Twitter plans to place a disclaimer on future tweets from world leaders that break its rules but which Twitter decides are in the "public interest," the company said in a blog post Thursday. From a report: This policy change could face its most prominent test in President Trump. Trump has repeatedly tested Twitter's community standards with his regular tirades on the platform and some of the president's tweets have run afoul of Twitter's rules. Twitter has in the past allowed tweets from Trump and other world leaders to remain online, even though they broke the company's rules, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to CNN Business, because it believes the tweets are in the public interest.

But putting a disclaimer on one of Trump's tweets would almost certainly bring a firestorm of criticism down on Twitter's head. Republicans in Washington, including Trump, often claim without real evidence that technology companies are biased against conservatives. Such a disclaimer on a Trump tweet, even if he had clearly violated Twitter's rules, would provoke a new cycle of such complaints at a time when Washington is increasingly investigating Big Tech over concerns about antitrust and privacy.

The r/The_Donald subreddit has been "quarantined" by Reddit administrators after a series of threats against police were posted there. Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares an excerpt from The Daily Beast: "Recent behaviors including threats against the police and public figures is content that is prohibited by our violence policy," a Reddit spokesperson said in a statement. "As a result, we have actioned individual users and quarantined the subreddit." The new quarantine was brought on by anti-police threats posted on The_Donald. Some users had apparently encouraged violence against law enforcement, angry that officials in Oregon were trying to bring back GOP state senators who fled the state to avoid voting on a climate-change bill. In a note to The_Donald moderators, Reddit administrators said they had "observed this behavior in the form of encouragement of violence towards police officers and public officials in Oregon." The report notes that The_Donald has roughly 754,000 subscribers and is "one of the largest forums for Trump fans on the internet, and by far the largest on Reddit." Donald Trump himself answered questions from the forum's members during the 2016 campaign.

Oregon's climate change bill that would cap carbon emissions and make polluters pay for their greenhouse gas production is dead, Senate President Peter Courtney, a Democrat, announced on the state Senate floor Tuesday morning. "As a walkout by Republican senators over the cap-and-trade bill entered its sixth day -- and in an apparent attempt to bring them back -- Courtney gave assurances that the bill would die in the Senate chamber," reports NPR. From the report: Republican Sen. Cliff Bentz said Tuesday morning he had only just heard of Courtney's announcement and that he had questions about its meaning. "The question becomes, 'What are they trying to do?' " said Bentz, who is believed to be staying in Idaho while the boycott plays out. "Are they trying to make some sort of arrangement? If they are suggesting they don't have the votes, what's the procedure they're going to use to kill the bill?" Sen. Tim Knopp, a Republican from Bend, Ore., echoed that confusion. "We need clarification. What does that mean?" Knopp said. "Does it mean it's dead until the 2020 session? Is the governor going to take it up in a special session?" Meanwhile, senators who backed the bill appeared livid and declined to speak to reporters on the floor. All 11 Republican senators fled the state last week to avoid voting on the bill. Gov. Kate Brown ordered the Oregon State Police to find the Senate Republicans and bring them back to the Capital in Salem for a vote, but none of the Republicans had been found. The New York Times explains what this fight is really about, what's actually in the bill, and how Oregon's bill compares to other state climate policies. Here's an excerpt from the report: Senate Republicans say the legislation would have a devastating effect on farmers, dairies and the state's struggling logging industry, among others. More than that, Republicans say, the bill represents an existential threat to rural life, and they want the residents of Oregon to decide on the proposal, not the Democrats who control the state's capital.

The highly debated bill would make Oregon one of several states to impose an emissions-trading program, a market-based approach to lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The bill would place limits on the amount of carbon dioxide that businesses could lawfully emit. By 2050, for instance, the bill would mandate an 80 percent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels. Some businesses would be required to buy credits for every ton of greenhouse gas they produce. Those credits would then be purchased at special auctions and traded among businesses. Over time, the state would make fewer credits available, ultimately forcing companies to pollute less. The plan, commonly known as cap-and-trade, is modeled after a California law. It is far more extensive than most. Oregon would become just the second state, after California, to require that businesses in every sector of the economy pay for the planet-warming greenhouse gases that they emit.

Two US senators have proposed a bill in Congress to force tech companies to disclose what data they collect about their users and how it is being leveraged by the platform for profit. From a report: Named the Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight And Regulations on Data (DASHBOARD) Act, the bill was proposed by Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). The bill's targets are all tech companies with over 100 million monthly active users that collect data about their users. Per the bill's text, tech giants will have to inform both end users and US regulators about the precise information they are collecting about users, and if and how they're monetizing it for their own profit. In addition, the companies will also have to "regularly" inform users about how much their data is worth.

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced a plan on Monday to erase the country's $1.6 trillion outstanding student loan tab, intensifying the higher education policy debate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. From a report: The Democratic presidential candidate's legislation -- dubbed "The College for All Act" -- will release all 45 million Americans from their student debt and be paid for with a new tax on Wall Street transactions. The proposal goes further than fellow Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren's plan, which caps student debt forgiveness at $50,000 and offers no relief to borrowers who earn more than $250,000. Outstanding education debt in the U.S. has eclipsed credit card and auto debt. Today the average college graduate leaves school $30,000 in the red, up from $10,000 in the 1990s, and 28% of student loan borrowers are in delinquency or default. Sanders' plan would make two- and four-year public colleges and universities tuition- and debt-free. Trade schools and apprenticeship programs would be tuition-free, as well.

A group of more than 30 Microsoft employees is lobbying coworkers to stop donating to the company's political action committee in an effort to starve the PAC of funds, multiple Microsoft workers with knowledge of the efforts told OneZero. From a report: While Microsoft pitches itself as an inclusive and progressive company -- especially during Pride Month, with tweets and donations to LGBTQ+ causes -- employees who have donated to the PAC say they have no control over which candidates are being supported, meaning that they have no say when the PAC financially supports candidates whose views the employees don't want to support. Microsoft employees who spoke to OneZero -- on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals -- say that the PAC doesn't ask employees for input or supply avenues to suggest or control which candidates should be supported.

"Candidates that we dislike are those that advance policies contrary to the company's stated policies of diversity, inclusion, and growth mindset," one employee, who said they had persuaded about 10 others to stop donating to the PAC, told OneZero. The PAC is a voluntary, opt-in fund that's entirely supported by donations from more than 4,000 of Microsoft's 140,000 employees, according to a 2015 blog post. The goal of Microsoft's "MSPAC" is to "support and encourage the election to federal offices of persons who support the needs of business in a free and healthy economy," according to its website. In other words, the PAC exists to extend Microsoft's political influence and serve its business interests. It also brings prominent speakers to campus for employees who donate to MSPAC, and occasionally opens those events up to nondonors.

U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has taken to Twitter to announce his support for video game workers unions. "In his message, Sanders gives shout-outs to IATSE (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) and Game Workers Unite, two organizations that have been working to help game creators organize," reports VentureBeat. "He also links to a June 11 Time story about the epidemic of worker burn out occurring in the industry." From the report: Video games make a ton of money, including $43 billion in revenue in 2018 in the U.S. (as Sanders also points out). But the people making games are often overworked and suspect to "crunch," mandatory (and sometimes unpaid) overtime. Recently, stories of unhealthy crunch cultures have surrounded giant game makers like Rockstar and Electronic Arts. Other employees suffer mass layoffs, like at Activision Blizzard earlier this year, even when their companies are big or even record profits. Some studios shut down completely.

Election Systems & Software has championed electronic voting machines in the US. Now it has had a change of heart about the need for paper records of votes. From a report: TechCrunch understands the decision was made around the time that four senior Democratic lawmakers demanded to know why ES&S, and two other major voting machine makers, were still selling decade-old machines known to contain security flaws. ES&S chief executive Tom Burt's op-ed said voting machines "must have physical paper records of votes" to prevent mistakes or tampering that could lead to improperly cast votes. Sen. Ron Wyden introduced a bill a year ago that would mandate voter-verified paper ballots for all election machines. The chief executive also called on Congress to pass legislation mandating a stronger election machine testing program. Burt's remarks are a sharp turnaround from the company's position just a year ago, in which the election systems maker drew ire from the security community for denouncing vulnerabilities found by hackers at the annual Defcon conference.

Google will have to face a California lawsuit accusing the company of bias against conservative job candidates as part of a legal challenge first brought against the company by James Damore, author of the infamous 2017 "Google memo." The Verge reports: Damore exited the lawsuit last year and entered arbitration with the company. But the suit, which argues Google's hiring practices are biased against white and Asian people, conservatives, and men, will move ahead after surviving a dismissal motion from the company. In a statement, the law firm representing the plaintiffs said the suit will now move into the discovery phase. The plaintiffs in the case are seeking class certification to represent others they believe have been discriminated against, a decision the court will make at a later date. In legal filings, Google has disputed that conservatives are an identifiable class under the law. In a decision, the judge on the case said the court "indeed has doubts" about the viability of the idea, but it is, for the time being, letting the case move ahead. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

The House Intelligence Committee will next week examine the risks posed by deepfakes, artificial intelligence technology that can create realistic-looking fake videos, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said this week. From a report: Schiff, a California Democrat, said he feared that Russia could engage in a "severe escalation" of its disinformation campaign targeting the United States ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. "And the most severe escalation might be the introduction of a deep fake -- a video of one of the candidates saying something they never said," Schiff said.

Schiff made the comments during an interview with CNN's Washington Bureau Chief Sam Feist at the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday. He said that while the doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that went viral on social media two weeks ago was not a deepfake, it was an example of how manipulated media could be used. "That was what's called a cheap fake; very easy to make, very simple to make, real content just doctored," Schiff sad. "But if you look back at how impactful the Mitt Romney videotape about the 47% was, you could imagine how a videotape that is more incendiary could be election-altering."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Congressional leaders are planning to scrap a provision of an IRS reform bill making permanent the Free File deal between the government and private tax filing companies, torpedoing a long-sought goal by industry giant Intuit, the maker of TurboTax. The development, first reported by Politico Pro and confirmed to ProPublica by a House Republican staffer, comes two months after an outcry sparked by our story on the Free File provision in a bill called the Taxpayer First Act.

The bill, which has bipartisan support and contains a range of provisions including restrictions on the private debt collection of unpaid taxes, passed the House in April but stalled in the Senate. Under the Free File program, the industry promises to offer a no-fee option to most Americans and in return the IRS pledges not to develop its own free, online filing service. Such an IRS program would threaten the industry's profits. Only a small percentage of eligible Americans use the Free File options, and many are instead steered to paid products by the industry. The new bill, without the Free File provision, could be introduced today and voted on in the House as soon as next week, according to Politico. The Free File program will continue as before and will not be codified into law.

"The current deal expires in 2021," reports ProPublica. "The IRS said in May that it was launching an internal review of the program, following our stories on how Intuit, H&R Block and other companies deliberately hid their Free File editions from search engines, making it harder for taxpayers to find them."

A Florida election software company targeted by Russians in 2016 inadvertently opened a potential pathway for hackers to tamper with voter records in North Carolina on the eve of the presidential election, POLITICO reported on Wednesday, citing a document and a person with knowledge. From the report: VR Systems, based in Tallahassee but with customers in eight states, used what's known as remote-access software to connect for several hours to a central computer in Durham County, N.C., to troubleshoot problems with the company's voter list management tool, the person said. The software distributes voter lists to so-called electronic poll books, which poll workers use to check in voters and verify their eligibility to cast a ballot.

The company did not respond to POLITICO's requests for comment about its practices. But election security experts widely condemn remote connections to election-related computer systems -- not only because they can open a door for intruders but because they can also give attackers access to an entire network, depending on how they're configured. In Durham County's case, the computer in question communicated with North Carolina's State Board of Elections to download the county's voter list before elections, which could have potentially opened a gateway to the state system as well.

dryriver writes: BBC Future has the story of "Tamara" (not her real name) who used to be paid 24 euros a day to rewrite U.S. news stories for a slew of "fake news" U.S. politics websites targeted at American news readers but run out of Velev, Macedonia. Basically, Tamara's handler "Marco" would send her eight real U.S. politics news stories via email every morning, asking Tamara to rewrite them with very extreme political views and slants injected into them. Tamara was often tasked with writing horrible things about Muslims for example, making up heinous crimes they had committed in various places, and injecting those made-up falsehoods into otherwise legit-looking news articles. The rewritten articles, which were engineered to trigger strong reactions in readers, went on Facebook -- where Marco had over 2,000,000 likes -- and on a number of "American looking" fake news websites also run by Marco out of Macedonia. On a good day, Marco would earn up to 2,000 euros a day from Google ad revenues for his fake news U.S. politics websites. Tamara, who was only paid 3 euros per article she rewrote, muses in the BBC Future article about how stupid people must be to eat up the falsehoods that she, Marco and others put online everyday. She characterizes the content of the rewritten articles as "insultingly ridiculous" and "obviously fake," but many American news readers apparently ate them up and frequently believed what they read.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Forty-seven Democratic members of Congress are calling for a net neutrality compromise with Republicans, who have refused to support a full restoration of the net neutrality rules repealed by the Ajit Pai-led Federal Communications Commission. The Democratic-majority U.S. House of Representatives voted in April to pass the Save the Internet Act, which would restore the Obama-era FCC's net neutrality rules. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared the bill "dead on arrival" in the Republican-majority Senate.

Republican lawmakers say they'll only accept a net neutrality law that isn't as strict -- even though large majorities of both Democratic and Republican voters support the FCC's old net neutrality rules. On Wednesday, dozens of Democrats asked their party leadership to compromise with the GOP leadership. "We, the undersigned, voted for [the Save the Internet Act] because it represented an opportunity to resolve questions that courts have struggled with for decades," the Democrats wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "At the same time, we recognize that this legislation is unlikely to become law, or pass through the Senate, in its current form. If that proves true, consumers will be left without enforceable net neutrality protections while partisan conflict continues. We believe this result is unacceptable and unnecessary." The letter to Pelosi was led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Scott Peters (D-Calif.) and signed by another 45 Democratic members of the House. It goes on to suggest that the House create "a bipartisan working group" that would write a net neutrality law that's acceptable to Republican lawmakers.

Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain surrendered to mounting pressure from her lawmakers on Friday and said she would step aside as leader, after almost three years of trying and failing to lead Britain out of the European Union. From a report: Mrs. May said she would stand aside as leader of the Conservative Party on June 7, but remain as prime minister until a successor was chosen. Though she still has a little more time in Downing Street, the announcement puts an end to one of the most turbulent -- and at times shambolic -- premierships in recent British history. Her departure is likely to set off a vicious contest to succeed her within the governing Conservative Party. In truth, Mrs. May's rivals have been jockeying for position for months as her authority ebbed and lawmakers, and ultimately cabinet ministers, mutinied. Speaking outside 10 Downing Street, Mrs. May acknowledged that she had been unable to persuade lawmakers to support her plan to pull Britain out of the European Union, despite her best efforts. "I believe I was right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high," she said. "But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new prime minister to lead that effort." Her failure to reach a deal, she said, would remain a matter of "deep regret." Voice cracking, she noted at the end that she was "the second female prime minister, but certainly not the last."

Tim Cook told graduates at Tulane University that his "generation has failed" them by fighting more than making change on issues including immigration, criminal justice and, pointedly, climate change. From a report: "We've been too focused on the fight and not enough on the progress," the Apple chief executive said Saturday at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. "You don't need to look far to find an example of that failure." He was referring to the Superdome, which sheltered thousands from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He then criticized, without naming, politicians who raise doubts about climate change or its cause, a group that includes President Donald Trump.

"I don't think we can talk about who we are as a people and what we owe to one another without talking about climate change," he said. Cook, 58, said the solution to climate change won't be found based on whose side wins or loses an election. "It's about who has won life's lottery and has the luxury of ignoring this issue and who stands to lose everything," he said. "I challenge you to look for those who have the most to lose and find the real, true empathy that comes from something shared," Cook said. "When you do that, the political noise dies down."

The bankruptcy of one of America's largest coal producers revealed that the company was helping to fund "think tanks that have attacked the link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change, as well as to several conservative advocacy groups that have attempted to undermine policies intended to shift the economy toward renewable energy," reports the Intercept. The document shows that Cloud Peak Energy helped fund the Institute of Energy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based group that has dismissed the "so-called scientific consensus" on climate change and regularly criticizes investments in renewable energy as a "waste" of resources. Several of the groups that receive funding from Cloud Peak Energy have used aggressive tactics to attempt to discredit environmentalists.

The Center for Consumer Freedom, one of the groups listed in the coal company's filing, is part of a sprawling network of front groups set up by a lobbyist named Rick Berman geared toward attacking green groups such as the Sierra Club and Food & Water Watch as dangerous radicals. Other organizations quietly bankrolled by Cloud Peak Energy have directly shaped state policy... The Montana Policy Institute -- a local libertarian think tank that promotes a discredited claim that world temperatures are falling, not rising, and questions whether humans cause climate change -- also received funding from the firm....

Four years ago, falling coal prices led to a series of bankruptcies of the largest coal companies in America. The filings, first reported by The Intercept, similarly revealed that the coal industry had financed a range of activists and organizations dedicated to spreading doubt about the science underpinning climate change...

In 2016, Greg Zimmerman, an environmental activist, stumbled upon a presentation titled "Survival Is Victory: Lessons From the Tobacco Wars." The slide deck was the creation of Richard Reavey, a vice president for government and public affairs at Cloud Peak Energy, and a former executive at Phillip Morris. Reavey argued that fossil fuel firms, particularly coal, should emulate the tactics of big tobacco, which similarly spent decades battling scientists and regulators over claims that its product harmed public health. In the New York Times coverage of the episode, Reavey told the paper that his firm "has never fought climate change -- never fought it, never denied it or funded anyone who does." The bankruptcy filing from last week, however, suggests otherwise.

Facebook today said it detected dozens of Facebook accounts that were engaging in election interference and other forms of public manipulation via news and social media, directed primarily at West African countries. What's especially noteworthy about this announcement is the source. Israeli commercial entity Archimedes Group was behind the behavior. The Verge reports: The goal ostensibly was to have some type of effect on local elections and the political atmosphere, although Facebook says it can't divine the exact intentions of the group and there is no indication that it was in any way linked to the Israeli government. Although it was centered on West African countries like Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, and Niger, Facebook also detected activity aimed at users in Angola, Tunisia, and parts of Southeast Asia and South America.

As a result, Facebook says it's shut down 65 Facebook accounts, 161 pages, 23 groups, and 12 events. It also detected and shut down four Instagram accounts related to the effort. It's also banned Archimedes Group and all of its subsidiaries, and Facebook sent a cease and desist letter to the company. On its website, Archimedes Group's tagline is, "Winning elections worldwide." It advertises itself as a kind of consultant for social media marketing related to elections, writing, "When approaching a client's challenge, we address all possible facets relating to it. We then formulate a concise yet comprehensive solution that will use every tool and take every advantage available in order to change reality according to our client's wishes." In a blog post, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, wrote: "The people behind this network used fake accounts to run Pages, disseminate their content and artificially increase engagement. They also represented themselves as locals, including local news organizations, and published allegedly leaked information about politicians. The Page administrators and account owners frequently posted about political news, including topics like elections in various countries, candidate views and criticism of political opponents."

On Wednesday, the White House launched a new tool for people to use if they feel they've been wrongly censored, banned, or suspended on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. "No matter your views, if you suspect political bias caused such an action to be taken against you, share your story with President Trump," the site reads. The Verge reports: The tool asks users for screenshots and links regarding specific enforcement actions, specifying Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube as platforms of interest. (None of the companies immediately responded to a request for comment.) The tool also collects significant personal information from the user, and near the end invites users to opt into email newsletters from President Trump, "so we can update you without relying on platforms like Facebook and Twitter." A separate question points users to an extensive user agreement, and makes clear that "you understand this form is for information gathering only."

Alongside sharing updates on many of its platforms, Microsoft said at its Build developer conference today that is also getting ready to release several new tools to shore up security for political parties and candidates and at the ballot box. From a report: Microsoft announced an ambitious effort it says will make voting secure, verifiable and subject to reliable audits. Two of the three top U.S elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the open-source software into their proprietary voting systems. The software kit is being developed with Galois, an Oregon-based company separately creating a secure voting system prototype under contract with the Pentagon's advanced research agency, DARPA. Dubbed "ElectionGuard," the Microsoft kit will be available this summer, the company says, with early prototypes ready to pilot for next year's general elections. CEO Satya Nadella announced the initiative Monday at a developer's conference in Seattle. Nadella said the project's software, provided free of charge as part of Microsoft's Defending Democracy Program, would help "modernize all of the election infrastructure everywhere in the world." Microsoft also announced a cut-rate Office 365 application suite for political parties and campaigns for what it charges nonprofits. Both Microsoft and Google provide anti-phishing email support for campaigns. Three little-known U.S. companies control about 90 percent of the market for election equipment, but have long faced criticism for poor security, antiquated technology and insufficient transparency around their proprietary, black-box voting systems.