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issie lapowsky Profile picture
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6 May, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Holy Moly. NY AG report finds out of the 22 million net neutrality comments the FCC received in 2017, 18 million were fake.

Report alleges a "secret campaign" by the broadband industry, which offered consumers rewards for male enhancement drugs ‼️

protocol.com/fcc-net-neutra…
It also finds that one single 19-year-old college student submitted more than 7 million pro-net neutrality comments under different fake identities. Wild. protocol.com/fcc-net-neutra…
Every line of this is more flabbergasting than the last: One of the lead generators working with the broadband industry used info obtained from a data breach to submit comments in unwitting consumers' names. protocol.com/fcc-net-neutra…
The report also cites the "Mad Libs" esque comments that the broadband industry sponsored to create the “appearance of multiple, unrelated efforts.”

I wrote about this in 2017 when @FiscalNote detected the similarities between these comments: wired.com/story/bots-bro…

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More from @issielapowsky

issie lapowsky Profile picture
5 May
This will get overlooked, but Michael McConnell of the Oversight Board is making a point that's much broader than Trump and gets into concerns about Facebook jail: "Users and their audiences, must not be left in a state of uncertainty as to time or reasons for restoration."
"In the future, if a head of state of government, or high government official repeatedly post messages that pose a risk of harm, Facebook should either suspend the account for definitive period of time, or delete the account." - @HelleThorning_S of the Oversight Board
"Anyone who's concerned about Facebook's excessive concentration of power should welcome the oversight board clearly telling Facebook that they cannot invent new unwritten rules when it suits them." -@HelleThorning_S arguing this is what the board is for. Not sure ppl will agree!
Read 5 tweets
issie lapowsky Profile picture
27 Apr
Sen. Coons begins hearing on algorithms by saying he and Sasse don't have a specific legislative agenda: "Ranking member Sasse and I plan to use this hearing as an opportunity to learn."
Sasse also strikes a conciliatory tone. "It's too easy in DC for us to take any complicated issue and reduce it immediately to heroes and villains and whatever the regulatory or legislative pre-determined tool was to then slam it down on the newly to be defined problem."
Seems clear Coons and Sasse are trying to position this as the "serious" hearing, discouraging the usual partisan finger-pointing.

People, we're potentially looking at two legit and informative tech hearings in a row. Could it be? Reserving judgment.
Read 32 tweets
issie lapowsky Profile picture
19 Mar
I'm creating a new thread to talk about this issue, because I think it's an important one.

Facebook told me multiple times that Ad Observer collects and publishes data on users who hadn't consented.

It was such a damning allegation, I wanted to know whose data they meant. 1/x
I pushed until they confirmed they were talking about advertisers' public Pages, not private users' accounts.

Had I published their statement outright, it would have been misleading or at least incomplete and damaging to the NYU researchers. protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
It reminded me of how much tech cos control the narrative around researchers intent.

The most glaring example of this was the vilification of the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which I covered for WIRED here: wired.com/story/the-man-…
Read 4 tweets
issie lapowsky Profile picture
19 Mar
NEW: Facebook’s attempt to shutter research at NYU on political ads is just the most extreme example of the increasingly fraught relationship between platforms and academics.

My #longreads on how tech giants both court and crush the people who study them protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
I talked to @LauraEdelson2 of NYU about her legal issues with Facebook, @mark_ledwich about how the NYU case has put a chill on funding into YouTube transparency projects, @gchaslot about scraping YouTube data and @j_a_tucker about collaborating w/Facebook protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
While reporting, Facebook told me Ad Observer violates their terms by scraping/publishing users' data who didn't consent.

That claim shocked me until I realized: the users Facebook was talking about were advertisers whose ads and Pages are already public protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
Read 5 tweets
issie lapowsky Profile picture
17 Nov 20
If Senators actually do their jobs during this hearing, we could get answers to critical questions about the efficacy of Facebook and Twitters' election defenses.

But I don't have high hopes. protocol.com/post-election-…
And we're off. In opening remarks, Graham asks: "If you're not a newspaper at Twitter or Facebook, then why do you have editorial control over the New York Post?"

Note: Not republishing something from the NY Post is not the same as having editorial control over the NY Post.
Some rational thinking from Graham: "I don't want the government to take over the job of telling America what tweets are legitimate and what are not."
Read 39 tweets
issie lapowsky Profile picture
27 Nov 18
Lawmakers from 9 countries are questioning Facebook's Richard Allan right now in London. First up is Canada's Charlie Angus, who's going in on the fact that Zuckerberg didn't show up like they wanted him to. He condemns the "frat boy billionaires" in CA upending global democracy.
"You have lost the trust of the international community to self-police." - Angus of Canada
Background: This should be an interesting day. Last week, the British MPs seized a cache of internal FB documents that are part of a legal case in CA and were ordered sealed. The docs allegedly back up accusations of Facebook exploiting user data and anticompetitive practices.
Read 19 tweets

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