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      Trump’s Facebook and Instagram ban to be lifted, Meta announces

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      Trump’s Facebook and Instagram ban to be lifted, Meta announcesEx-president to be allowed back ‘in coming weeks … with new guardrails in place’ after ban that followed January 6 attack In a highly anticipated decision, Meta has said it will allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram following a two-year ban from the platforms over his online behavior during the 6 January insurrection.Meta will allow Trump to return “in coming weeks” but “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses”, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote in a blogpost explaining the decision.Two more papers found in Trump’s storage last year were marked secretRead more“Like any other Facebook or Instagram user, Mr Trump is subject to our community standards,” Clegg wrote.“In the event that Mr Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation.”Trump was removed from Meta platforms following the Capitol riots on 6 January 2021, during which he posted unsubstantiated claims that the election had been stolen, praised increasingly violent protestors and condemned former vice-president Mike Pence even as the mob threatened his life.Clegg said the suspension was “an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances” and that Meta has weighed “whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period is justified”.Ultimately, the company has decided that its platforms should be available for “open, public and democratic debate” and that users “should be able to hear from a former President of the United States, and a declared candidate for that office again”, he wrote.“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying – the good, the bad and the ugly – so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” he said.As a general rule, we don’t want to get in the way of open debate on our platforms, esp in context of democratic elections. People should be able to hear what politicians are saying – good, bad & ugly – to make informed choices at the ballot box. 1/4— Nick Clegg (@nickclegg) January 25, 2023
      While it is unclear if the former president will begin posting again on the platform, his campaign indicated he had a desire to return in a letter sent to Meta in January.“We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” the letter said.Safety concerns and a politicized debateThe move is likely to influence how other social media companies will handle the thorny balance of free speech and content moderation when it comes to world leaders and other newsworthy individuals, a debate made all the more urgent by Trump’s run for the US presidency once again.Online safety advocates have warned that Trump’s return will result in an increase of misinformation and real-life violence. Since being removed from Meta-owned platforms, the former president has continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories elsewhere, predominantly on his own network, Truth Social.While widely expected, it still drew sharp rebukes from civil rights advocates. “Facebook has policies but they under-enforce them,” said Laura Murphy, an attorney who led a two-year long audit of Facebook concluding in 2020. “I worry about Facebook’s capacity to understand the real world harm that Trump poses: Facebook has been too slow to act.”The Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Free Press and other groups also expressed concern on Wednesday over Facebook’s ability to prevent any future attacks on the democratic process, with Trump still repeating his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.“With the mass murders in Colorado or in Buffalo, you can see there is already a cauldron of extremism that is only intensified if Trump weighs in,” said Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of media watchdog Media Matters for America. “When Trump is given a platform, it ratchets up the temperature on a landscape that is already simmering – one that will put us on a path to increased violence.”After the 6 January riots, the former president was also banned from Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube. Some of those platforms have already allowed Trump to return. Twitter’s ban, while initially permanent, was later overruled by its new chief executive Elon Musk. YouTube has not shared a timeline on a decision to allow Trump to return. Trump remains banned from Snapchat. Meta, however, dragged out its ultimate decision. In 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained in a post Trump had been barred from the platforms for encouraging violence and that he would remain suspended until a peaceful transition of power could take place.While Zuckerberg did not initially offer a timeline on the ban, the company punted its decision about whether to remove him permanently to its oversight board: a group of appointed academics and former politicians meant to operate independently of Facebook’s corporate leadership. That group ruled in May 2021 that the penalties should not be “indeterminate”, but kicked the final ruling on Trump’s accounts back to Meta, suggesting it decide in six months – two years after the riots.The deadline was initially slated for 7 January, and reports from inside Meta suggested the company was intensely debating the decision. Clegg wrote in a 2021 blog post that Trump’s accounts would need to be strictly monitored in the event of his return.How the ‘guardrails’ could workAnnouncing the decision on Wednesday, Clegg said Meta’s “guardrails” would include taking action against content that does not directly violate their community standards but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6th, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon”.Meta “may limit the distribution of such posts, and for repeated instances, may temporarily restrict access to our advertising tools”, Clegg said, or “remove the re-share button” from posts.Trump pleads with Meta to restore Facebook accountRead moreTrump responded to the news with a short statement on Truth Social, reposted by others on Twitter, saying that “such a thing should never happen again to a sitting president” but did not indicate if or when he would return to the platform.It remains to be seen if he will actually begin posting again on the platforms where his accounts have been reinstated. While he initially suggested he would be “staying on Truth [Social]”, his own social media platform, recent reports said he was eager to return to Facebook, formally appealing Meta to reinstate his accounts. But weeks after returning to Twitter, Trump had yet to tweet again. Some have suggested the silence has been due to an exclusivity agreement he has with Truth Social.A report from Rolling Stone said Trump planned to begin tweeting again when the agreement, which requires him to post all news to the app six hours in advance of any other platform, expires in June. Trump has a far broader reach on mainstream social platforms compared to Truth Social, where he has just 5 million followers.Many online safety advocates have warned Trump’s return would be toxic, and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill urged Meta in a December letter to uphold the ban.Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat who previously chaired the House intelligence committee, criticized the decision to reinstate him.“Trump incited an insurrection,” Schiff wrote on Twitter. “Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous.”Trump’s account has remained online even after his ban, but he had been unable to publish new posts. Civil rights groups say that regardless of the former president’s future actions the Meta decision marks a dangerous precedent. “Whether he uses the platforms or not, a reinstatement by Meta sends a message that there are no real consequences even for inciting insurrection and a coup on their channels,” said a group of scholars, advocates and activists calling itself the Real Facebook Oversight Board in a statement. “Someone who has violated their terms of service repeatedly, spread disinformation on their platforms and fomented violence would be welcomed back.”Reuters contributed reportingTopicsDonald TrumpMetaFacebookInstagramUS politicsSocial networkingUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Justice department alleges Google tried to ‘eliminate’ ad market rivals in lawsuit

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      Justice department alleges Google tried to ‘eliminate’ ad market rivals in lawsuitThe DoJ and eight states have filed a complaint against the tech company for violating antitrust laws The US justice department and eight states filed a lawsuit against Alphabet’s Google on Tuesday over allegations that the company abused its dominance of the digital advertising business, according to a court document.Google parent firm Alphabet to cut 12,000 jobs worldwideRead more“Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the government said in its antitrust complaint.The government alleges that Google’s plan to assert dominance has been to “neutralize or eliminate” rivals through acquisitions and to force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors’ products.The antitrust suit was filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Attorney general Merrick Garland said in a press conference Tuesday that Google’s dominance in the ad market means fewer publishers are able to offer their products without charging subscription or other fees, because they can’t rely on competition in the advertising market to keep ad prices low.As a result of Google’s dominance, he said, “website creators earn less and advertisers pay more”.The justice department asked the court to compel Google to divest its Google Ad manager suite, including its ad exchange AdX.The department’s suit accuses Google of unlawfully monopolizing the way ads are served online by excluding competitors. This includes its 2008 acquisition of DoubleClick, a dominant ad server, and subsequent rollout of technology that locks in the split-second bidding process for ads that get served on Web pages.Google’s ad manager lets large publishers who have significant direct sales manage their advertisements. The ad exchange, meanwhile, is a real-time marketplace to buy and sell online display ads.The lawsuit demands that Google break off three different businesses from its core business of search, YouTube and other products such as Gmail: the buying and selling of ads and ownership of the exchange where that business is transacted.Garland said that “for 15 years, Google has pursued a course of anti-competitive conduct” that has halted the rise of rival technologies and manipulated the mechanics of online ad auctions to force advertisers and publishers to use its tools.In so doing, he added, “Google has engaged in exclusionary conduct” that has “severely weakened”, if not destroyed competition in the ad tech industry.Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, said in a statement that the suit “doubles down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow”.The lawsuit is the second federal antitrust complaint filed against Google, alleging violations of antitrust law in how the company acquires or maintains its dominance. The justice department lawsuit filed against Google in 2020 focuses on its monopoly in search and is scheduled to go to trial in September.Eight states joined the department in the lawsuit filed on Tuesday, including Google’s home state of California. The states taking part in the suit include California, Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee.Dina Srinivasan, a Yale University fellow and adtech expert, said the lawsuit is “huge” because it aligns the entire nation – state and federal governments – in a bipartisan legal offensive against Google.Google shares were down 1.3% on the news.While Google remains the market leader by a long shot, its share of the US digital ad revenue has been eroding, falling to 28.8% last year from 36.7% in 2016, according to Insider Intelligence. Google’s advertising business is responsible for about 80% of its revenue.TopicsGoogleAlphabetUS politicsAdvertisingnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump pleads with Meta to restore Facebook account

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      Trump pleads with Meta to restore Facebook accountFormer president’s lawyers petition company to allow access following ban from platform in wake of 2021 Capitol attack Donald Trump has petitioned Meta to restore his access to Facebook, as he reportedly looks to shift his 2024 presidential campaign into a higher gear.The former president was banned from Facebook more than two years ago, after his followers attacked the US Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.In a letter to Meta obtained by NBC News on Wednesday, Trump advisers argued that the ban “dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse” and should be rescinded.Meta said it would “announce a decision in the coming weeks”.Free the nipple: Facebook and Instagram told to overhaul ban on bare breastsRead moreFacebook and Twitter banned Trump a day after the January 6 attack, which has been linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement.Trump used his Twitter account to encourage supporters to gather near the Capitol. In a speech before the attack, he urged supporters to “fight like hell”. He then used Twitter to criticize his vice-president, Mike Pence, for not stopping certification while the attack was in progress.A congressional committee recommended that Trump be criminally charged in connection with the attack, the fate of hundreds of his supporters.Twitter lifted its ban on Trump after Elon Musk bought the platform last year. But Trump has not tweeted since, choosing to remain on his own rival social media service, Truth Social.NBC quoted an anonymous Republican who said Trump had been bragging about eventually returning to Twitter and predicted the ex-president would do so.Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Twitter have 34 million and nearly 88 million followers respectively. On Truth Social, he has fewer than 5 million followers.Trump used Twitter and Facebook extensively when he ran for the presidency in 2016 and throughout his time in office.Impeached over the Capitol attack but acquitted, Trump announced his 2024 run in mid-November. In doing so he sought to take credit for Republicans winning back the US House in the midterm elections, though their majority was much narrower than expected and many candidates Trump endorsed suffered high-profile defeats.TopicsDonald TrumpMetaFacebookUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Ex-secretary of state George Shultz was besotted by Theranos fraudster Holmes, book says

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      Ex-secretary of state George Shultz was besotted by Theranos fraudster Holmes, book saysHe was either ‘corrupt’, ‘in love’ or had ‘completely lost’ his mental edge, says grandson who blew whistle on Holmes’s scheme Former US secretary of state George Shultz’s support for Elizabeth Holmes and her fraudulent blood testing company, Theranos, which devastated his family and caused a bitter feud with his grandson, receives fresh scrutiny in a biography published on Tuesday.Year of the tech grifter: will Silicon Valley ever learn from its mistakes? Read moreShultz was Ronald Reagan’s top diplomat at the end of the cold war. Before that, he was secretary of the treasury and secretary of labor under Richard Nixon. He is now the subject of In the Nation’s Service, written by Philip Taubman, a former New York Times reporter.Shultz joined the Theranos board of directors in 2011.Taubman recounts how Shultz – then in his 90s and with no biomedical expertise – was impressed by Holmes’s startup and its promise to revolutionise blood testing. He helped the young entrepreneur form a board of directors and raise money from heavyweight investors including Rupert Murdoch.“Shultz repeatedly told friends that Holmes was brilliant,” Taubman writes. “Over time, his associates grew alarmed, fearing that his enthusiasm was colored by personal affection for Holmes. He talked by phone with her almost every day and invited her to join Shultz family Christmas dinners. She encouraged his attention by leaning in close to him when they were seated together on sofas.”Dismissing scepticism regarding Holmes’s claim to have come up with a quick and easy blood test that would dramatically simplify healthcare, Shultz encouraged his grandson, Tyler Shultz, to work a summer internship at Theranos and become a full-time employee.But Tyler Shultz came to suspect that Holmes was overselling her technology and took his concerns to the Wall Street Journal. Suspecting the younger Shultz was the whistleblower, Holmes set her lawyers on him and put him under surveillance. Alarmed, Tyler Shultz went to his grandfather for help.Taubman writes: “Instead of hugging his grandson and disowning Holmes, Shultz equivocated. He tried unsuccessfully to mediate between Tyler and Holmes.”When that effort failed, Shultz refused to cut ties with the businesswoman. He told Tyler: “I’m over 90 years old. I’ve seen a lot in my time, I’ve been right almost every time and I know I’m right about this.”Tyler felt betrayed. In a 2020 podcast, Thicker Than Water, he imagined three reasons why his grandfather sided with Holmes.“One is that you were corrupt and have invested so much money in Theranos that you were willing to make ethical compromises in order to see return on your investment. The second is that you are in love with Elizabeth.“So no matter how many times she lies to you, no matter how many patients she injures and no matter how badly she harms your family, you will put her above everything else. The last possibility is that you have completely lost your mental edge and despite an abundance of data showing that she was a criminal, you somehow are incapable of connecting these very, very big dots.”Taubman also suggests motives: financial gain, as Shultz’s holdings in Theranos stock soared before Holmes fell to disgrace, peaking at $50m; or personal loyalty to Holmes, just as Shultz showed to Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis and Reagan during the Iran-contra affair.The author writes: “Shultz’s performance left his family broken. Saddened friends and associates attributed the conduct to his advanced age.”In 2018, Holmes was indicted on charges involving defrauding investors and deceiving patients and doctors. Last year, she was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, made a symbol of Silicon Valley ambition that veered into deceit.Shultz sought to heal the rift with his grandson, stating that he had “made me proud” and shown “great moral character”. Tyler Shultz said his grandfather never apologised but their relationship “started to heal”. Taubman notes that the Holmes issue “remained unfinished business” when Shultz died in 2021, at the age of 100.The biography was written over 10 years and draws on exclusive access to Shultz’s papers. It explores his involvement in the summits between Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that ended the cold war, the Iran-contra affair and Internal Revenue Service investigations into Nixon’s “enemies”.TopicsBooksTheranosUS politicsRepublicansUS crimenewsReuse this content More

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      Why did the US just ban TikTok from government-issued cellphones?

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      ExplainerWhy did the US just ban TikTok from government-issued cellphones?Trump tried to impose a total ban on the China-based app and some states have already prohibited its use on official devices The US government has approved an unprecedented ban on the use of TikTok on federal government devices. The restrictions – tucked into a spending bill just days before it was passed by Congress, and signed by Joe Biden on Thursday – add to growing uncertainty about the app’s future in the US amid a crackdown from state and federal lawmakers.Officials say the ban is necessary due to national security concerns about the China-based owner of the app, ByteDance. But it also leaves many questions unanswered. Here’s what you need to know.TikTok admits using its app to spy on reporters in effort to track leaksRead moreWhy did the ban happen?The US government has banned TikTok on federal government-issued devices due to national security concerns over its China-based parent company, ByteDance. The US fears that the Chinese government may leverage TikTok to access those devices and US user data. TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said the company was “disappointed” that Congress moved forward with the proposal and that it was “a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests”.The ban means that, in about two months, federal government employees will be required to remove TikTok from their government-issued devices unless they are using the app for national security or law enforcement activities.The director of the US Office of Management and Budget and other offices have 60 days to come up with standards and processes for all government employees to remove the app from their phones. Several federal agencies such as the White House and the defense, homeland security and state departments have already banned TikTok, so it won’t change anything for those employees. And earlier this week, Catherine Szpindor, the chief administrator of the House of Representatives, also instructed all staff and lawmakers to delete the app from their devices.How did we get here?US security concerns about TikTok have existed for years. Donald Trump first attempted, unsuccessfully, to ban TikTok in 2020, but bipartisan efforts to regulate and rein in use of the app reached a fever pitch in 2022 after news outlets reported ByteDance employees were accessing US TikTok user information.National security concerns were reinforced by warnings from the FBI director, Christopher Wray, that the Chinese government could use the app to gain access to US users’ devices. Several, predominantly Republican-led states – including Texas, South Dakota and Virginia – have also recently banned the use of TikTok on state government-issued devices.In April, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a similar ban to the one now taking effect, calling TikTok a “Trojan horse for the Chinese Communist party”. The measure, the contours of which were largely replicated in the ban that was passed on Friday, was unanimously approved by the Senate earlier in December.Have other countries taken similar actions against TikTok?While other countries such as Indonesia have imposed temporary bans on TikTok, the biggest country that continues to prohibit the use of the app is India. India permanently banned TikTok along with more than 50 other Chinese apps after a deadly border dispute with China, citing national security concerns. National bans in other countries have not lasted more than, at most, a few months.Should we be more worried about TikTok than other apps?It depends on whom you ask. Several digital privacy and civil advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Fight for the Future say while the potential for China to exploit access to TikTok is indeed concerning, other apps and services offer government entities, including in the US, similar access to user data.“Unless we’re also [going to] ban Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Uber and Grubhub, this is pointless,” said the Fight for the Future director, Evan Greer. “Yes, it’s possibly a bit easier for the Chinese government to gain access to data through TikTok than other apps, but there’s just so many ways governments can get data from apps.”But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have introduced bills and applauded efforts to limit the use of TikTok. In addition to Hawley’s bill, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida introduced a bill to ban the company from operating in the US entirely. “This isn’t about creative videos – this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day,” Rubio said in a press release announcing the bipartisan bill.The Democratic senator Mark Warner of Virginia has also encouraged efforts to ban TikTok on government devices and called for more states to “take action to keep our government technology out of the CCP’s [Chinese Communist party’s] reach”.What are the geopolitical implications of this ban?The US has ramped up its efforts to address potential national security concerns from China over the last few years, including adding more China-based companies and entities to a commerce department blacklist limiting exports to those firms. The focus on TikTok is part of this larger campaign, but some groups warn that a ban on TikTok would lead to similar moves from China.“Blanket bans on apps based on a company’s foreign ownership will only hurt US businesses in the long run because countries could seek to block US online services over similar national security concerns,” said Gillian Diebold, a policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation.Like other privacy advocates, Diebold said that “policymakers should pursue more promising solutions that address the underlying risks.“For example, to address data concerns, lawmakers should prioritize passing federal privacy legislation to protect consumer data that would explicitly require companies to disclose who they share data with and hold them accountable for those statements,” Diebold said.Could the US ever ban TikTok outright?There have been several attempts at banning TikTok from operating in the US entirely. Rubio’s bill, for instance, would block all of the company’s commercial operations in the US.But the viability of such bans have yet to be proved. Trump’s previous attempt to ban new users from downloading TikTok was blocked in court in part due to free speech concerns. The EFF general counsel, Kurt Opsahl, said a total ban is a violation of free speech and while Rubio’s bill and similar proposed laws to ban TikTok purportedly “protect America from China’s authoritarian government”, they actually adopt “one of the hallmarks of the Chinese internet strategy”.“A government is within its rights to set rules and restrictions on use of official devices it owns, but trying to ban TikTok from public use is something else entirely,” Opsahl said.“TikTok’s security, privacy and its relationship with the Chinese government is indeed concerning, but a total ban is not the answer,” he continued. “A total ban is not narrowly tailored to the least restrictive means to address the security and privacy concerns, and instead lays a censorial blow against the speech of millions of ordinary Americans.”TopicsTikTokUS CongressChinaInternetAppsAsia PacificUS politicsexplainersReuse this content More

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      US bans China-based TikTok app on all federal government devices

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      US bans China-based TikTok app on all federal government devicesMove follows House of Representatives ban, which TikTok called a ‘political measure that will do nothing’ for national security TikTok has been banned on all federal government devices in the US, with limited exceptions, after Joe Biden signed a $1.7tn (£1.4tn) spending bill on Thursday containing a provision that outlaws the China-based app over growing security concerns.The ban – which was approved by Congress in a vote last week – is a major step targeting the fastest-growing social media platform in the world as opponents express worry user data stored in China could be accessed by the government.Various government agencies will develop rules for implementing the ban over the next two months. It will mean that federal government employees are required to remove TikTok from their government-issued devices unless they are using the app for national security or law enforcement activities.TikTok banned on devices issued by US House of RepresentativesRead moreIt follows a flurry of legislative action against the platform in the US, after more than a dozen governors have issued similar orders prohibiting state employees from using TikTok on state-owned devices. Earlier this week, Congress passed legislation to ban TikTok on devices issued to members of the House of Representatives.TikTok did not immediately respond to request for comment. In a statement released after the initial House ban, TikTok said the move was a “political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests”.Meanwhile, there has been a push to ban TikTok outright in the US, with legislation introduced by Senator Marco Rubio earlier this month to “ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good”. That bill echoes moves from the previous administration, after Donald Trump issued an executive order in August 2020 prohibiting US companies from doing business with TikTok’s parent company ByteDance.The order was later revoked by Biden in June 2021 under the condition that the US committee on foreign investment conducted a security review of the platform and suggested a path forward. That investigation has been ongoing for several years.Although ByteDance is based in China, the company has long claimed all US user data is stored in data centers in Virginia and backed up in Singapore.But political pressure began to build anew after BuzzFeed reported in June that China-based ByteDance employees had accessed US TikTok user data multiple times between September 2021 and January 2022.Legislators have expressed concern that the Chinese Communist party could manipulate young users with pro-China content on its algorithmic home page and access sensitive user data.“TikTok, their parent company ByteDance, and other China-based tech companies are required by Chinese law to share their information with the Communist party,” Senator Mark Warner said in July when calling for further investigation of the platform.“Allowing access to American data, down to biometrics such as face prints and voice prints, poses a great risk to not only individual privacy but to national security,” he added.The legislative pressure on TikTok comes as the app has exploded in popularity in recent years, amassing a user base of more than 1 billion after reporting a 45% increase in monthly active users between July 2020 and July 2022. In 2022 it became the most downloaded app in the world, quietly surpassing longstanding forebears Instagram and Twitter.With the meteoric rise has come broad concerns about the app’s impact on its relatively young users. Nearly half of people between 18 and 30 in the US use the platform, a recent Pew Research Center report showed – and 67% of users between the ages of 13 and 18 use the app daily.TopicsTikTokChinaUS politicsBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      TikTok banned on devices issued by US House of Representatives

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      TikTok banned on devices issued by US House of RepresentativesPoliticians ordered to delete Chinese-owned social video app that House has said represents ‘high risk to users’ TikTok has been banned from any devices issued by the US House of Representatives, as political pressure continues to build on the Chinese-owned social video app.The order to delete the app was issued by Catherine Szpindor, the chief administrative officer (CAO) of the House, whose office had warned in August that the app represented a “high risk to users”.According to a memo obtained by NBC News, all lawmakers and staffers with House-issued mobile phones have been ordered to remove TikTok by Szpindor.“House staff are NOT allowed to download the TikTok app on any House mobile devices,” NBC quoted the memo as saying. “If you have the TikTok app on your House mobile device, you will be contacted to remove it.” The move was also reported by Reuters.In a statement the US house of representatives confirmed the ban, saying “we can confirm that the Committee on House Administration has authorized the CAO Office of Cybersecurity to initiate the removal of TikTok Social Media Service from all House-managed devices.”In August the CAO issued a “cyber advisory” labelling TikTok a high-risk app due to its “lack of transparency in how it protects customer data”. It said TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, “actively harvests content for identifiable data” and stores some user data in China. TikTok says its data is not held in China, but in the US and Singapore.The U.S. House of Representatives’ Chief Administrative Officer has issued a cyber advisory on TikTok, labeling it “high-risk” with personal info accessed from inside China:“we do not recommend the download or use of this application due to these security and privacy concerns.” pic.twitter.com/F87qwFiHhR— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) August 17, 2022
      The CAO move comes amid multiple attempts to restrict the use of TikTok by government and state employees.Last week Congress passed a $1.7tn spending bill, which includes a provision banning TikTok from government devices. The ban will take effect once President Joe Biden signs the legislation into law. According to Reuters, at least 19 US states have partially blocked the app from state-managed devices over security concerns. In a statement released after the Congress ban, TikTok said the move was a “political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests”.TikTok admits using its app to spy on reporters in effort to track leaksRead moreThis month the US senator Marco Rubio, a former Republican presidential contender, unveiled a legislative proposal to ban TikTok from the US entirely. Rubio said it was time to “ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good”.Biden has revoked presidential orders targeting TikTok issued by his predecessor, Donald Trump, which included requiring TikTok to sell its US business. However, the US Committee on Foreign Investment, which scrutinises business deals with non-US companies, is also conducting a security review of TikTok.According to a recent Reuters report, TikTok is offering to operate more of its US business at arm’s length and subject it to outside scrutiny.The office of the House’s chief administrative officer and TikTok have been approached for comment.TopicsTikTokUS CongressUS politicsChinanewsReuse this content More

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      Trump, Bankman-Fried and Musk are the monsters of American capitalism | Robert Reich

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      Trump, Bankman-Fried and Musk are the monsters of American capitalismRobert ReichFor them, and for everyone who still regards them as heroes, there is no morality in business or economics. The winnings go to the most ruthless If this past week presents any single lesson, it’s the social costs of greed. Capitalism is premised on greed but also on guardrails – laws and norms – that prevent greed from becoming so excessive that it threatens the system as a whole.Yet the guardrails can’t hold when avarice becomes the defining trait of an era, as it is now. Laws and norms are no match for the possibility of raking in billions if you’re sufficiently ruthless and unprincipled.Donald Trump’s tax returns, just made public, reveal that he took bogus deductions to reduce his tax liability all the way to zero in 2020. All told, he reported $60m in losses during his presidency while continuing to pull in big money.Every other president since Nixon has released his tax returns. Trump told America he couldn’t because he was in the middle of an IRS audit. But we now learn that the IRS never got around to auditing Trump during his first two years in office, despite being required to do so by a law dating back to Watergate, stating that “individual tax returns for the president and the vice-president are subject to mandatory review”.Of course, Trump is already synonymous with greed and the aggressive violation of laws and norms in pursuit of money and power. Worse yet, when a president of the United States exemplifies – even celebrates – these traits, they leach out into society like underground poison.Meanwhile, this past week the SEC accused Sam Bankman-Fried of illicitly using customer money from FTX from the beginning to fund his crypto empire.“From the start, contrary to what FTX investors and trading customers were told, Bankman-Fried, actively supported by Defendants, continually diverted FTX customer funds … and then used those funds to continue to grow his empire, using billions of dollars to make undisclosed private venture investments, political contributions, and real estate purchases.”If the charge sticks, it represents one of the largest frauds in American history. Until recently, Bankman-Fried was considered a capitalist hero whose philanthropy was a model for aspiring billionaires (he and his business partner also donated generously to politicians).But like the IRS and Trump, the SEC can’t possibly remedy the social costs that Bankman-Fried has unleashed – not just losses to customers and investors but a deepening distrust and cynicism about the system as a whole, the implicit assumption that this is just what billionaires do, that the way to make a fortune is to blatantly disregard norms and laws, and that only chumps are mindful of the common good.Which brings us to Elon Musk, whose slash-and-burn maneuvers at Twitter might cause even the most rabid capitalist to wince. They also raise questions about Musk’s other endeavor, Tesla. Shares in the electric vehicle maker dropped by almost 9% on Thursday as analysts grew increasingly concerned about its fate. Not only is Musk neglecting the carmaker but he’s appropriating executive talent from Tesla to help him at Twitter. (Tesla stock is down over 64% year-to-date.)Musk has never been overly concerned about laws and norms (you’ll recall that he kept Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, going during the pandemic even when public health authorities refused him permission to do so, resulting in a surge of Covid infections among workers). For him, it’s all about imposing his gargantuan will on others.Trump, Bankman-Fried and Musk are the monsters of American capitalism – as much products of this public-be-damned era as they are contributors to it. For them, and for everyone who still regards them as heroes, there is no morality in business or economics. The winnings go to the most ruthless. Principles are for sissies.But absent any moral code, greed is a public danger. Its poison cannot be contained by laws or accepted norms. Everyone is forced to guard against the next con (or else pull an even bigger con). Laws are broken whenever the gains from breaking them exceed the penalties (multiplied by the odds of getting caught). Social trust erodes.Adam Smith, the so-called father of modern capitalism, never called himself an economist. He called himself a “moral philosopher,” engaged in discovering the characteristics of a good society. He thought his best book was not The Wealth of Nations, the bible of modern capitalist apologists, but the Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he argued that the ethical basis of society lies in compassion for other human beings.Presumably Adam Smith would have bemoaned the growing inequalities, corruption, and cynicism spawned by modern capitalism and three of its prime exemplars – Trump, Bankman-Fried, and Musk.TopicsUS newsOpinionUS politicsUS taxationDonald TrumpSam Bankman-FriedFTXUS economycommentReuse this content More