Tensions between the U.S. and China are escalating at a dizzying pace, with July 24 marking the lowest point of bilateral relations in decades. On that day, the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas, was closed and taken over by U.S. officials.FILE – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a news conference at the State Department in Washington, July 15, 2020.“We announced the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston because it was a hub of spying and intellectual property theft,” said Secretary of State FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during an oversight hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, on Capitol Hill, Feb. 5, 2020 in Washington.The FBI created a special economic espionage unit in 2010, and currently has over 2,000 active cases related to Chinese counterintelligence operations in the U.S. FBI director Christopher Wray recently said the bureau is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 minutes.Economic espionage is certainly nothing new. When the U.S. passed the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, the focus was on Israel and France, and China wasn’t really in the picture.Hvistendahl said the shift of focus started in the mid-2000s, when the business community decided to join the intelligence community to address the issue. These U.S. companies had previously hoped that if they kept their mouths shut, they could eventually break into the Chinese market and begin to see significant market growth.“By the mid-2000s, it became clear to many companies that it was just not going to happen, they were going to get shut out of the market eventually,” Hvistendahl told VOA. “So many CEOs started to be more vocal about some of the problems that they have received with China.”The impact on the U.S. economy through loss of intellectual property (IP) is one of the main concerns among U.S. policy makers. According to a 2017 report by the Intellectual Property Commission, the cost of IP theft for the United States is somewhere between $225 billion and $600 billion. And China is responsible for 71% to 87% of that figure. (The percentage varies annually.) Apart from economic loss, there is also loss of domestic production capabilities, loss of industries, and loss of jobs along the way.Eric Zhang, former chief representative of the Oklahoma Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Office in China, told VOA that America is also realizing the potential security threat posed by these China-related industrial espionage activities.“Espionage activities in other countries are mainly for economic gain, but China is different. Since Xi Jinping came to power, China has started to deem the United States as a competitor, especially in terms of military,” said Zhang. “In this sense, the purpose of Chinese industrial espionage is different from that of other countries. This is why the U.S. is very concerned now.”Full-scale effortUnder the Trump administration, federal authorities have launched full-scale efforts to ferret out economic espionage.In some high-profile cases, the FBI has recently arrested four Chinese research scientists in the U.S. who concealed their relations with Chinese military during their visa applications. Apart from the FBI, the Justice Department has also launched the China Initiative in 2018, with the goal of identifying and prosecuting those engaged in economic espionage, trade secret theft, hacking and other related crimes. Yet Zhang said that although there has been ample pushback, China has not slowed down its pace of stealing innovative technologies and trade secrets from developed countries.“Innovative technology is key to China’s economic growth, which is the top reason to legitimize CCP (Chinese Communist Party) rule. So if they can’t get anything from the U.S., I think Beijing will strengthen its economic espionage efforts in other developed countries,” Zhang said.Hvistendahl warns that when addressing the issue of industrial espionage and IP theft, the U.S. needs to be careful and avoid discrimination.“You have to keep in mind that much of the research force in the U.S. is ethnic Chinese. So you have to deal with the issue in a way that it’s fair, that doesn’t give way to allegations of racial profiling, ethnic bias,” she said.She added that it’s to America’s own benefit to keep the U.S. as an innovative place to which researchers from all over the world would want to come and study.
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Twitter announced its decision Thursday to label the accounts of state-controlled media outlets.
The new label will apply exclusively to “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution,” according to a Twitter blog post.
So far, the labels are confirmed to apply to accounts for China Daily, Russia Today, and Sputnik, as well as several other media outlets. According to the company’s post, they “are starting with a limited and clearly-defined group of countries before expanding to a wider range of countries in the future.”
Twitter also has plans to label the accounts of some government leaders, including ambassadors and foreign ministers.
These decisions arrive partially as a response to public criticism for the way social media outlets have dealt with foreign interference and disinformation. Much of this criticism stems from the Russian disinformation campaign prior to the 2016 U.S. election, much of which took place on Twitter.
These announcements could face potential backlash, possibly from U.S. President Donald Trump, who tweets daily on the site.
The company has had issues with the Trump campaign in the past. Twitter locked the president’s campaign account Wednesday for breaking its COVID-19 disinformation rules after the account tweeted a video of the president saying children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.
Some Republicans also have maintained that Twitter and other social media outlets specifically censor conservative views in an effort to suppress their positions on various issues.
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Facebook has deleted a post by President Donald Trump for violating its policy against spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.
The post in question featured a link to a Fox News video in which Trump says children are “virtually immune” to the virus.
Facebook said Wednesday that the “video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation.”
A few hours later, Twitter temporarily blocked the Trump campaign from tweeting from its account, until it removed a post with the same video. Trump’s account retweeted the video. The company said in a statement late Wednesday that the tweet violated its rules against COVID misinformation. When a tweet breaks its rules, Twitter asks users to remove the tweet in question and bans them from posting anything else until they do.
Twitter has generally been quicker than Facebook in recent months to label posts from the president that violate its policies against misinformation and abuse.
This is not the first time that Facebook has removed a post from Trump, Facebook said, but it’s the first time it has done so because it was spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. The company has also labeled his posts.
Several studies suggest, but don’t prove, that children are less likely to become infected than adults and more likely to have only mild symptoms. But this is not the same as being “virtually immune” to the virus.
A CDC study involving 2,500 children published in April found that about 1 in 5 infected children were hospitalized versus 1 in 3 adults; three children died. The study lacks complete data on all the cases, but it also suggests that many infected children have no symptoms, which could allow them to spread the virus to others.
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Conservationists in Australia are hoping infrared drones might help save the remaining koala population in New South Wales, one of the regions most affected by recent Australian bushfires. The infrared camera makes it easier to spot the iconic marsupials — not bears — which scientists say could be extinct by 2050. VOA’s Mariama Diallo has this report.
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The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday asked a federal judge to block California’s net neutrality law, arguing that federal law preempts the state statute.In October, a U.S. appeals court largely upheld the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repeal of landmark U.S. net neutrality rules. In 2018, California agreed not to enforce its own state net neutrality law until a final court decision on the FCC repeal.The Trump FCC in 2017 voted 3-2 to toss out Obama-era rules prohibiting internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes. The California law would reinstate those prohibitions in the state.The U.S. government is seeking a preliminary injunction to block California from being able to enforce its law.The California attorney general’s office said it is reviewing the Justice Department’s filing “and look forward to defending California’s state net neutrality protections.”The 2017 FCC 3-2 vote was applauded by internet service providers (ISPs), as it gave them sweeping powers to recast how Americans use the internet, as long as they disclose changes. The new rules took effect in June 2018, but service providers have yet to change how users access the internet.The California law was applauded by large tech companies and consumer groups that had championed the level playing field of net neutrality.The appeals court, in its October decision, also ruled the FCC had overstepped its legal authority when it expressly declared states cannot pass their own net neutrality laws.The Justice Department said despite that ruling that it still believes California’s net neutrality law is preempted by federal law. A decision on the Justice Department action is not expected before mid-October, according to a court schedule.
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Facebook launched a short-film product similar to the popular TikTok app in the United States and dozens of other countries Wednesday.The new product, called Reels, is embedded in the Instagram app and permits users to create 15-second videos set to music from a predetermined music library.The feature has been in production for at least two years, having undergone trials in Brazil in 2018. The addition comes two days after President Donald Trump gave Microsoft 45 days to acquire the U.S. division of the Chinese-owned TikTok over security concerns.FILE – The logo of the TikTok application seen on a mobile phone, Feb. 21, 2019.After the Brazil trials, Facebook tested the product in France, Germany and India, trying to grapple with some of TikTok’s biggest user concentrations. A stand-alone app, Lasso, made it to market but was not successful.TikTok Chief Executive Officer Kevin Mayer called Reels a “copycat product” that would unfairly employ Instagram’s existing user base of more than 1 billion after “their other copycat Lasso failed quickly.”Vishal Shah, Instagram’s vice president of product, acknowledged the similarities in a video conference call Tuesday with reporters and said, “Inspiration for products comes from everywhere,” including Facebook’s teams and “the ecosystem more broadly.”Instagram’s current Stories feature allows users to share a photo or video that disappears after 24 hours, like the popular social media app Snapchat.Reels differs from TikTok in that it employs Instagram’s preexisting augmented reality effects, which let users overlay images and filters onto their videos.Reels’s algorithm reportedly is similar to TikTok’s, maintaining the platform’s draw for unknown creatives to go viral through being featured on the Explore page or sharing content with friends through reposts or personal messages. Content creators will be able to appear on the Explore page if their profiles are set to public.According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook is pursuing TikTok’s creators by offering them financial incentives to move over to Reels. In response to the report, a Facebook spokesperson said in certain cases, it may help cover production costs for influencers’ “creative ideas.”Instagram said it does not have plans to monetize Reels content in the near future.“We’re experimenting with different monetization options (for creators),” Shah said.
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India has banned some mobile apps of Chinese companies such as Xiaomi Corp and Baidu Inc, three sources told Reuters on Wednesday, in New Delhi’s latest move to hit Chinese companies following a border clash between the neighbors.
India in June outlawed 59 Chinese apps for threatening the country’s “sovereignty and integrity,” including ByteDance’s video-sharing app TikTok, Alibaba’s UC Browser and Xiaomi’s Mi Community app.
Another ban was imposed in recent weeks on about 47 apps which mostly contained clones, or simply different versions, of the already banned apps, the sources said.
Unlike its June move, the government did not make its latest decision public, but there are a few new apps that have made it to that list, including Xiaomi’s Mi Browser Pro and Baidu’s search apps, the sources said.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many new apps have been affected.
India’s IT Ministry and the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi did not respond to a request for comment. China has previously criticized India’s decision to ban the apps.
A spokesman for Xiaomi in India said the company was trying to understand the development and will take appropriate measures. Baidu declined to comment.
A ban on the Mi Browser, which comes pre-loaded on most Xiaomi smartphones, could potentially mean the Chinese firm will need to stop installing it on new devices it sells in India.
Xiaomi is India’s No.1 smartphone seller with close to 90 million users, according to Hong Kong-based tech researcher Counterpoint.
The bans are part of India’s moves to counter China’s dominant presence in the country’s internet services market following a border clash in June between the two nuclear-armed neighbors in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed.
India has also made approval processes more stringent for Chinese companies wanting to invest in the country, and also tightened norms for Chinese companies wanting to participate in government tenders.
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European Union antitrust regulators announced Tuesday they’ll launch an investigation into Google’s plan to buy Fitbit.Google, a U.S. tech giant owned by Alphabet, is hoping to break into the wearable technology market, and hopes to buy Fitbit for $2.1 billion. Fitbit makes wearable watch-like fitness devices. A variety of groups advocating for privacy and consumer rights want to block the deal because of antitrust and privacy concerns.The EU and many other groups say they are concerned the deal will increase the amount of data to which Google has access, making it increasingly difficult for other companies to compete effectively in the online advertising space.The EU’s executive commission stated “the proposed transaction would further entrench Google’s market position in the online advertising markets by increasing the already vast amount of data that Google could use for personalization of the ads it serves and displays.”EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager added that the “investigation aims to ensure that control by Google over data collected through wearable devices as a result of the transaction does not distort competition.”Google’s senior vice president for devices and services, Rick Osterloh, countered that “this deal is about devices, not data,” and he added that “we’ve been clear from the beginning that we will not use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads.”The EU antitrust enforcer said this promise alone was not adequate.Fitbit was one of the first companies to market wearable fitness devices, which are used to monitor physical activities, heart rates, sleep patterns, and a variety of other factors. Fitbit has more than 28 million active users, and upwards of 100 million devices have been sold.
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The Chinese company that owns popular video-sharing app TikTok is exploring all possibilities to ensure that its subsidiary can continue operating in the United States, according to a memo sent out Monday by Chief Executive Officer Zhang Yiming.Beijing-based ByteDance has come under pressure from Washington to sell off its U.S. TikTok operations over concerns that the company’s links to the Chinese government threaten the privacy of U.S. citizens.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Sunday that President Donald Trump is likely to take action in the coming days. People familiar with the matter told Reuters that Trump agreed to give ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale to Microsoft.In the meantime, Microsoft said in a blog post Sunday that its CEO, Satya Nadella, and Trump had a conversation on the potential acquisition and “Microsoft is prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States.”Zhang, who founded ByteDance in 2012, said Monday that his teams are working around-the-clock “for the best outcome.” Without naming Microsoft directly, Zhang acknowledged that ByteDance is in negotiations with a tech firm, but “we have not decided on the final solution yet. The attention of the outside world and rumors around TikTok might last for a while,” he said.According to the memo that was reported in the Chinese media, Zhang complained to his employees that “the current geopolitical and public opinion environment is becoming more and more complex. TikTok’s U.S. business is facing the possibility of being forced to sell by CFIUS, or TikTok products may be banned in the United States due to administrative orders.”FILE – Tik Tok logos are seen on smartphones in front of a displayed ByteDance logo in this illustration taken Nov. 27, 2019.CFIUS, or the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, opened a review last year of the Musical.ly purchase that led to TikTok’s creation. Zhang also said that despite their willingness to adopt more technical solutions to allay Washington’s concerns, the company believes CFIUS will require it to sell the TikTok U.S. operation. “We do not agree with this decision,” he said.As TikTok surged to become one of the most popular apps in the world, Washington began calling for a national security investigation into the app. White House officials and lawmakers are worried what information TikTok shares with the Chinese government about the app’s roughly 100 million American users.Zhang emphasized again that TikTok is a privately run business.“We’ve always firmly protected the security of users’ data, the platform’s independence and transparency,” he said.U.S. officials have argued that such guarantees mean little because Chinese companies generally have no choice but to bend to Communist Party demands.On Monday China’s foreign ministry said it strongly opposed any U.S. actions against Chinese software companies, and it hoped the U.S. could stop its “discriminatory policies.”In an interview Monday with U.S. business news network CNBC, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called the company’s pursuit of TikTok “exciting.”“Price is important, as well as whatever restrictions come with it from a government perspective, but I think it’s an exciting avenue for Microsoft to really increase its consumer base,” he said.In the meantime, U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday called for a U.S. company to purchase TikTok.“A U.S. company should buy TikTok so everyone can keep using it and your data is safe,” he said in a tweet, “With TikTok in China, it’s subject to Chinese Communist Party laws that may require handing over data to their government.”
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The Chinese-owned social media app TikTok “is going to be out of business in the United States” on Sept. 15, unless Microsoft or another U.S. company concludes a purchase deal that satisfies the U.S. government, President Donald Trump said on Monday. The president also is insisting the U.S. Treasury should get a cut of the sale price for allowing the company to operate in the U.S. “The United States should get a very large percentage of that price,” Trump said at an afternoon news conference. “It would come from the sale — whatever the number is.” It is unclear under what authority the government could demand such a payment. FILE – Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at a conference in Seattle, May 6, 2019.In a statement, Microsoft confirmed that its chief executive officer, Satya Nadella, had spoken to Trump and was committed to acquiring the company by the stated deadline.“Microsoft will move quickly to pursue discussions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in a matter of weeks, and in any event completing these discussions no later than September 15, 2020. During this process, Microsoft looks forward to continuing dialogue with the United States government, including with the president,” the statement read. “Price is important, as well as whatever restrictions come with it from a government perspective, but I think it’s an exciting avenue for Microsoft to really increase its consumer base,” the company’s largest individual shareholder, former CEO Steve Ballmer, told CNBC earlier Monday. Trump suggested it would be “easier to buy the whole thing than to buy a portion” of TikTok. “How do you do 30%? Who is going to get the name? The name is hot. The brand, hot. And who is going to get the name? How do you do that if it’s owned by two different companies?” Trump said at the White House. The Chinese video app is extremely popular globally. It has been downloaded 2 billion times, including 165 million times in the United States. TikTok features not only entertainment videos but also debates, and it takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Trump said late last week that he would ban the app because of security concerns. India already has taken such action. Trump Sets Clock Ticking for TikTokUS president has threatened to ban popular Chinese-owned social media app amid security concerns Officials in Washington have repeatedly expressed concern that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing the company might share users’ data with the Chinese government. ByteDance has said it does not share user data with the government of China and maintains it stores Americans’ user data only in the United States and Singapore. TikTok recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing. “TikTok will be here for many years to come,” company spokesperson Hilary McQuaide said in a statement issued Monday. The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, opened a national security review of TikTok last year. CFIUS’s job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks. It can force companies to cancel deals or institute other measures it deems necessary for national security.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that he would ban the popular video app TikTok by Sept. 15 unless U.S company Microsoft acquires it before then. The Republican president said last week that he would ban the app, which is owned by Chinese company Bytedance, because of security concerns.Trump Sets Clock Ticking for TikTokUS president has threatened to ban popular Chinese-owned social media app amid security concerns Trump said Monday he would not mind if Microsoft Corp. acquired the app, but that the purchase would have to be completed by Sept. 15. Saying he doesn’t mind if @Microsoft buys @tiktok_us, @POTUS adds that any purchase by an American company would have to be done by a Sept. 15 deadline “at which point it’s going to be out of business in the United States.”
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) August 3, 2020In a statement, Microsoft confirmed that its CEO had met with Trump and was committed to acquiring the company by the stated deadline. “Microsoft will move quickly to pursue discussions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in a matter of weeks, and in any event completing these discussions no later than September 15, 2020. During this process, Microsoft looks forward to continuing dialogue with the United States Government, including with the President,” the statement read.
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Microsoft Corp said Sunday it would continue talks to acquire popular short-video app TikTok from Chinese internet giant ByteDance. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has agreed to give ByteDance 45 days to negotiate the sale, two people familiar with the matter said Sunday.
Microsoft, which is aiming to conclude talks by Sept. 15, released a statement following a conversation between CEO Satya Nadella and Trump. It said it would ensure that all of the private data of TikTok’s American users is transferred to and remains in the United States.
“Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the president’s concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury,” Microsoft said in a statement.
The company added there was no certainty a deal would be reached.
The ByteDance-Microsoft negotiations will be overseen by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a U.S. government panel that has the right to block any agreement, the two sources added.
ByteDance, Microsoft and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Earlier Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that Trump would take action soon.
“President Trump has said ‘enough’ and we’re going to fix it and so he will take action in the coming days with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party,” Pompeo said on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
And Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told ABC on Sunday that the Committee on Foreign Investment on the United States “agrees that TikTok cannot stay in the current format because it risks sending back information on 100 million Americans.”
Over the weekend several Republican senators said they backed a plan for ByteDance to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok.
Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on Twitter that a divestment “and purchase by U.S. company is win-win.”
Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican who chairs the Commerce Committee, added that “tight security measures need to be part of any deal in order to protect consumer data and ensure no foreign access.”
Republican Senator Marco Rubio said on Twitter “if the company & data can be purchased & secured by a trusted U.S. company that would be a positive & acceptable outcome.”
On Saturday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said the “right answer” to address security concerns about TikTok would be to “have an American company like Microsoft take over TikTok. Win-win. Keeps competition alive and data out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”
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Facebook announced Saturday that it had obeyed a Brazilian judge’s order for a worldwide block on the accounts of 12 of President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters who are under investigation for allegedly running a fake news network.Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Friday night that the company had failed to fully comply with a previous ruling ordering the accounts to be shut down, saying they were still online and publishing by changing their registration to locations outside Brazil.Facebook issued a statement saying it had complied because of the threat of criminal liability for an employee in Brazil.But it called the new order “extreme,” saying it posed a “threat to freedom of expression outside of Brazil’s jurisdiction and conflicting with laws and jurisdictions worldwide.” The company said it would appeal to the full court.Facebook also argued it had complied with the previous order by “restricting the ability for the target Pages and Profiles to be seen from IP locations in Brazil.””People from IP locations in Brazil were not capable of seeing these Pages and Profiles even if the targets had changed their IP location,” the company said.Moraes said that Facebook ought to pay $ 367,000 in penalties for not complying with his previous decision during the last eight days.He also had ruled Twitter should block the accounts. While Twitter said then that the decision was disproportionate under Brazil’s freedom of speech rules and that it would appeal, the targeted profiles were disabled.Moraes is overseeing a controversial investigation to determine whether some of Bolsonaro’s most ardent allies are running a social media network aimed at spreading threats and fake news against Supreme Court justices.The probe is one of the main points of confrontation between Bolsonaro and the Supreme Court.The president himself filed a lawsuit last week demanding the accounts to be unblocked.
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President Donald Trump went to one of his private golf courses Saturday in Virginia after threatening to halt operations in the United States of a popular Chinese-owned video sharing social media app. “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” he told reporters Friday on Air Force One traveling with him from Florida. He said he would likely use an executive order to prohibit the app. No action was announced before the president left the White House Saturday morning for the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.Trump was seen by VOA dressed casually departing the West Wing of the White House. It is common for him on weekends to golf at his 325-hectare property, which is located 40 kilometers northwest of the White House. Trump also told reporters on Air Force One the previous day that he does not support a deal that would allow a U.S. company to buy TikTok’s American operations. The app is extremely popular globally. It already has been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide, and 165 million of those downloads were in the United States. The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates, and it takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the coming U.S. presidential election. Officials in Washington are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing the company might share its user data with China’s government.When asked by Fox News last month whether Americans should download the app on their phones, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “Only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.” TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore. ByteDance has agreed to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, the Reuters news agency reported Saturday. TikTok also recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing. “Banning an app like TikTok, which millions of Americans use to communicate with each other, is a danger to free expression and technologically impractical,” said the American Civil Liberties Union. The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, opened a national security review of TikTok last year. CFIUS’s job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks. It can force companies to cancel deals or institute other measures it deems necessary for national security.Microsoft and other U.S. companies, in recent days, reportedly have been looking to purchase the U.S. operations of TikTok.Some on social media are accusing Trump of singling out TikTok because pranksters used the app to order hundreds of thousands of tickets to his June 20 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which attracted a smaller-than-expected crowd. TikTok is also where comedian Sarah Cooper posts her videos lip-synched to Trump sound bites, which have attracted millions of views. Cooper on Friday, uploaded a video mouthing comments made by the president earlier in the day about TikTok. How to tick tack pic.twitter.com/1Mn8nk363f
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) July 31, 2020
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President Donald Trump says he intends to ban the operation of TikTok in the U.S.Trump said Friday he could take action as soon as Saturday to stop the operation of the popular video-sharing social media app in the U.S.“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” he told reporters traveling with him Friday from Florida.He said he would likely use an executive order to prohibit the app.Trump does not support a deal that would allow a U.S. company to buy TikTok’s American operations.The app is extremely popular in both the U.S. and around the world. It has already been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide, and 165 million of those downloads were in the U.S.The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates and takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the coming U.S. presidential election.U.S. officials are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing that the company might share its user data with China’s government. However, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore. TikTok also recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing.Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said earlier this week that the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, would be looking into TikTok.CFIUS’s job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks. It can force companies to cancel deals or institute other measures it deems necessary for national security.
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A British man, a Florida man and a Florida teen hacked the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in bitcoin, authorities said Friday. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office will prosecute him as adult. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, U.K., and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, were charged in California federal court. In one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, hackers sent out bogus tweets on July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. FILE – American reality-show star Kim Kardashian West takes a selfie as she rides on a classic car next to her husband, rap singer Kanye West in Havana, Cuba, May 4, 2016.The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous bitcoin address. “There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence,” U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California said in a news release. “Today’s charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived.” Although the case against the teen was also investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren explained that his office is prosecuting Clark in Florida state court because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate. “This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and he’ll be prosecuted here,” Warren said. Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media company’s employees into giving them access. It said hackers targeted “a small number of employees through a phone spear-phishing attack.” “This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems,” the company tweeted. After stealing employee credentials and getting into Twitter’s systems, the hackers were able to target other employees who had access to account support tools, the company said. FILE – Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders answers questions during an interview with Reuters in the Hague, Netherlands.The hackers targeted 130 accounts. They managed to tweet from 45 accounts, access the direct message inboxes of 36, and download the Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed. Internal Revenue Service investigators in Washington, D.C., were able to identify two of the hackers by analyzing bitcoin transactions on the blockchain — the ledger where transactions are recorded — including ones the hackers attempted to keep anonymous, federal prosecutors said. Spear-phishing is a more targeted version of phishing, an impersonation scam that uses email or other electronic communications to deceive recipients into handing over sensitive information. Twitter said it would provide a more detailed report later “given the ongoing law enforcement investigation.” The company has previously said the incident was a “coordinated social engineering attack” that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools. It didn’t provide any more information about how the attack was carried out, but the details released so far suggest the hackers started by using the old-fashioned method of talking their way past security. British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that a targeted Twitter employee or contractor received a message by phone asking them to call a number. “When the worker called the number they might have been taken to a convincing (but fake) helpdesk operator, who was then able to use social engineering techniques to trick the intended victim into handing over their credentials,” Clulely wrote Friday on his blog. It’s also possible the hackers pretended to call from the company’s legitimate help line by spoofing the number, he said. Hillsborough County court records didn’t list an attorney for Clark, and federal court records didn’t list attorneys for Sheppard or Fazeli.
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Twitter Inc said on Friday it has permanently suspended the account of David Duke, a former leader of the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan, as the social media company tries to curb the spread of hateful content on its website.Duke’s account had been suspended for repeatedly violating Twitter’s policy on hateful content and harmful links, the micro-blogging site said.Under Twitter’s hateful conduct policy, any threats of attacks directed at people on the basis of their religion, race or ethnicity is prohibited on its website.Twitter has long been under pressure to clean up hateful content on its platform and has come under the scanner to control misinformation especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.The KKK is the oldest white supremacist group in the United States and its roots trace back to the Reconstruction period in the South that followed the Civil War.In addition to anti-Black views, the KKK has expressed anti-semitic, anti-immigrant and anti-gay views.
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The European Union on Thursday imposed travel and financial sanctions on a department of Russia’s military intelligence service and on firms from North Korea and China over their suspected participation in major cyberattacks across the world.In its first-ever sanctions related to cybercrime, the EU targeted the department for special technologies of the Russian military intelligence service, known as Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, it said in a statement.The bloc accused the Russian service of having carried out two cyberattacks in June 2017, which hit several companies in Europe resulting in large financial losses. The service is also accused of two cyberattacks against Ukraine’s power grid in 2015 and 2016.Four individuals working for the Russian military intelligence service were also sanctioned for allegedly participating in an attempted cyberattack against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the Netherlands in April 2018.North Korean company Chosun Expo was also sanctioned on suspicion of having supported the Lazarus Group, which is deemed responsible for a series of major attacks worldwide, including an $81 million heist against Bangladesh Bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 2016, the world’s biggest cyber fraud.The company is also allegedly linked to an attack against Hollywood film studio Sony Pictures to prevent the release of a satirical movie about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in 2014.The U.S. Treasury last year imposed sanctions on the Lazarus Group and two other North Korean hacking groups for their alleged participation in the attacks on Sony Pictures and the central bank of Bangladesh, among others. It said North Korea’s main intelligence service was behind the hacking groups.North Korea has denied any involvement in cyberattacks. The EU sanctions also hit Chinese firm Haitai Technology Development, which is accused of having supported cyberattacks — known as Operation Cloud Hopper — aimed at stealing commercially sensitive data from multinationals across the world. Two Chinese individuals allegedly involved in the attacks were also sanctioned.Sanctions include travel bans and asset freezes. EU individuals, companies and other entities are forbidden from making funds available to those blacklisted.China’s diplomatic mission to the European Union said in a statement early on Friday that China “is a staunch defender of network security and one of the biggest victims of hacker attacks.”China wants global cyberspace security to be maintained through “dialogue and cooperation” and not by unilateral sanctions, the statement added.
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Big Tech companies reported mixed quarterly earnings Thursday, a day after their top executives faced a tough congressional grilling over their market power and alleged monopolistic practices.The staggering economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic was reflected in reports released Thursday from Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet.Apple delivered surprisingly strong numbers with both its revenue and profit rising, defying analysts’ lowered expectations. The iPhone maker’s revenue rose 11% to nearly $60 billion while profit rose 12% to $11.3 billion.Alphabet, Google’s holding company, reported its first-ever drop in quarterly revenue compared with the prior year. Although it was only a 2% decline, it was a telling sign of a downturn in the digital ad market while also serving as a reminder that the economy is struggling even more than it did more than a decade ago during the Great RecessionGoogle’s low point during that time came during the second quarter of 2009 when its revenue edged up by 3%. Alphabet’s profit for its most recent quarter plunged 30% to nearly $7 billion.Facebook, which also makes most of its money from digital ads, recorded an 11% increase in revenue from the prior year, the social networking company’s slowest growth since going public eight years ago. The company’s profit nearly doubled to roughly $6 billion from the same time last year. Part of the big jump stemmed from special charges last year.Amazon was a pandemic winner, with people stuck at home relying on the company to shop online. It reported record quarterly profit, doubling to $5.2 billion from last year while its revenue soared 40% to $88.9 billion.
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The U.S. has launched its next-generation Mars rover in search of potential signs of life on the red planet.NASA’s latest rover, Perseverance, launched at 11:50 GMT Thursday from Cape Canaveral in the southeastern state of Florida.The robotic explorer was propelled into space by an Atlas 5 rocket operated by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between private aerospace companies Boeing and Lockheed.The rocket has separated from the first stage and is being boosted to orbit by the Centaur second stage. @NASAPersevere is now preparing for a second burn that will put it on a trajectory towards Mars. #CountdownToMarspic.twitter.com/MBRqcxMTdw
— NASA (@NASA) July 30, 2020The rover is scheduled to land on Mars in February at the bottom of a 250-meter crater that was a lake some 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists believe the site could hold evidence of possible past microbial life.Scientists have debated for decades whether there was once life on Mars, which was more hospitable to life billions of years ago.Perseverance’s landing on the solar system’s second smallest planet will involve a complex set of maneuvers that NASA engineers call the “seven minutes of terror.”During that period, the rover descends through the atmosphere in extremely hot and high-speed conditions and deploys a set of supersonic parachutes before mini rockets ignite, allowing for a soft landing.The car-sized Perseverance will also deploy a mini helicopter named Ingenuity and test equipment for future human missions to the planet.Thursday’s launch from Earth to Mars is the third in July. China and the United Arab Emirates launched probes earlier in the month.Perseverance is the latest U.S. lander headed to Mars. NASA’s Sojourner landed in 1997 and Spirit and Opportunity have found signs of ancient water formations. NASA also landed Pathfinder, Phoenix and InSight on Earth’s planetary neighbor.The U.S. plans to send astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s. To help pave the way, Perseverance will try to convert elements of the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere to produce oxygen for future astronauts or to produce fuel for rockets that could be launched from the surface of Mars.
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The summer’s third and final mission to Mars — featuring NASA’s most elaborate life-hunting rover — is on the verge of liftoff.The rover Perseverance will follow China’s rover-orbiter combo and a United Arab Emirates orbiter, both launched last week. It will take the spacecraft seven months to reach Mars after traveling 300 million miles.Once on the surface, Perseverance will scrounge for evidence of past microscopic life in an ancient lakebed, and gather the most promising rock samples for future pickup. NASA is teaming up with the European Space Agency to return the samples to Earth around 2031.This unprecedented effort will involve multiple launches and spacecraft — and cost more than $8 billion.”We don’t know if life existed there or not. But we do know that Mars at one point in its history was habitable,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on the eve of launch.The U.S. remains the only country to land successfully at Mars. If all goes well next February, Perseverance will become the ninth U.S. spacecraft to operate on the Martian surface.First things first, though: Good flying weather is forecast for United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. The Denver-based rocket maker and its heritage companies have launched all of NASA’s Mars missions, beginning with the Mariners in 1964.ULA chief executive Tory Bruno said Perseverance is arguably the most sophisticated and most exciting of all the Mars missions.”We are literally chomping at the bit to take this nuclear-powered dune buggy out to Mars,” he said earlier this week.
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The Chinese-owned app TikTok is under a security review by the U.S. government, which will make a recommendation on the matter to President Donald Trump next week, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.Trump said Wednesday, “we are thinking about making a decision” about TikTok.The video-sharing social media app, is extremely popular in both the US. and around the world. It has already been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide and 165 million of those downloads were in the U.S.The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates and takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the upcoming U.S. presidential election.TikTok to Exit Hong Kong Market Over New National Security Law Decision by Chinese-based app follows decisions by Facebook, Google and Twitter to briefly suspend review of Beijing requests for user data in semi-autonomous city U.S. officials are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing that the company might share its user data with China’s government. However, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore. TikTok also recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing.Mnuchin said that the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS), an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, will be looking into TikTok. CFIUS’ job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks.CFIUS has the ability to force companies to cancel deals or put in place other measures it deems necessary for national security.
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Holocaust survivors around the world are lending their voices to a campaign launched Wednesday targeting Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to take action to remove denial of the Nazi genocide from the social media site.
Coordinated by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the #NoDenyingIt campaign uses Facebook itself to make the survivors’ entreaties to Zuckerberg heard, posting one video per day urging him to remove Holocaust-denying groups, pages and posts as hate speech. Videos will also be posted on Facebook-owned Instagram, as well as Twitter.
Zuckerberg raised the ire of the Claims Conference and others with comments in 2018 to the tech website Recode that posts denying the Nazi annihilation of 6 million Jews would not necessarily be removed. He said he did not think Holocaust deniers were “intentionally” getting it wrong, and that as long as posts were not calling for harm or violence, even offensive content should be protected.
After an outcry, Zuckerberg, who is Jewish himself, clarified that while he personally found “Holocaust denial deeply offensive” he believed that “the best way to fight offensive bad speech is with good speech.”
Since then, Facebook representatives have met with the Claims Conference but the group, which negotiates compensation payments from Germany for Holocaust victims, says Zuckerberg himself has refused to. The goal of the campaign is to get him to sit down with Holocaust survivors so that they can personally tell him their stories and make their case that denial violates Facebook’s hate speech standards and should be removed.
“In Germany or in Austria people go to prison if they deny the Holocaust because they know it’s a lie, it’s libel,” said Eva Schloss, an Auschwitz survivor who today lives in London and has recorded a message for Zuckerberg.
“How can somebody really doubt it? Where are the 6 million people? There are tens of thousands of photos taken by the Nazis themselves. They were proud of what they were doing. They don’t deny it, they know they did it.”
Schloss’ family escaped before the war from Vienna to the Netherlands, where she became friends with Anne Frank, who lived nearby in Amsterdam and was the same age. After the German army overran the country, the Schloss and Frank families went into hiding but were discovered by the Nazis separately in 1944, the Schloss family betrayed by a Dutch woman.
Schloss and her mother survived Auschwitz, but her father and brother were killed, while Otto Frank, Anne’s father, was the only survivor of his immediate family and married Schloss’ mother after the war. Otto Frank published his daughter’s now-famous diary so that the world could hear her story. Schloss has written about her own story, is a frequent speaker and would like to tell Zuckerberg of her own experience.
“It was just every day, the chimneys were smoking, the smell of burning flesh,” the 91-year-old told The Associated Press, adding that she had been separated from her mother and assumed she had been gassed.
“Can you imagine that feeling? I was 15-years-old and I felt alone in the world and it was terrible.”
Facebook said in a statement that it takes down Holocaust denial posts in countries where it is illegal, like Germany, France and Poland, while in countries where it is not an offense, like the U.S. and Britain, it is carefully monitored to determine whether it crosses the line into what is allowed.
“We take down any post that celebrates, defends, or attempts to justify the Holocaust,” Facebook told the AP. “The same goes for any content that mocks Holocaust victims, accuses victims of lying about the atrocities, spews hate, or advocates for violence against Jewish people in any way. Posts and articles that deny the Holocaust often violate one or more of these standards and are removed from Facebook.”
Earlier this month, a two-year audit of Facebook’s civil rights record found “serious setbacks” that have marred the social network’s progress on matters such as hate speech, misinformation and bias. Zuckerberg is one of four CEOs of big tech firms who face a grilling by the U.S. Congress on Wednesday over the way they dominate the market.
More than 500 companies on July 1 began an advertising boycott intended to pressure Facebook into taking a stronger stand against hate speech. The Claims Conference decided to launch its own campaign after concluding the boycott “doesn’t seem to be making a dent,” said Greg Schneider, the Claims Conference’s executive vice president.
Several Holocaust denial groups have been identified on Facebook by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, some hidden and most private.
On one, “Real World War 2 History,” administrators are clearly aware of the fine line between what is and isn’t allowed, listing among its rules that members must “avoid posts that feature grotesque cartoons that FB censors can construe as racist or hateful.”
Another page, the “Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust,” features regular posts of revisionist videos, including one from February in which the commentator says the Zyklon B gas used to kill Jews in Nazi death camps was actually employed to kill the lice that spread typhus, claiming “this chemical was used to improve the inmates’ health and reduce, not increase, camp mortality.”
Though not overtly advocating attacks, such postings are meant to “perpetuate a myth, anti-Semitic tropes that somehow Jews made this up in order to gain sympathy or political advantage” and could easily incite violence, Schneider said.
“The United Nations has acknowledged that Holocaust denial is a form of anti-Semitism, and of course anti-Semitism is hate speech,” he said.
For Charlotte Knobloch, a prominent German Jewish leader who survived the Holocaust in hiding as a young girl and is participating in the campaign, it is particularly important for social media platforms to be vigilant about preventing denial because many in younger generations rely on them for information.
“They have a particular responsibility,” the 87-year-old told the AP.
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They control the digital spaces where many around the world spend their time, shop, work, and talk to friends and family. Together, the companies’ combined annual sales are roughly the same as the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, as Axios notes.Now the CEOs of four top U.S. technology companies — Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google – are set to answer questions Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust about how they wield their considerable market power. Deposition for the world The hearing comes as federal and state regulators are looking into whether the tech giants, through their dominance in some markets, stifle competition. The joint appearance of Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon is a sign of how high the stakes are for the future of their businesses, legal observers say. Critics, customers and regulators globally will be watching. “This is a deposition for the whole world,” said William Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission member and now a law professor at George Washington University. Asking the questions will be the 15 members of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, lawmakers from both political parties, who have spent the past year looking into antitrust and competition concerns with each firm. The report on their probe is expected at the end of the summer, but the lawmakers’ questions will likely reveal what they have learned and some of their thinking about what they may do next, legal experts say. A first for Amazon’s Bezos The hearing, in many ways, is unprecedented. Never before have these CEOs appeared together in front of a congressional hearing, albeit over video conference due to the coronavirus pandemic. It will be the first time Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon and the richest person in the world, will testify before Congress. “This is an important accountability exercise,” Kovacic said. “It does demonstrate that the branches of government responsible for high-level policymaking have the capacity to hold these powerful executives and their extraordinary companies to account. So that’s important. To remind them who does set larger policy.” Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said the hearing is an opportunity for the tech leaders to show they understand concerns about the power they have over people’s lives. “That’s what I’m hoping to hear, these CEOs saying, ‘We hear you, we hear the concerns that are being expressed, and here is the way we come to the table to be part of the solution,’” Crane said. Changed tone in Washington The hearing also shines a spotlight on U.S. regulators and lawmakers, whose job it is to set policies and enforce laws that stop firms from using their market dominance to kill competition. They have been under increasing criticism from some antitrust experts that the government’s oversight of these giants has been weak, especially compared to stronger enforcement in Europe. In recent years, the tone has changed in Washington from one of caution about taking on Big Tech to one of resolve that something has to be done, Kovacic said. “U.S. agencies are also weary of watching the Europeans do everything and realizing that policy in a variety of areas — privacy, competition — is being set in Europe. And if the U.S. doesn’t play, it will continue to be set in Europe,” he said. Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, a competition think tank, said she will watch the hearing for signs that lawmakers want to pursue “robust enforcement.” On her anti-monopoly wish list is “structural breakups” of the tech giants and blocking companies from buying smaller companies seen as threats. “These problems are really deep and really widespread, and we need to really use the whole anti-monopoly tool kit to address them,” said Hubbard, a former assistant attorney general for antitrust enforcement in the New York attorney general’s office. Lawmakers’ challenge Lawmakers can’t charge the tech companies with antitrust violations or attempt to break them into smaller entities. But what they can do is change the laws and put pressure on regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice to do more to enforce existing regulations. The Justice Department is reportedly likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google. State regulators may join the Justice Department or pursue their own cases, according to reports.Part of the challenge lawmakers face at the hearing will be that while Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are the Who’s Who of internet firms, in fact their businesses are not really the same. Still, the policies set by lawmakers in the months and years ahead will likely affect Big Tech for years to come.
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The New York Times Wednesday said the Vatican’s computer networks have been breached by Chinese hackers since May, in an apparent espionage effort before the start of sensitive talks between the Roman Catholic Church and Communist China. The Times says the attack, discovered by private U.S.-based cybersecurity and monitoring firm Recorded Future, appears to be the first time hackers have been publicly caught directly hacking into the Vatican and a Hong Kong-based group of de facto Vatican representatives who have negotiated with China over the Church’s status on the mainland. The newspaper says cybersecurity experts at Recorded Future have presumed the hackers are working for the Chinese government. The Vatican and China are expected to begin talks in September over renewal of a provisional agreement they reached in 2018 that gives the pope the final say over bishops selected by the Communist Party for the state-sanctioned Catholic Church. The Times says the revelations are certain to anger the Vatican and further complicate its relationship with the Chinese government. The two sides cut off formal diplomatic ties in 1951. The Vatican officially recognizes Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims is a rogue breakaway territory that belongs under its control. If the Vatican and China restore diplomatic relations, Chinese officials are certain to demand that the Church cut off all ties with Taiwan. China officially recognizes Catholicism and four other religions, but Communist Party officials often suspect religious groups and worshipers pose a threat to national security and are working to undermine the party’s grip on power. Authorities have often used cyberattacks to gather information on groups such as Buddhist Tibetans, Muslim Uighurs and members of the outlawed Falun Gong who operate outside of China.
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Turkey is poised to introduce drastic measures to control social media platforms. The proposed legislation is drawing growing international criticism with social media remaining one of the few venues for dissent. FILE – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech at the Bestepe National Congress and Culture Center in Ankara, July 21, 2020.Infuriated by tweets mocking his son in law and daughter, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared this month, the “immoral [social media] platforms” would be “completely banned or controlled.” Under new legislation set to pass before Eid holidays later this week, the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Tik Tok will be compelled to open offices in Turkey by requiring them to assign representatives who would be subject to Turkish laws, including tax regulations. “It builds upon and expands upon the current regime of controls,” said Professor Yaman Akdeniz, co-founder of the Freedom of Expression Society, an advocacy group in Istanbul. Until now, the social media giants have resisted Ankara’s demands to open offices in Turkey. But in an innovative approach, proposed legislation uses the threat of ending net neutrality to force compliance. New attempt to control Social media platforms that fail to comply face cuts of up to 95% of their Internet bandwidth, making them unusable. “This is well thought out legislation on the government’s part,” said Akdeniz. Previous attempts by Erdogan to tame social media have failed. Despite over 400,000 web pages banned and thousands of people prosecuted for social media postings, the Internet remains a powerful venue for dissent and independent news.Internet tools like Virtual Private Networks, VPN, and proxies are widely used in Turkey to circumvent website bans. A three-year ban on Wikipedia was so widely flouted the government capitulated and lifted the restrictions. But controlling bandwidth could be more effective than blocking websites. “This will be a very serious restriction which may not be easy to bypass with alternative ways,” said Akdeniz. “Turkey’s attempt to restrict access to social media platforms should not be underestimated.” Turkish authorities usually temporarily cut bandwidth to curtail social media use, in the aftermath of major terror attacks. In what appears to be a new coordinated approach, the government’s Internet regulators have been stepping up their efforts to curtail the use of VPN and proxies. “A considerable number of VPN services are already blocked from Turkey, and more will be blocked,” said Akdeniz. Devlet Bahceli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, MHP, the parliamentary coalition partner of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, AKP, called for efforts to be stepped up to end the use of VPN and proxies. Using tax laws The president’s director of communications, Fahrettin Altun, says the new legislation is about holding the social media giants financially accountable, accusing them of “uncontrollably making profits in our country and continue their operations immune to any tax obligations.” The European Union is also calling on social media companies to be more financially accountable. In a statement released this month, the EU commission unveiled plans “that extends EU tax transparency rules to digital platforms.” But there is growing international concern over Ankara’s plans. “If passed the new law will enable the government to control social media, to get content removed at will, and to arbitrarily target individual users,” said Tom Porteous, deputy program director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch. “Social media is a lifeline for many people who use it to access news, so this law signals a new dark era of online censorship.” Until now, social media platforms have walked a tightrope by complying with some — but not all — Turkish regulatory authority demands to remove sites and ban users. But under the proposed reforms, failure to comply would result in substantial fines that they would be obliged to pay if they open an office in Turkey. “If the social media platforms decide to establish offices in Turkey,” said Akdeniz, “then they will be compelled to remove the content as well as close down accounts subject to blocking and removal decisions involving defamation as well as other so-called personal rights violations.” Twitter, Facebook, or Tik Tok have so far commented on the proposed legislation, but analysts believe the companies have plenty of reason to oppose it. Lucrative market Turkey’s young net-savvy population is seen as a lucrative market for the social media giants. FILE – People wearing face masks to protect against the spread of coronavirus, walk a in popular shopping street, in Ankara, Turkey, June 27, 2020.The growing popularity of social media as an alternative to mainstream media, most of which is under government control, is seen as Erdogan’s primary motivation behind the pending legislation. “Even members of the AKP and MHP constituencies consider social media as their primary source of information,” said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. “One of the main reasons Erdogan could make so many mistakes and still stay in power is because he controls the flow of information reaching his entire voting segment, now he realizes those days have gone. People have moved to an alternative medium which he has no control,” added Yesilada. With the Turkish economy hit by the COVID 19 pandemic, recent opinion polls suggest Erdogan’s AKP’s popularity is at historic lows, even though it remains the most popular party with Turkey’s fractured opposition. The proposed law opens the door to revamping Erdogan’s and his party’s image. “News websites, as well as social media platforms, will be compelled to remove content from their servers and news archives,” said Akdeniz. “The idea behind this is to cleanse AKP’s and the government’s past injustices, corruption, and irregularity allegations.” Yesilada warns that even if the latest reforms succeed, the Turkish leader could yet pay a high price. “We have ample survey evidence that the young generation are hooked to social media, and they already have a poor view of Mr. Erdogan and his politics. Controlling social media will completely turn them off the AKP and Mr. Erdogan.”
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Twitter has limited Donald Trump Jr.’s account and deleted one of his tweets for violating Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policies. The tweet, posted on Monday, had what Twitter termed a misleading video on the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. An adviser to Trump Jr., Andrew Surabian, tweeted an angry response, in which he said that Trump Jr.’s account had been suspended, adding that “big tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America.” He added in a statement to Business Insider that Twitter’s action is evidence that “the company is committing election interference to stifle Republican votes.”BREAKING: @Twitter & @jack have suspended @DonaldJTrumpJr for posting a viral video of medical doctors talking about Hydroxychloroquine.Big Tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America today & they’re continuing to engage in open election interference – full stop. pic.twitter.com/7dJbauq43O— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) July 28, 2020A Twitter spokesman said that the account was not suspended, and instead “Twitter required the tweet to be deleted because it violated our rules” and they merely limited “some account functionality for 12 hours.” Under limited account functionality, Trump Jr.’s account remains visible and he is able to browse Twitter, but during the 12 hours he is not able to tweet, retweet, or like anything on the micro-blogging platform.
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