Category Archives: Big Tech

Something both convoluted and disturbing happened on Twitter this week that illustrates why its not enough for lawmakers in Washington to haul Big Tech executives before congressional committees every now and then and give them a good talking to.

Congress actually has to do something about this. Regulating social media giants like Twitter and Facebook as common carriers, prohibiting them from censoring under the absurd pretext that speech they dont like is harmful or abusive, would be a good place to start. If that doesnt happen, Twitter will eventually ban every conservative voice and every media outlet that dares to challenge left-wing pieties about race, gender, and a host of other issues.

Heres what happened. On Wednesday evening, around the time Twitterbegan censoring Federalist articlesby appending a warning they may be unsafe and their contents could be violent or misleading, I got a notice from Twitter support letting me know that someone had complained about a tweet of mine noting that Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, is a man.

As a result, my tweet would be banned, but only in Germany, where, according toTwitters explanationof what it calls, country withheld content, an authorized entity issued a valid legal demand to block my tweet.

I had written the tweet in response to news this week that Twitter locked the account of Charlie Kirk for saying Levine is a man. Banning Kirk made no sense, I wrote, because Levine is obviously a man a man who dresses like a woman, but a man nonetheless.

To be clear, Levine is a 64-year-old man who spent the first 54 years of his life presenting or living publicly as a man. He was married and fathered two children. In 2011, he decided to transition and began dressing and presenting as a woman, changing his name to Rachel Levine (previously, he went by Richard, his given name). He divorced his wife of 25 years in 2013.

Levine is and will always be a man. His story is a sad one, and far from mocking or berating him, conservatives should pray for him and hope that he gets the help he obviously needs.

But none of this is really about Levine. Its about Twitter. Twitter locked Kirks account after itlocked the account of The Babylon Beeearlier this week for postingan articleheadlined, The Babylon Bees Man of the Year is Rachel Levine, riffing onan actual USA Today piecenaming Levine as one of its 2022 women of the year, despite the fact that Levine is a man.

After Twitter locked out the Bee, which is a satirical publication, its Editor in Chief Kyle Mann tweeted, Maybe theyll let us back into our @TheBabylonBee Twitter account if we throw a few thousand Uighurs in a concentration camp, which prompted Twitter to lock Manns account for hatful conduct. Later, the Bees founder Adam Ford was locked out of Twitter for retweeting Mann.

While all this was going on, articles at The Federalist suddenly started getting blocked by Twitter. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the handful of articles that were blocked, but it started withan article by Libby Emmonspublished Wednesday morning entitled, Everybody Knows Rachel Levine Is Truly A Man, Including Rachel Levine.

When my colleague Tristan Justiceasked Twitter about it, a spokesperson told him, the URLs referenced were mistakenly marked under our unsafe links policy this action has been reversed. Nothing to see here, it was all just a big mistake!

But we all know it wasnt. It was no more a mistake than my tweet getting flagged in Germany, of all places, or Kirk and Mann and Ford and the Bee all getting locked out of their accounts. This kind of behavior from social media companies has become all too common for anyone to believe that getting locked out of your account or getting an article taken down is ever a mistake, and certainly not when the tweet or article in question is asserting the plain truth that a man does not become a woman simply by growing his hair out and putting on a skirt. When youre account is locked overthat, its on purpose, and the point is to shut you up.

And its not just Twitter. This week, YouTuberemoved a bunch of videosfrom the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, including a speech by J.D. Vance and a panel discussion with Federalist CEO Sean Davis, Rachel Bovard, and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. a panel discussion that happened to be aboutthe harms of Big Tech and how federal law protects them from liability.

Its obvious that these firms will eventually silence everyone who dissents from their woke ideology. Theyre not even trying to hide it anymore. If you say that Rachel Levine is a man, or that Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who just won an NCAA Division I national championship, is a man, they will come after you. It doesnt matter that Levine and Thomas are in fact men. Truth is no defense against censorship by Big Tech.

So until Congress under what would have to be a Republican majority, given Democrats enthusiasm for online censorship acts to put an end to this, it will continue. And the list of things you cant say will grow. Before long, you wont be able to say, for example, that abortion is the taking of a human life, that gay marriage is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, or that children should not be taught that America is systemically racist.

In such an environment, the only way to ensure the censors dont come after you is to follow the extraordinary example of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was asked by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on Tuesday during the confirmation hearing to define the word woman. Jackson replied, infamously, Im not a biologist.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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If Congress Doesn't Rein In Big Tech, Censors Will Eliminate The Right From Public Discourse - The Federalist

Wannabe innovation hubs from coast to coast have been slavering over the prospect that the work-from-home revolution triggered by the COVID pandemic would finally break the stranglehold that California and Silicon Valley have had on high-tech jobs.

Here's the latest picture on this expectation: Not happening.

That's the conclusion of some new studies, most recently by Mark Muro and Yang You of the Brookings Institution.

They found that although the pandemic brought about some changes in the trend toward the concentration of tech jobs in a handful of metropolitan areas, the largest established hubs as a group "slightly increased their share" of national high-tech employment from 2019 through 2020. (Emphasis theirs.)

Stories of discontented California entrepreneurs decamping for up and coming new hubs or even remote (but broadband-enabled) climes are common fodder in the news.

The Times last year published a sort of diary in which Geoffrey Woo, one such expatriate, wrote about his relocation to Miami to flee the crime and pandemic lockdown of San Francisco. He's still in Miami.

Yet "the big tech superstar cities aren't going anywhere," Muro told me. "There's a suggestion that we're on the brink of an entirely different geography. I don't think recent history or the nature of the technologies point in that direction."

Muro, in harmony with other experts in the geography of work, divides tech employment hubs into three groups.

There are the superstar metro areas: Silicon Valley and San Francisco; New York; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Seattle-Tacoma; Los Angeles; and Austin. Next come "rising stars": Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, San Diego, Miami, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Orlando. Finally, everywhere else.

The superstars increased their share of total tech employment by 0.3% during the pandemic less than the increase of 1.4% they experienced in 2015-2019, but still positive. The rising stars as a group increased their share by 0.1%, down from 0.5% in the earlier period. Both gains came at the expense of other would-be hubs.

"The California metropolises really do retain their irreplaceable depth and strength," Muro says. "That's not to say there won't be some movement. Early in the period we saw some exiting, especially from the Bay Area, but it turned out that much of it was within California, rather than to Kansas."

This shouldn't be too surprising. The value of concentrated ecosystems in nurturing innovation has been document for decades. As Nicholas Bloom of Stanford and colleagues pointed out in 2020, elite academic institutions attract highly skilled innovators and spin off their learning into new technologies and new industries; their presence tends to attract others like them.

That's how Boston and San Diego became biotech hubs and Silicon Valley and San Francisco centers of inventive approaches to computer hardware and software. There's a notable cross-pollination effect: Inventors who move to a city with a large cluster of inventors in the same field experience "a sizable increase in the number and quality of patents produced," according to UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti.

The allure of living and working in such a cluster outweighs the downsides of high living costs, taxes and congestion.

"High-tech clusters tend to be located in cities with high labor and real estate costs cities like San Francisco, Boston, or Seattle rather than in cities where costs are low," Moretti observes, possibly because for creative intellectuals, intellectual productivity outweighs those costs.

Tech companies have been moving some operations away from their traditional headquarter locations or expanding elsewhere, Moretti says, but that was happening long before COVID. "I'm skeptical that COVID-induced changes are driving an acceleration in an exodus of tech firms," he says.

Muro's research points to an evolutionary change in high-tech geography triggered by the pandemic, rather than "a wholesale decentralization of tech." There may be several reasons why a large-scale flight from the big hubs hasn't happened.

One is that most tech companies don't plan to abandon office work entirely but expect their workers to commute to work two or three days a week.

This hybrid system "allows employees to move further from their place of work, such as from a city center to a surrounding suburb," Bloom reckons. "But it does not allow an employee to move to another metro area entirely because they must still commute to work on some days."

Instead, Bloom found increased movement within metro areas, rather than between metros a trend he terms the "donut effect," signifying movement out of the central city and into suburbs or exurbs.

Bloom's data are drawn from U.S. Postal Service change-of-address records and Zillow's tracking of rent increases.

His findings cast doubt on the theory, put forth by urbanist Richard Florida and economist Adam Ozimek, that habits of remote work would give rise to "Zoom towns," communities such as Tulsa, Boulder, Colo., and Bozeman, Mont., remote from traditional business centers but inviting for workers who need only keep in touch with their bosses and colleagues digitally via the Zoom and Slack platforms.

While Postal Service statistics do show some movement from densely populated cities to distant locations, the trend is "small relative to the within-metro movement from city centers to their suburbs," Bloom wrote.

The pandemic-driven shift to remote work does seem to have opened entrepreneurs' eyes at least to the potential for doing away with centralized workforces.

In a recent survey of tech startup founders, the share of respondents saying they would prefer to start a firm with an entirely remote workforce from Day One rose to 42.1% in 2021 from only 6% in 2020. Among physical locations where the founders said prefer to launch their businesses, however, San Francisco still dominated, at 28.4%, with New York a distant second.

There have been some clues in recent years that the exodus of big business from California hasn't been all it's cracked up to be.

In 2020, the headline departures featured in reports of corporate relocations were three: Oracle, Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The Brookings study, published this month, mentions three major tech firms: Oracle, Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (Brookings cites a fourth Palantir, a money-losing software company headquartered in Denver, but as of year-end 2021 it employed fewer than 1,900 people in the U.S., some of whom work in California.)

Some of the assertions about a California exodus aim to make political, rather than economic or demographic, points. Consider an August 2021 paper by Lee Ohanian of the Hoover Institution and Joseph Vranich, who happens to be the CEO of a Texas business relocation firm.

Far from being a sober statistical survey of business moves, the paper is more of a screed comprising the usual conservative beefs about California, such as too much regulation. It also makes some surprising assertions: "California is notorious for imposing excessive real estate taxes," for example.

Actually, California's property taxes are the 36th-highest in the nation; Texas, Vranich's home state, ranks seventh, with an effective rate more than twice California's. Thanks to Proposition 13, California is notorious for, if anything, having low real estate taxes.

Ohanian and Vranich, asserting that corporate headquarters are leaving California in "unprecedented numbers," offer a database of 265 companies that did so from January 2018 through June 2021. The list includes such non-business businesses as the NFL Raiders, which moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020. The NFL, however, actually approved the relocation in 2017.

The authors don't give this supposed exodus its proper context, which is how many businesses have been created or moved into California in the same period. The answer, according to the Census Bureau, is 133,503. In the same time span, Texas added 90,916. (By the way, California still hosts three NFL teams, tied with Florida for the most of any state.)

Communities are eager to position themselves as remote tech hubs because of the sector's economic resilience. Unlike service industries such as leisure and tourism, most tech industries experienced barely a hiccup in their long-term growth trends during the pandemic.

Although employment in semiconductor and computer hardware manufacturing fell from January 2020 through June 2021, Brookings found that software publishing, data processing and information services such as Google and Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) suffered only brief employment losses early in 2020, but by mid-2021 had larger workforces than before the pandemic.

Would-be tech hubs can't depend on attracting digital workers naturally, Muro says; they have to work at making themselves seem attractive to a digital workforce. That means building up a technical infrastructure, including broadband access, developing a networking culture resembling Silicon Valley in its early days, and offering good schools and other crucial amenities.

The political environment is also an imponderable factor. Whether aggressively conservative politics in Texas and Florida, including hostility to the LGBTQ community and the contraction of women's reproductive health rights, will slow the influx of young and well-educated workers is hard to tell at the moment.

But the early signs should worry those states' leaders. Tech journalist Kara Swisher, who is gay, recently canceled a tech conference scheduled for next year in Miami to protest the state's so-called "Don't Say Gay" law.

The law prompted a workforce uproar at Walt Disney Co., one of Florida's biggest employers, over the company's silence about its enactment; California Gov. Gavin Newsom publicly invited Disney to reverse its decision to move 2,000 jobs to Florida from California. (The company hasn't responded to the overture.)

It's doubtful when, if ever, 100% work-from-home jobs will amount to a large share of employment. Full-scale work-from-home only applies to about 6% of workers, Moretti says. That's triple the 2% level of the pre-pandemic era, but still an exception to the rule.

For all that, it's also true that some "rising star" metros may offer entrepreneurs and tech workers some qualities that established hubs have lost. That's what has kept Woo, who wrote about his decision to relocate, in Miami.

Woo, who runs two businesses in startup mode and a venture investing fund, says he hasn't found business reasons to regret moving from San Francisco. (The dearth of decent Asian food is the one drawback he mentioned.)

The tech community in San Francisco has become dominated by large established companies led by billionaires, those who have already made their fortunes, Woo told me. The tech community in Miami is more inviting to "people who haven't made it, who aren't billionaires.... San Francisco is in harvest mode rather than create mode it's harvesting the value of all the dynamism that has been created over the last 20 or 30 years."

As for Florida politics, "the most impactful policy for normal citizens is COVID policy," he says. "I've been used to not having to wear a mask or show vax cards for every little thing, and it's been great."

Conservative social policies, he says, might undergo change as the result of the inflow of a diverse workforce, rather than keeping people away. "As people come in, the policies of the jurisdiction will evolve to match what the constituents want."

There may be a cultural shift going on in what Moretti calls the "geography of jobs." But "it's still unclear how far it will go," he says. "It will take at least a few years to know."

Michael Hiltzik is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

2022 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Michael Hiltzik: That big tech exodus out of California turns out to be a bust - The Denver Gazette

A Stigler Center discussion between Ling Chen (Johns Hopkins) and Matt Sheehan (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), moderated by Wall Street Journal journalist Lingling Wei, explores questions regarding the interplay between the tech sector and the state in present-day China and how the recent regulatory push might impact innovation.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Alibaba and Tencenttwo of Chinas largest tech firmsplan to lay off thousands of employees as both companies continue to grapple with regulatory pressures following the government crackdown that caused Chinese tech firms to lose hundreds of billions of their market value.

Chinas sweeping regulatory crackdown on the countrys tech sector, launched over a year ago, has upended an industry that until relatively recently was seen as virtually immune from governmentscrutiny. The crackdown has raised many questions regarding the relationship between Chinas government and the private sector and, despite signs of slowing, there are also signs it may not be going away just yet.

What is the current relationship between the Chinese tech industry and the state? And where is it headed? A recent Stigler Center panel, part of the Centers Chinas Political Economy: A New Era? webinar series, explores these questions and more. The panel featured a discussion betweenLing Chen, an assistant professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, and Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The conversation was moderated by the Wall Street Journals Lingling Wei, co-author of the 2020 book Superpower Showdown: How the Battle Between Trump and Xi Threatens a New Cold War.

At the start of the panel, Sheehan provided a brief overview of how the relationship between the Chinese government and the tech sector evolved over the past decade. First, the Great Firewall set the parameters for competition. They basically blocked most of the big foreign information platformsGoogle, Facebook, Twitter, etc.and by doing that, they cleared space in the Chinese tech scene for homegrown giants and shaped how the tech industry grew.

The second big way the Chinese government helped shape its tech sector, Sheehan said, was how it set the parameters for online speech. By 2013, China built the tools and the bureaucratic mechanisms with which to control how information is shared online, which also served as a kind of a catalyst for the tech sector. Historically, Chinese tech is very private-sector driven; thats where a lot of the first activity happens, where a lot of the momentum starts, but the government could weigh in and be a big stimulant to the growth of an industry. I saw this firsthand in the way that the AI industry grew. In 2017, when the government came out with its big national AI plan, that was a big marker that stimulated so much more investment in the industry, so much more public sector adoption and company formation. But even then, he said, it wasnt like the government was always in the day-to-day operations of all the companies.

The relationship began changing two years ago, in late 2020, when regulators canceled Ant Groups IPO, Sheehan said. Since then, there has been a tidal wave of new regulations that are fundamentally changing the shape and the nature of those interactions.

Asked about the seeming contradiction between Chinas goal to become a world leader in AI and its regulatory push against the industry, Sheehan said that In the US, we often describe these things as in conflict with each otherthe Chinese government sees it differently.

Drawing on her research, Chen noted the differences between Chinas understanding of its tech sector and that of the US. In China, she said, the terms tech sector and high-tech sector sometimes get blended. Their understanding of Alibaba and DiDi and Tencent is different from the typical US way of understanding the tech sector.

In Chinas perspective, Chen added, online platforms are associated with bubbles because their success is not necessarily traced to hardcore technology. Rather, they are viewed as having a first-mover advantage and that may create monopolies and rents and can easily become the target of antimonopoly law and antitrust law. These online platforms are also sometimes linked to financial platforms, such as the Ant Group. The Ant Group, in the states view, is creating shadow-banking almostand thats part of the reason the state is going after it.

These online platforms also control sensitive data and user data. Even though they have operated for a couple of decades already, the regulators seem to be just waking up to realize how important it is to regulate these data and algorithms. But the state has a lot of experience or know-how about semiconductor chips, not necessarily enough experience about data management and regulation, Chen said.

Asked about the seeming contradiction between Chinas goal to become a world leader in AI and its regulatory push against the industry, Sheehan said that in the US, we often describe these things as in conflict with each otherthe Chinese government sees it differently. The fundamental bedrock of China being a productive leading power, in the Chinese Communist Partys mind, is maintaining Chinese Communist Party control. You cant let these companies run too far ahead if its going to create social problems, or financial and economic risk that undermines the partys control. Honestly, I think they looked at what happened in the US between 2015 and the present day, at the role of social media platforms in division, political influence, and stuff like that, and said, Not for us.

Asked about the impact of the new regulations on the tech sector on Chinese innovation, Chen emphasized the gradual change in the Chinese governments thinking regarding semiconductor manufacturing, from joint ventures with other countries toward the development of indigenous technologies. I dont think theres really a final answer as to whether China can succeed or notthe only thing I know is they seem to be doubling down on their effort.

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Stigler Conversation: How the Chinese Government Thinks About Big Tech - ProMarket

As Big Tech platforms such as Facebook and Google prepare for this year's midterm elections, liberals and conservatives alike are critical of the platforms' lack of transparency in regard to content moderation.

Since the 2020 election, conservatives have criticized major social media companies, saying their attempts to reduce misinformation have meant unfairly censoring content and banning users such as former President Donald Trump. At the same time, liberals have accused the platforms of allowing too much dangerous misinformation to spread.

Google announced Thursday its plan to help secure the midterm elections by outlining its policies on how to reduce election misinformation on Google Search and YouTube and explained how the company will equip campaigns and election workers with enhanced security tools.

Google said it plans to surface authoritative voices about the election based on certain news sources on its platforms while also trying to limit the spread of election misinformation, which it defines as content "that can cause real-world harm, like certain types of technically manipulated content, and content interfering with democratic processes.

Google also plans to help political campaigns enhance their security by providing them with free advanced protections from online attacks and cybersecurity threats and promised to provide more transparency when it comes to political advertising.

Other social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter are also expected to make similar announcements on their approach to election integrity in the coming months, with a focus on trusted news outlets, misinformation, and election security.

INTERNET FRAGMENTS AS RUSSIAN INVASION PUSHES PLATFORMS TO CHOOSE SIDES

Tech industry insiders say Google failed to shine a light on how it plans to deal with domestic actors who threaten elections and its rules around de-platforming users in the context of the election.

They didnt really get into the more controversial and tricky stuff regarding new and emerging threats to elections, who could be banned from the platform and why, said Katie Harbath, a former Facebook public policy director. Id like to see more transparency in general, like understanding how they plan to use labeling around election results, like when Trump falsely claimed he won and things of that nature."

Conservatives say Google cant be trusted when it comes to election integrity, suppressing misinformation, and elevating authoritative voices.

Google should voluntarily disclose their algorithms in reference to searches related to the midterm elections no one knows how theyll handle such info and they have their own agenda, said Dan Gainor, a vice president at the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog that tracks censorship on Big Tech platforms.

Facebook or Google could try to push one group of people to vote and not others or boost one candidate in searches over another. We just have no idea, they dont believe in transparency," said Gainor.

In its announcement Thursday, Google said it would continue to crack down on content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of any past U.S. presidential election.

Conservatives often cite Twitter's and Facebooks decision to block a story by the New York Post about Hunter Biden as an example of unfair censorship.

Conservatives in the tech industry say pressuring social media giants to change their election-related policies and practices and to be more transparent could backfire on Republicans.

If politicians and the public push too hard, then Google and Facebook will just decide to ban ads altogether, which will hurt Republicans much more than Democrats because the Left can still lean on legacy media, said Carl Szabo, a vice president and general counsel at NetChoice, an advocacy group that represents companies including Facebook and Google.

But its worth being skeptical and vigilant of Google or Facebooks definitions of election misinformation, which is why people can go to upstarts like Truth Social or Rumble to get well-rounded information to make the best decision, said Szabo.

The news publishing industry, however, supports Googles decision to boost authoritative voices in the media landscape.

Election misinformation is best tackled by limiting micro ad-targeting and amplifying trusted media voices and brands that people have known for a long time and have credibility, said Jason Kint, the CEO of digital content trade association Digital Content Next, which represents a large number of prominent news publishers.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Authoritative is measured in different ways, but established brands like any local news outlet, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, these all have some authority with the public, said Kint.

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Liberals and conservatives bash Big Techs preparations for midterm elections - Washington Examiner

This article by Professor Elise Bant, from The University of Western Australia's Law School, Liam Hardin, from Melbourne University's Law School, and Professor Jeannie Marie Paterson, from Melbourne University's Law School, was originally published in Pursuit.

Australia, like many other countries, is engaged in an ongoing debate about the kinds of laws that are needed to respond to advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI). This on top of the oligarchic dominance of Big Tech - namely Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple.

Even now Australia has ongoing governmental inquiries into privacy law, Internet of Things and cyber security law, the regulation of digital platforms and Australias AI policy framework.

But working in the shadow of all of this law reform, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been engaged in an ongoing campaign to bring Big Tech into line with the rules of fair market conduct that apply to any other company doing business in Australia.

We can argue about how successful these efforts have been in the face of the wealth, reach and power of Big Tech. But the tenacity of the regulator is undeniable.

Moreover, its actions have repeatedly made use of the humble section 18 prohibition on misleading conduct thats been a core element of Australian Consumer Law since its inception in 1974. As a matter of legislative design, the section 18 prohibition on conduct in trade or commerce that misleads is remarkably simple.

But the open textured language of the section makes it highly adaptable in responding to novel legal issues as they arise.

The ACCC has repeatedly put the prohibition to good use in its battles with Big and not-so Big Tech, bringing actions for misleading conduct against Google, Apple, Health Engine, Viagogo, Trivago, Google (again and again) and Facebook/Meta.

In these cases, the ACCC has used the prohibition on misleading conduct previously used typically as a tool directed at misleading advertising or deceit in contract negotiations to protect consumer privacy.

The ACCC has successfully argued on a number of occasions that this prohibition was breached by the tech company in question departing from its own stated privacy policy.

In its most recent action, this time against Facebook parent Meta, the ACCC is pushing forward with a bold (at least in legal terms) new use of the prohibition. And its addressing a gap in the law that Google made use of many years before to escape liability for misleading advertising.

One of the first section 18 cases brought against a platform was Google v ACCC in 2013.

The case concerned Googles well-known search engine Google Search. Ads promoted by the search engine falsely represented that there was a commercial association or affiliation between the advertiser and its competitor.

Although the ads themselves were misleading, the High Court held that Google itself had not engaged in misleading conduct. This was because, in the view of the majority, Google was a mere conduit passing on the content of the advertisements without adopting or endorsing them.

This conduit argument had subsequently been used to insulate social media platforms from liability or responsibility for misleading information or scams on their sites. So for a time, it was thought that regulators like the ACCC couldnt do much to make Big Tech take responsibility for blatantly wrongful and, even dangerous, advertising appearing on their sites, including for outrageously false COVID cures.

The ACCCs new action against Meta is directed at scam cryptocurrency advertisements promoted on Facebook with reference to public figures and celebrities, without their consent.

The scam ads direct Facebook users to fake media articles, with made up quotes wrongly attributed to the featured public figure endorsing a cryptocurrency scheme. Users were then subject to high-pressure sales scams designed to persuade them to sign up and deposit funds into the fake schemes.

The ads are clearly false but is Meta/Facebook implicated?

This time the ACCC is taking a line of argument that directly targets the mere conduit defence against liability by platforms for misleading advertising. The case is that Meta was doing much more than passively or innocently passing on information prepared by fraudsters.

From its recent press release, the ACCC appears to have at least three possible arguments.

Firstly, Meta adopted or endorsed these ads by using its technology to target users who were most likely to be receptive to them.

Secondly, Meta aided and abetted or was knowingly concerned in the misleading conduct because, even after being told about the false use of celebrity endorsements, it did nothing to remove or stop the ads.

And finally, Meta failed to live up to its own representations that it would keep users safe from scam ads.

The motivation here is the same as the Google case attempting to create responsibility and therefore liability for facilitating harmful advertising practices.

However, the ACCC has learnt from previous actions.

It has demanded transparency from Big Tech around its data handling and privacy policies. The ACCC is now pushing for greater accountability from Big Tech in response to the serious problem of online harms.

And the end game may be the erosion of the over-used defence were just a platform.

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ACCC vs Big Tech: Round 10 and counting - University News: The University of Western Australia

Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, Big Tech firms and intermediaries announced either partial or total stoppage of services for Russia and its citizens. This, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar believes, is a dangerous precedent, and brings back focus on the power that such platforms wield. Edited Excerpts from an interview with Aashish Aryan and Liz Mathew:

How do you view the events in Russia and Ukraine vis--vis the internet companies?

The recent events in Ukraine and Russia have again in a lot of ways drawn the attention to the power of platforms on the internet, the power of some governments to direct platforms on the internet to take decisions that are partisan and effectively what I call the weaponisation of the internet.

Two phenomena are very visible. One is the weaponisation of the internet, of which we were aware in some sense as we discussed user harm etc in the past. The second is what I call the phenomenon of the splinter-net. The internet is now increasingly being splintered driven by the power of some western countries.

The internet started as this Utopian space for people to connect and exchange ideas with each other. Therefore, the role of the state always was very minimal. And over time, the conversation around internet and companies on the internet was always about innovation, who is doing the next big thing, what is the next big idea on platforms etc. Therefore, regulation and laws never really came into the picture at all. Because it was never envisaged that internet could be for anything but public good.

Our understanding of internet has moved from saying that it is only for public good to also saying that it also has user harm. There are many aspects of criminality and user harm now. The jurisprudence and law must also evolve to address this. These platforms have become so big, the power of these platforms and therefore the power that they represent on the internet is so dominant, that in the event of a conflict between two sovereigns, these platforms are playing roles and therefore are being weaponised.

There have been no laws and rules that have prevented this or seen this coming and prevented this from happening. Now you have all the other things that have developed around internet. You have app stores that are duopolies, search engines that are monopolies, data and data economy is growing at a very fast rate. Obviously there are reciprocal issues of data privacy and protection. And also the startup innovation ecosystem that is growing very fast.

The basic principles of net neutrality, which is the openness of the internet that was the founding idea of early days, where we said that these telecom service providers cannot become the gatekeepers of the internet is now manifesting in the form that these big intermediaries are becoming gatekeepers of the internet. So the whole argument of net neutrality was in context of the telecom companies because they control the pipeline to the internet.

Now while the pipelines may be diversified and there is no control there, the platforms are now controlling access to the internet in many dangerous ways such as duopolies of app stores, monopolies of search engines, devices, ad tech. The underlying dynamics of the internet today on cybersecurity, dark internet and things that are going there in terms of identity theft, wallets being taken over, people being identified, all point to the need for us to have an overall data governance framework and have legislative principles established by a series of laws.

It is clear today that we need Aatmanirbhar internet which says that dont depend only on these platforms that have now demonstrated during the Russia-Ukraine war that they are not removed from state influence for all of the narrative they put out. They are absolutely subject to sovereign influence and it can make them weaponised against a country or for another country. We have to completely relook at our legislative and jurisprudential framework in that context.

There are draft laws with respect to data and cybersecurity pending? What does a re-look mean?

We must first create a national data governance framework, establish some principles of law, define the role of these intermediaries and what should be the nature of the relationship between the intermediaries and the user. We must define what should be the consumer rights. Are they more than the fundamental rights that they have? Do we need a magna carta of consumer rights on cyberspace so that every man, woman and child can consider the internet to be a safe, trusted and open space?

So the jurisprudential legal principles have to be built on that before we go on saying that we need to come up with this law or that. We will be belling the cat on one corner without addressing the overall piece. We have framed issued, such as ad tech. We have to de-risk our Indian internet and that de-risking urgency has, in a sense, been amplified by what we are seeing in Ukraine-Russia. It is validating our thinking, what we have been talking about in terms of a new digital law, the need for a data governance framework. We will create a framework, which will have the data protection law, the digital law and the cybersecurity statutes.

So we are now planning an architecturally-built cyberspace jurisprudence, rather than doing it piecemeal and a catch-up mode. Our approach now is exactly in keeping with the Aatmanirbhar Bharat principles and the success we have had in the fintech space and replicating it in other areas.

We are not averse to Big Tech. But we have to make sure that our rules and laws in India do not permit Big Tech platforms to be weaponised deliberately, wittingly, unwittingly, by any other force. For example, US-based platforms are not immune from US-government influence. A US platform will listen to the US government, just like a Russian platform will listen to the Russian government and a Ukrainian platform will listen to its government.

The weaponisation of the splinter-net impact of these platforms due to the sovereign influence on them has become visible during this conflict. We cannot allow our cyberspace and digital economy to ever be undermined by any body or any force outside our borders. That is the point of Aatmanirbhar internet.

Until such a governance framework is put into place, how will the government protect the cyberspace?

You cannot. With a law that is 20 years old, you cannot do it. You have to accept that. That is why the urgency to become an Aatmanirbhar cyberspace that you need an overarching framework, data protection law, cybersecurity policy, along with the basic ecosystem, toolkits and capabilities for cybersecurity.

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Then the question of ease of doing business and clamping down on such weaponisation of the internet comes into the picture?

There is no clamping down. Nobody clamps down on such weaponisation. I use the phrase weaponisation to understand the implication if you do not create an Aatmanirbhar Bharat and cyberspace. That is a real issue today that all policymakers should be concerned about.

For example, today there is a discussion on cryptocurrency or bitcoin. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is not wrong. The RBI is not wrong to say that if you allow bitcoin to be unregulated and you allow cyrptocurrencies of a foreign jurisdiction to be used here in India without the proper understanding of how those will be managed or how the exchange controls would be addressed, you will create havoc. If that is a normal chaos, that is still okay. But if it is a havoc that can be weaponised tomorrow by somebody, that is a real problem.

So what I am saying is that the weaponisation of the internet and the use of the internet where the biggest and most dominating platforms are of an external jurisdiction is an area of concern for public policymakers. Therefore, we have to ensure that the internet is diversified and is open, safe and trusted, as well accountable.

How do you achieve that? Through a series of new legislation, laws, rules and additional policy framework that addresses the issue of security, data governance as an overarching framework. I do not have an instant gratification response on what will we do tomorrow.

The fact is that the world of internet is today in chaos. Because governments across the world for a long time allowed them to pretend that they were innovators. All public policymakers must see internet as innovators and startups on one hand and as areas that require deep public policy interventions to ensure user safety, and non-weaponisation of internet.

As of today how prepared are we against such a weaponisation?

Our neighbours and state actors are actively using the internet against us. Kargil War was televised. Russia-Ukraine is now becoming a conflict where the internet is actively weaponised by both sides. I am not commenting on the Russia-Ukraine dispute. What I am saying is that when two nations have gone head-to-head in conflict, they have, in addition to using tanks, bombs, jets and drones, actively used the internet. And that weaponisation means that it can tomorrow be used by anybody against anybody, unless there are safeguards in terms of policy.

We have some experience as a nation where the internet has been used to foment trouble, whether it is state actor behind it or not. This today is a wake up call for us in the sense that as we move towards Web 3.0 and all these other kinds of dis-aggregated kind of internet which is further decentralised, we have to be clear that unlike in the past where laws lag innovation, here law should be in lock-step with innovation.

That is the only protection we can have. The domestic laws must make it very difficult for the intermediaries who are jurisdictionally present in India, to be weaponised against the interest of India and its citizens. That can only be done through laws. So it is not about picking up a phone and calling up some platform and telling them do not do this or that.

I say this as an entrepreneur who has seen internet evolve from the early days. For a large part of the travel of the internet, the internet and the innovation around the internet was kept outside the government purview totally by saying to the government that you do not understand what we are doing, so do not come and interfere.

All of these things that have happened are intrinsic part of internets nature and power. So Web 3.0 is even more powerful. So to prevent the weaponisation and splinter-net of the kind that we have seen today and to prevent big influence, monopolisation and cartelisation is an equal public policy imperative. For that we need policy to keep pace rather than play catch up.

Link:

Rajeev Chandrasekhar: Need to relook laws to de-risk Indian internet, make it difficult for Big Tech to be weaponised - The Indian Express

In my most recent Defining Ideas article, Let Freedom Rein in Big Tech, I made a case against the kind of regulation of Big Tech that many on the right favor. In that article, I promised to lay out the problems with some of the regulations of Big Tech that many on the left favor. One such set of regulations is in the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICO), sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota). My further research surprised me. I had thought that this was a bill favored mainly by the left. But it seems to have populist anti-big-business support from both left and right. Five of the bills co-sponsors are Democrats and six are Republicans. That makes analyzing the bill more, not less, important.

The fact that the words innovation and choice are in the bills title might suggest that the bills sponsors think those are good things. But what the bill would actually do, if implemented, is severely restrict innovation and choice when those innovations are undertaken by the Big Tech firms that are targets of the bill. Just as antitrust laws in the past seemed more designed to protect competitors rather than consumers, so with AICO. Moreover, what the proponents seem not to recognize is that innovation often occurs in unpredictable ways and that the firm with market power today is often, ten years later, the firm that has been displaced by innovative competitors.

This is from David R. Henderson, A Populist Attack on Big Tech, Defining Ideas, March 3, 2022.

I hadnt realized until I started to look into AICO how bipartisan it is.

Another excerpt:

AICO defines a covered platform as one that has at least 50,000,000 United Statesbased monthly active users on the online platform or has at least 100,000 United Statesbased monthly active business users on the online platform. It must also have net annual sales or a market capitalization greater than $550 billion. Why $550 billion? The answer is telling.

Originally, the cutoff in the bill was $600 billion. But on February 8, 2022, the market capitalization of Meta, owner of Facebook, fell below $600 billion for the first time since May 2020. CNBC writer Lauren Feiner thought at the time that the lower market value could help Meta avoid being regulated under AICO. But no such luck. Senator Klobuchar quickly revised the bill to make the threshold $550 billion, which was below, and is still below, Metas market cap. If there was ever any doubt as to one of her targets, Klobuchars revision of the bill removed that doubt.

I also dig into the robber baron issue.

Read the whole thing.

Read the rest here:

A Populist Attack on Big Tech - Econlib

If there were a graveyard for failed health IT endeavors, it would be cluttered with the tombstones of Big Tech companies like IBM, Google and Amazon.

Big technology companies have often been hailed as the saviors that could free the nation from the problems of our dysfunctional, inefficient and archaic healthcare system. The reality is that these organizations continue to fail in their initiatives, ultimately stifling true healthcare innovation and reducing the markets confidence in technologies that are successfully addressing real market needs.

After wasting time and money on half-baked solutions, organizations eventually give up and wonder if Big Techs motivations for saving healthcare were based more on greed and hubris than actual innovation. Oracles $28 billion acquisition of Cerner is the latest Big Tech investment to generate headlines, and its a deal thats not likely to end well, either.

A quick review of notable Big Tech healthcare failures

As a refresher, lets look back to a few of the more notable Big Tech healthcare debacles of recent years.

Why does this keep happening? Dirty healthcare data

Its easy to understand the appeal that healthcare holds for Big Tech. Its a $4.1 trillion market that is plagued by disorganization and waste. Despite what we in the industry sometimes like to tell ourselves, the reality is that healthcare in America is horrible. Healthcare is more expensive in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, yet quality is poorer than most developed nations in terms of life expectancy and outcomes.

Why? The foundation of the U.S. healthcare systems is billing codes i.e., financial rather than clinical information. That leads to a host of problems due to the lack of granularity of claims data, which does not account for many important factors, including patients social determinants of health.

One consistent theme that runs through all of these missteps is that Big Tech constantly underestimates the problem that healthcare has with dirty data. Healthcare is not engineering. In healthcare, data is rarely clean or consistent; its more like the Tower of Babel. Healthcare is full of industry-specific terminologies, such as ICD-10, SNOMED, RxNorm and MedDRA.

Indeed, approximately 30% of the worlds data volume is generated by the healthcare industry, according to RBC Capital Markets. By 2025, the compound annual growth rate of data for healthcare is expected to reach 36%, a faster rate of growth than the manufacturing, financial services, and media and entertainment industries.

Patient data may be included in medical histories, diagnoses, observations, lab reports and imaging reports, to name just a few of the many disparate sources. Further, each patient record is unique, and medical data can be complex and confusing.

In addition to its complexity, clinical data is often perplexingly and frustratingly both redundant and incomplete at the same time. Its stored in separate electronic health records systems across various providers, but full of spelling errors and inconsistencies.

Much of the valuable data that healthcare organizations need to improve decision-making is also unstructured. The information is trapped in the notes sections of EHRs or as PDFs and image files, which are difficult for machine-learning algorithms to decipher. It is estimated that about 80% of healthcare data is unstructured.

Big Techs lack of healthcare domain expertise can create conditions that stifle innovation and reduce market confidence in certain types of technology. When organizations spend time and money to implement Big Tech solutions that ultimately dont fix their pain points, many simply give up on the technology even when other innovative solutions are available in the market.

For healthcare, by those with healthcare expertise

Look, I do Google searches and use Big Techs tools just like everybody else. For the most part, theyre good at what they do when they stick to what they do and thats not healthcare.

As weve seen time and time again, Big Tech just cant get healthcare right because they cant overcome the dirty data problems that are endemic to the industry and they are too proud to integrate the third party solutions that do. Everyone (that is to say: the healthcare industry, Big Tech themselves, and oh yeah, patients) would frankly be better off if they stopped trying.

Instead of relying on Big Tech to solve healthcares big problems, stakeholders would be better served to look at solutions that have been developed for healthcare by experienced experts who know and understand the industry.

Photo: pictafolio, Getty Images

Go here to see the original:

Big Tech companies are harming not helping healthcare - MedCity News

LinkedIn employees are treated to "surprise and delight" moments through the tech company's LiftUp program.

LinkedIn

Millions of Americans are quitting their jobs and rethinking what they want when it comes to work and work-life balance. Companies are responding, meeting their employees' needs in areas like remote work, flexible hours, four-day workweeks, compensation and more. This story is part of a series looking at the "Great Reshuffle" and the shift in workplace culture taking place right now.

Can something as simple as an extra paid day off or a workday without meetings really help employee well-being?

For tech giant LinkedIn, the answer is a resounding yes.

As the Covid-19 pandemic took its toll on workers around the nation, employers scrambled to respond. LinkedIn decided to tackle the burnout, anxiety and exhaustion many of its employees were facing by instituting a new initiative called LiftUp.

It's a resource hub and a series of fun events, but most notably it also gives the gift of time in the form of global well-being days off and meeting-free days.

More from Invest in You:A four-day workweek doesn't mean less work. Here's how to do itMeet the company that offers its contract workers benefits and job securityThis worker took three months off with pay to hike in Europe

There was also a company-wide shutdown for a week in April 2021 and a year-end "Silver Linings Show" featuring employees' positive moments in 2020, hosted by comedian Trevor Noah. Other events included a music festival and day filled with random acts of kindness.

"The surprises and delights were really meant to simply put the spark back in everyone, lift our heads up higher, and create some fun along the way," Nina McQueen, LinkedIn's vice president of benefits and employee experience at LinkedIn, said in the company's 2022 Global Talent Trends report.

While LiftUp started in response to the crisis, it has now become part of LinkedIn's DNA.

"[Employees] need support, they need to know the organization values them," said Jennifer Shappley, LinkedIn's global head of talent acquisition.

"What people need right now is some help balancing," she explained. "LiftUp is an example of how we are helping people with that."

Two years into the pandemic, workers are still struggling. Fully 54% feel mentally exhausted and drained after every workday and 44% have trouble staying focused at on the job, a survey by HR tech company Workhuman found. The poll, conducted by Workhuman IQ, polled 2,268 full-time workers in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Ireland from Nov. 12 to 14.

Nawal Fakhoury, director of employee experience at LinkedIn, called the LiftUp initiative a gift.

"I was one of those employees who never ever took a break or time off until I was absolutely at the point of needing it," she said. "The surprise days off I didn't realize how much I needed them."

Organizational psychologist Melissa Doman agrees that a company-wide day off is beneficial for workers. They can focus on other things without guilt since no one else is working either, she said.

What people need right now is some help balancing.

Jennifer Shappley

LinkedIn's global head of talent acquisition

"Work is important l love my work, I work a lot but work is not all of life," said Doman, author of "Yes, You Can Talk About Mental Health at WorkHere's Why (And How To Do It Really Well)."

"You have to give people the space of the human experience outside of work," she added. "In the corporate world of work, the world is not going to burn if you shut down for eight hours.

"People need to stop treating it like it will."

To be sure, LinkedIn's effort is one of many approaches to dealing with employee burnout. Others have turned to perks like flexible schedules or a four-day workweek. It's all part of a shift in workplace culture that has employers focused on employee well-being.

"It is so overdue, but I'm so happy that the pandemic has forced people to realize that feeling valued and having your well-being valued doesn't always have to come with a dollar sign," Doman said.

In fact, what job-seekers want most is work-life balance, LinkedIn's report found, with 63% calling it a top priority when picking a new job. In comparison, 60% cited compensation and benefits.

The company believes its culture is resonating with job-seekers and employees alike.

"Over the last three quarters, we have hired more people than we have hired ever in our history," Shappley said.

For Fakhoury, the experience with LiftUp has raised her level of awareness on the well-being of her direct reports. It's also impacted the way she approaches her own work life.

"It was this persistent reminder to be taking care of ourselves," she said. "It rewired me."

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This Big Tech company 'surprises and delights employees to keep them happy - CNBC

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked outcry and sanctions, but the direct power to shape human destiny in the 21st Century doesn't lie with governments alone.

From social media platforms being used for information warfare to software companies defending customers from state-sponsored cyber attacks, the invasion has highlighted how critical technology companies are in times of conflict.

They are also potential levers of influence. Ukraine's digital minister Mykhailo Federov has called on a number of companies, including Netflix, to block their services in Russia.

Read more: Could Russia turn to cryptocurrency and cyber crime to dodge sanctions?

Many argued in response that keeping their services available was the best way to inform Russians about the invasion, but some have been pulled and others are being monitored for manipulation.

In alphabetical order, here's how they are responding:

Airbnb

Airbnb's chief executive Brian Chesky said the company was suspending all operations in Russia and Belarus.

Earlier this week Mr Chesky said the company would work with hosts to help house up to 100,000 Ukrainians forced to flee their homes and would waive all booking fees in the country.

He called for people "in nearby countries, including Poland, Germany, Hungary and Romania" to offer in their homes using the platform.

Apple

In a statement Apple said: "We are deeply concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stand with all of the people who are suffering as a result of the violence."

The company said it has "paused all product sales" in Russia while "Apple Pay and other services have been limited".

In Ukraine, the company has "disabled both traffic and live incidents in Apple Maps... as a safety and precautionary measure for Ukrainian citizens" amid concerns that Russia could attack locations where large groups were gathering.

Outside of Russia the company has removed the apps for RT and Sputnik from the App Store.

Electronic Arts

In its statement Electronic Arts, the gaming company behind the FIFA titles, said: "We stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine."

The company said it will stop sales of its games and content in Russia and Belarus while the conflict continues.

"We are also working with our platform partners to remove our titles from their stores and stop the sale of new in-game content in the region," the company said.

Google

In a statement Google said: "The Russian invasion of Ukraine is both a tragedy and a humanitarian disaster in the making."

In Ukraine the company has updated its Search and Maps services to provide alerts to UN resources for people searching for refugee and asylum information.

Similar to Apple, the company has also disabled some live Google Maps features in the country "including the traffic layer and information about how busy places are, to help protect the safety of local communities and their citizens".

Google said it had been taking action against "Russia-backed hacking and influence operations" for years and was continuing to automatically increase Google account security protections.

Read more: Cyber, war and Ukraine - What does recent history teach us to expect?

It said it was also providing protection against DDoS attacks for more than 100 Ukrainian websites, including local news services.

The company has blocked the YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe - including the UK, which is not covered by the European Union restrictions - and has banned RT from monetising its content on any of its advertising platforms.

In Russia, the company said most of its services would remain available, helping people there access global information and perspectives beyond those of state-controlled media.

Meta

Meta said: "In response to Russias invasion of Ukraine, our teams have been on high alert to identify emerging threats and respond as quickly as we can."

It has blocked access to RT and Sputnik across the EU and following a request from Nadine Dorries is also blocking access to them in the UK.

Facebook and Instagram are globally demoting content from the Russian state-controlled media outlets, as well as fact-checking posts about the conflict.

Nick Clegg said Meta was facing restrictions in Russia as a result of refusing the Kremlin's demands to stop fact-checking and labelling posts.

Meta added it has also been uncovering information warfare networks which had been operating fictitious personas and brands across the internet and taking down their accounts.

It added it is seeing "increased targeting of people in Ukraine, including Ukrainian military and public figures" by a hacking group which the security community believes has Belarussian and Russian links, and warned the hackers were sending friend requests using its social platforms.

Additional account privacy and security protections have been rolled out in Ukraine and are being added to Russia as well "in response to public reports of targeting of civil society and protesters", the company added.

Microsoft

In its statement Microsoft said it was "following closely the tragic, unlawful and unjustified invasion of Ukraine" and was working to support humanitarian organisations.

It has stopped all new sales of products and services in Russia as of Friday.

The company said it has been and will continue to detect and advise the Ukrainian government about cyber attacks targeting the country's digital infrastructure.

Read more: Should UK be worried about an escalating cyber conflict?

"We remain especially concerned about recent cyberattacks on Ukrainian civilian digital targets, including the financial sector, agriculture sector, emergency response services, humanitarian aid efforts, and energy sector organisations and enterprises," the company said.

Microsoft added that it was removing the RT news apps from the Windows App Store and de-ranking RT and Sputnik on Bing, as well as banning all of their advertisements from its networks.

Netflix

Netflix hasn't issued a statement regarding the conflict, but is estimated to have approximately a million subscribers in Russia.

A recently passed Russian law which came into effect on 1 March means the American platform is now required to include 20 government-controlled television stations among its streaming services.

However in the context of the invasion of Ukraine this has not yet been implemented.

A spokesperson for Netflix told Sky News: "Given the current situation, we have no plans to add these channels to our service."

Netflix had previously launched original programming in Russia including Anna K, a contemporary retelling of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

However Sky News understands that Netflix has now halted all Russian productions and acquisitions.

Snap

Snap said: "We stand in solidarity with our Ukrainian team members and the people of Ukraine who are fighting for their lives and for their freedom."

The company's augmented reality features are based on technology from a Ukrainian company called Looksery which it acquired in 2015 and Snap said Ukraine has been the home of more than 300 of its team members.

It said it had stopped all advertising running in Russia, Ukraine and even Belarus as a result of the conflict.

It was also halting advertising sales to all Russian and Belarusian organisations. The company said it does not accept revenue from Russian state-owned entities.

The Snapchat app will continue to be available in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia "as it remains an important communications tool for family and friends" buy the company will continue to monitor for disinformation and other misuse.

"Ukraine is a nation whose incredible potential is helping to shape a more positive future for the world and we will not waver in our solidarity," the company's statement concluded.

Telegram

A spokesperson for Telegram, the social media platform founded in Russia although now legally based in the British Virgin Islands, told Sky News they were complying with the EU's legal request to ban RT and Sputnik.

According to a POLITCO Europe report, RT channels in English, Spanish, German, and French were still active on the platform this morning.

Telegram sent Sky News a list of channels associated with RT which it said have now been blocked in the EU. Sky News was unable to immediately verify the blocks.

But the company confirmed to POLITICO that the blocks only affect those with an EU-based phone number, not for anyone geographically located in the European Union.

European Commissioner for values and transparency Vera Jourova tweeted in response: "The rules are clear. There cannot be any circumvention of the law. Member States should make sure the sanctions are applied."

TikTok

TikTok has not released an official statement regarding the conflict.

The company has banned RT and Sputnik in the EU following the legal instruction by Ursula von der Leyen.

Regarding disinformation and harmful misinformation, a spokesperson told Sky News it was continuing to monitor and dedicate "increased resources to the situation as it evolves".

Twitter

Twitter said it was "actively monitoring for risks associated with the conflict in Ukraine, including identifying and disrupting attempts to amplify false and misleading information".

The company had already banned RT and Sputnik from running advertisements following allegations over Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in the US.

It added that it has temporarily paused all advertisements in Ukraine and Russia.

Similarly to Meta, Twitter labels the posts of media outlets sponsored by the Russian state. The company said it was aware the site was being restricted in Russia as a result.

This included monitoring high-profile accounts, "including journalists, activists, and government officials and agencies to mitigate any attempts at a targeted takeover or manipulation".

It has also withheld content on RT and Sputnik for users within the EU, and says outside of the EU it will "focus on de-amplifying this type of state-affiliated media content".

Continue reading here:

How are the big tech companies responding to the invasion of Ukraine? - Sky News