The Chinese company that owns popular video-sharing app TikTok is exploring all possibilities to ensure that its subsidiary can continue operating in the United States, according to a memo sent out Monday by Chief Executive Officer Zhang Yiming.Beijing-based ByteDance has come under pressure from Washington to sell off its U.S. TikTok operations over concerns that the company’s links to the Chinese government threaten the privacy of U.S. citizens.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Sunday that President Donald Trump is likely to take action in the coming days. People familiar with the matter told Reuters that Trump agreed to give ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale to Microsoft.In the meantime, Microsoft said in a blog post Sunday that its CEO, Satya Nadella, and Trump had a conversation on the potential acquisition and “Microsoft is prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States.”Zhang, who founded ByteDance in 2012, said Monday that his teams are working around-the-clock “for the best outcome.” Without naming Microsoft directly, Zhang acknowledged that ByteDance is in negotiations with a tech firm, but “we have not decided on the final solution yet. The attention of the outside world and rumors around TikTok might last for a while,” he said.According to the memo that was reported in the Chinese media, Zhang complained to his employees that “the current geopolitical and public opinion environment is becoming more and more complex. TikTok’s U.S. business is facing the possibility of being forced to sell by CFIUS, or TikTok products may be banned in the United States due to administrative orders.”FILE – Tik Tok logos are seen on smartphones in front of a displayed ByteDance logo in this illustration taken Nov. 27, 2019.CFIUS, or the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, opened a review last year of the Musical.ly purchase that led to TikTok’s creation. Zhang also said that despite their willingness to adopt more technical solutions to allay Washington’s concerns, the company believes CFIUS will require it to sell the TikTok U.S. operation. “We do not agree with this decision,” he said.As TikTok surged to become one of the most popular apps in the world, Washington began calling for a national security investigation into the app. White House officials and lawmakers are worried what information TikTok shares with the Chinese government about the app’s roughly 100 million American users.Zhang emphasized again that TikTok is a privately run business.“We’ve always firmly protected the security of users’ data, the platform’s independence and transparency,” he said.U.S. officials have argued that such guarantees mean little because Chinese companies generally have no choice but to bend to Communist Party demands.On Monday China’s foreign ministry said it strongly opposed any U.S. actions against Chinese software companies, and it hoped the U.S. could stop its “discriminatory policies.”In an interview Monday with U.S. business news network CNBC, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called the company’s pursuit of TikTok “exciting.”“Price is important, as well as whatever restrictions come with it from a government perspective, but I think it’s an exciting avenue for Microsoft to really increase its consumer base,” he said.In the meantime, U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday called for a U.S. company to purchase TikTok.“A U.S. company should buy TikTok so everyone can keep using it and your data is safe,” he said in a tweet, “With TikTok in China, it’s subject to Chinese Communist Party laws that may require handing over data to their government.”
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The Chinese-owned social media app TikTok “is going to be out of business in the United States” on September 15, unless Microsoft or another company concludes a purchase deal that satisfies the U.S. government, President Donald Trump told reporters Monday.  “A very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States because we’re making it possible for this deal to happen,” explained Trump. “It’s a little bit like the landlord-tenant (relationship).”  The president suggested it would be “easier to buy the whole thing than to buy a portion” of TikTok. “How do you do 30 percent? Who is going to get the name? The name is hot. The brand hot. And who is going to get the name? How do you do that if it’s owned by two different companies?” Trump said at the White House. In a statement, Microsoft confirmed that its chief executive officer, Satya Nadella, had spoken to Trump and was committed to acquiring the company by the stated deadline.  “Microsoft will move quickly to pursue discussions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in a matter of weeks, and in any event completing these discussions no later than September 15, 2020. During this process, Microsoft looks forward to continuing dialogue with the United States government, including with the president,” the statement read.  “Price is important as well as whatever restrictions come with it from a government perspective, but I think it’s an exciting avenue for Microsoft to really increase its consumer base,” the company’s largest individual shareholder, former CEO Steve Ballmer told CNBC earlier Monday.  The Chinese video app is extremely popular globally. It has been downloaded 2 billion times, including 165 million times in the United States.    TikTok features not only entertainment videos, but also debates, and it takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the coming U.S. presidential election.   Trump said late last week that he would ban the app because of security concerns. Trump Sets Clock Ticking for TikTokUS president has threatened to ban popular Chinese-owned social media app amid security concerns Officials in Washington have repeatedly expressed concern that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing the company might share users’ data with the Chinese government.    ByteDance has said it does not share user data with the government of China and maintains that it stores Americans’ user data only in the United States and Singapore.  TikTok recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing.   TikTok General Manager Venessa Pappas uploaded a video on Saturday to reassure users that “we’re not going anywhere,” noting the platform has 1,500 employees in the U.S. and has been planning on bringing an additional 10,000 jobs into the country over the next three years.   The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, opened a national security review of TikTok last year.    CFIUS’s job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks. It can force companies to cancel deals or institute other measures it deems necessary for national security.     
  
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Microsoft Corp said Sunday it would continue talks to acquire popular short-video app TikTok from Chinese internet giant ByteDance. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has agreed to give ByteDance 45 days to negotiate the sale, two people familiar with the matter said Sunday.
 
Microsoft, which is aiming to conclude talks by Sept. 15, released a statement following a conversation between CEO Satya Nadella and Trump. It said it would ensure that all of the private data of TikTok’s American users is transferred to and remains in the United States.
 
“Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the president’s concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury,” Microsoft said in a statement.
 
The company added there was no certainty a deal would be reached.
 
The ByteDance-Microsoft negotiations will be overseen by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a U.S. government panel that has the right to block any agreement, the two sources added.
 
ByteDance, Microsoft and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.  
 
Earlier Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that Trump would take action soon.
 
“President Trump has said ‘enough’ and we’re going to fix it and so he will take action in the coming days with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party,” Pompeo said on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
 
And Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told ABC on Sunday that the Committee on Foreign Investment on the United States “agrees that TikTok cannot stay in the current format because it risks sending back information on 100 million Americans.”
 
Over the weekend several Republican senators said they backed a plan for ByteDance to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok.
 
Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on Twitter that a divestment “and purchase by U.S. company is win-win.”
 
Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican who chairs the Commerce Committee, added that “tight security measures need to be part of any deal in order to protect consumer data and ensure no foreign access.”
 
Republican Senator Marco Rubio said on Twitter “if the company & data can be purchased & secured by a trusted U.S. company that would be a positive & acceptable outcome.”
 
On Saturday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said the “right answer” to address security concerns about TikTok would be to “have an American company like Microsoft take over TikTok. Win-win. Keeps competition alive and data out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.” 
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Facebook announced Saturday that it had obeyed a Brazilian judge’s order for a worldwide block on the accounts of 12 of President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters who are under investigation for allegedly running a fake news network.Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Friday night that the company had failed to fully comply with a previous ruling ordering the accounts to be shut down, saying they were still online and publishing by changing their registration to locations outside Brazil.Facebook issued a statement saying it had complied because of the threat of criminal liability for an employee in Brazil.But it called the new order “extreme,” saying it posed a “threat to freedom of expression outside of Brazil’s jurisdiction and conflicting with laws and jurisdictions worldwide.” The company said it would appeal to the full court.Facebook also argued it had complied with the previous order by “restricting the ability for the target Pages and Profiles to be seen from IP locations in Brazil.””People from IP locations in Brazil were not capable of seeing these Pages and Profiles even if the targets had changed their IP location,” the company said.Moraes said that Facebook ought to pay $ 367,000 in penalties for not complying with his previous decision during the last eight days.He also had ruled Twitter should block the accounts. While Twitter said then that the decision was disproportionate under Brazil’s freedom of speech rules and that it would appeal, the targeted profiles were disabled.Moraes is overseeing a controversial investigation to determine whether some of Bolsonaro’s most ardent allies are running a social media network aimed at spreading threats and fake news against Supreme Court justices.The probe is one of the main points of confrontation between Bolsonaro and the Supreme Court.The president himself filed a lawsuit last week demanding the accounts to be unblocked.
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President Donald Trump went to one of his private golf courses Saturday in Virginia after threatening to halt operations in the United States of a popular Chinese-owned video sharing social media app. “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” he told reporters Friday on Air Force One traveling with him from Florida. He said he would likely use an executive order to prohibit the app. No action was announced before the president left the White House Saturday morning for the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.Trump was seen by VOA dressed casually departing the West Wing of the White House. It is common for him on weekends to golf at his 325-hectare property, which is located 40 kilometers northwest of the White House.   Trump also told reporters on Air Force One the previous day that he does not support a deal that would allow a U.S. company to buy TikTok’s American operations. The app is extremely popular globally. It already has been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide, and 165 million of those downloads were in the United States. The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates, and it takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the coming U.S. presidential election. Officials in Washington are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing the company might share its user data with China’s government.When asked by Fox News last month whether Americans should download the app on their phones, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “Only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.” TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore. ByteDance has agreed to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, the Reuters news agency reported Saturday. TikTok also recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing. “Banning an app like TikTok, which millions of Americans use to communicate with each other, is a danger to free expression and technologically impractical,” said the American Civil Liberties Union.  The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, opened a national security review of TikTok last year.  CFIUS’s job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks. It can force companies to cancel deals or institute other measures it deems necessary for national security.Microsoft and other U.S. companies, in recent days, reportedly have been looking to purchase the U.S. operations of TikTok.Some on social media are accusing Trump of singling out TikTok because pranksters used the app to order hundreds of thousands of tickets to his June 20 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which attracted a smaller-than-expected crowd. TikTok is also where comedian Sarah Cooper posts her videos lip-synched to Trump sound bites, which have attracted millions of views.  Cooper on Friday, uploaded a video mouthing comments made by the president earlier in the day about TikTok.   How to tick tack pic.twitter.com/1Mn8nk363f
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) July 31, 2020
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President Donald Trump says he intends to ban the operation of TikTok in the U.S.Trump said Friday he could take action as soon as Saturday to stop the operation of the popular video-sharing social media app in the U.S.“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” he told reporters traveling with him Friday from Florida.He said he would likely use an executive order to prohibit the app.Trump does not support a deal that would allow a U.S. company to buy TikTok’s American operations.The app is extremely popular in both the U.S. and around the world. It has already been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide, and 165 million of those downloads were in the U.S.The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates and takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the coming U.S. presidential election.U.S. officials are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing that the company might share its user data with China’s government. However, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore. TikTok also recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing.Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said earlier this week that the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, would be looking into TikTok.CFIUS’s job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks. It can force companies to cancel deals or institute other measures it deems necessary for national security.  
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A British man, a Florida man and a Florida teen hacked the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in bitcoin, authorities said Friday. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office will prosecute him as adult. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, U.K., and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, were charged in California federal court. In one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, hackers sent out bogus tweets on July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. FILE – American reality-show star Kim Kardashian West takes a selfie as she rides on a classic car next to her husband, rap singer Kanye West in Havana, Cuba, May 4, 2016.The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous bitcoin address. “There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence,” U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California said in a news release. “Today’s charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived.” Although the case against the teen was also investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren explained that his office is prosecuting Clark in Florida state court because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate. “This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and he’ll be prosecuted here,” Warren said. Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media company’s employees into giving them access. It said hackers targeted “a small number of employees through a phone spear-phishing attack.”  “This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems,” the company tweeted.  After stealing employee credentials and getting into Twitter’s systems, the hackers were able to target other employees who had access to account support tools, the company said. FILE – Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders answers questions during an interview with Reuters in the Hague, Netherlands.The hackers targeted 130 accounts. They managed to tweet from 45 accounts, access the direct message inboxes of 36, and download the Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed.  Internal Revenue Service investigators in Washington, D.C., were able to identify two of the hackers by analyzing bitcoin transactions on the blockchain — the ledger where transactions are recorded — including ones the hackers attempted to keep anonymous, federal prosecutors said. Spear-phishing is a more targeted version of phishing, an impersonation scam that uses email or other electronic communications to deceive recipients into handing over sensitive information.  Twitter said it would provide a more detailed report later “given the ongoing law enforcement investigation.”  The company has previously said the incident was a “coordinated social engineering attack” that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools. It didn’t provide any more information about how the attack was carried out, but the details released so far suggest the hackers started by using the old-fashioned method of talking their way past security.  British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that a targeted Twitter employee or contractor received a message by phone asking them to call a number. “When the worker called the number they might have been taken to a convincing (but fake) helpdesk operator, who was then able to use social engineering techniques to trick the intended victim into handing over their credentials,” Clulely wrote Friday on his blog.  It’s also possible the hackers pretended to call from the company’s legitimate help line by spoofing the number, he said.  Hillsborough County court records didn’t list an attorney for Clark, and federal court records didn’t list attorneys for Sheppard or Fazeli. 
 
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Twitter Inc said on Friday it has permanently suspended the account of David Duke, a former leader of the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan, as the social media company tries to curb the spread of hateful content on its website.Duke’s account had been suspended for repeatedly violating Twitter’s policy on hateful content and harmful links, the micro-blogging site said.Under Twitter’s hateful conduct policy, any threats of attacks directed at people on the basis of their religion, race or ethnicity is prohibited on its website.Twitter has long been under pressure to clean up hateful content on its platform and has come under the scanner to control misinformation especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.The KKK is the oldest white supremacist group in the United States and its roots trace back to the Reconstruction period in the South that followed the Civil War.In addition to anti-Black views, the KKK has expressed anti-semitic, anti-immigrant and anti-gay views. 
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The European Union on Thursday imposed travel and financial sanctions on a department of Russia’s military intelligence service and on firms from North Korea and China over their suspected participation in major cyberattacks across the world.In its first-ever sanctions related to cybercrime, the EU targeted the department for special technologies of the Russian military intelligence service, known as Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, it said in a statement.The bloc accused the Russian service of having carried out two cyberattacks in June 2017, which hit several companies in Europe resulting in large financial losses. The service is also accused of two cyberattacks against Ukraine’s power grid in 2015 and 2016.Four individuals working for the Russian military intelligence service were also sanctioned for allegedly participating in an attempted cyberattack against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the Netherlands in April 2018.North Korean company Chosun Expo was also sanctioned on suspicion of having supported the Lazarus Group, which is deemed responsible for a series of major attacks worldwide, including an $81 million heist against Bangladesh Bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 2016, the world’s biggest cyber fraud.The company is also allegedly linked to an attack against Hollywood film studio Sony Pictures to prevent the release of a satirical movie about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in 2014.The U.S. Treasury last year imposed sanctions on the Lazarus Group and two other North Korean hacking groups for their alleged participation in the attacks on Sony Pictures and the central bank of Bangladesh, among others. It said North Korea’s main intelligence service was behind the hacking groups.North Korea has denied any involvement in cyberattacks. The EU sanctions also hit Chinese firm Haitai Technology Development, which is accused of having supported cyberattacks — known as Operation Cloud Hopper — aimed at stealing commercially sensitive data from multinationals across the world. Two Chinese individuals allegedly involved in the attacks were also sanctioned.Sanctions include travel bans and asset freezes. EU individuals, companies and other entities are forbidden from making funds available to those blacklisted.China’s diplomatic mission to the European Union said in a statement early on Friday that China “is a staunch defender of network security and one of the biggest victims of hacker attacks.”China wants global cyberspace security to be maintained through “dialogue and cooperation” and not by unilateral sanctions, the statement added.
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Big Tech companies reported mixed quarterly earnings Thursday, a day after their top executives faced a tough congressional grilling over their market power and alleged monopolistic practices.The staggering economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic was reflected in reports released Thursday from Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet.Apple delivered surprisingly strong numbers with both its revenue and profit rising, defying analysts’ lowered expectations. The iPhone maker’s revenue rose 11% to nearly $60 billion while profit rose 12% to $11.3 billion.Alphabet, Google’s holding company, reported its first-ever drop in quarterly revenue compared with the prior year. Although it was only a 2% decline, it was a telling sign of a downturn in the digital ad market while also serving as a reminder that the economy is struggling even more than it did more than a decade ago during the Great RecessionGoogle’s low point during that time came during the second quarter of 2009 when its revenue edged up by 3%. Alphabet’s profit for its most recent quarter plunged 30% to nearly $7 billion.Facebook, which also makes most of its money from digital ads, recorded an 11% increase in revenue from the prior year, the social networking company’s slowest growth since going public eight years ago. The company’s profit nearly doubled to roughly $6 billion from the same time last year. Part of the big jump stemmed from special charges last year.Amazon was a pandemic winner, with people stuck at home relying on the company to shop online. It reported record quarterly profit, doubling to $5.2 billion from last year while its revenue soared 40% to $88.9 billion.
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The U.S. has launched its next-generation Mars rover in search of potential signs of life on the red planet.NASA’s latest rover, Perseverance, launched at 11:50 GMT Thursday from Cape Canaveral in the southeastern state of Florida.The robotic explorer was propelled into space by an Atlas 5 rocket operated by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between private aerospace companies Boeing and Lockheed.The rocket has separated from the first stage and is being boosted to orbit by the Centaur second stage. @NASAPersevere is now preparing for a second burn that will put it on a trajectory towards Mars. #CountdownToMarspic.twitter.com/MBRqcxMTdw
— NASA (@NASA) July 30, 2020The rover is scheduled to land on Mars in February at the bottom of a 250-meter crater that was a lake some 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists believe the site could hold evidence of possible past microbial life.Scientists have debated for decades whether there was once life on Mars, which was more hospitable to life billions of years ago.Perseverance’s landing on the solar system’s second smallest planet will involve a complex set of maneuvers that NASA engineers call the “seven minutes of terror.”During that period, the rover descends through the atmosphere in extremely hot and high-speed conditions and deploys a set of supersonic parachutes before mini rockets ignite, allowing for a soft landing.The car-sized Perseverance will also deploy a mini helicopter named Ingenuity and test equipment for future human missions to the planet.Thursday’s launch from Earth to Mars is the third in July. China and the United Arab Emirates launched probes earlier in the month.Perseverance is the latest U.S. lander headed to Mars. NASA’s Sojourner landed in 1997 and Spirit and Opportunity have found signs of ancient water formations. NASA also landed Pathfinder, Phoenix and InSight on Earth’s planetary neighbor.The U.S. plans to send astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s. To help pave the way, Perseverance will try to convert elements of the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere to produce oxygen for future astronauts or to produce fuel for rockets that could be launched from the surface of Mars. 
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The summer’s third and final mission to Mars — featuring NASA’s most elaborate life-hunting rover — is on the verge of liftoff.The rover Perseverance will follow China’s rover-orbiter combo and a United Arab Emirates orbiter, both launched last week. It will take the spacecraft seven months to reach Mars after traveling 300 million miles.Once on the surface, Perseverance will scrounge for evidence of past microscopic life in an ancient lakebed, and gather the most promising rock samples for future pickup. NASA is teaming up with the European Space Agency to return the samples to Earth around 2031.This unprecedented effort will involve multiple launches and spacecraft — and cost more than $8 billion.”We don’t know if life existed there or not. But we do know that Mars at one point in its history was habitable,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on the eve of launch.The U.S. remains the only country to land successfully at Mars. If all goes well next February, Perseverance will become the ninth U.S. spacecraft to operate on the Martian surface.First things first, though: Good flying weather is forecast for United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. The Denver-based rocket maker and its heritage companies have launched all of NASA’s Mars missions, beginning with the Mariners in 1964.ULA chief executive Tory Bruno said Perseverance is arguably the most sophisticated and most exciting of all the Mars missions.”We are literally chomping at the bit to take this nuclear-powered dune buggy out to Mars,” he said earlier this week.
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The Chinese-owned app TikTok is under a security review by the U.S. government, which will make a recommendation on the matter to President Donald Trump next week, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.Trump said Wednesday, “we are thinking about making a decision” about TikTok.The video-sharing social media app, is extremely popular in both the US. and around the world. It has already been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide and 165 million of those downloads were in the U.S.The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates and takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the upcoming U.S. presidential election.TikTok to Exit Hong Kong Market Over New National Security Law Decision by Chinese-based app follows decisions by Facebook, Google and Twitter to briefly suspend review of Beijing requests for user data in semi-autonomous city U.S. officials are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing that the company might share its user data with China’s government. However, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore. TikTok also recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing.Mnuchin said that the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS), an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, will be looking into TikTok. CFIUS’ job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks.CFIUS has the ability to force companies to cancel deals or put in place other measures it deems necessary for national security.
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Holocaust survivors around the world are lending their voices to a campaign launched Wednesday targeting Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to take action to remove denial of the Nazi genocide from the social media site.
Coordinated by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the #NoDenyingIt campaign uses Facebook itself to make the survivors’ entreaties to Zuckerberg heard, posting one video per day  urging him to remove Holocaust-denying groups, pages and posts as hate speech. Videos will also be posted on Facebook-owned Instagram, as well as Twitter.
Zuckerberg raised the ire of the Claims Conference and others with comments in 2018 to the tech website Recode that posts denying the Nazi annihilation of 6 million Jews would not necessarily be removed. He said he did not think Holocaust deniers were “intentionally” getting it wrong, and that as long as posts were not calling for harm or violence, even offensive content should be protected.
After an outcry, Zuckerberg, who is Jewish himself, clarified that while he personally found “Holocaust denial deeply offensive” he believed that “the best way to fight offensive bad speech is with good speech.”
Since then, Facebook representatives have met with the Claims Conference but the group, which negotiates compensation payments from Germany for Holocaust victims, says Zuckerberg himself has refused to. The goal of the campaign is to get him to sit down with Holocaust survivors so that they can personally tell him their stories and make their case that denial violates Facebook’s hate speech standards and should be removed.
“In Germany or in Austria people go to prison if they deny the Holocaust because they know it’s a lie, it’s libel,” said Eva Schloss, an Auschwitz survivor who today lives in London and has recorded a message for Zuckerberg.
“How can somebody really doubt it? Where are the 6 million people? There are tens of thousands of photos taken by the Nazis themselves. They were proud of what they were doing. They don’t deny it, they know they did it.”
Schloss’ family escaped before the war from Vienna to the Netherlands, where she became friends with Anne Frank, who lived nearby in Amsterdam and was the same age. After the German army overran the country, the Schloss and Frank families went into hiding but were discovered by the Nazis separately in 1944, the Schloss family betrayed by a Dutch woman.
Schloss and her mother survived Auschwitz, but her father and brother were killed, while Otto Frank, Anne’s father, was the only survivor of his immediate family and married Schloss’ mother after the war. Otto Frank published his daughter’s now-famous diary so that the world could hear her story. Schloss has written about her own story, is a frequent speaker and would like to tell Zuckerberg of her own experience.
“It was just every day, the chimneys were smoking, the smell of burning flesh,” the 91-year-old told The Associated Press, adding that she had been separated from her mother and assumed she had been gassed.
“Can you imagine that feeling? I was 15-years-old and I felt alone in the world and it was terrible.”
Facebook said in a statement that it takes down Holocaust denial posts in countries where it is illegal, like Germany, France and Poland, while in countries where it is not an offense, like the U.S. and Britain, it is carefully monitored to determine whether it crosses the line into what is allowed.
“We take down any post that celebrates, defends, or attempts to justify the Holocaust,” Facebook told the AP. “The same goes for any content that mocks Holocaust victims, accuses victims of lying about the atrocities, spews hate, or advocates for violence against Jewish people in any way. Posts and articles that deny the Holocaust often violate one or more of these standards and are removed from Facebook.”
Earlier this month, a two-year audit of Facebook’s civil rights record found “serious setbacks” that have marred the social network’s progress on matters such as hate speech, misinformation and bias. Zuckerberg is one of four CEOs of big tech firms who face a grilling by the U.S. Congress on Wednesday over the way they dominate the market.
More than 500 companies on July 1 began an advertising boycott intended to pressure Facebook into taking a stronger stand against hate speech. The Claims Conference decided to launch its own campaign after concluding the boycott “doesn’t seem to be making a dent,” said Greg Schneider, the Claims Conference’s executive vice president.
Several Holocaust denial groups have been identified on Facebook by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, some hidden and most private.
On one, “Real World War 2 History,” administrators are clearly aware of the fine line between what is and isn’t allowed, listing among its rules that members must “avoid posts that feature grotesque cartoons that FB censors can construe as racist or hateful.”
Another page, the “Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust,” features regular posts of revisionist videos, including one from February in which the commentator says the Zyklon B gas used to kill Jews in Nazi death camps was actually employed to kill the lice that spread typhus, claiming “this chemical was used to improve the inmates’ health and reduce, not increase, camp mortality.”
Though not overtly advocating attacks, such postings are meant to “perpetuate a myth, anti-Semitic tropes that somehow Jews made this up in order to gain sympathy or political advantage” and could easily incite violence, Schneider said.
“The United Nations has acknowledged that Holocaust denial is a form of anti-Semitism, and of course anti-Semitism is hate speech,” he said.
For Charlotte Knobloch, a prominent German Jewish leader who survived the Holocaust in hiding as a young girl and is participating in the campaign, it is particularly important for social media platforms to be vigilant about preventing denial because many in younger generations rely on them for information.
“They have a particular responsibility,” the 87-year-old told the AP.
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They control the digital spaces where many around the world spend their time, shop, work, and talk to friends and family.  Together, the companies’ combined annual sales are roughly the same as the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, as Axios notes.Now the CEOs of four top U.S. technology companies — Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google – are set to answer questions Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust about how they wield their considerable market power. WATCH Judiciary Committee Hearing LIVE Deposition for the world The hearing comes as federal and state regulators are looking into whether the tech giants, through their dominance in some markets, stifle competition.  The joint appearance of Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon is a sign of how high the stakes are for the future of their businesses, legal observers say. Critics, customers and regulators globally will be watching.  “This is a deposition for the whole world,” said William Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission member and now a law professor at George Washington University.  Asking the questions will be the 15 members of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, lawmakers from both political parties, who have spent the past year looking into antitrust and competition concerns with each firm.  The report on their probe is expected at the end of the summer, but the lawmakers’ questions will likely reveal what they have learned and some of their thinking about what they may do next, legal experts say.    A first for Amazon’s Bezos The hearing, in many ways, is unprecedented. Never before have these CEOs appeared together in front of a congressional hearing, albeit over video conference due to the coronavirus pandemic.  It will be the first time Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon and the richest person in the world, will testify before Congress.  “This is an important accountability exercise,” Kovacic said. “It does demonstrate that the branches of government responsible for high-level policymaking have the capacity to hold these powerful executives and their extraordinary companies to account. So that’s important. To remind them who does set larger policy.”  Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said the hearing is an opportunity for the tech leaders to show they understand concerns about the power they have over people’s lives.  “That’s what I’m hoping to hear, these CEOs saying, ‘We hear you, we hear the concerns that are being expressed, and here is the way we come to the table to be part of the solution,’” Crane said.  Changed tone in Washington  The hearing also shines a spotlight on U.S. regulators and lawmakers, whose job it is to set policies and enforce laws that stop firms from using their market dominance to kill competition. They have been under increasing criticism from some antitrust experts that the government’s oversight of these giants has been weak, especially compared to stronger enforcement in Europe.  In recent years, the tone has changed in Washington from one of caution about taking on Big Tech to one of resolve that something has to be done, Kovacic said.  “U.S. agencies are also weary of watching the Europeans do everything and realizing that policy in a variety of areas — privacy, competition — is being set in Europe. And if the U.S. doesn’t play, it will continue to be set in Europe,” he said.  Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, a competition think tank, said she will watch the hearing for signs that lawmakers want to pursue “robust enforcement.” On her anti-monopoly wish list is “structural breakups” of the tech giants and blocking companies from buying smaller companies seen as threats.  “These problems are really deep and really widespread, and we need to really use the whole anti-monopoly tool kit to address them,” said Hubbard, a former assistant attorney general for antitrust enforcement in the New York attorney general’s office.    Lawmakers’ challenge    Lawmakers can’t charge the tech companies with antitrust violations or attempt to break them into smaller entities.  But what they can do is change the laws and put pressure on regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice to do more to enforce existing regulations.  The Justice Department is reportedly likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google. State regulators may join the Justice Department or pursue their own cases, according to reports.Part of the challenge lawmakers face at the hearing will be that while Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are the Who’s Who of internet firms, in fact their businesses are not really the same.  Still, the policies set by lawmakers in the months and years ahead will likely affect Big Tech for years to come.  
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They control the digital spaces where many around the world spend their time, shop, work, and talk to friends and family.  Together, the companies’ combined annual sales are roughly the same as the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, as Axios notes.Now the CEOs of four top U.S. technology companies — Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google – are set to answer questions Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust about how they wield their considerable market power. Deposition for the world The hearing comes as federal and state regulators are looking into whether the tech giants, through their dominance in some markets, stifle competition.  The joint appearance of Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon is a sign of how high the stakes are for the future of their businesses, legal observers say. Critics, customers and regulators globally will be watching.  “This is a deposition for the whole world,” said William Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission member and now a law professor at George Washington University.  Asking the questions will be the 15 members of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, lawmakers from both political parties, who have spent the past year looking into antitrust and competition concerns with each firm.  The report on their probe is expected at the end of the summer, but the lawmakers’ questions will likely reveal what they have learned and some of their thinking about what they may do next, legal experts say.    A first for Amazon’s Bezos The hearing, in many ways, is unprecedented. Never before have these CEOs appeared together in front of a congressional hearing, albeit over video conference due to the coronavirus pandemic.  It will be the first time Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon and the richest person in the world, will testify before Congress.  “This is an important accountability exercise,” Kovacic said. “It does demonstrate that the branches of government responsible for high-level policymaking have the capacity to hold these powerful executives and their extraordinary companies to account. So that’s important. To remind them who does set larger policy.”  Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said the hearing is an opportunity for the tech leaders to show they understand concerns about the power they have over people’s lives.  “That’s what I’m hoping to hear, these CEOs saying, ‘We hear you, we hear the concerns that are being expressed, and here is the way we come to the table to be part of the solution,’” Crane said.  Changed tone in Washington  The hearing also shines a spotlight on U.S. regulators and lawmakers, whose job it is to set policies and enforce laws that stop firms from using their market dominance to kill competition. They have been under increasing criticism from some antitrust experts that the government’s oversight of these giants has been weak, especially compared to stronger enforcement in Europe.  In recent years, the tone has changed in Washington from one of caution about taking on Big Tech to one of resolve that something has to be done, Kovacic said.  “U.S. agencies are also weary of watching the Europeans do everything and realizing that policy in a variety of areas — privacy, competition — is being set in Europe. And if the U.S. doesn’t play, it will continue to be set in Europe,” he said.  Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, a competition think tank, said she will watch the hearing for signs that lawmakers want to pursue “robust enforcement.” On her anti-monopoly wish list is “structural breakups” of the tech giants and blocking companies from buying smaller companies seen as threats.  “These problems are really deep and really widespread, and we need to really use the whole anti-monopoly tool kit to address them,” said Hubbard, a former assistant attorney general for antitrust enforcement in the New York attorney general’s office.    Lawmakers’ challenge    Lawmakers can’t charge the tech companies with antitrust violations or attempt to break them into smaller entities.  But what they can do is change the laws and put pressure on regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice to do more to enforce existing regulations.  The Justice Department is reportedly likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google. State regulators may join the Justice Department or pursue their own cases, according to reports.Part of the challenge lawmakers face at the hearing will be that while Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are the Who’s Who of internet firms, in fact their businesses are not really the same.  Still, the policies set by lawmakers in the months and years ahead will likely affect Big Tech for years to come.  
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The New York Times Wednesday said the Vatican’s computer networks have been breached by Chinese hackers since May, in an apparent espionage effort before the start of sensitive talks between the Roman Catholic Church and Communist China. The Times says the attack, discovered by private U.S.-based cybersecurity and monitoring firm Recorded Future, appears to be the first time hackers have been publicly caught directly hacking into the Vatican and a Hong Kong-based group of de facto Vatican representatives who have negotiated with China over the Church’s status on the mainland.  The newspaper says cybersecurity experts at Recorded Future have presumed the hackers are working for the Chinese government.   The Vatican and China are expected to begin talks in September over renewal of a provisional agreement they reached in 2018 that gives the pope the final say over bishops selected by the Communist Party for the state-sanctioned Catholic Church.  The Times says the revelations are certain to anger the Vatican and further complicate its relationship with the Chinese government.   The two sides cut off formal diplomatic ties in 1951.  The Vatican officially recognizes  Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims is a rogue breakaway territory that belongs under its control. If the Vatican and China restore diplomatic relations, Chinese officials are certain to demand that the Church cut off all ties with Taiwan.  China officially recognizes Catholicism and four other religions, but Communist Party officials often suspect religious groups and worshipers pose a threat to national security and are working to undermine the party’s grip on power.   Authorities have often used cyberattacks to gather information on groups such as Buddhist Tibetans, Muslim Uighurs and members of the outlawed Falun Gong who operate outside of China.   
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Twitter has limited Donald Trump Jr.’s account and deleted one of his tweets for violating Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policies.  The tweet, posted on Monday, had what Twitter termed a misleading video on the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.  An adviser to Trump Jr., Andrew Surabian, tweeted an angry response, in which he said that Trump Jr.’s account had been suspended, adding that “big tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America.”  He added in a statement to Business Insider that Twitter’s action is evidence that “the company is committing election interference to stifle Republican votes.”BREAKING: @Twitter & @jack have suspended @DonaldJTrumpJr for posting a viral video of medical doctors talking about Hydroxychloroquine.Big Tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America today & they’re continuing to engage in open election interference – full stop. pic.twitter.com/7dJbauq43O— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) July 28, 2020A Twitter spokesman said that the account was not suspended, and instead “Twitter required the tweet to be deleted because it violated our rules” and they merely limited “some account functionality for 12 hours.”  Under limited account functionality, Trump Jr.’s account remains visible and he is able to browse Twitter, but during the 12 hours he is not able to tweet, retweet, or like anything on the micro-blogging platform.
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The coronavirus pandemic has forced small businesses around the world to come up with new ways to cope with the new reality – including using technology to stay afloat.   VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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It’s going to be a record year for voting by mail in the U.S. election and that has raised security concerns about each step of the process.  
 
But election officials say they have systems in place to make voting by mail a success even as health concerns about voting during the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing states to expand their current vote-by-mail options.
 
“Somewhere between 90 million and 105 million ballots might come through the mail,” said Eddie Perez, global director of technology development at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit election technology organization. “If what we’re seeing in other primary elections is any guide, it’s probably safe to estimate that somewhere between 65% and 75% of all ballots cast in the November election might come by mail.”
“That’s a very, very significant volume of mail,” he added.
 
To get an idea of how significant, the share of voters who cast ballots via mail-in methods increased nearly threefold between 1996 and 2016 – from 7.8% to nearly 21%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the Census Bureau’s voter supplement data. Of course, the total number of voters in each election wasn’t the same, and isn’t known for 2020, so the comparison is imprecise. But the leap from nearly 21% to 75% or even 65% of all votes coming by mail is significant.
 
Numerous logistical and security challenges must be met to make sure voting by mail goes smoothly. Of particular concern is the security of states’ voter registration databases, which could be a rich target for hackers.  
 
Still, election experts say that the mail-in voting process has checks throughout, enhanced by technology and election software, starting with the ballot sent to the voter.  
 
“Sometimes you hear talk as if blank ballots are simply being sent out into the world almost willy-nilly without control,” Perez said. “And that’s simply not the case. There’s always a tight association between a voter whose eligibility has already been verified and the step of actually sending that voter a ballot.”  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 11 MB540p | 15 MB720p | 28 MB1080p | 50 MBOriginal | 67 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioRunning digital traps
 
Once the voter mails in or drops off the ballot, the county’s voting software system goes to work. Digital scanners take images of the ballot envelope to make sure the voter’s signature on the outside matches the one the county has on file. Barcoded information on the ballots is scanned and cross-referenced with the voter registration record.  
 
“The county always knows who has been issued a ballot, is that indeed an eligible voter, is every single ballot received coming from an eligible voter,” Perez said. “Once those traps have been run, there’s a critical process verifying that the ballot and the voter’s name on the ballot actually came from the voter.”  
 
A digital scanner scans the ballots and counting begins. Any anomaly – a missing or wrong signature, a stray mark – is sent to a team to review.   
 
Neal Kelley is the registrar of voters for Orange County, California. He expects to start processing mailed-in ballots 30 days before the official election day.  
 
“There’s multiple times those ballots run through that automation because it’s like a factory floor,” he said. “It’s quality control standards, because we have to look at the signature more closely.”  
 
Voters can track their ballot’s progress, much like the way they can track a package being delivered – via text messages or a ballot tracking app, Kelley said.  
 
“It actually gives you more data than your Amazon package,” he said. FILE – Mail-in ballots for the 2016 U.S. general election are seen at the Salt Lake County Government Center, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Nov. 1, 2016.Uncounted mail-in ballots
 
But voting by mail isn’t a panacea. Not all who vote get their ballots counted. In California’s March 2020 primary, about 100,000 mail-in ballots – about 1.5% of the 7 million turned in – did not get counted, according to the Associated Press.
 
Common problems with mail-in ballots include those mailed too late, voters failing to sign ballot envelopes and voters’ signatures not matching the ones the county has on file.  
 
Reforms around the country have addressed these problems. This year, California has extended the window for when mail ballots need to arrive to be counted: 17 days after Election Day. If there is a problem with a ballot, such as problem matching the ballot’s signature with the one on file, counties must contact voters to see if they can fix the problem.  
 
But even with those reforms, Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, said she worries about one group – young and new voters.  
 
“They have three strikes against them,” she said. “They are unfamiliar with voting. They are not very familiar with how the U.S. Postal Service works. And they’re not used to making a signature. They don’t write checks. They don’t sign checks. So you put all those three together, and it means we have a lot of outreach and education work.”
 
That’s what election officials are doing now, racing the clock, checking voter registrations, sending mailers to get the word out about how to vote by mail.  
 
Not everything will go smoothly, they say, and the public may have to be patient. Election results may not be known for weeks, perhaps not until early December.  
 
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Google employees will work from home until summer 2021 due to COVID-19 concerns, the company announced Monday.The decision affects almost 200,000 employees worldwide, including full-time and contract workers, making Google the first large U.S. company to keep its employees working remotely for over a year.The company stated earlier that most of its employees would work from home for the rest of 2020.The choice to extend remote work into next year could cause other businesses to announce similar plans.Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai made the choice after debating options with an internal group of executives. According to someone familiar with the situation, Pichai’s decision was influenced by employees with children, many of whom are facing the possibility of online school this year.”To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we’ll be extending our global voluntary work-from-home option through June 30, 2021, for roles that don’t need to be in the office,” Pichai told employees in a memo. “I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months.” 
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Social media has become the target of a dueling attack ad campaign being waged online by the sitting president and his election rival. They’re shooting the messenger while giving it lots of money.
President Donald Trump has bought hundreds of messages on Facebook to accuse its competitor, Twitter, of trying to stifle his voice and influence the November election.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden has spent thousands of dollars advertising on Facebook with a message of his own: In dozens of ads on the platform, he’s asked supporters to sign a petition calling on Facebook to remove inaccurate statements, specifically those from Trump.  
The major social media companies are navigating a political minefield as they try to minimize domestic misinformation and rein in foreign actors from manipulating their sites as they did in the last U.S. presidential election. Their new actions — or in some cases, lack of action — have triggered explosive, partisan responses, ending their glory days as self-described neutral platforms.  
Even as the two presidential campaigns dump millions of dollars every week into Facebook and Google ads that boost their exposure, both are also using online ads to criticize the tech platforms for their policies. Trump is accusing Twitter and Snapchat of interfering in this year’s election. Biden has sent multiple letters to Facebook and attacked the company for policies that allow politicians, Trump specifically, to freely make false claims on its site. Biden is paying Facebook handsomely to show ads that accuse Facebook of posing a “threat” to democracy.
Meantime Trump is paying Facebook to run ads trashing the medium he uses like none other, Twitter.
“Twitter is interfering in the 2020 Election by attempting to SILENCE your President,” claimed one of nearly 600 ads Trump’s campaign placed on Facebook.
It’s “a huge departure from 2016,” said Emerson Brooking, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a Washington think-tank. “If you were leading the Trump or Clinton campaign, you weren’t writing letters to Facebook all day long. It wasn’t so much a central campaign issue. Now it seems like it very much is.”  
Americans, after all, are on high alert about the platforms’ policies after discovering that Russian trolls posted divisive messages, created fake political events and even used rubles to buy Facebook ads intended for U.S. audiences in the 2016 election. Research already shows the Kremlin is at it again.  
Since the last presidential election, Facebook and Twitter  have banned voting-related misinformation and vowed to identify and shut down inauthentic networks of accounts run by domestic or foreign troublemakers. Before this year’s election, Twitter banned political ads altogether, a decision a company spokesman told the AP it stands behind. And Facebook, along with Google, began disclosing campaign ad spending while banning non-Americans from buying U.S. political ads.  
Facebook didn’t comment for this story.  
But calls to deflate Big Tech’s ballooning power have only grown louder from both Democrats and Republicans, even though the two parties are targeting different companies for different reasons to rally supporters.  
Those politics will no doubt be on full display Wednesday, when four big tech CEOs, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook, testify to a House Judiciary Committee panel as part of a congressional investigation into the tech industry’s dominance.
Biden has focused on Facebook, with a #MoveFastFixIt campaign that admonishes Facebook for not doing enough to protect users from foreign meddling or being duped by falsehoods, particularly those spread by Trump about mail-in voting.
His campaign just last month spent nearly $10,000 to run ads scolding the company on its own platform.  
“We could lie to you, but we won’t,” says one of Biden’s ads. “Donald Trump and his Republican allies, on the other hand, spend MILLIONS on Facebook ads like this one that spread dangerous misinformation about everything from how to vote to the legitimacy of our democratic process.”
Despite criticizing Facebook, Biden’s campaign said it’s still purchasing millions of dollars in Facebook ads because it’s one of the few ways to counter Trump’s false posts — since Facebook won’t fact check him.  
The ads are also a cheap and effective way for the campaigns to rally supporters who are unhappy with the platforms, said Kathleen Searles, a Louisiana State University political communications professor.
“We do know that anger can be very motivating — it motivates them to get their name on an email list, or donate $20,” Searles said. “What better way to get people angry than a faceless platform?”
While Biden has focused on Facebook, Trump has honed in on Twitter, and occasionally Snapchat, with his campaign running online ads that accuse both companies of “interfering” in the election.
 
Twitter became a Trump campaign target after the company rolled out its first fact check of his inaccurate tweet about voting in late May. Twitter has since applied similar labels to five other Trump tweets, including two that called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted that “mail boxes will be robbed” if voting doesn’t take place in person.
Trump responded by signing a largely symbolic executive order challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides protections from lawsuits for internet companies that have served as a bedrock for unfettered speech online.
“It’s preposterous that Silicon Valley, the bastion of diversity and liberalism, is terrified of intellectual diversity and conservative voices,” Trump deputy national press secretary Ken Farnaso said in a statement.  
Republican leaders have since joined in railing against Twitter.  
This month, Rep. Jim Jordan, a firebrand conservative from Ohio, demanded Twitter hand over a full accounting, including emails, of how it decided to fact check the president. Saying “big tech is out of control,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz joined dozens of conservative media outlets, Trump staffers and politicians who waged a two-day campaign last month urging their Twitter followers to ditch the platform and join Parler, a social media app that does not moderate its content as closely.  
Facebook could be next for a face-off with the president and his allies now that the company has vowed to label any posts — Trump’s included — that violate its rules against voting misinformation or hate speech. Facebook has yet to take such action, though.
“Social media censorship is going to be a very potent campaign issue,” Brooking said. “And there’s going to be incentive from a number of folks running for office in 2020 to push the envelope still further, to try to invite more and more social media moderation because they see it as a potent political stunt.” 
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Australia’s competition regulator has launched court proceedings against Alphabet’s Google for allegedly misleading consumers about the expanded use of personal data for targeted advertising.The case by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in Federal Court said Google did not explicitly get consent nor properly inform consumers about a 2016 move to combine personal information in Google accounts with activities on non-Google websites that use its technology.The regulator said this practice allowed the Alphabet Inc unit to link the names and other ways to identify consumers with their behavior elsewhere on the internet.Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The move by the ACCC comes amid heightened attention in much of the world on data privacy. U.S. and European lawmakers have recently stepped up their focus on how tech companies treat user data because of privacy concerns.”We are taking this action because we consider Google misled Australian consumers about what it planned to do with large amounts of their personal information, including internet activity on websites not connected to Google,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.The regulator alleges Google used the combined data to boost targeted advertising – a key source of income – and that it did not make clear to consumers about changes in its privacy policy.The regulator did not say what it wanted the court to do, adding that it has filed the claim on a “confidential basis pending claims by Google.”
 
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The director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center has warned that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are meddling in U.S. political campaigns as the November 3 general election draws closer.“We see our adversaries seeking to compromise the private communications of U.S. political campaigns, candidates and other political targets,” William Evanina said Friday in a statement.Evanina said that while the United States “is primarily concerned with China, Russia and Iran,” other countries and “nonstate actors” could also try to “harm our electoral process.”US Cybersecurity Experts See Recent Spike in Chinese Digital Espionage The report said it was ‘one of the broadest campaigns by a Chinese cyber espionage actor we have observed in recent years” China is trying to influence the “policy environment” in the U.S. with the intent of affecting the presidential race between President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Evanina said.He said “internet trolls and other proxies” are among a variety of disinformation campaigns Russia is using to “undermine confidence in our democratic process.”Iran is also spreading disinformation online and via social media in an attempt to “undermine U.S. democratic institutions and divide the country in advance of the elections,” he added.Evanina said the U.S. intelligence community would continue to watch for “malicious cyber actors” and touted the robust security of state election systems in the U.S. that make it “extraordinarily difficult for foreign adversaries to broadly disrupt or change vote tallies without detection.”He called on the American people to help ensure an orderly election by consuming information with a “critical eye” and by practicing “good cyber hygiene and media literacy.” The NCSC director also urged citizens to report suspicious activity to authorities.VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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