Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg says users will be able to turn off political adverts on the social network in the run-up to the 2020 US election. The BBC reports: In a piece written for USA Today newspaper, he also says he hopes to help four million Americans sign up as new voters. "For those of you who've already made up your minds and just want the election to be over, we hear you -- so we're also introducing the ability to turn off seeing political ads," Mr Zuckerberg wrote. Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram will give users the option to turn off political adverts when they appear or they can block them using the settings features. Users that have blocked political adverts will also be able to report them if they continue to appear.

The feature, which will start rolling out on Wednesday, allows users to turn off political, electoral and social issue adverts from candidates and other organizations that have the "Paid for" political disclaimer. The company said it plans to make the feature available to all US users over the next few weeks and will offer it in other countries this autumn. Mr Zuckerberg went on to encourage people who aren't signed up as voters to register in time for the US election in November. As part of the initiative a new information hub, called The Voting Information Center, will be put at the top of American users' Facebook and Instagram feeds from the beginning of July. Information on offer will include how to register to vote and details about mail-in ballots. The firm also said it will share reliable information from state and local election authorities.

Social media research group Graphika published today a 120-page report unmasking a new Russian information operation of which very little has been known so far. ZDNet reports: Codenamed Secondary Infektion, the group is different from the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Sankt Petersburg company (troll farm) that has interfered in the US 2016 presidential election. Graphika says this new and separate group has been operating since 2014 and has been relying on fake news articles, fake leaks, and forged documents to generate political scandals in countries across Europe and North America. The research team says it first learned of the group from reports published by Reddit and Facebook last year, along with previous research done by the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.

According to Graphika's analysis, most of the group's content has followed nine primary themes:

- Ukraine as a failed state or unreliable partner
- The United States and NATO as aggressive and interfering in other countries
- Europe as weak and divided
- Critics of the Russian government as morally corrupt, alcoholic, or otherwise mentally unstable
- Muslims as aggressive invaders
- The Russian government as the victim of Western hypocrisy or plots
- Western elections as rigged and candidates who criticized the Kremlin as unelectable
- Turkey as an aggressive and destabilizing state
- World sporting bodies and competitions as unfair, unprofessional, and Russophobic

Graphika says that most of this content has been aimed at attacking classic Russian political rivals like Ukraine, the US, Poland, and Germany, but also other countries where Russian influence came under attack, at one point or another. [...] Researchers said the group managed to keep its identity secret because they paid very close attention to operational security (OpSec). Graphika says Secondary Infektion agents employed single-use burner accounts for almost everything they posted online, abandoning each account in less than an hour after promoting their content. With its identity still a secret, the group is expected to continue operating and sowing conflict between Russia's rivals.

"President Trump on Saturday told his Twitter and Facebook followers to drop Comcast..." reports CNN -- adding that "For the most part, people just shrugged." Comcast executives barely batted any eyelashes. The company didn't bother to comment. And Google searches for "Comcast customer service" trended lower than in recent days... Saturday's anti-Comcast post received fewer than 10,000 retweets in 10 hours. On Facebook, where it was reposted, it received fewer than 7,500 comments.

One of the comments with the most reactions said, "You spend way too much time on social media."

Strangely, his post was a reaction to a three-year-old tweet by former Arkansas governor and Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee, who wrote in 2017 that the mafia has "better service than Comcast. Sure they shoot you, but it's over with and they don't charge you for the bullet," Huckabee riffed. It was unclear how the old tweet suddenly grabbed the president's attention.
Though reaction to the tweet seemed muted, CNN still called it "an egregious use" of a presidential platform to hurt an American business...

Republican Federal Communications Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said he's unsure whether his agency has the authority to carry out President Trump's executive order targeting tech firms' legal protections. From a report: Trump's order seeks to have the FCC craft regulations limiting the scope of legal immunity that online platforms have under federal law. All three commission Republicans would need to support such regulations for them to pass, as the FCC's two Democrats are certain to oppose them. In an interview Wednesday for C-SPAN's "The Communicators," O'Rielly told Axios he sympathizes with the president's claims that conservatives have been unfairly stifled online, but "what we do about that is a different story. I have deep reservations they provided any intentional authority for this matter, but I want to listen to people," O'Rielly said, later adding, "I do not believe it is the right of the agency to read into the statute authority that is not there."

The Biden presidential campaign, emboldened by a recent surge in support, is going after a new target: Facebook. From a report: After months of privately battling the tech giant over President Trump's free rein on its social network, the campaign will begin urging its millions of supporters to demand that Facebook strengthen its rules against misinformation and to hold politicians accountable for harmful comments. On Thursday, the campaign will circulate a petition and an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, to change the company's hands-off approach to political speech. The petition will be sent to millions of supporters on its email and text message lists and through social media, including Facebook, imploring them to sign the letter. The campaign will also release a video this week to be shared across social media to explain the issue.

"Real changes to Facebook's policies for their platform and how they enforce them are necessary to protect against a repeat of the role that disinformation played in the 2016 election and that continues to threaten our democracy today," said Bill Russo, a spokesman for the Biden campaign. The move puts the Biden camp in the center of a raging debate about the role and responsibility of tech platforms. Civil rights leaders, Democratic lawmakers and many of Facebook's own employees say that big tech companies have a responsibility to prevent false and hateful information from being shared widely.

Even fed-up tech workers are paralyzed by Silicon Valley's culture. From a column: It's easier for tech workers to talk about taking a stand than to do so. For one, big technology companies such as Facebook and Google are viciously competitive about acquiring talent. They hire or poach the best people, sometimes just to prevent a competitor from having access to them instead. Some workers don't want to rock the boat for fear they might get blacklisted, Ian McCarthy, a vice president of product at Yahoo, said. And ironically, the brokenness at companies such as Facebook and Uber can also make their jobs enticing. Disruption is appealing, and the promise to move fast and break things (even priceless and irrecoverable ones, such as democracy) can be a recruiting tool.

Others already in a company's employ may see an opportunity to fix some of its ills. One product manager at a large tech firm, who also advises many early-career professionals, spoke with me on the condition of anonymity because she fears reprisal from within the industry. She told me about her "activist" friends who refuse to leave jobs at Facebook, even if they disagree with the company's practices. "They came to change the world," she said, "and stayed to work within the system on issues they cared about." The same drive that makes these workers care about the consequences of Facebook's impact on democracy also makes them want to stick it out in an effort to improve the service.

Even so, Facebook seems to have crossed the line of tolerable abhorrence for some tech workers. Inside the business, nextplayism may offer the best, and maybe the only, way for them to show their distaste. "The vast majority of people I know at the director-and-up level, when they are leaving a company and looking for a new gig, they're Never Facebookers," McCarthy, who is also an occasional collaborator of mine, said, referring to senior-level roles. "They're offended if you even offer to do introductions to someone at Facebook." But that is a privileged attitude. Much of the magical operation of online services is driven by rote laborers, such as moderators, AI-training wranglers, and gig workers. They aren't counted as members of the industry, except perhaps as its casualties.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: On Sunday, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan revealed numerous security flaws in the product that West Virginia and Delaware are using, saying it "represents a severe risk to election security and could allow attackers to alter election results without detection." In fact, it may be a decade or more before the U.S. can safely entrust the internet with the selection of its lawmakers and presidents, according to some experts. Still, a handful of states are pushing ahead, with the encouragement of one politically connected tech entrepreneur -- and the tempting logic of the question, "If we can bank online, why can't we vote the same way?" These are the problems with that logic:

1) Elections are different. Lots of people bank, shop and socialize online -- putting their money and personal details at potential risk of theft or other exploitation. But elections are unique for two reasons: They are anonymous and irreversible. Aside from party caucuses and conventions, virtually all U.S. elections use secret ballots and polling places designed for privacy. That protects people from being blackmailed or bribed to vote a certain way -- but it also means that, barring an advance in the technology, voters have no way to verify that their ballots were correctly counted or challenge the results. That's far different from a consumer's ability to contest a fraudulent credit card purchase, which depends on their financial institution linking their activity to their identity.

2) The internet is a dangerous place. Even if it were possible to require electronic ballots to travel through servers only in the U.S., no method exists to ensure security at every server along the way. It would be like trusting FedEx to deliver a package that had to pass through warehouses with unlocked doors, open windows and no security cameras. The most effective way to protect data along these digital paths is "end-to-end" encryption [...] Researchers have not figured out how to use end-to-end encryption in internet voting.

3) People's devices may already be compromised. It's hard enough to protect a ballot as it transits the internet, but what really keeps experts up at night is the thought of average Americans using their computers or phones to cast that ballot in the first place. Internet-connected devices are riddled with malware, nefarious code that can silently manipulate its host machine for myriad purposes. [...] Importantly, election officials cannot peer into their voters' devices and definitively sweep them for malware. And without a secure device, end-to-end encryption is useless, because malware could just subvert the encryption process.

4) Hackers have lots of potential targets. What could an attacker do? "There are literally hundreds of different threats," said Joe Kiniry, chief scientist of the election tech firm Free & Fair. Among the options: Attacking the ballot; Attacking the election website; Tampering with ballots in transit; Bogging down the election with bad data; and/or The insider threat involving a "bad" employee tampering with an election from the inside.

5) Audits have faulted the major internet voting vendors' security. Virtually every audit of an internet voting system has revealed serious, widespread security vulnerabilities, although the ease with which a hacker could exploit them varies.

6) Internet voting advocates disagree. Election officials who embrace internet voting deny the risks are as serious as the experts say.

7) What it would take to make internet voting secure. Secure internet voting depends on two major advances: technology that allows voters' computers and phones to demonstrate that they are malware-free, and end-to-end encryption to protect ballots in transit. [...] Solving these problems would require expensive, long-term collaboration between virtually every big-name hardware- and software-maker, Kiniry said. Note: Each point listed above has been abbreviated for brevity. You can read the full article here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A little-known Indian IT firm offered its hacking services to help clients spy on more than 10,000 email accounts over a period of seven years. New Delhi-based BellTroX InfoTech Services targeted government officials in Europe, gambling tycoons in the Bahamas, and well-known investors in the United States including private equity giant KKR and short seller Muddy Waters, according to three former employees, outside researchers, and a trail of online evidence. A cache of data reviewed by Reuters provides insight into the operation, detailing tens of thousands of malicious messages designed to trick victims into giving up their passwords that were sent by BellTroX between 2013 and 2020. The data was supplied on condition of anonymity by online service providers used by the hackers after Reuters alerted the firms to unusual patterns of activity on their platforms. On the list: judges in South Africa, politicians in Mexico, lawyers in France and environmental groups in the United States. These dozens of people, among the thousands targeted by BellTroX, did not respond to messages or declined comment.

Researchers at internet watchdog group Citizen Lab, who spent more than two years mapping out the infrastructure used by the hackers, released a report here on Tuesday saying they had "high confidence" that BellTroX employees were behind the espionage campaign. "This is one of the largest spy-for-hire operations ever exposed," said Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton. Reuters was not able to establish how many of the hacking attempts were successful.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna called on Congress Monday to enact reforms to advance racial justice and combat systemic racism while announcing the company was getting out of the facial recognition business. CNBC reports: "IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency," Krishna wrote in the letter delivered to members of Congress late Monday. "We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies."

IBM decided to shut down its facial recognition products and announce its decision as the death of George Floyd brought the topic of police reform and racial inequity into the forefront of the national conversation, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC. IBM's facial recognition business did not generate significant revenue for the company, the person familiar with the situation said, but the decision remains notable for a technology giant that counts the U.S. government as a major customer. The decision was both a business and an ethical one, the person familiar with the situation said. The company heard in the past few weeks concerns from many constituencies, including employees, about its use of the technology, the person added.

"Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool that can help law enforcement keep citizens safe. But vendors and users of Al systems have a shared responsibility to ensure that Al is tested for bias, particularly when used in law enforcement, and that such bias testing is audited and reported," Krishna wrote. The letter was addressed to sponsors and co-sponsors of a sweeping police reform bill unveiled by Democrats Monday -- Black Caucus Chair Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

Pressure from Facebook staff is continuing to mount on Mark Zuckerberg over his policies towards posts by Donald Trump, with moderators joining those criticizing their boss for his stance. From a report: The moderators penned an open letter to their colleagues in support of virtual walkouts that have broken out at the company, after Zuckerberg refused to take down posts by Trump that many believed breached the site's policies on incitement of violence. "We would walk out with you -- if Facebook would allow it," the moderators write. In their statement, all the company's currently employed moderators remained anonymous, highlighting the precarious nature of their employment, which is subcontracted out through third parties.

"As outsourced contractors, non-disclosure agreements deter us from speaking openly about what we do and witness for most of our waking hours. Safety and data protection are important, but so is a healthy debate about what happens at Facebook. We can't walk out, but we cannot stay silent ... Facebook can do better," the letter continues. "We need to express that Mr Zuckerberg's words about personal dismay caused by Trump's 'looting and shooting' rhetoric are not enough. The benefit of the doubt this politician is being given as a user, even with such a large platform, is unparalleled -- the attempt to retroactively place his words behind the context of other posts actually has had effect of putting it on an isolated pedestal. This may be the ultimate exhibit of white exceptionality and further legitimization of state brutality we have witnessed in the last weeks." Further reading: More Than 140 Zuckerberg-funded Scientists Call on Facebook To Rein in Trump.

Joe Biden has had a clear path to the Democratic Party's presidential nomination ever since Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the 2020 race in early April. His path to the nomination reached another milestone tonight as the former Vice President officially secured the delegates needed to win. NPR reports: [T]he 78-year-old, who served as Delaware's U.S. Senator for decades before becoming vice president in 2009, will be his party's standard bearer against President Trump. Biden reached the benchmark as he has started to re-emerge on the campaign trial outside of his home, addressing twin crises that appear to be contributing to his lead over Trump in national polls, as well as in battleground states. The AP delegate estimate reached the magic number of 1,991 delegates for Biden as seven states and the District of Columbia continue counting votes from Tuesday's primaries. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who conceded and endorsed Biden in April while remaining on the ballot, failed to reach the 15% threshold to receive delegates in several contests, giving Biden more delegates than many political observers expected him to secure this week. NPR says Biden "wrapped up the nomination in practical terms faster than any Democrat since John Kerry in 2004."

Facebook said Thursday it will begin blocking state-controlled media outlets from buying advertising in the U.S. this summer. It's also rolling out a new set of labels to provide users with transparency around ads and posts from state-controlled outlets. Outlets that feel wrongly labeled can appeal the process. Axios reports: Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, says the company hasn't seen many examples yet of foreign governments using advertising to promote manipulative content to U.S. users, but that the platform is taking this action out of an abundance of caution ahead of the 2020 election. Beginning Thursday, the types of state-backed media that U.S. users will see labels on include outlets like Russia's Sputnik, China's People's Daily, Iran's Tasnim News Agency and others. [...]

The purpose of labeling these outlets is to give users transparency about any kind of potential bias a state-backed entity may have when providing information to U.S. users. Gleicher says it's labeling these outlets, not removing them altogether, because in many places around the world, state-backed media is the only form of local news. Facebook considers an outlet to be state-backed not just if it takes state funding, but also based on the organization's structure (whether a government official helps them make editorial decisions) and whether there are clear indications that the entity has editorial independence (like a law or charter granting them that independence).

Snapchat said Wednesday it would no longer promote President Donald Trump's content in its Discover section, a move that brings the messaging company closer to Twitter's approach in the ongoing debate over political speech. From a report: The company said in a statement that it would not "amplify voices who incite racial violence." Snapchat's Discover section typically features content from news organizations, brands, celebrities and sometimes politicians. The president's account remains visible on the platform, and anyone can follow the account for updates. Snapchat's change will remove Trump from the Discover section. "We are not currently promoting the president's content on Snapchat's Discover platform," the company said. "We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover. Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America."

In a call with Facebook employees, who have protested the inaction on Mr. Trump's messages, Mr. Zuckerberg said his decision was "pretty thorough." From a report: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, on Tuesday stood firmly behind his decision to not do anything about President Trump's inflammatory posts on the social network, saying that he had made a "tough decision" but that it "was pretty thorough." In a question-and-answer session with employees conducted over video chat software, Mr. Zuckerberg sought to justify his position on Mr. Trump's messages, which has led to fierce internal dissent. The meeting, which had been scheduled for Thursday, was moved up to Tuesday after hundreds of employees protested the inaction by staging a virtual "walkout" of sorts on Monday. Facebook's principles and policies around free speech "show that the right action where we are right now is to leave this up," Mr. Zuckerberg said on the call, the audio of which was heard by The New York Times. He added that though he knew many people would be upset with the company, a review of its policies backed up his decision. "I knew that I would have to separate out my personal opinion," he said. "Knowing that when we made this decision we made, it was going to lead to a lot of people upset inside the company, and the media criticism we were going to get."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in a letter Friday to the Justice and Treasury departments, is calling for a criminal investigation of Twitter over allegations the company is violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. Twitter is already under fire from President Trump for adding fact checks and a warning label, respectively, to misleading and incendiary tweets he made in recent days. Cruz's letter adds another dimension to the tech company's woes in Washington.

Twitter allows Iranian leaders to maintain accounts on its service, and Cruz is asking Attorney General Bill Barr and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to probe whether that violates U.S. sanctions prohibiting American companies from providing goods or services to the country's top officials. "I believe that the primary goal of (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act) and sanctions law should be to change the behavior of designated individuals and regimes, not American companies," Cruz wrote."But when a company willfully and openly violates the law after receiving formal notice that it is unlawfully supporting designated individuals, the federal government should take action." In February, Cruz led a letter from Republican senators to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, calling on the company to ban Iranian leaders from the site for the same reasons. Twitter responded in April, arguing that its service is exempt from the sanctions, and that the public conversation on the platform is critically important during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Fundamental values of openness, free expression, public accountability, and mutual understanding matter now more than ever," Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's legal, public policy & trust and safety lead, wrote. "Regardless of the political agenda of a particular nation state, to deny our service to their leaders at a time like this would be antithetical to the purpose of our company, which is to serve the global public conversation."

Former Vice President Joe Biden still wants to repeal the pivotal internet law that provides social media companies like Facebook and Twitter with broad legal immunity over content posted by their users, a campaign spokesperson told The Verge. Still, the campaign emphasized key disagreements with the executive order signed by the president earlier this week. From a report: Earlier this year, Biden told The New York Times that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be "revoked, immediately." In recent days, President Donald Trump has reinvigorated a controversial debate over amending the foundational internet law after Twitter fact-checked one of his tweets for the first time. Over the last year, Trump and other congressional Republicans have grown concerned over the false idea that social media platforms actively moderate against conservative speech online. Trump turned his threats into action Thursday, signing an executive order that could pare back platform liability protections under Section 230.

In a statement Thursday responding to the order, Biden campaign spokesperson Bill Russo said that "it will not be the position of any future Biden Administration ... that the First Amendment means private companies must provide a venue for, and amplification of, the president's falsehoods, lest they become the subject of coordinated retaliation by the federal government." Still, Biden's position on Section 230 remains unchanged.

Twitter placed a notice on a tweet from President Trump, shielding it from view for breaking what the company said are its rules about glorifying violence [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: Mr. Trump's tweet was a comment on the violent protests in Minnesota. The post can now only be seen after users click a box with a notice saying it violated Twitter's rules against encouraging violence, but it otherwise remains visible. "We've taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts, but have kept the Tweet on Twitter because it is important that the public still be able to see the Tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance," Twitter said on its official communications account.

This is the first time such a step has been taken against a head of state for breaking Twitter's rules about glorifying violence, a company spokesman said. The company said users' ability to interact with the tweet will be limited, and that users can retweet it with comment, but not like, reply to, or otherwise retweet it. "...These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!," Mr. Trump's tweet said. The official account of the White House, which tweeted Trump's message, has been flagged as well.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he does not think social networks should be fact-checking what politicians post. From a report: Zuckerberg's comment came after CNBC asked him for thoughts on Twitter's decision to start fact-checking the tweets of President Donald Trump. Twitter's move came on Tuesday after Trump tweeted that mail-in ballots would be "substantially fraudulent." Earlier Tuesday, Twitter declined to censor or warn users after Trump tweeted baseless claims that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough should be investigated for the death of his former staffer. "I don't think that Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth," Zuckerberg said. "Political speech is one of the most sensitive parts in a democracy, and people should be able to see what politicians say."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Internet-based advertising has been a boon for both political campaigns and disinformation campaigns, which love to take advantage of the ability to slice and dice the electorate into incredibly tiny and carefully targeted segments for their messaging. These ads -- which may or may not be truthful and are designed to play very specifically on tiny groups -- are incredibly difficult for regulators, researchers, and anyone else not in the targeted group to see, identify, analyze, and rebut. Google prohibits this kind of microtargeting for political ads, while Twitter tries not to allow any political advertising. Facebook, on the other hand, is happy to let politicians lie in their ads and continue microtargeting on its platform. Members of Congress have challenged Facebook and its CEO to explain this stance in the face of rampant disinformation campaigns, but to no avail.

Lawmakers now want to go further and make this kind of microtargeting for political advertising against the law. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) today introduced a bill (PDF) that would amend federal election law to do just that. The proposed Banning Microtargeted Political Ads Act would do exactly what it says. Platforms and campaigns covered by the law, and their agents, would be prohibited from targeting "the dissemination of a political advertisement" to "an individual or specific group of individuals on any basis." The text includes a few exceptions. For example, geographic targeting -- aiming for people in a certain region, instead of matching a certain demographic profile -- would be fair game. But the proposed bill also includes a loophole you could fit the White House through: anyone who has provided "express affirmative consent" to receive microtargeted political advertising would be subject to it. In other words, anyone who ticks off a check box somewhere without actually reading the terms and conditions -- which is everyone -- could find themselves added to an "opt in" list.

President Donald Trump threatened to regulate or shutter social media companies -- a warning apparently aimed at Twitter after it began fact-checking his tweets. From a report: In a pair of tweets issued Wednesday morning from his iPhone, Trump said that social media sites are trying to silence conservative voices, and need to change course or face action. There is no evidence that Trump has the ability to shut down social media networks, which are run by publicly traded companies and used by billions of people all over the world.

Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen," he said Wednesday. In a second tweet, he added: "Just like we can't let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country." He didn't cite any platforms by name, but it was plainly a response after Twitter added a fact-check label to earlier Trump tweets that made unsubstantiated claims about mail-in voting. It's the first time Twitter has taken action on Trump's posts for being misleading.