Senate hearing underway. Nice to see @BostonJoan connecting data protection and antitrust with misinformation. "needs an overhaul, so that companies are not able to siphon data and leverage it to maximize an advantage over consumers." 
"This is because Facebook knew, even back then, that their products could threaten privacy on a scale society had never reckoned with before." again noting risks and harms. misinformation downstream from them. @tim_cook Apple also understands this hence 14.5.
Nice and well-deserved hat tip to the reporting of @BrandyZadrozny @oneunderscore__ hidden in @BostonJoan's testimony.
oomph @tristanharris just analogizes the hearing with executives from YouTube and Facebook and their efforts as similar to asking the CEOs of Shell, Exxon, et al what they're doing about climate change.
Bickert citing Facebook's announcement three years ago about leaning into family and friends despite losing time on the site... that announcement has been used in Australia and around the globe in its defense. I've started to wonder if they did it simply for later defense.
reminder to @BenSasse, Bickert is not a forthright witness. She was on emails to brutally selectively shutting down of competitive apps' access to data in 2013, UK hearing where they denied data breaches a month before we found out about them, etc.
https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1386331554163613698?s=20
YouTube witness: "On our platform, advertisers advertise on single pieces of content" is a really strong, stealth wack at Facebook. She's pointing out Facebook's repeated and weak claim ads don't run against specific content to avoid liability and scrutiny of its core biz model.
and @tristanharris describes the smart people at Google, Facebook with good intentions as having "a gun off-screen held to their heads" protecting their core harmful biz model. I call these the corporate guard rails but his analogy is much better.
pretty good hearing so far. one comment (and try hard as possible to not take this as partisan) but @ossoff is headed for rookie of year on understanding Facebook/Google's core biz model. To confirm not partisan, @HawleyMO won this two years ago. Will post video shortly.
Here is @ossoff in three tweets. Rightly starts with antitrust lawsuits as privacy, misinformation, algorithmic bias, censorship are all downstream concerns from power and surveillance model. Asks simple question which Facebook’s Bickert dodges. (1 of 3)
Then comes back at it and Bickert again dodges as she’s the content policy person. I wonder if @ossoff knows Bickert was the Facebook lawyer assigned to Facebook’s 2013 strategy to cut off competitive threats from their data APIs. She’s on the leaked emails. (2 of 3)
Finally, @ossoff circles around to Apple’s operating system update yesterday which kneecaps Facebook’s core biz model since a little known fact is a majority of their data comes from when you’re not actually using one of Facebook’s services. (3 of 3)
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