Deepa Seetharaman

A collective cry is breaking out as authors, artists and internet publishers realize that the generative-AI phenomenon sweeping the globe is built partly on the back of their work. The emerging awareness has set up a war between the forces behind the inputs and the outputs of these new artificial-intelligence tools, over whether and how content originators should be compensated. The disputes threaten to throw sand into the gears of the AI boom just as it seems poised to revolutionize the global economy.

Twitter's move to label two tweets by President Donald Trump as misinformation highlights a widening divide among big tech platforms on how they handle political speech, an increasingly contentious issue as the U.S. presidential election approaches.

After the 2016 presidential election, Republican Party officials credited Facebook with helping Donald Trump win the White House. One senior official singled out a then-28-year-old Facebook employee embedded with the Trump campaign, calling him an “MVP.” Now that key player is working for the other side—as national debate intensifies over Facebook’s role in politics.

Apparently, the Federal Trade Commission is examining Facebook’s acquisitions as part of its antitrust investigation into the social-media giant—to determine if they were part of a campaign to snap up potential rivals before they could become a threat. Facebook disclosed the FTC’s antitrust investigation in its earnings announcement recently, but provided few details.

Apparently, Facebook uncovered emails that appear to connect Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to potentially problematic privacy practices at the company. Within the company, the unearthing of the emails in the process of responding to a continuing federal privacy investigation has raised concerns that they would be harmful to Facebook—at least from a public-relations standpoint—if they were to become public. The potential impact of the internal emails has been a factor in the tech giant’s desire to reach a speedy settlement of the investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.

After more than a year of research and discussion, Facebook late in the summer of  2018 shelved a project called “Common Ground” that tried to encourage users with different political beliefs to interact in less-hostile ways. One reason: fears the proposed fix could trigger claims of bias against conservatives, apparently.  The objections were raised by Joel Kaplan, a former White House aide to George W.

Facebook officials have begun briefing lawmakers about its massive security breach as the social-media company tries to quell a potential backlash in Washington over its latest setback involving user data. Facebook briefed Department of Homeland Security officials the week of Sept 24 and some individual lawmakers the following week, apparently. The company is expected to meet with other congressional committees, including the Senate Intelligence Committee, about the breach as early as the week of Oct 1.

Apple ruled that Facebook's data-security app violated Apple's data-collection policies designed to limit data collection by app developers. Apple informed Facebook that Onavo also violated a part of its developer agreement that prevents apps from using data in ways that go beyond what is directly relevant to the app or to provide advertising. The app, called Onavo Protect, has been available as a free download through Apple’s app store for years, with updates regularly approved by Apple’s app-review board.

Facebook dismantled 652 pages, groups and accounts engaged in an coordinated influence campaign ahead of the 2018 US midterm elections, part of the company’s broader purge of bad actors on its site. Facebook said the 652 pages and accounts originated in Iran, and that they had been flagged for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Facebook said the offenders had targeted internet services in the US, Middle East, UK and Latin America. The company separately found evidence of inauthentic Russian activity. Facebook said it found no evidence the campaigns by Russia and Iran were connected.

Facebook has asked large US banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking account balances, as part of an effort to offer new services to users. The company asked JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup,  and US Bancorp to discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger. Facebook has talked about a feature that would show its users their checking-account balances. It has also pitched fraud alerts. Data privacy is a sticking point in the banks’ conversations with Facebook.