The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday unanimously voted to approve a plan to subpoena chief executives of Twitter, Alphabet’s Google and Facebook for a hearing likely to be held before the election on a prized legal immunity enjoyed by internet companies.
The hearing will discuss reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which offers tech companies protection from liability over content posted by users.

The panel’s top Democrat Maria Cantwell, who opposed the move last week, saying she was against using “the committee’s serious subpoena power for a partisan effort 40 days before an election,” changed her mind and voted to approve the move.

“I actually can’t wait to ask Mr. Zuckerberg further questions,” Cantwell said. “I welcome the debate about 230.”

The committee, chaired by Republican Senator Roger Wicker, had originally asked the executives to come on Oct. 1 on a voluntary basis and was ready to issue subpoenas last week.

On Thursday, he said Section 230’s “sweeping liability protections” are stifling diversity of political discourse on the internet.

“After extending an invite to these executives, I regret that they have again declined to participate and answer questions about issues that are so visible and urgent to the American people,” Wicker said.

Republican President Donald Trump has made holding tech companies accountable for allegedly stifling conservative voices a theme of his administration. As a result, calls for a reform of Section 230 have been intensifying ahead of the elections, but there is little chance of approval by Congress this year.

Last week Trump met with nine Republican state attorneys general to discuss the fate of Section 230 after the Justice Department unveiled a legislative proposal aimed at reforming the law.

The chief executives of Google, Facebook, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc recently testified before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel. The panel, which is investigating how the companies’ practices hurt rivals, is expected to release its report as early as next Monday.

Source:reuters

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Twitter's moves to label or hide comments from President Donald Trump have escalated a feud between the social network and the White House, but there could be more to come.

The messaging platform has a range of "enforcement" options for dealing with content in violation of its policies, each of which carries its own potential risks and costs.

Twitter has shown a newfound willingness to enforce its policies," said Daniel Kreiss, a University of North Carolina professor specializing in politics and social media.

"If you're a private company you have a right to regulate content, and it behooves those companies to enforce these policies in a fair and transparent and publicly justifiable way. I think Twitter will do this in a consistent way."

While Twitter could have acted before on Trump's tweets, "I think there has been a gradual shift in thinking at Twitter inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its thinking about misinformation that is harmful," said Tiffany Li, a fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project who specializes in social media.

Twitter, which this week added fact-check labels to two Trump tweets and a violation notice on another, can go further under its enforcement guidelines.

One option would be to "downrank" or limit the visibility of a tweet, or to remove it.

But Twitter's policies also include a "public interest" exception which would require leaving a tweet online but with the possibility of blocking "engagements" such as retweets and likes.

Kreiss said that because of Trump's importance as a public figure, "I don't think you'll see a takedown" of his tweets but "you might see actions preventing these things from being amplified."

Twitter's guidelines note that "world leaders are not above our policies entirely" and that the platform reserves the right to remove tweets that promote terrorism, violence or self-harm, or includes private information about another person.

- Most drastic steps -

Twitter's policies say the company may suspend or delete an account for repeated violations.

Some of Trump's critics have called for him to be "de-platformed" for his conduct, but such a move could create a political firestorm by acting against a leader with 80 million followers.

"They're not going to want to put themselves out on a limb," said Steven Livingston, director of the George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics.

At the same time, Livingston said, Twitter may be making a calculation that it can withstand the pressure as Trump moves further to the extreme.

"The smart people at Twitter are going to want to test the waters to determine if are they putting themselves at political risk by standing up to Trump," he said.

Twitter has already triggered the wrath of Trump, who two days after tweets of his on mail-in voting were tagged as misleading, signed an executive order which could lead to tighter oversight of social media platforms. There are doubts about the order's legality, however.

The San Francisco company carefully weighed its decision this week before labeling Trump's tweets for the first time, according to the news platform OneZero's account of deliberations.

"The company needed to do what's right, and we knew from a comms perspective that all hell would break loose," spokesman Brandon Borrman told OneZero.

Twitter drew an intense backlash not only from the president but from "the internet mob" which directed anger at a specific company executive, according to Li.

"This is troublesome because while Twitter as a company is a relatively strong entity, an individual is more vulnerable," she said.

The dramatic clash between Trump and Twitter may have consequences for both, but both sides may also end up benefitting, according to Kreiss.

"I don't think Trump is going to leave Twitter because this is how he uses it to communicate," Kreiss said.

The conflict "sets up a foil for him and helps him mobilize his base," the researcher said.

"Ironically this is good for Twitter too because it now makes it the center of fundamental debate going into the 2020 election, and it will increase use of the platform."

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Google is starting to roll out a new editing mode for Google Photos on Android, which adds machine learning-powered automatic suggestions, and improved tools for more granular manual controls to help make your photos look even better.

The biggest change is a new “Suggestions” tab in the photo editing menu, which will offer recommendations for edits for the specific photo you’re currently looking at, automatically adjusting things like “brightness, contrast, and portrait effects.” The broad edits are also just a starting point — Google will also show you what edits it made, and let you tweak them further.
To start, Google is offering some basic options for suggestions, like “Enhance” and “Color Pop,” but the company promises it’ll continue to expand its lineup of options optimized around specific types of images (like portraits, landscapes, or sunsets) in the coming months, starting with Pixel phones.

Google is also rolling out a new interface for its general editing tools, for things like brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, white point, blur, and more, making it easier for users to scroll through each option and adjust it for the image in question.

The new Google Photos editing tools should be rolling out on Android devices today. No iOS release date was announced.

Source:theverge

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Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would start promoting content from public Facebook Groups in users’ news feeds and in search engine results, defying calls by watchdog groups to limit algorithmic recommendations ahead of U.S. elections next month.
In a blog post, Facebook app chief Fidji Simo said the company would surface recommendations in news feeds by showing “related discussions” from public groups next to a link or post. Facebook Groups are communities that form around shared interests, and public groups’ posts can be viewed by any user. Simo said Facebook would also start showing conversations from public groups outside the app, such as in web searches.

Facebook declined to specify when the changes would be rolled out, with a spokesman saying only that U.S. tests would begin “in a very limited capacity” in the coming weeks.

The company, which made groups a strategic priority last year, also said it was adding new moderation tools for the more than 70 million people running those communities to help them reject posts, lead discussions and arrange paid sponsorships.

According to an internal memo seen by The Verge here, the groups push this year has been a success for engagement on the Facebook app, with posts up 31.9% year over year as of August.

At the same time, the company has faced a series of scandals over extremist activity within groups, including the spread of thousands of Boogaloo, QAnon, and militia groups and communities promoting health misinformation.

Facebook has gradually removed some such groups and limited recommendations to others.

Its new groups push comes days after Accountable Tech and a dozen other advocacy organizations called on Facebook to pause its use of group recommendations altogether until the results of the Nov. 3 elections are formally certified.

The coalition accused Facebook of prioritizing groups despite red flags from researchers, warning the tools have become “hidden breeding grounds for disinformation campaigns and organizing platforms for extremists.”

Adam Conner, a former Facebook executive who now leads technology policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said the company’s decision risked accelerating those dynamics.

“Giving content from those groups wider distribution and easier discovery is a dangerous choice right before a contentious election during a pandemic,” said Conner.

source:reuters

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