Drew Harwell

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance challenged the US government in a legal filing on May 7 over a new law forcing the sale or ban of the social media giant, igniting a high-stakes court battle in Washington that could prove to be an existential fight for one of the world’s most popular apps. President Biden signed a law in April demanding that China-based ByteDance sell TikTok within a year or be banned across the United States, arguing that the Chinese government c

Congressional lawmakers are drafting a bill to create a “national commission” at the Department of Homeland Security to study the ways that social media can be weaponized — and the effectiveness of tech giants’ efforts to protect users from harmful content online. The draft House bill is slated to be introduced and considered next week. If passed, the commission would be empowered — with the authority to hold hearings and issue subpoenas — to study the way social media companies police the Web and to recommend potential legislation.

The White House will host top tech companies to discuss the rise of violent online extremism on Aug 9, marking the Trump administration’s first major engagement on the issue days after a mass shooting in TX left 22 people dead. The gathering will include “senior administration officials along with representatives of a range of companies,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. He did not name which companies would attend.

After right-wing influencers and online provocateurs flocked to the White House for a summit on how they’d been suppressed across social media, a remarkable thing happened: Their social media audiences soared. 15 of the event’s invitees have seen their Twitter audiences grow by a combined 197,000 followers — a 75 percent jump over the number of followers they’d gained in the same time span before the event. On July 24, they put that new reach to good use, mobilizing on social media against the testimony of former special counsel Robert S.

The White House will not sign an international call to combat online extremism brokered between French and New Zealand officials and top social media companies, amid US concerns that it clashes with constitutional protections for free speech. The decision comes as world leaders prepare to announce the so-called “Christchurch call to action” on May 15, an effort named after the New Zealand city where a shooter attacked two mosques in an attack inspired by online hate and broadcast on social media sites.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders the night of Nov 7 shared a video of CNN reporter Jim Acosta that appeared to have been altered to make his actions at a news conference look more aggressive toward a White House intern. The edited video looks authentic: Acosta appeared to swiftly chop down on the arm of an aide as he held onto a microphone while questioning President Donald Trump. But in the original video, Acosta’s arm appears to move only as a response to a tussle for the microphone. His statement, “Pardon me, ma’am,” is not included in the video Sanders shared.

Gab has become the most visible of a collection of services catering to people mainstream companies such as Twitter and Facebook have rejected as too hateful, extreme or threatening in their posts as part of a crackdown on extremism.

Racist and anti-Semitic content has surged on shadowy social media platforms — spiking around President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day and the “Unite the Right Rally” in Charlottesville (VA) — spreading hate speech and extremist views to mainstream audiences, according to a recent analysis. The findings, from a newly formed group of scientists named the Network Contagion Research Institute who studied hundreds of millions of social media messages, bolster a growing body of evidence about how extremist speech online can be fueled by real-world events.

Facebook was for years a best friend to the data brokers who make hundreds of millions of dollars a year gathering and selling Americans' personal information. Now, the world's largest social network is souring that relationship — a sign that the company believes it has overshadowed their data-gathering machine. 

The data on millions of Facebook users that a firm wrongfully swiped from the social network probably has spread to other groups, databases and the dark Web, experts said, making Facebook’s pledge to safeguard its users’ privacyhard to enforce. Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a privacy expert and co-founder of PersonalData.IO suspects the data has already proliferated far beyond Cambridge Analytica’s reach. “It is the whole nature of this ecosystem,” Dehaye said. “This data travels.