Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

[caltrek]

House Rebuke of TikTok CEO is a Bipartisan Affair
by Benjamin S. Weiss
March 23, 2023

Introduction:

WASHINGTON (Courthouse News) — A video of a firing handgun punctuated a hearing Thursday morning with the CEO of TikTok as some lawmakers pushed for a national ban against the social media platform.

The short TikTok clip, played by Florida Representative Kat Cammack, depicted what appeared to be a 3D rendering of a Glock 17 handgun firing with the caption “me asf [as f**k] at the House Energy and Commerce Committee on 03/23/23.”

After Cammack showed the video posted Feb. 10 during the meeting of the lower chamber’s energy panel, TikTok moderators quickly removed it. The clip had a little over 450 likes — thin gruel for a platform where some creators command engagement in the hundreds of thousands — but lawmakers positioned it regardless as an example of the threat posed by TikTok.

Cammack called it a blatant display of how vulnerable everyday users are on the platform.

“This video has been up for 41 days,” the Florida Republican told TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who was invited to give testimony. “It is a direct threat to the chairwoman of this committee and the people in this room. … You expect us to believe that you are capable of maintaining the data privacy and security of 150 million Americans, when you can’t even protect the people in this room?”

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/house-r ... n-affair/

caltrek’s comment: Defenders of free speech may object to the harsh scrutiny and criticism being levied against Tik Tok. Still, a lot rests on how truly independent from mainland China is Tik Tok?

Of course, one could also turn that argument around and apply it to social media platforms based in the U.S but operating in a foreign country. As an example, it would be a shame to see the Future Timeline forum banned or severely restricted across the globe simply because it is based in England. Still a big part of the equation rests on the size of the social media platform in question. The larger the size, the more appropriate it is to have oversight. So, yes, that even means that if certain foreign countries decide they don’t want a U.S based firm that is hogging up too much of their attending audience, then protective actions may be justified.

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Congress Might Want a TikTok Ban, But Their Questions Suggest Going Further
by Ali Breland
March 24, 2023

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) What if the United States government banned every single social media app? Not just TikTok. All of them. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter–sayonara. It may sound ludicrous, but if you apply the logic behind the kinds of questions posed at Thursday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the data security risks and alleged harm to children posed by TikTok, that’s what the members inadvertently proposed.
During the hearing, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) called out TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew for spreading dangerous viral trends—like the blackout challenge, which shows kids how to intentionally pass out. Rep. Gus Billarakis (R-Fla.) lamented TikTok serving users videos sympathetic to suicide. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) criticized illicit drug sales on the platform. Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) challenged the company for being addictive.

Carter, Billarakis, Guthrie, and others all essentially asked the same thing: What if we lived in a world where there was no algorithmic amplification of harmful content? That’s basically the same as asking: What if we lived in a world where there was no such thing as social media?

To be clear, encouraging self-harm, facilitating illegal drug sales, and deploying addictive design are bad, but they’re also not unique to TikTok. Every other social media platform has been a vector, to varying degrees, for such harms. Snapchat has become a vital tool for some drug dealers. Tumblr was infamously home to pro-eating disorder content. More bad things have happened on Facebook and YouTube than anyone could reasonably count. While it stands to reason TikTok’s powerful algorithm, which is uniquely good at widely distributing content, is probably better at distributing problematic, that isn’t desirable at any scale.

Alas, social media companies in their current form probably can’t exist without producing this kind of deleterious runoff. They’ve tried to get rid of the worst of it for years; they know that the PR risk of drug dealing and social security numbers theft is not worth the profit boost that minuscule subset of users brings. The same goes for content that directly encourages eating disorders or other self-harm.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... hearing/

caltrek’s comment: All of which reminds of the expression that “even paranoid people have enemies.”

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

TikTok Hires Former Biden Staffer as it Fights U.S. Ban
by Donald Shaw
March 24, 2023

Introduction:

(Sludge) On the same day its CEO appeared before Congress for the first time, social video company TikTok hired a new lobbyist in D.C. who formerly worked for President Joe Biden.

Ankit Desai, the new TikTok lobbyist, was a legislative correspondent for Biden for 10 months in 2005 while he was a U.S. senator, as Sludge previously reported. Since January 2021, Desai has been a managing member at lobbying firm ABI Associates.

TikTok hired Desai to lobby in D.C. on “Issues related to internet technology, regulation of content platforms,” according to a disclosure filed with the Senate.

The video platform company is under increasing scrutiny from lawmakers who say they are concerned about its data surveillance practices as well as national security concerns stemming from the fact that it is owned by a Chinese company. In December 2022, President Biden signed into law legislation from Sen. John Hawley (R-Mo.) that bans TikTok from being installed on federal devices. Earlier this month, the White House called on TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, to sell the app in order to avoid it being banned in the U.S. by Congress, a ramping up of its pressure which had previously focused on getting the company to sign a security deal with the U.S.

Desai is just one of the people in the Biden orbit who TikTok has recently hired. Public relations firm SKDK was also recently employed by the company according to reports. SKDK is very closely tied to the Biden administration, with many of its former employees having shifted to working in the administration in recent years. Most notable among these individuals is Anita Dunn, a founder and former partner at the firm, who is a senior advisor to Biden.

Read more here: https://readsludge.com/2023/03/24/tikto ... s-u-s-ban/

[weatheriscool]

Twitter pushes hate speech, extremist content into 'For You' pages
Source: Washington Post

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter is amplifying hate speech in its “For You” timeline, an unintended side effect of an algorithm that is supposed to show users more of what they want.

According to a Washington Post analysis of Twitter’s recommendation algorithm, accounts that followed “extremists” — hate-promoting accounts identified in a list provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center — were subjected to a mix of other racist and incendiary speech. That included tweets from a self-proclaimed Nazi, for example, a user the account did not follow.

Many were from users previously suspended by Twitter and let back on by new owner Elon Musk, who pledged to de-boost hate speech following his takeover of the site.

The tweets appeared on Twitter’s new “For You” page, which the company unveiled in January as part of Musk’s redesigned site. Twitter says the timeline includes “suggested content powered by a variety of signals,” including “how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... te-speech/

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Looks like its going more downhill.

[Powers]

Looks like its going more downhill.

The snowball keeps rolling.
One more

[caltrek]

More on that:

Twitter Will Not Let You Retweet, Like, or Reply to Substack Links
by Amanda Silberling
April 7, 2023

Extract:

(TechCrunch) So much for “free speech absolutism.”
…
The timing of this action doesn’t seem coincidental. Two days ago, Substack launched its Notes feature, which looks a whole lot like Twitter. Unlike other new Twitter alternatives, Substack has a huge advantage: people actually use the platform, and many writers already have massive followings there. Such writers include Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, who Twitter owner Elon Musk partnered with to publish “The Twitter Files.”

Under Musk’s ownership, Twitter has also taken steps to suppress content from Mastodon, an open source social network that gained a sudden influx of users when Musk took control of Twitter. In December, Twitter temporarily suspended Mastodon’s account and banned posting links to Mastodon servers. On its formerly banned Twitter account, Mastodon said, “Not a good sign if you need to build a wall to keep people in.”

“We’re disappointed that Twitter has chosen to restrict writers’ ability to share their work. Writers deserve the freedom to share links to Substack or anywhere else,” Substack’s founders wrote in an emailed statement. “Their livelihoods should not be tied to platforms where they don’t own their relationship with their audience, and where the rules can change on a whim.”

Musk is an active critic of mainstream media, going as far as slapping a misleading “state-affiliated media” label on NPR’s account. These labels are usually reserved for publications that do not have editorial independence from state government, but the government has no hand in NPR’s content; plus, the news organization only received about 1% of its budget from federal funding in 2020.

Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/07/twit ... -retweet/

[Time_Traveller]

More on that:

Twitter Will Not Let You Retweet, Like, or Reply to Substack Links
by Amanda Silberling
April 7, 2023

Extract:

(TechCrunch) So much for “free speech absolutism.”
…
The timing of this action doesn’t seem coincidental. Two days ago, Substack launched its Notes feature, which looks a whole lot like Twitter. Unlike other new Twitter alternatives, Substack has a huge advantage: people actually use the platform, and many writers already have massive followings there. Such writers include Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, who Twitter owner Elon Musk partnered with to publish “The Twitter Files.”

Under Musk’s ownership, Twitter has also taken steps to suppress content from Mastodon, an open source social network that gained a sudden influx of users when Musk took control of Twitter. In December, Twitter temporarily suspended Mastodon’s account and banned posting links to Mastodon servers. On its formerly banned Twitter account, Mastodon said, “Not a good sign if you need to build a wall to keep people in.”

“We’re disappointed that Twitter has chosen to restrict writers’ ability to share their work. Writers deserve the freedom to share links to Substack or anywhere else,” Substack’s founders wrote in an emailed statement. “Their livelihoods should not be tied to platforms where they don’t own their relationship with their audience, and where the rules can change on a whim.”

Musk is an active critic of mainstream media, going as far as slapping a misleading “state-affiliated media” label on NPR’s account. These labels are usually reserved for publications that do not have editorial independence from state government, but the government has no hand in NPR’s content; plus, the news organization only received about 1% of its budget from federal funding in 2020.

Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/07/twit ... -retweet/

Hmm, i wonder why i left the birdy.

[Time_Traveller]

Twitter Company ‘No Longer Exists,’ Is Now Part of Musk’s X Corp

APRIL 11, 2023 3:18 PM

Twitter has ceased to be an independent company after merging with a newly formed shell firm called X Corp., driving speculation about what Elon Musk intends for the social media platform.

Twitter “no longer exists” after being merged with X Corp., according to an April 4 document submitted in a California court for a lawsuit filed against the company and its former chief executive, Jack Dorsey, last year by conservative activist Laura Loomer.

It’s unclear what the change means for Twitter, which has seen a sweeping overhaul since Musk bought the company for $44 billion last year. The billionaire owner has in the past suggested that buying Twitter would be an “accelerant” for creating X — which he dubbed an “everything app.” Musk tweeted about the move Tuesday with the single character “X.”

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/ ... ter-x-corp

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

Parler Abruptly Taken Down By New Owners -- Site Replaced With Brutal Statement on Conservative 'Twit

Parler Abruptly Taken Down By New Owners — Site Replaced With Brutal Statement on Conservative ‘Twitter Clone’

The Parler app and website were taken offline Friday after parent company Parlement Technologies Inc. announced it reached a deal with media company Starboard to buy the faltering social network.

The conservative social media app was marketed and adopted as an alternative to Twitter for conservatives, and became a highly MAGA and Donald Trump-focused niche service.

In December, a deal to sell Parler to rapper controversial Kanye West fell through, leaving the company in a lurch resulting in massive layoffs at Parlement. Parler CEO George Farmer, husband of conservative pundit Candace Owens, is being replaced, but not many other details were available about the deal.

The app was taken offline and replaced by a brutally frank assessment from new owner Starboard, which owns several conservative-leaning publications. Describing Parler as “the world’s pioneering uncancelable free speech platform,” the statement then flatly declares: “No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-AA19S8jV

[weatheriscool]

Montana Just Passed the First State TikTok Ban
https://www.yahoo.com/news/montana-just ... 00394.html

Montana made history on Friday by becoming the first state legislature to approve a wholesale TikTok affecting nearly all devices in the state. The first-of-its-kind ban, which goes far beyond previous state efforts banning the app on government devices, could set the precedent for a wave of TikTok bans in other Republican-led states. Widespread TikTok bans, for better or worse, could become a reality.

The state’s House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill, called SB 419, by a margin of 54-43 on Friday afternoon. Montana’s state senate already approved the bill back in March, meaning the only thing preventing it from becoming law is a signature from governor and known journalist body-slammer Greg Gianforte. Once signed, the ban will take effect in January 2024. However, the bill would become void if Congress enacts its own national TikTok ban. The bill also wouldn’t apply if TikTok divests its US business from Chinese ownership.

How would the ban work?

SB 419 prohibits TikTok from operating “within the territorial jurisdiction of Montana,” over fears the app could be manipulated by the Chinese government for espionage purposes. If TikTok or app stores violate the law, Montana’s Department of Justice could slap them with penalties of up to $10,000 per day for the length of the violation. Those fines would apply to entities facilitating TikTok’s download rather than the app’s users.

“TikTok endangers the safety of Montanans and Americans at large,” Montana state Sen. Shelley Vance, one of the bill’s primary authors said according to KTVH. “We know that beyond a doubt that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is operating as a surveillance arm of the Chinese Communist Party and gathers information about Americans against their will.”

[weatheriscool]

Canada's public broadcaster quits Twitter, joining US outlets
Source: The Hill

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) announced that it will quit posting content on Elon Musk-owned Twitter, joining other U.S.-based media outlets.

“Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter,” CBC wrote in a tweet on Monday.

Twitter hit CBC, along with other media outlets receiving some public funding, with a “government-funded” label on its account, which amassed more than 32,000 followers.

According to Twitter policy, government-funded media is defined as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... r-AA19YTge

[Time_Traveller]

Interest in joining Twitter has plunged after surging when Elon Musk took over last year, Google data shows

Apr 17, 2023, 4:33 PM GMT+1

Interest in joining Twitter has plunged in the six months since Elon Musk's takeover, according to Google Trends data compiled by the web-hosting company Fasthosts.

Google Trends' index for searches of "Twitter sign up" has plummeted 81% from a November peak, just weeks after the world's second-richest person took control of the social-media company.

Fasthosts' report adds that searches for how to delete accounts have now returned to pre-Musk levels, but those relating to joining Twitter appear to be less common than before the acquisition.

That could be because so many people have now joined Twitter — as Musk has said usage is at an all-time high, and tweeted an internal report saying it had crossed 250 million daily users for the first time.

Although Fasthosts suggests it would be "idealistic" to say this is the only reason for the declining interest. "Searches being as low as they are will not be the scenario those in charge were hoping for, a sign of potentially sluggish future growth," it said.

https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter ... &r=US&IR=T