and Today I filed for divorce from my QAnon-obsessed husband rub shoulders with pleas for help from those who still hope they can win loved ones back.

Beyond the heartbreak and anguish on QAnonCasualties, there is a common thread: a feeling that their friends and relatives are inhabiting a different reality. On all levels, from the old-school conspiracist who just wants to uncover corruption to the alien interdimensional vampire demon QAnon believer, they ignore reality and latch on to narratives that support their version of reality, says Robert Johnson, one of the moderators of the board, adding that most of the recent posts are from people radicalised in lockdown.

Early on in the pandemic, Facebook moved to make the most of the situation. As almost all of its 50,000 or so employees, as well as its army of contractors, were sent home, and Zuckerberg talked up the benefits of remote working, the company handed out grants to small businesses to help them switch to digital operation $100m (79m) globally, and another $100m in the US and retooled its product offerings to take advantage of the new normal. But for all the work it put into smoothing the transition to lockdown life, Facebook also knew it had a problem brewing. The companys never-ending battle with misinformation on its platforms was about to step into overdrive.

For a long time, the company had resisted acting on the problem. Moderation is hard enough already: simply finding and removing every example of unambiguously banned content on Facebook is a huge task, with comparatively easy-to-automate searches for things such as adult content still throwing up dizzying numbers of edge cases and errors. When it came to tackling misinformation, Facebook had a stated philosophical objection. As a principle, in a democracy, I believe people should decide what is credible, not tech companies, Zuckerberg told an audience at Georgetown University last year. But the company was also motivated by the fact that misinformation isnt as straightforward to identify as nudity, graphic violence or even hate speech.

For one thing, there isnt even a commonly accepted definition. It is a sibling of disinformation, which is the deliberate spreading of falsehoods. But the line between misinformation and simple inaccuracies is blurry. Generally, the focus is on the potential for harm. A rumour that, say, the Canadian emo pop star Avril Lavigne was secretly replaced by a body double in the late 2000s is probably untrue, but unlikely to qualify as misinformation. Conversely, a rumour that Trump died of Covid-19 in early October and has been secretly replaced by a body double almost certainly does.

But wherever the line is drawn, the problem is the same: to find out if something is misinformation, you need to know the truth. Were Facebook to ban it directly, the company would effectively need to run an entire journalistic enterprise within its own moderation team.

As a compromise, Facebook partnered with journalists in 2017. Around the world, independent factchecking organisations were given funding and tools to mark viral posts on Facebook as true or false (there are a number of other categories, including satirical, altered or missing context). If the posts were false, their reach the extent to which the Facebook algorithm showed them to others would be diminished, and users would have to click through a warning sign to read them.

So far, the programme has been a mixed success. Reducing the reach of false content certainly helps: just a few months after it was launched, Facebook said a factcheck would lead to 80% fewer viewers of a piece of false content. But factcheckers have complained about the limits placed on them by the social network, ranging from restrictions on their ability to factcheck political adverts to a lack of feedback from Facebook about how much, or little, their work is actually helping.

And that was before Covid hit. We went early as a company in closing down globally, says Mendelsohn. You would class us as conservative in that respect, and we will be conservative coming out as well. Now, six months on, Facebook has a skeleton team in some of its offices and datacentres, and employees coming in to work on the companys augmented and virtual reality products, such as its Oculus headsets. But the bulk of its staff are still working from home, something that Zuckerberg has said is likely to continue well past the end of the crisis.

Facebooks moderation staff have been pulled off some of the most sensitive work, owing to data security concerns and fears for the employees own mental health. The soul-grinding task of scouring the platform for livestreamed suicides and videos of graphic violence has already led to a $52m settlement paid to more than 11,000 moderators in the US, and a lawsuit in Ireland over allegations of post-traumatic stress disorder, and that was when contractors were based in offices, with the support that brings.

By early April, the company was having to bring its diminished resources to bear against some of the most viral misinformation it had ever seen. (The unfortunate double meaning of the world viral was noted by nearly everyone I interviewed for this piece, as was the cliched-yet-useful approach of modelling misinformation as something spreading like a disease.)

It became clear, very quickly, that there would be different approaches to how people would talk about, debate and discuss the issues of the virus, Mendelsohn says. And so we work through our harmful misinformation policy that weve had in place for about two and a half years now, where we have a very specific policy about taking down anything that could contribute to physical harm.

Of course, the company has a lot of leeway in how it defines physical harm. It had applied that to infectious diseases before. A measles outbreak in Samoa, for instance, saw a parallel outbreak in harmful untruths, which Facebook acted to limit. But for years, Facebook has argued that the harm caused by the broader anti-vaccination movement didnt cross that threshold, and allowed the groups to flourish on the platform. In March 2019, it relented slightly, and banned anti-vax ads that include misinformation about vaccines; in October this year, it went further, and banned all anti-vax advertising, except for that with a political message. Organic content posts and groups advocating against vaccines is still allowed.

With Covid-19, the company went even further, attempting to limit the misinformation while also filling in the information voids that led people such as Philip down their dark path. Links pinned at the top of feeds have taken more than 2 billion people, Mendelsohn says, to resources from health authorities around the world, detailing what is known about the virus.

But those efforts cant stop the tide. There was just an explosion of interest in one singular topic, for very obvious reasons, says Tom Phillips, the editor-in-chief of Full Fact, one of Facebooks two UK factchecking partners. In the UK, we generally see massive spikes of traffic around elections, and we had one at the end of 2019. The pandemic dwarfed that. And matching that explosion in interest was an explosion in the supply of misinformation, much of it delivered by questionable sources.

The industries that many celebrities work in film, music, sport were among the hardest hit by shutdowns. So even more than most of us, they suddenly found themselves with nothing to do but sit on Twitter, Phillips says. Not all of them did a Taylor Swift, spending the time recording an album. Some of them started sharing wild rumours to millions of followers instead. This, then, is how we end up with Ian Brown, the former frontman of the Stone Roses, declaring that conspiracy theorist is a term invented by the lame stream media to discredit those who can smell and see through the government/media lies and propaganda.

Browns obsession with revealing the truth about coronavirus has spread from his social-media posts to his recorded music: the anti-mask, anti-vaccine Little Seed Big Tree, with lyrics including Masonic lockdown, in your home town / Get behind your doors for the new world order joins Van Morrisons No More Lockdown (No more taking of our freedom / And our God-given rights / Pretending its for our safety) in the canon of hits championed by QAnon supporters.

Where celebrities at least have a coterie of minders, publicists and agents begging them not to follow Brown and Morrison down this route, the rest of us had to rely on our friends and family, says QAnonCasualties Johnson. And then, suddenly, we couldnt. Some of these folk probably werent too into QAnon before the lockdown, Johnson says. They would have been shot down by co-workers when bringing it up. Without that kind of reality check, they were able to fall further.

Full Facts Phillips agrees. Personal contact takes you out of the rabbit hole. You know, it can be a very direct, No, mate, thats nonsense, but it could also just be taking people away from the singular focus that conspiracy rabbit holes require. Just by introducing other topics of conversation. Lockdown removed those opportunities for intervention at a stroke.

And so, furloughed and stuck indoors, Rachels husband, Philip, sank deeper and deeper into the alternative reality that QAnon presented. Although Facebook had been the open end of the rabbit hole, it proved too restrictive for him: even the algorithmically mediated interactions with his friends and family were becoming hostile and argumentative, as they tried in vain to push back against the cult.

He started new social media accounts, dedicated only to the conspiracy. When Rachel found one of those, and saw what it was sharing, she felt physically sick; she realised her husband hadnt simply picked up a few odd beliefs, but joined a full-blown cult. How do you talk to someone who has been brainwashed but who believes that it is you that is the brainwashed one, she asked Reddit.

In August, things hit rock bottom. Philips focus had grown from coronavirus-specific conspiracies to the wider web of evil posited by QAnon. His YouTube recommendations were no longer about mobile phones and cars; they were for clips putting forward conspiracy theories and fabrications. YouTube has historically been one of the most permissive of the major social media platforms, with few policies against misinformation: instead, the site puts links to Wikipedia pages underneath contentious videos (and deletes only the most egregiously false ones). But even YouTubes filters started getting in the way, and so he switched again, to the video host BitChute, where Fall of the Cabal, a notorious QAnon video primer, shares space with content creators recounting lurid stories of having seen an infamous yet entirely fictional video of Hillary Clinton eating a young child alive, chasing a supposed high that can be gained from drinking the blood of a terrified child.

In Philips eyes, Rachel was now an idiot, who believed mainstream media. I became a normie who needed to wake up and understand what was really going on, she says. He was unable to stick to one topic. If I said something about how we were struggling with social distancing at work, he would respond with a furious diatribe about Soros, Clinton, Bill Gates, 5G and vaccines that control and kill people.

For Rachel, the final straw was when her husband claimed to have seen a video incriminating a member of the Hollywood elite: a clip, he said, of Tom Hanks with a three-year-old girl. For Rachel, who works with safeguarded children, the implication was obscene. If her husband really had seen such a clip, then no matter how it was produced Photoshopped, edited together it must have started as real child abuse imagery. That a cult ostensibly focused on saving children could somehow persuade her husband to engage in sharing such material disgusted her. She started packing her bags the next morning.

By the time QAnon adherents are that far in the rabbit hole, the consensus on the QAnonCasualties board is that its hard to rescue them. Its not easy to overturn someones sense of reality, but even harder to restore it once it has been lost. And so the focus is on preventing people from falling down the rabbit hole in the first place: tackling QAnon at the more acceptable end.

In the UK, that largely means the Save the Children movement, not to be confused with the charity of the same name. One of its largest groups, Freedom for the Children UK (FFTCUK), was created in July by Laura Ward, 36, who told the BBC she had a spiritual awakening that motivated her to organise during the lockdown. By late August, the FFTCUK Facebook page had become large enough to organise a 500-strong rally in central London, campaigning to raise the awareness of child exploitation and human trafficking. Ward denied any links to QAnon, but the London rally one of 200 nationwide that day was full of QAnon-related slogans, from warnings that pizzagate is real to the catchphrase Where we go one, we go all (shortened to WWG1WGA).

In October, Facebook announced a blanket ban on QAnon-related groups, after earlier trying to ban only those arms of the movement linked to violence. But that ban did not extend to groups such as FFTCUK, which remained on the site with more than 10,000 members. Joe Ondrak, of the factchecking site Logically, says the groups denials dont hold water. He cites the fact that members of the group openly talk about adrenochrome harvesting the supposed high from drinking childrens blood. While they dont talk about Trump saving the world, the bedrock of their particular movement is based on one of QAnons many plotlines, rather than having any basis in reality, Ondrak says.

Shortly before this piece was published, Facebook finally took action to remove FFTCUK for violating our dangerous individuals and organisations policy. A spokesperson said: In August, we expanded our dangerous individuals and organisations policy to address militarised social movements and violence-inducing conspiracy networks, such as QAnon. Since then, weve identified over 600 militarised social movements, removing about 2,400 pages, 14,200 groups and about 1,300 Instagram accounts they maintained, and in addition, weve removed about 1,700 pages, 5,600 groups and about 18,700 Instagram accounts representing QAnon.

The problem for Facebook is that the QAnon rabbit hole doesnt work like other conspiracy theories. Rather than laying out the conspiracy, with a call to arms for believers, it instead offers a far more compelling instruction: Do your research.

Adrian Hon, a game designer and founder of the developer Six to Start, describes the appeal as similar to that of an alternate reality game, or ARG. A relatively niche pursuit even in the geek circles where they flourish, ARGs can be thought of as large-scale communal puzzles, with clues and riddles often seeded across fake websites and real locations. They often involve the players working together to assemble evidence of a shadowy conspiracy, at a scale that no one person could hope to solve alone. The parallels, he feels, are obvious. QAnon makes the act of researching fun, and into a game. It is not a solitary effort where you are in your basement putting red string everywhere, and no one cares what youre doing: youre doing this in forums, on Facebook and WhatsApp. It is quite a social phenomenon.

QAnon is a group with coherent goals ending child trafficking, or opposing Covid lockdowns that prompt further questions. The adherents work together to uncover the truth beneath the surface, moving from mainstream sites to ever more esoteric communities, slowly getting sucked into the narrative they are both consuming and, ultimately, creating. I know how people feel when they get into this, Hon says. Its intoxicating and exciting to have all this information at your fingertips, and to be Googling things and checking websites.

That impulse doesnt just pull in adherents. Those on the outside can find themselves equally intrigued by the complexity of QAnon-related beliefs. Abbie Richards, a graduate student of climate studies at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, found herself the target of QAnon-related attacks after she went viral on TikTok for, of all things, a video criticising golf courses.

You see all the comments in your videos, and I had one that was like: Watch Fall of the Cabal, all 24 sections, and itll make sense, she says. I was like, You know what, I will! As she researched, what stood out was the ease with which the movement slid from things that were absolutely real to things that werent. In the eyes of the QAnon follower: If Jeffrey Epsteins death looks suspicious, then how can you deny that theres a sex trafficking ring of people who drink blood?

Richards drew up a diagram, The Conspiracy Chart, exploring that slide in detail. At the bottom are things that actually happened historical conspiracies such as the FBIs Cointelpro operation, which aimed to destroy the civil rights movement in the 1960s. At the top, past the antisemitic point of no return, is the mesh of beliefs that characterise QAnon and its adherents. Initially posted on TikTok, the framework is a remarkably useful way of distinguishing between conspiracy theories, and the alternative realities that sit on top of them. (God bless Abbie Richards, says Full Facts Phillips, unprompted, when discussing the difficulty of defining QAnon.)

But the chart also highlights, inadvertently, the difficulty of fighting the delusions head-on. As the conspiracies drift further away from the baseline of reality, the theorists are increasingly living in an altogether different world.

In the sci-fi author Neal Stephensons 2019 novel Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, a tech guru launches a misinformation attack on the world, releasing a fake video showing the destruction by a nuclear weapon of the small Utah town of Moab. The attack is quickly revealed as a hoax, but it doesnt matter: 20 years later, remember Moab bumper stickers plaster cars as a cold civil war simmers. The consensus reality has broken down. Stephensons book feels prescient in an age when QAnon is mobilising marches of thousands of people against mass child abductions that aid workers say have simply not taken place. And, surprisingly, some experts, such as Ruth Ahnert, a professor at Queen Mary University of London and fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, which conducts research into artificial intelligence and data science, think we have been here before.

Ahnert acknowledges that Facebook and other social media platforms have changed the way we get information, but disputes that consensus reality is only now breaking down. I think that idea is true only if you think of the movement from the 20th century to the 21st century, from broadcast media to social media. If you look in the longer history back to the 16th century you see something that looks like now.

She says that then, as now, the elites had access to fairly accurate information about the state of the world. If you look at the really influential people, those people had huge reach. They were communicating across Europe, into north Africa, into South America, Ottoman empire, sub-Saharan Africa. Think of Samuel Pepys, as administrator of the navy, able to request and receive a report on the local conditions from almost anywhere English ships sailed. But normal people were probably not communicating much beyond their village, Ahnert points out. And, in an era when people primarily get their news from social networks as more than one in 10 British adults do, according to Ofcom then all that has happened is the village has moved online.

In that long view, the artificial world isnt the one the internet and lockdown have created, but the temporary blip in time when broadcast media was able to forge one shared reality for a nation. I wonder if its kind of come full circle in a way, Ahnert says. The more information we have access to, the less ability we have to tell what is authentic or not.

When I put Ahnerts words to Facebooks chief product officer, Chris Cox, he is, unsurprisingly, less pessimistic. I dont think were going back to the stone age here, but I do think, like with each medium, we go through a reckoning when its born; [a process] of understanding it and integrating it into our lives. Facebook was built in 2004, so I guess technically were still a teenager.

He points out that for Facebook, the work is continuing. When we study groups, for example, we are able to study which of those are harmful and take a stand on them. And which of those are creating, at least at the individual level, a sense of deep belonging, fulfilling a deep need.

We arent fully living in an online village yet. The number of people who get their news from a large, trusted provider still vastly outweighs those who focus primarily on social media; three times as many British people say BBC One is their single most important news source as those who cite Facebook. But Facebook is in third place, just behind ITV, and its share is growing.

We take our responsibility very, very seriously, says Facebooks Mendelsohn. Its interesting to think about the history of misinformation, because it has been around for ever. It is in the nature of human beings.

Rachel has a more concrete suggestion for how to reverse the tide. QAnon seems to turn people into angry, bitter, volatile people. Offering kindness, and reminding yourself of who they really are, helps. It is a mental health issue.

When she confronted her husband about the Hanks video, and started making preparations to leave, it shocked him back to reality. Philip came to her, saying he had deleted everything QAnon-related from his phone, as well as his social media accounts. I do love you, he said.

It has been a long road to recovery. Philip admitted that he hadnt seen the Hanks video, but a still image that was definitely him. Two days later, he and Rachel went shopping, and he wore a face covering for the first time, something he had previously insisted was just another example of how they were controlling the sheep. Since then, Rachel says, weve racked up more than 1,000 miles in the car, driving all over England to visit beautiful, quiet places to walk and talked like there is no tomorrow.

I reminded him of how we laughed like drains when Trump was elected in 2016 and wondered if the US had lost its collective mind. He laughed and agreed. He still believes there might be a deep state or something sinister like that, but is now thinking more about questioning the motives of the people who are doing the pointing not who they are pointing at.

I am glad I stuck my hand down the rabbit hole and hauled him out, she says. Although I suspect that I am going to be dusting the rabbit droppings off him for a long time.

This article was amended on 11 November 2020. An earlier version said that Facebook had yet to extend its ban to groups such as FFTCUK. In fact, that group was banned on 10 November 2020, shortly before the articles publication; the piece was updated to reflect this and a statement from Facebook added.

Read more:

Facebook, QAnon and the world's slackening grip on reality - The Guardian

At some of the countrys largest technology firms, technologists believe that a Biden-Harris White House will reverse Trump-era immigration policies,according to new data from Blind, which surveys anonymous technologists about a variety of current issues. That could result in some seismic change at many firms.

Overall, some 66 percent of technologists think that President-elect Bidenwill loosen restrictions on hiring skilled foreign workersonce he takes office; around 74 percent think that he will remove executive orders limiting high-skilled immigration; and 64 percent assume that future White House policies will increase the pipeline of foreign-born workers for technology firms.

With any new president, there are many unknowns, read Blinds blog posting on the data. We dont know which tech policies will be prioritizedor others that may come to the fore. However, tech professionals feel confident that this administration will make h1-b visas more accessible.

But the degree to which technologists believe these changes will take place varies from firm to firm. For example, 82 percent of technologists at Oracle believe that Biden will loosen restrictions on hiring skilled foreign-born workers, versus the 58 percent at Uber who think the same. Heres that full breakdown:

Its a similar situation when it comes to the potential for Biden to increase the pipeline of foreign-born workers: The majority of those at companies such as Bloomberg and VMware seem to believe thats going to come to pass, whereas those at Facebook, Uber, and Intel are much less convinced:

Substantial portions of technologists also believe that a Biden administration is going to end the executive orders that the Trump administration used to limit immigration via the H-1B and other means:

In the days preceding the election, Dicecompared the respective H-1B policies of Biden and Donald Trump. Although the Trump administration has spent the past four years tweaking H-1B policy, including the visas wage and skill requirements, Bidens campaign suggested it will revert to many Obama-era immigration policies.

Although Republican control of the Senate (which could very well happen, depending on Januarys run-off elections in Georgia) could prevent a President Biden from pushing through broad-based immigration reform, a Biden administration could still reverse many of Trumps executive orders. In addition, Biden could order U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to re-adjust their recent changes to visa requirements (such as a selection systembased on H-1B applicants potential salaries).

Over atForbes, theres an extensive breakdown of the other ways that Biden could adjust immigration policy, including tweaking the per-country limit for employment-based immigration. In the meantime, though, it seems that many technologists at the nations largest technology companies believe that big changes to immigration policy are coming.

Want more great insights?Create a Dice profile today to receive the weekly Dice Advisor newsletter, packed with everything you need to boost your career in tech. Register now

More:

Tech Immigration, H-1B Reform on the Way, Most Big Tech Employees Think - Dice Insights

As information warfare exposes two completely different versions of reality concerning the presidential election, the Senate is slated to grill the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter about their ongoing roles in censoring and suppressing election-related content.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have both agreed to testifyin a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 17, less than three weeks after sitting in the hot seat before the Senate Commerce Committee on October 28.

While hardly anybody expects any meaningful action to ever come out of these big tech hearings in Congress, what is said under oath can later be used as fodder to feed legal actions in other jurisdictions.

For example, less than three months after Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified before the House Judiciary Committee on July 29, the Department of Justice and 11 state attorneys generalsmacked his company with an antitrust lawsuit on October 20, and the accusations put forthmirrored those of lawmakers who made the same exact claims during Congressional hearings.

With the current US presidential election still in limbo nine days after the November 3 election day, Facebook and Twitter have been censoring and slapping disputed claims warnings on posts that allege evidence of election improprieties, including flagging nearlyhalf of all the US presidents social media posts.

Donald Trumps Twitter feed is full of censored tweets. #Election2020 #elections pic.twitter.com/wRSIpThHMM

Kamil Karamali (@KamilKaramali) November 5, 2020

Claims of irregularities in the election process are being marked as disputed on social media, but certain facts remain:

Meanwhile, both Zuckerberg and Dorsey are slated to be put under oath next Tuesday to give testimony on the decisions their companies made to censor and suppress content during the presidential election,and anything the big tech CEOs say on record can and will be used against them.

Through the questions they ask and the accusations they fling, lawmakers tip their hands to show where they will strike big tech next

As bureaucratic and slow the US Congress is, one silver lining is that the hearings can show glimpses of things to come.

Through the questions they ask and the accusations they fling, lawmakers tip their hands to show where they will strike big tech next, such as removing big tech immunity under Section 230.

For example, Senator Josh Hawley recently went on the highest-rated cable TV news show in history to say that that Congress must act now to take away the special immunity [under Section 230] that these tech companies get for this censorship.

#BigTech will keep right on censoring & spying & cheating until Congress stops it. Its that simple. Congress must quit talking and ACT pic.twitter.com/WnqMl9np01

Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) October 29, 2020

Other Senate Judiciary Committee members who will also grill Dorsey and Zuckerberg next week have publicly addressed their concerns over the selective censorship on Twitter and Facebook to which the CEOs struggled to recall a single person whom they censored on the left (when pressed during the last hearing), but could readily give examples of those instances on the right.

In the October hearing, Senator Mike Lee, who is on both the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees, told the big tech CEOs, There is a disparity between the censorship of conservative and liberal points of view, and its an enormous disparity [] But given the disparate impact of who gets censored on your platforms, it seems that youre either one: not enforcing your terms of service equally, or alternatively, two: that youre riding your standards to target conservative viewpoints.

A brave patriot. More & more people are stepping forward to expose this Rigged Election! https://t.co/DfOVDQu2Qp

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2020

Next weeks scheduled hearing on big tech censorship during the election was put into motion before November 3, but the evidence of censorship has been growing ever since, and America still doesnt know who will be president in 2021.

The media has projected victory for Joe Biden, and theres a very good chance that the claim could later be proven accurate, but as of today, the election isnt over.

Court battles are being fought, and the information warfare rages on.

Citizens of a free nation cannot make informed decisions when they are restricted from sharing and reviewing the counterarguments

Censoring the views of nearly half the country only amplifies the confusion, anger, and hostility that has already polarized the nation.

Citizens of a free nation cannot make informed decisions when they are restricted from sharing and reviewing the counterarguments.

Censorship takes away the peoples ability to objectively evaluate all of the information at hand, which is especially dangerous in a social media environment where every side has a completely different version of reality based on the information they are permitted to see or not see.

But those who seek will surely find, and their paths to discovery may trod the alternative routes less traveled than the ones paved by big tech and media companies.

Conflicts of interest with Facebook censorship, the Atlantic Council, Burisma & politics: perspective

Facebook relied heavily on FBI briefings before trying to prevent NY Post story from spreading wildly: Zuckerberg

Twitter is sabotaging public discourse regarding important national and homeland security issues: DHS acting secretary

Twitter censored the NY Post for showing direct material to back up claims, violated hacked materials policy: Dorsey

Facebooks business model is poison & its algorithms amplify misinformation: digital forensics expert testifies

Social media services that I & others have built are tearing people apart: ex-Facebook ads chief testifies

Here is the original post:

Facebook & Twitter CEOs to testify on big tech censorship during disputed presidential election - The Sociable

TipRanks

Were a little over one week past the Presidential election, and the market reaction shows that that investors are pleased. While the election margins were razor thin, the will of the voters came through: they rejected Donald Trump, and his brash, in-your-face style, but they also rejected the Democratic Party on policy; the Dems lost seats in the House, will likely not take control of the Senate, and also lost ground at the State level. Americas voters seem to be tired of drama, whether it comes from Donald Trump or the Democrats push to the political left. They want a government that will simply plod straight along.And it looks like they will get just that. With power split in the White House and the Chambers of Congress, were about to be reminded of a feature of the checks and balance system: that gridlock is a result of a closely divided electorate. Change wont happen unless one side or the other gets a large majority, or a small majority over several terms. Neither of those is in the cards for now.The immediate result is a multi-day market rally. The implication is clear the markets sentiment has calmed since the election, and investors look forward to government settling into a more normal mode in the coming months.To this end, investors are sure to find solid options in the near term. Writing from Raymond James, analyst Ric Prentiss has recently published three reviews on mid-cap stocks, pointing out why, in his view, they offer high return potential with more settled markets in the coming year. The stocks all fit a profile: they are at the lower end of the mid-cap range, with market valuations between $2 billion and $3 billion; they inhabit the telecom ecosystem, and they all have, according to Raymond James, over 80% upside potential. We ran the the three through TipRanks database to see what other Wall Street's analysts have to say about them.Telephone & Data Systems (TDS)First on our list, Telephone & Data Systems, is a Chicago-based company providing a range of telecom services to over 6 million customers. The company offers broadband over cable and wireline, wireless products and services, and TV and voice services. TDS operates the countrys fifth-largest cellular carrier.TDS has dramatically outperformed expectations in 2020, despite the ongoing coronavirus. Revenues, at $1.32 billion, are about level with the pre-corona report ($1.34 billion in Q4 2019), while earnings jumped in 1Q20 and have remained high ever since. The Q3 earnings, at 66 cents, beat the forecast by 153%. It was an impressive performance, made more so by the 266% year-over-year growth.On another bright note for investors, TDS has maintained its dividend payment through the year. The 17-cent per common share payout annualizes to 68 cents, and offers a yield of 3.6%, nearly double the average yield found among S&P-listed companies.TDS has shown strong business through the year, but its weak point has been in the fiber and wireline niche. However, Raymond James Ric Prentiss looks at the half-full glass, noting: "WFH policies have continued to result in some slower approvals from municipalities and electrical utilities associated with building aerial fiber. And in some cases, TDS is pivoting to alternatives with better economics. Still, TDS Telecom grew fiber service addresses 5% y/y and is seeing better-than-expected take rates around 30-40%, depending on the market. Moreover, 34% of Wireline customers are now served by fiber, compared to 29% a year ago, and TDS expects acceleration throughout the rest of 2020."Prentiss rates TDS as a Strong Buy, and increased his price target by 6% to $34. At that level, he sees an 81% upside for the stock over the next months. (To watch Prentisss track record, click here)This stock also holds a Strong Buy rating from the analyst consensus, based on 3 unanimous Buy reviews set in recent weeks. Shares are priced at $18.73 and the average target of $34.83 suggests a one-year upside of 85.5%. (See TDS stock analysis on TipRanks)ViaSat, Inc. (VSAT)Next up, ViaSat, is a high-speed satellite broadband provider. The California company serves commercial and defense markets, building on the broad need, across industries, for secure communications.Social lockdown measures took a toll on the companys business, especially the shutdowns of airlines. Commercial air traffic relies heavily on satellite communications, and that slowdown is still weighing on ViaSat.The headwinds are partially offset by a backlog in services ordered. Revenues have remained stable over the past four quarters, between $530 million and $588 million, with the $554 million recorded in Q3 being solidly in the middle of that range. Earnings have bounced back into positive territory after turning negative in Q2. The third quarter EPS was only 3 cents, but that was a dramatic sequential improvement from the previous 20-cent net loss.In his look at VSAT, Prentiss notes, Government Systems and Commercial Networks remain strong, while the IFC business continues to navigate significant headwinds related to COVID-19 On the positive side, social distancing and Safer-At-Home policies are driving more residential broadband data usage and pushing ARPUs higherPrentiss rates VSAT an Outperform (i.e. Buy) while his $63 price target suggests an 87% upside potential.Overall, ViaSat gets a Moderate Buy rating from the analyst consensus, based on 3 reviews that include 2 Buys and 1 Hold. The shares have an average price target of $53.33, which implies a 12-month upside of 59% from the trading price of $33.39. (See VSAT stock analysis on TipRanks)EchoStar Corporation (SATS)Last but not least is EchoStar, another satellite operator. This company controls a constellation of communications satellites, offering satcom capabilities to the media and private enterprises, as well as both civilian and military US government agencies. In addition, EchoStar provides satellite broadband in 100 countries around the world.At the top line, EchoStar's revenues have held steady for the past three quarters, coming in at $465 million, $459 million, and $473 million. And while earnings were negative in Q1 and Q2, the Q3 results showed a net profit of 26 cents per share.The sequential Q3 improvements at the top and bottom lines come along with increases in the EchoStars subscriber base, to more than 1.54 million in total. The company also boasts a strong balance sheet, having more than $2.5 billion in cash on hand and no net debt.Covering SATS, Ric Prentiss is upbeat about near- and mid-term prospects. He writes, SATS [has] strategic optionality in a time when others, especially higher levered satellite companies, are cash starved facing significant maturities or capex programs we think a number of organic and inorganic growth options are being considered, including the future deployment of SBand spectrum after lining up anchor tenant(s). Lastly, we believe EchoStar's recently announced collaboration with Inmarsat to provide capacity for In-Flight Connectivity should provide over time high margin cash flows, and we note the deal is not exclusive.These comments back another Strong Buy rating, and Prentisss $57 target price indicates room for 123% growth in the next year. In terms of other analyst activity, it has been relatively quiet. 1 Buy and 1 Hold ratings assigned in the last three months add up to a Moderate Buy analyst consensus. In addition, the $43.50 average price target puts the upside potential at ~74%. (See SATS stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

See original here:

Stocks Rise to 10-Week High With Rally in Big Tech: Markets Wrap - Yahoo Finance