Facebook says it will not allow foreign-funded advertisements for an upcoming presidential election in Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, hoping to allay concerns that its platform is being used to manipulate voting behavior.

The announcement on Facebook’s website said the restriction in Indonesia took effect Monday morning and is part of “safeguarding election integrity on our platform.”

Facebook and other internet companies are facing increased scrutiny over how they handle private user data and have been lambasted for not doing enough to stop misuse of their platforms by groups trying to sway elections. Critics say foreign interests, and Russia in particular, used Facebook to harvest private data and disseminate paid ads that may have influenced the outcomes of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the U.K. referendum on leaving the European Union.

Indonesia votes for president on April 17. The campaign pits incumbent leader Joko Widodo against ultranationalist former Gen. Prabowo Subianto, who was narrowly defeated by Widodo in 2014.

The social media company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp and has about 2.3 billion users for its Facebook site alone, said it’s using a mix of automated and human intervention to identify foreign-funded election ads.

It said the restriction applies to any ads coming from an advertiser based outside of the country “if it references politicians or political parties or attempts to encourage or suppress voting.”

The company said it had also prohibited foreign-funded advertisements for Nigeria’s elections in February and for Ukraine’s elections later this month.

For upcoming elections for the European Parliament and India, it has said advertisers will need to be authorized to buy political ads and a new tool will provide information about an ad’s budget, the number of people it reached and demographics about who saw the ad, including age, gender and location.
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As the global race to gain the lead in next generation tech heats up, China is stepping up its efforts, recently announcing a long-awaited plan to link up its southern Pearl River Delta into a massive hub of technology, research finance and innovation.

The possibilities and challenges of the project are both equally challenging and promising, analysts say.

Some describe the plan as an attempt to create a mega-city to rival Silicon Valley, the U.S. technology powerhouse that is home to companies such as Google, Facebook, and Apple.

But while Silicon Valley has a population of 3.1 million and covers an area 121.4 square kilometers, the Greater Bay Area will link up nine cities together with Hong Kong and Macau and cover an area of 56,000 square kilometers. The area will have a population of about 70 million and the economic heft, state media argues, to drive the Chinese economy, let alone the world.

According to the plan, which was announced recently and is expected to be a prominent topic during high-level political meetings this month in Beijing, each city will focus on an area of strength. For example, Hong Kong will focus on finance, Macau tourism, Shenzhen, innovation and technology, Guangzhou will be a gateway and logistic hub and so on.

The plan is not necessarily new. China’s opening up to the world more than four decades ago began in the south and the Pearl River Delta has long been home to some of the country’s leading companies from telecommunications – such as Huawei to Internet giant Tencent and host of other technology and manufacturing enterprises.

“It’s (the plan) a natural evolution of economic growth and the growth engine,” said Adam Xu, partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants. “If you really look at history in China, a lot of top down plans always have some bottom up support. A lot of economic activity has already happened there, then you have a grand plan to first officially recognize, then to promote and to further accelerate.”

Xu said that as labor costs rise in China, the country is looking to move up the industrial value chain and the program seeks to do just that to push the region on to the next wave, be it the manufacturing of electric cars, financial services or telecommunications.

It also aims to drive investment to the area at a time when foreign funds flowing into the country are sagging.

Challenges

One key challenge, Xu adds, will be execution. The plan will tie together three different legal jurisdictions and that makes the plan unique compared to the two other major mega-city projects in China – the Beijing, Hebei, Tianjin merger and the Yangtze River Delta integration plan near Shanghai.

“We don’t know how effective the top down grand plan will (be in) guiding the many independent growing forces at the city level to coordinate and be successful,” Xu said. “This part will be quite an important challenge.”

China has long had deep pockets when it comes to making investments that push forward technological advances. In many cases, however, that has led to overlaps in development and spending on technology and in turn oversupply.

“Looking at the grand scheme each city doesn’t have anything new,” said C.Y. Huang, partner of FCC Partners. “The biggest challenge and the biggest beauty – if they can pull it off – will be linking all of these together. 

One way the plan could do that is not just by lifting physical barriers, but the flow of people, information and money.

China has already taken major strides to overcome some of the physical obstacles such as linking Hong Kong with Guangzhou and Shenzhou by high-speed rail and its recent opening of the 55-kilometer Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge. 

But other barriers may prove to be a bigger challenge.

“I think it is really the barriers in systems that is the challenge. If they can really pull that off that will be a tremendous benefit and synergy in the long term,” Huang said.

At the same time, he added, we shouldn’t underestimate the social and political aspect of the challenges because we are talking about people.

“One is a communist country, and the other is a free society. Although they talk about one country two systems, still it is different,” Huang said.
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Studying engineering isn’t just about learning, it’s about using skills in the real world. But for biomechanical engineering students, it can be hard to get that real-world experience. However, students at the University of the District of Columbia are able to see how their schoolwork translates to helping people. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The first American commercially built-and-operated crew spacecraft in eight years docked successfully Sunday at the International Space Station.

There was, however, no crew aboard the spacecraft, just a test dummy named Ripley, in a nod to the lead character in the Alien movies.

The docking was carried out autonomously by the Crew Dragon capsule, as the three astronauts on board the International Space Station watched.

The Space X Crew Dragon capsule lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket early Saturday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

The Dragon brought supplies and test equipment to the space station where it will spend five days as astronauts conduct tests and inspect the Dragon’s cabin.

NASA has awarded millions of dollars to Space X and Boeing to design and operate a capsule to launch astronauts into orbit from American soil some time this year.

It is not immediately clear whether that goal will be reached.

Space X is entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company. Musk is also the CEO of electric carmaker Tesla.

Currently, America relies on Russia to launch astronauts to the space station.

Russia charges about $80 million per ticket.

 
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With the U.S. and China still negotiating a trade deal, and ongoing concerns in the U.S. about China’s technology goals, Silicon Valley is caught between two superpowers. Michelle Quinn reports.
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They call it the Trump effect.

Increased government scrutiny of Chinese investments in Silicon Valley has meant some deals are not getting done. Some aren’t even considered.

Usually eager for money and tantalized by the prospect of the Chinese market, startups are even declining Chinese investment.

After years of growing ties between China and Silicon Valley, the U.S. tech capital sees itself caught between Beijing and Washington over which country will win the competition to create the next generation of communication technologies.

“China’s innovation efforts are broad and deep,” said Michael Wessel, commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, at a recent congressional hearing. “China wants to be a global innovation leader and is doing all that it can legally and illegally to achieve its goals.”

​Flashpoint Huawei

Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company that is building a 5G network in countries around the world, remains a flashpoint. Its chief financial officer faces extradition to the United States from Canada on fraud charges.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, U.S. and Huawei officials lobbied world leaders on whether Huawei should be trusted.

U.S. concerns about China and technology extend to the nation’s methods to achieve technology dominance, as outlined in Beijing’s Made in China 2025 plan.

In addition to subsidies for industry, and research and development, the U.S. says those methods include massive cyberhacking campaigns to steal corporate secrets, forced technology transfers to Chinese partners, and government policies that reward intellectual property theft.

WATCH: Silicon Valley Skeptical of Washington’s China Concerns

Increased scrutiny of Chinese investors

The U.S. government wants new barriers up because it believes some technologies, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, are important to national security. But many in the tech industry see risks in new restrictions.

“By not working with China, not only do we have less access to information to what they are doing,” said Parag Khanna, author of “The Future Is Asian.” They will substitute us for more reliable partners and we will be cut out of the entire market.”

Tim Draper is a prominent venture capitalist in Silicon Valley who says he was the first U.S. venture capitalist to invest in Baidu, the Chinese technology firm.

“I think we should be open and sharing,” he said. “Both countries benefit so much by having a very open communication lane there. … I believe we have a problem that we are putting up barriers where they don’t benefit us.”

The race to build 5G

Chinese companies are racing to build 5G wireless communication networks around the world, which Washington says risks giving Beijing enormous opportunities for electronic surveillance.

The stakes make it hard to predict how the U.S. and China will come to an understanding. In the meantime, Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs have accepted for now a cooling-off period for cross-border investment.

The disconnect between Silicon Valley and Washington is hard to bridge, said Christian Brose, head of strategy at Anduril Industries, a Southern California tech company that works with the U.S. government.

“When you have a conversation where one party sees China as an emerging national security challenge, and the other sees it as an emerging business opportunity, that’s just a fundamental clash of cultures and expectations that is difficult to reconcile, but I also think it’s not impossible,” he added.

While the two countries negotiate, Silicon Valley, caught in the middle, waits.
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YouTube said Thursday it will disable user comments on a broad array of videos featuring children to thwart “predatory behavior” after revelations about a glitch exploited for sharing of child pornography.

The Google-owned video sharing service announced further steps to crack down on inappropriate comments a week after an investigation showing how comments and connections on child porn were being displayed alongside innocuous videos.

“We recognize that comments are a core part of the YouTube experience and how you connect with and grow your audience,” YouTube said in a posted message to creators.

“At the same time, the important steps we’re sharing today are critical for keeping young people safe.”

YouTube said that during the past week it has suspended comments on tens of millions of videos to prevent users from exploiting of the software glitch for nefarious purposes.

“These efforts are focused on videos featuring young minors and we will continue to identify videos at risk over the next few months,” YouTube said.

“Over the next few months, we will be broadening this action to suspend comments on videos featuring young minors and videos featuring older minors that could be at risk of attracting predatory behavior.”

A small number of video creators will be allowed to keep comments enabled, but will be required to carefully moderate commentary and to deploy software tools provided by YouTube, according to Google.

YouTube accelerated the release of an improved “classifier” that it said will detect and remove twice the number of policy-breaking comments by individuals.

‘Wormhole’

A YouTube creator last week revealed what he called a “wormhole” that allowed comments and connections on child porn alongside videos.

Shortly thereafter, YouTube deleted many comments and blocked some accounts and channels showing inappropriate comments.

Matt Watson, a YouTube creator with some 26,000 subscribers, revealed the workings of what he termed a “wormhole” into a pedophile ring that allowed users to trade social media contacts and links to child porn in YouTube comments.

The post by Watson sparked a series of news reports and boycotts of YouTube ads from major firms.

The incident raised fears of a fresh “brand safety” crisis for YouTube, which lost advertisers last year following revelations that messages appeared on channels promoting conspiracy theories, white nationalism and other objectionable content.
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Thailand’s legislature has passed a cybersecurity bill that would allow authorities access to people’s personal information without a court order.

The Cybersecurity Act addresses computer hacking crimes, but activists fear it will allow the government sweeping access to people’s personal information.

The National Legislative Assembly, which passed the bill in its final reading Thursday by a vote of 133-0, was appointed by the junta that came to power after a 2014 coup. It becomes law when published in the Royal Gazette.

The cybersecurity bill allows state officials to seize, search, infiltrate, and make copies of computers, computer systems and information in computers without a court warrant if an appointed committee sees it as a high-level security threat, and relevant courts can later be informed of such actions.
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The top U.S. trade official said Wednesday that a new trade agreement with China is not yet close to being completed. State Department correspondent Nike Ching reports from Washington on the latest in the talks and how U.S. concerns over high-tech issues remain a key point of friction. VOA Mandarin reporter Yihua Lee contributes.
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The fast-growing, Chinese-owned video sharing network TikTok agreed to pay a $5.7 million fine to U.S. authorities to settle charges that it illegally collected personal information from children, officials said Wednesday. 

The Federal Trade Commission said the penalty for the social network, which had been known as Musical.ly, was the largest ever in a children’s privacy investigation. 

The social network, which has been surging in popularity with young smartphone users and taking over from rivals like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, failed to obtain parental consent from its underage users as required by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, FTC officials said. 

The operators of TikTok “knew many children were using the app, but they still failed to seek parental consent before collecting names, email addresses, and other personal information from users under the age of 13,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons.  

No tolerance for lawbreakers

“This record penalty should be a reminder to all online services and websites that target children: We take enforcement of COPPA very seriously, and we will not tolerate companies that flagrantly ignore the law.” 

TikTok claimed 500 million users worldwide last year, making it one of the most popular worldwide apps. 

Owned by China’s ByteDance, it expanded its reach in the U.S. with the merger with Musical.ly. 

Teens have been flocking to the service, which allows them to create and share videos of 15 seconds.  

According to the FTC, the company required users to provide an email address, phone number, username, first and last name, a short biography, and a profile picture. 

The consumer protection regulator said 65 million accounts have been registered in the United States. 

Officials said the company knew that many of its users were under 13 and should have taken greater precautions. 

“In our view, these practices reflected the company’s willingness to pursue growth even at the expense of endangering children,” said a statement from FTC Commissioners Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. 

“The agency secured a record-setting civil penalty and deletion of ill-gotten data, as well as other remedies to stop this egregious conduct.” 

Suggestive content

TikTok has faced criticism around the world for featuring sexually suggestive content inappropriate for children. 

TikTok said in a statement it would create a “separate app experience” for younger users with additional privacy protections as part of its agreement with regulators. 

“It’s our priority to create a safe and welcoming experience for all of our users, and as we developed the global TikTok platform, we’ve been committed to creating measures to further protect our user community — including tools for parents to protect their teens and for users to enable additional privacy settings,” the statement said.
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When it comes to dining out, the noisiness of a restaurant can ruin an otherwise good meal. But a crowdsourcing app is helping diners choose where to eat based on noise levels. Tina Trinh reports.
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Robots, cars, drones and virtual-reality gaming sets connected by cutting-edge 5G networks are among the thousands of futuristic gadgets on display at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

While there is much excitement over how 5G will transform our everyday lives, the conference is overshadowed by the standoff between the United States and Beijing over the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, which the U.S. says could be used by the Chinese government for espionage.

Some U.S. cities and parts of Asia are already operating 5G mobile networks. They offer speeds of over a gigabyte per second and low latency — in other words, practically instant connections with no delay.

Experts say that opens up whole new fields of connectivity, from new generations of virtual reality gaming and communication, to remote robotic surgery.

The technology promises to transform not only the mobile phone in your pocket — but also the world around us, says Paul Triolo of the Eurasia Group, who spoke to VOA from the conference.

“The really key aspects of 5G, like some of the low latency communications and massive sensor, massive machine-to-machine communications, that’s more about industry and industrial uses. And that gets into thing like critical infrastructure so you’re going to have a lot more non-personal or industrial data flying around and that really has people concerned. For example, military forces in countries like the U.S. will also leverage large parts of the commercial network,” said Triolo.Chinese firm Huawei is a big presence at the Mobile World Congress and a big player in 5G network technology.

Washington has banned the company from 5G rollout in the United States, citing Chinese legislation requiring companies to cooperate with the state — raising fears Huawei 5G networks overseas could be used as a ‘Trojan horse’ to spy on rivals.

Attending the Mobile World Congress Tuesday, the U.S. State Department’s Deputy Secretary for Cyber Policy Robert L. Strayer urged allies to do the same.

“We will continue to engage with these governments and the regulators in these countries to educate them about what we know and keep sharing the best practices for how we can all successfully move to next generation of technology. I´ll just say there are plenty of options in the West,” Strayer told reporters.

Huawei’s management has said the company would never use ‘back doors’ for espionage — and the Chinese government has dismissed the accusations.

Australia, New Zealand and Japan have followed Washington’s lead and restricted Huawei’s involvement in 5G. Europe remains undecided — but the industry needs clarity, said analyst Paul Triolo.

“The European community in particular and also the U.S. have to clarify what these policies mean, what a ban would mean or what some kind of a partial ban would mean, if there’s really a middle ground that can be found here.”

Vodafone’s CEO Nick Read told the Barcelona conference that banning Huawei could set Europe’s 5G rollout back another two years.

The eye-catching gadgets show the potential that 5G networks are about to unleash. But the question of who controls those networks, and the data they carry, looms large over this futuristic world.
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