And don’t forget to follow our liveblog here for reporting and analysis: cnn.com/business/live-…
Crap. I overcaffeinated.
Just preemptively: Be wary of any claims today that Section 230 somehow requires platforms to be politically neutral. It does not.
The law gives platforms wide latitude to manage their sites as they see fit. That includes decisions on political content. law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47…
Expect @jack to repeat familiar themes today, including expressing a commitment to greater transparency and warning Congress not to entrench the power of large tech platforms (in what could be read as a jab at Facebook): cnn.com/business/live-…
Spending most of my hearing doing updates to the liveblog instead of tweeting but my quick take here is that so far, this hearing has been more substantive than last month’s.
We’re getting a clearer idea of both where lawmakers and executives stand on important questions.
Sen. Feinstein not knowing that Twitter has been labeling misleading tweets about the election is the “Senator, we sell ads” of this hearing
Dorsey patiently explaining what you see on Twitter’s label, and how it is a link and not just text, has a very strong “tech support at Thanksgiving” vibe
Especially when Dorsey already explains this in his opening remarks and written testimony and his prior congressional appearance…
Sen. Lee used his question time to spread the unfounded narrative of voter fraud, which election officials have routinely debunked and rejected.
He said Facebook’s labeling is “editorializing [that] insulates people from the truth and it insinuates that anyone concerned about voter fraud must be crazy.”
This dangerous attack line normalizes the idea that it is appropriate to suspect a conspiracy to deny election fraud.
We’re in a break for Senate votes.
Lots of lip service so far to keeping the government out of direct content moderation while lawmakers issue calls for tech companies to do better… which is about where we were before all this began.
On election security, here’s the Trump administration's own CISA director reminding people of the extremely dubious nature of election fraud claims
We’ve heard Zuckerberg repeatedly invoke Facebook’s approach toward terrorist or child-exploitation content. It’s a rhetorical crutch and also something of a deflection. Here’s why: cnn.com/business/live-…
One of the takeaways from this hearing is that Twitter and Facebook are increasingly staking out diverging positions on federal policies for content moderation: cnn.com/business/live-…
Facebook wants federal policy to basically incentivize algorithmic decisionmaking; Twitter wants users to be able to opt out of algorithms.
Here are the implications of that.
One is a centralized approach, the other is decentralized.
One favors a company with a vested interest in building proprietary algorithms and making users dependent on them; the other gives platforms a plausible excuse for offloading responsibility onto third parties.
They each have their tradeoffs and reflect the respective strengths of Facebook and Twitter.
This explains why Jack is so adamant that federal policy not “entrench” large, established social media platforms.
This is big: President Trump’s social media accounts could face even greater enforcement when he leaves office, Dorsey and Zuckerberg both said, citing company policies that protect his conduct.
Of course, this raises the same question for Trump that applies to Bannon: How many times can a normal user violate Facebook’s policies before being banned?
Zuckerberg has been rather evasive about this.
Sen. Graham is wrapping up now.
“To the two witnesses, you made it through! … I want to thank you for appearing.”
And teases future hearings on tech regulation in the next Congress.
There are a couple people who replied to this saying that Zuck meant the opposite. Just a couple of clarifying points:
Zuckerberg was saying that for any category of violation that does not have a newsworthiness exception, Trump will continue to be treated the same as he is now, and the same as anyone else.
But there are other policies where Facebook *does* have a newsworthiness exemption.
Trump currently benefits from this. He may soon no longer.
But that, of course, raises the question of whether Facebook will continue to view Trump as a newsworthy individual eligible for protection under this exemption even after he departs the White House.
But the implication is clear that as a former president, Trump could face expanded enforcement.
Facebook’s @andymstone points me to this policy page, which says that while sitting politicians aren't eligible for fact-checking by partners, content by *former* politicians is.
When a fact-checker throws a red flag, the content is restricted on FB.
Reflecting on today’s hearing, some early first impressions.
Today’s hearing seemed more substantive and/or illluminating compared to the last, and we now have a clearer idea where some lawmakers and the companies stand on certain questions.
On a bipartisan basis, leading senators swore up and down that they don’t believe government has a role in direct content moderation.
The companies articulated their respective visions for the future.
Facebook seems to want (or at least not oppose) clear categories of unacceptable content that algorithms can be told to seek out and enforce against — importing the terrorism/exploitation regulatory regime.
Twitter seems to want more competition in algorithms, including the ability for users to opt-out of algorithmic content ranking altogether. Whatever is put in place shouldn’t entrench the power of incumbent platforms, in Jack’s view.
Conservatives are still mad about perceived anti-conservative bias, though at least from where I sit, the last hearing seemed much more intensely focused on this topic.
And the CEOs hinted at what may be in store for @realDonaldTrump in his post-presidency years.
Those I think are the main highlights.
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Trump just fired @CISAKrebs on Twitter, one of the top election security officials in the country. Krebs had consistently said that the election was conducted securely.
A viral YouTube video with over a million views and that's been shared repeatedly in the top-performing Facebook group in politics claims Biden has lost his status as president-elect. Others claim CNN has altered its projections. Neither claim is true. cnn.com/2020/11/10/tec…
The viral video’s main source is a misleading, now-removed tweet by Pam Bondi saying RealClearPolitics had changed its projections for Pennsylvania, thus losing Biden the race. But RCP itself said it had never called the state.
YouTube says the video doesn’t violate its rules.
Some experts are warning that the damage being done now by misinformation ecosystems could last for “years or even decades, unfortunately, because people are very motivated to both participate in them and believe them.” cnn.com/2020/11/10/tec…
Trump’s FCC nominee Nathan Simington acknowledges he played a “minor” role in drafting and preparing the Trump administration’s petition to the FCC to “clarify” #Section230.
Sen. Cruz asks if he thinks the FCC rulemaking should move forward. “Senator, I do,” Simington says.
If confirmed, Simington would thus be in a position to oversee a proceeding that he helped ask for while in the Trump administration.
Sen. Blumenthal asks if Simington would recuse himself. Simington says it’s “premature” to say but that he would consult the FCC ethics office.
Blumenthal, in his opening remarks, said Simington’s nomination — and Trump’s tweet earlier today urging a swift confirmation — raises concerns that “you have been sent to the FCC on a mission to execute” Trump’s social media executive order.
A few quick impressions from today’s #Section230 hearing.
The exchange between Dorsey and Gardner really illustrates how confusing social media policies (and their enforcement) are to most people.
Per Dorsey, Twitter has no general misinformation policy, but it does have specific misinfo policies on Covid and elections. They apply to world leaders, but also don’t, in that a world leaders policy protects them. Except when tweets to a domestic audience could cause harm.
Is it any wonder that normal people find this completely mind-boggling?
The debate right now is over how to define the market that Apple is allegedly monopolizing.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is pushing Epic on its claim that the relevant market is iOS app distribution, asking why it isn’t “video games” writ large.
Epic’s lawyer argues that many Fortnite players “don’t have multiple devices” to play Fortnite on.
Apple’s lawyer argues there are “many channels” for Epic to distribute Fortnite on besides iOS.
I’ve spent my morning trying to understand better who will own what under the TikTok deal, and it is just an utter mess trying to get to any clarity. If you know more, please get in touch.
We start with two seemingly conflicting statements from ByteDance and Oracle…
ByteDance claimed that the new TikTok ("TikTok Global”) will be a “100% owned subsidiary of ByteDance.”
Oracle said after it and Walmart make their investment, "Americans will be the majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global."
Here’s what I’ve been able to gather so far, from a person familiar with the deal.
TikTok Global has to be created. Once it’s established, its ownership structure will simply reflect ByteDance’s ownership structure, but this is not the same as saying ByteDance is the owner.