Tag: iab-internet

Jack Dorsey no longer thinks Elon Musk is the right person to run Twitter | CNN Business

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Washington
CNN
—

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey backtracked Saturday on his earlier endorsement of Elon Musk as the right choice to lead the company, speaking out against the billionaire who, for the past six months, has led Twitter through a series of largely self-inflicted crises.

Asked on Bluesky, Dorsey’s new Twitter-like social media venture, whether he believed Musk has been the best possible steward of Twitter, Dorsey said flatly: “No.”

Dorsey added that Musk “should have walked away” from acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, and faulted Twitter’s board in hindsight for trying to compel Musk to follow through with the deal despite Musk’s attempts to back out of the purchase last year.

“It all went south,” Dorsey said. “But it happened and all we can do now is build something to avoid that ever happening again.”

Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team under Musk, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under Musk, Twitter has slashed most of its staff, suffered frequent service disruptions and made a number of controversial changes to its policies and features, including a recent decision to remove blue checks from VIP users who don’t pay to be verified.

Dorsey’s reflections, outlined in Bluesky posts reviewed by CNN, highlight the Twitter founder’s growing disillusionment with Musk. They also come after numerous exchanges in recent months where Dorsey has publicly questioned some of Musk’s decision-making.

A year ago, Dorsey was quick to heap praise on Musk. When Musk’s deal to purchase Twitter was first announced, Dorsey said that so long as Twitter had to be owned by a single person or company, “Elon is the singular solution I trust.”

“I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness,” Dorsey proclaimed at the time.

Dorsey also rolled over his more than 18 million shares in Twitter (a roughly 2.4% stake) into the new Musk-owned company as an equity investor, rather than receiving a cash payout, according to a securities filing after the deal was completed.

Now, though, Dorsey appears to believe Musk was an imperfect choice. Confronted by criticism from other Bluesky users that Twitter could have gone in a different direction, Dorsey argued that there was nothing stopping someone else from outbidding Musk.

“If Elon or anyone wanted to buy the company, all they had to do was name a price that the board felt was better than what the company could do independently,” he said. “This is true for every public company.”

Asked whether he felt any responsibility for the role he played in the transaction, Dorsey, who served on Twitter’s board at the time, said he was not the only person who authorized the deal and that Twitter’s “only alternative” to Musk was an acquisition by “hedge funds and Wall Street activists.”

“The company would have never survived as a public company,” Dorsey claimed, adding: “I wish it were different,” but that some of Twitter’s revenue initiatives prior to Musk’s takeover “would not have mattered given market turn.”

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April 12, 2021
Chinese police detain man for allegedly using ChatGPT to spread rumors online | CNN Business

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Hong Kong
CNN
—

Police in China have detained a man they say used ChatGPT to create fake news and spread it online, in what state media has called the country’s first criminal case related to the AI chatbot.

According to a statement from police in the northwest province of Gansu, the suspect allegedly used ChatGPT to generate a bogus report about a train crash, which he then posted online for profit. The article received about 15,000 views, the police said in Sunday’s statement.

ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft

(MSFT)-backed OpenAI, is banned in China, though internet users can use virtual private networks (VPN) to access it.

Train crashes have been a sensitive issue in China since 2011, when authorities faced pressure to explain why state media had failed to provide timely updates on a bullet train collision in the city of Wenzhou that resulted in 40 deaths.

Gansu authorities said the suspect, surnamed Hong, was questioned in the city of Dongguan in southern Guangdong province on May 5.

“Hong used modern technology to fabricate false information, spreading it on the internet, which was widely disseminated,” the Gansu police said in the statement.

“His behavior amounted to picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” they added, explaining the offense that Hong was accused of committing.

Police said the arrest was the first in Gansu since China’s Cyberspace Administration enacted new regulations in January to rein in the use of deep fakes. State broadcaster CGTN says it was the country’s first arrest of a person accused of using ChatGPT to fabricate and spread fake news.

Formally known as deep synthesis, deep fake refers to highly realistic textual and visual content generated by artificial intelligence.

The new legislation bars users from generating deep fake content on topics already prohibited by existing laws on China’s heavily censored internet. It also outlines take down procedures for content considered false or harmful.

The arrest also came amid a 100-day campaign launched by the internet branch of the Ministry of Public Security in March to crack down on the spread of internet rumors.

Since the beginning of the year, Chinese internet giants such as Baidu

(BIDU) and Alibaba

(BABA)have sought to catch up with OpenAI, launching their own versions of the ChatGPT service.

Baidu unveiled “Wenxin Yiyan” or “ERNIE Bot” in March. Two months later, Alibaba launched “Tongyi Qianwen,” which roughly translates as seeking truth by asking a thousand questions.

In draft guidelines issued last month to solicit public feedback, China’s cyberspace regulator said generative AI services would be required to undergo security reviews before they can operate.

Service providers will also be required to verify users’ real identities, as well as providing details about the scale and type of data they use, their basic algorithms and other technical information.

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April 12, 2021
Reddit sparks outrage after a popular app developer said it wants him to pay $20 million a year for data access | CNN Business

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Washington
CNN
—

Twitter has been widely criticized for trying to charge transit agencies, third-party app developers and academics for data access to its platform, a move opponents say has forced independent apps to shut down and threatened research on misinformation and hate speech.

Now, a similar revolt against Reddit may be gaining steam after a popular app developer said Wednesday the social media company wants to charge him $20 million a year to continue offering software that lets Reddit users view and interact with the platform.

The newly unveiled pricing of Reddit’s paywall “is close to Twitter pricing” and is not “anything based in reality or remotely reasonable,” said Christian Selig, developer of the Apollo app, in a Reddit post on Wednesday. “It goes without saying that I don’t have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card.”

Selig’s post highlights a plan Reddit announced in April to enact a Twitter-like pricing structure for its application programming interface (API) — the software that allows other programs to tap into the company’s data, including posts and comments. Reddit’s API is what allows Reddit content to be displayed to the Apollo app’s 900,000 daily active users.

Reddit’s initial announcement had been light on pricing details, leaving many to speculate about the future of third-party access to Reddit. As details of its pricing plan trickled out on Wednesday, Reddit did not dispute Selig’s account of his conversations with the company, but said Reddit remains “committed to fostering a safe and responsible developer ecosystem.”

“Expansive access to data has impact and costs involved, and in terms of safety and privacy we have an obligation to our communities to be responsible stewards of data,” said Tim Rathschmidt, a company spokesperson, in an email.

Selig’s tweet on the issue has been viewed more than one million times and has led to an outpouring of criticism for Reddit. “Apollo is the only reason I use Reddit,” one fan of the app tweeted. Another said: “Reddit is going full Twitter and it’s a big mistake.” .

Selig had initially expressed cautious optimism about the company’s plan, saying on the day of the announcement that he had spoken to the company and that if the new moves were implemented reasonably, “this could be a positive change.”

But now, a month later, Selig’s optimism has deflated. According to Selig’s post Wednesday, Reddit intends to charge $12,000 for every 50 million attempts to access the company’s data.

“Apollo made 7 billion requests last month,” Selig wrote Wednesdsay, meaning his additional costs simply for running his business as usual would add up to “1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year.”

“I’d be in the red every month,” he added. Selig didn’t immediately respond to questions from CNN about whether he expects to have to shut down the app.

Selig isn’t the only app developer crying foul. Some developers have said Reddit’s API changes would also block ads in third-party apps, potentially depriving apps of ad revenue and forcing them to try to convert users to subscription business models.

Part of the motivation for Reddit’s plan involves the surging popularity of artificial intelligence.

Large language models such as ChatGPT are developed using training data, which in many cases is sourced from content found across the internet. Reddit should not be expected to provide that data to “some of the largest companies in the world for free,” CEO Steve Huffman told the New York Times in a recent interview.

Meanwhile, Reddit is also widely expected to go public, potentially as soon as this year. The stock offering could add to pressure for Reddit to show revenue growth. Its paid API could help on that front.

But that could come at the expense of independent apps and, as some pointed out, Reddit users who may experience a loss of choices in ways to access the platform. Some predicted that they might soon have to rely on Reddit’s proprietary app, which has been widely panned by users, if they wish to access the site at all.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter accused of failing to pay millions in employee bonuses after Musk takeover | CNN Business

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CNN
—

Twitter failed to pay out annual bonuses to staff after its acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk despite repeated assurances from executives in the lead-up to the deal closing that the company would do so, according to a new lawsuit filed on behalf of employees.

The lawsuit was filed in a San Francisco federal court on Tuesday by Mark Schobinger, who was a senior director of compensation at Twitter until he left the company late last month. The suit is seeking class action status for former and current Twitter employees who did not receive their 2022 bonus.

“We estimate about a couple thousand employees would have been eligible for the bonuses,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing Schobinger, said in a statement to CNN. “While I don’t have an exact number, we expect the amount owed is in the tens of millions.”

Twitter, which has cut much of is public relations team, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The complaint states that after it was announced that Musk was acquiring the social media company last April, “many employees raised concerns” over the fate of “their compensation and annual bonus” if and when the deal closed.

In the months leading up to Musk completing his acquisition of Twitter, company executives repeatedly promised employees that 2022 bonuses would be paid out at 50% of the target, according to the complaint. “The promise was repeated following Musk’s acquisition,” the complaint said.

Despite the promises, however, Twitter has yet to pay out bonuses, the lawsuit says. Schobinger left the company last month following “Twitter’s reneging on various promises it had made to employees, including its failure to pay promised bonuses,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal actions taken by former Twitter employees after Musk’s acquired the company and slashed 80% of the staff in an urgent bid to cut costs.

Liss-Riordan previously brought multiple proposed class action suits against Twitter, including on behalf of female employees and disabled employees. Another suit was filed by a group of former employees who accused Twitter of breach of contract because it allegedly failed to follow through on promises to allow remote work and provide consistent severance benefits after the acquisition.

Twitter has denied the breach of contract allegations in the lawsuit brought by former employees about remote work and severance. The proposed class action suits on behalf of female and disabled employees were dismissed by federal judges last month. The suits were later refiled.

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April 12, 2021
Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

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CNN
—

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, handing a win to GOP states in a lawsuit accusing the government of going too far in its effort to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

In a preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty, the judge ordered a slew of federal agencies and more than a dozen top officials not to communicate with social media companies about taking down “content containing protected free speech” that’s posted on the platforms.

The injunction notes that the government can still communicate with the companies as part of efforts to curb illegal activity and address national security threats.

The order applies to agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Justice Department and FBI as well as officials such as US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

The agencies and officials, Doughty said, are prohibited from “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, noted in the lawsuit that social media companies “include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok,” as well as a number of other online platforms.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

Meta declined to comment. CNN also reached out to Twitter, Google and TikTok for comment.

The lawsuit brought by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general in 2022 represents a novel way to pursue “censorship” claims accusing the Biden administration of effectively silencing conservatives by leaning on the private social media companies.

Though Doughty hasn’t yet ruled on the merits of the two states’ claims, his order Tuesday represents their most significant victory yet in the ongoing lawsuit. The judge had previously ordered the administration to produce documents identifying government officials and the nature of their communications with social media platforms.

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April 12, 2021
Laid-off Twitter Africa team ‘ghosted’ without severance pay or benefits, former employees say | CNN Business

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Nairobi, Kenya
CNN
—

Former employees of Twitter Africa who were laid off as part of a global cost-cutting measure after Elon Musk’s acquisition have not received any severance pay more than seven months since leaving the company, several sources told CNN.

In late May, the former employees, who were based in the Ghanaian capital Accra, accepted Twitter’s

(TWTR) offer to pay them three months worth of severance, the cost of repatriating foreign staff and legal expenses incurred during negotiations with the company, but they have not received the money or any further communication, the sources said.

“They literally ghosted us,” one former Twitter Africa employee told CNN.

“Although Twitter has eventually settled former staff in other locations, Africa staff have still been left in the lurch despite us eventually agreeing to specific negotiated terms.”

The former employees say they reluctantly agreed to the severance package without benefits, even though it was less than what colleagues elsewhere received.

“Twitter was non-responsive until we agreed to the three months because we were all so stressed and exhausted and tired of the uncertainty, reluctant to take on the extra burdens of a court case so we felt we had no choice but to settle,” another former employee told CNN.

The former employees spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because they said they were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements as part of their exit terms.

According to Carla Olympio, an attorney who is representing the former employees, the last communication from Twitter or its lawyers was in May, shortly after settlement was agreed.

CNN reached out to Twitter for comment on the status of the severance package for the former employees in the Ghana office but received an automated response – a poop emoji. It’s unclear whether Twitter still has a media relations department.

In March, Musk tweeted that Twitter would respond to all press inquiries with the poop emoji. He completed a deal to buy the social media platform in October.

CNN also asked Ghana’s Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations for comment. A spokesperson said they are investigating the claims.

Whether Ghanaian authorities can compel Twitter to comply with the settlement is uncertain. The former employees and their attorney say the offer was never finalized.

The dozen or so team members were laid off just four days after the social network opened a physical office in Accra last November.

Some of them said they had moved to Ghana from other African nations, and depended on their jobs at Twitter to support their legal status in the country.

“Unfortunately, it appears that after having unethically implemented their terminations in violation of their own promises and Ghana’s laws, dragging the negotiation process out for over half a year, now that we have come to the point of almost settlement, there has been complete silence from them for several weeks,” Olympio said.

Twitter and Musk face multiple lawsuits where plaintiffs are claiming the company has failed to pay former staffers what they are owed.

Last week, a former US employee filed a proposed class action lawsuit claiming the company didn’t pay the full amount of severance benefits it promised last November prior to mass layoffs.

The plaintiff said Twitter promised senior employees severance of six months of base pay plus one week for every year of service, in addition to other benefits. Instead, the plaintiff said they received a total of three months of pay, according to the lawsuit. In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, Twitter sent CNN an automated poop emoji.

In April, Musk told the BBC more than 6,000 people had been laid off since he completed his acquisition of the company in late October.

“We’re exploring our options with respect to causes of action against Twitter in various jurisdictions including Ghana,” Olympio told CNN.

Twitter did not open negotiations with the African team until after CNN reported in November that they had been offered separation terms that differed from those offered to departing staff in Europe and North America.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter’s rebrand is the next stage in Elon Musk’s vision for the company. But does anyone want it? | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
—

Elon Musk’s move over the weekend to rebrand Twitter and replace its iconic bird logo with an X is just the latest step in his effort to make over the billionaire’s longtime favorite platform in his image.

When Musk bought Twitter late last year, he laid out a vision for an “everything” app called X, where users could communicate, shop, consume entertainment and more. Last June — prior to his takeover — Musk told Twitter employees that the platform should be more like China’s WeChat, where he said users “basically live on” the app because “it’s so usable and helpful to daily life.”

The vision for the rebrand may go all the way back to Musk’s creation of the original X.com in 1999, which Musk hoped would be an all-in-one financial platform and which eventually became PayPal.

Despite Musk’s longstanding ambitions — and the heightened stakes since he shelled out $44 billion to purchase the social network — ditching Twitter’s branding in service of a future super app is a significant risk.

Twitter still has a long way to go if Musk wants to build out the kind of services WeChat is known for — everything from ordering groceries and booking yoga classes to paying bills and chatting with friends. And that’s not to mention the financial and competitive challenges the company faces merely existing in its current form, let alone launching a massive expansion. It’s also not clear how much demand there is for such a super app outside of China, given that efforts by other platforms to simply sell users on added shopping features have been slow to take off.

“While Musk’s vision is to turn ‘X’ into an ‘everything app,’ this takes time, money, and people -— three things that the company no longer has,” Mike Proulx, research director and vice president at Forrester, said in an investor note. By ditching Twitter’s name, Proulx added, Musk “will have singlehandedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” leaving him to start fresh at a precarious time for the company.

The X branding has already started taking over Twitter.

Musk — who bought Twitter with a company called X Corp. — tweeted on Sunday that X.com now redirects to Twitter. (Musk reportedly bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017.)

On Sunday night, the new stylized X logo was projected onto the company’s headquarters. And by Monday, the bird logo had been replaced by an X on Twitter’s website. Musk even told followers that tweets should instead be called “x’s.”

On Sunday, CEO Linda Yaccarino seemed to confirm Musk’s vision for the company. “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino said in a tweet.

Walter Isaacson, the legendary tech journalist who has been shadowing Musk to write his biography, tweeted on Sunday that Musk told him even before the Twitter acquisition that he wanted to use the social platform to fulfill his original, decades-old vision for X.com. “I am very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!” Musk texted Isaacson at 3:30 a.m. one morning last October, just ahead of his takeover, according to the writer.

On Monday, Musk explained the move in a tweet saying, “The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.”

“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk said. “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context.”

(The rebrand also seems to be a continuation of a sort of obsession with the letter “X,” which also features in the name of one of Tesla’s cars, the Model X; the name of his rocket company, SpaceX; the name of his new artificial intelligence firm, xAI; and the name of two of his children, X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl.)

In recent weeks, Twitter has quietly begun its effort to build out a payments business called Twitter Payments — the company was granted money transmitter licenses in four US states since last month, including Arizona and Michigan. Musk has discussed his desire to promote longer videos on Twitter. And he’s tried to shift Twitter’s business model away from advertising by allowing users to pay for verification, a strategy that has resulted in some chaos but only a limited number of actual subscriptions.

Still, Musk faces obvious hurdles to turning Twitter into a fully-developed super app. Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has fired around 80% of its staff, scared away many of the advertisers that made up its core user base and frustrated many of its users with controversial policy decisions. And now, Twitter faces steep competition from Meta’s rival app Threads, which launched to stunning success, although its usage has petered off slightly in recent days.

Musk last week also said that Twitter still has negative cash flow because of a 50% decline in ad revenue.

Even if Musk does add new features to Twitter, many US tech platforms have struggled to succeed in imitating WeChat. Deloitte said in a report published last year that Western markets are unlikely to see “a single, dominant super-app like WeChat in the near term” because the services such apps would aim to bundle together, such as digital payments and ride hailing, already “have too many well-established players.”

A 2019 effort by the social media giant then known as Facebook to create its own digital currency and payments system that the company said would make it easier to buy things online officially flopped last year following intense regulatory scrutiny. And both TikTok and Instagram have reportedly scaled back their ambitions to incorporate e-commerce onto their platforms after their shopping features failed to gain significant traction with users.

And until Musk rolls out significant changes to the platform, observers of the company say ditching Twitter’s well-known brand is a risky move.

“To rebrand without significant new features seems like a desperate attempt for attention,” especially in the wake of Meta’s launch of Threads, said Joshua White, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University. “This is akin to buying Coke and changing the bottle and name without changing the formula — likely a mistake.”

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April 12, 2021
Pentagon investigating alleged classified documents circulating on social media of US and NATO intelligence on Ukraine | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
—

The Pentagon is investigating what appear to be screenshots of classified US and NATO military information about Ukraine circulating on social media, a Pentagon official told CNN.

CNN has reviewed some of the images circulating on Twitter and Telegram but is unable to verify if they are authentic or have been doctored. US officials say the documents are real slides, part of a larger daily intelligence deck produced by the Pentagon about the war, but it appears the documents have been edited in some places.

Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh would not weigh in on the documents’ legitimacy but said in a statement that the Defense Department is “aware of the reports of social media posts, and the Department is reviewing the matter.”

Mykhailo Podolyak, the adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said on his Telegram channel he believes the Russians are behind the purported leak. Podolyak said the documents that were disseminated are inauthentic, have “nothing to do with Ukraine’s real plans” and are based on “a large amount of fictitious information.”

The emergence of the documents, whether genuine or not, has heightened focus on when the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive will begin and what, if anything, either side knows about the other’s preparations for it.

One image that has been circulating on Russian Telegram channels and was reviewed by CNN is a photo of a hard copy of a document titled “US, Allied & Partner UAF Combat Power Build.” The document, which is from February and marked as secret, lists the amounts of certain Western weapons systems that Ukraine currently has on hand, estimated delivery of additional systems and the training Ukraine has or is expected to complete on the systems.

Another is titled “Russia/Ukraine Joint Staff J3/4/5 Daily Update (D+370)” and is listed as secret. J3 refers to the operations directorate of the US military’s joint staff, J4 deals with logistics and engineering, and J5 proposes strategies, plans and policy recommendations. “D+370” refers to the date the document was produced: 370 days after the first day of the Russian invasion.

A third document is a map, listed as top secret, that shows the status of the conflict as of March 1. The map shows Russian and Ukrainian battalion locations and sizes, as well as total assessed losses on both sides. The casualty numbers on this document are what officials believe was doctored – the Russian losses are actually far higher than the “16,000-17,500 killed in action” listed on the document, officials said.

The document also says that 61,000-71,500 Ukrainians have been killed in action, a number that officials said also appeared edited to be higher than actual Pentagon estimates.

A fourth document is a weather projection from February, listed as Secret, that assesses where the ground may freeze in Ukraine in a way that would be favorable for vehicle maneuver.

The New York Times, which first disclosed the Pentagon investigation, reported that some of the images circulating online describe intelligence that could be useful to Russia, such as how quickly the Ukrainians are expending munitions used in US-provided rocket-systems.

Podolyak called the documents “a bluff, dust in your eyes” and said that “if Russia really did receive real scenario preparations, it would hardly make them public.”

“Russia is looking for any way to seize the information initiative, to try to influence the scenario plans for Ukraine’s counteroffensive,” he said. “To raise doubts, compromise previous ideas and frighten with their ‘awareness.’ But these are just standard elements of the Russian intelligence’s operational game and nothing more. It has nothing to do with Ukraine’s real plans.”

Podolyak added that Russian troops “will get acquainted” with Ukraine’s real counteroffensive plans “very soon.”

Asked about the images circulating on Twitter and Telegram, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told CNN in a statement that “we don’t have the slightest doubt about direct or indirect involvement of the United States and NATO in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”

“This level of involvement is rising, is rising gradually,” he said. “We keep our eye on this process. Well, of course, it makes the whole story more complicated, but it cannot influence the final outcome of the special operation.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

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April 12, 2021
FTC says Meta should be barred from monetizing data from younger users | CNN Business

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CNN
—

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday accused Facebook-parent Meta of violating its landmark $5 billion privacy settlement and called for toughening up restrictions on the company, after alleging Meta has improperly shared user data with third parties and failed to protect children as it has promised.

The proposal to update the binding 2020 settlement with Meta marks a new front in the FTC’s long-running battle with the social media company, which has included multiple lawsuits aimed at breaking up the tech giant or preventing it from growing larger.

The FTC said Meta should be banned from monetizing data it collects from younger users. It added that the company should be barred from releasing any new features or products until a third-party auditor determines the company’s privacy policies do enough to protect users. It also called for new limitations on how Meta can use facial recognition technology.

If approved, the sweeping proposal could threaten the future of Meta’s business, including its expansion into virtual reality.

In a statement on Wednesday, Meta spokesman Andy Stone called the FTC proposal “a political stunt” and vowed to contest the effort.

“Despite three years of continual engagement with the FTC around our agreement, they provided no opportunity to discuss this new, totally unprecedented theory,” Stone said. “FTC Chair Lina Khan’s insistence on using any measure – however baseless – to antagonize American business has reached a new low.”

The FTC proposal comes as policymakers at all levels of government have increasingly blamed social media for furthering a mental health crisis among young people, prompting calls for strict regulations on how tech platforms can use the personal information of users under 18, target them with automated recommendations or seek to boost their engagement in other ways. Many of those proposals have taken the form of broad-based legislation, but the FTC proposal would represent a novel approach by amending a past consent order in connection with a single company that influences more than a billion users.

As part of the FTC’s call for changes, the agency said Meta had misled the public about its compliance with the historic settlement that resolved allegations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica data fiasco, as well as prior agreements with the agency.

Meta had allowed personal information to leak to apps that users of the platform were no longer using, the FTC alleged. That data sharing, the FTC claimed, contrasted with Meta’s public statements about how it cuts off a third-party app’s access to Facebook users’ information if the users stop using the third-party app for 90 days.

The FTC also alleged that multiple coding errors in a messaging app marketed to children, Messenger Kids, allowed users to connect to “unapproved contacts” in group video calls, and that the flaws went unresolved for weeks.

Those flaws meant parents could not control who their kids were speaking to on the app, in contrast to claims by Meta that they could, according to the FTC.

In addition to being a breach of Meta’s prior settlements, the alleged violations surrounding Messenger Kids also ran afoul of a federal children’s privacy law known as COPPA, the FTC said, because parents were not provided an opportunity to give Meta their consent before the company collected information on their kids.

Meta will have 30 days to respond to the proposed findings and changes, the FTC said, before the commission votes to finalize them. The FTC can unilaterally approve updates to the settlement, but Meta would have the opportunity to appeal that move in federal court, according to an agency fact sheet.

The FTC voted 3-0 to issue the proposed findings and changes, but one commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, questioned whether the agency has the authority to impose such sweeping restrictions on Meta in light of the alleged violations.

In a statement, Bedoya said he was skeptical whether there was enough of a connection between Meta’s alleged harms and the proposed remedies to legally sustain a complete ban on monetizing the data of young users.

“I look forward to hearing additional information and arguments and will consider these issues with an open mind,” Bedoya said.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter is adding calls and encrypted messaging | CNN Business

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London
CNN
—

Twitter is adding encrypted messaging to the platform Wednesday, and calls will follow shortly, CEO Elon Musk tweeted late Tuesday.

“Release of encrypted DMs [direct messages] V1.0 should happen tomorrow. This will grow in sophistication rapidly. The acid test is that I could not see your DMs even if there was a gun to my head,” he said.

“Coming soon will be voice and video chat from your handle to anyone on this platform, so you can talk to people anywhere in the world without giving them your phone number.”

The move comes as Musk, who took control of Twitter six months ago, looks for ways to return the platform to growth. Its future looks increasingly uncertain in the face of dwindling advertising revenue and increased competition from rivals such as Mastodon and BlueSky, developed by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.

Adding calls and encrypted messaging could allow Twitter to compete with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which owns Facebook

(FB) Messenger and WhatsApp. Billions of people around the world use those platforms to communicate daily with family and friends, including in groups. Twitter, meanwhile, reported 238 million monetizable daily users last July.

Since taking the company private in October, Musk has turned Twitter on its head. A number of users, celebrities and media organizations have said they plan to leave the platform over recent policy changes, which they say threaten to make it less safe and reliable.

Right-wing TV host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday he would relaunch his program on Twitter, which he praised as the only remaining large free-speech platform in the world after Fox News fired him last month.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter’s head of trust and safety says she has resigned | CNN Business

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Twitter’s head of trust and safety Ella Irwin told Reuters on Thursday that she has resigned from the social media company.

In the role, Irwin oversaw content moderation, but the company has faced criticism for lax protections against harmful content since billionaire Elon Musk acquired it in October.

Irwin’s departure also comes as the platform has struggled to keep advertisers on it, mainly as brands have been wary of appearing next to unsuitable content.

Musk announced earlier this month that he hired Linda Yaccarino, former NBCUniversal advertising chief, to become Twitter’s new CEO.

Fortune earlier reported that Irwin’s internal Slack account appeared to be deactivated.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter isn’t letting users view the site without logging in | CNN Business

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CNN
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Twitter appears to be restricting access to its platform for anyone not logged into an account.

People without a Twitter account or who weren’t logged in used to be able to scroll the platform’s homepage and view public accounts and tweets. But as of this week, when such a user opens the platform they are met with a screen prompting them to sign up or sign in to Twitter.

Internet users began noticing the change late this week, and on Friday, multiple CNN reporters were unable to access Twitter without logging in.

It was not immediately clear whether the change was an intentional policy update or a glitch, both of which have been common at Twitter since Musk took over the platform. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

The change comes as billionaire owner Elon Musk attempts to revamp Twitter’s business following months of challenges since his takeover late last year — now with the help of new CEO Linda Yaccarino.

Twitter’s leadership is urging advertisers to return to the platform after many fled over concerns about increased hate speech, layoffs and general questions about the company’s direction. Musk has also sought to grow subscription revenue by offering a blue verification checkmark for users who sign up for its Twitter Blue service.

The restriction on public access to Twitter could be an effort to grow the platform’s user base, which has always been significantly smaller than social media rivals like Facebook and Instagram.

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April 12, 2021
DeSantis and his team unleash on Rep. Donalds for questioning Florida’s new Black history standards | CNN Politics

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused Rep. Byron Donalds – the only Black Republican in Florida’s congressional delegation – of aligning himself with Vice President Kamala Harris by critiquing the state’s new standards for teaching Black history.

Donalds tweeted Wednesday that the new standards are “good, robust, & accurate.” But the two-term congressman added that a new requirement for middle school students to be taught that slaves learned skills they later benefited from “is wrong & needs to be adjusted.” He added that he has “faith that (Florida Department of Education) will correct this.”

In the face of that seemingly gentle criticism, DeSantis’ administration and online allies unloaded on Donalds, who has backed former President Donald Trump over his home state governor for the 2024 nomination. Jeremy Redfern, the spokesman for the governor’s office, called Donalds a “supposed conservative.” Christina Pushaw, the campaign’s rapid response director, replied to Donalds’ tweet: “Did Kamala Harris write this tweet?” DeSantis’ Education Commissioner Manny Diaz tweeted that Florida would “not back down … at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman.”

DeSantis joined the pile on during his Iowa bus tour, telling Donalds to “stand up for your state.”

“You got to choose: Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you doing to side with the state of Florida?” he said.

Responding to the blowback to his remarks, Donalds on Twitter called the online attacks aimed at him “disingenuous” and said DeSantis supporters were “desperately attempting to score political points,” adding that that is why he is “proud to have endorsed” Trump.

“What’s crazy to me is I expressed support for the vast majority of the new African American history standards and happened to oppose one sentence that seemed to dignify the skills gained by slaves as a result of their enslavement,” he wrote on Twitter.

This week’s clash with Donalds is the latest example of how the DeSantis campaign’s failure to win support from key members of his state’s GOP has come back to bite him as he runs against Trump. Last week, Rep. Greg Steube, who has also endorsed Trump, put DeSantis on blast over property insurance rates in the state continuing to soar.

“The result of the state’s top elected official failing to focus on (and be present in) Florida,” Steube said, tweeting out a headline that linked the sharp rise in premiums to DeSantis’ time in office.

The war of words between two Florida Republicans this week is all the more remarkable because of how closely aligned Donalds and DeSantis once appeared.

Donalds introduced DeSantis and his family at the governor’s election night victory party last year, heaping praise on the man he called “America’s governor.” He played DeSantis’ 2018 election opponent, Democrat Andrew Gillum, during debate preparation. DeSantis had also formed a close alliance with Donalds’ wife, a school choice advocate who received a plum appointment to the Florida Gulf Coast University board of trustees.

But there was a notable break in their relationship in April when Donalds endorsed Trump over DeSantis. Donalds had previously stated publicly he would wait on an announcement until the field was set. The decision stunned DeSantis’ political operation, which had clearly underestimated the governor’s failures to build a rapport with fellow Republicans. Ultimately most Florida Republicans in the House lined up behind Trump.

The back and forth with Donalds stems from the new standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, which were approved earlier this month by the Florida Board of Education. While education and civil rights advocates have decried many elements of the new standards as whitewashing America’s dark history, much of the national attention has focused on one passage that clarifies middle school students should learn “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Amid intense objections to the language, Harris responded by holding a press conference in Jacksonville where she accused Florida’s leaders of “creating these unnecessary debates.”

“This is unnecessary to debate whether enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said. “Are you kidding me? Are we supposed to debate that?”

DeSantis and state education officials have fiercely defended the new standards in recent days. Redfern and others have pointed to similar language that appeared in the course framework for a new Advanced Placement African American Studies course piloted by the College Board. Florida was widely criticized by Democrats for blocking the course from being taught in state public schools.

According to one document, the AP course intended to teach students: “In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South. Once free, American Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.”

The College Board said Thursday it “resolutely” disagrees with the notion that enslavement was beneficial for African Americans after some compared the content of its course to Florida’s recently approved curriculum.

On Thursday, DeSantis said the state standards are “very clear about the injustices of slavery in vivid detail.”

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April 12, 2021
Beware deepfake reality as Trump dominates headlines | CNN Politics

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A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

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After earlier and incorrectly predicting his own arrest this week, former President Donald Trump veered into the more sinister business of predicting violence and catastrophe if he’s arrested.

Whether the prediction turns into reality is another thing entirely.

Trump’s reemergence into the headlines, as both a third-time presidential candidate and a potential defendant, is threatening to pull the country back into his reality. Trump has not been formally charged with any crime and denies all wrongdoing.

Compare the lived reality where people interact, mostly in peace, and go about their lives with the Trump-centered, fake world available on social media.

In the real world, Trump hasn’t been charged with anything. On Twitter, fake photos of his arrest generated by artificial intelligence have been viewed millions of times.

In the real world, prosecutors have to form a methodical criminal case before they indict a defendant. On social media, Trump says everything is part of a plot against him.

Positing the idea of violent retribution into the echo chamber of his Truth Social platform early Friday, Trump said it is “known that potential death & destruction” that would be “catastrophic for our Country” would result if a charge is brought against him.

In a post Thursday, Trump went into all caps – the typographical equivalent of screaming – to declare his innocence and add, “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL.”

The veiled threats place a new form of pressure on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has already been threatened by Republicans in Congress with an investigation. Without naming Bragg in the Friday post, Trump said anyone who would charge him with a crime is “a degenerate psychopath that truely (sic) hates the USA!”

CNN’s Brynn Gingras and Kara Scannell reported Friday that Bragg’s office received a package containing a white powder substance and a threatening note. They added that while authorities determined there was no dangerous substance, the package capped off a week where law enforcement has seen continual threats against the court, including several bomb threats, all of which turned out to be unfounded.

Meanwhile, rather than condemn Trump’s latest post, top Republicans in Washington like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy refused to answer questions about it.

The photos of Trump being arrested were created in jest by Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative journalism group Bellingcat, who asked an AI art generator to make a photo of “Donald Trump falling down while being arrested,” according to The Washington Post.

“I was just mucking about,” Higgins told the Post. “I thought maybe five people would retweet it.”

Bellingcat, ironically, uses social media posts and other digital data to prove facts, uncovering crimes and investigating atrocities. CNN worked with Bellingcat, for instance, to uncover the Russian operatives who apparently tried to poison the now-jailed dissident leader Alexey Navalny. The group has also used social media to track down apparent war crimes in Ukraine.

The fake photos, while requiring a double take, were clearly not real. But it is that first impression that can be misleading – and lasting. They fed Trump’s narrative of persecution, a visual manifestation of the drama he puts into his posts.

There’s more and more of this online, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell fiction from reality.

Earlier this month, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan had an incredible video report on the power of AI-generated audio. In addition to magically mimicking Anderson Cooper, he used an AI generator to call his parents. The computer sounded like his voice, but it was not O’Sullivan talking. While his mother later said O’Sullivan’s Irish accent felt off during the conversation, she did not catch it in real time.

“When we enter this world where anything can be fake – any image, any audio, any video, any piece of text, nothing has to be real – we have what’s called the liar’s dividend, which is anybody can deny reality,” Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information, told O’Sullivan.

There are many examples of deepfake photos and videos if not tricking people, then certainly causing harm – such as women whose faces have been deepfaked, without their consent, onto pornography.

When something is repeated enough online or when a fake narrative takes hold, it can influence the real world. That’s certainly what happened on January 6, 2021, when conspiracy theories that blossomed online turned into an attack on the Capitol.

“There is no online and offline world; there’s one world, and it’s fully integrated,” Farid told O’Sullivan with regard to the potential for AI to create a false reality online that bleeds into the real world.

“When things happen on the internet, they have real implications for individuals, for communities, for societies, for democracies, and I don’t think we as a field have fully come to grips with our responsibility here,” he said.

It’s something to be very careful of as we look at what could be a historic period in which a former president, current candidate, serial conspiracy theorist and master of social media potentially faces criminal charges.

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April 12, 2021
Academic researchers blast Twitter’s data paywall as ‘outrageously expensive’ | CNN Business

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Washington
CNN
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After Twitter announced in February it would begin charging third parties to access its platform data, academic researchers warned that the vaguely worded plan could threaten important studies about how misinformation, harassment and other malicious activity spreads online.

Now, as Twitter has released more pricing information, many of those same academics are saying their fears were well-founded, complaining that Twitter’s new tiered paywall not only charges “outrageously expensive” prices but that it also restricts the amount of accessible data so heavily that what little researchers can see, even on the most expensive tiers, is not useful for studies at any rigorous level.

Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team under CEO Elon Musk, automatically responded to a request for comment with an email containing a poop emoji.

In an open letter this week, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research — a group representing dozens of researchers and civil society organizations — said free and open access to Twitter data has historically enabled systematic, large-scale research on social media’s role in public health initiatives, foreign propaganda, political discourse, and even the bots and spam that Musk has blamed for ruining Twitter.

But Twitter’s new tiered access system undercuts all of that, the researchers said. The company’s pricing that launched last week, starting at $100 per month for a “basic” amount of data, does not provide nearly enough volume for users at the low end, while the high end “ranges from $42,000 to $210,000 per month [and] is unaffordable for researchers,” the letter said.

The new basic tier limits users to reading just 10,000 tweets per month. That represents 0.3% of what researchers used to be able to collect in a single day, the letter said.

Even under the most expensive “enterprise” tier costing upwards of $2.5 million a year, Twitter is offering only a fraction of the tweets it used to, the letter continued. Before the change, researchers could pay about $500 a month for the ability to access up to 10% of the roughly 1 billion tweets a month that flow across Twitter’s platform.

Now, though, “the most expensive Enterprise tier would cut that by 80% at about 400 times the price,” the researchers’ letter said.

Asking researchers to pay orders of magnitude more for a fifth of the access they once had represents a barrier to accountability and transparency, the letter added.

“Under the new pricing plans, studying the communications and interactions of even a small population—such as the 535 Members of the U.S. Congress or the 705 Members of the European Parliament—will be unfeasible,” the letter said. “The new pricing plans will also end at least 76 long-term efforts, including dashboards, tools, or code packages that support other researchers, journalists, first-responders, educators, and Twitter users.”

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April 12, 2021
Meta opens up its Horizon Worlds VR app to teens for the first time, prompting outcries from US lawmakers | CNN Business

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Meta is forging ahead with plans to let teenagers onto its virtual reality app, Horizon Worlds, despite objections from lawmakers and civil society groups that the technology could have possible unintended consequences for mental health.

On Tuesday, the social media giant said children as young as 13 in Canada and the United States will gain access to Horizon Worlds for the first time in the coming weeks.

The app, which is already available to users above the age of 17, represents Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for a next-generation internet, where users can physically interact with each other in virtual spaces resembling real life.

“Now, teens will be able to explore immersive worlds, play games like Arena Clash and Giant Mini Paddle Golf, enjoy concerts and live comedy events, connect with others from around the world, and express themselves as they create their own virtual experiences,” Meta said in a blog post.

Zuckerberg has pushed to spend billions developing VR hardware and software, even as Meta has scaled back significantly in other parts of its business. Last year alone, the company spent nearly $16 billion in its Reality Labs segment and warned investors not to expect profitability from that unit anytime soon.

Tuesday’s expansion reflects Meta’s attempt to capture early adopters in a key demographic. But it immediately triggered criticism from lawmakers who had pleaded with the company to postpone its plan.

“Meta is despicably attempting to lure young teens to Horizon Worlds in an attempt to boost its failing platform,” said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who last month, along with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, urged Zuckerberg to reconsider letting teens use the app.

Lawmakers have previously raised alarms about the impact of some of Meta’s other products, including Instagram, on younger users.

“Meta has a record of abject failure to protect children and teens, and yet again, this company has chosen to put young users at risk so that it can make more money,” Markey said, accusing Meta of “inviting digital disaster.”

“I’m calling on the company to reverse course and immediately abandon this policy change,” Markey added.

Those calls were echoed earlier this month by dozens of civil society groups who wrote in an open letter that Meta’s VR offerings could expose users to new privacy risks through the collection of biometric and other data; new forms of unfair and deceptive marketing; and abuse or bullying.

Meta said in its announcement that in opening up Horizon Worlds to teens, the company would provide protective guardrails, such as by using default settings to make teenage users’ profiles and activity less visible to other users and by applying content ratings to potentially mature virtual spaces. Meta added that its safety controls were developed with input from parents and online safety experts.

“I hope no one is assuming there is any inclination on our part to simply open the floodgates,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, told CNN during a recent tech demonstration at the company’s Washington offices. “Clearly we can’t do that. We have to build experiences which are tailored to the unique vulnerabilities of teens.”

Meta’s announcement Tuesday came as other US government officials said they were beefing up scrutiny of social media’s potential effects on mental health.

The Federal Trade Commission is “actively working” on hiring in-house psychologists to address concerns linking social media use to teen mental health harms, said Alvaro Bedoya, an FTC commissioner.

In recent weeks, members of the FTC have been consulting with public health officials and medical professionals to understand the available scientific evidence on the matter, Bedoya told lawmakers on a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

“There is evidence that some uses of social media do, in fact, hurt certain groups of teenagers and children,” Bedoya said, though he cautioned that there were important nuances and caveats in the research. “This is not some moral panic. There is a ‘there’ there.”

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April 12, 2021
Twitter’s new encrypted message feature criticized by security and privacy experts | CNN Business

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Privacy and security experts widely panned a new feature that Twitter unveiled Wednesday that encrypts some direct messages between users, raising questions about the future of user safety on the platform.

Twitter’s early efforts at securing direct messages with encryption appear to be riddled with caveats, flaws and risks that may endanger users, the experts said after the company rolled out its initial release.

With the first iteration of the feature, only users who are paying subscribers to Twitter Blue or whose organizations have paid to be verified with the company may use encrypted messages.

In addition, encrypted messages may only be sent between two individuals, not groups. Encrypting images, video and other media is not supported. Both participants must either have exchanged direct messages in the past, or the recipient of an encrypted message must already follow the sender.

Perhaps most crucially, Twitter acknowledged that even with the encryption feature enabled, the company itself, and other third parties, can still potentially access user messages.

“I’m trying to be positive about Twitter deploying encrypted DMs even though there are so many things about this system that make it feel like a v0.1 release, or are just obnoxious,” said Matthew Green, a cryptographer and computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, in a tweet.

Twitter’s former chief information security officer, Lea Kissner, publicly pleaded with Twitter’s current engineering team to improve the feature quickly.

“Twitter folks, seriously. I left some design docs somewhere. Please use them,” Kissner said on Bluesky, a rival platform.

Twitter has described encrypted messaging as key to the company’s future of becoming “the most trusted platform on the internet.” But the rollout provides another example of how, under CEO Elon Musk, Twitter has forged ahead with significant changes to the platform over the warnings of independent researchers about potential unintended consequences stemming from incomplete or poorly implemented updates.

In a blog post Wednesday, Twitter said users of its latest app will be eligible to participate in encrypted direct messages. And it announced that its goal is to provide a similar level of protection as other privacy-preserving apps that come highly recommended by security experts, such as Signal.

“The standard should be, if someone puts a gun to our heads, we still can’t access your messages,” the blog post said. “We’re not quite there yet, but we’re working on it.”

But the company also acknowledged the feature’s limitations, including the fact that the new encryption option does “not offer protections against man-in-the-middle attacks.”

“As a result, if someone — for example, a malicious insider, or Twitter itself as a result of a compulsory legal process — were to compromise an encrypted conversation, neither the sender or receiver would know,” Twitter’s blog post said.

The lack of so-called end-to-end encryption makes Twitter’s implementation largely meaningless, security experts said.

“The ENTIRE PURPOSE of End-to-end encryption is to protect you against whoever controls the messaging servers,” said Marcus Hutchins, also known as MalwareTech, on Bluesky.

John Scott-Railton, a cybersecurity and disinformation researcher, tweeted that this caveat means it is “not safe for anyone worried about privacy & safety to assume that this has equivalent protections to things like [Signal].”

Twitter’s new feature also encrypts messages at the conversation level, not each individual message. That means that if a malicious actor gained unauthorized access to the keys, they could view the entire message chain. A stronger approach would be to assign each message its own encryption key, a feature that already exists in other apps.

Jonathan Mayer, a computer scientist at Princeton University and a former chief technologist of the Federal Communications Commission, said Twitter’s version of encryption would fail basic principles taught in an Information Security 101 course.

“We literally teach the students not to do exactly what Twitter is doing,” Mayer said.

One of the feature’s biggest dangers to users is that they could come away with a false sense of security, Hutchins added, which would be far worse than Twitter offering no encryption at all, because users may be lulled into sharing more in Twitter messages than they otherwise would.

In an apparent response to the wave of criticism, Musk tweeted early Thursday: “Try it, but don’t trust it yet.”

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April 12, 2021
Twitter loses its top content moderation official at a key moment | CNN Business

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CNN
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Twitter has lost its top content moderation official just weeks before the company is set to undergo a regulatory stress test by European Union officials focused on its handling of user content, in the latest sign of turbulence at the company under owner Elon Musk.

On Thursday, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told Reuters she had left the company. Irwin has not addressed the reasons for her departure, but the move coincided with the company’s content moderation dispute with the Daily Wire, a conservative outlet.

The dispute focused on the forthcoming release of a self-described documentary, “What Is a Woman?” that Twitter warned would be labeled as “hateful content” due to two instances of misgendering, according to Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing. Musk intervened later Thursday, calling the content moderation decision “a mistake by many people at Twitter” and that the video would be “definitely allowed.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Irwin’s departure.

But the sudden and unexpected vacancy at Twitter could leave the company without a key content moderation official at a sensitive moment. Later this month at Twitter’s San Francisco offices, EU officials are set to review whether the platform is likely to be compliant with a sweeping content moderation law that could eventually trigger millions of dollars in fines for Twitter if it’s found to be noncompliant.

That law, known as the Digital Services Act, will require so-called “very large online platforms” including Twitter to abide by tough content moderation standards by as early as August. It’s far from clear whether the company can meet those requirements by the deadline, and recent developments at Twitter seem to have further alarmed EU regulators in that respect.

For months, as Musk has increasingly welcomed more incendiary speech onto the platform Twitter had previously restricted, EU officials have been reminding Twitter of its content moderation obligations under the DSA. The warnings have also come amid mass layoffs at the company that have eliminated entire teams, including much of its content moderation staff.

Last month, Twitter pulled out of the European Union’s code of conduct on disinformation, a series of voluntary commitments to combat mis- and disinformation that the EU has said would be considered as part of any evaluation of a platform’s compliance with the overall Digital Services Act (DSA).

Although Twitter said it was “committed to fully complying with the Digital Services Act” and would meet its DSA obligations with respect to misinformation “in a manner that reflects Twitter’s unique service,” the company told EU officials “we feel we have no alternative” but to withdraw from the code.

The announcement prompted swift backlash from Thierry Breton, a top EU commissioner and digital regulator, who appeared to regard Twitter’s decision as an attempt to evade responsibility.

“Obligations remain,” Breton said. “You can run but you can’t hide.”

Irwin’s departure could undercut the EU’s confidence further. Without a trust and safety head who would otherwise be expected to attend the EU stress test, Twitter’s ability to effectively respond to the evaluation may be constrained. A spokesperson for the European Commission didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter’s head of brand safety and ad quality also departed the company this week.

All of this could be problematic for Twitter and Musk in the long run – and could also create an added headache for Linda Yaccarino just as she takes over as the company’s new CEO.

Companies that fail to abide by the DSA risk fines of up to 6% of their global annual revenue. For Twitter, which is already struggling to regain its financial footing amid significant debt and an advertiser backlash, that’s a cost it can ill afford.

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April 12, 2021
Malaysia to take legal action against Meta over ‘undesirable’ content | CNN Business

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Malaysia said Friday it would take legal action against Facebook parent company Meta for failing to remove “undesirable” posts, the strongest measure the country has taken to date over such content.

Last year’s closely fought national election has led to a rise in ethnic tensions, and since coming to power in November, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration has vowed to curb what it calls provocative posts that touch on race and religion.

Facebook

(FB) has recently been “plagued by” a significant volume of undesirable content relating to race, royalty, religion, defamation, impersonation, online gambling and scam advertisements, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said in a statement.

It also said Meta had failed to take sufficient action despite the body’s repeated requests and that legal action was necessary to promote accountability for cybersecurity and protect consumers.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The commission also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what legal action might be taken.

Race and religion are thorny issues in Malaysia, which has a majority of Muslim ethnic Malays alongside significant ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian minorities.

Commentary on the country’s revered royals is also a sensitive issue, and negative remarks toward them can be tried under sedition laws.

The action against Facebook comes just weeks ahead of regional elections in six states that are expected to pit Anwar’s multi-ethnic coalition against a conservative Malay Muslim alliance.

Facebook is Malaysia’s biggest social media platform, with an estimated 60% of its population of 33 million having a registered account.

Globally, big social media firms that include Meta, Google’s

(GOOGL) YouTube, and TikTok are often under regulatory scrutiny over content posted on their platforms.

Some Southeast Asian governments have frequently requested that content be taken down.

In 2020, Vietnam threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if it did not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform. The authorities said last year that social media platforms operating in Vietnam removed more than 3,200 posts and videos in the first quarter that contained false information and violated the country’s law.

In Indonesia in 2019, Facebook took down hundreds of local accounts, pages and groups linked to a fake news syndicate.

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April 12, 2021
Meta officially launches Twitter rival Threads | CNN Business

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Facebook has tried to compete with Twitter in numerous ways over the years, including copying signature Twitter features such as hashtags and trending topics. But now Facebook’s parent company is taking perhaps its biggest swipe at Twitter yet.

Meta on Wednesday officially launched a new app called Threads, which is intended to offer a space for real-time conversations online, a function that has long been Twitter’s core selling point.

The app appears to have many similarities to Twitter, from the layout to the product description. The listing, which first appeared earlier this week as a teaser, emphasizes its potential to build a following and connect with like-minded people.

“The vision for Threads is to create an option and friendly public space for conversation,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post following the launch. “We hope to take what Instagram does best and create a new experience around text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind.”

Zuckerberg said on his verified Threads account that the app passed 2 million sign-ups in the first two hours. Later on Wednesday, he wrote that Threads “passed 5 million sign ups in the first four hours.”

He also responded to posts and shared his thoughts on whether Threads will ever be bigger than Twitter.

“It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads. “Hopefully we will.”

The app’s listing describes it as a place where communities can come together to discuss everything from the topics they care about today to what’s trending.

“Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favorite creators and others who love the same things — or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world,” it reads.

Meta said messages posted to Threads will have a 500 character limit. The company said it was bringing the app to 100 countries via Apple’s iOS and Android.

After downloading the app, users are asked to link up their Instagram page, customize their profile and follow the same accounts they already follow on Instagram. The look is similar to Twitter with a familiar layout, text-based feed, the ability repost and quote other Thread posts. But it also blends Instagram’s existing aesthetic and offers the ability to share posts from Threads directly to Instagram Stories. Verified Instagram accounts are also automatically verified on Threads. Thread accounts can also be listed as public or private.

The new app joins a growing list of Twitter rivals and could pose the biggest threat to Twitter of the bunch, given Meta’s vast resources and its massive audience.

It also comes amid heightened turmoil at Twitter, which experienced an outage over the weekend, followed by an announcement that the site had imposed temporary limits on how many tweets its users are able to read while using the app.

Twitter owner Elon Musk said these restrictions had been applied “to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation.” Commenting on the launch of Threads Monday, he tweeted: “Thank goodness they’re so sanely run,” parroting reported comments by Meta executives that appeared to take a jab at Musk’s erratic behavior.

Since acquiring Twitter in October, Musk has turned the social media platform on its head, alienating advertisers and some of its highest-profile users. He is now looking for ways to return the platform to growth. Twitter announced Monday that users would soon need to pay for TweetDeck, a tool that allows people to organize and easily monitor the accounts they follow.

Twitter is also attempting to encroach on Meta’s domain. In May, Twitter added encrypted messaging and said calls would follow, developments that could allow the platform to compete with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, also owned by Meta.

The escalating rivalry between the two companies only appears to have added to the rivalry between Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In response to a tweet last month from a user about Threads, Musk wrote: “I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options.” In a followup tweet, Musk teased the idea of a cage match with Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg fired back in an Instagram story by posting a screenshot of Musk’s tweet overlaid with the caption: “Send Me Location.”

And after the Threads app debuted, Zuckerberg tweeted an image of two cartoon Spider-Men pointing at each other.

– CNN’s Hanna Ziady contributed to this report.

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April 12, 2021