Monthly Archives: January 2021

Text size

Ive always been skeptical about the push to sue, legislate, and regulate social media companies toward better behavior. My view has been they might get their wrists slapped, but that the risks werent material to the stocks. And that has largely been the right call. Now Im not so sure.

State and federal litigation against Facebook (ticker: FB) and Alphabet -owned Google (GOOGL) is mounting. And social media firms are taking heat for their role in creating the fraught political climate that led to a mob taking over the U.S. Capitol this past Wednesday. In short, the risks to the social media companiesand their shareholdersare rising.

This past week, the social media networks took their most drastic actions yet to rein in President Trumps public comments. The most shocking news came late Friday when Twitter (TWTR) permanently suspended his account, citing the risk of further incitement of violence. (The stock was down nearly 4% in late trading Friday night.) Facebook has banned Trump on its platform at least until his presidency ends on Jan. 20.

The social media companies may finally be feeling pressure to take some responsibility for our nations discourse and behavior, especially in the wake of the attack on the Capitol, which left five people dead and dozens injured. And its hard to avoid the feeling that social media is somehow to blame. Rioters, after all, gathered with the help of social media and then posted in real-time to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other sites as they stormed the Capitol.

Its just the latest in a long list of issues for social media. On the same day last week when Congress members had to suspend counting the Electoral College vote to hide in safe rooms, Facebook revised the terms and privacy policy for WhatsApp, the companys wildly popular messaging service that has two billion monthly users. Among other things, the revised policy requires users to agree to allow WhatsApp datatheir phone number, transaction data, IP address, and other informationto be shared with Facebook, so the social network can make suggestions to you and serve up relevant offers and ads. Users have two options: Click yes, or stop using WhatsApp.

Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook who has become one of its greatest critics, has spent the last four years urging regulators, prosecutors, and legislators to end the companys practice of converting user data into dollars, largely via targeted advertising. Its what Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism.

In an interview last week, McNamee told me that Facebooks WhatsApp change was a giant f-you to antitrust regulators...a completely irresponsible action.

A WhatsApp spokesperson says that it began notifying some users of the change in December and that new terms are intended to make it easier for businesses to communicate with consumers through WhatsApp. The company provided an opt-out of data sharing with Facebook back in 2016 but no longer offers that option.

Facebook is positioning itself as a friend to small business. It recently ran a series of full page ads in major newspapers attacking a new Apple (AAPL) policy that requires Apple device users to opt-in to having their activity tracked across apps and websites. Apple sees this as a consumer privacy issue; Facebook positions it as bad for small business. More to the point, it would also be bad for Facebooks business.

So far, investors remain unconcerned about social medias liability; and the events of the past week, which also included Democrats taking control of the Senate, dont seem to have changed their mind.

After an initial flutter, tech stocks still raced higher on the week. One veteran internet analyst I spoke with sees the risks of tech regulation only slightly heightened by Georgia voters flipping the Senate to Democratic controlthe tech giants, after all, have detractors on both sides of the aisle.

President-elect Biden, like Trump, has called for the elimination of Section 230, a provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that protects online businesses from being liable for their users posts. Still, investors seem unconcerned about imminent change. In the early going, Biden will have his hands full trying to address a raging pandemic and a wounded economyfixing Section 230 might not be high on his to-do list.

And yet, theres no question the risks to big tech are greater than they were a year ago. McNamee, for one, predicts that the megacaps, including Facebook, Google, Amazon.com (AMZN), and Applewill all lose antitrust cases in the months ahead. He sees particular risk in the case filed against Google in Texas by a group of 10 state attorneys general. They argue that Google conspired with Facebook to engage in price fixing in the online advertising market.

McNamee points out that federal law, at least, allows for felony treatment of price-fixing actions. Last year, a former CEO of Bumble Bee Foods was sentenced to 40 months in prison for conspiring with rivals StarKist and Chicken of the Sea to fix canned tuna prices. For now, Big Tech is dealing with civil cases. McNamee thinks the details in that 130-page Texas complaint are damning. Google says the case is meritless. Facebook has declined to comment.

Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com

Read more here:

Facebook and Google Face a Growing Threat from Regulators - Barron's

The internet has pretty much been the Wild West for over two decades, which is a good thing and has allowed the best among various internet companies to grow.

We have all benefited. To me the greatest value-add of social media is that I can directly follow the smartest people on earth: Nobel prize winners and others whose opinions I find worth considering.

But somewhere down the line the winners in this internet battle (Big Tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Twitter) seem to have become too big for their boots. They have begun to trample upon the liberty of their customers.

We have always had problems with these companies not adequately protecting our privacy but through the years we had struck sort of a balance. That is why, for long Ive argued that governments must not regulate Big Tech. Ive trusted in their innate common sense (they cant afford to annoy customers too much else they lose business) and in peoples ability to move to alternative platforms if they are unhappy with a particular service.

But 2020 has changed my mind. The option to move to alternative platforms means that still there is only a minimal case for regulation, but governments must now step in to define the minimum expectations from speech-related platforms. Terms and conditions cannot be allowed to be used to get people to sign away their liberty, just as contracts for slavery are forbidden. Speech-related companies must develop an industry code or be forced by the law assure their customers of the same speech protections that are assured by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

To the rest of the world, the USA is a beacon of liberty. The First Amendment restricts only the US government from infringing free speech but the spirit of liberty represented in the Statue of Liberty represents something more: a belief amongst people across the world that the USA will lead us all to freedom. Through social media people living outside the USA get to experience some of that American liberty.

But in 2020, these companies have egregiously blocked content and even disabled the accounts of highly talented, competent people. One would not expect anything better from companies based in other countries but when American companies start trampling liberty, the world is facing a problem.

Over the past year I have been personally affected by these attacks. LinkedIn has banned me permanently a couple of months ago for posting material that I had taken from publicly available data sources. They claimed my post was not professional whatever that means. But it was absolutely true and authentic. The information I had posted casts doubt about the classification of covid deaths (an issue that has been repeatedly confirmed from other sources). All I can think is that this information might have been inconvenient for LinkedIns owner Bill Gates, with his drive to vaccinate everyone regardless of the true risk of covid among various age groups.

Likewise, with Facebook, on which I have diligently built around 50 pages and groups over the past decade to promote liberty. Then, in late 2020, I was banned twice. First, I was banned for 3 days for sharing a meme critical of Victoria Police. By blocking my criticism of the atrocities being committed by Victoria Police, Facebook has behaved no differently from the Chinese Communist Party. It is colluding with the oppressive acts of Western governments.

I resumed posting after the 3-day ban expired but within days, Facebook banned me for a further 7 days for sharing an extract from a publication which discussed how people had grossly exaggerated the magnitude of the swine flu. I compared this with the official covid narrative which is also greatly exaggerated. That was sufficient for Facebook to block me, in an uncanny resemblance to totalitarian CCP.

These are not minor infringements that can be shrugged off. These attack everything that the free world stands for and that freedom fighters gave up their lives for even the Indians who fought Nazi totalitarianism during the second World War. Now that all governments (except Swedens) have adopted a totalitarian path to deal with a minor pandemic, Big Tech companies are treating people like Nazi Germany would have done.

This is intolerable. Either they must tell us that they are being forced by totalitarian governments to block our speech or they must immediately stop trampling upon our freedoms.

If speech-related companies wont self-regulate then a new law is needed. This law would require them to block direct incitement to violence (it must be direct) and content that obviously breaches criminal laws. They would be allowed to have age-appropriate settings for customer content, to protect children. But for all other speech, they would be forbidden from blocking or restricting content except on the orders of a court. And forbidden from forcing people to sign off their free speech rights through terms and conditions.

The more I see the character of some of the leaders of the Big Tech companies, the less I find to admire about them. They lie and do not keep their promises. The recent breach of promise by WhatsApp is a glaring example, with data that users were assured would never be released now being handed over to Facebook.

No one expects private business leaders to behave with any integrity. As Indias only pro-busines party, Swarna Bharat Party does not expect business leaders to be paragons of virtue. But we trust government leaders even less. The reason why our party prefers private businesses to undertake most activities in society and not the government is because we believe that competition can keep the private sector in check whereas there is no check on the excesses of monopoly governments.

Fortunately, people have the option even today of voting with their feet. I am making arrangements to permanently abandon WhatsApp and will incrementally move out of Facebook in which I had once invested considerable time and money to build groups and pages. I will take my business elsewhere, blacklist any company that advertises on totalitarian Facebook, and recommend that we all look for and support free speech platforms.

Let us make it clear to all these people that our freedoms are non-negotiable.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

Excerpt from:

Time for big tech to respect liberty or be forced to do so - The Times of India Blog

National Review

Law enforcement officials announced Friday that they had arrested the man pictured in a viral photograph sitting in House Speaker Nancy Pelosis office with one leg up on her desk when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.Officials said they took 60-year-old Richard Barnett into custody in Little Rock, Ark. and also released details about crimes for which several people will face federal charges.Barnett, who faces charges of violent entry and theft of public property, among other things, told KFSM that he was looking for a bathroom when he saw that the door to Pelosis office was open."I sat down here in my desk. Im a taxpayer. Im a patriot. That aint her desk we loaned her that desk," he told KFSM. "And she aint appreciating the desk, so I thought I would sit down and appreciate the desk."Barnett is being held in the Washington County Detention Center in Fayetteville, Ark., awaiting his initial appearance, according to NBC News.A New York Times reporter on Wednesday shared a video of Barnett, which he said was taken after the Arkansan's time in the speaker's office, and shows him bragging about taking a personalized envelope from the office, which he says he didn't steal.> Heres Mr. Barnett, who goes by Bigo, telling the story in his own words pic.twitter.com/oSyKiCDXgy> > -- Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) January 6, 2021"I left a quarter on her desk," he said, and later added that he left a "nasty note" as well."I'll probably be telling them this is what happened all the way to the D.C. jail," he added.Barnett said that he knocked politely on the door to the office, but was then pushed inside by other rioters.Pelosi's aides have said her office was vandalized on Wednesday and that a laptop from a conference room had been stolen, though the equipment was only used for presentations.Officials earlier announced the arrests of 82 people at the state, local and federal levels, according to reports, while the FBI's Washington Field Office on Friday released 40 photos of people who are wanted in connection with the rioting at the Capitol.A state lawmaker from West Virginia was also charged Friday in connection with the riot at the Capitol. Derrick Evans, a Republican, reportedly recorded and then deleted a video of himself joining the crowd, leading to a petition asking for him to step down.Meanwhile, 70-year-old Lonnie Coffman of Falkville, Ala. is accused of having two handguns, an assault rifle and 11 Molotov cocktails that included gasoline and what appeared to be homemade napalm, officials said.Police were able to link Coffman to a suspicious red GMC pick-up truck with Alabama plates, according to NBC News.Mark Leffingwell was charged and is accused of knowingly entering restricted ground and assaulting an officer after entering the Capitol. Leffingwell repeatedly punched a U.S. Capitol Police officer in the helmet and chest, according to court papers.Christopher Michael Alberts of Maryland is accused of illegally entering the Capitolwhile in possession of a loaded Taurus 9mm handgun and a separate magazine filled with ammunition. Alberts, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, is also accused of having a pocketknife at the time.He "immediately tried to flee" before police detained him, according to court papers. Hetold police he had the gun "for personal protection and he did not intend on using the firearm to harm anyone."

More here:

Big Tech is discriminating because of their political bend when banning conservatives: Andrew McCarthy - Yahoo News

Share This Article:President Trumps Twitter account during the 12-hour lockout.By Chris Jennewein

The online revolution centered in Californias Silicon Valley came to the rescue of democracy Wednesday by temporarily locking out President Trump from social media platforms.

Support Times of San Diego's growthwith a small monthly contribution

When Trump refused to quickly condemn the riot he incited at the Capitol, and later offered only mealy-mouthed calls for calm that reiterated his big lie about the election being stolen, Twitter and Facebook acted on their own.

Twitter locked out the President for 12 hours. Facebook went further, making the ban indefinite, as did Snapchat. That did this to prevent Trump for possibly inciting further violence.

Unlike many, perhaps most countries, media is the United States is almost entirely in private hands. We dont have a public broadcaster like the BBC, an official newspaper like the Peoples Daily, or a state news agency like ITAR-TASS. Its entirely up to private American owners to decide how to cover the news.

A lot of politicians throughout the world hate independent, privately owned media because they cant control it. This is especially true of the new media types spawned by the creativity of Silicon Valley.

Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and Americas world-champion technology companies like Amazon, Google and Apple are increasingly under attack exactly because of such independence.

A number of states have filed antitrust suits, and Trump has been singularly fixated on removing Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. In fact, he vetoed the important annual defense bill because it didnt specifically include repeal of this unrelated law.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the man who infamously raised his fist in support of the mob outside the Capitol before objecting to the certification of Joe Bidens victory, is also fixated on this section.

For too long, Big Tech companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook have used their power to silence political speech from conservatives without any recourse for users. Section 230 has been stretched and rewritten by courts to give these companies outlandish power over speech without accountability, according to Hawley.

Why are they so fixated on this law? Because it gives ordinary Americans an easy way to make their thoughts and and concerns public. It turns every person with a computer or smartphone into an independent publisher. This really, really threatens politicians.

In authoritarian countries like China, the solution is simple: monitor everything and everyone though a social credit system. But in the United States, the First Amendment and Section 230 prevent this.

The section states very simply that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. It means that when you write a restaurant review, post a video, or tweet that Trump is a Facist, the online platform isnt responsible and cant be sued.

Now Trump, Hawley and other politicians, businesses aggrieved by bad reviews, and celebrities seeking to remove unflattering photos arent going to go though a lot of effort to try to sue you. Theyd rather sue the deep pockets: Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Google, Amazon and so on. Section 230 prevents that.

If there was no Section 230, your restaurant review would be subject to editing and your video would be taken down to avoid a lawsuit. And Trumps tweets from Wednesday telling his very special mob I know your pain would still be public to avoid any accusation of unfairness.

Social media companies came through for democracy on Wednesday by exercising their independence in the great tradition of American media independence. If we take away their speech protections, its as bad as inviting the mob back into the Capitol.

Chris Jennewein is editor & publisher of Times of San Diego.

Opinion: Amid the Capital Chaos, Big Tech Sought to Protect Democracy was last modified: January 7th, 2021 by Chris Jennewein

>> Subscribe to Times of San Diegos free daily email newsletter! Click here

Read this article:

Opinion: Amid the Capital Chaos, Big Tech Sought to Protect Democracy - Times of San Diego

Big Tech has just taken a gigantic step toward its objective of gaining total control over what can and what cannot be said on the internet.

Apple and Google have commanded Parler, a social network used by conservatives, to police its users. In effect, what their warning issued to Parler means, do as you are told or face digital annihilation!.

Google suspended Parler from its Play Store, declaring that it will shut the network until it rigorously polices its app. Apple was reported to have followed suit giving Parler 24 hours to fall in line; otherwise it would be removed from Apples App Store.

Apple and Googles declaration of war on Parler has serious implications. These two giant companies make operating systems that support nearly every smartphone in the world. That means that if Apple shuts Parler out of its App Store, people would not be able to download the app on their iPhones or iPads.

The timing of the edict issued by the masters of Silicon Valley is not a coincidence. Parler is one of the fastest growing apps on the internet. Millions of conservatives fed up with the censorious behavior of Twitter and Facebook have been attracted to this social network. In the aftermath of President Trump being forced off Facebook and Twitter, it was expected that millions of his supporters would turn to Parler to freely express their convictions.

Big Tech censorship is nothing new. In recent years, social-media companies once reluctant to be drawn into becoming official censors and arbiters of truth have increasingly clamped down on what they deem to be hate speech or misinformation.

Since the beginning of the pandemic Big Tech companies have behaved as if they are digital gods. These powerful unaccountable billionaires have issued one Papal Bull after another. Facebook has used the pandemic to expand its policing of what can be posted. Initially it stated that it would continue to remove misinformation that could contribute to imminent physical harm, while deploying its army of fact-checkers to flag certain posts, depress their distribution, and direct sharers of such material to reliable information. A few weeks later in April, 2020 it was reported that it was removing event posts for anti-lockdown gatherings.

Early on in the pandemic Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, declared that she saw their role as the arbiter of truth on the coronavirus. She stated that anything that contradicted the recommendations of the WHO would be removed from her platform.

That Big Tech sees itself as a veritable global power that stands above elected governments was strikingly illustrated by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, when he announced that Trumps page would be closed down, at the very least, for the rest of his presidency. A day later, Twitter followed suit and suspended Trumps account permanently. This humiliation of the American president indicates that a handful of billionaire capitalists now get to decide who can have a voice in the digital public square.

Big Tech companies censoring their own platforms is bad enough. However, when they take it upon themselves to determine how another independent social network must police itself, they have in effect assumed a tyrannical role over the entire internet. Their declaration of war on Parler, indicates that they see themselves as not simply private companies but as global institutions that can wield political and policing power over the digital world.

It is likely that Parler will be forced to cave in and accept the terms imposed on it by Apple and Google. John Matze, Parlers CEO, has gone on record to state that he believes that we can retain our values and make Apple happy quickly. If Parler is forced to fall in line with the edict issued by Big Tech then it will constitute the greatest blow struck against internet freedom so far.

Despite its rhetoric of supporting diversity, Big Tech is distinctly opposed to the diversity of opinion. As recent events show they intend to turn the digital world into an entirely homogeneous system, where the only values that can be freely expressed are those of Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

Restoring the freedom to express whatever view you want to put forward on the internet is one of the most important challenges confronting genuine democrats.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Originally posted here:

Big Tech giants want to prove they are American gods. Anyone watching the watchers? - RT

The head of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said on Saturday that conservatives and Trump administration officials are "constantly being censored" -- a day after President Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter.

"This is about individuals in positions of power that have a different political and ideological viewpoint and opinion than others and when that happens they try toshut us down," Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said on "Fox & Friends."

TWITTER SUSPENDS @REALDONALDTRUMP ACCOUNT PERMANENTLY

Morgan was reacting after President Trump was locked out of his social media account in the wake of the riotat Capitol Hill -- which a number of people, including Republicans and Democrats, have accused Trump of stoking.

Twitter said it was within that context that the ban was being administered and shared two recent tweets as justification.

One read: "The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!"

The other was a tweet from Trump saying he would not attend President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration.

NIKKI HALEY SAYS TRUMP TWITTER BAN IS 'WHAT HAPPENS IN CHINA'

"These two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the Presidents statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks," the company said.

"After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service."

Morgan was not impressed by that claim, and said that when the Hatfield Courthouse was being sieged by protesters in Portland over the summer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saw no consequences for calling federal agents "stormtroopers."

CBP CHIEF SAYS TWITTER LOCKED HIS ACCOUNT FOR PRO-BORDER WALL MESSAGE

"Now my opinion is that is hateful, that is irresponsible and that is inciteful, but that's my opinions and even how irresponsible that is I still support her right to say that because that is what America is about, that is what we stand for... and that is what makes us different from any other nation in this world," he said.

Morgan said that viewers will struggle to find examples of left-wing politicians being censored.

"What you will find is this administration and conservatives thatare constantly being censored," he said.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Morgan himself was briefly suspended in October 2020 for a tweet about the wall on the southern border -- but it was reversed on appeal.

"Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators and drugs from entering our country," the tweet had said. Twitter initiallylocked the account for violating rules governing "hateful conduct."

Link:

After Trump Twitter ban, CBP chief says conservatives are 'constantly being censored' by Big Tech - Fox News