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Former Twitter employee convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia
NY Post | August 09, 2022
Company Listed: Twitter
A former Twitter employee has been convicted of failing to register as an agent for Saudi Arabia and other charges after accessing private data on users critical of the kingdom’s government in a spy case that spanned from Silicon Valley to the Middle East.
Ahmad Abouammo, a US citizen and former media partnership manager for Twitter’s Middle East region, was charged in 2019 with acting as an agent of Saudi Arabia without registering with the US government. A jury found him guilty on six counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. The jury acquitted him on another five charges involving wire fraud.
Facebook bans hate speech but still makes money from white supremacists
Washington Post | August 10, 2022
Company Listed: Facebook
Last year, a Facebook page administrator put out a clarion call for new followers: They were looking for “the good ole boys and girls from the south who believe in white [supremacy].” The page — named Southern Brotherhood — was live on Tuesday afternoon and riddled with photos of swastikas and expressions of white power.
Facebook has long banned content referencing white nationalism. But a plethora of hate groups still populate the site, and the company boosts its revenue by running ads on searches for these pages.
Teens have fled Facebook but are loyal to YouTube, poll shows
Washington Post | August 10, 2022
Company Listed: Facebook, YouTube
Anyone who has talked to a teenager in the past five years knows teens aren’t spending all their time scrolling through Facebook posts. What social media sites are they staring at on their phones and computers?
They’re looking at videos, mostly on YouTube followed by TikTok, according to a Pew Research study on the social media habits of teenagers. Their interests are a mix of the old and new. At 17 years old, YouTube is the unrivaled dominant social media site for teens according to the study, with 95 percent of teens ages 13 to 17 saying they use the video streaming service. The next most popular option is TikTok at 67 percent.
Bad bot: Meta cleans up AI that spewed anti-Semitism and election conspiracies
NY Post | August 10, 2022
Company Listed: Social Media
Meta’s artificial intelligence doesn’t want to talk about the 2020 election being stolen or Jews controlling the economy anymore — but it still spreads rumors that Mark Zuckerberg “isn’t very nice to his employees.
After a flood of social media posts this week showed the Facebook parent’s newly released chatbot spewing conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism, Meta appears to have cleaned up the misbehaving artificial intelligence system to make it less of a shock jock.
T&S Policies & Regulations
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Big Tech, intercepted messages and online privacy in a post-Roe world
The Hindu | August 11, 2022
Company Listed: Social Media
The case of a Nebraska woman charged with helping her teenaged daughter end her pregnancy after investigators obtained Facebook messages between the two has raised fresh concerns about data privacy in the post-Roe world.
Meta, which owns Facebook, said Tuesday it received warrants requesting messages in the Nebraska case from local law enforcement on June 7, before the Supreme Court decision overriding Roe came down. The warrants, the company added, “did not mention abortion at all,” and court documents at the time showed that police were investigating the “alleged illegal burning and burial of a stillborn infant.
Justice Department reportedly prepares antitrust suit against Google
NY Post | August 10, 2022
Company Listed: Google
The US Department of Justice is reportedly preparing to sue Google as soon as September over its domination of the online advertising market.
Justice Department lawyers are interviewing online publishers to put final touches on the lawsuit ahead of its filing, building on other interviews conducted in previous stages of the lengthy investigation, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
Google opposes Facebook-backed proposal for self-regulatory body in India –sources
Reuters | August 11, 2022
Company Listed: Facebook, Twitter, Google
Google has grave reservations about developing a self-regulatory body for the social media sector in India to hear user complaints, though the proposal has support from Facebook and Twitter (TWTR.N), sources with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters.
India in June proposed appointing a government panel to hear complaints from users about content moderation decisions, but has also said it is open to the idea of a self-regulatory body if the industry is willing.
T&S Good News
Some of the good news in the T&S industry that leaders want to know
Social media offers parents more controls. But do they help?
ABC News | August 10, 2022
Company Listed: Social Media
As concerns about social media's harmful effects on teens continue to rise, platforms from Snapchat to TikTok to Instagram are bolting on new features they say will make their services safer and more age appropriate. But the changes rarely address the elephant in the room — the algorithms pushing endless content that can drag anyone, not just teens, into harmful rabbit holes.
The tools do offer some help, such as blocking strangers from messaging kids. But they also share some deeper flaws, starting with the fact that teenagers can get around limits if they lie about their age. The platforms also place the burden of enforcement on parents. And they do little or nothing to screen for inappropriate and harmful material served up by algorithms that can affect teens' mental and physical well-being.