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News on Regulation and Policy
On Friday morning, Jeff Sites, a challenger to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, didn’t have a blue verification badge on his official Twitter page. Sites had announced his campaign months earlier, so he should have been verified months ago. It caught the eye of one volunteer named Nancy Levine, who has been monitoring Twitter’s plan to […]
By Kim LyonsMichael R. Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has been experimenting with novel tactics to cultivate an online following, or at least the appearance of one. But one of the strategies — deploying a large number of Twitter accounts to push out identical messages — has backfired. On Friday, Twitter began suspending 70 accounts posting pro-Bloomberg content in […]
By Suhauna Hussain and Jeff BercoviciWASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration said on Tuesday said it will begin treating five major Chinese state-run media entities with U.S. operations the same as foreign embassies, requiring them to register their employees and U.S. properties with the State Department. Two senior state department officials said the decision was made because China has been […]
By Jonathan LandayAs we gear up for the 2020 elections, voters in both the Volunteer State and the Show-Me State will be flooded with election-related information. This includes anything related to voter registration, polling locations and times, absentee ballots and other election questions. That’s why Secretary Ashcroft, and I are joining forces along with Secretaries of State […]
By Tre Hargett and Jay AshcroftSome of the biggest corporations in the United States are brawling over the future of the law that allows free speech and innovation to thrive online. Under the guise of getting rid of lies and protecting children, they’re working with the Trump administration and top Republicans to undermine Americans’ rights and give the government unprecedented control […]
By Ron WydenEvery day, platforms like Facebook have to make trade-offs on important social values — between free expression and safety, privacy and law enforcement, and between creating open systems and locking down data. There is rarely a clear “right” answer. Often it is as important that decisions are made in a way that people feel is […]
By Mark ZuckerbergThe question of how Facebook and Google make and justify decisions regarding permissible political advertising on their platforms is increasingly important. In this paper, we focus on the U.S. case and present findings from interviews with 17 former social media firm employees (n = 7) and political practitioners (n = 11). We also analyze emails […]
LONDON — Britain on Wednesday introduced a plan that would give the government more latitude to regulate internet content, as part of an effort to force Facebook, YouTube and other internet giants to do more to police their platforms.The government said the country’s media regulator, known as Ofcom, would take on new responsibilities monitoring internet […]
By Adam SatarianoSingapore’s newly passed misinformation law has been grabbing headlines because it empowers government officials to order corrections to be placed next to social media and online posts they deem false. The law came into effect in October 2019, resulting in outrage from human rights groups and tech giants such as Facebook and Google, which claim that […]
By Jillian LouisTwitter will ban faked pictures, video, and other media that are “deceptively shared” and pose a serious safety risk. The company just announced a new policy on synthetic and manipulated media — a category that encompasses sophisticated deepfake videos, but also low-tech deceptively edited content. In addition to banning egregious offenders, Twitter will label some […]
By Adi RobertsonFacebook has agreed to pay a $550 million settlement over its use of facial recognition technology nearly a decade ago. This comes just days after a relatively unknown startup selling facial recognition systems to police departments caught the attention of Congress. It seems, after years of civil liberties advocates worrying, facial recognition technology is more […]
By Sara Morrison