The Russian government has lifted a ban on Telegram two years after it announced attempts to restrict access to the encrypted instant-messaging app, the country’s communications regulator said Thursday.“As agreed with the Prosecutor General’s office, Roskomnadzor withdraws the demand to restrict access to the Telegram messenger,” the federal communications watchdog said in a statement.Roskomnadzor began blocking the popular app in accordance with a 2018 court order that demanded the messaging service be restricted because of its alleged use by Islamic State terrorists.Pavel Durov, the app’s Russian-born founder, was ordered to hand over the app’s encryption codes but refused, citing violations of user privacy.But even top-tier officials such as Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov continued using the app after its developers adjusted the code to slip past Roskomnadzor’s cybersecurity barriers.Its widespread use has continued, and even coronavirus task force operations in many Russian regions use Telegram for daily updates.Roskomnadzor on Thursday said it was prepared to lift restrictions because Durov, who has been living in self-imposed exile since 2014, was prepared to cooperate with Russian government counterterrorism efforts to combat extremism on the platform.Islamic State terrorists behind the November 2015 Paris attacks, which claimed 130 lives, used the app’s public channels to spread propaganda and other related content. The app shut the channels down after the attack.Telegram’s developers say that they have since increased their ability to spot and delete extremist content on the app without compromising user privacy.The Kremlin took note of Roskomnadzor’s decision and the reasoning for it, the Tass news agency reported, quoting Kremlin spokesman Peskov.Founded in 2013, Telegram now has an estimated 30 million users in Russia — nearly 20% of the population.Some information for this report came from AP and Reuters.
 
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Engineers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, are developing new technology for health care workers on the front lines of fighting the spread of COVID-19. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports from Chicago, an unexpected benefit of the current pandemic is technological innovation that could have a lasting impact.Camera: Kane Farabaugh        Produced by: Rob Raffaele
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Turkey criticized Twitter on Friday for suspending more than 7,000 accounts the social media company said were promoting narratives favorable to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and the AK Parti (AKP). The suspended 7,340 accounts were detected earlier this year “employing coordinated inauthentic activity,” Twitter said in a blog post uploaded on Friday. Republic of Turkey communications director Fahrettin Altun said the social media company was attempting to smear the government and trying to redesign Turkish politics. “This arbitrary act … has demonstrated yet again that Twitter is no mere social media company, but a propaganda machine with certain political and ideological inclinations,” Altun said in a written statement on Twitter.Statement regarding Twitter’s decision to suspend accounts in Turkey and the company’s allegations: pic.twitter.com/mi9abYDWEE
— Fahrettin Altun (@fahrettinaltun) June 12, 2020The communications director closed with a warning to Twitter. “We would like to remind this company of the eventual fate of a number of organizations, which attempted to take similar steps in the past,” Altun said. In its Friday blog post, Twitter revealed it had shared data from the account takedowns related to Turkey, as well as China and Russia, with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute  (ASPI) and Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). In what the SIO dubbed “The Turkey Operation,”  it found batches of fabricated personalities, all created on the same day. The suspended accounts were used for AKP “cheerleading,” to increase domestic support for Turkish intervention in Syria and compromised other Twitter accounts linked to organizations critical of the government, the SIO found.Twitter’s handling of the “Turkey Operation” has come to light as it removed 23,750 accounts posting pro-Beijing narratives, and 1,152 accounts engaging in state-backed political propaganda within Russia. 
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Twitter has removed a vast network of accounts that it says is linked to the Chinese government and were pushing false information favorable to the country’s communist rulers. Beijing denied involvement Friday and said the company should instead take down accounts smearing China.
The U.S. social media company suspended 23,750 accounts that were posting pro-Beijing narratives, and another 150,000 accounts dedicated to retweeting and amplifying those messages.
 
The network was engaged “in a range of coordinated and manipulated activities” in predominantly Chinese languages, including praise for China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and “deceptive narratives” about Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, the company said.  
The accounts also tweeted about two other topics: Taiwan and Guo Wengui, an exiled billionaire waging a campaign from New York against China’s president and party leader Xi Jinping and his administration. Most had little to no followers and failed to get much attention. The accounts were suspended under Twitter’s manipulation policies, which ban artificial amplification and suppression of information.  
Twitter and other social media services like Facebook and YouTube are blocked in China.
 
“While the Chinese Communist Party won’t allow the Chinese people to use Twitter, our analysis shows it is happy to use it to sow propaganda and disinformation internationally,” said Fergus Hanson, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre, which worked with the company on the takedown.  China denied involvement.  
“It holds no water at all to equate China’s response to the epidemic with disinformation,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily news briefing on Friday.  
“If Twitter wants to make a difference, it should shut down those accounts that have been organized and coordinated to attack and discredit China,” she added.
Twitter also removed more than 1,000 accounts linked to a Russian media website engaging in state-backed political propaganda in Russian, and a network of 7,340 fake or compromised accounts used for “cheerleading” the ruling party in Turkey.
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A popular podcasting platform, Pocket Casts, has been removed from Apple’s app store in China at Beijing’s request, according to the company’s Twitter thread. Pocket Casts confirmed Wednesday on Twitter that the request was made by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), Beijing’s top internet watchdog agency that controls which apps can be accessed on iOS and other platforms in the country. “We were contacted by the CAC through Apple around 2 days before the app was removed from the store,” it said.Pocket Casts has been removed from the Chinese App store by Apple, at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China. We believe podcasting is and should remain an open medium, free of government censorship. As such we won’t be censoring podcast content at their request.
— Pocket Casts (@pocketcasts) June 11, 2020Before Pocket Casts was removed, another podcast player for iPhone, Castro, said on June 4 that its app was also removed from the Chinese app store by Apple. Castro said about 10% of its user base is in China. Asked why its app was taken down, Castro said in a Twitter comment on June 6 that they think it might have been the company’s support of the protests in Hong Kong, but “we were not given specifics.”We think it might have been our support of the protests in the Discover tab. We were not given specifics.
— Castro Podcasts (@CastroPodcasts) June 7, 2020Pocket Casts, originally developed by an Austrian company, was acquired by a group of American public radio companies in 2018. It is currently ranked 82nd most popular in the podcast news app section on Apple’s U.S website, where the Twitter app is number one. The app was not searchable within Apple’s Chinese app store at the time of writing. Apple could not be immediately reached for comment. This is not the first time that Apple has removed an app from the app store following a request by the Chinese government. According to a Transparency Report released on Apple’s website, for the first six months of 2019, the company received 56 requests from the Chinese government seeking removal of a third-party application offered on the app store related to alleged or suspected legal violations. In comparison, it received only two requests from Vietnam and five from Russia. Apple, by its own account, took down 194 apps in mainland China, none in Vietnam and 16 in Russia. The podcast removal comes amid fresh criticism from U.S.-based Chinese activists who said that Zoom, a U.S. video communication company, censors video talks on Hong Kong protests and China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown.The video-chat app briefly blocked an account of a Chinese human rights leader and then later restored the account on Wednesday. According to The New York Times, Zoom said in a statement on Wednesday that it had been following local laws when it suspended the account. “It is not in Zoom’s power to change the laws of governments opposed to free speech,” Zoom said.
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Microsoft has become the third big tech company this week to say it won’t sell its facial recognition software to police, following similar moves by Amazon and IBM.Microsoft’s president and chief counsel, Brad Smith, announced the decision and called on Congress to regulate the technology during a Washington Post video event on Thursday.”We’ve decided we will not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology,” Smith said.The trio of tech giants is stepping back from law-enforcement use of systems that have faced criticism for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin. Ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd have focused attention on racial injustice in the U.S. and how police use technology to track people.Amazon Bans Police Use of its Face Recognition for a Year Civil rights groups and Amazon’s own employees have pushed the company to stop selling its technology, called Rekognition, to government agencies, saying that it could be used to invade people’s privacy and target minoritiesBut while all three companies are known for their work in developing artificial intelligence, including face recognition software, none is a major player in selling such technology to police. Smith said Thursday that Microsoft currently doesn’t sell its face recognition software to any U.S. police departments. He didn’t say if that includes federal law enforcement agencies or police forces outside the U.S.Several other companies that are less well known dominate the market for government facial recognition contracts in the U.S., including Tokyo-based NEC and the European companies Idemia and Gemalto.Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are calling on Congress to set national rules over how police use facial recognition — something that’s now being considered as part of a police reform package sparked by the protests following Floyd’s death.”If all of the responsible companies in the country cede this market to those that are not prepared to take a stand, we won’t necessarily serve the national interest or the lives of the black and African American people of this nation well,” Smith said. “We need Congress to act, not just tech companies alone.”Microsoft has spent two years warning of the potential dangers of face-scanning technology being abused to enable oppressive mass surveillance, but the company has opposed outright bans on government use of the technology passed in San Francisco and other cities. That’s led to criticism from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which says Microsoft is lobbying for weak regulations that could end up legitimizing and expanding police use of facial recognition.”Congress and legislatures nationwide must swiftly stop law enforcement use of face recognition, and companies like Microsoft should work with the civil rights community — not against it — to make that happen,” said Matt Cagle, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, in a statement Thursday. 
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Videoconferencing company Zoom temporarily shut down the account of a U.S.-based activist group days after it held an event commemorating the 31st anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square protests. Humanitarian China, an organization focused on providing relief for political prisoners and activists, held the Zoom conference on May 31. A week later June 7, the account used for the conference displayed a message that it had been shut down.  The meeting was streamed by 4,000 people and joined by more than 250 participants worldwide, including organizers of the Hong Kong Candlelight Vigil, writers and scholars, former student leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests and the Tiananmen Mothers.  The Tiananmen Square student-led protest has long been a sensitive topic in China’s political history.  30 Years After Tiananmen, Remembering a Pivotal Night

        On June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party ordered tanks and soldiers to fire at its own people gathered at Tiananmen Square, which is located in the heart of Beijing. Three decades later, the shots fired still reverberate today.The bravery of a lone man confronting a row of Chinese tanks became a symbol of the night of resistance between the people of China and the hard-liners of the Communist Party that ordered the army action. His identity remains unknown. 

On June 4, 1989, in what critics and activists call a “massacre,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ordered tanks and soldiers to fire at pro-democracy protesters. Humanitarian China is currently led by human rights activist Zhou Fengsuo, who was a student during the protests in 1989. The organization said it is “outraged” Zoom shut its account and that “it seems possible Zoom acted on pressure from the CCP.” Humanitarian China also mentioned that former Tiananmen Square protester Dong Shengkun, previously imprisoned by the Chinese government for 17 years, was detained for five days to prevent him from attending the conference live.  Zoom has since reactivated the account and released a statement explaining the shutdown. “When a meeting is held across different countries, the participants within those countries are required to comply with their respective local laws,” the company said in an emailed statement.  “We aim to limit the actions we take to those necessary to comply with local laws and continuously review and improve our process on these matters.”        
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Amazon on Wednesday banned police use of its face-recognition technology for a year, making it the latest tech giant to step back from law-enforcement use of systems that have faced criticism for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin.   The Seattle-based company did not say why it took action now. Ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd have focused attention on racial injustice in the U.S. and how police use technology to track people. Floyd died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into the handcuffed black man’s neck for several minutes even after Floyd stopped moving and pleading for air.  Law enforcement agencies use facial recognition to identify suspects, but critics say it can be misused. A number of U.S. cities have banned its use by police and other government agencies, led by San Francisco last year. On Tuesday, IBM said it would get out of the facial recognition business, noting concerns about how the technology can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling. Civil rights groups and Amazon’s own employees have pushed the company to stop selling its technology, called Rekognition, to government agencies, saying that it could be used to invade people’s privacy and target minorities.   In a blog post Wednesday, Amazon said that it hoped Congress would put in place stronger regulations for facial recognition. “Amazon’s decision is an important symbolic step, but this doesn’t really change the face recognition landscape in the United States since it’s not a major player,” said Clare Garvie, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology. Her public records research found only two U.S. two agencies using or testing Rekognition. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon has been the most public about using it. The Orlando police department tested it, but chose not to implement it, she said.   Studies led by MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini found racial and gender disparities in facial recognition software. Those findings spurred Microsoft and IBM to improve their systems, but irked Amazon, which last year publicly attacked her research methods. A group of artificial intelligence scholars, including a winner of computer science’s top prize, last year launched a spirited defense of her work and called on Amazon to stop selling its facial recognition software to police. A study last year by a U.S. agency affirmed the concerns about the technology’s flaws. The National Institute of Standards and Technology tested leading facial recognition systems — though not Amazon’s, which didn’t submit its algorithms — and found that they often performed unevenly based on a person’s race, gender or age.   Buolamwini on Wednesday called Amazon’s announcement a “welcomed though unexpected announcement.”  “Microsoft also needs to take a stand,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “More importantly our lawmakers need to step up” to rein in harmful deployments of the technologies.   Microsoft has been vocal about the need to regulate facial recognition to prevent human rights abuses but hasn’t said it wouldn’t sell it to law enforcement. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Amazon began attracting attention from the American Civil Liberties Union and privacy advocates after it introduced Rekognition in 2016 and began pitching it to law enforcement. But experts like Garvie say many U.S. agencies rely on facial recognition technology built by companies that are not as well known, such as Tokyo-based NEC, Chicago-based Motorola Solutions or the European companies Idemia, Gemalto and Cognitec. Amazon isn’t abandoning facial recognition altogether. The company said organizations, such as those that use Rekognition to help find missing children, will still have access to the technology.   This week’s announcements by Amazon and IBM follow a push by Democratic lawmakers to pass a sweeping police reform package in Congress that could include restrictions on the use of facial recognition, especially in police body cameras. Though not commonly used in the U.S., the possibility of cameras that could monitor crowds and identify people in real time have attracted bipartisan concern.   The tech industry has fought against outright bans of facial recognition, but some companies have called for federal laws that could set guidelines for responsible use of the technology.   “It is becoming clear that the absence of consistent national rules will delay getting this valuable technology into the hands of law enforcement, slowing down investigations and making communities less safe,” said Daniel Castro, vice president of the industry-backed Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which has advocated for facial recognition providers.   Ángel Díaz, an attorney at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said he welcomed Amazon’s moratorium but it “should have come sooner given numerous studies showing that the technology is racially biased.” “We agree that Congress needs to act, but local communities should also be empowered to voice their concerns and decide if and how they want this technology deployed at all,” he said. 
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Four Republican U.S. senators on Tuesday urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review whether to revise liability protections for internet companies after President Donald Trump urged action.Trump said last month he wants to “remove or change” a provision of a law that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users and directed a U.S. Commerce Department agency to petition the FCC to take action within 60 days.Senators Marco Rubio, Kelly Loeffler, Kevin Cramer and Josh Hawley asked the FCC to review Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and “clearly define the criteria for which companies can receive protections under the statute.”FILE – FCC Chairman Ajit Pai testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 5, 2019.Last week, an advocacy group backed by the tech industry sued, asking a judge to block the executive order.FCC Chairman Ajit Pai — who in 2018 said he did not see a role for the agency to regulate websites like Facebook Inc , Alphabet Inc’s Google and Twitter — declined to comment on potential actions in response to Trump’s executive order. He told reporters on Tuesday it would not be appropriate to “prejudge a petition that I haven’t seen.”FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said on Tuesday the order poses a lot “of very complex issues.”O’Rielly tweeted earlier “as a conservative, I’m troubled voices are stifled by liberal tech leaders. At same time, I’m extremely dedicated to the First Amendment which governs much here.” 
 
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As tension grows between China and the United States, there is worry in Beijing that the conflict could end up further restricting Chinese access to American technology.Of foremost concern is that despite decades of effort, China has yet to build a homegrown operating system good enough to replace Microsoft Windows. “Our operating system market is dominated by U.S. companies such as Microsoft, Google and Apple,” a recent report by state-run Xinhua News Agency said. “To fundamentally solve the problem of ‘being choked in [the] neck’, creating a domestic operating system and supporting software and hardware ecosystem is a must.” To be fair, China is not alone. Other countries including Russia, Germany and South Korea have been trying to develop their own operating systems. But none of them have gotten very far yet. Washington has already targeted China’s technology vulnerabilities. The U.S. Commerce Department has banned FILE – In this June 19, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump, from left, and Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, listen as Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive Officer of Amazon, speaks during an American Technology Council roundtable.Decoupling fallout          Economists now talk about “decoupling” the Chinese and U.S. economies, severing supply chains and business relationships that account for trillions of dollars in trade, because of the political tensions between Washington and Beijing. “Some decoupling in the high-tech area seems inevitable and already in process,” said Doug Barry, the spokesman for communications and publications at the US-China Business Council. Driven by the U.S. campaign to restrict China’s technology giants because of threats to U.S. national security, experts say the U.S.-China decoupling could widen to include desktop computers as well.  “To keep China from using Windows would be devastating to China,” Dr. Feng Chongyi, associate professor in China Studies at Australia’s University of Technology Sydney, wrote in an email to VOA. “I am afraid this is a logical step when the Cold War II escalates to a higher level.”  China’s vulnerability Like the rest of the world, China is heavily dependent on American technology companies that design microchips and the most popular computer operating systems.According to a market report released last July by a Chinese research firm, Microsoft enjoys a dominant position in desktop and server operating systems, with nearly 90% of the market share in China. “Domestic desktop and mobile operating systems are still in their infancy, accounting for less than 1% of the domestic market share,” said the report by FILE – Edward Snowden speaks via video link as he takes part in a round table on the protection of whistleblowers at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, March 15, 2019.The need for a homegrown operating system took on new urgency inside China in 2013 after Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked evidence showing secret U.S. surveillance programs, revealed he had avoided using commercial operating systems like Windows to hide his communications from the National Security Agency (NSA). FILE – People use computers at an Internet cafe in Hefei, Anhui province, September 26, 2010.Dream of homegrown OS Building its own operating system has been one of China’s largest and longest-running technical challenges. The effort can be traced back to the late 1970s when China first began to use the Unix operating system and tried to develop its own Unix-based operating system. Creating this operating system was formally approved as a critical mission in the country’s top-level policy blueprint, the 1992 Five-Year Plan.   But almost three decades later, there’s been little success.   Over the years China has developed more than 20 operating systems with some of them being installed on computers used by the military and other sensitive government agencies. None of them has made much of a dent in the consumer market.  One of the biggest reasons, experts say, is the country does not have a so-called software ecosystem of developers creating programs to run on a new homegrown operating system. “These systems have never been accepted by a large base of software developers,” Qin Peng, a former Chinese IT consultant told VOA. “It is actually impossible for China to be in a position to have an ecosystem that is on par with the one in the U.S,” said Qin, who left China in 2014 and is now living in the U.S. where he is an independent commentator focusing mainly on IT issues. Developers are selective on which projects they spend their time and money on, and most of the time their decisions are based on how big the user base is for a particular system.   “Chinese companies have not yet built up a library of premier applications, as many of them rely on Microsoft and Google for all kinds of functions,” Qin told VOA. Liu Xinhuan, general manager of Tongxin Software Technology Co., Ltd., one of China’s major operating system makers, said in an interview with a Chinese media outlet that it could take up to 10 years before China can really compete with foreign operating systems, and the key to shorten the process “is to have a large ecosystem” of developers. All of which means if the Chinese and U.S. economies do further decouple, Beijing could be stuck with few options for replacing the operating systems they have relied on for decades.    
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A South Korean Court has rejected an arrest warrant for the heir to the legendary Samsung Group conglomerate in connection with a controversial merger.   Prosecutors have accused Lee Jae-yong, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, of stock manipulation and illegal trading involving the 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates, Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, of which Lee is the largest shareholder.  He allegedly sought to inflate the value of Cheil Industries and lower the value of Samsung C&T to give him a bigger stake in the merged company, a move that would give him increasing control of South Korea’s largest conglomerate and smooth the transition from his ailing father, Lee Kun-hee, who suffered a heart attack in 2014.    But the Seoul Central District Court ruled Tuesday that while prosecutors had amassed enough evidence against Lee in their investigation, there was not enough to justify detaining him.   The 51-year-old Lee arrived at the courthouse Monday for the hearing, which lasted nine hours, and awaited the decision at a detention center.      Samsung released a statement last week denying the allegations against Lee, who prosecutors have also accused of inflating the value of Samsung Biologics, a subsidiary of Cheil Industries.    Lee is also awaiting a retrial on his original 2017 conviction for bribing a confidante of then-President Park Geun-hye in return for Park’s support for the 2015 merger, a scandal that forced Park out of office and eventually landed her in prison. Lee served a year in prison before an appeals court suspended his sentence, but South Korea’s Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision last year.   
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Google is adding features on its Maps service to alert users about COVID-19-related travel restrictions to help them plan their trips better, the Alphabet Inc unit said Monday. The update would allow users to check how crowded a train station might be at a particular time, or if buses on a certain route are running on a limited schedule, Google said.The transit alerts would be rolled out in Argentina, France, India, Netherlands, the United States and United Kingdom among other countries, the company said in a blog post.The new features would also include details on COVID-19 checkpoints and restrictions on crossing national borders, starting with Canada, Mexico and the United States.In recent months, the company has analyzed location data from billions of Google users’ phones in 131 countries to examine mobility under lockdowns and help health authorities assess if people were abiding with social-distancing and other orders issued to rein in the virus.Google has invested billions of dollars from its search ads business to digitally map the world, drawing 1 billion users on average every month to its free navigation app. 
 
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The heir to South Korea’s Samsung empire appeared in a Seoul court Monday for a hearing to decide whether he will be arrested and jailed in connection with a controversial merger.   Lee Jae-yong was silent as he walked through an army of shouting reporters when he arrived at the courthouse. If the court approves the warrant, Lee could be detained and taken into custody. A final decision is expected late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. Prosecutors have accused Lee, the current vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, of stock manipulation and illegal trading during the 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates, Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, of which Lee is the largest shareholder. He allegedly sought to inflate the value of Cheil Industries and lower the value of Samsung C&T to give him a bigger stake in the merged company, a move that would give him increasing control of South Korea’s largest conglomerate and smooth the transition from his ailing father, Lee Kun-hee, who suffered a heart attack in 2014.   Lee is also accused of inflating the value of Samsung Biologics, which is a subsidiary of Cheil Industries. Samsung released a statement last week denying the allegations against Lee. Lee was convicted in 2017 for bribing a confidante of then-President Park Geun-hye in return for Park’s support for the 2015 merger, a scandal that forced Park out of office and eventually landed her in prison.  Lee served a year before an appeals court suspended his sentence. South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial on the original charges. 
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A Virginia NGO called Computer CORE helps low-income immigrants master using computers in order to help them find jobs. However, the coronavirus pandemic has made life hard for the organization because so few of the students have computers or an internet connection at home. VOA’s Maxim Moskalkov has the story. Camera: Sergey Sokolov      
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Protesters are using a variety of technology tools to organize rallies, record police violence and communicate during the marches sweeping the U.S. and other countries following the death of George Floyd. Some of that involves secure messaging services like Signal, which can encrypt messages to thwart spies. Those apps, along with others for listening to police scanners and recording video, are enjoying an uptick in popularity. But experts say convenience and reach remain key, which favors standbys like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. White nationalists, however, are also turning to apps like Telegram to blast disruptive messages to their supporters, hoping to wreak havoc on demonstrations.When a friend shared a Facebook post with Michelle Burris inviting her to protest in downtown Washington, D.C., last Saturday, she knew she had to go. So she bought a Black Lives Matter mask from a street vendor before marching the streets of the district with a “No Justice, No Peace” sign.After that march ended, she pulled up details on Instagram for a car caravan demonstration just a few blocks away. “It was extremely powerful, not only Facebook but Instagram,” Burris said. “It was very easy to mobilize.”Protesters are using a variety of technology tools to organize rallies, record police violence and communicate during the marches sweeping the U.S. and other countries following the death of George Floyd. Some of that involves secure messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, which can encrypt messages to thwart spies. Those apps, along with others for listening to police scanners and recording video, are enjoying an uptick in popularity.But experts say convenience and reach are key. “Reaching as many people as possible is the number one criterion for which platform someone is going to use,” said Steve Jones, a University of Illinois at Chicago media researcher who studies communication technology.That means Twitter, Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram remain the easiest ways for people to organize and document the mass protests. Facebook’s tools remain popular despite a barrage of criticism over the platform’s inaction after President Donald Trump posted a message that suggested protesters in Minneapolis could be shot.”I don’t want to support or be a part of something that is possibly supporting Trump and his racist, hate filed spew,” said Sarah Wildman, who’s been to three protests in Atlanta and has used Instagram exclusively to locate and to document the demonstrations she attended. But she said she feels that, at this point, “the benefits of Instagram outweigh not using it.”  Half a century ago during the civil rights protests, Jones said, it was almost impossible to know what was going on during a protest. “There was a lot of rumor, a lot of hearsay,” he said. “Now you can reach everyone almost instantaneously.”Wildman said she uses Instagram’s “live” function to find out what is happening during protests, especially when protesters in the back might not know what’s happening at the front. At one, she said, people started yelling that police were using tear gas — but it wasn’t true, which she learned by checking Instagram.Organizers are also using Telegram, an app that allows private messages to be sent to thousands of people at once, creating channels for specific cities to give updates on protest times and locations, as well as updates on where police are making arrests or staging. One New York City Telegram channel for the protests grew from just under 300 subscribers on Monday to nearly 2,500 by Friday.  During a peaceful rally in Providence, Rhode Island, on Friday, Anjel Newmann, 32, said that while she’s mostly using Instagram and Facebook to organize, younger people are using Snapchat. The main problem: It’s hard to tell which online flyers are legitimate. “That’s one of the things we haven’t figured out yet,” she said. “There was a flyer going around saying this was canceled today.”The simplicity of shooting and sharing video has also made possible recordings of violence that can spread to millions within moments. A smartphone video of Floyd’s death helped spark the broad outrage that led to the protests.  Apps like Signal are seeing an uptick in downloads according to Apptopia, which tracks such data. Signal was downloaded 37,000 times over the weekend in the U.S., it said, more than at any other point since it launched in 2014. Other private messaging apps, such as Telegram and Wickr, have not seen a similar uptick.One new user is Toby Anderson, 30, who also attended the Providence rally on Friday. Anderson, who is biracial, said he downloaded the encrypted Signal app several days earlier at the request of his mom. “She’s a black woman in America,” he said, worried about his safety and eager to grasp any additional measure of security she could.Meanwhile, apps like Police Scanner and 5-0 Police Scanner, which allow anyone to listen to live police dispatch chatter — and may be illegal in some states — racked up 213,000 downloads over the weekend, Apptopia said. That is 125% more than the weekend before and a record for the category. Citizen, which sends real-time alerts and lets users post live video of protests and crime scenes, was downloaded 49,000 times.  On the down side, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism said in a blog post this week that it has found white nationalists using Telegram to try to wreak havoc during the protests.  “Some, especially those in the accelerationist camp, are celebrating the prospect of increased violence, which they hope will lead to a long-promised ‘race war,'” the ADL said Monday. “They are extremely active online, urging other white supremacists to take full advantage of the moment.”  In one Telegram channel, the ADL found, participants suggested murdering protesters, then spreading rumors to blame the deaths on police snipers.Others want to further exacerbate racial tensions. “Good time to stroke race relations” and “post black live’s don’t matter stickers,” a user posted — with misspellings — to the Reformthestates Telegram channel, according to the ADL.
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Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced his resignation from the board of the social media site and urged the board to replace him with a black candidate.
Ohanian, who is white, implicitly linked his move to protests around the globe over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a police officer pressed his knee against his neck for several minutes, even after he stopped pleading for air and became unresponsive.
The entrepreneur, who is married to tennis star Serena Williams, said he made the decision for the sake of his daughter.
“I’m writing this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks: “What did you do?,” Ohanian said in a blog post. He pledged to use future gains on his Reddit stock to “serve the black community, chiefly to curb racial hate.”
He also said he would give $1 million to Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp. Former NFL player Kaepernick is known for  kneeling to protest police brutality and racism in 2016, and later filed a grievance claiming the league had blacklisted him as a result.
Reddit, based in San Francisco, calls itself “the front page of the internet” and has millions of users. LIke all social media sites, it has had issues over the years balancing freedom of speech against posts with racist, inflammatory and abusive intent.
Co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said in a Reddit post that the board would honor Ohanian’s wish to be replaced by a black candidate. He also said Reddit was working with moderators to explicitly address hate speech. 
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A group of young professionals in California’s Silicon Valley has created a non-profit organization called “Code for Venezuela,” dedicated to bringing together tech innovators to solve the most pressing needs of the South American nation.  The group’s latest initiative aims to help residents in Venezuela find information about COVID-19.   Cristina Caicedo Smit has the story
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In Ethiopia, mobile applications are spreading fast to help health care workers and the public fight against COVID-19, which has claimed 12 lives in the country and affected about 1,100 people.  Ethiopian web developers have designed seven apps that do everything from virus tracing to sharing data and patient information among health workers.  But while the apps are spreading in cities, getting into remote and poor areas of Ethiopia remains a challenge.  FILE – Ethiopians have their temperature checked for symptoms of the new coronavirus, at the Zewditu Memorial Hospital in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 18, 2020.Just days after Ethiopia confirmed its first case of the coronavirus in March, 38-year-old software engineer Mike Endale, who emigrated to the U.S. 20 years ago, sent out a solitary tweet calling for help.   He called on all software developers and engineers in the Ethiopian diaspora to help the health ministry by contributing open source software to respond to COVID-19. Endale became coordinator of the Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team, a volunteer force of doctors, artificial intelligence specialists, software engineers and data analysts.   He spoke via a messaging application from Washington, D.C., where he works as principal technologist at BLEN Corporation, a company that provides technology solutions for the public sector and charities.   “People just organically gathered around a slack channel and we started figuring out how to help,” he said.  “So, the impetus for the group was… to see if we could augment the Ministry of Health’s work in a couple of areas.  One originally was around tech.  Luckily for that there was already an internal initiative going on that started a day before [we originated].  We got connected with them and we started working on broad-based solutions.”  Alongside software engineers at the Ministry of Health and the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, Endale’s army of tech gurus helped to develop a series of applications to aid health workers.   The apps allow health workers to register the identity and medical profiles of people entering the country and also record information about those in contact with COVID-19 patients.  The ministry’s contact tracing team is then sent into communities with tablet computers to identify suspected infections and test for the virus.   Though still limited in their use, the apps are modernizing how health workers and hospitals accurately and quickly share information in Ethiopia, where — until the pandemic — patient data was recorded on paper.   Other apps created through the response team can be downloaded by the public. The COVID-19 Ethiopia app was launched in late May so that the public can self-report cases or alert health authorities to others with symptoms.  And an app called Debo captures the identity of anyone who comes within two meters of the user so that contacts can be traced should the person one day test positive. “This is very important work for the country in responding to COVID-19,” said Biruhtesfa Abere, a senior health information specialist at the Ministry of Health. “Also, for decision makers, the ministry task force is sitting here trying to forecast how many cases they’re going to have in the future, next month.  So, they need data, they need baseline data.”  Biruhtesfa says the digital tools mean that test results — thousands per day — can be shared to health workers nationwide within 24 hours, allowing those who test negative for the virus to leave isolation quicker. Data in the apps are also being used to record where test kits are sent in Ethiopia, how many are being used, and how many are being wasted.  But while the apps are making progress in cities, Biruhtesfa says getting rural health workers using the tools where good internet and smartphones are rare, is a challenge.  “The tool can help you manage your records, maintain contact listing and [record] the relationship of the positive person’s contacts in the past 14 days.  That is basically automated and fully functional,” he said.  “But the problem is bringing the users on board to use the system.  We are strongly pushing contact tracing and the follow-up team to record using the system and they are coming a little bit at a time.  They will be on board very soon.”  Biruhtesfa says the health ministry is rolling out training sessions via video link to health workers in rural areas so they can learn how to use the applications.  And 30,000 tablet computers that were to be used for Ethiopia’s national census are being repurposed so that health workers in areas with poor internet can also use the applications.   Endale’s global network of volunteers are now organizing themselves beyond developing digital apps for Ethiopia.  He says members of the community have organized themselves into ten different work streams for tasks such as donation drives and repairing ventilators.              
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An advocacy group backed by the tech industry filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s executive order on social media, as U.S. technology companies have been fighting White House efforts to weaken a law that protects them. The Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology said in its lawsuit that Trump’s executive order violates the First Amendment rights of social media companies. It noted that the order was issued after Twitter Inc amended one of Trump’s tweets and called it “plainly retaliatory.” The lawsuit argues that Trump’s executive order will “chill future online speech by other speakers” and reduce the ability of Americans to speak freely online. Trump, in an attempt to regulate social media platforms where he has been criticized, said last week he will introduce legislation that may scrap or weaken a law that has protected internet companies, including Twitter and Facebook. The proposed legislation was part of an executive order Trump signed on Thursday afternoon. Trump had attacked Twitter for tagging his tweets about unsubstantiated claims of fraud about mail-in voting with a warning prompting readers to fact-check the posts. Trump said he wants to “remove or change” a provision of a law known as Section 230 that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users. He also said Attorney General William Barr will begin drafting legislation “immediately” to regulate social media companies. The White House declined comment on the lawsuit. “Twitter appended the President’s tweets … in immediate retaliation, the President issued the Executive Order,” said the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 
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Though Black Out Tuesday was originally organized by the music community, the social media world also went dark in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, joining voices around the world outraged by the killings of black people in the U.S.
Instagram and Twitter accounts, from top record label to everyday people, were full of black squares posted in response to the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
Most of the captions were blank, though some posted #TheShowMustBePaused, black heart emojis or encouraged people to vote Tuesday since seven states and the District of Columbia are hosting the largest slate of primary elections in almost three months.
Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Radiohead, Coldplay, Kelly Rowland, Beastie Boys and were among the celebrities to join Black Out Tuesday on social media.
“I won’t be posting on social media and I ask you all to do the same,” Britney Spears tweeted. “We should use the time away from our devices to focus on what we can do to make the world a better place …. for ALL of us !!!!!”
Spotify blacked out the artwork for several of its popular playlists, including RapCaviar and Today’s Top Hits, simply writing “Black lives matter.” as its description. The streaming service also put its Black Lives Matter playlist on its front page, featuring songs like James Brown’s “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,” N.W.A.’s “(Expletive) the Police,” Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” and Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.”
The opening pages of Apple Music and iTunes focused on supporting Black Lives Matter, and SiriusXM said it will be silencing its music channels for three minutes at 3 p.m. EDT in tribute to “all of the countless victims of racism.”
The company said it “will continue to amplify Black voices by being a space where Black artists showcase their music and talents, and by carrying the message that racism will not be tolerated.”
Some on social media questioned if posting black squares would divert attention away from posts about the Black Lives Matter movement.
“this is the 4th completely different flyer i’ve seen for it,” Grammy-nominated singer Kehlani tweeted about Black Out Tuesday. “”this is the only one without the saying go completely silent for a day in solidarity. the messages are mixed across the board and i really hope it doesn’t have a negative effect.”
When musician Dillon Francis posted that the hashtag for Black Lives Matter was blank on Instagram because users were posting black squares, rapper Lil Nas X responded with: “this is not helping us. bro who the (expletive) thought of this?? ppl need to see what’s going on.”
Several music releases and events were postponed as a result of Black Out Tuesday. Interscope Geffen A&M Records said it would not release music this week and pushed back releases from MGK, 6lack, Jessie Ware, Smokepurp and others. Chloe x Halle said its sophomore album will come out June 12 instead of Friday, while the group Glass Animals postponed the Tuesday release of its new single “Heat Waves.” Instead of being released Wednesday, singer Ashnikko will drop her song “Cry” and its video on June 17.
A benefit for the Apollo Theater will take place Thursday instead of Tuesday, and South by Southwest postponed an event planned with Rachael Ray.
“At SXSW we stand with the black community and will continue to amplify the voices and ideas that will lead us to a more equitable society,” the company said.
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Facebook employees walked away from their work-from-home desks on Monday and took to Twitter to accuse Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg of inadequately policing U.S. President Donald Trump’s posts as strictly as the rival platform has done.Reuters saw dozens of online posts from employees critical of Zuckerberg’s decision to leave Trump’s most inflammatory verbiage unchallenged where Twitter had labeled it. Some top managers participated in the protest, reminiscent of a 2018 walkout at Alphabet Inc’s Google over sexual harassment.Twitter Adds ‘Glorifying Violence’ Warning to Trump Tweet Trump, a prolific Twitter user, has been at war with the company since earlier this week, when it applied fact checks to two of his tweets about mail-in ballotsIt was a rare case of staff publicly taking their CEO to task, with one employee tweeting that thousands participated. Among them were all seven engineers on the team maintaining the React code library which supports Facebook’s apps.”Facebook’s recent decision to not act on posts that incite violence ignores other options to keep our community safe. We implore the Facebook leadership to #TakeAction,” they said in a joint statement published on Twitter.”Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind,” wrote Ryan Freitas, identified on Twitter as director of product design for Facebook’s News Feed. He added he had mobilized “50+ likeminded folks” to lobby for internal change.Twitter Fact-Checks Trump Tweet for First Time The blue exclamation mark notification prompts readers to ‘get the facts about mail-in ballots’ and directs them to a page with news articles and information about the claims aggregated by Twitter staffers A Facebook employee said Zuckerberg’s weekly Friday question-and-answer session would be moved up this week to Tuesday.Katie Zhu, a product manager at Instagram, tweeted a screenshot showing she had entered “#BLACKLIVESMATTER” to describe her request for time off as part of the walkout.Facebook Inc will allow employees participating in the protest to take the time off without drawing down their vacation days, spokesman Andy Stone said.Separately, online therapy company Talkspace said it ended partnership discussions with Facebook. Talkspace CEO Oren Frank tweeted he would “not support a platform that incites violence, racism, and lies.”Social justiceTech workers at companies including Facebook, Google, and Amazon.com Inc have pursued social justice issues in recent years, urging the companies to change policies.Employees “recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community,” Stone wrote in a text.”We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership. As we face additional difficult decisions around content ahead, we’ll continue seeking their honest feedback.”Last week, nationwide unrest erupted after the death of a black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis last Monday. Video footage showed a white officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes before he died.On Friday, Twitter Inc affixed a warning label to a Trump tweet that included the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter said it violated rules against glorifying violence but was left up as a public interest exception.Facebook declined to act on the same message, and Zuckerberg sought to distance his company from the fight between the president and Twitter.On Friday, Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post that while he found Trump’s remarks “deeply offensive,” they did not violate company policy against incitements to violence and people should know whether the government was planning to deploy force.Zuckerberg’s post also said Facebook had been in touch with the White House to explain its policies.Twitter used the same label as for Trump on Monday to hide a message by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida that likened protesters to terrorists and called for them to be hunted down “like we do those in the Middle East.”Gaetz said in response he would “see” Twitter in the Judiciary Committee.Some of Facebook’s dissenting employees have praised Twitter for its response over Trump. Others, like Jason Toff, a director of product management and former head of short-form video app Vine, started organizing fundraisers for racial justice groups in Minnesota. Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook on Monday the company would contribute an additional $10 million to social justice causes.Toff tweeted: “I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we’re showing up. The majority of coworkers I’ve spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard.” 
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President Donald Trump posted identical messages on Twitter and Facebook this week. But while the two social platforms have very similar policies on voter misinformation and glorifying violence, they dealt with Trump’s posts very differently, proof that Silicon Valley is far from a united front when it comes to political decisionsTwitter placed a warning label on two Trump tweets that called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted problems with the November elections. It demoted and placed a stronger warning on a third tweet about Minneapolis protests that read, in part, that “when the looting starts the shooting starts.”Facebook left the posts alone.“Facebook doesn’t want to alienate certain communities,” said Dipayan Ghosh, co-director of the digital platforms and democracy project at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “It doesn’t want to tick off a whole swatch of people who really believe the president and appreciate his tweets.”Twitter, on the other hand has a history of taking stronger stances, he added, including a complete ban on political advertisements that the company announced last November.That’s partly because Facebook, a much larger company with a broader audience, caught in the crosshairs of regulators over its size and power, has more to lose. And partly because the companies’ CEOs don’t always see eye to eye on their role in society.“Our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on his social network Friday.FILE – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on the second day of the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Feb. 15, 2020.Referring to the president’s comments about the Minneapolis protests, Zuckerberg said that he had “a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric.” But Facebook decided, he said, to keep the president’s comment’s on the site because “we read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.”More broadly, Zuckerberg has often said Facebook does not seek to be “the arbiter of truth.”Still, Facebook has long used fact checks on its site, done by third-party news organizations such as The Associated Press, and it constantly uses algorithms to decide what to show its 2.5 billion users. And it is setting up an oversight board to decide whether to remove controversial posts.FILE – Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey leaves after his talk with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, June 7, 2019.Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that Twitter will “continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally.” But he added: “This does not make us an ‘arbiter of truth.’”This is not the first time that a social media company clashed with the president. And with six months to go before the election, it won’t be the last.“It sure looks like, in the face of pressure to follow the White House’s preferred speech policies, Facebook chose appeasement and Twitter chose to fight,” said Daphne Keller, a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society. “Why the difference? … Maybe Facebook thinks it has more to lose by alienating Republicans.”Trump and fellow conservatives have been claiming for years that Silicon Valley tech companies are biased against them. But there is no evidence for this — and while the executives and most employees of Twitter, Facebook and Google may lean liberal, the companies have stressed they have no business interest in favoring on political party over the other.The trouble began in 2016, two years after Facebook launched a section called “trending,” using human editors to curate popular news stories. Facebook was accused of bias against conservatives based on the words of an anonymous former contractor who said the company downplayed conservative issues in that feature and promoted liberal causes.Zuckerberg met with prominent right-wing leaders at the time in an attempt at damage control. In 2018, it shut down the “trending” section but by then the narrative of conservative bias had spread far and wide. Congressional hearings about conservative bias followed, with the leaders of Google, Twitter and Facebook defending their companies and explaining that it would not be in their interest to alienate half of their U.S. users.While critics have accused both Zuckerberg and Dorsey of cozying up with one side of the political alley or the other, Zuckerberg appears more intent on remaining in the mushy middle — even when that’s proving increasingly difficult.“Facebook doesn’t want to alienate anybody,’’ said Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Civic Media. “Twitter seems more comfortable saying: ‘Look, as a private platform we reserve the right to do whatever want to do.’ … They’re right. This is not a First Amendment issue’’ involving government censorship.Zuckerman said that tech companies’ approach to handling misinformation and incitement to violence has had to change. “Both Zuckerberg and Dorsey are from the generation of internet entrepreneurs that had a very strong freedom of speech bias… you should be able to say whatever you want, and no should block it,’’ Zuckerman said.But that hands off approach no longer appears sustainable.Perhaps even more than Trump’s provocative tweets the coronavirus pandemic is forcing tech firms to rethink what goes unchallenged on their platforms. Zuckerman noted, for example, that both Facebook and Google have been vigilant about barring the conspiracy theory video “Plandemic,” which makes false claims about COVID-19 and therefore poses a potential threat to public health.“It’s really a no-win scenario’’’ for social media companies, said Patrick Hedger, research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Conservatives will complain if they block or correct Trump statements. Liberals will cry foul if they don’t.Hedger also noted that “the unmoderated world does exist,’’ pointing to Gab.com, which has become a haven for extremist views. “The unmoderated internet is not a pretty place,’’ he said. 
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Fourteen Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee are requesting that Federal Trade Commission regulators investigate the popular video app TikTok for violations of children’s privacy.The Energy and Commerce Committee conducts oversight on the FTC’s privacy unit. The lawsuit filed Thursday follows claims submitted by the Center for Digital Democracy, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and others that TikTok failed to remove videos posted by children under the age of 13, which it had previously agreed to do in a 2019 agreement with the FTC.The FTC fined TikTok $5.7 million in February 2019 over lax enforcement of measures designed to ensure children’s privacy.In addition to removing videos of underage children, the FTC also required the company to comply with all aspects of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in the future.The 2019 case alleged that TikTok neglected to implement blocks against the collection of tweens’ personal data and did not permit parents to request that their child’s data be deleted — if the parents were even aware that personal data was being collected in the first place.After the FTC ruling, TikTok introduced an under-13 section of the app that does not permit the dissemination of personal information. Last month, the Family Pairing feature was announced, which provides parents with a way to implement restrictions on all teenage accounts, not just those under 13.The Democratic lawmakers say that failure to comply with the FTC’s mandate violates COPPA.”The blatant disregard for the consent decree could encourage other websites to fail to adhere to settlements made with your agency, thereby weakening protections for all Americans,” the letter to the FTC said.The Chinese-owned app has been downloaded 1.9 billion times internationally, including 172 million times in the United States, The New York Times reported. Its popularity has soared since the onset the coronavirus pandemic and worldwide shelter-in-place orders, achieving record first-quarter growth.Suspicions over data collectionThe U.S. government has previously expressed doubts regarding the trustworthiness of the app, citing its Chinese origins. Several branches of the U.S. military, for example, have prohibited personnel from creating an account, and at least one senator has proposed legislation to ban use for federal employees.The lawmakers’ letter to the FTC comes after two Republican members of the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote a letter to the CEO of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance.Representatives Greg Walden and Cathy McMorris Rodgers requested that the company disclose its data-collection practices for Americans and how that data is shared with the Chinese Communist Party or other Chinese state entities.According to The Hill, TikTok has previously stated it stores American user data in Singapore and denies that it shares information with the Chinese government.
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QUESTION: What is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act?ANSWER: Section 230 “is one of the most valuable tools for protecting freedom of expression and innovation” on the internet, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a U.S.-based global nonprofit digital rights group.The original purpose of the 1996 Communications Decency Act was to restrict free speech on the internet, the EFF said. The Supreme Court, however, struck down anti-free speech provisions after objections from the internet community, including the EFF.Section 230 says, in part, that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”Q: What is an interactive computer service?A: An interactive computer service is partially described in the CDA as “any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the internet.”This means internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are subject to CDA regulations.A variety of interactive computer service providers that generally include any online service that publishes third-party content are also required to comply with CDA regulations. Examples are Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo.Q: Does the CDA provide protections for online intermediaries? If so, what are they?A: Section 230 protects them from civil liability. It says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph.”In summary, Section 230 protects online intermediaries against multiple laws that could otherwise hold them legally accountable for the content and actions of others. Regular ISPs are protected, as are essentially any online services that publish third-party content.While the measure protects them from some of their users’ content, it does not completely do so, as they must still comply with certain intellectual property and criminal laws.Q: Do other countries offer legal protections to interactive computer services, as Section 230 of the CDA does in the U.S.?A: Many other countries do not have similar laws, according to the EFF. While Canada, European countries and Japan provide high levels of internet access, most major online services are U.S.-based.”This is in part because CDA 230 makes the U.S. a safe haven for websites that want to provide a platform for controversial or political speech and a legal environment favorable to free expression,” the EFF says.Source: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
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