Mark Zuckerberg

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Facebook faces antitrust allegations over deals for Instagram and WhatsApp

      by

      Facebook is expecting significant new legal challenges, as the US Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of attorney generals from up to 40 states are preparing antitrust suits.
      [embedded content]
      Although the specific charges in both cases remain unclear, the antitrust allegations are expected to center on the tech giant’s acquisition of two big apps: a $1bn deal to buy the photo-sharing app Instagram in 2012, and the $19bn purchase of the global messaging service WhatsApp in 2014. Together, the buys brought the top four social media companies worldwide under Facebook’s control. The purchases would constitute antitrust violations if Facebook believed the companies were viable competitors.
      At the time of its acquisition, Instagram had 30 million users, and, even though it was growing rapidly, it wasn’t yet making money. WhatsApp boasted more than 450 million monthly active users when it was acquired. “WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people,” Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time.
      The FTC cleared Facebook for the acquisitions when they occurred, and the company is hoping to leverage those approvals in mounting a defense. Facebook executives have also argued their company has helped the apps grow.
      But Facebook has come under greater scrutiny since the deals were done, and the FTC launched a new investigation into the potential antitrust violations in 2019.
      The FTC probe will build on findings from a separate inquiry conducted by the US House Judiciary subcommittee, which released millions of documents that appeared to show that Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were concerned the apps could become competition, before aggressively pursuing them.
      In one 2012 email, made public through the House investigation, Zuckerberg highlighted how Instagram had an edge on mobile, an area where Facebook was falling behind. In another, the CEO said Instagram could hurt Facebook even if it doesn’t become huge. “The businesses are nascent but the networks are established, the brands are already meaningful and if they grow to a large scale they could be disruptive to us,” Zuckerberg wrote. Instagram’s co-founder also fretted that his company might be targeted for destruction by Zuckerberg if he refused the deal.
      The FTC is expected to vote on a possible suit this week. Three of the five-member commission are believed to be in favor of the move, including chair Joseph Simons, who is expected to leave the agency before the new Biden administration is sworn in, Politico reported.
      Commissioners also have to decide where to file the suit: in federal court, which would leave the outcome to a judge; or in the FTC, where the commission could ultimately decide.
      The suit expected from the bipartisan coalition of states is headed by New York attorney general Letitia James. While details of their complaint are also scant, several states’ top law enforcement offices launched probes into Facebook’s acquisitions last year, adding to the pressure put on the company by federal regulators.
      Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
      Facebook’s possible legal challenges come as a growing number of US lawmakers are arguing that companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple have amassed too much power and should be reined in.
      These companies “wield their dominance in ways that erode entrepreneurship, degrade Americans’ privacy online, and undermine the vibrancy of the free and diverse press”, the House judiciary committee concluded in its nearly 500-page report.
      “The result is less innovation, fewer choices for consumers, and a weakened democracy.”
      President-elect Joe Biden, too, has been critical of the tech companies. “Many technology giants and their executives have not only abused their power, but misled the American people, damaged our democracy and evaded any form of responsibility,” said Biden spokesperson Matt Hill to the New York Times. “That ends with a President Biden.”
      In May, Facebook took over Giphy, a hugely popular moving-image app, with plans to integrate it with Instagram. Late last month, the company also announced plans to acquire Kustomer, an e-commerce app.
      “This deal is about providing more choices and better products for consumers,” a company spokesman said in a statement to the New York Times. “The key to Facebook’s success has always been innovation, with M&A being just a part of our overall business strategy, and we will continue to demonstrate to regulators that competition in the technology sector is vibrant.” More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      If you think Biden's administration would rein in big tech, think again | John Naughton

      by

      Before the US presidential election I wondered aloud if Mark Zuckerberg had concluded that the re-election of Trump might be better for Facebook than a Biden victory. There were several reasons for thinking this. One was the strange way Zuckerberg appeared to be sucking up to Trump: at least one private dinner in the White House; the way he jumped on to Fox News when Twitter first placed a warning on a Trump tweet to say that Facebook would not be doing stuff like that; and the majority report of the House subcommittee on tech monopolies, in which it was clear that the Democrats had it in for the companies.But the most significant piece of evidence for the belief that a Biden administration would finally tackle the tech giants, and Facebook in particular, came in the long interview Biden gave last January to the New York Times, in which he was highly critical of the company.“I’ve never been a big Zuckerberg fan,” Biden said. “I think he’s a real problem … I’ve been in the view that not only should we be worrying about the concentration of power, we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you’re not exempt. [The New York Times] can’t write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms.” As readers of this column know only too well, section 230 of the 1996 US Telecommunications Act is the clause that exempts tech platforms from legal liability for anything that users post on their platforms. It’s the nearest thing social media has to a kill switch. Pull it and their business models evaporate. Trump had been threatening to pull it before the election, but he lacked the attention span to be able to do anything about it. Biden, on the other hand, had already talked about it in January and would have people around him who knew what they were doing. So maybe we were going to get some real progress in getting tech giants under control.And then he gets elected and what do we find? Biden’s transition eam is packed with tech industry insiders. Tom Sullivan, from Amazon, is earmarked for the Department of State. Mark Schwartz, also from Amazon, is heading for the Office of Management and Budget, as are Divya Kumaraiah from Airbnb and Brandon Belford from Lyft, the ride-hailing company. The US Treasury gets Nicole Isaac from LinkedIn, Microsoft’s department of spam, and Will Fields, who was Sidewalk Labs’ senior development associate. (Sidewalk Labs was the organiser of Google’s attempt – eventually cancelled – to turn Toronto’s waterfront into a data-geyser for surveillance capitalism.) The Environmental Protection Agency, a body that Trump looted and sidelined, gets Ann Dunkin, who is Dell’s chief technology officer. And so on.Well, I thought, perusing this sordid list, at least there’s nobody from Facebook on it. How innocent can you be? Politico reveals that the joint chair of Biden’s transition team, Jeff Zients, is a former Facebook board member. Another former board member is an adviser. And two others, one who was a Facebook director and another who was a company lobbyist, have, according to Politico “taken leadership roles”. And then, to cap it all, it turns out that Biden himself has a friendly relationship with a guy called Nick Clegg, who was once a serious politician and now doubles as Mark Zuckerberg’s bagman and representative on Earth.Truly, you couldn’t make this up. And just to add a touch of satire to it, the woman who is now a heartbeat away from the presidency, Kamala Harris, has a career-long record of cosying up to Silicon Valley. She participated, for example, in the marketing campaign for Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg’s anthem of capitalist feminism, even though at the time Harris was California’s law enforcement official most responsible for overseeing Facebook. As the state’s attorney general, she took a semi-comatose view of the way the big tech companies were allowed to gobble up potential rivals and bulldoze their way into new industries. Facebook’s controversial acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, perhaps the most obvious anti-competitive mergers in the short history of the tech industry, happened on her watch and triggered no regulatory reflex. If Silicon Valley could be said to have a darling, then Ms Harris is it. And all those campaign donations from tech companies and moguls may turn out to have been a shrewd investment after all.Given these sobering circumstances, how should we calculate the odds of a Biden administration taking on the power of the tech giants? The answer: slightly better than those of a snowball staying cool in hell. But only slightly.What I’ve been readingIs 2020 just a taster?Graeme Wood has written a riveting essay, titled The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse, on the work of Peter Turchin, a quantitative historian who believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies.Birth of an iNationWhat if we viewed tech giants as countries? A thoughtful essay in Tortoise Media considers Apple as a one-party state as secretive as China. But more liberal. Phew!Is less Moore?I enjoyed a lovely post by Venkatesh Rao on the Ribbonfarm blog, about the mindset induced by living in a world governed by Moore’s Law. More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Facebook and Twitter CEOs face Senate hearing over handling of 2020 US election – video

      by

      The chief executive officers of Twitter and Facebook appear before a US Senate hearing to testify about allegations of anti-conservative bias and their handling of the 2020 election. Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg face questioning for the second time in as many months, with Republican lawmakers alleging – without evidence – censorship of conservative views
      Twitter and Facebook CEOs testify on alleged anti-conservative bias More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Twitter and Facebook CEOs testify on alleged anti-conservative bias

      by

      The chief executive officers of Twitter and Facebook took the stand on Tuesday to testify, again, about allegations of anti-conservative bias on their platforms.
      Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey were subpoenaed in October to appear at Tuesday’s hearing with the Senate judiciary committee in order to “review the companies’ handling of the 2020 election”.
      [embedded content]
      Republican lawmakers frequently allege – without evidence – censorship of conservative views, but this particular hearing was called in response to the companies’ handling of a New York Post article about Joe Biden.
      When the story was published in October, Twitter took unprecedented steps to limit its circulation, blocking users from posting links or photos of the report. At the time, Twitter said the measures were taken due to “the origins of the materials” included in the article, which were allegedly pulled from a computer that had been left by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. Twitter policies prohibit “directly distribut[ing] content obtained through hacking that contains private information”.
      The company later walked back on its response, tweeting that the communication around the actions on the article “was not great”. It also changed its hacked materials policies in response to the outcry. Facebook took a less aggressive stance, placing some limitations on the article due to questions about its validity.
      In his opening statement, Dorsey explained again the company took action against the New York Post tweet due to “the origins of the materials” included in the article and said that Twitter upon further review decided that action was wrong. “I hope this illustrates the rationale behind our actions and demonstrates our ability to take feedback,” Dorsey said. “Mistakes and changes were all transparent to the public.” More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Section 230: tech CEOs to defend key internet law before Congress

      by

      [embedded content]
      The CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google are expected to tell lawmakers in a rare appearance before Congress that a federal law protecting internet companies is crucial to free expression online.
      Wednesday’s hearing with Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai will take place less than a week before election day and was convened to address section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law underpinning US internet regulation that exempts platforms from legal liability for content generated by its users.
      The hearing will investigate “how best to preserve the internet as a forum for open discourse”, according to the Senate judiciary committee, and it comes largely in response to allegations of anti-conservative bias in the tech world.
      Senate Republicans indicated they wanted to question Pichai and Zuckerberg in October to discuss issues related to section 230. Dorsey was added to the mix after Twitter restricted the circulation of a controversial New York Post article that featured potentially hacked materials relating to Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
      In prepared testimony for Wednesday’s hearing, Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, said eroding the foundation of section 230 “could collapse how we communicate on the internet, leaving only a small number of giant and well-funded technology companies”.
      Facebook’s Zuckerberg warned that tech companies were likely to censor more content to avoid legal risks if section 230 were repealed. “Without section 230, platforms could potentially be held liable for everything people say,” he said.
      The Facebook executive also argued that without the law, tech companies could face liability for doing even basic moderation, such as removing hate speech and harassment. He said he supported “updating” the rules for the internet if it were done with the potential consequences in mind.
      Pichai said Google approached its work without political bias and was able to offer the information it did because of existing legal frameworks such as section 230. “I would urge the committee to be very thoughtful about any changes to section 230 and to be very aware of the consequences those changes might have on businesses and consumers,” Pichai’s written testimony said.
      Republicans’ allegations that tech companies unfairly silence conservative voices is unsubstantiated. In fact, a recent report alleged that Facebook had suppressed progressive content to appease Republican lawmakers.
      Still, Donald Trump has repeatedly accused Twitter and Facebook of censoring him and has zeroed in on section 230 as one of the culprits. Trump has stepped up his criticism since the companies began to label or even remove posts by the president or his campaign that spread misinformation or call for violence.
      “Repeal section 230!!!” Trump tweeted on 6 October, after Twitter added a misinformation warning label to one of his tweets claiming the flu is more deadly than Covid-19.
      Ironically, the repeal of section 230 protections would probably lead social media platforms to take more, not less, action over Trump’s posts, as it would hold them legally liable for any falsehoods he posts. Experts say the effects would be comparable to what was seen with the passage of Fosta/Sesta, legislation that held platforms responsible for sexual service advertisements posted on their sites. The passage of those bills led to the removal of Craigslist personal ads and upended content policies on sites like Tumblr.
      Privacy advocates have long called for the protection of section 230, saying it is integral to internet freedom. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group, called section 230 “the most important law protecting internet speech”.
      The Internet Society, another non-profit organization advocating for internet access, warned that poorly informed policy decisions on section 230 could bring “dire consequences” for what we are able to do online.
      That is because the law applies not only to platforms like Facebook and Twitter but to other internet infrastructure like domain name registries and internet service providers. Without section 230, these entities may have to approve content prior to posting or take other action that would significantly slow the flow of the internet as we know it.
      Despite the warnings, the modification of existing regulations has become a major point of contention in the run-up to the election, with both presidential candidates proposing section 230’s repeal. There have been an additional 20 attempts to amend or revoke the law in the past two years.
      In addition to discussions on reforming the law, the hearing will bring up issues about consumer privacy and media consolidation. On Tuesday, Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate commerce panel, released a report on how big tech platforms have decimated the local news industry, including newspapers and broadcasters.
      The tech executives will begin their testimony at 10am ET and all three will appear remotely.
      Reuters contributed reporting More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Facebook announces plan to stop political ads after 3 November

      by

      Facebook has announced significant changes to its advertising and misinformation policies, saying it will stop running political ads in the United States after polls close on 3 November for an undetermined period of time.The changes, announced on Wednesday, come in an effort to “protect the integrity” of the upcoming election “by fighting foreign interference, misinformation and voter suppression”, the company said in a blogpost.Facebook’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, had previously defended the controversial decision not to factcheck political advertising on the platform, but in recent weeks Facebook has begun to remove political ads that feature dangerous and misleading claims.In early September, the company pledged to stop running new political ads one week before 3 November, the day of the United States elections, to prevent last-minute misinformation. Now it will also disallow political advertising entirely following election day “to reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse”.In other words, Facebook will not allow new advertisements starting one week before 3 November, and immediately after polls close it will stop running all political advertisements indefinitely. The company did not give a timeline for if or when political advertising would return.The new policies mark important progress toward protecting elections, said Vanita Gupta, the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of dozens of nonprofits and human rights groups advocating for democracy.“We are seeing unprecedented attacks on legitimate, reliable and secure voting methods designed to delegitimize the election,” Gupta said. “These are important steps for Facebook to take to combat disinformation and the premature calling of election results before every vote is counted.”Others said the change is too little, too late. Senator Elizabeth Warren called the changes “performative”. The internet freedom group Fight for the Future said in a tweet the change “isn’t going to fix the problem at all”. The group noted that Facebook’s recent decision to allow content from private groups to appear in newsfeeds will increase misinformation and negate any positive changes that come from an advertising ban.“Facebook is banning political ads but at the same time they’re tweaking their algorithm to go into overdrive recruiting people into groups where they’ll be spoon-fed manipulation and misinformation,” Fight For the Future said.Facebook is again making performative changes to try to avoid blame for misinformation on its platform. The problem isn’t the ads themselves. The problem is Facebook’s refusal to regulate its ads, change its broken algorithm, or take responsibility for the power it’s amassed. https://t.co/OkkyM1PtML— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 7, 2020
      Facebook is seeking to avoid another political disaster after it was found that Facebook was used by Russian operatives in 2016 to manipulate the United States elections.Since then, Facebook has hired thousands of people working on safety and security surrounding elections and has worked on more than 200 elections around the globe, “learning from each” and making “substantial progress”, the company said.Executives at Facebook, including Zuckerberg, reportedly became increasingly alarmed at language from Donald Trump suggesting the president would not participate in a peaceful transfer of power. Trump has also been accused of encouraging violence when he told white supremacists to “stand back and stand by” and encouraged supporters to “go to the polls” and “watch very carefully” at the first presidential debate.The company also said it will be removing calls for people to engage in poll watching that use “militarized language” or suggest the goal is to intimidate voters or election officials.Zuckerberg has previously expressed concern about challenges posed by the surge in mail-in ballots this year due to the pandemic.“I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country,” he said.Facebook said it would respond to candidates or parties making premature claims of victory, before races were called by major media outlets, by adding labels and notifications about the state of the race. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      'Too much power': key moments as tech CEOs face historic US hearing – video

      by

      Play Video

      Top US tech bosses are told they are censoring political speech, spreading fake news and ‘killing’ the engines of the US economy in a combative and historic congressional hearing.
      Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, appeared before members of the house judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee and faced intense questioning on everything from market dominance and data surveillance to military contracts and political censorship.
      ‘Too much power’: Congress grills top tech CEOs in combative antitrust hearing

      Topics

      Amazon

      Apple

      Google

      Facebook

      US Congress

      Jeff Bezos

      Mark Zuckerberg More