But it’s a behavior that hasn’t quite translated to Silicon Valley, where company executives often don’t significantly ramp up platform integrity efforts until just weeks before votes are cast.
Now a group of former social media workers is urging companies to shift gears and adopt a more “always on” approach to protecting US elections, citing the ongoing wave of attacks on the election process.
A new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center, a DC-based think tank made up of industry veterans, calls on digital platforms to be more proactive in coordinating with local officials to combat misinformation and misinformation about the voting process. . It encourages companies to deploy resources and policy changes earlier, and keep them in place longer, to avoid threats.
“Elections don’t always end on election night, a lesson that was brought home in 2020 when escalating disinformation about the election got out of hand, leading to the January 6 attack… The election efforts of tech companies can’t end on election night either.” wrote the group.
The report urges companies to engage directly with government officials even years before an election to address concerns earlier in the process, including in the primaries and other points of the campaign.
“It’s much easier to be able to prevent a fire than to try to put it out after it’s happened,” he said. Collier Fernekesa research analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The report was developed with input from local election officials and technology industry leaders who participated in a joint exercise to combat potential digital threats, its authors said.
While many tech companies say they stay in close contact with election officials, historically they have made a number of plans in the run-up to national elections.
I tweet announced earlier this month – less than 90 days from the interim deadline of November 8 – that it would start implementing the election integrity rules in the context of this year’s elections. In January, Twitter confirmed to me that it had stopped applying the same policies “to content related to the outcome of the now-concluded 2020 US election.”
The moves highlight how some major platforms have closely tied their integrity efforts to the scope of national elections.
Companies in the past have also ramped up resources in the weeks leading up to Election Day.
In 2018, Facebook grabbed headlines for setting up a dedicated election “war room” two months after the last US midterm elections. But the company quietly ended the push a few weeks after the election, as Bloomberg News reported at the time.
Facebook has also faced criticism for withdrawing “dozens of election-season measures it had used to crack down on misleading and hateful content” after the 2020 election and before the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, as my colleagues reported. (Facebook said at the time that “responsibility” for the violence rested with the protesters and that it took steps to limit content that seeks to delegitimize the election outcome.)
While big tech companies have the capacity to quickly deploy resources just weeks before votes are cast, election officials don’t have the same luxury, the group said.
“Unfortunately, there may be a mismatch between the high-speed development cycles of technology companies and the realities of the election calendar,” they wrote in the report. “Often, technology roadmaps are only created about six months to a year, which is too late to do the in-depth resource building that protects election integrity.”
Those “inconsistent” schedules make it harder for local officials to coordinate with tech companies, it said. Katie Harbath, a member of the center and a former policy staffer at Facebook. And that has limited the impact of joint initiatives in the past, including a push by companies in 2020 to get more volunteers to sign up to be poll workers, she said.
“Some of the companies put up alarms and labels [saying], ‘Hey, go sign up to be a survey worker in your jurisdiction,’ she said. “However, many election officials said that … it backfired because they ended up not having enough space for everyone who was interested.”
Top lawmakers investigate Twitter whistleblower complaint
Democratic and Republican lawmakers appeared united in their responses to a whistleblower complaint filed by Twitter’s former security chief Peter “Mudge” Zatkowith policymakers saying the revelations raised important national security and privacy issues, Zakrzewski the cat reports. Zatko spoke to three congressional committees on Tuesday, Zatko’s lawyer John Tye said in a Twitter Spaces event hosted by The Post. And the heads of three key congressional committees said they are looking into Zatko’s revelations.
- Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who heads the Commerce panel, which focuses on consumer protection, called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Zatko’s claims and bring “enforcement actions” such as fines against the company where appropriate .
- Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said the revelations show the FTC “absolutely needs more resources.”
- The political fallout could intensify amid Republican concerns that Twitter has unfairly suppressed their tweets. “Twitter has a long history of making really bad decisions about everything from censorship to security practices,” Sen said. blond frame, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee. “This is a major concern given the company’s ability to influence national discourse and global events.”
The complaint could also inject new urgency into talks over privacy and other technology-related legislation. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (DN.J.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the top lawmaker on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said that if Zatko’s allegations are true, they “reaffirm” the need for Congress to protect Americans’ data by passing privacy legislation.
Twitter has retracted Zatko’s complaint, with spokeswoman Anna Hughes saying it appears to have “inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.” Security and privacy are “company-wide priorities” at Twitter, Hughes said. “Gosh. Zatko’s allegations and opportunistic timing seem designed to attract attention and cause damage to Twitter, its customers and shareholders,” she said.
A major crypto firm is challenging US sanctions on Tornado Cash
Tether, which issues the world’s largest dollar-pegged token, is not blacklisting accounts linked to Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency anonymization service called a “mixer” that the Treasury Department sanctioned this month. Tory Newmyer AND Jeremy B. Merrill report. Cybercriminals, including North Korean hackers, have used Tornado Cash to launder the proceeds of their crimes, Treasury said.
“Tether has not been contacted by US officials or law enforcement with a request” to freeze Tornado Cash transactions, Tether Chief Technology Officer Paolo Arduino said, noting that it “normally complies with requests from US authorities”.
It is not clear whether Tether has a legal obligation to comply with the sanctions. The company, which is based in Hong Kong, suggests it doesn’t because it “does not operate in the United States or onboard US persons as customers,” Ardoino said. But he said the company views the Treasury sanctions “as part of its world-class compliance program.”
Experts said the issue is controversial. But moving Tether can be dangerous. “It’s never a very good idea to test OFAC. Right now, it’s a particularly bad time for any crypto-related company to do that,” said a former senior official with the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces sanctions. “It seems that’s what they’re doing.”
Facebook settles location tracking lawsuit
Company’s $37.5 million settlement resolves claims it violated users’ privacy by tracking their movements Reuters Jonathan Stamp reports.
“Users said that while they did not want to share their locations with Facebook, the company nevertheless inferred where they were from their IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and used that information to send them targeted ads,” Stempel writes. . “Monday’s settlement covers people in the United States who used Facebook after January 30, 2015.”
The company has denied wrongdoing and did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
The revelation of Zatko’s Twitter whistleblower was much discussed on Twitter. It was also the subject of lighter tweets. our colleague, Joe Men:
Researcher and blogger Jane Manchun Wong:
Absence of #DeleteTwitter Tweets After Twitter Whistleblower’s Bombshell Report Shows We’re All Stuck On This Site
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 23, 2022
Twitter reshuffles ‘health’ team amid spam bot debate (Reuters)
Facebook restricted a Planned Parenthood post telling people about abortion pills (Motherboard)
Snap agrees to $35 million settlement over privacy lawsuit (The Verge)
Meta learned via tweet of FTC lawsuit to block VR deal (Bloomberg)
People are asking Cloudflare to take down Kiwi Farms (Motherboard)
that‘That’s all for today – thank you so much for joining us! Be sure to tell others to subscribe of technology 202 here. Get in touch with tips, comments or greetings I tweet or email.
