Hill, The
Privacy advocates worry FTC will fall short in addressing YouTube children's privacy practices
Consumer advocates are pushing for the Federal Trade Commission to come down hard on YouTube’s handling of children’s videos after conversations with the agency’s leadership prompted concerns about how regulators would be approaching a settlement with the video-sharing site. The Center for Digital Democracy and the Center for a Commercial-Free Childhood sent a letter to the FTC, urging the FTC to force YouTube to separate the children’s videos from the rest of the platform in order to better crack down on illegal data collection of younger viewers.
Consumer groups ask lawmakers to halt Facebook cryptocurrency project over privacy and issues to national sovereignty (Hill, The)
Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Tue, 07/02/2019 - 12:46Trump reversal on Huawei gets bipartisan pushback (Hill, The)
Submitted by benton on Tue, 07/02/2019 - 06:11Facebook commits to staving off census misinformation (Hill, The)
Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Sun, 06/30/2019 - 20:00Facebook should do more on voter suppression, hateful content, civil rights audit says (Hill, The)
Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Sun, 06/30/2019 - 19:47Tech giants pressed in House hearing on policing extremist content
Facebook, Twitter, and Google defended their efforts to combat extremist content and misinformation online before the House Homeland Security Committee on June 26, but lawmakers walked away complaining that they aren’t satisfied with the tech giants’ efforts. “They’re going to have to do more,” said Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), noting that he was dissatisfied with answers on a range of issues. Rep Max Rose (D-NY) offered some of the sharpest criticism, saying the tech firms are offering “technocratic” explanations while “people are being killed.”
Democrats say Facebook is 'grossly unprepared' for 2020 election (Hill, The)
Submitted by benton on Wed, 06/26/2019 - 17:30Artificial intelligence can't solve online extremism issue, experts tell House Counterterrorism Subcommittee
A group of experts warned the House Counterterrorism Subcommittee that artificial intelligence is not capable of sweeping up the full breadth of online extremist content — in particular posts from white supremacists. Lawmakers cast doubt on claims from top tech companies that artificial intelligence, or AI, will one day be able to detect and take down terrorist and extremist content without any human moderation.
Senators spar with Google exec over use of 'persuasive technology'
Lawmakers expressed disbelief when Maggie Stanphill, Google’s director of user experience, told the Senate Communications Subcommittee “No, we do not use persuasive technology at Google.” At issue before the panel was how algorithms used by companies like Google, Facebook and others might influence their users. Stanphill's statement prompted pushback from senators who had been scrutinizing the company over its content decisions on platforms like YouTube. “You don’t want to clarify that a little further?” Sen Brian Schatz (D-HI) asked.