Microsoft on Thursday lobbied for other countries to follow Australia’s lead in calling for news outlets to be paid for stories published online, a move opposed by Facebook and Google.Microsoft last week offered to fill the void if rival Google follows through on a threat to turn off its search engine in Australia over the plan.Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement the company fully supports proposed legislation in Australia that would force Google and Facebook to compensate media for their journalism.”This has made for an unusual split within the tech sector, and we’ve heard from people asking whether Microsoft would support a similar proposal in the United States, Canada, the European Union and other countries,” Smith said in a blog post.FILE – This combination of file photos shows a Google sign and the Facebook app. “The short answer is, yes.”Facebook and Google have both threatened to block key services in Australia if the rules, now before Parliament, become law as written.The situation raises the question of whether U.S. President Joe Biden will back away from his predecessor’s objection to the proposal in Australia.”As the United States takes stock of the events on January 6, it’s time to widen the aperture,” Smith said, referring to a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol building by a mob of Trump supporters out to overturn the election results.”The ultimate question is what values we want the tech sector and independent journalism to serve.”Smith argued that internet platforms that have not previously compensated news agencies should now step up to revive independent journalism that “goes to the heart of our democratic freedoms.”“The United States should not object to a creative Australian proposal that strengthens democracy by requiring tech companies to support a free press,” Smith said. “It should copy it instead.”Bing goes big?The proposed law in Australia would govern relations between financially distressed traditional media outlets and the giants that dominate the internet and capture a significant share of advertising revenues.Microsoft’s search engine Bing accounts for less than 5% of the market in Australia, and from 15% to 20% of the market in the United States, according to the tech giant based in Washington State.”With a realistic prospect of gaining usage share, we are confident we can build the service Australians want and need,” Smith said.”And unlike Google, if we can grow, we are prepared to sign up for the new law’s obligations, including sharing revenue as proposed with news organizations.”Under the proposed News Media Bargaining Code, Google and Facebook would be required to negotiate payments to individual news organizations for using their content on the platforms.Australia’s biggest media companies, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Nine Entertainment, have said they think the payments should amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year.If agreement cannot be reached on the size of the payments, the issue would go to so-called “final offer” arbitration where each side proposes a compensation amount and the arbiter chooses one or the other.Google and Facebook, backed up by the U.S. government and leading internet architects, have said the scheme would seriously undermine their business models and the very functioning of the internet.Both Facebook and Google have insisted they are willing to pay publishers for news via licensing agreements and commercial negotiations, and both have signed deals worth millions of dollars with news organizations around the world.Google has said the bargaining code should focus on facilitating these kinds of negotiations, but it rejected the idea of mandatory “final offer” arbitration.
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India has warned social media giants to comply with local laws or face action amid an escalating dispute with Twitter over the government’s demand that hundreds of accounts be blocked.
 
Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told parliament Thursday that “if social media is misused to spread fake news and misinformation, then action will be taken.”  
 
Naming Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube and LinkedIn, he said that they were free to do business in India but would have to “follow the Indian constitution.”
 
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called on Twitter to take down hundreds of accounts and posts for allegedly using provocative hashtags and spreading misinformation about a massive farmers’ protest that erupted in violence on January 26.
 
India has reacted angrily to Twitter’s failure to comply fully with its directive — while the social media company has acted on some of these accounts, it has not taken down all of them.   
 
Following a virtual call with Twitter’s executives, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that it had “expressed deep disappointment” over the manner in which the company had “unwillingly, grudgingly and with great delay” complied with only parts of its orders. “Lawfully passed orders are binding on any business entity and must be obeyed immediately,” it said in a statement on Wednesday.FILE – A man reads tweets by Indian celebrities on his mobile phone in New Delhi, India, Feb. 4, 2021.Twitter had earlier said, “In keeping with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians.”
 
India also called out Twitter for “differential treatment,” citing its crackdown on accounts following last month’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington.
 
“During Capitol Hill, social media platforms stand with the police action and in violence at Red Fort, you take a different stand,” Minister Prasad said in parliament, referring to the storming of a historic building in New Delhi by thousands of farmers during a rally. “We won’t allow these double standards.”
 
Critics have voiced concern about the government’s intolerance of dissenting voices and accuse it of cracking down on free speech.    
 
Digital rights activists say there is no way to ascertain whether the government’s request to act against hundreds of accounts is legal because the orders “lack transparency.”
 
“Apart from Twitter which has seen these orders, no one can comment on whether these orders are justified,” according to Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama, a mobile and digital news portal. “But on the face of it some of these demands appear to be a disproportionate act of censorship,” he said.
 
Pahwa cites the example of a news magazine, The Caravan, whose account was restored after being briefly blocked. “The Caravan is an award-winning, legitimate news organization and was not even given an opportunity of a hearing.”
 
Pahwa welcomed Twitter’s move to not take down all the accounts as the government demanded. “I wish more platforms stood up for their users’ speech like this and push back against orders that are in their opinion not lawful,” he said.
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The social media platform Instagram has permanently removed the account of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for posting false information regarding vaccines and COVID-19.
 
In a statement Wednesday, Facebook, which owns Instagram, said, “We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.”
 
Kennedy’s Facebook page, which has carried some of same information and has over 300,000 followers, remains active. 
Kennedy is the son of the former senator and U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and worked for decades as an environmental lawyer. In recent years, he is better known as an anti-vaccine crusader.
 
He chairs a nonprofit organization, Children’s Health Defense, which is skeptical about the health benefits of vaccines. Kennedy has lobbied Congress to give parents exemptions from state vaccine requirements for children.
 
Kennedy has said he is not opposed to vaccines, as long as they are safe, and says he has vaccinated all of his children. Yet, he regularly endorses discredited links between vaccines and autism and has argued that it is safer to contract the coronavirus than to be inoculated against it.
 
Members of Kennedy’s famous political family have spoken out against his views.
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Twitter said Wednesday it had suspended some accounts in India after New Delhi served the social media giant several orders to block accounts amid civil unrest.  The announcement comes after months of unrest in India over changes to agriculture bills in the country. Protesting farmers have been met with internet cuts and social media blocks, which New Delhi has said are necessary for security. In a FILE – Security officers push back people shouting slogans during a protest held to show support to farmers who have been on a monthslong protest, in New Delhi, India, Feb. 3, 2021.Just last week, Twitter blocked hundreds of accounts in India — many of them belonging to news professionals and activists. Twitter said that two orders served by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) were “emergency orders,” and that while they were initially complied with, Twitter later restored the accounts, arguing that blocking them was against India’s own free speech laws. “After we communicated this to MeitY, we were served with a non-compliance notice,” the blog post said. Twitter relented, to some degree, after the order, as the company was told its local employees could face up to seven years in prison under an Indian information technology law. After more the two months of protests and campaigns against the new “farm bills,” which protesters say would leave them at the mercy of corporations, the demonstrations have experienced a resurgence and received international attention over the last week.
 
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned about an “explosion of risk” from digital markets, including the misuse of cryptocurrencies, but said new financial technologies could also help fight crime and reduce inequality.In remarks to a financial sector innovation roundtable, Yellen said such technologies could be used to stem the flow of dark money from organized crime and fight back against hackers, but also to reduce digital gaps in the United States.She said passage of the Anti-Money Laundering Act in December would allow the Treasury Department to rework a framework for combating illicit finance that has been largely unchanged since the 1970s.”The update couldn’t have come at a better time,” Yellen told policymakers, regulators and private sector experts. “We’re living amidst an explosion of risk related to fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing, and data privacy.”The COVID-19 pandemic had triggered more — and more sophisticated — cyberattacks aimed at hospitals, schools, banks, and the government itself, she said.Cryptocurrencies and virtual assets offered promise, but they had also been used to launder the profits of online drug traffickers and to finance terrorism.Innovation in the sector could help address these problems while giving millions of people access to the financial system, she said.Yellen, who has promised to prioritize fighting inequality and disparities, said the pandemic had exposed huge problems, including the dearth of broadband access in many areas of the country.She said responsible and equitable innovation could make a big difference.”Innovation should not just be a shield to protect against bad actors. Innovation should also be a ladder to help more people climb to a higher quality of life,” she said.
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Ugandan authorities restored access to the internet Wednesday, a month after blocking it ahead of the January 14 elections. The government said the disruption was needed for security, while critics say it was intended to cut off communication among opponents of President Yoweri Museveni. “Internet and social media services have been fully restored,” Ugandan Minister for Information and Communications Technology Peter Ogwang tweeted Wednesday, adding, “We apologize for the inconveniences caused, but it was for the security of our country.” A tweet by Peter Ogwang, Ugandan Minister for Information and Communications Technology, announces the restoration to access to social media websites. (Screenshot from Twitter)Government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said the shutdown was a method of war against elements that were a threat to the credibility of the elections. Since those threats have been greatly neutralized, he said, the government has restored access to social media websites, with the exception of Facebook. “We have released elements of social media — Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp — because we think to a less extent, those are not as lethal as Facebook,” Opondo said. “So, we shall examine going forward, their posture on these other social media platforms that have been released. And that will inform how soon Facebook is restored.” Before the January 14 elections, Museveni ordered the blocking of Facebook following reports that the company had shut down 220 accounts linked to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. Facebook said the accounts were fakes or duplicates being used to make posts by Museveni and his son, Lieutenant General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, appear more popular than they were.  Some posts from the accounts also targeted the opposition National Unity Platform Party and its presidential candidate, Bobi Wine.  National Unity Platform Party spokesperson Joel Senyonyi says Facebook was right to shut down the accounts. “Government continues to have a grip on social media because they want to control free speech,” he said. “Because they know that Ugandans pretty much have social media as the avenue for their free expression. And that’s why Facebook did carry out its investigations, because there was a lot of propaganda churned out by those government-run social media accounts.” A message from service providers to consumers after the Ugandan government restored access to social media websites. (Screenshot)Michael Niyitegeka, an information technology expert, says the shutdown of Facebook is hurting many Ugandans’ livelihoods because they rely on the social media site for marketing.  “Because they don’t have the resources to go to radio, they don’t have the resources to go on TV. So, their business largely depends on the Facebook market,” he said. Dorothy Mukasa, chief executive officer of Unwanted Witness, a digital rights organization, is calling for lawmakers to establish rules on internet access.  “What we should be doing as Ugandans is to continue to put the government to account,” she said. “You know, why did they shut down the internet? And also, ask institutions like parliament or judiciary to put in place guidelines. Because this is bound to happen over and over. Can we have guidelines in place or even a law that really stipulates, when should the internet be disrupted?”In the meantime, Ugandans continue to use virtual private networks to access Facebook without paying a social media tax introduced by the government in July 2018. 
 
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Many broadcasters are using a variety of digital radio for high quality transmissions reaching faraway lands.  Mike O’Sullivan reports on one format that is starting to play an important role in global communications.
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After a brief honeymoon, China appears to have blocked a popular, invitation-only audio app called Clubhouse.The iPhone-only app had seen a surge in users over the weekend as users were able to discuss taboo topics like reunification with Taiwan and the plight of the Muslim minority in Xinjiang province.But on Monday, users began reporting difficulty connecting, fueling speculation the app had been blocked by the so-called Great Firewall.“Clubhouse created the space many Chinese yearn for – the means to communicate with each other and the world outside of the Great Firewall unconstrained by censorship,” said Angeli Datt, a senior research analyst at Freedom House. “The Chinese government swiftly blocked Clubhouse because it knows the most effective way to control free speech is to swiftly clamp down on the channels and tools used to communicate rather than policing individual conversations.” The user surge started last week when Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla appeared on the app unexpectedly and held a discussion with Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, the app instrumental to the GameStop drama. Chinese media covered the conversation.According to Bloomberg, Clubhouse was a hot topic on Chinese social media, and some were even selling invitations to the app on Alibaba’s online retailer. Some of the invites were going for as much as $44.60, according to Bloomberg.As with many banned apps, Chinese users can still access Clubhouse using a virtual private network (VPN), and CNN reported that many were doing so. One such user was Susan Liang, a 31-year-old from Shenzhen.”It is too rare an opportunity. Everyone has lived under the Great Firewall for so long, but on this platform, we can talk about anything,” she told CNN. “It’s like someone drowning and can finally breathe in a large gulp of air.”She said she feared a crackdown as VPNs not approved by the government are illegal.Clubhouse has so far not responded to media inquiries, Reuters reported.While Clubhouse was fully accessible, VOA Mandarin observed several Chinese-language clubs where users joined discussions on wide-ranging and sensitive topics including Uighur rights, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan’s independence, China’s national identity and gender issues.   In a club conversation titled “Politically Incorrect Reporters,” users engaged in a heated debate about the continuing influence of former U.S. President Donald Trump. In another people were chatting about women’s rights in different places  In the “room of silence” chat, the description read, “Today is the death anniversary of Dr. Li Wenliang. We remember him not because he’s a hero, but because everyone of us could be him.” Li was a Chinese whistleblower doctor who died from the coronavirus a year ago.Chinese Whistleblower Honored on Anniversary of His DeathDr. Li Wenliang, 34, was one of eight whistleblowers whom local authorities punished early on for ‘spreading rumors’ about a SARS-like virus; it turned out to be COVID-19, which eventually killed him Graham Webster, editor of the DigiChina project at the Stanford University Cyber Policy Center, told VOA Mandarin that Chinese netizens had seized the rare chance to hold open, free discussions with their peers in Hong Kong and Taiwan.  “[The conversations] were open and people were having a really interesting engagement in a way that they might not be able to in writing, which is a much more censorship and surveillance intensive form,” he said.  He added that the app was helping people working across the Chinese border to have connections with one another when travel is difficult because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  A netizen said in a Chinese language chat room that he/she valued the platform mostly because it offered people from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan a chance to sit down and just talk about anything.  “I think it’s a rare ecology, it’s quite Utopian,” the user said, “I want to learn more and get more information from it.” Datt said it is unlikely that China will unblock the app, adding, “Even if the developers of the app comply with Chinese censorship and surveillance laws, which would be difficult for a small startup, there is no guarantee that censors would unblock Clubhouse.” Adam Xu and Lin Yang of VOA Mandarin contributed to this report. 
 
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Internet providers in Myanmar, including state-owned telecom MPT, were blocking access to Facebook Inc.-owned services in the country on Thursday, days after military leaders seized power in a coup.A letter posted online by the Ministry of Communications and Information overnight said Facebook would be blocked until February 7 for the sake of “stability.”Some users in Myanmar reported they were not able to access several Facebook services.Network monitoring group NetBlocks confirmed state-owned telecom MPT, which says it has 23 million users, had blocked Facebook as well as its Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp services.Norway’s Telenor Asa said it had just blocked Facebook to comply with the directive.Facebook spokesman Andy Stone acknowledged the disruption.”We urge authorities to restore connectivity so that people in Myanmar can communicate with their families and friends and access important information,” he said.Half of population affectedHalf of Myanmar’s 53 million people use Facebook, which for many is synonymous with the internet.”Currently, the people who are troubling the country’s stability … are spreading fake news and misinformation and causing misunderstanding among people by using Facebook,” the ministry letter said.Telenor expressed “grave concern” about the directive, which it said had been received by all mobile operators and internet service providers on Wednesday.It said in a statement it was directing users to a message saying Facebook websites cannot be reached because of a government order.”While the directive has legal basis in Myanmar law, Telenor does not believe that the request is based on necessity and proportionality, in accordance with international human rights law,” it said.On Tuesday, the military warned against the posting of what it said were rumors on social media that could incite rioting and cause instability.U.N. human rights investigators have previously said hate speech on Facebook had played a key role in fomenting violence in Myanmar. The company has said it was too slow to act in preventing misinformation and hate in the country.This week, Facebook said it was treating the situation in Myanmar as an emergency and taking temporary measures to protect against harm such as removing content that praises or supports the coup, according to a spokeswoman. 
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Amazon.com Inc. on Tuesday said founder Jeff Bezos would step down as CEO and become executive chairman, as the company reported its third consecutive record profit and quarterly sales above $100 billion for the first time. The transition, slated for the third quarter, will make current cloud computing chief Andy Jassy Amazon’s next chief executive officer. Net sales rose to $125.56 billion as consumers turned to the world’s largest online retailer for holiday shopping, beating analyst estimates of $119.7 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. FILE – Andy Jassy, CEO Amazon Web Services, speaks at a conference in Laguna Beach, California, Oct. 25, 2016.Bezos, who started the company 27 years ago as an internet bookseller, said in a note to employees posted on Amazon’s website, “As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions.” He added, “I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring.” Since the start of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, consumers have turned increasingly to Amazon for delivery of home staples and medical supplies. Brick-and-mortar shops closed their doors; Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, instead recruited over 400,000 more workers and posted consecutive record profits. With its warehouses open, Amazon had another record holiday, beating estimates for online store sales, subscription sales, third-party service sales such as warehousing, and other sales to merchants on its platform. Jassy’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), traditionally a bright spot, fell slightly short of expectations. While the cloud computing division announced deals in the quarter with ViacomCBS, the BMW Group and others, it posted revenue of $12.7 billion, short of the $12.8 billion analysts had estimated. A boost in revenue came from moving Amazon’s marketing event Prime Day — usually in July — to October, lengthening the holiday shopping season. 
 
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Social media company Reddit was experiencing problems on its website on Saturday, according to outage monitoring website Downdetector.com.
 
Customers reported trouble logging in and sending messages on its website. The outage affected regions such as New York, Boston and Washington in United States and Toronto in Canada, according to an outage map on Downdetector’s website. 
 
It was not immediately known what caused the glitches. Reddit did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
 
Reddit has come into THE the forefront after a social media chatroom on its platform, “Wallstreetbets,” led to a so-called “Reddit rally,” which has helped attract a flood of retail cash into stocks such as GameStop Corp., burning hedge funds that had bet against the company and roiling the broader market. WallStreetBets has about 6 million members. 
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Facebook’s quasi-independent oversight board has ruled the social media company must restore four of five posts that it had taken down.The cases involved Facebook’s policy regarding adult nudity, hate speech and “dangerous individuals.”The oversight board ordered images of female nipples displayed by a Brazilian user on Instagram to raise awareness about breast cancer to be restored. The post had been removed for violating Facebook’s policy on adult nudity.In another post about Muslims by a user in Myanmar, which included photos of a dead Syrian toddler, the board said the post was offensive but was not hate speech.The board also ordered the restoration of a post with a quote falsely attributed to Nazi propaganda and Third Reich minister Joseph Goebbels because the intent was to make a political statement about former President Donald Trump.Finally, the board said a post in French about COVID-19 that had been taken down for misinformation should be restored because it did not cause imminent harm.The board agreed that Facebook was correct to remove a post that used a racial slur to describe Azerbaijanis.The decisions are final.The board will next decide whether Facebook was correct to remove Trump’s page for what the company said was his role in encouraging the violent rampage of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters on January 6.The public can begin making comments on this case Friday.Facebook regularly removes content it says violates its terms of service. So far, about 150,000 cases have been brought to the oversight board.
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Facebook Inc’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday the company would no longer recommend civic and political groups to users of the platform.The social media company said in October that it was temporarily halting recommendations of political groups for U.S. users in the run-up to the presidential election. On Wednesday, Facebook said it would be making this permanent and would expand the policy globally.On Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Ed Markey wrote to Zuckerberg asking for an explanation of reports, including by news site The Markup, that Facebook had failed to stop recommending political groups on its platform after this move.He called Facebook’s groups “breeding groups for hate” and noted they had been venues of planning for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.Speaking on a conference call Wednesday with analysts about Facebook’s earnings, Zuckerberg said that the company was “continuing to fine-tune how this works.”Facebook groups are communities that form around shared interests. Public groups can be seen, searched and joined by anyone on Facebook.Several watchdog and advocacy groups have pushed for Facebook to limit algorithmic group recommendations. They have argued that some Facebook groups have been used as spaces to spread misinformation and organize extremist activity.Zuckerberg also said that Facebook was considering steps to reduce the amount of political content in users’ news feeds.
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Facebook’s profits surged in the final three months of last year as people enduring the holidays in a pandemic turned to the leading social network for work and pleasure, the company said Wednesday.Facebook reported a profit of $ 11.2 billion on revenue of $ 28 billion, increases of 53% and 33% when compared with the same period the prior year.“We had a strong end to the year as people and businesses continued to use our services during these challenging times,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said.Facebook said its core social network had 2.8 billion users at the end of December, while 3.3 billion people used at least one of its “family” of apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. 
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People from Boston to the Washington area were reporting internet outages or slow service Tuesday. According to Downdetector.com, which tracks outages, users reported problems with Verizon, Google, Zoom, YouTube, Slack and Amazon Web Services. Many of those services have become staples for millions of Americans working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Students attending school virtually also depend on the services. Verizon reported that a fiber cable in the city of New York borough of Brooklyn had been severed, but it was unclear if that was causing all the problems.  Downdetector also showed that Comcast users were reporting outages or slowdown. Comcast is a rival internet service provider. Amazon Web Services, which provides cloud services to many companies, also reported connectivity issues, according to The Washington Post. 
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Twitter on Monday unveiled a new tool it is piloting to combat misinformation. Called Birdwatch, the crowdsourcing tool aims to enlist other Twitter users to vet tweets they think contain misinformation.Instead of deleting an offending tweet or having Twitter attach a warning label, users will be able to add annotations to the tweet to “provide informative context,” according to a Twitter blog post.For now, the added notes will not be visible to all users, as the program is a pilot project with only a limited number of U.S. volunteers. The company would eventually like to have the notes visible to all.”We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding contact that people trust and find valuable,” Twitter wrote.The move comes as social media companies face increasing pressure from those who say their platforms spread misinformation, and those who say they are too censorious.Twitter’s approach differs from Facebook, which uses a team of third-party fact-checkers.“We know there are a number of challenges toward building a community-driven system like this — from making it resistant to manipulation attempts to ensuring it isn’t dominated by a simple majority or biased based on its distribution of contributors. We’ll be focused on these things throughout the pilot,” Twitter said. 
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Twitter said Friday it has permanently banned an account that some in Iran believe is linked to the office of the country’s supreme leader after a posting that seemed to threaten former President Donald Trump.In the image posted by the suspect account late Thursday, Trump is shown playing golf in the shadow of a giant drone, with the caption “Revenge is certain” written in Farsi.In response to a request for comment from The Associated Press, a Twitter spokesperson said the account was fake and violated the company’s “manipulation and spam policy,” without elaborating how it came to that conclusion.The tweet of the photo violated the company’s “abusive behavior policy,” Twitter’s spokesperson added.In Iran, the suspect account — @khamenei_site — is believed to be linked to the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei because its behavior mirrored that of other accounts identified in state-run media as tied to his office. It frequently posted excerpts from his speeches and other official content.In this case, the account carried the link to Khamenei’s website.Other accounts tied to Khamenei’s office that did not tweet the photo, including his main English language account, remained active. The photo had also been featured prominently on the supreme leader’s website and was retweeted by Khamenei’s main Farsi language account, @Khamenei-fa, which apparently deleted it after posting.Earlier this month, Facebook and Twitter banned Trump from their platforms for allegedly inciting the assault on the U.S. Capitol, an unprecedented step that underscored the immense power of tech giants in regulating speech on their platforms. Activists soon urged the companies to apply their policies equally to other political figures worldwide, in order to combat hate speech and content that encourages violence.The warning in the caption referenced Khamenei’s remarks last month ahead of the first anniversary of the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. In his speech, Khamenei did not call out Trump by name, but reiterated a vow for vengeance against those who ordered and executed the attack on Soleimani.”Revenge will certainly happen at the right time,” Khamenei had declared.Iran blocks social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, and censors others. While top officials have unfettered access to social media, Iran’s youth and tech-savvy citizens use proxy servers or other workarounds to bypass the controls.Soon after Trump’s ban from Twitter ignited calls to target tweets from other political leaders, the company took down a post by a different Khamenei-linked account that pushed a COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theory.Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran, had claimed that virus vaccines imported from the U.S. or Britain were “completely untrustworthy.”  
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Amazon won’t be forced to immediately restore web service to Parler after a federal judge ruled Thursday against a plea to reinstate the fast-growing social media app, which is favored by followers of former President Donald Trump.U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle said she was not dismissing Parler’s “substantive underlying claims” against Amazon but said it had fallen short in demonstrating the need for an injunction forcing it back online.Amazon kicked Parler off its web-hosting service on Jan. 11. In court filings, it said the suspension was a “last resort” to block Parler from harboring violent plans to disrupt the presidential transition.The Seattle tech giant said Parler had shown an “unwillingness and inability” to remove a slew of dangerous posts that called for the rape, torture and assassination of politicians, tech executives and many others.The social media app, a magnet for the far right, sued to get back online, arguing that Amazon had breached its contract and abused its market power. It said Trump was likely on the brink of joining the platform, following a wave of his followers who flocked to the app after Twitter and Facebook expelled Trump after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.Rothstein said she rejected “any suggestion that the public interest favors requiring Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host the incendiary speech that the record shows some of Parler’s users have engaged in.” She also faulted Parler for providing “only faint and factually inaccurate speculation” about Amazon and Twitter colluding with one another to shut Parler down.Political motives?Parler CEO John Matze asserted in a court filing that Parler’s abrupt shutdown was motivated at least partly by “a desire to deny Trump a platform on any large social-media service.” Matze said Trump had contemplated joining the network as early as October under a pseudonym. The Trump administration last week declined to comment on whether he had planned to join.Amazon denied its move to pull the plug on Parler had anything to do with political animus. It claimed that Parler had breached its business agreement “by hosting content advocating violence and failing to timely take that content down.”Parler was formed in May 2018, according to Nevada business records, with what co-founder Rebekah Mercer, a prominent Trump backer and conservative donor, later described as the goal of creating “a neutral platform for free speech” away from “the tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords.”Amazon said the company signed up for its cloud computing services about a month later, thereby agreeing to its rules against dangerous content.Matze told the court that Parler has “no tolerance for inciting violence or lawbreaking” and has relied on volunteer “jurors” to flag problem posts and vote on whether they should be removed. More recently, he said the company informed Amazon it would soon begin using artificial intelligence to automatically pre-screen posts for inappropriate content, as bigger social media companies do.Amazon last week revealed a trove of incendiary and violent posts that it had reported to Parler over the past several weeks. They included explicit calls to harm high-profile political and business leaders and broader groups of people, such as schoolteachers and Black Lives Matter activists.Move to EpikGoogle and Apple were the first tech giants to take action against Parler in the days after the deadly Capitol riot. Both companies temporarily banned the smartphone app from their app stores. But people who had already downloaded the Parler app were still able to use it until AWS pulled the plug on the website.Parler has kept its website online by maintaining its internet registration through Epik, a U.S. company owned by libertarian businessman Rob Monster. Epik has previously hosted 8chan, an online message board known for trafficking in hate speech. Parler is currently hosted by DDoS-Guard, a company whose owners are based in Russia, public records show.DDoS-Guard did not respond to emails seeking comment on its business with Parler or on published reports that its customers have included Russian government agencies.Parler did not return requests for comment this week about its future plans. Though its website is back, it has not restored its app or social network. Matze has said it will be difficult to restore service because the site had been so dependent on Amazon engineering, and Amazon’s action has turned off other potential vendors.The case has offered a rare window into Amazon’s influence over the workings of the internet. Parler argued in its lawsuit that Amazon violated antitrust laws by colluding with Twitter, which also uses some Amazon cloud services, to quash the upstart social media app.Rothstein, who was appointed to the Seattle-based court by Democratic President Jimmy Carter, said Parler presented “dwindlingly slight” evidence of antitrust violations and no evidence that Amazon and Twitter “acted together intentionally — or even at all — in restraint of trade.” 
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Google and a French publishers lobby said Thursday that they had agreed to a copyright framework for the U.S. tech giant to pay news publishers for content online, a first for Europe.The move paves the way for individual licensing agreements for French publications, some of which have seen revenues drop with the rise of the internet and declines in print circulation.The deal, which Google describes as a sustainable way to pay publishers, is likely to be closely watched by other platforms such as Facebook, a lawyer involved in the talks said.Facebook was not immediately reachable for comment.Alphabet-owned Google and the Alliance de la Presse D’information Générale (APIG) said in a statement that the framework included criteria such as the daily volume of publications, monthly internet traffic and “contribution to political and general information.”Google has so far only signed licensing agreements with a few publications in France, including national daily newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro. These take into account the framework agreed with APIG, a Google spokesman said.Google News ShowcaseGoogle’s vehicle for paying news publishers, called Google News Showcase, is so far only available in Brazil and Germany.On Thursday, Reuters confirmed it had signed a deal with Google to be the first global news provider to Google News Showcase. Reuters is owned by news and information provider Thomson Reuters Corp.”Reuters is committed to developing new ways of providing access to trusted, high-quality and reliable global news coverage at a time when it’s never been more important,” Eric Danetz, Reuters global head of revenue, said in a statement.Google and APIG did not say how much money would be distributed to APIG’s members, who include most French national and local publishers. Details on how the remuneration would be calculated were not disclosed.The deal follows months of bargaining among Google, French publishers and news agencies over how to apply revamped EU copyright rules, which allow publishers to demand a fee from online platforms showing extracts of their news.Google, the world’s biggest search engine, initially fought against the idea of paying publishers for content, saying their websites benefited from the greater traffic it brought. 
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Twitter has locked the account of China’s U.S. embassy for a tweet that defended China’s policies in the Xinjiang region, which the U.S. social media platform said violated the firm’s policy against “dehumanization.” The Chinese Embassy account, @ChineseEmbinUS, posted a tweet this month that said that Uighur women were no longer “baby making machines,” citing a study reported by state-backed newspaper China Daily. The tweet was removed by Twitter and replaced by a label stating that it was no longer available. Although Twitter hides tweets that violate its policies, it requires account owners to manually delete such posts. The Chinese Embassy’s account has not posted any new tweets since January 9. Twitter’s suspension of the embassy’s account came a day after the Trump administration, in its final hours, accused China of committing genocide in Xinjiang, a finding endorsed by the incoming Biden administration. The Biden administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Twitter’s move. “We’ve taken action on the Tweet you referenced for violating our policy against dehumanization, where it states: We prohibit the dehumanization of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious disease, national origin, race, or ethnicity,” a Twitter spokesperson said on Thursday. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment. Twitter is blocked in China but is an increasingly favored platform by China’s diplomats and state media. China has repeatedly rejected accusations of abuse in its Xinjiang region, where a United Nations panel has said at least 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims had been detained in camps. Last year, a report by German researcher Adrian Zenz published by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation think tank accused China of using forced sterilization, forced abortion and coercive family planning against minority Muslims. The Chinese foreign ministry said the allegations were groundless and false. Twitter’s move also follows the removal of the account of former U.S. President Donald Trump, which had 88 million followers, citing the risk of violence after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol this month. Twitter had locked Trump’s account, asking for deletion of some tweets, before restoring it and then removing it altogether after the former president violated the platform’s policies again.  
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When Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th U.S. president Wednesday, he inherited several social media accounts, including the @POTUS, @WhiteHouse, @FLOTUS and @VP Twitter accounts. 
 
Unlike after the last inauguration in 2017, when then-President Barack Obama’s followers were transferred to his successor Donald Trump, Biden inherited none of the @POTUS account’s existing 33 million followers. 
 
Biden’s current official Twitter account, @PresElectBiden became @POTUS, bringing with it all followers. 
 
President Biden’s first tweet shortly after he was sworn in Wednesday said, “There is no time to waste when it comes to tackling the crises we face. That’s why today, I am heading to the Oval Office to get right to work delivering bold action and immediate relief for American families.” There is no time to waste when it comes to tackling the crises we face. That’s why today, I am heading to the Oval Office to get right to work delivering bold action and immediate relief for American families.— President Biden (@POTUS) January 20, 2021 
Biden’s social media team has expressed concerns about how Twitter is handling the transition, calling the moves “absolutely, profoundly insufficient.” 
 
Twitter says the move will give users the choice of whether to follow the new president.  
 
Meanwhile, Trump’s @POTUS tweets will be archived by Twitter under the handle @POTUS45. His personal account will remain suspended without an official archive of the tweets, leaving some scholars concerned that there will be no official record of Trump’s tweets as president.  
 
Facebook and Instagram duplicated the current followers of the official White House Page for the new administration page. Official Trump administration pages will be archived. YouTube will perform a similar transfer of accounts. 
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In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, dozens of Palestinian high-tech startups are flourishing. Some are branches of international companies, others are all Palestinian. High-tech also offers new possibilities for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Jerusalem.
Camera: Ricki Rosen 
 
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Take a ride on a new kind of bike — one that skirts across lakes and waterways – powered by an electric engine and a battery. Michelle Quinn got a ride.Camera: Michelle Quinn   
Producer: Rob Raffaele   
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Turkey imposed advertising bans Tuesday on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest for not complying with a new law requiring social media companies to appoint a local representative to handle content removal orders.
 
The rules that went into effect in October have drawn criticism from human rights and media freedom groups who argue Turkey’s government is trying to stifle dissent.
 
The law calls for a local representative to respond to requests to remove content that violates privacy and personal rights within 48 hours.
 
Facebook said Monday it would appoint such an envoy, while highlighting in a statement the need for users to be able to freely express themselves.
 
Other companies have complied with the rules, including YouTube, TikTok, Dailymotion and VKontakte.
 
Any company that does not comply faces the possibility of having its bandwidth reduced, making it difficult for users to access the service.
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