Wednesday, May 27, 2020
US State Takes Google to Court Over Location Tracking
Bill Gates Conspiracy Theories Echo Through Africa
Google Sees Resurgence in State-Backed Hacking Related to COVID-19
Jack Dorsey explains why Twitter fact-checked Trump’s false voting claims
After Twitter flagged a pair of President Trump’s tweets with a fact-checking label on Tuesday, tensions between the president and his favored social media platform are running high.
On Wednesday night, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey—rarely one to pick a political fight—took to his own platform to clarify the company’s decision.
In the statement, Dorsey referenced comments Mark Zuckerberg made to Fox News contrasting Facebook’s obsessively neutral approach to policing its platform with Twitter’s present situation. “I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” Zuckerberg said. “Private companies… especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”
Dorsey also denounced Trump’s online supporters and surrogates for going after the company’s executives, asking the Twitter’s newly energized critics, inspired by Trump’s own ire toward the company, to “please leave our employees out of this.”
On Dorsey’s own account and the official Twitter Safety account, the company clarified that its decision to add a fact-checking link to two of Trump’s tweets stemmed specifically from the possibility that they might “confuse voters about what they need to do to receive a ballot and participate in the election process.”
In the tweets the company added a label to—but did not hide or remove—the president states falsely that California’s governor is “sending ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state no matter who they are or how they got there.” In reality, the state is only sending the ballots to registered voters. Trump also made fear-mongering false claims about the integrity of mail-in voting, a system already widely used around the country in the form of absentee ballots.
With his clarification, Dorsey linked to what Twitter calls its “civic integrity policy,” a set of rules prohibiting certain kinds of “manipulative behavior” on the platform. Per those rules, misleading information about how to vote, the documents required to vote or the date and time of an election of other civic process are prohibited. Under the policy, broader claims about elections “such as unsubstantiated claims that an election is ‘rigged'” are not prohibited.
Twitter’s list of possible enforcement actions includes forcing users to delete the tweets, locking their account if the misinformation is present in a bio or permanent suspension “for severe or repeated violations of this policy.”
Though the timing might be coincidental, Tuesday’s move by Twitter came on the heels of a series of tweets from Trump promoting a baseless conspiracy theory that MSNBC host and political rival Joe Scarborough was responsible for the death of a Congressional intern almost two decades prior.
On Wednesday evening, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters the president would soon sign an executive order “pertaining to social media,” widely expected to be a shocking though likely unsubstantial strike back at Twitter’s policy enforcement choices this week. The order may rehash the White House’s previous stalled efforts to threaten Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—a vital legal provision underpinning the modern internet—and wield power against social media companies through the FTC and FCC.
Alluding to the expected retaliation, Trump tweeted “Stay Tuned!!!” to his more than 80 million followers.
Zuckerberg on Twitter fact-checking Trump: private companies, especially platform companies, shouldn't be the arbiter of truth (Yael Halon/Fox News)
Zuckerberg on Twitter fact-checking Trump: private companies, especially platform companies, shouldn't be the arbiter of truth — Mark Zuckerberg on Twitter fact-checking Trump: Private companies shouldn't be the arbiter of truth — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called out Twitter …
Sources: Trump is planning to sign an executive order Thursday that could threaten punishment for Facebook, Google, and Twitter over content moderation (Washington Post)
Sources: Trump is planning to sign an executive order Thursday that could threaten punishment for Facebook, Google, and Twitter over content moderation — The president is expected to sign the order on Thursday. — President Trump is preparing to sign an executive order Thursday …
Tencent raises $6 billion in largest Asian corporate debt deal this year
Online fraudsters find new victims in midst of lockdown
JD.com and Kuaishou, a Chinese livestreaming platform with 300M+ DAUs, announce partnership, allowing users to directly purchase JD products within Kuaishou app (Rita Liao/TechCrunch)
JD.com and Kuaishou, a Chinese livestreaming platform with 300M+ DAUs, announce partnership, allowing users to directly purchase JD products within Kuaishou app — JD.com, the online retailer that is Alibaba's long-time nemesis, announced Wednesday a strategic partnership with Kuaishou …
Refurbished, pre-owned smartphones rack up numbers as incomes shrink
Donald Trump threatens to shut social media companies after Twitter fact check
Visa, Mastercard urge RBI to relax limits on 'tap and go' payments
HBO Max is live: $15/mo for a massive library, significant headaches
Enlarge (credit: WarnerMedia)
Like it or not, another subscription streaming service has entered the chat.
This one—HBO Max—debuts across the United States on Wednesday, and it comes from the combined AT&T-Time Warner media empire. After taking shape in 2018, the new "WarnerMedia" cluster of film and TV content has since put together a streaming library of exclusive content—particularly by yoinking content away from Netflix and other partners, in apparent defiance of AT&T's antitrust pledge to US Congress.
WarnerMedia didn't make the service available to Ars Technica ahead of the launch, so I jumped into the fray by claiming a free seven-day trial on launch day and picked through its first day's content and interface. I did so to answer the following question: has WarnerMedia pulled off a service worthy of a $15/month fee?
Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Investors say emerging multiverses are the future of entertainment
The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the adoption of new technologies and cultural shifts that were already well underway. According to a clutch of heavy-hitting investors, this dynamic is particularly strong in gaming and extended reality.
Unlike other segments of the startup and tech world, where valuations have been slashed, early-stage companies focused on building new games, gaming infrastructure and virtual or extended reality entertainment are having no trouble raising money. They’ve even seen valuations rise, investors said.
“Valuations have increased pretty significantly in the gaming sector. Valuations have gone up 20 to 25% higher than I would have seen prior to this pandemic,” Phil Sanderson, a co-founder and managing director at Griffin Gaming Partners, told fellow participants on a virtual panel during the Los Angeles Games Conference earlier this month.
Driving the appetite for new investments is the entertainment industry’s bearhug of virtual events, animated features, games and social media platforms after widespread shelter-in-place orders made physical events an impossibility.
Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid western sanctions after its Ukraine invasion (Financial Times)
Financial Times : Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid weste...
-
The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
-
Sohee Kim / Bloomberg : South Korean authorities are investigating a data leak at e-commerce giant Coupang that exposed ~33.7M accounts; ...
