Politics
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Big Technology
In a new interview with Big Technology, the senator discusses the future of antitrust
“I’d say resolved,” Senator Amy Klobuchar told me over Zoom yesterday. We were talking about whether congressional Democrats were serious about pursuing meaningful action against the tech giants. And Klobuchar, the new chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, seemed committed.
“There’s been some good hearings,” she said. “But to me, actually, I have to get something done.”
Klobuchar is already moving ahead. She introduced an ambitious new bill to bolster antitrust law last month. And today — less than 24 hours after Congress passed its $1.9 …
Data belonging to Alex Jones, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell may be included
A hacker targeted far-right social network Gab and stole more than 70 gigabytes of user data, including 40 million posts and private messages, Wired reported on Sunday.
Gab CEO Andrew Torba acknowledged the hack on Sunday, claiming the platform was attacked by “demon hackers” and referred to these individuals using a transphobic slur, The Verge noted.
The hacker identifies as “JaXpArO and My Little Anonymous Revival Project” and “siphoned that data out of Gab’s backend databases in an effort to expose the platform’s largely right-wing users,” according to Wired. …
Big Technology
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, and Austin Mayor Steve Adler speak on why Silicon Valley’s hold on the tech industry may be weakening
Mayor Francis Suarez took his seat on a beautiful Miami afternoon, with a blue sky, bay, boats, and palm trees visible behind him. He was in good spirits, happy to again be talking about Miami’s potential as a tech hub. “This,” he told me, “is not a virtual background.”
The notion that any city could challenge the Bay Area’s tech dominance seemed ludicrous even a few months ago. But a full year of remote work can change things. Over the past two weeks, I’ve spoken with Mayor Suarez, Austin Mayor Steve Adler, and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway about why they…
Pattern Matching
Social networks would love to show users less political content. Here’s why that’s a problem.
Political posts on Facebook and other social networks are often divisive, misleading, or just plain false. Social platforms including Facebook and YouTube have played a role in radicalizing people and facilitated the organization of radical groups, including hate groups, some of which have committed real-world violence.
There is reason to believe that social networks have not merely played passive host to these developments, which have been implicated in the decline of democratic institutions in the U.S. and abroad, but have actively fueled them with feed-ranking and recommendation algorithms that systemically amplify sensational claims and outrage-bait over nuance and balanced reporting.
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Another social network slowly backs away from political groups after the U.S. Capitol riot
Nextdoor recently stopped recommending political groups to its users, OneZero has learned. The company had not publicly disclosed this change, but confirmed it when asked on Wednesday.
“We stopped allowing political groups in the main feed in mid-January,” Nextdoor spokesperson Edie Campbell-Urban told me via email. “The change is permanent.”
The move is significant because the company’s guidelines prohibit posts or threads about national politics in the main feed, so groups are the primary forum for these discussions.
Previously, Nextdoor regularly recommended political and other groups to all users in a module titled “Groups Near You” that appears periodically in…
There were more chicken soup recipes than posts about fallen Capitol officers
On January 11, Amazon pulled the plug on hosting services for social app Parler, stating violations of their terms of service. But just before that happened, @donk_enby, the Twitter alias of a security researcher, culled and published all available public images, public videos, and public posts made on the platform from January 6 through January 10.
Before being taken off-line, Parler had achieved over 11 million downloads, with most installs (9 million) coming from the United States, reports CNET. According to analytics company Sensor Tower, the app was downloaded 997,000 times from Apple’s App Store and Google Play during that…
The company’s CEO says MeWe does not enforce ‘political litmus tests’ or target political affiliations
Alternative social network MeWe became a destination for right-wing speech surrounding the Capitol riots last month. In groups and chatrooms, some users celebrated the violence in Washington, D.C., and endorsed the possibility of killing their perceived opponents.
Following the attack, MeWe announced that it was cooperating with U.S. Capitol Police and cracked down on far-right groups like Stop the Steal across the platform. MeWe says it began removing accounts and messages promoting violence and in a tweet, the company said it was removing Stop the Steal groups and encouraged people to report such communities. “We are taking Stop the Steal…
BIG TECHNOLOGY
‘We talked about tech because all tech is politics and all politics is tech’
OneZero is partnering with the Big Technology Podcast from Alex Kantrowitz to bring readers exclusive access to interview transcripts — edited for length and clarity — with notable figures in and around the tech industry.
To subscribe to the podcast and hear the interview for yourself, you can check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Overcast.
Donald Trump is out of office, and now the U.S. political system is in for a reset. The Republican Party will decide whether it’s the party of those who objected to the election or those who did not. …
‘Uncareful efforts to poke holes in Section 230 could result in the exact opposite outcome’
More than 70 advocacy organizations have sent a letter to Congress and the Biden administration warning against making changes to Section 230, the law that gives tech platforms immunity for the content users post on their sites.
Organizations such as Fight for the Future, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, and Data for Black Lives are typically critical of laws that indemnify Big Tech companies, but in this case, the civil rights advocates and tech firms are aligned: Nobody wants Twitter or Facebook to be legally obligated to police more kinds of speech.
“We concur that Congress should act to address…
If only we’d have listened 30 years ago
Up until last month, I’d not “seriously” played any video games for nearly a decade. I’d quit after a frustrating career as a producer in the console games industry left me exhausted by the precariousness and working conditions, which in turn had tainted the whole hobby for me. I still kept half an eye on news and trends because as a tech-cultural phenomenon, it fascinated me, but gaming had started to feel like a relic of a past life, something I’d left behind. And then 2020 happened. Like many, I found myself looking for activities that let me turn off…
