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The gloves and training wheels come off as a group of smart, poignantly naive and utterly insufferable Texas boys get together to simulate government More
The social media titans are more powerful than politicians. But it doesn’t have to be this wayThis week, in a hearing on Capitol Hill, you could gaze upon the men with the power to determine November’s presidential election and the future of American democracy – but the men in question were not politicians. Rather they were the four tech titans who appeared by Zoom before a congressional committee. Even via video link, the power radiated from them: the heads of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple loomed from the monitors as veritable masters of the universe, their elected questioners mere earthlings.That hardly exaggerates their might. Between them, and with their users numbered in the billions, Facebook and Google determine much of what the human race sees, reads and knows. Mark Zuckerberg’s writ runs across the planet, no single government is able to constrain him: he is an emperor of knowledge, a minister of information for the entire world. A mere tweak of an algorithm by Facebook can decide whether lies, hate and conspiracy theories spread or shrivel. Continue reading… More
Opinion
New York Times
Tom Cotton’s war on the 1619 Project is the real ‘cancel culture’
Malaika Jabali
Conservatives like Cotton prefer we avoid looking critically at the US at all, and anyone that falls out of line must be cancelled More
The US attorney general, William Barr, may be using Julian Assange’s extradition case in the UK for political ends, the WikiLeaks founder’s defence team alleged during a court hearing at which he appeared by video link from prison for the first time in months.It was a fact that Donald Trump had described the defence case as “a plot by the Democrats”, Edward Fitzgerald QC told the hearing at Westminster magistrates court.Fitzgerald said a new superseding US indictment, produced months after the start of attempts in the UK to secure his extradition, had been “sprung” on his defence team.The indictment, which had not yet been formally laid before the court, supersedes previous indictments brought in February and which related to 2010 and 2011.A US grand jury had previously indicted Assange on 18 charges – 17 of which fall under the Espionage Act – around conspiracy to receive, obtaining and disclosing classified diplomatic and military documents.The details in the new indictment – publicised last month by the US Department of Justice – focus on conferences in 2009 in the Netherlands and Malaysia at which US prosecutors say Assange tried to recruit hackers who could find classified information, including in relation to a “most wanted leaks” list posted on the WikiLeaks website.The hearing on Monday was the latest in a series of administrative hearings. Chaotic arrangements meant journalists, legal observers and some lawyers had difficulty accessing it remotely to listen in. The full hearing of the extradition case has been postponed until September due to the Covid-19 pandemic.Wearing a beige sweater and a pink shirt, Assange eventually appeared from Belmarsh prison after an earlier attempt was aborted.Fitzgerald told the hearing it would be improper if the new indictment led to the postponement of the hearing until after the November presidential election in the US.Judge Vanessa Baraitser told the hearing that the deadline had arrived for any further evidence before the extradition hearing, aside from psychiatric reports. She said she expected all parties to attend the hearing in September in person.Outside the court, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said: “The ‘new’ superseding indictment actually contains nothing new. All the alleged events have been known to the prosecution for years.“It contains no new charges. What’s really happening here is that despite its decade-long head-start, the prosecution are still unable to build a coherent and credible case. So they’ve scrapped their previous two indictments and gone for a third try.”US Department of Justice authorities have said: “The new indictment does not add additional counts to the prior 18-count superseding indictment returned against Assange in May 2019. It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged.” More
The Observer
Interview
Ian Tucker
An early investor in Facebook outlines the unprecedented scale of power wielded by the social media giants – and sets out his blueprint for reform
John Naughton on how Facebook could stop Biden’s progress to the White House
Q&A with Facebook whistleblower Yaël Eisenstat
Carole Cadwalladr: If you’re not terrified about Facebook, you haven’t been paying attention More
The Observer
Interview
Ian Tucker
The ex-CIA officer on why she lasted only six months at the tech giant and her fears about its role in the forthcoming US election
John Naughton on how Facebook could stop Biden’s progress to the White House
Q&A with early Facebook investor Roger McNamee
Carole Cadwalladr: If you’re not terrified about Facebook, you haven’t been paying attention More
Mayors across the United States have rejected Donald Trump’s election-season depiction of their cities as awash in violence, and media coverage of peaceful protests in Portland and elsewhere has belied the president’s claims of widespread “anarchy”.But for Americans who mainly consume conservative media, Trump’s latest evocation of an “American carnage”, with “a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders and heinous crimes of violence” is as plain as the news flashing across the screen.The stars of conservative cable TV programs and the biggest conservative news sites and social media accounts have echoed and amplified Trump since he declared himself “your president of law and order” in an appearance outside the White House in early June.Over the last week, however, alarm over the security of America’s cities has intensified on the conservative airways.“These vicious, violent, hate-filled, anti-American protesters are also attacking federal buildings,” Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show last week. “How many stores and parks and statues and public buildings have been destroyed recently by rioters?” the Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked last month. “Reign of street terrorists”, the conservative radio host Mark Levin tweeted with a story about the removal and defacement of statues and monuments.The Republican senator Tom Cotton, who has been calling for a military crackdown in US cities for two months, found a welcome outlet this week for his message on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, one of the country’s most-watched.“If federal troops are brought in and then – of course the mayors and the governors, they’re not stopping the anarchists, and there’s chaos in the streets … and then they have to fire to protect themselves or others, who gets the blame for that?” Hannity asked, describing a scenario in which troops fired on protesters.“Well ultimately the blame lies with the criminals,” Cotton replied.Political analysts see Trump’s efforts to create the impression of widespread social unrest which only he can solve as part of a long-shot re-election strategy. Trump trails rival Joe Biden by double digits in polling averages including in key swing states.Conservative media could help Trump to create an impression of chaos – at least for their conservative audience. Media consumption habits have shown strong correlation with basic world outlook. An Axios-Ipsos poll published on Tuesday found that a 62% majority of Fox News watchers believe that statistics tracking US coronavirus cases are overblown, while 48% who reported no main news source thought so. Only 7% of CNN and MSNBC watchers thought so.Trump has blamed Democrats for creating the climate of chaos he relies on conservative media to help him amplify. “I’m going to do something – that, I can tell you,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office this week.“Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these – Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.”US mayors have disputed that depiction, urging the Trump administration to stop treating protesters like criminals and accusing the White House of an “abuse of power”.Mayors from 15 of the largest American cities addressed a letter to the attorney general, Bill Barr, and the acting homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, on Monday.“The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked a national uprising and reckoning,” the letter said. “The majority of the protests have been peaceful and aimed at improving our communities.“Where this is not the case, it still does not justify the use of federal forces. Unilaterally deploying these paramilitary-type forces into our cities is wholly inconsistent with our system of democracy and our most basic values.” More
Social media
Researchers train machine learning to pick up patterns of social media posts aimed at manipulating political events More
