Protesters are using a variety of technology tools to organize rallies, record police violence and communicate during the marches sweeping the U.S. and other countries following the death of George Floyd. Some of that involves secure messaging services like Signal, which can encrypt messages to thwart spies. Those apps, along with others for listening to police scanners and recording video, are enjoying an uptick in popularity. But experts say convenience and reach remain key, which favors standbys like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. White nationalists, however, are also turning to apps like Telegram to blast disruptive messages to their supporters, hoping to wreak havoc on demonstrations.When a friend shared a Facebook post with Michelle Burris inviting her to protest in downtown Washington, D.C., last Saturday, she knew she had to go. So she bought a Black Lives Matter mask from a street vendor before marching the streets of the district with a “No Justice, No Peace” sign.After that march ended, she pulled up details on Instagram for a car caravan demonstration just a few blocks away. “It was extremely powerful, not only Facebook but Instagram,” Burris said. “It was very easy to mobilize.”Protesters are using a variety of technology tools to organize rallies, record police violence and communicate during the marches sweeping the U.S. and other countries following the death of George Floyd. Some of that involves secure messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, which can encrypt messages to thwart spies. Those apps, along with others for listening to police scanners and recording video, are enjoying an uptick in popularity.But experts say convenience and reach are key. “Reaching as many people as possible is the number one criterion for which platform someone is going to use,” said Steve Jones, a University of Illinois at Chicago media researcher who studies communication technology.That means Twitter, Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram remain the easiest ways for people to organize and document the mass protests. Facebook’s tools remain popular despite a barrage of criticism over the platform’s inaction after President Donald Trump posted a message that suggested protesters in Minneapolis could be shot.”I don’t want to support or be a part of something that is possibly supporting Trump and his racist, hate filed spew,” said Sarah Wildman, who’s been to three protests in Atlanta and has used Instagram exclusively to locate and to document the demonstrations she attended. But she said she feels that, at this point, “the benefits of Instagram outweigh not using it.”  Half a century ago during the civil rights protests, Jones said, it was almost impossible to know what was going on during a protest. “There was a lot of rumor, a lot of hearsay,” he said. “Now you can reach everyone almost instantaneously.”Wildman said she uses Instagram’s “live” function to find out what is happening during protests, especially when protesters in the back might not know what’s happening at the front. At one, she said, people started yelling that police were using tear gas — but it wasn’t true, which she learned by checking Instagram.Organizers are also using Telegram, an app that allows private messages to be sent to thousands of people at once, creating channels for specific cities to give updates on protest times and locations, as well as updates on where police are making arrests or staging. One New York City Telegram channel for the protests grew from just under 300 subscribers on Monday to nearly 2,500 by Friday.  During a peaceful rally in Providence, Rhode Island, on Friday, Anjel Newmann, 32, said that while she’s mostly using Instagram and Facebook to organize, younger people are using Snapchat. The main problem: It’s hard to tell which online flyers are legitimate. “That’s one of the things we haven’t figured out yet,” she said. “There was a flyer going around saying this was canceled today.”The simplicity of shooting and sharing video has also made possible recordings of violence that can spread to millions within moments. A smartphone video of Floyd’s death helped spark the broad outrage that led to the protests.  Apps like Signal are seeing an uptick in downloads according to Apptopia, which tracks such data. Signal was downloaded 37,000 times over the weekend in the U.S., it said, more than at any other point since it launched in 2014. Other private messaging apps, such as Telegram and Wickr, have not seen a similar uptick.One new user is Toby Anderson, 30, who also attended the Providence rally on Friday. Anderson, who is biracial, said he downloaded the encrypted Signal app several days earlier at the request of his mom. “She’s a black woman in America,” he said, worried about his safety and eager to grasp any additional measure of security she could.Meanwhile, apps like Police Scanner and 5-0 Police Scanner, which allow anyone to listen to live police dispatch chatter — and may be illegal in some states — racked up 213,000 downloads over the weekend, Apptopia said. That is 125% more than the weekend before and a record for the category. Citizen, which sends real-time alerts and lets users post live video of protests and crime scenes, was downloaded 49,000 times.  On the down side, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism said in a blog post this week that it has found white nationalists using Telegram to try to wreak havoc during the protests.  “Some, especially those in the accelerationist camp, are celebrating the prospect of increased violence, which they hope will lead to a long-promised ‘race war,'” the ADL said Monday. “They are extremely active online, urging other white supremacists to take full advantage of the moment.”  In one Telegram channel, the ADL found, participants suggested murdering protesters, then spreading rumors to blame the deaths on police snipers.Others want to further exacerbate racial tensions. “Good time to stroke race relations” and “post black live’s don’t matter stickers,” a user posted — with misspellings — to the Reformthestates Telegram channel, according to the ADL.
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Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced his resignation from the board of the social media site and urged the board to replace him with a black candidate.
Ohanian, who is white, implicitly linked his move to protests around the globe over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a police officer pressed his knee against his neck for several minutes, even after he stopped pleading for air and became unresponsive.
The entrepreneur, who is married to tennis star Serena Williams, said he made the decision for the sake of his daughter.
“I’m writing this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks: “What did you do?,” Ohanian said in a blog post. He pledged to use future gains on his Reddit stock to “serve the black community, chiefly to curb racial hate.”
He also said he would give $1 million to Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp. Former NFL player Kaepernick is known for  kneeling to protest police brutality and racism in 2016, and later filed a grievance claiming the league had blacklisted him as a result.
Reddit, based in San Francisco, calls itself “the front page of the internet” and has millions of users. LIke all social media sites, it has had issues over the years balancing freedom of speech against posts with racist, inflammatory and abusive intent.
Co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said in a Reddit post that the board would honor Ohanian’s wish to be replaced by a black candidate. He also said Reddit was working with moderators to explicitly address hate speech. 
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A group of young professionals in California’s Silicon Valley has created a non-profit organization called “Code for Venezuela,” dedicated to bringing together tech innovators to solve the most pressing needs of the South American nation.  The group’s latest initiative aims to help residents in Venezuela find information about COVID-19.   Cristina Caicedo Smit has the story
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In Ethiopia, mobile applications are spreading fast to help health care workers and the public fight against COVID-19, which has claimed 12 lives in the country and affected about 1,100 people.  Ethiopian web developers have designed seven apps that do everything from virus tracing to sharing data and patient information among health workers.  But while the apps are spreading in cities, getting into remote and poor areas of Ethiopia remains a challenge.  FILE – Ethiopians have their temperature checked for symptoms of the new coronavirus, at the Zewditu Memorial Hospital in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 18, 2020.Just days after Ethiopia confirmed its first case of the coronavirus in March, 38-year-old software engineer Mike Endale, who emigrated to the U.S. 20 years ago, sent out a solitary tweet calling for help.   He called on all software developers and engineers in the Ethiopian diaspora to help the health ministry by contributing open source software to respond to COVID-19. Endale became coordinator of the Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team, a volunteer force of doctors, artificial intelligence specialists, software engineers and data analysts.   He spoke via a messaging application from Washington, D.C., where he works as principal technologist at BLEN Corporation, a company that provides technology solutions for the public sector and charities.   “People just organically gathered around a slack channel and we started figuring out how to help,” he said.  “So, the impetus for the group was… to see if we could augment the Ministry of Health’s work in a couple of areas.  One originally was around tech.  Luckily for that there was already an internal initiative going on that started a day before [we originated].  We got connected with them and we started working on broad-based solutions.”  Alongside software engineers at the Ministry of Health and the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, Endale’s army of tech gurus helped to develop a series of applications to aid health workers.   The apps allow health workers to register the identity and medical profiles of people entering the country and also record information about those in contact with COVID-19 patients.  The ministry’s contact tracing team is then sent into communities with tablet computers to identify suspected infections and test for the virus.   Though still limited in their use, the apps are modernizing how health workers and hospitals accurately and quickly share information in Ethiopia, where — until the pandemic — patient data was recorded on paper.   Other apps created through the response team can be downloaded by the public. The COVID-19 Ethiopia app was launched in late May so that the public can self-report cases or alert health authorities to others with symptoms.  And an app called Debo captures the identity of anyone who comes within two meters of the user so that contacts can be traced should the person one day test positive. “This is very important work for the country in responding to COVID-19,” said Biruhtesfa Abere, a senior health information specialist at the Ministry of Health. “Also, for decision makers, the ministry task force is sitting here trying to forecast how many cases they’re going to have in the future, next month.  So, they need data, they need baseline data.”  Biruhtesfa says the digital tools mean that test results — thousands per day — can be shared to health workers nationwide within 24 hours, allowing those who test negative for the virus to leave isolation quicker. Data in the apps are also being used to record where test kits are sent in Ethiopia, how many are being used, and how many are being wasted.  But while the apps are making progress in cities, Biruhtesfa says getting rural health workers using the tools where good internet and smartphones are rare, is a challenge.  “The tool can help you manage your records, maintain contact listing and [record] the relationship of the positive person’s contacts in the past 14 days.  That is basically automated and fully functional,” he said.  “But the problem is bringing the users on board to use the system.  We are strongly pushing contact tracing and the follow-up team to record using the system and they are coming a little bit at a time.  They will be on board very soon.”  Biruhtesfa says the health ministry is rolling out training sessions via video link to health workers in rural areas so they can learn how to use the applications.  And 30,000 tablet computers that were to be used for Ethiopia’s national census are being repurposed so that health workers in areas with poor internet can also use the applications.   Endale’s global network of volunteers are now organizing themselves beyond developing digital apps for Ethiopia.  He says members of the community have organized themselves into ten different work streams for tasks such as donation drives and repairing ventilators.              
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Several prominent media and entertainment organizations, including Apple and ViacomCBS, paid tribute to the call for racial equality and justice in the United States amid the recent protests, some violent, by pausing regular services and company events on what they are calling “Black Out Tuesday.” 
 
According to Reuters, CBS said it would spend the day reflecting on “building community,” putting business ventures temporarily “on pause.”  
 
The company also said it would broadcast 8 minutes and 46 seconds of breathing sounds with the words “I can’t breathe,” echoing the last words of George Floyd, a man killed last week in Minneapolis.  
 
Floyd’s death has caused international outrage and days of protests across the nation, many turning violent. The officer present at the time of Floyd’s death, Derek Chauvin, has been arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.  
 
Black Out Tuesday was initially organized by the music community, the AP reports, although the movement quickly spread across social media to include sports stars, such as Lebron James, and other prominent cultural icons like Kylie Jenner.  
 
There has been some criticism on social media, however, that people tagging #black lives matter on the post has pushed the protest content and resources out of sight and actually has obscured it, rather than help to amplify it. They charge that this approach is not well conceived and is harming the cause rather than helping it. 
 
Rapper Little Nas X called for more exposure, saying the black-out effect shields the public from “what’s going on.”  
 
“This is not helping us,” he tweeted. 
 
Apple Music and iTunes both featured the group Black Lives Matter on their homepage, while streaming service Spotify created black logos for several of their most popular playlists, each captioned with the phrase “black lives matter.”  
 
The company added that it, too, would feature an 8 minute and 46 second track in select playlists and podcasts, and that it would halt social media publications.  
 
Eight minutes and 46 seconds is the length of a video capturing Floyd’s death.  
 
Several artists took to Instagram, posting black squares, some using the hashtag #TheShowMustBePaused or encouraging people to vote.  
 
Grammy-nominated singer Kehlani expressed doubts about the movement’s efficacy on Twitter, citing the various messaging surrounding the event.“The messages are mixed across the board and i really hope it doesn’t have a negative effect,” she tweeted.Several artists and record labels also announced that the release of new singles and albums would be delayed due to their participation in Black Out Tuesday.  
Interscope Geffen A&M Records said it would not release music this week, while new releases from Glass Animals, Chloe x Halle and others all will be pushed back, and will drop in coming weeks.  
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An advocacy group backed by the tech industry filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s executive order on social media, as U.S. technology companies have been fighting White House efforts to weaken a law that protects them. The Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology said in its lawsuit that Trump’s executive order violates the First Amendment rights of social media companies. It noted that the order was issued after Twitter Inc amended one of Trump’s tweets and called it “plainly retaliatory.” The lawsuit argues that Trump’s executive order will “chill future online speech by other speakers” and reduce the ability of Americans to speak freely online. Trump, in an attempt to regulate social media platforms where he has been criticized, said last week he will introduce legislation that may scrap or weaken a law that has protected internet companies, including Twitter and Facebook. The proposed legislation was part of an executive order Trump signed on Thursday afternoon. Trump had attacked Twitter for tagging his tweets about unsubstantiated claims of fraud about mail-in voting with a warning prompting readers to fact-check the posts. Trump said he wants to “remove or change” a provision of a law known as Section 230 that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users. He also said Attorney General William Barr will begin drafting legislation “immediately” to regulate social media companies. The White House declined comment on the lawsuit. “Twitter appended the President’s tweets … in immediate retaliation, the President issued the Executive Order,” said the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 
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Should President Donald Trump and Twitter ultimately part ways, his campaign has a backup plan at the ready to get his voice out.
 
Tensions between Trump and the messaging platform escalated last week after Twitter began to label some of his tweets with a fact-check. Trump responded with an executive order that threatens to curtail some legal protections enjoyed by social media companies.
 
Trump’s campaign has been building an alternative channel for him for months, a smartphone app that aims to become a one-stop news, information and entertainment platform for his supporters, in part because of concerns that the president would lose access to the Twitter platform, said his campaign manager, Brad Parscale.
 
The Trump app, which was launched in April, has since often placed among the Top 10 in Apple’s rankings of news apps, sometimes above those of individual news organizations such as CNN, the New York Times and Reuters.
 
“We have always been worried about Twitter and Facebook taking us offline and this serves as a backup,” Parscale told Reuters.
 
He spoke before Twitter for the first time prompted readers to check the facts in Trump’s tweets last week, warning that his claims about mail-in ballots were false and had been debunked by fact checkers.
 
For supporters, the new app is where they can get the latest campaign news, watch campaign-produced, prime-time shows hosted by Trump allies and earn reward points for making phone calls or signing people up for the app.
 
For the campaign, it is a pandemic-proof substitute to Trump’s signature rallies, and a key tool to collect crucial data that can help micro-target voters ahead of November’s election. Trump will face presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 contest.
 
With millions of Americans stuck at home and campaign rallies paused due to the coronavirus, successful digital organizing can make a difference, digital strategists in both parties say.
 
Signing into the app requires a cellphone number, which then allows the campaign to send the user regular text messages lauding Trump or asking for donations.
 
“The most important, golden thing in politics is a cellphone number,” said Parscale, who ran Trump’s digital efforts in 2016 before leading the 2020 campaign. “When we receive cellphone numbers, it really allows us to identify them across the databases. Who are they, voting history, everything.”
 
Reward points that users can earn by getting other people to sign up for the app can be used to buy campaign gear or even score a meeting with Trump himself, the campaign said.
 ‘Digital Mousetrap’
 
Biden’s campaign has a phone app as well, where supporters can donate or volunteer, and text people directly with campaign messaging.
 
But unlike Trump’s app, it provides little information, such as social media streams or news releases. Nor does it connect to the virtual campaign events Biden has been holding nearly daily during the coronavirus pandemic. The app is not ranked by Apple as among its 200 most popular for news.
 
The Biden campaign said it uses its app almost solely for organizing supporters, not for pushing content.
 
By contrast, according to Stefan Smith, a Democratic digital strategist who worked for Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, the Trump app has created a “walled garden” or “digital mousetrap” where voters ideally stay as long as possible, interacting with the app’s steady stream of content.
 
“The Trump campaign is a media company with an electoral component,” Smith said.
 
The Trump campaign hired Texas-based company Phunware to build the app.
 
If they so choose, users can rely on the app as a primary, if heavily filtered, information source, one where Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is championed and the economy is poised for a quick recovery and the federal probe into Trump’s collusion with Russia was a politically motivated hoax.
 
Not included is less favorable coverage of the president. On Monday, the app contained a campaign statement framed like a news article that said Trump had been working to unite the county in the wake of nationwide protests over the police shooting of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
 
There was no mention of a combative conference call Trump had with U.S. governors in which he urged them to act more aggressively toward the protesters.
 
Bill Bigby, a Trump supporter in Scranton, Pennsylvania, said the app has now become his go-to source for the latest news.
 
“We have learned that you can’t trust anything the media says about Trump,” Bigby, 56, said. “They just don’t like him.”
 
Parscale said that was exactly the goal the campaign had in mind.
 
“I think everything we do is to counter the media,” Parscale said. “This is another tool in the tool shed to fight that fight, and it’s a big tool.”  
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Though Black Out Tuesday was originally organized by the music community, the social media world also went dark in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, joining voices around the world outraged by the killings of black people in the U.S.
Instagram and Twitter accounts, from top record label to everyday people, were full of black squares posted in response to the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
Most of the captions were blank, though some posted #TheShowMustBePaused, black heart emojis or encouraged people to vote Tuesday since seven states and the District of Columbia are hosting the largest slate of primary elections in almost three months.
Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Radiohead, Coldplay, Kelly Rowland, Beastie Boys and were among the celebrities to join Black Out Tuesday on social media.
“I won’t be posting on social media and I ask you all to do the same,” Britney Spears tweeted. “We should use the time away from our devices to focus on what we can do to make the world a better place …. for ALL of us !!!!!”
Spotify blacked out the artwork for several of its popular playlists, including RapCaviar and Today’s Top Hits, simply writing “Black lives matter.” as its description. The streaming service also put its Black Lives Matter playlist on its front page, featuring songs like James Brown’s “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,” N.W.A.’s “(Expletive) the Police,” Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” and Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.”
The opening pages of Apple Music and iTunes focused on supporting Black Lives Matter, and SiriusXM said it will be silencing its music channels for three minutes at 3 p.m. EDT in tribute to “all of the countless victims of racism.”
The company said it “will continue to amplify Black voices by being a space where Black artists showcase their music and talents, and by carrying the message that racism will not be tolerated.”
Some on social media questioned if posting black squares would divert attention away from posts about the Black Lives Matter movement.
“this is the 4th completely different flyer i’ve seen for it,” Grammy-nominated singer Kehlani tweeted about Black Out Tuesday. “”this is the only one without the saying go completely silent for a day in solidarity. the messages are mixed across the board and i really hope it doesn’t have a negative effect.”
When musician Dillon Francis posted that the hashtag for Black Lives Matter was blank on Instagram because users were posting black squares, rapper Lil Nas X responded with: “this is not helping us. bro who the (expletive) thought of this?? ppl need to see what’s going on.”
Several music releases and events were postponed as a result of Black Out Tuesday. Interscope Geffen A&M Records said it would not release music this week and pushed back releases from MGK, 6lack, Jessie Ware, Smokepurp and others. Chloe x Halle said its sophomore album will come out June 12 instead of Friday, while the group Glass Animals postponed the Tuesday release of its new single “Heat Waves.” Instead of being released Wednesday, singer Ashnikko will drop her song “Cry” and its video on June 17.
A benefit for the Apollo Theater will take place Thursday instead of Tuesday, and South by Southwest postponed an event planned with Rachael Ray.
“At SXSW we stand with the black community and will continue to amplify the voices and ideas that will lead us to a more equitable society,” the company said.
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Facebook employees walked away from their work-from-home desks on Monday and took to Twitter to accuse Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg of inadequately policing U.S. President Donald Trump’s posts as strictly as the rival platform has done.Reuters saw dozens of online posts from employees critical of Zuckerberg’s decision to leave Trump’s most inflammatory verbiage unchallenged where Twitter had labeled it. Some top managers participated in the protest, reminiscent of a 2018 walkout at Alphabet Inc’s Google over sexual harassment.Twitter Adds ‘Glorifying Violence’ Warning to Trump Tweet Trump, a prolific Twitter user, has been at war with the company since earlier this week, when it applied fact checks to two of his tweets about mail-in ballotsIt was a rare case of staff publicly taking their CEO to task, with one employee tweeting that thousands participated. Among them were all seven engineers on the team maintaining the React code library which supports Facebook’s apps.”Facebook’s recent decision to not act on posts that incite violence ignores other options to keep our community safe. We implore the Facebook leadership to #TakeAction,” they said in a joint statement published on Twitter.”Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind,” wrote Ryan Freitas, identified on Twitter as director of product design for Facebook’s News Feed. He added he had mobilized “50+ likeminded folks” to lobby for internal change.Twitter Fact-Checks Trump Tweet for First Time The blue exclamation mark notification prompts readers to ‘get the facts about mail-in ballots’ and directs them to a page with news articles and information about the claims aggregated by Twitter staffers A Facebook employee said Zuckerberg’s weekly Friday question-and-answer session would be moved up this week to Tuesday.Katie Zhu, a product manager at Instagram, tweeted a screenshot showing she had entered “#BLACKLIVESMATTER” to describe her request for time off as part of the walkout.Facebook Inc will allow employees participating in the protest to take the time off without drawing down their vacation days, spokesman Andy Stone said.Separately, online therapy company Talkspace said it ended partnership discussions with Facebook. Talkspace CEO Oren Frank tweeted he would “not support a platform that incites violence, racism, and lies.”Social justiceTech workers at companies including Facebook, Google, and Amazon.com Inc have pursued social justice issues in recent years, urging the companies to change policies.Employees “recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community,” Stone wrote in a text.”We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership. As we face additional difficult decisions around content ahead, we’ll continue seeking their honest feedback.”Last week, nationwide unrest erupted after the death of a black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis last Monday. Video footage showed a white officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes before he died.On Friday, Twitter Inc affixed a warning label to a Trump tweet that included the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter said it violated rules against glorifying violence but was left up as a public interest exception.Facebook declined to act on the same message, and Zuckerberg sought to distance his company from the fight between the president and Twitter.On Friday, Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post that while he found Trump’s remarks “deeply offensive,” they did not violate company policy against incitements to violence and people should know whether the government was planning to deploy force.Zuckerberg’s post also said Facebook had been in touch with the White House to explain its policies.Twitter used the same label as for Trump on Monday to hide a message by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida that likened protesters to terrorists and called for them to be hunted down “like we do those in the Middle East.”Gaetz said in response he would “see” Twitter in the Judiciary Committee.Some of Facebook’s dissenting employees have praised Twitter for its response over Trump. Others, like Jason Toff, a director of product management and former head of short-form video app Vine, started organizing fundraisers for racial justice groups in Minnesota. Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook on Monday the company would contribute an additional $10 million to social justice causes.Toff tweeted: “I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we’re showing up. The majority of coworkers I’ve spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard.” 
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President Donald Trump posted identical messages on Twitter and Facebook this week. But while the two social platforms have very similar policies on voter misinformation and glorifying violence, they dealt with Trump’s posts very differently, proof that Silicon Valley is far from a united front when it comes to political decisionsTwitter placed a warning label on two Trump tweets that called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted problems with the November elections. It demoted and placed a stronger warning on a third tweet about Minneapolis protests that read, in part, that “when the looting starts the shooting starts.”Facebook left the posts alone.“Facebook doesn’t want to alienate certain communities,” said Dipayan Ghosh, co-director of the digital platforms and democracy project at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “It doesn’t want to tick off a whole swatch of people who really believe the president and appreciate his tweets.”Twitter, on the other hand has a history of taking stronger stances, he added, including a complete ban on political advertisements that the company announced last November.That’s partly because Facebook, a much larger company with a broader audience, caught in the crosshairs of regulators over its size and power, has more to lose. And partly because the companies’ CEOs don’t always see eye to eye on their role in society.“Our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on his social network Friday.FILE – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on the second day of the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Feb. 15, 2020.Referring to the president’s comments about the Minneapolis protests, Zuckerberg said that he had “a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric.” But Facebook decided, he said, to keep the president’s comment’s on the site because “we read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.”More broadly, Zuckerberg has often said Facebook does not seek to be “the arbiter of truth.”Still, Facebook has long used fact checks on its site, done by third-party news organizations such as The Associated Press, and it constantly uses algorithms to decide what to show its 2.5 billion users. And it is setting up an oversight board to decide whether to remove controversial posts.FILE – Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey leaves after his talk with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, June 7, 2019.Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that Twitter will “continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally.” But he added: “This does not make us an ‘arbiter of truth.’”This is not the first time that a social media company clashed with the president. And with six months to go before the election, it won’t be the last.“It sure looks like, in the face of pressure to follow the White House’s preferred speech policies, Facebook chose appeasement and Twitter chose to fight,” said Daphne Keller, a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society. “Why the difference? … Maybe Facebook thinks it has more to lose by alienating Republicans.”Trump and fellow conservatives have been claiming for years that Silicon Valley tech companies are biased against them. But there is no evidence for this — and while the executives and most employees of Twitter, Facebook and Google may lean liberal, the companies have stressed they have no business interest in favoring on political party over the other.The trouble began in 2016, two years after Facebook launched a section called “trending,” using human editors to curate popular news stories. Facebook was accused of bias against conservatives based on the words of an anonymous former contractor who said the company downplayed conservative issues in that feature and promoted liberal causes.Zuckerberg met with prominent right-wing leaders at the time in an attempt at damage control. In 2018, it shut down the “trending” section but by then the narrative of conservative bias had spread far and wide. Congressional hearings about conservative bias followed, with the leaders of Google, Twitter and Facebook defending their companies and explaining that it would not be in their interest to alienate half of their U.S. users.While critics have accused both Zuckerberg and Dorsey of cozying up with one side of the political alley or the other, Zuckerberg appears more intent on remaining in the mushy middle — even when that’s proving increasingly difficult.“Facebook doesn’t want to alienate anybody,’’ said Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Civic Media. “Twitter seems more comfortable saying: ‘Look, as a private platform we reserve the right to do whatever want to do.’ … They’re right. This is not a First Amendment issue’’ involving government censorship.Zuckerman said that tech companies’ approach to handling misinformation and incitement to violence has had to change. “Both Zuckerberg and Dorsey are from the generation of internet entrepreneurs that had a very strong freedom of speech bias… you should be able to say whatever you want, and no should block it,’’ Zuckerman said.But that hands off approach no longer appears sustainable.Perhaps even more than Trump’s provocative tweets the coronavirus pandemic is forcing tech firms to rethink what goes unchallenged on their platforms. Zuckerman noted, for example, that both Facebook and Google have been vigilant about barring the conspiracy theory video “Plandemic,” which makes false claims about COVID-19 and therefore poses a potential threat to public health.“It’s really a no-win scenario’’’ for social media companies, said Patrick Hedger, research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Conservatives will complain if they block or correct Trump statements. Liberals will cry foul if they don’t.Hedger also noted that “the unmoderated world does exist,’’ pointing to Gab.com, which has become a haven for extremist views. “The unmoderated internet is not a pretty place,’’ he said. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order aimed at curbing protections for social media giants, in the Oval Office of the White House, May 28, 2020.The order requires the Federal Communication Commission to clarify a section of the Communications Decency Act that largely exempts online companies from any legal liability concerning users’ content. It also directs the White House Office of Digital Strategy to redouble its efforts to collect complaints of online censorship and submit them to the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.The president, in the Oval Office, decried social media companies as monopolies that have become more influential than newspapers and broadcasters.”We can’t let this continue to happen. It’s very, very unfair,” Trump said.The president’s ire is aimed in particular at Twitter, which earlier this week placed a fact-check warning on two of his tweets.”If it were able to be legally shut down, I would do it,” Trump said of Twitter.When Twitter, Google, Facebook and other platforms choose to fact check or choose to ignore certain posts that is “political activism,” according to the president. “I’m sure they’ll be doing a lawsuit,” he said.”If you weren’t fake,” Trump said in reply to a reporter’s question about why he just does not delete his personal Twitter account. “If we had a fair press in this country, I’d do that in a heartbeat.”The order’s interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act “is not expected to hold up in court, but it has the effect of giving political permission to attack social media companies if they apply content moderation or fact-checking rules to Trump’s statements or those of his supporters and allies,” Rebecca MacKinnon, director of Ranking Digital Rights, told VOA.President Donald Trump listens as Attorney General William Barr speaks before Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, May 28, 2020.Trump said he was directing U.S. Attorney General William Barr to cooperate with the states to enforce their own laws against deceptive practices by social media companies, who now have what the president characterized as power “tantamount to monopoly. Tantamount to taking over the airwaves.”The president added: “We’re fed up with it. It’s unfair.”Barr, in the Oval Office with Trump for the signing of the executive order, said the administration is preparing legislative proposals regarding social media companies and also will pursue litigation.Senator Ron Wyden, the highest-ranking Democrat on the finance committee, said he had long been warning the Trump administration might make such a move “in order to chill speech and bully companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter into giving him favorable treatment. Today, Trump proved me right. I expect those companies, and every American who participates in online speech, to resist this illegal act by all possible means. Giving in to bullying by this president may be the single most unpatriotic act an American could undertake.”House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the order “outrageous” and meant as a distraction from the coronavirus crisis.On Tuesday, an unprecedented alert on the @realDonaldTrump tweets about mail-in balloting prompted the president to accuse Twitter of interference in this year’s election and of “completely stifling” free speech.When those viewing Trump’s flagged tweets on Tuesday clicked on the warning placed by Twitter, they were taken to a notification titled: Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud.FILE – Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey leaves the Elysee Palace in Paris, June 7, 2019.The alert, linked to stories from CNN and The Washington Post, also included a fact box citing what Twitter called false claims by the president about mail-in ballots.Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said Trump’s tweets “may mislead people into thinking they don’t need to register to get a ballot. Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves.”Before Thursday’s executive order was issued, Facebook Chief Executive Office Mark Zuckerberg, appearing on the CNBC business channel, said he did not think “Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth.”The White House press secretary was asked by a reporter during Thursday’s briefing whether Trump’s focus on alleged widespread fraud involving mail-in balloting is laying the groundwork to cast doubt on the outcome of November’s presidential election.”No, he’s certainly not doing that,” Kayleigh McEnany said.  
 
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Fourteen Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee are requesting that Federal Trade Commission regulators investigate the popular video app TikTok for violations of children’s privacy.The Energy and Commerce Committee conducts oversight on the FTC’s privacy unit. The lawsuit filed Thursday follows claims submitted by the Center for Digital Democracy, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and others that TikTok failed to remove videos posted by children under the age of 13, which it had previously agreed to do in a 2019 agreement with the FTC.The FTC fined TikTok $5.7 million in February 2019 over lax enforcement of measures designed to ensure children’s privacy.In addition to removing videos of underage children, the FTC also required the company to comply with all aspects of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in the future.The 2019 case alleged that TikTok neglected to implement blocks against the collection of tweens’ personal data and did not permit parents to request that their child’s data be deleted — if the parents were even aware that personal data was being collected in the first place.After the FTC ruling, TikTok introduced an under-13 section of the app that does not permit the dissemination of personal information. Last month, the Family Pairing feature was announced, which provides parents with a way to implement restrictions on all teenage accounts, not just those under 13.The Democratic lawmakers say that failure to comply with the FTC’s mandate violates COPPA.”The blatant disregard for the consent decree could encourage other websites to fail to adhere to settlements made with your agency, thereby weakening protections for all Americans,” the letter to the FTC said.The Chinese-owned app has been downloaded 1.9 billion times internationally, including 172 million times in the United States, The New York Times reported. Its popularity has soared since the onset the coronavirus pandemic and worldwide shelter-in-place orders, achieving record first-quarter growth.Suspicions over data collectionThe U.S. government has previously expressed doubts regarding the trustworthiness of the app, citing its Chinese origins. Several branches of the U.S. military, for example, have prohibited personnel from creating an account, and at least one senator has proposed legislation to ban use for federal employees.The lawmakers’ letter to the FTC comes after two Republican members of the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote a letter to the CEO of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance.Representatives Greg Walden and Cathy McMorris Rodgers requested that the company disclose its data-collection practices for Americans and how that data is shared with the Chinese Communist Party or other Chinese state entities.According to The Hill, TikTok has previously stated it stores American user data in Singapore and denies that it shares information with the Chinese government.
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