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A US antitrust suit might break up Google. Good – it’s the Standard Oil of our day
Sarah Miller
Republicans and Democrats agree on something: big tech’s power threatens our economies and our flow of information More
A total of 2.2m ads on Facebook and Instagram have been rejected and 120,000 posts withdrawn for attempting to “obstruct voting” in the upcoming US presidential election, Facebook’s vice president Nick Clegg has said.In addition, warnings were posted on 150m examples of false information posted online, the former British deputy prime minister told French weekly Journal du Dimanche on Sunday.Facebook has been increasing its efforts to avoid a repeat of events leading up to the 2016 US presidential election, won by Donald Trump, when its network was used for attempts at voter manipulation, carried out from Russia.There were similar problems ahead of Britain’s 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union.“Thirty-five thousand employees take care of the security of our platforms and contribute for elections,” said Clegg, who is vice president of global affairs and communications at Facebook.“We have established partnerships with 70 specialised media, including five in France, on the verification of information”, he added. AFP is one of those partners.Clegg added that the company also uses artificial intelligence that has “made it possible to delete billions of posts and fake accounts, even before they are reported by users”.Facebook also stores all advertisements and information on their funding and provenance for seven years “to ensure transparency,” he said.In 2016, while he was still deputy prime minister, Clegg complained to the Journal du Dimanche that Facebook had not identified or suppressed a single foreign network interfering in the US election.On Wednesday, Trump rebuked Facebook and Twitter for blocking links to a New York Post article purporting to expose corrupt dealings by election rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine.A day earlier Facebook announced a ban on ads that discourage people from getting vaccinated, in light of the coronavirus pandemic which the social media giant said has “highlighted the importance of preventive health behaviours”. More
Facebook and Twitter took steps on Wednesday to limit the spread of a controversial New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, sparking outrage among conservatives and stoking debate over how social media platforms should tackle misinformation ahead of the US election.In an unprecedented step against a major news publication, Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report. Users attempting to share the story were shown a notice saying: “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Users clicking or retweeting a link already posted to Twitter are shown a warning the “link may be unsafe”.Twitter said it was limiting the article’s spread due to questions about “the origins of the materials” included in the article, which contained material supposedly 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 further explained the decision in a series of tweets on Wednesday, saying some of the images in the article contained personal and private information. Twitter’s policy against posting hacked material was established in 2018. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, said the company’s communication about the decision to limit the article’s spread was “not great”, saying the team should have shared more context publicly.Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable. https://t.co/v55vDVVlgt— jack (@jack) October 14, 2020
Facebook, meanwhile, placed restrictions on linking to the article, saying there were questions about its validity. “This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation,” said a Facebook spokesperson, Andy Stone.The move marks the first time Twitter has directly limited the spread of information from a news website, as it continues to implement stricter rules around misinformation ahead of the 2020 elections. On Wednesday evening Twitter also reportedly locked the personal account of the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing the article.In recent weeks Twitter announced it would warn users who attempt to retweet a link without first clicking on it for more context. It has also started to take action against misinformation and calls to violence posted by Donald Trump and other public figures.Wednesday’s actions around the New York Post article drew swift backlash from figures on the political right, who accused Facebook and Twitter of protecting Biden, who is leading Trump in national polls. The New York Post blasted the companies, saying they were trying to help Biden’s election campaign and falsely claiming no one had disputed the story’s veracity. “Facebook and Twitter are not media platforms. They’re propaganda machines,” it wrote in an editorial.Meanwhile, the Republican senator Ted Cruz wrote a letter to Dorsey, saying: “Twitter’s censorship of this story is quite hypocritical, given its willingness to allow users to share less-well-sourced reporting critical of other candidates.”Trump’s campaign director, Jake Schneider, called the blocking of McEnany “absolutely unacceptable” and McEnany herself tweeted: “Censorship should be condemned.”Trump tweeted that it was “terrible” that the social media companies “took down” the article – in fact, it was restricted, not removed – and renewed his calls to “repeal section 230”, a measure that keeps website hosts from being held responsible for content posted. Ironically, repealing section 230 would require Twitter to take down more content, including many of Trump’s tweets.Even non-conservatives criticized the choice to limit the spread of the article as one that will play into the rightwing narrative that big tech firms censor conservative views. The decision was indeed quickly politicized – with House Republicans publishing the text of the story on their website in order to share the link without censorship.The article implicates the former vice-president in connection with his son Hunter’s Ukraine business and was headlined: “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.”The unnamed owner of the computer repair shop told the newspaper he passed a copy of the hard drive on the seemingly abandoned computer to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.The story focused on one email from April 2015, in which a Burisma board adviser thanked Hunter for inviting him to a Washington meeting with his father. But there was no indication of when the meeting was scheduled or whether it ever happened.“Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague, have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official US policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign. “Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”The campaign said it was not told by Facebook or Twitter that any action would be taken regarding the article.“We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” the Biden campaign added.Others cast also doubt on the report, citing Giuliani’s record of producing disinformation and making bogus claims about both Bidens and Ukraine.AFP contributed reporting More
Twitter has suspended a network of accounts claiming to be owned by Black supporters of Donald Trump and his re-election campaign due to spam and platform manipulation, it said Tuesday.The company is investigating the activity and may suspend additional similar accounts if they are found to be violating its policies, a spokesperson said.The Washington Post first reported on the investigation, citing more than a dozen accounts using identical, inauthentic language including the phrase: “YES IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!”A review of some of the suspended accounts shows they often used stolen images to appear real. The accounts sometimes claimed to be owned by military veterans or members of law enforcement.This is not the first time Twitter has had to address a spam operation claiming to be led by Black voters. NBC News also reported spam operations from fake accounts posing as Black Trump supporters in August.Some accounts were able to attract thousands of followers before they were suspended. One tweet, for example, amassed more than 10,000 retweets before it was removed, NBC News found. Another account allegedly used a photo of a veteran who died last month to pose as a Trump supporter.Polls show about 10% of Black voters in the US support Trump. These accounts raised suspicion for their identical language and stock image avatars.Meanwhile, research shows Black Americans have been negatively impacted by misinformation campaigns online in recent months, particularly those focused on spreading misinformation about Covid-19.“Black lives are consistently put in danger, and it is incumbent upon community actors, media, government, and tech companies alike to do their part to ensure that timely, local, relevant and redundant public health messages are served to all communities,” a study from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center found.Twitter rules prohibit using the platform “in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter”, a Twitter spokesman told the Guardian.The company reports campaigns discovered to be state-backed in its public archive. This month it revealed it had suspended more than 1,500 accounts affiliated with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Thailand and Russia that had sought to spread misinformation. It did not say where it believed the network of people posing as Black Trump supporters originated or whether it was state-backed.Reuters contributed reporting More
Michigan terror plot: why rightwing extremists are thriving on Facebook
The platform provides tools for radicalization and coordinated violence, and critics say it’s been slow to ban dangerous groups More
Social network says accounts tied to Turning Point USA sought to influence conversations by flooding news articles with comments More
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
China is well on its way to becoming a cashless society. More than 600 million Chinese already use Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay to pay for much of what they purchase. Between them, the two companies control approximately 90% of China’s mobile payments market, which totaled some $17 trillion in 2019. A wide variety of sectors throughout China have since adopted Blockchain to pay bills, settle disputes in court and track shipments. The Chinese government understands that, via Blockchain, the issuance of its own cryptocurrency is an excellent way to track and record the movement of payments, goods and people.
Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Global Rulebook
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The unsexily named Digital Currency/Electronic Payments (DCEP) is intended to be used by anyone around the world to purchase anything. It has the potential to revolutionize the global payments system. Assuming it succeeds, many other countries will want to emulate it. Some other governments have already launched similar initiatives, but not on the scope or scale of the DCEP, which promises to be the first global digital currency.
Digital Wallets
What appears to have spurred the Chinese government to actively pursue the DCEP in 2019 was the birth of an organization that also has the potential to revolutionize the global payments system, the Libra Association. Libra is a grouping of more than two dozen organizations creating the world’s first Blockchain-derived global payment system, specifically founded on best practices in regulation and governance. Its stated objective is to transparently bring access to financial services to billions of people who either have limited or no access to the existing global banking system.
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Given that it is an American-led initiative that will use the US dollar to determine its benchmark value, Beijing viewed Libra as an attempt to establish US dominance over the global cryptocurrency marketplace. It previously viewed other cryptocurrencies as a threat to its own hegemony over capital controls in China.
Although its motivations to counter the US are clear enough, much remains unknown about the DCEP. One has to wonder just how much focus it will have on transparency, governance or best practices. It will not be available on cryptocurrency exchanges, nor will it be available for speculative purposes. Embracing Blockchain and creating a DCEP ecosystem will give the Chinese Central Bank unprecedented power over capital movements — certainly in China, but also around the world.
Like Alipay and WeChat, the DCEP will require a digital wallet, but it will not require a bank account. Commercial banks will issue the digital wallets, but no internet connection will be required to conduct transactions via the DCEP. All that will be required is that a phone has battery power. While a certain degree of anonymity will be present with the DCEP, the Chinese Central Bank will still be able to track who spent or received funds, when, where and from whom. The Chinese government calls the concept “controllable anonymity” and will rely on Big Data to identify behavioral characteristics of the individuals and businesses using DCEP. Doing so will help the government identify money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist financing. It will, of course, also permit a higher degree and quality of state surveillance of Chinese citizens and citizens of any other country that may use it.
Since the Chinese government will be the first to launch a global digital currency, it will gain a considerable lead over the world’s nations and provide it with the ability to perfect its surveillance capabilities in China and around the world for any country that chooses to adopt the DCEP. It will also help to internationalize the yuan and simultaneously create less dependence on the US dollar. So, the Chinese government intends to stay a step ahead of the competition, enhance its ability to monitor its citizens, broaden its soft power and increase China’s appeal to other countries while countering the supremacy of the US dollar in the process.
Alternative System
By issuing the DCEP, the Chinese government hopes that demand for yuan reserves will follow, facilitating a digital version of the yuan as a global alternative to dollar reserves, especially in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) member nations seeking to modernize their financial sectors. It could also help internationalize China’s e-payment systems, which are not used outside of China. In the absence of an American cryptocurrency, which seems to be a long way off, doing so could in theory make the DCEP the cryptocurrency of choice among BRI (and other) countries.
Such an alternative system may be particularly appealing for countries under US sanctions, which may wish to avoid using the US dollar entirely, or for countries or businesses engaged in trading, investment or lending with Chinese companies. But the yuan remains not fully convertible, with just 1% of international payments using it. That could have a significant impact on the government’s implementation strategy. In addition, the Chinese government is attempting to centralize what is a decentralized technology by requiring that all “nodes” using the Blockchain register with the government and provide information about their users.
While the Chinese people are accustomed to having their government pry into, and try to control, their private lives, most of the world’s population wants nothing of the sort. It remains to be seen just how broadly the DCEP will be adopted, or whether it will turn out to be a net positive for the nations that choose to use it, but having the first-mover advantage will surely serve Beijing well. Despite its apparent flaws, if it also helps to bring some of the world’s poorest nations with the least access to basic and global financial services on par with the world’s developed nations in that regard, Beijing will have done much of the world’s population a great service in the process.
*[Daniel Wagner is the author of “The Chinese Vortex: The Belt and Road Initiative and its Impact on the World.”]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
