Internet News

Facebook is revealing a wider range of websites and apps that gather data for Facebook, previously without being identified or seeking consent. Facebook will offer a new privacy control covering these newly revealed snoopers.

A feature in settings called Off-Facebook Activity will show all the apps and websites that send information about you to Facebook, which is then used to target ads more effectively.You will also be able to clear your history and prevent your future off-app behaviour being tapped.

For now, it is rolling out very slowly, with only Ireland, South Korea and Spain getting access. But the goal is to eventually offer it globally.

Facebook collects data from beyond its platform either because you have opted to use the social media site to log in to an app or, more likely, because a website uses something called Facebook Pixel to track your activities.

If you select options to turn off tracking Facebook will still collect the data, but it will be anonymised.

...Read the full article from bbc.com

Twitter and Facebook have blocked what they described as a state-backed Chinese misinformation campaign.

Twitter said it removed 936 accounts it said were being used to sow political discord in Hong Kong. It said the accounts originated in mainland China and were part of a coordinated attempt to undermine the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement.

Facebook said it had, after being tipped off by Twitter, removed seven Pages, three Groups and five Facebook accounts. Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy said:

Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the Chinese government.

The move came after Twitter was criticised at the weekend for allowing China's Xinhua news agency to buy sponsored posts on the network. Twitter said on Monday it would no longer allow such ads, saying: Going forward, we will not accept advertising from state-controlled news media entities,

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood is a 2019 USA / UK comedy drama by Quentin Tarantino.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood visits 1969 Los Angeles, where everything is changing, as TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) make their way around an industry they hardly recognize anymore. The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood's golden age.

Director Quentin Tarantino's new film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has been passed by the Indian film censors at the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) with an adults sonly A certificate with a couple of curious cuts.

The censor board left multiple instances of the word 'fuck' but has beeped out every usage of the word 'ass', ccording to Pinkvilla, which has access to the censor certificate.

Instagram is adding an option for users to report posts they claim are false. The photo-sharing website is responding to increasing pressure to censor material that government's do not like.

Results then rated as false are removed from search tools, such as Instagram's explore tab and hashtag search results.

The new report facility on Instagram is being initially rolled out only in the US.

Stephanie Otway, a Facebook company spokeswoman Said:

This is an initial step as we work towards a more comprehensive approach to tackling misinformation.

Posting false information is not banned on any of Facebook's suite of social media services, but the company is taking steps to limit the reach of inaccurate information and warn users about disputed claims.

Facebook has introduced a new censorship tool known as Group Quality to evaluate private groups and scrutinize them for any 'problematic content'.

For a long time now, Facebook was facing heat from the media for the fact that the private groups feature is harboring extremists and the spreading of 'fake news'. As a result, the company wrote an article from newsroom.fb.com introducing a new feature known as Group Quality:

Being in a private group doesn't mean that your actions should go unchecked. We have a responsibility to keep Facebook safe, which is why our Community Standards apply across Facebook, including in private groups. To enforce these policies, we use a combination of people and technology -- content reviewers and proactive detection. Over the last few years, we've invested heavily in both, including hiring more than 30,000 people across our safety and security teams.

Within this, a specialized team has been working on the Safe Communities Initiative: an effort that started two years ago with the goal of protecting people using Facebook Groups from harm. Made up of product managers, engineers, machine learning experts and content reviewers, this team works to anticipate the potential ways people can do harm in groups and develops solutions to minimize and prevent it. As the head of Facebook Groups, I want to explain how we're making private groups safer by focusing on three key areas: proactive detection, tools for admins, and transparency and control for members.

On the plus side Facebook has updated settings used in defining access and visibility of groups which are much clearer than previus incarnations.

Critics say that Facebook's move will not curb misinformation and fake news, but, on the contrary, it may further push it deeper underground making it hard for censor to filter or terminate such content from the site.

Thailand's Digital Economy and Society Minister Puttipong Punnakanta plans to set up a Fake News Center.

The digital minister confirmed that he is looking to create the Fake News Center to:

get rid of fabricated, misleading content on social media which might jeopardize the people's safety and property and violate the Computer Crime Act and other laws.

For instance, content on social media about natural disasters and health care might be fabricated or exaggerated only to confuse and scare viewers. They might be deceived by fraudulent investment scams or lured to buy illegal, hazardous health products online.

He said a dozen government agencies will be asked to cooperate with the Fake News Center such as the police, the military, the Consumer Protection Board, the Food and Drugs Administration and the Public Relations Department, among others.

Back in April of this year the data protection police of the ICO set about drawing up rules for nearly all commercial websites in how they should deal with children and their personal data.

Rather perversely the ICO decided that age verification should underpin a massively complex regime to require different data processing for several age ranges. And of course the children's data would be 'protected' by requiring nearly all websites to demand everybody's identity defining personal data in order to slot people into the ICO's age ranges.

The ICO consulted on their proposals and it seems that the internet industry forcefully pointed out that it was not a good idea for nearly all websites to have to demand age verification from all website visitors.

The ICO has yet to publish the results of the consultation or its response to the criticism but the ICO have been playing down this ridiculously widespread age verification. This week the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham further hinted at this in a blog. She wrote:

Our consultation on the proposed code began in April, and prompted more than 450 written responses, as well more than 40 meetings with key stakeholders. We were pleased with the breadth of views we heard. Parents, schools and children's campaign groups helped us better understand the problems young people can face online, whether using social media services or popular games, while developers, tech companies and online service providers gave us a crucial insight into the challenges industry faces to make this a reality.

...

This consultation has helped us ensure our final code will be effective, proportionate and achievable.

It has also flagged the need for us to be clearer on some standards.

We do not want to see an age-gated internet, where visiting any digital service requires people to prove how old they are. Our aim has never been to keep children from online services, but to protect them within it. We want providers to set their privacy settings to high as a default, and to have strategies in place for how children's data is handled.

We do not want to prevent young people from engaging with the world around them, and we've been quick to respond to concerns that our code would affect news websites. This isn't the case. As we told a DCMS Select Committee in July, we do not want to create any barriers to children accessing news content. The news media plays a fundamental role in children's lives and the final version of the code will make that very clear.

That final version of the code will be delivered to the Secretary of State ahead of the statutory deadline of 23 November 2019.

We recognise the need to allow companies time to implement the standards and ensure they are complying with the law. The law allows for a transition period of up to a year and we'll be considering the most appropriate approach to this, before making a final decision in the autumn. In addition to the code itself, my office is also preparing a significant package to ensure that organisations are supported through any transition period, including help and advice for designers and engineers.

The UK Government recently outlines its plans for appointing Ofcom as the internet censor overseeing new EU censorship rules introduced under a new Audio Visual Media Services AVMS directive.

In Ireland, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has pitched for similar powers, with the government currently considering the BAI's position alongside the appointment of an online safety commissioner.

The BAI believes that it could become an EU-wide regulator for online video, because Google and Facebook's European operations are headquartered in Dublin.

Earlier this year, the government announced plans that would see a future online safety commissioner given the power to issue administrative fines, meaning the commissioner would not have to go through a court.

Requirements for Video Sharing Platforms in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive

The Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) is the regulatory framework governing EU-wide coordination of national legislation on all audiovisual media. The government launched a consultation on implementing the newly introduced and amended provisions in AVMSD on 30 May, which is available here .

One of the main changes to AVMSD is the extension of scope to cover video-sharing platforms (VSPs) for the first time. This extension in scope will likely capture audiovisual content on social media sites, video-sharing sites, pornography sites and live streaming services. These services are required to take appropriate measures to: protect children from harmful content; protect the general public from illegal content and content that incites violence or hatred, and; respect certain obligations around commercial communications.

The original consultation, published on 30 May, outlined the government's intention to implement these requirements through the regulatory framework proposed in the Online Harms White Paper . However, we also indicated the possibility of an interim approach ahead of the regulatory framework coming into force to ensure we meet the transposition deadline of 20 September 2020. We now plan to take forward this interim approach and have written to stakeholders on 23 July to set out our plans and consult on them.

This open letter and consultation sent to stakeholders, therefore, aims to gather views on our interim approach for implementing requirements pertaining to VSPs through appointing Ofcom as the national regulatory authority. In particular, it asks questions regarding:

• how to transpose the definition of VSPs into UK law, and which platforms are in the UK's jurisdiction;

• the regulatory framework and the regulator's relationship with industry;

• the appropriate measures that should be taken by platforms to protect users;

• the information gathering powers Ofcom should have to oversee VSPs;

• the appropriate enforcement and sanctions regime for Ofcom;

• what form the required out of court redress mechanism should take; and

• how to fund the extension of Ofcom's regulatory activities from industry.

Update: The press get wind of the EU censorship nightmare of the new AVMS directive

12th August 2019. See article from bbc.com

The government is considering giving powers to fine video-sharing apps and websites to the UK's media censor Ofcom.

The proposal would see Ofcom able to impose multi-million pound fines if it judges the platforms have failed to prevent youngsters seeing pornography, violence and other harmful material.

Ofcom are already the designated internet censor enforcing the current AVMS censorship rules. These apply to all UK based Video on Demand platforms. The current rules are generally less stringent than Ofcom's rules for TV so have not particularly impacted the likes of the TV catch up services, (apart from Ofcom extracting significant censorship fees for handling minimal complaints about hate speech and product placement).

The notable exception is the regulation of hardcore porn on Video on Demand platforms. Ofcom originally delegated the censorship task to ATVOD but that was a total mess and Ofcom grabbed the censorship roles back. It too became a bit of a non-job as ATVOD's unviable age verification rules had effectively driven the UK adult porn trade into either bankruptcy or into foreign ownership. In fact this driving the porn business offshore gave rise to the BBFC age verification regime which is trying to find ways to censor foreign porn websites.

Anyway the EU has now created an updated AVMS directive that extends the scope of content to be censored, as well as the range of websites and apps caught up the law. Where as before it caught TV like video on demand websites, it now catches nearly all websites featuring significant video content. And of course the list of harms has expanded into the same space as all the other laws clamouring to censor the internet.

In addition, all qualifying video websites will have to register with Ofcom and have to cough up  a significant fee for Ofcom's censorship 'services'.

The EU Directive is required to be implemented in EU members' laws by 20th September 2020. And it seems that the UK wants the censors to be up on running from the 19th September 2020.

Even then, it would only be an interim step until an even more powerful internet censor gets implemented under the UK's Online Harms plans.

The Telegraph reported that the proposal was quietly agreed before Parliament's summer break and would give Ofcom the power to fine tech firms up to 5% of their revenues and/or block them in the UK if they failed to comply with its rulings. Ofcom has said that it is ready to adopt the powers.

A government spokeswoman told the BBC.

We also support plans to go further and legislate for a wider set of protections, including a duty of care for online companies towards their users.

But TechUK - the industry group that represents the sector - said it hoped that ministers would take a balanced and proportionate approach to the issue.  Its deputy chief executive Antony Walker said:

Key to achieving this will be clear and precise definitions across the board, and a proportionate sanctions and compliance regime, said

The Internet Association added that it hoped any intervention would be proportionate. Daniel Dyball, the association's executive director.said:

Any new regulation should be targeted at specific harms, and be technically possible to implement in practice - taking into account that resources available vary between companies.

The BBC rather hopefully noted that if the UK leaves the European Union without a deal, we will not be bound to transpose the AVMSD into UK law.

Web browser risk to child safety

We are deeply concerned that a new form of encryption being introduced to our web browsers will have terrible consequences for child protection.

The new system 204 known as DNS over HTTPS -- would have the effect of undermining the work of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF); yet Mozilla, provider of the Firefox browser, has decided to introduce it, and others may follow.

The amount of abusive content online is huge and not declining. Last year, the IWF removed more than 105,000 web pages showing the sexual abuse of children. While the UK has an excellent record in eliminating the hosting of such illegal content, there is still a significant demand from UK internet users: the National Crime Agency estimates there are 144,000 internet users on some of the worst dark-web child sexual abuse sites.

To fight this, the IWF provides a URL block list that allows internet service providers to block internet users from accessing known child sexual abuse content until it is taken down by the host country. The deployment of the new encryption system in its proposed form could render this service obsolete, exposing millions of people to the worst imagery of children being sexually abused, and the victims of said abuse to countless sets of eyes.

Advances in protecting users' data must not come at the expense of children. We urge the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport to address this issue in the government's upcoming legislation on online harms.

• Sarah Champion MP;
• Tom Watson MP;
• Carolyn Harris MP;
• Tom Brake MP;
• Stephen Timms MP;
• Ian Lucas MP;
• Tim Loughton MP;
• Giles Watling MP;
• Madeleine Moon MP;
• Vicky Ford MP;
• Rosie Cooper MP;
• Baroness Howe;
• Lord Knight;
• Baroness Thornton;
• Baroness Walmsley;
• Lord Maginnis;
• Baroness Benjamin;
• Lord Harris of Haringey

The IWF service is continually being rolled out as an argument against DoH but I am starting to wonder if it is still relevant. Given the universal revulsion against child sex abuse then I'd suspect that little of it would now be located on the open internet. Surely it would be hiding away in hard to find places like the dark web, that are unlikely to stumbled on by normal people. And of course those using the dark web aren't using ISP DNS servers anyway.

In reality the point of using DoH is to evade government attempts to block legal porn sites. If they weren't intending to block legal sites then surely people would be happy to use the ISP DNS including the IWF service.

Russia is continuing its pressure on Google to censor political political opinion that the government does not like. Media censor Roskomnadzor has sent a letter to Google insisting that it stop promoting banned mass events on YouTube.

It particularly didn't like that YouTube channels were using push notifications and other measures to spread information about protests, such as the recent demonstrations objecting to Moscow banning some opposition politicians from running in upcoming elections. Some users are allegedly receiving these alerts even if they're not subscribed to the channels.

The Russian agency said it would treat continued promotion as interference in the sovereign affairs of the country and consider Google a hostile influence ostensibly bent on obstructing elections.

Political protests have continued to grow in Russia (the most recent had about 50,000 participants), and they've turned increasingly from the Moscow-specific complaints to general dissatisfaction with President Putin's anti-democratic policies.

A draft executive order from the White House could put the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in charge of social media censorship. The FFC has a disgraceful record on the subject of internet freedom. It recently showed totally disregard for the rights of internet users when siding when big business over net neutrality.

Donald Trump's draft order, a summary of which was obtained by CNN, calls for the FCC to develop new regulations clarifying how and when the law protects social media websites when they decide to remove or suppress content on their platforms. Although still in its early stages and subject to change, the Trump administration's draft order also calls for the Federal Trade Commission to take those new policies into account when it investigates or files lawsuits against misbehaving companies.

US media giants have clearly been showing political bias when censoring conservative views but appointing the FCC as the internet censor does not bode well.

According to the summary seen by CNN, the draft executive order currently carries the title Protecting Americans from Online Censorship . It claims that the White House has received more than 15,000 anecdotal complaints of social media platforms censoring American political discourse, the summary indicates.

The FTC will also be asked to open a public complaint docket, according to the summary, and to work with the FCC to develop a report investigating how tech companies curate their platforms and whether they do so in neutral ways. Companies whose monthly user base accounts for one-eighth of the U.S. population or more could find themselves facing scrutiny, the summary said, including but not limited to Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat.

The Trump administration's proposal seeks to significantly narrow the protections afforded to companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Under the current law, internet companies are not liable for most of the content that their users or other third parties post on their platforms. This law underpins any company wanting to allow users to post their own comments without prior censorship. If protectsion were to be removed all user posting would need to be censored before being published.

New Zealand ISP Spark says it will block the controversial website 8chan if it resumes service, because it continues to host disturbing material.

8chan is currently down after its web host pulled out in response to 8chan being used by US mass shooters. However, Spark said if 8chan finds another host provider, it would block access. Spark said:

We feel it is the right thing to do given the website's repeated transgressions and continual willingness to distribute disturbing material.

The 8chan internet forum was used by the accused Christchurch mosque gunman to distribute his manifesto and live stream the attack.

However Spark seemed to realise that it would now become a magnet for every easily offended social justice warrior with a pet grievance and said that the the government should step in:

Appropriate agencies of government should put in place a robust policy framework to address the important issues surrounding such material being distributed online and freely available.

Technology commentator Paul Brislen responded:

It's very, very nearly the edge of what's acceptable for what your internet provider to be doing in this kind of situation.

I'm as uncomfortable as they [Spark] are about it. They do really need to find a new way to manage hate-speech and extremist content on the internet.

It's much like the Telecom of old to decide which phone calls you can and can't make.

The risk was someone would now turn around and say okay you blocked 8Chan because of hate speech, now I want you to block this other website because it allows people to access something else. It might be hate speech, it might be pornography, it might be something that speaks out against a religious group or ethnicity.

You start down a certain track of Spark or any of the other ISPs being forced to decide what is and isn't acceptable for the NZ public and that's not their job at all. They really shouldn't be doing that.

Update: New Zealand's chief censor David Shanks chips in

11th August 2019. See article from classificationoffice.govt.nz

I applaud the announcement by Spark that they are prepared to block access to 8chan if and when it re-emerges on the internet.

This move is both brave and meaningful. Brave, because a decision not to provide users with access to a site is quite a different thing from a decision not to provide a site with the server capacity and services it needs (which is the choice that Cloudflare recently made). Meaningful, because everything I have seen tells me that 8chan is the white supremacist killer's platform of choice, with at least three major attacks announced on it within a few months. There is nothing indicating that upon re-emergence 8chan will be a changed, safer platform. Indeed, it may be even more toxic.

We appreciate that our domestic ISP's have obligations to provide their customers with access to the internet according to their individual terms and conditions. Within those constraints, as the experience post the March 15 attacks show, our ISP's can act and do the right thing to block platforms that are linked to terrorist atrocities and pose a direct risk of harm to New Zealanders.

I know that ISPs don't take these decisions lightly, and that they do not want to be in the business of making judgments around the content of sites. But these are extraordinary circumstances, and platforms that promote terrorist atrocities should not be tolerated on the internet, or anywhere else. Spark is making the right call here.

This is a unique set of circumstances, and relying on ISPs to make these calls is not a solution for the mid or long term. I agree with calls for a transparent, robust and sensible regulatory response. Discussions have already started on what this might look like here in NZ. Ultimately this is a global, internet problem. That makes it complex of course, but I believe that online extremism can be beaten if governments, industry and the public work together

A few days ago Donald Trump responded to more mass shooters by calling on social networks to build tools for identifying potential mass murderers before they act. And across the government, there appears to be growing consensus that social networks should become partners in surveillance with the government.

So quite a timely moment for the Wall Street Journal to publish an article about FBI plans for mass snooping on social media:

The FBI is soliciting proposals from outside vendors for a contract to pull vast quantities of public data from Facebook, Twitter and other social media to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.

The request was posted last month, weeks before a series of mass murders shook the country and led President Trump to call for social-media platforms to do more to detect potential shooters before they act.

The deadline for bids is Aug. 27.

As described in the solicitation, it appears that the service would violate Facebook's ban against the use of its data for surveillance purposes, according to the company's user agreements and people familiar with how it seeks to enforce them.

The Verge comments on a privacy paradox:

But so far, as the Journal story illustrates, the government's approach has been incoherent. On one hand, it fines Facebook $5 billion for violating users' privacy; on the other, it outlines a plan to potentially store all Americans' public posts in a database for monitoring purposes.

But of course it is not a paradox, many if not most people believe that they're entitled to privacy whilst all the 'bad' people in the world aren't.

Commercial interests are also very keen on profiling people from their social media postings. There's probably a long list of advertisers who would love a list of rich people who go to casinos and stay at expensive hotels.

Well As Business Insider has noted, one company Hyp3r has been scraping all public postings on Instagram to provide exactly that information:

A combination of configuration errors and lax oversight by Instagram allowed one of the social network's vetted advertising partners to misappropriate vast amounts of public user data and create detailed records of users' physical whereabouts, personal bios, and photos that were intended to vanish after 24 hours.

The profiles, which were scraped and stitched together by the San Francisco-based marketing firm Hyp3r, were a clear violation of Instagram's rules. But it all occurred under Instagram's nose for the past year by a firm that Instagram had blessed as one of its preferred Facebook Marketing Partners.

Hyp3r is a marketing company that tracks social-media posts tagged with real-world locations. It then lets its customers directly interact with those posts via its tools and uses that data to target the social-media users with relevant advertisements. Someone who visits a hotel and posts a selfie there might later be targeted with pitches from one of the hotel's competitors, for example.

The total volume of Instagram data Hyp3r has obtained is not clear, though the firm has publicly said it has a unique dataset of hundreds of millions of the highest value consumers in the world, and sources said more than of 90% of its data came from Instagram. It ingests in excess of 1 million Instagram posts a month, sources said.

See full article from businessinsider.com

The White House is circulating drafts of a proposed executive order that would address the anti-conservative bias of social media companies. This appears to be the follow up to President Donald Trump pledging to explore all regulatory and legislative solutions on the issue.

The contents of the order remain undisclosed but it seems that many different ideas are still in the mix. A White House official is reported to have said:

If the internet is going to be presented as this egalitarian platform and most of Twitter is liberal cesspools of venom, then at least the president wants some fairness in the system. But look, we also think that social media plays a vital role. They have a vital role and an increasing responsibility to the culture that has helped make them so profitable and so prominent.

The social media companies have denied the allegations of bias, but nevertheless the large majority of users censored by the companies are indeed on the right.

Instagram is hiding content hosted by the pole dancing community's most commonly used hashtags.

Pole dancers, performers and entrepreneurs say that the censorship is threatening their livelihood. Sweden-based instructor and performer, Anna-Maija Nyman, told Yahoo Lifestyle.:

The censorship is affecting our whole community because it makes it harder to share and connect, I felt that our community is in danger and under attack.

The controversy for pole dancers began on July 19, when hashtags such as #poledancing, #poledancer and #polesportorg were noticeably wiped off all content previously aggregated by pole dancers around the world.

To alert fellow dancers, California-based pole star, Elizabeth Blanchard, wrote in a post that day that the banning of 19 hashtags appeared to be an effort to shadowban the community. She wrote:

There seems to have been a massive 'cleanse' on instagram and pole dancers have been deemed dirty and inappropriate...or as Instagram puts it we don't 'meet Instagram's community guidelines. There has been lots of talk about shadowbans lately but this purge of hashtags is hard to mistake as being targeted towards pole dancers.

Shadowbanning is a method used by social networks to quietly silence an account by curtailing how it gets engagement without blocking the ability to post new content. Shadowbanned users are not told that they have been affected, they can continue to post messages, add new followers and comment on or reply to other posts. But their [content] doesn't appear in the feeds, their replies may be suppressed and they may not show up in searches.

Australia-based instructor, performer and business owner Michelle Shimmy points out that the current restrictions facing pole dancers on the social media platform are part of a much larger issue having to do with Instagram's policy changes to manage 'problematic' content, which she suggests are inherently sexist.

Apparently Instagram has apologised for its censorship but nobody is expecting a change i th eplicy.

Google has changed its algorithm for the search term 'lesbian' to show informative results instead of pornographic content.

Previously, the first results shown when googling the word were porn videos.

The algorithm has been changed seemingly as a result of a campaign led by the Twitter account @SEO_lesbienne and French news site Numerama. They noted that only the word lesbian linked to sexualised pages, whereas searching for gay or trans displayed Wikipedia pages, articles and specialised blogs.

Now if you want to find some lesbian porn, you have to type 'lesbian porn'.