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Peter Holley / Washington Post:
Interviews with ER physicians in seven US cities reveal a spike in severe injuries due to electric scooters; Bird, Lime, and Spin say apps contain safety info — They have been pouring into emergency rooms around the nation all summer, their bodies bearing a blend of injuries …
Aaron Tilley / The Information:
Apple has hired Liz Schimel, a former president of Condé Nast China, whose LinkedIn page lists a July start date and her Apple role as “head of news business” — Apple is beefing up the management of its Apple News product, with the recent hiring of veteran media executive Liz Schimel.
Polina Devitt / Reuters:
Google removed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's YouTube ad inviting Russians to join protests after authorities complained it violated election law — MOSCOW (Reuters) - Google removed a YouTube advert by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after authorities complained …
Dave Gershgorn / Quartz:
Healthcare AI has the same racial and gender biases as the data used to train it, which must be addressed if AI systems are to help make real medical decisions — Imagine there was a simple test to see whether you were developing Alzheimer's disease. You would look at a picture and describe it …
Steve LeVine / Axios:
McKinsey study says AI adoption will add $13T/year to global production, and the companies that embrace AI now will see their cash flow double by 2030 — The world is in a deceptively quiet period in which some companies and countries are aggressively developing and applying early …
David Streitfeld / New York Times:
Profile of Lina Khan, whose antitrust argument, which says Amazon has far too much power, is making waves in Washington by reframing decades of antitrust law — With a single scholarly article, Lina Khan, 29, has reframed decades of monopoly law. — The dead books are on the top floor of Southern Methodist University's law library.
Wolfie Zhao / CoinDesk:
China's Supreme People's Court rules that blockchain can be legally used to authenticate digital evidence in legal disputes — Blockchain can now be legally used to authenticate evidence in legal disputes in China, according to the country's Supreme People's Court.
Gregory Barber / Wired:
Researchers think we may be on the verge of breakthroughs in AI's comprehension of language similar to the AI image recognition breakthroughs of 2012 — IN 2012, ARTIFICIAL intelligence researchers revealed a big improvement in computers' ability to recognize images by feeding …
Jared Schroeder / Columbia Journalism Review:
As Trump threatens new regulations for Google, Facebook, and Twitter, experts say legal precedents show algorithms may be protected under the First Amendment — President Trump indicated last week that the White House is looking into regulating Google, Facebook, and Twitter because they are …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
House passes a bill that requires White House to create and maintain a database with the names of foreign hackers and cyber-threat groups working against US — US hopes that a name-and-shame strategy would deter foreign nation-state hacking groups to attack US infrastructure as often as now.
Half an hour into their two-hour testimony on Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey were asked about collaboration between social media companies. “Our collaboration has greatly increased,” Sandberg stated before turning to Dorsey and adding that Facebook has “always shared information with other companies.” Dorsey nodded in response, and noted for his part that he’s very open to establishing “a regular cadence with our industry peers.”
Social media companies have established extensive policies on what constitutes “hate speech” on their platforms. But discrepancies between these policies open the possibility for propagators of hate to game the platforms and still get their vitriol out to a large audience. Collaboration of the kind Sandberg and Dorsey discussed can lead to a more consistent approach to hate speech that will prevent the gaming of platforms’ policies.
But collaboration between competitors as dominant as Facebook and Twitter are in social media poses an important question: would antitrust or other laws make their coordination illegal?
The short answer is no. Facebook and Twitter are private companies that get to decide what user content stays and what gets deleted off of their platforms. When users sign up for these free services, they agree to abide by their terms. Neither company is under a First Amendment obligation to keep speech up. Nor can it be said that collaboration on platform safety policies amounts to collusion.
This could change based on an investigation into speech policing on social media platforms being considered by the Justice Department. But it’s extremely unlikely that Congress would end up regulating what platforms delete or keep online – not least because it may violate the First Amendment rights of the platforms themselves.
Trying to find a universal definition for hate speech would be a fool’s errand, but in the context of private companies hosting user generated content, hate speech for social platforms is what they say is hate speech.
Facebook’s 26-page Community Standards include a whole section on how Facebook defines hate speech. For Facebook, hate speech is “anything that directly attacks people based on . . . their ‘protected characteristics’ — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or serious disability or disease.” While that might be vague, Facebook then goes on to give specific examples of what would and wouldn’t amount to hate speech, all while making clear that there are cases – depending on the context – where speech will still be tolerated if, for example, it’s intended to raise awareness.
Twitter uses a “hateful conduct” prohibition which they define as promoting “violence against or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” They also prohibit hateful imagery and display names, meaning it’s not just what you tweet but what you also display on your profile page that can count against you.
Both companies constantly reiterate and supplement their definitions, as new test cases arise and as words take on new meaning. For example, the two common slang words to describe Ukrainians by Russians and Russians by Ukrainians was determined to be hate speech after war erupted in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. An internal review by Facebook found that what used to be common slang had turned into derogatory, hateful language.
Under U.S. antitrust laws, companies cannot collude to make anticompetitive agreements or try to monopolize a market. A company which becomes a monopoly by having a superior product in the marketplace doesn’t violate antitrust laws. What does violate the law is dominant companies making an agreement – usually in secret – to deceive or mislead competitors or consumers. Examples include price fixing, restricting new market entrants, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between competitors.
A Pew survey found that 68% of Americans use Facebook. According to Facebook’s own records, the platform had a whopping 1.47 billion daily active users on average for the month of June and 2.23 billion monthly active users as of the end of June – with over 200 million in the US alone. While Twitter doesn’t disclose its number of daily users, it does publish the number of monthly active users which stood at 330 million at last count, 69 million of which are in the U.S.
There can be no question that Facebook and Twitter are overwhelmingly dominant in the social media market. That kind of dominance has led to calls for breaking up these giants under antitrust laws.
Would those calls hold more credence if the two social giants began coordinating their policies on hate speech?
The answer is probably not, but it does depend on exactly how they coordinated. Social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have grown large internal product policy teams that decide the rules for using their platforms, including on hate speech. If these teams were to get together behind closed doors and coordinate policies and enforcement in a way that would preclude smaller competitors from being able to enter the market, then antitrust regulators may get involved.
Antitrust would also come into play if, for example, Facebook and Twitter got together and decided to charge twice as much for advertising that includes hate speech (an obviously absurd scenario) – in other words, using their market power to affect pricing of certain types of speech that advertisers use.
In fact, coordination around hate speech may reduce anti-competitive concerns. Given the high user engagement around hate speech, banning it could lead to reduced profits for the two companies and provide an opening to upstart competitors.
Sandberg and Dorsey’s testimony Wednesday didn’t point to executives hell-bent on keeping competition out through collaboration. Rather, their potential collaboration is probably better seen as an industry deciding on “best practices,” a common occurrence in other industries including those with dominant market players.
Private companies are not subject to the First Amendment. The Constitution applies to the government, not to corporations. A private company, no matter its size, can ignore your right to free speech.
That’s why Facebook and Twitter already can and do delete posts that contravene their policies. Calling for the extermination of all immigrants, referring to Africans as coming from shithole countries, and even anti-gay protests at military funerals may be protected in public spaces, but social media companies get to decide whether they’ll allow any of that on their platforms. As Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman has stated, “There’s no right to free speech on Twitter. The only rule is that Twitter Inc. gets to decide who speaks and listens–which is its right under the First Amendment.”
Instead, when it comes to social media and the First Amendment, courts have been more focused on not allowing the government to keep citizens off of social media. Just last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina law that made it a crime for a registered sex offender to access social media if children use that platform. During the hearing, judges asked the government probing questions about the rights of citizens to free speech on social media from Facebook, to Snapchat, to Twitter and even LinkedIn.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made clear during the hearing that restricting access to social media would mean “being cut off from a very large part of the marketplace of ideas [a]nd [that] the First Amendment includes not only the right to speak, but the right to receive information.”
The Court ended up deciding that the law violated the fundamental First Amendment principle that “all persons have access to places where they can speak and listen,” noting that social media has become one of the most important forums for expression of our day.
Lower courts have also ruled that public officials who block users off their profiles are violating the First Amendment rights of those users. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, of the Southern District of New York, decided in May that Trump’s Twitter feed is a public forum. As a result, she ruled that when Trump blocks citizens from viewing and replying to his posts, he violates their First Amendment rights.
The First Amendment doesn’t mean Facebook and Twitter are under any obligation to keep up whatever you post, but it does mean that the government can’t just ban you from accessing your Facebook or Twitter accounts – and probably can’t block you off of their own public accounts either.
Sandberg made clear in her testimony on Wednesday that collaboration is already happening when it comes to keeping bad actors off of platforms. “We [already] get tips from each other. The faster we collaborate, the faster we share these tips with each other, the stronger our collective defenses will be.”
Dorsey for his part stressed that keeping bad actors off of social media “is not something we want to compete on.” Twitter is here “to contribute to a healthy public square, not compete to have the only one, we know that’s the only way our business thrives and helps us all defend against these new threats.”
He even went further. When it comes to the drafting of their policies, beyond collaborating with Facebook, he said he would be open to a public consultation. “We have real openness to this. . . . We have an opportunity to create more transparency with an eye to more accountability but also a more open way of working – a way of working for instance that allows for a review period by the public about how we think about our policies.”
I’ve already argued why tech firms should collaborate on hate speech policies, the question that remains is if that would be legal. The First Amendment does not apply to social media companies. Antitrust laws don’t seem to stand in their way either. And based on how Senator Burr, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chose to close the hearing, government seems supportive of social media companies collaborating. Addressing Sandberg and Dorsey, he said, “I would ask both of you. If there are any rules, such as any antitrust, FTC, regulations or guidelines that are obstacles to collaboration between you, I hope you’ll submit for the record where those obstacles are so we can look at the appropriate steps we can take as a committee to open those avenues up.”
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
US GAO releases report on how the 2017 Equifax hack occurred and the steps taken in its aftermath, concluding Equifax left information vulnerable on many fronts — GAO report takes us inside Equifax from March 2017 onward, showing how a few slip-ups led to one of the biggest breaches in US history.
Chris O'Brien / VentureBeat:
A look at how Stockholm became Europe's capital of startup exits, with Spotify's $27B IPO and iZettle's $2.2B acquisition — The exits earlier this year by two of Sweden's biggest startup names would be enough to swell the pride of any regional ecosystem. Spotify's $27 billion IPO …
Reports of Jack Ma’s impending retirement are greatly exaggerated, it seems. Ma, the co-founder and executive chairman of Alibaba, has pushed back on claims that he is on the cusp of leaving the $420 billion Chinese e-commerce firm.
The New York Times first reported that the entrepreneur plans to announce that he will leave the firm to pursue philanthropy in education, a topic he is passionate about — Ma is a former teacher. But that news was quickly rebutted after Ma gave an interview to the South China Morning Post — the media company that Alibaba bought in 2016 — in which he explained that he plans to gradually phase himself out of the company through a succession plan.
When reached for comment, Alibaba pointed TechCrunch to the SCMP report which claims Ma’s strategy will “provide [leadership] transition plans over a significant period of time.”
In order words, Ma isn’t abruptly leaving the company, but it seems that his role will be gradually reduced over time. Alibaba confirmed he’ll remain a part of the company while the succession plan is carried out. The exact details will be announced on Ma’s birthday, September 10.
That transition isn’t a new development. Ma stepped back from a daily role when he moved from CEO to chairman in 2013. Speaking at the time, he said that he would remain active and that it was “impossible” for him to retire but he did concede that younger people with fresher ideas should lead the business.
That’s exactly what has happened in the preceding years.
13-year Alibaba veteran Jonathan Lu stepped into Ma’s shoes as CEO. He led Alibaba when it went public in a record $25 billion IPO in 2015, but he was replaced in 2015 by Daniel Zhang after reportedly losing Ma’s confidence. Former COO Zhang leads the company today, although Ma’s presence still looms large and he is particularly involved in the political side of the business. That’s included a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, and various activities with national leaders in markets like Southeast Asia, where Alibaba has sought to leverage the colossal size of its business to make inroads in emerging markets and position its business for growth as internet access continues to increase.
“I sat down with our senior executives 10 years ago, and asked what Alibaba would do without me,” Ma told SCMP in an interview. “I’m very proud that Alibaba now has the structure, corporate culture, governance and system for grooming talent that allows me to step away without causing disruption.”
Another domino has fallen in Alex Jones’ media empire. Apple this week announced that it’s pulled the controversial conspiracy theorist/provocateur from the App Store this week, banning the Infowars app over violations to its “objectionable content” rules.
Slightly more specifically, the host was determined to have violated the TOS around “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or place a targeted individual or group in harm’s way.”
There’s been a cascade effect with many of the major platforms Jones has used to distribute his video content. Facebook, Google and Spotify have all pulled Infowars content from their respective platforms. This week, Twitter and Periscope banned him after widespread criticism.
Among other controversial comments, Jones has come under fire for suggesting that the Sandy Hook shooting, which resulted in the deaths of 20 elementary school students, was a hoax.
We’ve reached out to Apple for comment.
I’m deathly allergic to nuts, so I felt super excited when I heard about the Nima peanut sensor. I’ve ended up in the emergency room numerous times because there were nuts in something I thought did not contain nuts. With Nima, I could’ve tested those specific foods before consumption and probably avoided a trip to the ER.
Nima, a TechCrunch Battlefield alum, is gearing up to launch a peanut sensor, its second product, on September 12. The sensor is able to detect even the tiniest trace (10 parts per million) of peanut protein. To use Nima, you insert the food into a disposable test capsule, which goes into the device to figure out if there’s any peanut protein in the food. In under five minutes, the Nima sensor will tell you if your food is peanut-free.
The device connects to your phone via Bluetooth to enable the app to show your testing history, records of all the packaged foods yo’ve tried and a map of restaurants that Nima has tested for peanuts. To be clear, this sensor is just for peanuts. It does not test for all nuts, but Nima founder Shireen Yates told me the plan is to enable testing for additional nuts in the future.
The idea with Nima is not to suddenly ditch your Epi-Pen, an epinephrine shot designed to treat anaphylactic allergic reactions, but to provide one extra way to be confident about what you’re eating before you eat it. Based on two rounds of internal testing, Nima says there is a 97.6 percent accuracy rate.
Nima retails for $229 while the sensor plus 12 test capsules retails at $289. Nima launched its first product tested for gluten sensitivity. Check out the video at the top to learn more about Nima.
