After briefly stopping the process, Twitter has reopened its verification request portal.

This means that users can resubmit their verification requests. Due to a flood of requests, the microblogging service had to cease the verification procedure weeks after its start. Twitter reactivated its verification portal five years after it had been closed.

Twitter suspended the verification procedure on May 29, but reinstated it four days later. Twitter announced the same via its official account, writing, "Requests are open! Sorry for the interruption, but you may now resume your quest for a blue badge.” Some users are still waiting for the verification request form to appear on their app.

After receiving widespread criticism for verifying the account of a white nationalist, Twitter ceased confirming profiles in 2017. However, Twitter has issued a new set of criteria, detailing who will be verified and how the process will be carried out. In a blog post, Twitter stated that it will employ both technology and a human perspective to verify user accounts.

Twitter had begun the verification process for all users, but it had noted in its blog that users who fall into the following categories would receive a verified profile: government, companies, brands, and organizations, news organizations and journalists, entertainment, sports and gaming, activists, organizers, and other influential individuals. As a result, the user will have to prove his identification and offer numerous links to authenticate his identification as well as work-related facts while filling out the verification form.

Twitter also requires its users to have a complete profile. Users must have a profile name, a profile image, and a verified email address or phone number. Users must have been active in the last six months and have a track record of following the Twitter Rules.

The desired blue badge on a user's profile aids in determining the validity of accounts of significant public interest. According to the site, "it provides individuals on Twitter more context about who they're having conversations with, so they can judge if it's trustworthy," which "leads to healthier, more educated interactions," according to study.

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Facebook said Tuesday that it removed a small network of accounts and pages linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the “troll factory” that has used social media accounts to sow political discord in the U.S. since the 2016 presidential election.

Twitter also suspended five related accounts. The company said the tweets from these Russia-linked accounts“were low quality and spammy” and that most received few if any, likes or retweets.

The people behind the accounts recruited “unwitting” freelance journalists to post in English and Arabic, mainly targeting left-leaning audiences. Facebook said Tuesday the network’s activity focused on the U.S., U.K., Algeria and Egypt and other English-speaking countries and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The company said it started investigating the network based on information from the FBI about its off-Facebook activities. The network was in the early stages of development, Facebook added and saw “nearly no engagement” on Facebook before it was removed. The network consisted of 13 Facebook accounts and two pages. About 14,000 accounts followed one or more of the pages, though the English-language page had a little over 200 followers, Facebook said.

Still, its presence points to ongoing Russian efforts to disrupt the U.S. election and sow political discord in an already divided country. To evade detection, the people behind the network recruited Americans to do their bidding, likely unknowingly, both as journalists and as people authorized to purchase political advertisements in the U.S.

Facebook said the people behind the network posted about global events ranging from racial justice in the U.S. and the U.K., NATO, the QAnon conspiracy, President Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. The network spent about $480 on advertising on Facebook, primarily in U.S. dollars. However, Facebook said less than $2 worth of those ads targeted the U.S.

The network’s posts directed people to a website called PeaceData, which claims to be a global news organization that, according to a report by research firm Graphika, “took a left-wing stance, opposing what it portrayed as Western imperialism and the excesses of capitalism.”

The FBI said in a statement Tuesday that it provided information to the platforms “to better protect against threats to the nation’s security and our democratic processes.”

“While technology companies independently make decisions regarding the content of their platforms and the safety of their members, the FBI is actively engaged with our federal partners, election officials, and the private sector to mitigate foreign threats to our nation’s security and our elections,” the statement said.

Separately, Twitter said Tuesday it will start adding context to its trending section, which shows some of the most popular topics on the service at any given moment. Experts and even Twitter’s own employees have expressed concerns that the trending section can be gamed to spread misinformation and abuse.

Twitter uses algorithms and human employees to determine what topics are trending — it is not simply the most popular topics, but topics that are newly popular at any given time. But it’s not difficult to artificially elevate trends.

In the coming weeks, Twitter said, users in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, India and several other countries will see brief descriptions added to some trends to add context.

“To be clear, we know there is more work to do to improve trends and the context updates we’re announcing today are just a small step in the right direction,” said Liz Lee, a product trust partner and Frank Oppong, a product manager, in a blog post. “We need to make trends better and we will.”

source:AP

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YouTube is following the lead of Twitter and Facebook, saying that it is taking more steps to limit QAnon and other baseless conspiracy theories that can lead to real-world violence.

The Google-owned video platform said Thursday it will now prohibit material targeting a person or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify violence.

One example would be videos that threaten or harass someone by suggesting they are complicit in a conspiracy such as QAnon, which paints President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and “deep state” government officials.

Pizzagate is another internet conspiracy theory — essentially a predecessor to QAnon — that would fall in the banned category. Its promoters claimed children were being harmed at a pizza restaurant in Washington. D.C. A man who believed in the conspiracy entered the restaurant in December 2016 and fired an assault rifle. He was sentenced to prison in 2017.

YouTube is the third of the major social platforms to announce policies intended to rein in QAnon, a conspiracy theory they all helped spread.

Twitter announced in July a crackdown on QAnon, though it did not ban its supporters from its platform. It did ban thousands of accounts associated with QAnon content and blocked URLs associated with it from being shared. Twitter also said that it would stop highlighting and recommending tweets associated with QAnon.

Facebook, meanwhile, announced last week that it was banning groups that openly support QAnon. It said it would remove pages, groups and Instagram accounts for representing QAnon — even if they don’t promote violence.

The social network said it will consider a variety of factors in deciding whether a group meets its criteria for a ban. Those include the group’s name, its biography or “about” section, and discussions within the page or group on Facebook, or an account on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

YouTube said it had already removed tens of thousands of QAnon-videos and eliminated hundreds of channels under its existing policies — especially those that explicitly threaten violence or deny the existence of major violent events.

“All of this work has been pivotal in curbing the reach of harmful conspiracies, but there’s, even more, we can do to address certain conspiracy theories that are used to justify real-world violence, like QAnon,” the company said in Thursday’s blog post.

Experts said the move shows that YouTube is taking threats around violent conspiracy theories seriously and recognizes the importance of limiting the spread of such conspiracies. But, with QAnon increasingly creeping into mainstream politics and U.S. life, they wonder if it is too late.

“While this is an important change, for almost three years YouTube was a primary site for the spread of QAnon,” said Sophie Bjork-James, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University who studies QAnon. “Without the platform Q would likely remain an obscure conspiracy. For years YouTube provided this radical group an international audience.”

Source:apnews

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Twitter has finally responded to India's new IT rules and said it would strive to comply with applicable law in India. Twitter said that the Tech that it is particularly concerned about the requirement to make an individual (the compliance officer) criminally liable for content on the platform, the requirements for proactive monitoring, and the blanket authority to seek information about our customers.

Twitter goes on to add that this represents dangerous overreach that is inconsistent with open, democratic principles."Twitter is deeply committed to the people of India. Our service has proven vital for the public conversation and a source of support for people during the pandemic. To keep our service available, we will strive to comply with applicable law in India. But, just as we do around the world, we will continue to be strictly guided by principles of transparency, a commitment to empowering every voice on the service, and protecting freedom of expression and privacy under the rule of law," a Twitter spokesperson said. Twitter has also urged the Ministry of Electronics and IT to publish these Standard Operating Protocols on procedural aspects of compliance for public consultation.

The company also requested an extension in order for Twitter to implement the rules. Twitter India requested the Ministry to consider a minimum of three months extension for Twitter to implement the Rules.

The company added that it continues to accept grievances from users and law enforcement via its existing grievance redressal channel available here under the new Rules. The company also expressed how it feels about recent events in India where it was served notice."Right now, we are concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve. We, alongside many in civil society in India and around the world, have concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global Terms of Service, as well as with core elements of the new IT Rules," a Twitter spokesperson said.

"We plan to advocate for changes to elements of these regulations that inhibit free, open public conversation. We will continue our constructive dialogue with the Indian Government and believe it is critical to adopt a collaborative approach. It is the collective responsibility of elected officials, industry, and civil society to safeguard the interests of the public," the spokesperson added.

According to Twitter, the escalated content constitutes legitimate free speech. Yet, due to the law’s limited scope under Section 69A, which gives limited room to an intermediary to defend the content, it was compelled to withhold in response to a non-compliance notice. Not doing so poses penal consequences with many risks for Twitter employees, adds the company.

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