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enterprise| enterpriseauthorTom KrazitNoneAre you keeping up with the latest cloud developments? Get Tom Krazit and Joe Williams' newsletter every Monday and Thursday.d3d5b92349
July 15, 2020
Twitter acknowledged Wednesday evening that a third party was able to target its employees with "social engineering" techniques to gain control of the accounts of some of its most prominent users, uncorking a Bitcoin scam and sending the internet into a tizzy for several hours.
"We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools," Twitter said through its Twitter Support account hours after the first hijacked tweets were sent. "We know they used this access to take control of many highly visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf."
The accounts of Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian-West and a number of other major figures in tech, media and politics began tweeting out the same message midafternoon on the West Coast, urging their combined tens of millions followers to donate thousands of dollars in Bitcoin to a mystery account.
Shortly thereafter, verified users lost the ability to post. Unverified users began celebrating with tweets and GIFs. "The revolution will be unverified," one Twitter user wrote.
The block on verified accounts prevented major news organizations, federal agencies, police departments and state governments from tweeting out information.
Most of the messages, which began with the phrase "I am giving back to the community," promised to double the donations of anyone who sent Bitcoin to a particular wallet. Within hours, more than 300 people had sent more than $110,000.
More than an hour after the hacks began, scam tweets were still being sent from the accounts of additional celebrities. "We have locked accounts that were compromised and will restore access to the original account owner only when we are certain we can do so securely," Twitter Support said late Wednesday.
A key question Twitter will need to answer in the coming days and weeks is not just how this breach occurred, but also how much access the hackers had to those users' accounts. The collateral damage could be infinitely larger, for instance, if the hackers had a window into these people's direct messages.
"Internally, we've taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing. More updates to come as our investigation continues," Twitter Support said late Wednesday.
The Biden campaign told Protocol in a statement, "Twitter locked down the account immediately following the breach and removed the related tweet. We remain in touch with Twitter on the matter." The campaign didn't immediately respond to a question about whether it had two-factor authentication enabled.
Shortly after the breach, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey demanding answers about the scope of the damage and asking Dorsey to contact the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigations for help looking into the matter. "I am concerned that this event may represent not merely a coordinated set of separate hacking incidents but rather a successful attack on the security of Twitter itself," the letter reads. "A successful attack on your system's servers represents a threat to all of your users' privacy and data security."
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addressed the hack in a tweet earlier Wednesday evening, but it didn't explain much. "Tough day for us at Twitter," Dorsey wrote. "We all feel terrible this happened. We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened." He ended with a blue heart emoji for "our teammates working hard to make this right."
Update: This post was updated at 8:15 p.m. PT with more information from Twitter Support.
Emily Birnbaum
,Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
Issie Lapowsky
andIssie 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.
Tom Krazit
Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure, and most recently produced a leading cloud computing newsletter called Mostly Cloudy.
People
Expensify CEO David Barrett: ‘Most CEOs are not bad people, they're just cowards’
"Remember that one time when we almost had civil war? What did you do about it?"
Expensify CEO David Barrett has thoughts on what it means for tech CEOs to claim they act apolitically.
Photo: Expensify
January 19, 2021
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Signal at (510)731-8429.
January 19, 2021
The Trump presidency ends tomorrow. It's a political change in which Expensify founder and CEO David Barrett played a brief, but explosive role.
Barrett became famous last fall — or infamous, depending on whom you ask — for sending an email to the fintech startup's clients, urging them to reject Trump and support President-elect Joe Biden.
<p>"Anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against democracy," Barrett said in the email.</p><p>It was an unprecedented political maneuver by a CEO-founder in Silicon Valley, and one that drew praise from a preeminent historian of the region.</p><p>"This was a moment that utterly transcended politics as usual, and his statement utterly transcended politics as usual," futurist and historian Paul Saffo told Protocol. "I'm sure investors got a little bit of a case of indigestion over this. It was a bold move and I would say it was made with considerable character."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>And it wasn't a one-off: Barrett sent another email to Expensify customers over the weekend, telling its users about its plans to spend $3 million on fighting inequality, while also railing against the "domestic terrorists" who invaded the Capitol earlier this month.</p><p>Barrett talked to Protocol last Friday, before the latest email, about the coming transition, which he reflected on in a celebratory mood even as he looked back on the controversial episode. "We just survived Trump. This is going to be an amazing year," he said. "The economy's coming back. The vaccines are rolling out. Travel is going to restart. We got a new administration that's going to make reasonable decisions. We avoided a civil war. Everything's on the up and up."</p><p><em>The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.</em></p><p><strong>You sent that email taking a position on the election. I've talked to a lot of CEOs in Silicon Valley who'd rather stay in the middle. They're not going to say what they think or even who they voted for because it's safer.</strong></p><p>My opinion is a little bit different. I think this idea of "Oh, we're apolitical," I think that's kind of bullshit. I think there's no such thing in a democracy as being apolitical. Every action you take is your position. I think that a large number of these tech companies, by saying, "Oh, we're apolitical," that's a very convenient way of saying, "No, I'm voting for the status quo. I support the current administration, and I'm not going to take actions to do anything about it because it's actually good for business." I think it's actually pretty cynical.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p><strong>There's going to be a change, and there will be new issues. It's probably not going to be as intense as Trump, but there will be issues. How do you navigate them? It can be a slippery slope when you start to take positions.</strong></p><p>I think the litmus test is: What is the real-world potential impact of this? I don't anticipate to weigh in on the normal issues. It sounded bombastic back then when I wrote the newsletter: "Hey, I am genuinely concerned that we're going to have a true civil war, and that's going to be really bad for business. My business is great. We're profitable. We're growing. We're surviving the pandemic. So long as we don't descend into civil war, we'll be fine. But Trump is saying he's not going to leave office, and is anyone reading this crazy shit? We should take it seriously." </p><p>This is not normal politics. This is not taxes or health care or whatever. This is like the destruction of our nation up for discussion. The only reason I felt it was important as a CEO to weigh in was that the stakes are too high to be neutral here. </p><p>Even right now. The guy's still not out of office, by the way. The FBI's warning that we're going to have attacks on every state Capitol. Never has that happened in the history of the nation before. This is so wild, what we're talking about. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>I feel that we need to keep reminding ourselves just how beyond the pale this is. As business leaders, it's just shameful to just sit out this entire thing. It's like, "Oh, remember that one time when we almost had civil war? What did you do about it? Oh, fucking nothing? Oh, good job."</p><p><strong>What was the reaction to the email like? Did any of it give you pause?</strong></p><p>Expensify is not a product you adopt overnight. You also don't leave it overnight. We just didn't know what the reaction was going to be. We saw this thing just go so much bigger than we expected. We were like, "Oh, fuck. OK. That's exciting."</p><p>Most people ignored it, or agreed with it, or vented about it or whatever. The vast majority of people, they're too busy. And in this Twitter news cycle, sustaining anger for more than like 10 seconds is hard. It's like, "Fuck Trump! Oh, such a cute puppy!" It's so hard to do anything.</p><p><strong>Where does that come from, that belief in taking a position? Can you talk a bit about your background?</strong></p><p>My background has always been in hard engineering. Never been in finance. Never been in politics or any of that stuff. I think what you're getting at [is]: Why are you so outspoken? I'm in a lucky position to do that. I run a very profitable business that has a very distributed customer base. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>I think most CEOs, it's not that they're bad people, they're just cowards. They're like, "Yeah, I would like to take a stand, but I can't because of investors, customers and things like this." It basically comes down to, "I care more about hitting the next quarter results than preventing a civil war," which is so fucked up. They're more afraid of their investors than they are of militants. I'm in a lucky position where I don't have to be afraid of my investors. I'm super profitable. I can't get fired. There's no majority on the board that can fire me. So I think that I am in a position [where] I can take these stands much more than others. </p><p>I've heard from a lot of other CEOs [about speaking up, and they say]: "I can't. I wish I could. I feel bad. I feel ashamed. But I kind of can't." I feel I can give an example of, like, "Guys, speak up. The water's fine." Defending democracy is not actually a bold choice because most people agree with it.</p><p>Sure, we got a lot of shit on Twitter, or whatever. Those people weren't our customers anyway. It had no negative impact on revenue. If anything, I think we're gonna look back and this is going to be an incredible brand building event. We didn't expect this to go as viral as it did. It's like, "Shocker! Getting massive coverage for defending democracy is good for business, actually."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>I think that CEOs need to have the courage to actually step up for things that matter, and be less sort of afraid of the impact on their businesses. Because most customers, especially the people who are actually buying the software, they care about stability, they care about democracy.</p><p><strong>Would you consider politics after your business career?</strong></p><p>No, that sounds like a huge pain in the ass. Plus that assumes that there is an "after my business career." I just made this giant profitable business, and it's fucking awesome. I want to work here forever. My goal is just to stay here forever.</p>
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Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Signal at (510)731-8429.
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.
Power
Pressure mounts on tech giants to ban Trump, as rioters storm Capitol
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube removed a video in which Trump expressed love for the rioters, but none of the companies have banned him outright — yet.
Twitter locked President Trump's account.
Image: Twitter
January 10, 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 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."
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In another <a href="https://twitter.com/Moonalice/status/1346924865203228674?s=20" target="_blank">tweet</a>, 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."</p><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">You've got blood on your hands, <a href="https://twitter.com/jack?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jack</a> 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.<br>— Chris Sacca 🇺🇸 (@sacca) <a href="https://twitter.com/sacca/status/1346921144859783169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 6, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></div><p>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."</p><p>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 <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1346926978562142214?s=20" target="_blank">tweet</a> 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 <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1346970432017031178?s=20" target="_blank">said</a>.<br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>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."</p><p>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. </p><p>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.<br></p><p>Later, Facebook's vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen <a href="https://twitter.com/guyro/status/1346950532372393985?s=20" target="_blank">tweeted</a> 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." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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As the violence escalated Wednesday, Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1346904110969315332?s=20" target="_blank">asked</a> 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!"</p><p><em>This story is developing and will be continually updated.</em></p>
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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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