Monthly Archives: January 2021

Apple and Amazon both cracked down on Parler late Saturday, pulling the app from their Apple store and Amazon Web Services (AWS) hostinguntil theconservative social media platform ramps up content moderation.

We have always supported diverse points of view being represented on the App Store, but there is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity, Apple said in a statement to The Hill.

Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to peoples safety. We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues, added the company.

The platform, which bills itself as an unmoderated alternative to platforms like Twitter, has come under fire amid concerns it was used to coordinate last weeks deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.

"We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property, Apple wrote to Parler in a statement obtained by Buzzfeed News. The app also appears to continue to be used to plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities.

Amazon Web Services on Saturday eveningtold Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff in an email that the platform has increasingly been used to host violent content and become a threat to public safety. The site will likely go offline entirely Sunday night without a replacement host.

Recently, weve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms, the Amazon Web Services email, obtained by Buzzfeed, reads. Its clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service.

Google also pulled the Parler app from its store last week, citing an ongoing and urgent public safety threat.

We recognize that there can be reasonable debate about content policies and that it can be difficult for apps to immediately remove all violative content, but for us to distribute an app through Google Play, we do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content, the tech giant said in a statement.

While Parler heavily emphasizes its lack of content moderation, the platform confirmed to Mediaite this weekend that it has deleted posts by pro-Trump attorney and conspiracy theorist Lin Wood. Wood was also suspended from Twitter last week.

The crackdown comes as Twitter has suspended various users connected to the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory and, on Friday night, President TrumpDonald TrumpOutgoing Capitol Police chief accuses House, Senate security officials of hindering efforts to call in National Guard: WaPo PGA announces plans to move 2022 championship from Trump property Former Democratic senator: Biden Justice Department may investigate Jan. 6 rally speakers for incitement MORE himself, expressing concerns the president would use his account to foment further violence.

In the meantime, rival platform Gab reported it has seen its user base grow by 10,000 per hour in the wake of Trumps ban. Gab, like Parler claims far less content moderation than Twitter and has also become a haven for the far-right.

CEO Andrew Torba tweeted in the early hours of Sunday morning that the site saw 18 million visits Saturday.

500,000+ new users today.

18 million visits.

You don't need an account to use the site.

The Silicon Valley Exodus has begun.

Get in the Ark: https://t.co/J3Rfto6fi3

The best is yet to come.

Facebook also suspended Trump at least through the end of his term.

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Tech giants crack down on Parler for lack of content moderation | TheHill - The Hill

Ever since Twitter suspended the account of US President Donald Trump, there have been many calls for Big Tech social-media platforms to apply the same scrutiny to foreign leaders, such asIrans Ayatollah Khamenei. This talking point posits that while Trump and others might reasonably be suspended by social-media giants, it appears hypocritical that they dont apply the same standards to others abroad. The reasons for this are multilayered.

First of all, the social-media giants application of their own standards appears to be rapidly changing and arbitrary. The claim that various accounts violated their rules, such as inciting violence, spreading misleading information or hate speech, may be true, just as it may speak to how opaque these guidelines really are.

While they are private companies, they are not like other industries, such as automobile manufacturers, airlines or television stations, which might be regulated in some way.

The arbitrary nature of social-media suspensions, bans and internal rules means that for all intents and purposes, companies can do what they want on a whim. Often, they do cave to social, political or economic pressure.

For instance, social-media companies sought to close down accounts that support terrorism and extremism after the rise of ISIS in 2014. By 2018, Twitter had removed more than a million pro-terrorist accounts. Studies show that there had been more than 17 million pro-ISIS tweets.

Social-media giants also suspended millions of bots in 2018. Last June, Twitter removed China- and Turkey-linked bot networks. In September, they went after more Russian bots. In Turkeys case, a troll army linked to the ruling party had harassed dissidents and foreigners; some 30,000 accounts were closed.

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TODAY THERE are two lines of thinking about social-media giants closing down Trumps accounts and going after Parler and other platforms where pro-Trump commentators congregate. Swept up in the purge of Trump content are also people like Rush Limbaugh and former national security advisor Michael Flynn. The removal of far-right accounts has happened before. Alex Jones and Laura Loomer were removed by social-media giants in 2018.

This means the removal of Trump is the culmination of an attempt to reduce far-right content. How exactly such content is defined is unclear. Twitter has said it wants to be a safe place for free expression and not have abusive behavior.

There are basically two sets of guidelines underpinning these decisions, one from Facebook and the other from Twitter. Together with Google, which owns YouTube, these platforms are dominant and often appear to coordinate strategy, such as when they censored access to a New York Post story on Hunter Biden.

In the past year, Twitter has begun to label state-controlled media. But it also indicated it would keep up the accounts of foreign leaders because they relate to the public interest. However, information judged misleading sometimes by fact-checkers has been flagged.

Critics note that all of these complex decisions on who to ban and label dont seem to apply to foreign governments. Twitter did censor a tweet by Irans leader that spread misinformation about COVID vaccines. At the end of November, it refused to remove a tweet by a Chinese official that was misleading, despite Australias complaints.

At the time, the company said the tweet was marked sensitive but that foreign-policy sabre-rattling is acceptable. The tweet in question was staged and showed a fake image of an Australian soldier with a knife to a childs neck. Misleading comments about the US election were tagged as such, but not this image. Critics wonder why.

The reason social-media giants will not ban content by foreign totalitarian governments that is misleading or incendiary is mostly because Western governments have not put the kind of public pressure on them to do so. Internal domestic politics, often written in English, are on the radar of social-media giants and are hot-button issues. At the end of the day, these are corporations that grew out of the US, so their knowledge of American politics is greater.

This is part of a general Orientalist worldview that doesnt see foreign countries or foreign politics the same as internal Western democratic politics. This kind of paternalism tends to treat hateful rhetoric by those like Irans supreme leader as less dangerous than extremists inside the borders of the US. Foreign extremists are seen as more comical, even if for their own citizens their words are deadly serious.

Democracies have become less robust at challenging foreign dictatorship media, which has often enabled the well-endowed foreign media that are run by authoritarian regimes such as Qatar, Russia, Turkey or other countries to operate freely in the West, even as Western media and social media are sometimes restricted abroad.

THE LAST consideration that appears to underpin the decision not to censor foreign authoritarian regimes even the ones that spread misinformation, undermine democracy and incite is that social-media giants also dont want to be viewed as tools of Western governments. If they cave to every demand from lawmakers in the US or Australia to censor content from China, Iran, Russia or elsewhere, then they could run the risk of being treated as hostile foreign entities abroad.

This would lead other countries to create their own social-media platforms, as China already has, potentially threatening the global hegemony of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

In general, social-media giants have appeared to cave more quickly to demands from governments abroad, including religious extremists in Indonesia who got an account on Instagram banned because it was devoted to gay rights. It is not uncommon for Kurdish minority accounts to be banned on social media at the behest of the authoritarian government in Ankara. These include accounts devoted solely to language and culture.

In some cases, it appears that social-media giants in the West have become tools of foreign authoritarians to crack down on freedoms.

This creates an extraordinary paradox. Companies founded in the West and that grew out of freedoms accorded them gathering users because people wanted an online platform to express themselves have now cut down on users in their countries of origin, while appearing to accept the guidelines imposed by various foreign regimes.

Iranian dissidents, for instance, wonder why the regime in Iran gets to have unfettered access, but they cannot. Russian dissidents wonder about the arbitrary censorship of some Western activists, while noting that Moscow seems to exploit Western reluctance to make sure dissidents in Russia have access to social media.

Alexey Navalny argues that this precedent will be exploited by the enemies of freedom of speech around the world; in Russia as well. Every time when they need to silence someone, they will say: This is just common practice. Even Trump got blocked on Twitter.

LASTLY, THAT social-media giants dont put a priority on policing the misleading comments of various foreign regimes or subjecting them to fact-checking or bans for incitement, and dont help to amplify dissidents in those countries, boils down to caring less about the rights or lives of people in Iran than in the West, particularly the US.

That 1,500 Iranian protesters could be killed by the Iranian regime, and its leaders still use Western social media without restrictions, while the same giants are concerned about democracy being undermined by riots in Washington and see that as dangerous incitement, illustrates that the lives of Iranians matter less to major Western corporations.

The story is the same in Iraq: Dissidents are hunted down and killed, usually after incitement against them online by accounts that are not banned. In Turkey, every thuggish far-right media outlet, including those that post openly antisemitic content, is not suspended, but Kurdish womens-rights activists who post about cuisine or language are.

A combination of economic decisions, public pressure and paternalism underpins why major Tech Giants will not likely act against misleading incitement of authoritarian regimes but will continue to police the speech and content of people in Western democracies.

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Why will the big tech giants never censor foreign authoritarian regimes? - The Jerusalem Post

Parler, the conservative-leaning social media platform, will been suspended from Amazon's cloud hosting service starting Sunday evening over claims that users were "inciting violence" following last week's protests at the Capitol.

Parler reportedly failed to properly manage an increase in violent content, which breaches the Amazon Web Services (AWS) user agreement, according to an email seen by BuzzFeed News.

The AWS Trust and Safety team advised Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff that the platform did not properly adhere to the terms of service.

"Recently, we've seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms," the email reads. "It's clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service."

***As Big Tech censors media outlets they dont like and shuts down various free speech platforms, be sure to sign up forCBN News emailsand theCBN News appto ensure you keep receiving news from a Christian Perspective.***

Additionally, the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice tweeted that "Amazon deny Parler services until it removes posts inciting violence, including at the Presidential inauguration."

"We cannot be complicit in more bloodshed and violent attacks on democracy," they said.

Parler CEO John Matze said in a statementthat "there is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch."

"This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place," he wrote. "We were too successful too fast."

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BuzzFeed News reported that the app was also suspended by Apple and Google until it establishes a moderation plan that addresses "this ongoing and urgent public safety threat."

"We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property," Apple wrote to Parler. "The app also appears to continue to be used to plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities."

A Google spokesperson told Fox News, "We're aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the US."

Apple told Fox News that "Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people's safety."

Parler was launched in 2018 and classifies itself as a "free speech" platform that supports equality and religious freedom.

CBN News reported that the social media platform saw a spike in users last November after mounting pressure over big tech censorship among conservatives, pro-lifers, and some affiliated with the White House.

Bypass the bias on social media and get your news from a Christian perspective by downloading the free CBN News app.

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Parler Suspended From Amazon, Apple, Google; CEO Says It's a 'Coordinated Attack by the Tech Giants' - CBN News

But what happened on 6 January was not a result of something that Trump said just once. It was a culmination of falsehoods and misinformation perpetrated by the outgoing president time and again, against which the tech giants have acted now.

We spoke to three journalists at The Quint to get their views on the larger issue of using social media platforms and if the accountability lies with these tech giants.

Sushovan Sircar, who covers cyber policy, Nishtha Gautam, who is a Senior Editor (Opinions) and Asmita Nandy, who works at the intersection of caste and politics, spoke to this reporter about their views.

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9643651818, or e-mail it to us at webqoof@thequint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here

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Misinformation & Tech Giants Where Does the Responsibility Lie? - The Quint

Jan 9th 2021

LYING DRUNK in a field outside the Austrian city of Innsbruck in 1971, inspiration struck Douglas Adams, a science-fiction writer. He looked at his copy of The Hitchhikers Guide to Europe, and then up at the stars, and came up with the idea for a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It would be a (fictional) mixture of travel book and encyclopedia, but with an absurd-seeming twist: instead of being written by experts, anyone could contribute.

Adams played his idea for laughs. But today it looks as prescient as it was funny. On January 15th Wikipediathe free encyclopedia that anyone can editwill celebrate its 20th anniversary. It will do so as the biggest and most-read reference work ever. Wikipedia hosts more than 55m articles in hundreds of languages, each written by volunteers. Its 6.2m English-language articles alone would fill some 2,800 volumes in print. Alexa Internet, a web-analysis firm, ranks Wikipedia as the 13th-most-popular site on the internet, ahead of Reddit, Netflix and Instagram.

Yet Wikipedia is an oddity. It defies the Silicon Valley recipe for success. The site has no shareholders, has generated no billionaires and sells no advertising. Todays aspiring tech giants burn vast quantities of investors money subsidising taxi rides (Uber) or millennial messaging (Snap) in pursuit of scale. Wikipedia grew organically, as more and more ordinary people decided to contribute. The site has its roots in the techno-optimism that characterised the internet at the end of the 20th century. It held that ordinary people could use their computers as tools for liberation, education and enlightenment.

Like most Utopian thinking, the idea of an amateur encyclopedia was, for many years, treated as a bit of a joke. A few endorse Wikipedia heartily. This mystifies me, wrote a former president of the American Library Association in 2007. A professor who encourages the use of Wikipedia is the intellectual equivalent of a dietician who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything, he sneered. Even now, after numerous academic studies highlighting its reliability, Wikipedia still lacks the gravitas and authority of older encyclopedias like Britannica, which are written by paid academic experts rather than amateurs. Schools, universities and The Economists fact-checkers frown on relying on it.

Wikipedia may not have vanquished its doubters in theory. But it has triumphed in practice. With over 20bn page views a month, it has become the standard reference work for anyone with an internet connection. As social-media sites are lambasted for censorship, fake news, disinformation and conspiracy theories, its reputation is higher than ever. Toby Negrin, chief product officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, the San Francisco-based charity that provides the sites infrastructure, describes the online encyclopedia as a guardian of truth.

That sounds grandiose. But other tech behemoths now use it as a neutral arbiter. Conspiracy-theory videos on YouTube often come tagged with warning information from Wikipedia. Since 2018 Facebook has used Wikipedia to provide information buttons with the sources of news articles.

Others are also enthusiastic. In October the World Health Organisation (WHO) started working with Wikipedia to make information on covid-19 available via the site. It considered the collaboration vital to its efforts to prevent an infodemic of misinformation about the virus. Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, which preserves websites for posterity, describes Wikipedia as a treasure of the internet.

Wikipedias value and influence are hard to compute. Its revenues come from charitable grants and donations from its users. Wikipedia is an example of what I like to call digital dark matter, says Shane Greenstein, an economist at Harvard who has studied the site closely. Like parenting and housework, contributing to it is a valuable service that, because it is unpaid, remains mostly invisible to standard economic tools.

A few researchers have tried to guess. One study in 2018 estimated that American consumers put a value of about $150 a year on Wikipedia. If true, the site would be worth around $42bn a year in America alone. Then add indirect benefits. Many firms use Wikipedia in profitable ways. Amazon and Apple rely on it to allow Alexa and Siri, their voice assistants, to answer factual questions. Google uses it to populate the fact boxes that often accompany searches based on factual questions. Facebook has started to do something similar. This drives traffic to Wikipedia from those keen to learn more. AI language models of the sort employed by Google or Facebook need huge collections of text on which to train. Wikipedia fits the bill nicely.

Its biggest power is its subtlest. Since it is the first resort of students, professors, journalists and any number of curious people, its contributors do much to make the intellectual weather. The WHOs decision to work with Wikipedia reflects research suggesting that the site is the most-read source of medical information in the worldfor doctors as well as patients.

Its reach is clearest when things go wrong. In 2008 one user inserted a joke claiming that the South American coati, a small mammal, is sometimes known as the Brazilian aardvark. By the time the jape was revealed, in 2014, it had found its way on to various websites and into news articles and a book published by a university press. In 2012 a senior British judge was caught out when, in a report on the shortcomings and criminality of parts of the British press, he named Brett Straub as one of the founders of the Independent, a newspaper. Mr Straub has nothing to do with the Independent. His friends had been adding his name to Wikipedias pages as a joke.

Yet despite a string of notable embarrassmentsand its own disclaimer that Wikipedia is not a reliable sourceit is, on the whole, fairly accurate. An investigation by Nature in 2005 compared the site with Britannica, and found little difference in the number of errors that experts could find in a typical article. Other studies, conducted since, have mostly endorsed that conclusion. Explaining exactly why Wikipedias articles are so good is trickier. A common joke holds that it is just as well that Wikipedia works in practice, because it does not work in theory.

Deliberate decisions are one explanation. Wikipedia compares well with other reference works when it comes to honest mistakes, but it is uniquely vulnerable to vandalism and pranks. In an effort to combat them, says Mr Negrin, the site has developed algorithms that monitor articles for mischief. For Americas recent presidential election, editing articles was restricted to accounts more than 30 days old, and with at least 500 edits to their name.

Other reasons are structural. The sites open nature and its popularity help ensure that errors in well-read articles are usually spotted and fixed quickly. (By the same token, mistakes in more obscure entries may languish for years.) Mr Greenstein notes that, unlike with a printed encyclopedia, another paragraph doesnt cost anything. That means that ideological rows can often be defused simply by adding paragraphs outlining different views. The sites intimidating list of rules means that new editors face a steep learning curve. But it also helps to filter out dilettantes, ideologues and bores with an axe to grind.

Wikipedias not-for-profit structure, points out Mr Kahle, means it can focus on the interests of readers and editors without having to consider the (possibly conflicting) demands of advertisers. The site is unusual since it is run by humans, not algorithms. Though social-media sites rely on idiot-savant computer programs to maximise engagement (ie, to sell more advertising), Wikipedias humans try to uphold woolly ideals such as accuracy, impartiality and arguing in good faith.

Much of its success, in other words, is because of the culture its users have created. It is evident in the discussion pages that accompany every article, as the sites contributors debate with each other the noteworthiness of a topic, the quality of its primary sources, what information to include and to leave out, and more. Rules of thumb gradually become more solid guidelines. The Wikipedia page outlining the Neutral Point of Viewone of the most widely discussed and referred toruns to 4,500 words. It includes recommendations on how best to describe aesthetic opinions, which assumptions count as necessary, and which must be justified. It also points out the risks of providing false balance about controversial subjects.

Cultures constantly change. Relying on Wikipedias current one may, therefore, seem a risky strategy. Katherine Maher, the Wikimedia Foundations executive director and CEO, says that if Wikipedia did not already exist it might not be possible to create it on todays fragmented, commercially minded internet. But given that it does, she is bullish about its prospects for survival. Much of the sites work appeals to human nature, she says: People love to be right, to demonstrate their competence.

Even errors can be helpful. Ms Maher cites Cunninghams Law, which holds that the best way to get the right answer to a question on the internet...is to post the wrong answer. She recalls meeting a committed Chinese editor who began contributing to the Chinese-language project because a lot of what he saw was just wrong, and he felt he had to fix it!

Keeping Wikipedias culture healthy means moving with the times. Wikipedia is a child of the desktop internet, says Mr Negrin. But increasingly, when people talk about internet users, theyre talking about smartphones. So the foundation is improving the sites mobile-editing tools. Typing long articles on a smartphone is inescapably awkward, so attention has focused on helping users to make micro-edits, such as fixing spelling mistakes or correcting dates. The hope is that this will also act as a gateway drug for young editors and for those in poorer countries for whom smartphones are the standard or only way of getting online.

Attracting a steady supply of new editors is vital for Wikipedias long-term survival. So is attracting new kinds of contributors. Ms Maher estimates around 80% of Wikipedias editors are male, and skewed towards North America and Europe (see Graphic Detail). The encyclopedia itself is popular in America, Europe, Russia and Japan, but not much read in India and sub-Saharan Africa (see chart). Changing that, she says, is vital to the health of a project whose idealism remains undimmed. Our vision is a world where every single human being can share in all knowledge, she says. This time, such Utopianism is harder to dismiss. After all, it is backed up by 20 years of success.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "The other tech giant"

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Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher - The Economist

Pelosi is giving Mike Pence 24 hours to act.

After a mob of people stormed the US Capitol on Wednesdayin a riot, incited byDonald Trump, that ultimately ended the lives of five people, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has given Vice President Mike Pence 24 hours to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the sitting President Donald Trump from office.

In a letter sent to her colleagues on Sunday, Nancy Pelosi wrote that if Pence doesn't act within that timeframe, she will "proceed with bringing impeachment legislation to the Floor."

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"In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act with urgency," Pelosi wrote, "because this President represents an imminent threat to both. As the days go by, the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action."

Vice President Mike Pence has reportedly "not ruled out" invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office.

Trump has faced severe repudiation from several tech giants since the Wednesday riots. The president has been suspended indefinitely from Facebook, Instagram and, most significantly, Twitter. Parler, a social media platform that avoids censoring content and presents itself as a bastion of free speech, has been booted off Google, Apple and Amazon app stores on the grounds that users were inciting and promoting more Trump-related violent protests.

Pence has yet to make a public statement about invoking the 25th Amendment,CNN reportedSaturday, and that Pence wants to leave the option open in case Trump becomes unstable, according to reports.

Pence and Trump haven't spoken since Wednesday morning before the attacks, sources told CNN andThe New York Times.

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Pelosi will bring legislation to impeach Trump if Pence doesn't invoke 25th amendment - CNET

Jason Hiner/CNET This story is part of CES, where our editors will bring you the latest news and the hottest gadgets of the entirely virtual CES 2021.

If you usually spend part of your January following CES to discover what the year will bring in technology and gadgets, don't worry about the 2021 show's all-virtual format. The industry isn't flocking to Las Vegas this year, but the show will go on and CNET will still find the most fascinating new products and bring you the most important stories and trends.

To experience CES 2021 for yourself, you only need to watch CNET's livestream. We'll be broadcasting all day on Monday, when the show opens and getting an achingly early start. Follow along for press conferences, product reveals, a CES keynote presentation and expert commentary from our editors and hosts. Of course, we won't have a CNET stage, but the members of our team will join you from their home stages.

Get the latest tech stories with CNET Daily News every weekday.

Here's our schedule for Monday, Jan. 11 (all events are listed in Pacific Time). To see it all, go to CNET.com/ces.

4:30 a.m. -- Livestream begins!

4:45 a.m. -- CNET's hosts welcome you to CES 2021.

6:00 a.m. -- Samsung press conference. (Note that Samsung's reveal of its Galaxy S21 phone will happen Thursday, Jan. 14, at a separate Unpacked event, which CNET will be all over.)

7:00 a.m.-- Panasonic press conference.

8:00 a.m. -- TCL press conference.

9:00 a.m. -- Kohler press conference.

10:00 a.m. -- Intel press conference.

11:00 a.m. -- Indy Autonomous Challenge.

12 noon -- Caterpillar press conference.

1:00 p.m. -- Schneider Electric.

2:00 p.m. -- Sony press conference.

3:00 p.m. -- CNET's Roger Cheng, Jason Hiner and Claire Reilly discuss CES so far, during our editors roundtable.

3:30 p.m. -- CES keynote address with Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg.

4:30 p.m. -- That's it for today! Join us tomorrow, Jan. 12, for CES Day 2.

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Experience CES 2021 for yourself with CNET's livestream. Here's how to watch - CNET

The Galaxy S21 could be cheaper than its predecessor.

The new Samsung Galaxy S21 smartphone lineup might be cheaper than the current Galaxy S20 family, if rumors are to be believed. South Korean leaker Landsk speculates that the Galaxy S21 will start at $850, the S21 Plus at $1,050 and the S21 Ultra at $1,250. That would be a $100 drop from the launch price of the base S20 last March.

Read more: Galaxy S21 vs. Galaxy S20 and why now is the worst time to buy a Samsung Galaxy S20

Get the latest tech stories with CNET Daily News every weekday.

Meanwhile, Samsung is touting its new foldable phones as "more accessible," which could point to lower prices more broadly. The tech giant could be feeling pressure to make its devices more affordable after seeing a more than 20% sales drop in the second quarter of 2020. Analysts point to the coronavirus pandemic as the reason for the smartphone sales plunge.

Samsung did not respond to a request for comment.

The Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21 Plus and the Galaxy S21 Ultra are set to debut at the Samsung Unpacked event on Jan. 14 -- the last day of CES -- which will livestream at 7 a.m. PT (10 a.m. ET). The South Korean company's event theme is "Welcome to Everyday Epic." Here's how to watch Samsung Unpacked live.

Read more:Galaxy S20 FE vs. other S20 phones: Here's why the Fan Edition is so much cheaper

The new phones are the follow-up to the S20 phones, which Samsung released last year to accommodate multiple budgets. Rumors were circulating as early as November that Samsung was already mass-producing the Galaxy S21.

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Galaxy S21 price: Samsung's next phone could cost $100 less than the S20 - CNET