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January 6, 2021
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube took action against several of President Trump's posts Wednesday, labeling the posts, limiting reshares and removing a video in which President Trump expressed his love for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol building, leading to the evacuation of the Senate, the deployment of the National Guard and to one person being shot and killed. Twitter locked President Trump's account, requiring him to remove three tweets and saying that his account would remain locked for 12 hours after those tweets were removed. Twitter also warned that any future violations would get him banned. Facebook also locked his account for 24 hours, citing "two policy violations." These actions followed a day of calls from tech investors, academics and others to kick Trump off of their platforms once and for all.
In an early tweet, University of Virginia law professor Danielle Citron implored Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to take action. "As someone who has served on your Trust and Safety Board since its inception and counseled you since 2009, time is now to suspend President Trump's account," Citron wrote. "He has deliberately incited violence, causing mayhem with his lies and threats."
In another tweet, investor turned tech accountability activist Roger McNamee wrote, "Internet platforms — FB, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, etc. — enabled this. They amplified hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories because it was profitable. They are accessories to the felonies we are seeing on our TVs ... and many others."
You've got blood on your hands, @jack and Zuck. For four years you've rationalized this terror. Inciting violent treason is not a free speech exercise. If you work at those companies, it's on you too. Shut it down.
— Chris Sacca 🇺🇸 (@sacca) January 6, 2021
Facebook's former chief security officer Alex Stamos, who now heads up the Stanford Internet Observatory, also spoke out, arguing that Facebook and Twitter had run out of excuses not to ban Trump. "There have been good arguments for private companies to not silence elected officials, but all those arguments are predicated on the protection of constitutional governance," Stamos said. "Twitter and Facebook have to cut him off. There are no legitimate equities left and labeling won't do it."
Twitter responded to the chaos late in the afternoon, saying the company is "working proactively to protect the health" of conversation on the platform. "Threats of and calls to violence are against the Twitter Rules, and we are enforcing our policies accordingly," one tweet read. Only later Wednesday night did the company remove the president's video, lock his account and warn that he could face a ban later on. "Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account," Twitter said.
A Facebook spokesperson released a similar statement earlier in the day, writing, "The violent protests in the Capitol today are a disgrace. We prohibit incitement and calls for violence on our platform. We are actively reviewing and removing any content that breaks these rules."
YouTube was the first to remove President Trump's video altogether, citing its policy against videos that allege widespread election fraud. In his video address, Trump doubled down on his baseless claims that the election had been stolen, while in the same breath, asking his supporters to go home and be peaceful. "Go home. We love you. You're very special," the president said in the video.
YouTube spokesperson Farshad Shadloo said the company was also working to remove livestreams that violate its policies against incitement to violence or that include footage of graphic violence. "In addition, we're continuing to raise up authoritative news sources on our home page, in search results and in recommendations. We will remain vigilant in the coming hours," Shadloo said.
Later, Facebook's vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen tweeted that Facebook would do the same. "This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump's video," Rosen said. "We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence." Facebook then blocked Trump's account for 24 hours, saying that the president would "lose the ability to post on the platform during that time."
As the violence escalated Wednesday, Trump asked his supporters on Twitter to "stay peaceful," only after spending much of the last day — and much of the last several weeks — tweeting baseless theories about election fraud. But Trump's message hasn't been confined to social media. In a text sent directly to supporters at 1:35 p.m. ET Wednesday, Trump's campaign shared this message: "Congress is voting to certify, or OBJECT TO, the Election results. Pres. Trump needs YOU to STAND WITH HIM!"
This story is developing and will be continually updated.
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- The other reason Facebook silenced Trump? Republicans just lost their power. - Protocol ›
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- Trump got all he needed from Twitter. Now, he still has all the power. - Protocol ›
- Don’t worry about the cybersecurity fallout of the Capitol breach - Protocol ›
Issie Lapowsky
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
Politics
What tech policy could look like in Biden’s first 100 days
More antitrust laws and bridging the digital divide should be top of mind for the incoming administration.
Antitrust enforcement is one of the big lessons going into the Biden administration.
Photo: Alex Edelman/Getty Images
January 19, 2021
Penelope Blackwell is a reporting fellow at Protocol covering ed-tech, where she reports on the decisions leading up toward the advances of remote learning. Previously, she interned at The Baltimore Sun covering emerging news and produced content for Carnegie-Knight’s News21 documenting hate and bias incidents in the U.S. She is also a recent graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Morgan State University.
January 19, 2021
Although it is too soon to tell with certainty how President-elect Joe Biden will address the questions surrounding tech policy, it is clear that his inaugural transition on Wednesday will affect the world of tech.
Protocol reporters Issie Lapowsky and Emily Birnbaum, virtually met up with panelists Tuesday to discuss what tech policy and regulation could look like in Biden's first 100 days in office — as well as the next four years.
<p>According to Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, more antitrust laws that promote competition and protect consumers from anticompetitive mergers and business practices should be implemented. But she also mentioned that much of the backlash on this issue stems from users who "resist government antitrust intervention."</p><p>"What we are seeing is, on the one hand, imminently appropriate actions being taken by companies to stop violence. And on the other, we're seeing really important questions surface about the fact that those decisions are lying in the hands of private companies with enormous market power," Slaughter said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>As the FTC seeks to enforce these laws that address outsized market share, investigations are looming. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is leading a suit of 38 AGs against Google for anticompetitive conduct, said he thinks the depth of Google's totality needs to be examined.</p><p> "We would like to see the DOJ [Department of Justice] broaden their case against Google. We believe that the breadth of Google's anticompetitive conduct needs to be examined because it hurts consumers by limiting choice and hurts innovation," Weiser said, referring to the <a href="https://www.protocol.com/google-justice-department-lawsuit-antitrust" target="_self"><u>DOJ's antitrust suits</u></a> against the company.</p><p>Antitrust enforcement is the big lesson going into the Biden administration, Weiser said. And bridging the digital divide should also be top of mind, said the Brookings Institution Director for the Center of Technology Innovation Nicol Turner Lee.</p><p>"It's not just about tech for certain functions, it's about tech for all of reality. Not just in terms of getting kids online, but the ability to have an environment where people are being trained on how to build the infrastructure and how to use the technology," Lee said. "With over 100,000 business permanently closed as a result of the pandemic, we are going to be trusting tech to be the new economic driver, which means we need more multi-stakeholder conversations."</p>
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Penelope Blackwell is a reporting fellow at Protocol covering ed-tech, where she reports on the decisions leading up toward the advances of remote learning. Previously, she interned at The Baltimore Sun covering emerging news and produced content for Carnegie-Knight’s News21 documenting hate and bias incidents in the U.S. She is also a recent graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Morgan State University.
Doxxing insurrectionists: Capitol riot divides online extremism researchers
The uprising has sparked a tense debate about the right way to stitch together the digital scraps of someone's life to publicly accuse them of committing a crime.
Rioters scale the U.S. Capitol walls during the insurrection.
Photo: Blink O'faneye/Flickr
January 16, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 16, 2021
Joan Donovan has a panic button in her office, just in case one of the online extremists she spends her days fighting tries to fight back.
"This is not baby shit," Donovan, who is research director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said. "You do not fuck around with these people in public."
<p>Which is why Donovan has been so worried about what she's seen happening online in the days since a violent mob overtook the U.S. Capitol. Scores of amateur sleuths are combing through terabytes of footage and openly trading tips on Twitter in hopes of piecing together the rioters' identities and bringing them to justice. To Donovan, these Twitter detectives aren't just running the risk of misidentifying innocent people; they may also unknowingly be putting themselves at risk by publicly pursuing potentially dangerous people.</p><p>Even more worrisome to Donovan: the role some prominent researchers are playing in organizing the hunt. So this week, she went on Twitter and shared some blunt words of warning. "This is one of the most dangerous uses of social media by a researcher," Donovan <a href="https://twitter.com/BostonJoan/status/1349358629846183936?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrote</a>. "Research ethics now. We must hold each other to account."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Her remarks were directed at another academic, John Scott-Railton of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, who has gained a following for his crowdsourced investigations of the riot, which most notably led to the successful identification of an Air Force veteran who was photographed in full tactical gear on the floor of the Senate. Two days after The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow used Scott-Railton's tip to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-air-force-combat-veteran-breached-the-senate" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">confirm</a> the veteran's identity and published a story with his findings, the suspect was arrested in Texas. </p><p>Scott-Railton shares Donovan's concerns — and admires her work — but says those concerns have led him to a different conclusion. He argues that in the wake of any public event caught on camera, be it a confrontation on a bike trail or the Boston Marathon bombing, there are bound to be crowds of extremely online people using digital techniques to assign blame. His goal is to harness that energy in productive ways and model appropriate behavior. </p><p>"I think the conversation has to be one that involves being very intentional in thinking about harm reduction and in trying to do one's best to always model the behavior you want to see from others," he said, noting that he has repeatedly urged his followers not to name potential suspects on Twitter and, instead, to funnel any specific names to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Besides, with the inauguration around the corner and the vast majority of the Capitol rioters still on the loose, Scott-Railton argues it's critically important to use the power of crowdsourcing to stop those people from committing any more violence. "There may be people who intend to do violent things around the inauguration," he said. "We urgently need to understand who they are."</p><p>The Capitol riot was a boundary-busting event in almost every way, and its impact on the digital privacy debate was no different. The insurrectionists' acts were so galling, so frightening, that suddenly, even those who might oppose digital surveillance and forensics techniques in other contexts, like, say, identifying peaceful protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally, feel justified in deploying those tools against the rioters. The shifting goalposts have sparked a tense debate among researchers of online extremism about the right way to stitch together the digital scraps of someone's life to publicly accuse them of committing a crime — or whether there is a right way at all.</p><p>Shortly after the riot, Vivian Schiller, executive director of the Aspen Institute's digital department, <a href="https://twitter.com/vivian/status/1347556058487787521?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">asked</a> her followers a question on Twitter and stressed that it was not rhetorical: "Is there such a thing as 'ethical doxxing'?" </p><p>"Not really," replied Kate Klonick, an assistant professor of law at St. John's University, who studies online content moderation. </p><p>Others disagreed vehemently. "Yes, absolutely," wrote Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of civic media at MIT. "I would argue that in fact we have an ethical responsibility to expose people who are literal nazis and ensure there are consequences for their actions. Of course, this requires extreme care to verify so that innocents are not wrongfully accused."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Scott-Railton tends to see things that way, as does Aric Toler, a researcher with the group Bellingcat, which has been archiving vast troves of footage of the riot to help with identification. "The crowdsourcing element is obviously powerful and can go both ways, but I think it's overall more positive than not," Toler said. </p><p>The Capitol riot was virtually unprecedented in terms of the amount of digital exhaust it gave off. That's partly to do with the fact that the uprising was largely organized on social media, partly to do with the fact that some of the rioters were there <a href="https://www.protocol.com/trump-coup-social-networks" target="_self">explicitly to broadcast their actions</a> on social media and partly to do with the fact that Parler, the go-to social platform of the far-right, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-images-video/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">had a bug</a> that enabled a hacker to <a href="https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-users-location-dat-1846032466" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">scrape and archive</a> every public post and GPS coordinate before deletion.</p><p>Now, before anyone can get named and blamed, there's a virtual ton of information to sift through first. Toler sees much of the crowdsourcing work going on as a responsible way to divvy up the labor. "A lot of the work is just around sifting through ungodly amounts of photos and videos," Toler said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>Of course, a lot of it isn't. Already, a retired Chicago firefighter was <a href="https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/trolls-wrongly-accused-retired-firefighter-capitol-riot-murder" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrongly accused </a>of being involved in the riot, after Twitter detectives digitally enhanced a blurry photo of a man throwing a fire extinguisher at a cop and accused him of being "Extinguisher Man." In fact, he was back in Chicago, he said, celebrating his wife's birthday. "This story has fucked my life up," the man told a local news outlet.</p><p>Both Scott-Railton and Bellingcat had been seeking footage of that suspect on Twitter before he was misidentified. Though neither of them encouraged their followers to name names, and in some cases even actively discouraged it, the effort went sideways anyway. </p><p>That's to be expected, Donovan argues. Once you animate a crowd around a particular purpose, it's impossible to control what they'll do next, which she says is all the more reason for researchers to avoid such public investigations in the first place. "I have this overarching thesis that the internet turns us all into cops," Donovan said. "These are technologies of surveillance, and so use of them by the public to turn crowds into cops seems to me to be a very dangerous impulse."</p><p>That's to say nothing of the danger amateur investigators put themselves in, Donovan said. For all of the digital records the rioters have left behind, she stresses that the people looking into them often have their own digital trail that leaves them vulnerable to retaliation. "Say you identify some neo-Nazi militia member and think you're doing a good job, but you have your kid's birthday photos up on a Flickr account, which has the geotag of the apartment complex that you live in," Donovan said. "People don't understand how much is being revealed about them as they participate in these public campaigns."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>It's not that only trained researchers or law enforcement should be able to do this work. Donovan argues there's a way to carry out crowdsourced investigations in private channels, where participants are educated about the risks they're taking and how to protect themselves. Anything less, she argues, is malpractice. "If you don't educate people before you call them into action," Donovan said, "you put them at risk."</p><p>Scott-Railton has tailored his approach somewhat in response to feedback from Donovan and others. For one thing, he's begun <a href="https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1349914986278252553?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">deleting</a> old threads investigating people who have already been arrested to avoid leaving any misleading leads out in the open. He's also since deleted the tweet that Donovan first called him out on, in which he was seeking footage of people wearing earpieces at the riot. Donovan pointed out that such a directive could risk outing members of the media, who also regularly wear earpieces.</p><p>Perhaps, most importantly, on Thursday night, he <a href="https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1349919058922250240?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeted</a> an official notice to his now more than 100,000 followers. He told them that he was now moving to a "form-based intake model" for tips, in collaboration with Bellingcat, writing, "I feel this approach better balances the *many* reasonable concerns about a participatory & crowdsourced model done on Twitter."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
Politics
Trump got all he needed from Twitter. Now, he still has all the power.
President Trump used Twitter to become the most powerful man in the world. Now, that power is his to keep.
Trump became the most powerful man in the world thanks to Twitter. Now that he's banned, he'll take that power with him.
Photo: Joshua Hoehne/Unsplash
January 11, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 8, 2021
On Friday night, Twitter announced that it was forever banning President Trump from the digital podium where he conducted his presidency and where, for more than a decade, he built an alternate reality where what he said was always the truth.
There are moral arguments for not doing business with the guy who provoked a violent mob to invade the U.S. Capitol, leaving several people dead. There have been moral arguments for years for not doing business with the guy who spent most of his early mornings and late nights filling the site with a relentless stream of pithy, all-caps conspiracy theories about everything from Barack Obama's birthplace to the 2020 election. There are also moral arguments against tech companies muzzling the president of the United States at all.
<p>Wherever you stand, there's a hard truth to Twitter's decision to stop doing business with Trump now: Trump has already gotten all he needs from Twitter. He's already used the platform — and the company — to become the most powerful man in the world, bending Twitter's carefully-crafted rules and dancing across its neatly-drawn lines, knowing that by virtue of his position, he'd never face repercussions. Now that he has, that power is still his to keep, and it will follow him wherever he winds up next. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Deplatforming a controversial or even dangerous figure doesn't always work that way. Remember Milo Yiannopoulos? The conservative provocateur was credibly threatening to launch his <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/milo-yiannopoulos-media-company-2017-4" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">own media company</a> after being removed from Twitter and resigning from Breitbart in scandal — but when Yiannopoulos lost access to these forums, he lost his audience and effectively disappeared from public view. </p><p>But the fact that Twitter's decision is unprecedented also means that no one as powerful as the president of the United States has ever been permanently banished from any social media platform. Yes, he will soon lose the office of the presidency and the <a href="https://www.protocol.com/facebook-ban-trump-democrats-power" target="_self">levers of power</a> that office holds. But Wednesday's show of force by his adherents was evidence that there are many thousands of people willing to commit open insurrection in his name. And that's just the people who could afford a ticket to D.C. in the midst of an unemployment crisis. So it goes without saying that this time will be different. </p><p>As soon as Twitter <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">broke the news</a>, explaining that Trump's most recent tweets could be interpreted as incitements to violence in the context of this week, conservative commentators announced (on Twitter, of course) that they were <a href="https://twitter.com/marklevinshow/status/1347692115615219717?s=20" target="_blank">boycotting the site</a>, and invited their followers to seek them out on Parler, the far-right echo chamber of the moment. Shortly after, Google suspended Parler from the Play Store, saying in a statement that the company was "aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.," including threats on elected officials and plans for a militia march. Apple also <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/apple-threatens-ban-parler" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reportedly</a> threatened a ban on Parler as well, giving the company 24 hours to develop a moderation policy.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>The president also briefly breached Twitter's blockade, tweeting Friday night <a href="https://twitter.com/Kantrowitz/status/1347717828359516160?s=20" target="_blank">from the official @POTUS account</a>, which remains unaffected by the ban, to say he was looking into "building out our own platform in the near future." That tweet quickly disappeared, too. </p><p>Whether Trump takes his diatribes to Parler or Rumble or 4chan or any of the other platforms that would love his help in quadrupling their engagement, the man who was a media mogul long before he was president will find his venue. The only question is whether the mainstream media will, out of habit, morbid curiosity or concern for public safety, follow him there. If they — if we — do, the next four years will be no different from the last in terms of Trump's chokehold on the national conversation. If not, his audience might be smaller. But it won't be any less angry, any less capable of the violence that Twitter and Google and Facebook and the other tech companies that have taken action this week are afraid of. It will only be more insular, more tunnel-visioned, more removed from a world of information that Trump has said all along is fake news anyway.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
Politics
The other reason Facebook silenced Trump? Republicans lost power.
Yes, the president's acts were unprecedented. But Facebook is also preparing for a new Washington, controlled by Democrats.
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's head of public policy Joel Kaplan have spent four years bending to conservatives' demands. Now, Facebook is bending in a new direction.
Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
January 8, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 7, 2021
In his post announcing that President Trump would be blocked from posting on Facebook until at least Inauguration Day, Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the president's incitement of the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday was "fundamentally different" than any of the offenses he's committed on Facebook before. "The risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great," he wrote on Thursday.
That may be true. But there's another reason why — after four years spent insisting that a tech company has no business shutting up the president of the United States, no matter how much he threatens to shoot protesters or engages in voter suppression — Zuckerberg finally had a change of heart: Republicans just lost power.
<p>Since at least 2016, when conservatives first set off on their crusade against Big Tech, armed with spurious claims of liberal bias, Facebook's leaders have cowered in fear of the right. That year, after Gizmodo reported that Facebook had kept some conservative news out of its trending topics feature, Zuckerberg invited a ragtag delegation of conservative pundits including Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson to Facebook's headquarters to extend an olive branch.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>From that day forward, Facebook has repeatedly sought to avoid the right's ire, elevating Joel Kaplan, a former George W. Bush staffer and himself a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/11/15/its-insanity-how-brooks-brothers-riot-killed-recount-miami/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Brooks Brothers rioter</a>, to the company's highest public policy position to navigate a Washington that was no longer starry-eyed about Silicon Valley. During Trump's tenure and under a Republican-controlled Congress, Facebook refused to prohibit white nationalist content and conspiracy theories like QAnon, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-lonely-conservative-takes-on-a-power-position-11545570000" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">shelved plans</a> to promote healthier political dialogue for fear it would stoke Republican outrage and <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-zuckerberg-what-if-trump-disputes-election-results" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lavished</a> special treatment on far-right pages that repeatedly violated its policies. All the while, conservative voices dominated the site in the U.S.</p><p>None of it helped, of course. Zuckerberg was still regularly excoriated by Republican members of the House and Senate in public hearings over imagined slights and asked to explain again and again why a given political ad had been taken down or why Diamond and Silk's Facebook traffic was falling. In those moments, Zuckerberg would steel himself and politely vow to look into the matter, bending over backward to prove he was taking each bad faith argument to heart.</p><p>But, now that the people of Georgia have spoken, Democrats are about to assume control of both the White House and the Senate. So it stands to reason then that Zuckerberg is beginning to bend in a new direction. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>That fact didn't go unnoticed by some on the left, like former White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who <a href="https://twitter.com/jmpalmieri/status/1347064818944118784?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeted</a> Thursday, "It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump's destructive behavior was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them." </p><p>"Most big content moderation decisions are a reaction to policymakers, negative press coverage or advertisers, and we're seeing that play out this week," said Nu Wexler, a former policy spokesperson for Facebook.</p><p>That's not to say Zuckerberg was wrong or lying about the unprecedented and dangerous nature of Trump's actions on Wednesday. Facebook has historically avoided touching his posts, in part out of respect for the office of president and the significance that the president's words are supposed to hold in this democracy. But as Trump used the platform to express his love and understanding for the Capitol rioters and again repeat the baseless claims that sent them to the Capitol in the first place, he shattered the last democratic norm that Facebook was supposedly protecting. In muzzling Trump for the rest of his presidency and possibly beyond, Facebook has taken stronger action than either Twitter or YouTube have so far, though both companies have removed some Trump posts and warned that the president risks permanent bans if he commits more violations in the future.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>That's the generous read on Facebook's actions, at least. Another read reveals more cynical motives. Unlike Republicans on the Hill, who have fixated on how they and their conservative constituents are supposedly silenced, Democrats have spent the last four years fixated on how real-world harm manifests from Facebook's decision not to silence people more. But with the possible exceptions of the shooting at a Congressional baseball game in 2017 and the mail bombing attempts by the so-called MAGA bomber in 2018, rarely have the real-world repercussions of allowing people to become radicalized by lies online hit as close to Congress' home as they did on Wednesday. </p><p>Facebook's leaders, including Zuckerberg, know Washington well enough by now to expect this week's chaos to become Democrats' animating issue for the foreseeable future. "The Mazie Hironos of the world are definitely going to call for hearings on online harms, and they should," said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which researches disinformation online. "But now, it's gonna be like: 'Your platform coordinated an attempt on my life. What do you have to say?'"</p><p>And in those moments, Zuckerberg will steel himself once more and politely list all the steps Facebook has taken since that awful day to try to control the chaos, including, at least temporarily, banning Trump. Republicans will rant, as Democrats have done so often these last four years, about how the party holding the gavel is trying to force Facebook's hand and cow the company into carrying out their wishes. But without control of Congress or the White House, Republicans won't be able to do much about it. So Zuckerberg will hope instead that, at least in the eyes of the new people in power, these actions will help make up for the last four years. And he will almost certainly be wrong.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
Politics
Here’s how Big Tech is preparing for regulations in 2021
Companies know that the heat is only going to increase this year.
2021 promises to be a turbulent year for Big Tech.
Photo: Ting Shen/Getty Images
January 12, 2021
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
January 1, 2021
The open internet. Section 230. China. Internet access. 5G. Antitrust. When we asked the policy shops at some of the biggest and most powerful tech companies to identify their 2021 policy priorities, these were the words they had in common.
Each of these issues centers around a common theme. "Despite how tech companies might feel, they've been enjoying a very high innovation phase. They're about to experience a strong regulation phase," said Erika Fisher, Atlassian's general counsel and chief administrative officer. "The question is not if, but how that regulation will be shaped."
<p>Every company is putting their own spin on how they're preparing for that regulation. They know that the regulation heat is only going to increase in 2021, and they are all focused on how to adapt so it does the least harm to their own business models.</p><h3>Open internet</h3><p>"The open internet" is by far the most popular way companies frame their focus. For Twitter, protecting the open internet means challenging regulatory frameworks that the company's policy team said harm competition and entrench the power of the biggest companies, according to a Twitter spokesperson. The policy team cited GDPR as an example of a legislative framework that unintentionally hurts the open internet; they argued that while the law increased protections for user privacy, it decreased competition by strengthening large companies. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>In the U.S. specifically, Twitter has drilled in on protecting Section 230 as an essential part of that goal. At a Section 230 congressional hearing earlier this year, CEO Jack Dorsey said that Section 230 rollback could <a href="https://www.protocol.com/section-230-hearing/zuckerberg-dorsey-pichai-section-230-statements" target="_self">collapse the internet as we know it</a>, though he's open to some reforms. Twitter is eager for creative "alternative regulatory paths" that protect competition and don't force companies to frame their decisions around removing or protecting content, according to their spokesperson.</p><p>Facebook also framed its policy interests in terms of protecting the internet from increasing barriers. "Governments throughout the world are looking to build digital barriers and impose greater state control on the internet. This drive toward digital protectionism could have a devastating effect on economic recovery across the world," wrote Nick Clegg, Facebook's policy chief, in an email to Protocol. </p><h3>Global standards</h3><p>In 2021, Facebook will also be lobbying for multilateral standards around digital taxation, privacy and data portability, among others, according to Clegg. </p><p>By multilateral, they mean multicountry and multi-stakeholder, rather than, for example, the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-digital-tax/france-to-impose-digital-tax-this-year-regardless-of-any-new-international-levy-idUSKBN22Q25B" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">digital services tax</a> much-debated in France this year or data portability rules imposed by China on African countries receiving monetary support. Specifically, Clegg plans to urge the U.S., Europe and India to work together to create standards based on shared values. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>And Google is also explicitly interested in the same type of international government cooperation. The company refused to identify and break down specific priorities, but their statement still reflected this theme. "As this pandemic has shown, we can't solve big issues alone. This is why we will urge governments to restore multilateralism," said Karen Bhatia, Google's vice president for government affairs and policy. </p><h3>Access</h3><p>Beyond the big global regulation and antitrust fights that are coming next year, some companies outlined very specific priorities for U.S. policy. At Amazon and Dell, policy leaders framed some of their focuses around increasing equitable internet access. For Amazon, increasing internet access means an increased focus on the Project Kuiper low-orbit satellite program, which received approval from the FCC in July and is intended to provide cheap internet in places with poor broadband coverage. </p><p>"Amazon will be working internationally to achieve licensing in other countries to move this initiative forward," Brian Huseman, Amazon's VP for public policy, said. Amazon's other major policy priorities for 2021 will be pushing for a minimum wage increase to $15 per hour in the U.S. and more ambitious federal climate policy, according to Huseman.</p><h3>5G</h3><p>Telecom companies and some big tech players will be mostly focused on 5G next year, including Dell. For Dell's policy team, increasing internet access means lobbying heavily for an "open and interoperable" 5G network. "We would like to see the proper investment and partnerships across public, private and government organizations to advance U.S. leadership in 5G worldwide. The U.S. must drive the innovation and standardization of national 5G infrastructure," said Michael Young, Dell's senior vice president for global government affairs and public policy.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Broadband and data providers like Verizon, Comcast and AT&T will also be zeroing in on the 5G fight, lobbying to end the Pentagon's plan to control the commercial 5G network and instead pushing for the FCC to hold traditional auctions for 5G spectrum, according to an open letter from Jonathan Spalter, the president and CEO of trade group USTelecom. The more traditional spectrum-auction method would give telecom companies more control than the "nationalized" 5G Pentagon proposal (former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been a <a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/sourcecode/how-eric-schmidt-plays-politics?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">key advocate</a> of the nationalized plan). </p><p>Microsoft and Apple both declined to share their 2021 policy priorities.</p>
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
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