TikTok stars got a judge to block Trump’s TikTok ban

TikTok has won another battle in its fight against the Trump administration’s ban of its video-sharing app in the U.S. — or, more accurately in this case, the TikTok community won a battle. On Friday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania issued an injunction that blocked the restrictions that would have otherwise blocked TikTok from operating in the U.S. on November 12.

This particular lawsuit was not led by TikTok itself, but rather a group of TikTok creators who use the app to engage with their million-plus followers.

According to the court documents, plaintiff Douglas Marland has 2.7 million followers on the app; Alec Chambers has 1.8 million followers; and Cosette Rinab has 2.3 million followers. The creators argued — successfully as it turns out — that they would lose access to their followers in the event of a ban, as well as the “professional opportunities afforded by TikTok.” In other words, they’d lose their brand sponsorships — meaning, their income.

This is not the first time that the U.S. courts have sided with TikTok to block the Trump administration’s proposed ban over the Chinese-owned video sharing app. Last month, a D.C. judge blocked the ban that would have removed the app from being listed in U.S. app stores run by Apple and Google.

That ruling had not, however, stopped the November 12 ban that would have blocked companies from providing internet hosting services that would have allowed TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S.

The Trump administration had moved to block the TikTok app from operating in the U.S. due to its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, claiming it was a national security threat. The core argument from the judge in this ruling was the “Government’s own descriptions of the national security threat posed by the TikTok app are phrased in the hypothetical.”

That hypothetical risk was unable to be stated by the government, the judge argued, to be such a risk that it outweighed the public interest. The interest, in this case, was the more than 100 million users of TikTok and the creators like Marland, Chambers and Rinab that utilized it to spread “informational materials,” which allowed the judge to rule that the ban would shut down a platform for expressive activity.

“We are deeply moved by the outpouring of support from our creators, who have worked to protect their rights to expression, their careers, and to help small businesses, particularly during the pandemic,” said Vanessa Pappas, Interim Global Head of TikTok, in a statement. “We stand behind our community as they share their voices, and we are committed to continuing to provide a home for them to do so,” she added.

The TikTok community coming to the rescue on this one aspect of the overall TikTok picture just elevates this whole story. Though the company has been relatively quiet through this whole process, Pappas has thanked the community several times for its outpouring of support. Though there were some initial waves of “grief” on the app with creators frantically recommending people follow them on other platforms, that has morphed over time into more of a “let’s band together” vibe. This activity coalesced around a big swell in voting advocacy on the platform, where many creators are too young to actually participate but view voting messaging as their way to participate.

TikTok has remained active in the product department through the whole mess, shipping elections guides and trying to ban QAnon conspiracy spread, even as Pakistan banned and then un-banned the app.

Trump administration’s TikTok ban has been delayed

 

 

 

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Facebook hits pause on algorithmic recommendations for political and social issue groups

With just days to go before the U.S. election, Facebook quietly suspended one of its most worrisome features.

During Wednesday’s Senate hearing, Senator Ed Markey asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about reports that his company has long known its group recommendations push people toward more extreme content. Zuckerberg responded that the company had actually disabled that feature for certain groups — a fact Facebook had not previously announced.

“Senator, we have taken the step of stopping recommendations in groups for all political content or social issue groups as a precaution for this,” Zuckerberg told Markey.

TechCrunch reached out to Facebook with questions about what kind of groups would be affected and how long the recommendations would be suspended at the time but did not receive an immediate response. Facebook first confirmed the change to BuzzFeed News on Friday.

“This is a measure we put in place in the lead up to Election Day,” Facebook spokesperson Liz Bourgeois told TechCrunch in an email. “We will assess when to lift them afterwards, but they are temporary.”

The cautionary step will disable recommendations for political and social issue groups as well as any new groups that are created during the window of time. Facebook declined to provide additional details about the kinds of groups that will and won’t be affected by the change or what went into the decision.

Researchers who focus on extremism have long been concerned that algorithmic recommendations on social networks push people toward more extreme content. Facebook has been aware of this phenomenon since at least 2016, when an internal presentation on extremism in Germany observed that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools.” In light of the feature’s track record, some anti-hate groups celebrated Facebook’s decision to hit the pause button Friday.

“It’s good news that Facebook is disabling group recommendations for all political content or social issue groups as a precaution during this election season. I believe it could result in a safer experience for users in this critical time,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt told TechCrunch. “And yet, beyond the next week, much more needs to be done in the long term to ensure that users are not being exposed to extremist ideologies on Facebook’s platforms.”

On Facebook, algorithmic recommendations can usher users flirting with extreme views and violent ideas into social groups where their dangerous ideologies can be amplified and organized. Before being banned by the social network, the violent far-right group the Proud Boys relied on Facebook groups for its relatively sophisticated national recruitment operation. Members of the group that plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer also used Facebook groups to organize, according to an FBI affidavit.

Militia tied to plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer was removed from Facebook in boogaloo purge

While it sounds like Facebook’s decision to toggle off some group recommendations is temporary, the company has made an unprecedented flurry of choices to limit dangerous content in recent months, possibly in fear that the 2020 election will again plunge it into political controversy. Over the last three months alone, Facebook has cracked down on QAnon, militias and language used by the Trump campaign that could result in voter intimidation — all surprising postures considering its longstanding inaction and deep fear of decisions that could be perceived as partisan.

After years of relative inaction, the company now appears to be taking seriously some of the extremism it has long incubated, though the coming days are likely to put its new set of protective policies to the test.

Changing how retweets work, Twitter seeks to slow down election misinformation

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Big tech’s ‘blackbox’ algorithms face regulatory oversight under EU plan

Major Internet platforms will be required to open up their algorithms to regulatory oversight under proposals European lawmakers are set to introduce next month.

In a speech today Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager suggested algorithmic accountability will be a key plank of the forthcoming legislative digital package — with draft rules incoming that will require platforms to explain how their recommendation systems work as well as offering users more control over them.

“The rules we’re preparing would give all digital services a duty to cooperate with regulators. And the biggest platforms would have to provide more information on the way their algorithms work, when regulators ask for it,” she said, adding that platforms will also “have to give regulators and researchers access to the data they hold — including ad archives”.

While social media platforms like Facebook have set up ad archives ahead of any regulatory requirement to do so there are ongoing complaints from third party researchers about how the information is structured and how (in)accessible it is to independent study.

More information for users around ad targeting is another planned requirement, along with greater reporting requirements for platforms to explain content moderation decisions, per Vestager — who also gave a preview of what’s coming down the pipe in the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act in another speech earlier this week.

Europe to limit how big tech can push its own services and use third-party data

Regional lawmakers are responding to concerns that ‘blackbox’ algorithms can have damaging effects on individuals and societies — flowing from how they process data and order and rank information, with risks such as discrimination, amplification of bias and abusive targeting of vulnerable individuals and groups.

The Commission has said it’s working on binding transparency rules with the aim of forcing tech giants to take more responsibility for the content their platforms amplify and monetize. Although the devil will be in both the detail of the requirements and how effectively they will be enforced — but a draft of the plan is due in a month or so.

“One of the main goals of the Digital Services Act that we’ll put forward in December will be to protect our democracy, by making sure that platforms are transparent about the way these algorithms work – and make those platforms more accountable for the decisions they make,” said Vestager in a speech today at an event organized by not-for-profit research advocacy group AlgorithmWatch.

“The proposals that we’re working on would mean platforms have to tell users how their recommender systems decide which content to show – so it’s easier for us to judge whether to trust the picture of the world that they give us or not.”

Under the planned rules the most powerful Internet platforms — so-called ‘gatekeepers’ in EU parlance — will have to provide regular reports on “the content moderation tools they use, and the accuracy and results of those tools”, as Vestager put it.

There will also be specific disclosure requirements for ad targeting that go beyond the current fuzzy disclosures that platforms like Facebook may already offer (in its case via the ‘why am I seeing this ad?’ menu).

“Better information” will have to be provided, she said, such as platforms telling users “who placed a certain ad, and why it’s been targeted at us”. The overarching aim will be to ensure users of such platforms have “a better idea of who’s trying to influence us — and a better chance of spotting when algorithms are discriminating against us,” she added. 

Today a coalition of 46 civic society organizations led by AlgorithmWatch urged the Commission to make sure transparency requirements in the forthcoming legislation are “meaningful” — calling for it to introduce “comprehensive data access frameworks” that provide watchdogs with the tools they need to hold platforms accountable, as well as to enable journalists, academics, and civil society to “challenge and scrutinize power”.

The group’s set of recommendations call for binding disclosure obligations based on the technical functionalities of dominant platforms; a single EU institution “with a clear legal mandate to enable access to data and to enforce transparency obligations”; and provisions to ensure data collection complies with EU data protection rules.

Another way to rebalance the power asymmetry between data-mining platform giants and the individuals who they track, profile and target could involve requirements to let users switch off algorithmic feeds entirely if they wish — opting out of the possibility of data-driven discrimination or manipulation. But it remains to be seen whether EU lawmakers will go that far in the forthcoming legislative proposals.

The only hints Vestager offered on this front was to say that the planned rules “will also give more power to users — so algorithms don’t have the last word about what we get to see, and what we don’t get to see”.

Platforms will also have to give users “the ability to influence the choices that recommender systems make on our behalf”, she also said.

In further remarks she confirmed there will be more detailed reporting requirements for digital services around content moderation and takedowns — saying they will have to tell users when they take content down, and give them “effective rights to challenge that removal”. While there is widespread public support across the bloc for rebooting the rules of play for digital giants there are also strongly held views that regulation should not impinge on online freedom of expression — such as by encouraging platforms to shrink their regulatory risk by applying upload filters or removing controversial content without a valid reason.

The proposals will need the support of EU Member States, via the European Council, and elected representatives in the European parliament.

The latter has already voted in support of tighter rules on ad targeting. MEPs also urged the Commission to reject the use of upload filters or any form of ex-ante content control for harmful or illegal content, saying the final decision on whether content is legal or not should be taken by an independent judiciary.

Simultaneously the Commission is working on shaping rules specifically for applications that use artificial intelligence — but that legislative package is not due until next year.

Vestager confirmed that will be introduced early in 2021 with the aim of creating “an AI ecosystem of trust”.

Europe sets out plan to boost data reuse and regulate ‘high risk’ AIs

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Facebook is limiting distribution of ‘save our children’ hashtag over QAnon ties

Facebook today confirmed that it will be limiting the distribution of the hashtag “save our children.” Over the past several months, the phrase — and ones like it — have become associated with QAnon. These terms have served to provide a kind of innocuous cover for the popular online conspiracy theory.

A spokesperson for the social network confirmed the move today, noting that child safety resources will be prioritized in search above those potentially tied to QAnon.

“Earlier this week, we stepped up how we enforce our rules against QAnon on pages, events, and groups,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Starting today, we’re limiting the distribution of the ‘save our children’ hashtag given we’ve found that content tied to it is now associated with QAnon. When people search for it, they will now see the credible child safety resources.”

The company finally took action to remove the constellation of dangerous conspiracy theories with a ban on QAnon content across both Facebook and Instagram. It  had previously announced a ban on QAnon groups that “discussed potential violence” but the expanded ban evinced a deeper understanding of how conspiracies draw in and radicalize regular users. The ban has actually proven quite successful so far, making it more more difficult for QAnon-related posts and accounts to be discovered and amplified.

Over the summer, the service began to crack down on QAnon-adjacent hashtags like SaveTheChildren. It even went so far as temporarily blocking the phrase, which, for around a century, has been associated with nonprofit youth organizations. “We temporarily blocked the hashtag as it was surfacing low-quality content,” Facebook told the press at the time. “The hashtag has since been restored, and we will continue to monitor for content that violates our community standards.”

By then, however, the movement had already gained life beyond social media, with several well-attended rallies being held across the U.S. and in different locations across the globe. Organizers have broadly purported to be protesting child exploitation, ranging from accusations of pedophilia among the Hollywood elite to outrage over the Netflix film “Cuties.”

In August, the U.S.-based Save the Children Federation, Inc. released a statement seeking to clarify and distance itself from the trend. “Our name in hashtag form has been experiencing unusually high volumes and causing confusion among our supporters and the general public,” the org wrote. “In the United States, Save the Children is the sole owner of the registered trademark ‘Save the Children.’ While people may choose to use our organization’s name as a hashtag to make their point on different issues, we are not affiliated or associated with any of these campaigns.”

Facebook’s crackdown on QAnon and adjacent #SaveTheChildren content come after the company allowed the dangerous conspiracy theory group to thrive on its platform for years, moving from the fringes of online life into its center. While President Trump and a handful of QAnon-friendly Republican political figures have given the conspiracies a boost, mainstream social networks allowed adherents to ferry the revelations of so-called “Q drops” from the obscure and often extreme message board 8chan into the center of American political life.

Some users happen upon conspiracy content organically, but algorithmic recommendations on platforms like Facebook and YouTube are known to usher users from the edges of conspiracies like QAnon into their often more extreme core ideas. Dedicated QAnon believers are responsible for a number of real-world violent actions, including an armed occupation of the Hoover Dam. Matthew Wright, the man who pled guilty to a terrorism charge for blocking the bridge, explained in a video that his agitation stemmed from President Trump’s failure to arrest his political enemies, which disappointed QAnon believers. Last year, a 29-year-old QAnon adherent shot and killed a mob boss who he believed was part of the “deep state” — a frequent preoccupation of Q followers.

Facebook says it will ban QAnon across its platforms

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E.ventures opens up new office in Paris

VC firm e.ventures is expanding its footprint in Europe with a new office in Paris as well as a new Paris-based partner. Jonathan Userovici, who previously worked for Idinvest Partners, is joining e.ventures as partner and head of Paris office.

Originally founded in the U.S. 20 years ago, e.ventures has been expanding to new geographies over the past few years. It has offices in San Francisco, Berlin, Beijing, Tokyo, São Paulo, and now Paris.

Last year, the firm raised two new funds — the first one was a $225 million U.S.-focused fund and the second one was a $175 million fund based in Berlin and focused on Europe. The Paris team will deploy some capital in French startups with a sweet spot between €1 million and €10 million.

Over the past two decades, e.ventures has handled around 200 investments. Some of the most successful investments include funding rounds in Farfetch, Groupon, Sonos and Segment.

As for Jonathan Userovici, after five years at Idinvest Partners, he has been involved with some promising French startups. For instance, he is a board member at Swile and Ornikar.

Thanks to e.ventures’ distributed team, the VC firm hopes it can spot good investment opportunities in Europe and help them scale globally. The firm already has connections in the U.S., which should help French entrepreneurs when it comes to signing new deals and international expansion.

E.ventures, the global early-stage venture fund, has raised $400 million more from investors

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Passion Capital backs UK fertility workplace benefits provider, Fertifa

UK-based Fertifa has bagged a £1 million (~$1.3M) seed to plug into a fertility-focused workplace benefits platform. Passion Capital is investing in the round, along with some unnamed strategic angel investors.

The August 2019-founded startup sells bespoke reproductive health and fertility packages to UK employers to offer as workplace benefits to their staff — drawing on the use of technologies like telehealth to expand access to fertility support and cater to rising demand for reproductive health services.

Challenges conceiving can affect around one in seven couples, per the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).

In recent years fertility startups have been getting more investor attention as VC firms cotton on to growing market. Employers have also responded, with tech industry workplaces among those offering fertility ‘perks’ to staff. Although the access-to-services issue can be more acute in the US — given substantial costs involved in obtaining treatments like IVF.

In the UK the picture is a little different, given that the country’s taxpayer funded NHS does fund some fertility treatments — meaning IVF can be free for couples to access. Although how much support couples get can depend on where in the country they live, with some NHS trusts funding more rounds of IVF than others. There can also be access restrictions based on factors such as a woman’s age and the length of time trying to conceive.

This means UK couples can run out of free fertility support before they’ve been able to conceive — pushing them towards paying for private treatment. Hence Fertifa spotting an opportunity for a workplace benefits model around reproductive health services.

It signed up its first employers this spring and summer, and says it now has a portfolio of corporate clients with an employee pool from a few hundreds to >10,000 — although it isn’t breaking out customer numbers. Rather it says its services are available to around 700,000 UK employees at this point.

“At Fertifa we want to make fertility services more widely accessible to people,” says founder and CEO Tony Chen. “Some levels of fertility services can be provided by the NHS but every single NHS trust is different with eligibility, requirements and resources, and so unfortunately it can too often be reduced to a ‘postcode lottery’.

“We believe that everyone should have easy access to information, resources, education and services relating to fertility — and that working with workplaces is one way to start. With our efforts and partnerships we hope to normalise the conversations about fertility at work, just as other forms of health are openly discussed and provided for.”

Passion Capital partner Eileen Burbidge — who is joining Fertifa’s board (along with Passion’s Malin Posern) — has been public about her own use of IVF and takes a very personal interest in the fertility space.

“The unfortunate fact that over recent years, even though success rates have increased and of course more and more patients are exploring the benefits of IVF, NHS funding has been declining and the number of patients using the NHS for their first cycle has also been decreasing,” she tells TechCrunch.

“This doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s brilliant what we get from the NHS here in the UK, but there’s clearly a lot more which can be done to further increase accessibility and affordability — given less and less funding for the NHS in the face of increasing demand of both the NHS and private routes.”

Fertifa says its model is to provide direct care and support to employees — rather than being a broker or acting as part of a referral system. So it has two in-house clinicians at this stage (out of a team of 10-15 people). Although it also says it “partners” with clinicians and clinics across the UK. So it’s not doing everything in-house.

It offers what it bills as a “full range” of fertility and gynaecology services — from assisted reproductive technology such as IVF, IUI and more; fertility planning such as egg, sperm and embryo freezing to donor-assisted and third-party reproduction such as donor eggs and sperm; as well as surrogacy and adoption.

Its doctors, nurses and “fertility advocates” are there to provide a one-to-one care service to support patients throughout the process.

“We use technology in a number of ways and are ambitious about how it will help us to maintain an advantage over others in the sector and provide the best customer experience,” says Chen, noting it’s developed “a full end-to-end” app for patients to guide them through the various stages of their fertility journey.

“On the employer side we have a full employer portal as well which provides educational resources, support options and access to services for HR/People teams to use and share with their workforces. Additionally, we use telehealth to enable more efficient, convenient (particularly in the age of COVID-19 restrictions) and immediate consultations with clinicians and nurses. Finally, we are refining our machine learning algorithms to help drive more informed decision making for patients and clinicians alike.”

It’s not currently applying AI but says that over time its in-house medical experts will use artificial intelligence to aid decision-making — with the aim of reducing clinic visits, enhancing the patient experience and yielding better clinical pregnancy rates.

Chen points to the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority having already made its data publicly available on more than 100,000 couples and their treatment and outcomes — suggesting such data-sets will underpin the development of new predictive models for fertility.

“With additional insight and data sources could more accurately predict probability of success for a patient — or the best type of treatment for them,” he adds.

While Fertifa’s current focus is UK expansion — targeting workplaces of all sizes and scale — it’s also got its eye on scaling overseas down the line. Although it will of course face more competition at that point, with the likes of Y Combinator backed Carrot already offering global fertility benefits packages for employers.

“Fertility and reproductive health is important to people all over the world,” says Chen. “Globally one in four women experience a miscarriage, every LGBT+ individual requires support to become a parent, and everyone needs to be increasingly empowered to take control of their reproductive health through fertility preservation treatment.”

It’s a new era for fertility tech

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UK watchdog reduces Marriott data breach fine to $23.8M, down from $123M

The UK’s ICO has reduced the size of a data breach penalty for hotel business Marriott — dropping it to £14.4 million (~$23.8M) in a final penalty notice down from the £99M ($123M) figure that the watchdog initially said it would levy in July 2019.

The fine relates to a data breach suffered by the hotel giant that dates back to 2014 (involving the network of Starwood hotels, which it had acquired in 2015) — but which wasn’t discovered until November 2018.

The personal data involved in the breach differed between individuals but the ICO said it may have included names, email addresses, phone numbers, unencrypted passport numbers, arrival/departure information, guests’ VIP status and loyalty programme membership number.

Globally, some 339 million guest records were affected but fewer individuals are thought to have been compromised owing to some of the records being duplicates. The breach is thought to have affected around 30 million users across the EU, per an earlier ICO estimate.

Its investigation found there were failures by Marriott to put “appropriate technical or organisational measures in place to protect people’s data” — as required by the pan-EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). (The penalty only covers the portion of the breach that dates from 25 May 2018 — when the GDPR came into effect.)

Commenting in a statement, the UK’s information commissioner Elizabeth Denham said: “Millions of people’s data was affected by Marriott’s failure; thousands contacted a helpline and others may have had to take action to protect their personal data because the company they trusted it with had not. When a business fails to look after customers’ data, the impact is not just a possible fine, what matters most is the public whose data they had a duty to protect.”

A Marriott spokesperson told us the company “deeply regrets” the incident, adding in a statement: “Marriott remains committed to the privacy and security of its guests’ information and continues to make significant investments in security measures for its systems. The ICO recognises the steps taken by Marriott following discovery of the incident to promptly inform and protect the interests of its guests.”

The hotel giant also confirmed it does not intend to appeal the ICO’s decision (while not making any admission of liability).

The penalty had to be signed off by other EU data protection authorities, under the GDPR’s one-stop-shop mechanism for cross-border cases. And the ICO confirmed it completed the Article 60 process prior to the issuing of the penalty.

One interesting element here is the difference between the initial penalty proposed by the ICO and the final fine.

The GDPR framework greatly increased the potential size of penalties for data breaches, up to a maximum of £20M or 4% of an entity’s global annual turnover (whichever is greater). Prior to that data protection rules existed in the region but could be easily ignored, given puny penalties. The GDPR was supposed to change that.

However, almost 2.5 years since the framework begun being applied, large fines remain rare — with a backlog of major cross-border cases still awaiting decisions.

Regulations may also be concerned about being able to make large sums stick if companies appeal.

French court slaps down Google’s appeal against $57M GDPR fine

The ICO’s initial penalty for the Marriott breach would have been one of the largest fines issued under the GDPR. Today’s haircut revises that. The first figure proposed represented around 3% of the company’s 2018 revenue (circa $3.6BN) — but that’s now shrunk to around 0.6%.

It follows a very similar episode at the ICO over a BA data breach. In July 2019 the regulator said it intended to fine the airliner £183.39M ($230M) for a 2018 data breach that affected some 500,000 customers. But earlier this month it issued a final penalty to BA of just £20M ($25.8M).

In both cases the impact of the coronavirus appears to be playing some part in explaining why the ICO has reduced the size of the penalties. Although the pandemic might be something of a useful scapegoat given the substantial size of the reductions involved. (The regulator has also used it to ‘pause’ any action over major adtech complaints, for example.)

All the ICO has to say vis-a-vis Marriott’s penalty haircut is that it “considered representations from Marriott, the steps Marriott took to mitigate the effects of the incident and the economic impact of COVID-19 on their business before setting a final penalty”.

On the reduction in the size of the penalty Marriott told us it reflects “extensive mitigating measures” it put in place following the security incident — noting that it established a dedicated website to provide information to concerned guests; opened a dedicated helpline; and sent “millions” of email notifications to individuals whose information was involved in the breach. It also said it offered guests the opportunity to sign up for a personal information monitoring service where it was available.

The ICO similarly took representations from BA after issuing its initial intention to fine — and ended up making a small discount as a result, per our report, though we reported that the lion’s share of the BA reduction was due to revising how much blame it had placed on the airline for the breach.

Asked for a view on the ICO’s penalty haircuts, Tim Turner, a UK based data protection trainer and consultant, agreed that the coronavirus looks like a handy scapegoat.

“I’m not accusing the ICO of feeding misunderstanding but the impression that these reduced fines are down to the pandemic is very helpful to them,” he told TechCrunch. “They plainly miscalculated both the BA and Marriott fines by a huge margin, and they don’t really deny it. The notices just skate over that on the basis that the original mistake has been rectified so it doesn’t matter.

“The ICO were proposing fines way beyond anything in the EU on the basis of a draft, unpublished procedure. They ought to account for that rather than letting everyone think this is a big COVID-19 discount.”

UK’s ICO reduces British Airways data breach fine to £20M, after originally setting it at £184M

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WhatsApp is now delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day

WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging app owned by Facebook, is now delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day, the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said at the quarterly earnings call Thursday.

For some perspective, users exchanged 100 billion messages on WhatsApp last New Year’s Eve. That is the day when WhatsApp tops its engagement figures, and as many of you may remember, also the time when the service customarily suffered glitches in the past years. (No outage on last New Year’s Eve!)

At this point, WhatsApp is just competing with itself. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp together were used to exchange 60 billion messages a day as of early 2016. Apple chief executive Tim Cook said in May that iMessage and FaceTime were seeing record usage, but did not share specific figures. The last time Apple did share the figure, it was far behind WhatsApp’s then usage (podcast). WeChat, which has also amassed over 1 billion users, is behind in daily volume of messages, too.

WhatsApp hits 2 billion users, up from 1.5 billion 2 years ago

In early 2014, WhatsApp was being used to exchange about 50 billion texts a day, its then chief executive Jan Koum revealed at an event.

At the time, WhatsApp had fewer than 500 million users. WhatsApp now has more than 2 billion users and at least in India, its largest market by users, its popularity surpasses those of every other smartphone app including the big blue app.

“This year we’ve all relied on messaging more than ever to keep up with our loved ones and get business done,” tweeted Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp.

Sadly, that’s all the update the company shared on WhatsApp today. Mystery continues for when WhatsApp expects to resume its payments service in Brazil, and when it plans to launch its payments in India, where it began testing the service in 2018. (It has already shared big plans around financial services in India, though.)

“We are proud that WhatsApp is able to deliver roughly 100B messages every day and we’re excited about the road ahead,” said Cathcart.

WhatsApp to pilot projects to deliver credit, insurance and pension to users in India

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Ad revenues and e-commerce boom boost Facebook earnings but US users down from COVID surge

Facebook reported its Q3 earnings today, including revenues of $21.5 billion, and net income of $7.8 billion. The company earned $2.71 in per-share profit during the three-month period.

Analysts had expected Facebook, the social giant, to earn a much-smaller $1.91 per-share off smaller revenues of $19.82 billion. The company also reported an average of 1.82 billion daily active users in September, up 12% compared to the year-ago period. Monthly actives were 2.74 billion, also up 12%. Both results were ahead of expectations.

Notably Facebook’s headcount rose sharply during the year, rising 32% compared to the year-ago period. That outstripped its 22% year-over-year revenue growth. The company’s total expenses rose 28%, again faster than its revenues.

Shares of Facebook are effectively flat in after-hours trading, up around 0.4% at the time of writing.

The company did not share a specific outlook for Q4 2020 or 2021 in its report, instead noting that it anticipates “fourth quarter 2020 year-over-year ad revenue growth rate to be higher than [its] reported third quarter 2020 rate,” along with stronger non-advertising revenues stemming from Oculus Quest 2 sales, the company’s new VR helmet.

Facebook did say that 2021 will bring a “significant amount of uncertainty.” A potential hurdle of Facebook will be the regulatory environment in Europe, and viability of transatlantic data transfers. Facebook says that its “closely monitoring the potential impact on our European operations as these developments’ progress.”

Analysts expect Facebook to generate revenues of $24.25 billion and per-share profit of $2.67 in the fourth quarter of 2020, and $100.0 billion in 2021 top line leading to $10.26 in per-share income.

What matters in all of this? That the core advertising market that seemed to bolster Snap’s own results has helped fill Facebook’s wings as well. Facebook noted in its earnings that it thinks that the “pandemic has contributed to an acceleration in the shift of commerce from offline to online,” leading to it experiencing “increasing demand for advertising as a result of this acceleration.” Twitter, meanwhile, saw ad revenue only marginally increase, about 8% from the year prior, as advertiser taste buds remain volatile.

That’s a tailwind from a secular shift. For Facebook, it could mean a good year’s growth.

It’s worth noting, however, that Facebook lost users in the U.S. and Canada — down to 196 million from 198 million last quarter — a decline that it attributed to a slowing surge from the abnormal highs seen in the midst of the lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. So tailwinds, but also a return to normal patterns. And it expects this flat or down trend to continue into Q3, noting that “in the fourth quarter of 2020, we expect this trend to continue and that the number of DAUs and MAUs in the US & Canada will be flat or slightly down compared to the third quarter of 2020.”

Snap shares explode after blowing past earnings expectations

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PUBG Mobile to terminate access for users in India on October 30 following ban order

PUBG Mobile, the sleeper hit mobile game, will terminate all service and access for users in India on October 30, two months after New Delhi banned the game in the world’s second largest internet market over cybersecurity concerns.

India banned PUBG Mobile Nordic Map: Livik and PUBG Mobile Lite, along with over 100 apps with links to China on September 2. The ban came after India banned TikTok and dozens of other popular Chinese apps in late June.

These apps were “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order,” the country’s IT Ministry said on both the instances.

India bans PUBG Mobile, and over 100 other Chinese apps

But unlike other affected apps that became unavailable within days — if not hours — PUBG Mobile apps remained accessible in the country for users who already had them installed on their phones, tablets, and PCs. In fact, according to one popular mobile insight firm, PUBG Mobile had retained more than 90% of its monthly active users in the country, a mobile-first market where 99% of smartphones run Android, in the weeks following New Delhi’s order.

(Following the ban, Google and Apple pulled PUBG Mobile apps from their app stores in India. But soon enough, guides on how to workaround the ban and obtain and install the apps became popular on several forums.)

PUBG Mobile had about 50 monthly active users in India, tens of millions of users ahead of Call of Duty: Mobile and Fortnite and any other mobile game in the country.

“PUBG Mobile kickstarted an entire ecosystem — from esports organisations to teams and even a cottage industry of streamers that made the most of its spectator sport-friendly gameplay,” said Rishi Alwani, a long-time analyst of Indian gaming market and publisher of news outlet The Mako Reactor.

“Granted Tencent did a lot of the heavy lifting in building it out, but the game’s quality itself was heads and shoulders above what most Indians were used to on smartphones. And that’s a reason many kept coming back, some eventually monetising as well,” he added.

India bans TikTok, dozens of other Chinese apps

South Korea-headquartered PUBG Mobile attempted to assuage New Delhi’s concern by cutting ties with Tencent, the game’s publishing and distribution partner in India.

On Thursday, PUBG Mobile said, “protecting user data has always been a top priority and we have always complied with applicable data protection laws and regulations in India. All users’ gameplay information is processed in a transparent manner as disclosed in our privacy policy.”

“We deeply regret this outcome, and sincerely thank you for your support and love for PUBG Mobile in India,” it added.

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Twitter revenue rises 14%, but user growth fails to impress

Twitter continued to see its total traffic rise in the third quarter, thanks to that trifecta of returning sports, the presidential campaign and the COVID-19 pandemic. But there wasn’t nearly enough growth to appease Wall Street. 

Twitter beat out analyst expectations on revenue and net income; However, Wall Street was stuck on Twitter’s user user figures, which showed minimal growth and sent shares lower in after-market trading. Twitter’s MDAUs — the company’s internal audience metric that measures monetizeable daily active users — hit 187 million in the third quarter. That’s a razor thin improvement from the 186 million the company reported in second quarter of this year, although it did represent a 29% rise from the 145 million in the same period last year. Analysts from FactSet had expected 195 million MDAUs.

That mDAU “growth” heads into flat-like-the prairie states territory when focused on the U.S. figures. The average US mDAU was 36 million for the third quarter, the same figure in the second quarter. In short, U.S. mDAUs are flat, flat, flat. It did grow from 30 million mDAUs in the third quarter of 2019. Meanwhile, average international mDAU was 152 million for the third quarter, compared to 115 million in the same period of the previous year and 150 million in the previous quarter.

Shares were down nearly 15% in after-market trading.

Twitter reported Thursday net income of $29 million in the third quarter, or 4 cents per diluted share, a decline from the same time period last year, when the company brought in a net income of $47 million at 5 cents per diluted share. Adjusted earnings were 19 cents a share.

The company’s revenue came in at $936 million, up 14% from the same period last year and 37% from the second quarter. Analysts had expected revenue of $777 million. 

Twitter’s ad revenue also grew 15% to $808 million. Total ad engagement rose 27% over the same period in 2019. The return of live events as well as increased and previously delayed product launches helped boost ad revenue, Twitter CFO Ned Segal said.

“We also made progress on our brand and direct response products, with updated ad formats, improved measurement, and better prediction. We remain confident that our larger audience, coupled with ongoing revenue product improvements, new events and product launches, and the positive advertiser response to the choices we’ve made as we have grown the service, can drive great outcomes over time,” he added.

The U.S., Twitter’s biggest market, accounted for $513 million in revenue, a 10% increase YoY. 

However, Twitter warned that the holiday season and U.S. election could impact advertiser behavior.

 

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Nutrium app, which links dietitians and patients, raises $4.9M led by Indico Capital

Nutrium, a digital health startup which links dietitians and their patients via an app, has raised a €4.25 million Seed round led by Indico Capital Partners, alongside the the Social Innovation Fund in Portugal (SIF) and previous investors. It now offers professional nutrition software to 80,000 nutrition professionals and 800,000 patients in more than 40 countries.

With this investment round, Nutrium plans to double the team size in the next 24 months in order to focus on platform development and expand global sales in markets like Spain, France, Italy, USA and the UK where the company already has a strong customer base.

With the Nutrium platform, patients get integrated nutrition counseling which combines professional advice, continuous monitoring and access to commercial products.

André Santos, CEO and Co-founder of Nutrium commented: “We are moving closer to our vision of enabling the improvement of eating habits for millions of people globally.”

Stephan Morais, managing general partner at Indico said: “Nutrium will become a full-fledged platform bringing together nutritionists, patients, products and wellness data that will enable healthier and happier lives. We are pleased to back this jointly developed vision with capital and knowledge.“

Rui Ferreira, Vice President at Portugal Ventures said: “In 2017, when Portugal Ventures invested in Nutrium’s pre-seed round, the company was mainly present in two markets. Today, Nutrium operates in more than 40 markets, having increased its turnover exponentially.”

Nutrium’s competitors include NutriAdmin, AppointmentPlus, Evolution Nutrition which has raised $2.3M.

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VCs poured capital into European startups in Q3, but early-stage dealmaking appeared to suffer

The global recovery in venture capital activity did not miss Europe, new data indicates.

According to a PitchBook report, European venture capital activity rose in Q3 2020, putting the continent on pace to set a new yearly record for aggregate VC activity (as measured in Euros).

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The strong results come in the wake of a cracking quarter for venture capital activity in the United States and a generally bullish period for the global VC market. Venture debt is also seeing something of a rebound from lulls seen earlier in the year.

Inside Europe’s Q3 however, was some less-than-good news: the amount of money that went to first-financings was weak, and much of the strong results from the continent were predicated on capital flowing into already-funded startups. There’s less pie for new companies than the top-line numbers might suggest.

Let’s get into the good and bad from Europe’s quarter, contrasting our new data with some prior numbers that we saw when looking into aggregate VC data from Q3.

We’re wrapping up our look at the post-summer venture rebound today, but there’s just a bit more we need to learn before we move on. Let’s get into it.

Europe’s third quarter

Starting with the good news: PitchBook reports that total European venture capital activity came to €10.6 billion in the third quarter of 2020. Per the financial and business data group, it was the third time in history that European venture capital activity crossed the €10 billion mark. (For the sake of comparison, United States-based startups raised around $37 billion, or about €31.5 billion, during the same period.)

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Twitter’s API access changes are chasing away third-party developers

Edward Tian Contributor

Edward Tian is a computer science student at Princeton and an investigator at Bellingcat who combines technology and investigative journalism.

On August 12, Twitter launched a complete rebuild of its 2012 API, with new endpoints for data collection, new access levels and a new developer portal. Notably, the version 2 API was presented as a step in mending the notoriously fractious relationship between Twitter and its third-party developer community.

Improvements for third-party developers, however, arrived with hints of irony leaving many startup CEOs in the ecosystem unconvinced. Within 35 days of the v2 launch, Twint, a popular data scraping tool for researchers and journalists, stopped working. Twint is the latest casualty in a long string of third-party applications, including Tweetbot, Twitpic and numerous others that have shut down as a result of Twitter’s API restrictions.

“It may be time to get into another game,” says Ben Strick, a BBC investigator specializing in Twitter analytics.

“The game has already changed,” adds Tim Barker, the former CEO of DataSift, who explained that there is rightful skepticism over improvements in Twitter’s treatment of third-party applications. From a purely business standpoint, once Twitter directly entered the data analytics market after its 2014 acquisition of Gnip, it wanted limited players and no longer a competing ecosystem. Under increased public scrutiny of social media platforms post-Cambridge Analytica, Twitter also prioritized guarding its platform’s image, hoping to ward off increased regulation of its data.

“You can look on Crunchbase, but I can guarantee no one is in their bedroom starting a Twitter-centric startup anymore,” says Barker.

The most glaring evidence of Twitter tightening access to its data are massive hikes in pricing, which have pushed several startups out of the market. “In the early days,” Barker explains, “the pricing of Twitter data was volume based, as they were building an economy and an ecosystem.” But once that market matured and was funded by venture capitalists, Twitter was a post-IPO company that saw an opportunity to churn profits.

According to Stuart Shulman, CEO of Texifter, the market price of high-quality metadata for 100,000 tweets in 2011 was around $25-$50 USD. Today, Twitter estimates for the same quantity of data could potentially cost tens of thousands of dollars.

In 2018, Texifter (customer #9 of Gnip) failed to renew its eighth annual agreement for premium Twitter data. During annual contract renegotiations, Twitter sharply increased prices and imposed increasingly stringent regulations, including a quota on the amount of data Texifter could license access to. In Shulman’s words, “Twitter made it mathematically impossible to turn a profit.”

Europe to limit how big tech can push its own services and use third party data

European lawmakers are taking aim at big tech’s ability to push its own services in search results at the expense of rivals, with Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager confirming today that a legislative proposal due in a few weeks will aim to ban what she called “unfair self-preferencing”.

The concern is that so-called gatekeeper platforms have the ability to manipulate the way that they rank different businesses — and “show their own services more visibly than their rivals”, she said in a speech.

The Commission is expected to propose a package of legislative measures next month to update long-standing EU ecommerce rules and propose new strictures for platforms with significant market power (aka gatekeepers) — making good on its earlier pledge to reboot digital regulation.

In her speech to the EPC Digital Clearinghouse today, Vestager confirmed that the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) will be introduced in a few weeks’ time.

The Commission is surely enjoying its timing, here, with grumblings of political discontent against big tech over the pond and the US Department of Justice having just filed an antitrust case against Google. Although the EU executive’s proposals for reworking digital rules have been years in the making.

Vestager said the DSA will update the existing E-Commerce Directive — by requiring digital services to “take more responsibility for dealing with illegal content and dangerous products”, including by standardizing processes for reporting illegal content and dealing with content reports and complaints.

“Those new responsibilities will help to keep Europeans just as safe online as they are in the physical world. They’ll protect legitimate businesses, which follow the rules, from being undercut by others who sell cheap, dangerous products. And by applying the same standards, all over Europe, they’ll make sure every European can rely on the same protection – and that digital businesses of all sizes can easily operate throughout Europe, without having to meet the costs of complying with different rules in different EU countries,” said Vestager.

She also confirmed increased transparency requirements would be in the package — such as related to content takedowns and recommendations; and also disclosures for online ads, including both who’s paying for an ad and “why we’ve been targeted by a certain ad”.

On illegal hate speech, EU lawmakers eye binding transparency for platforms

The DMA proposal will have two components, per Vestager: A “clear list of dos and don’ts” for “big digital gatekeepers”, which she said “will be based on our experience with the sorts of behaviour that can stop markets working well”; and a “harmonised market investigation framework” that will span the EU’s single market — giving the executive the power to preemptively intervene in digital markets to address structural problems before they become entrenched and lead to baked in Internet monopolies.

Recent press reports have suggested that the list of dos and don’ts that’s coming down the pipe for big tech could be lengthy — although the final detail remains to be seen.

But a ban on some forms of self-preferencing will certainly be on that list.

Google’s preferencing of its own services in search results has been on the European Commission’s antitrust radar for years — with a multi-year investigation into its Shopping search comparison service culminating in a $2.7BN fine in 2017 and an order to Google to cease abusive self-preferencing. Despite that action rival price comparison services have continued to complain it’s still not playing fair. Hence the Commission deciding more needs to be done now.

Google pushes Europe to limit ‘gatekeeper’ platform rules

Another restriction Vestager confirmed affected major dual marketplaces — which are set to face future EU controls is on how they can use third party sellers’ data. She argued that the asymmetry of platforms both having access to sellers’ data and competing against those third parties in other markets “can seriously damage fairness” — saying the proposal “aims to ban big gatekeepers from misusing their business users’ data in that way”.

Again it’s an issue that’s been on the Vestager’s radar for some time. Last year, for example, the Commission opened a formal investigation into ecommerce giant Amazon’s use of merchant data (although that probe remains ongoing).

The other core plank of the DMA involves reform of digital competition rules, as EU lawmakers look to evolve the regulatory toolbox to keep pace with digital business.

“We face a constant risk that big companies will succeed in pushing markets to a tipping point, sending them on a rapid, unstoppable slide towards monopoly — and creating yet another powerful gatekeeper,” said Vestager, explaining the push for a harmonised set of rules to tackle structural problems in digital markets across the EU.

The risk of leaving it to EU Member States’ national competition authorities to tackle such issues is “a fragmented system, with different rules in different EU countries”, she went on, adding: “We’ve come to a point where we have to take action. A point where the power of digital businesses – especially the biggest gatekeepers – threatens our freedoms, our opportunities, even our democracy. And where the trust that successful digitisation relies on is becoming seriously frayed.”

The message to tech giants from the EU’s executive is an unwavering “things are going to have to change” — with enforced responsibility coming down the pipe to replace patchy self-regulation.

Vestager also made it clear the Commission is paying attention to how the future rebooted digital rules will be enforced — which is a key point given how a lack of uniformly vigorous enforcement has taken some of the shine off the EU’s rebooted data protection framework (because decision powers are held at the Member State level).

The commissioner said “effective enforcement” will be a vital component of the DSA package, arguing that: “To really give people trust in the digital world, having the right rules in place isn’t enough. People also need to know that those rules really work – that even the biggest companies will actually do what they’re supposed to. And to make sure that happens, there’s no substitute for effective enforcement.”

This means the package will include measures aimed at improving the way national authorities cooperate — “to make sure the rules are properly enforced, throughout the EU”, as she put it.

“Our proposal won’t change the fundamental principle, that digital services should be regulated by their home country. But it will set up a permanent system of cooperation that will help those regulators work more effectively, to protect consumers all across Europe. And it will give the EU power to step in, when we need to, to enforce the rules against some very large platforms,” she added.

The Commission is also clearly banking on the DMA as its key enforcement lever against big tech’s market-denting bulk — by being able to intervene proactively as a way to foster and sustain competition.

And with anger at big tech riding high across Europe the Commission likely feels confident in getting bu-in from EU Member States’ representatives on the EU Council and the elected members of the European Parliament — support that it’ll need to get its legislation proposals across the line.

France and the Netherlands signal support for EU body to clip the wings of big tech

Google’s EU Android choice screen isn’t working say search rivals, calling for a joint process to devise a fair remedy

 

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GetYourGuide closes $133M convertible note as travel startups continue to weather the Covid-19 storm

On the heels of Germany announcing another lockdown to try to contain the rapid rise in Covid-19 cases in the country, one of the hottest startups in its capital city is announcing the closing of a large convertible note to help it keep moving forward.

GetYourGuide, which in brighter times runs a thriving and viral business curating, selling tickets for, and running walks and other exploration experiences for people touring different parts of the world — viral because it’s been taken up by a critical mass people who love to share pictures of their experiences on social media — has now closed funding, in the form of a convertible note, of €114 million ($133 million).

The funding is being led by Searchlight Capital, with SoftBank Vision Fund, KKR, Battery Ventures, Highland Europe, Spark Capital, Lakestar, Heartcore Capital, NGP Capital, and the founding team all also investing.

The company tells me that the convertible note will convert into equity when it next raises a round, with the investors getting a stake in the company at that point based on its valuation in that round.

That equity round is not anticipated to be for another 12-18 months, the company tells me, which could be why some might think of a convertible note as a loan (and strictly speaking they are called Convertible Loan Notes).

For some context, the company was last valued at over $1 billion after it raised a Series E of $484 million in 2019.

The funding comes not just at a tumultuous time for Germany amidst the global health pandemic, but the world in general, and also the tourism and travel industry in particular, which has been hit especially hard by the shut down of many flights and the ability to travel places, the closures of many facilities, as well as a general reluctance from consumers to congregate with lots of people who are not already in their “bubble.”

Johannes Reck, the co-founder and CEO of GetYourGuide, described the situation back in March as a “nuclear winter” to us.

Three travel startups tell us how they’re responding to the coronavirus crisis

At least this summer, business slightly started to recover, with GetYourGuide seeing a bounce back in its home country with ticket sales up 60% in Germany over the warmer months, with people also looking at making far-far-foward bookings in general, too. However, the startup has in recent weeks laid off around 100 employees as part of its own cost-cutting and right-sizing for the market that exists today, and likely for the near future.

All that said, GetYourGuide tells me that it’s now seen ticket sales of 45 million in aggregate on its platform, which is only up 5 million on its figures from January this year — a major slowdown in growth that speaks to the struggles companies like it are facing, and very likely far from the projections it had originally made for its expansion.

The plan is still to keep on keeping on, though, with an IPO remaining in its sights for the longer term.

Reck said today that the fundraising is one of the easier rounds it’s closed in its life as a startup — a mark of how investors, who are still flush with lots of money to invest, will continue to use some of it to help shore up the most promising but most hard-hit of its portfolio companies through the current crisis.

“Raising this new capital was straightforward, because our investor base shares the belief that our mission matters,” he told TechCrunch. “The pandemic has been the worst crisis in the history of tourism, but it’s also proven that leisure travel is a fundamental human need. Throughout the crisis, people have never stopped dreaming of traveling again, and when they do, experiences will be what they crave the most.”

In a separate statement (in a press release announcing the funding), he continued that optimistic position:

“After the pandemic, people will travel again, and experiencing the sights and culture of the world’s iconic destinations will be what they crave the most,” he said.

The belief that the industry —  not just GetYourGuide but the rest of it, too — is credible enough for  new backers also to come in, it seems. Eric Zinterhofer at Searchlight Capital is a first-time investor in the company with this funding.

“We have a natural affinity with the talented, entrepreneurial team at GetYourGuide, given Searchlight’s own enterprising culture and our success in partnering with founder-led businesses,” he said. “While 2020 has undoubtedly been a challenging year for the travel sector, we believe GetYourGuide has the right strategy, capabilities and investor support in place to rebound strongly once the pandemic is under control. We are excited to begin our work together.”

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Trump hints at stopping “powerful” big tech in latest ‘get out the vote’ tweet

If there was any doubt that yesterday’s flogging of big tech CEOs by Senate republicans was anything other than an electioneering stunt, president Trump has thumped the point home by tweeting a video message to voters in which he bashes “big tech” as (maybe) too powerful but certainly in need of being “spoken to” and (maybe) more.

The not-so-subtle suggestion being that a vote for Trump is a vote to break up the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter.

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— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2020

In the video Trump signposts the DoJ’s antitrust suit against Google — ending with a call to his supporters to get out the vote. So the president is brandishing an anti-big tech message as the latest cudgel in his culture war, just a few days ahead of the 2020 US presidential election.

“For a long time I’ve been hearing about how powerful big tech is, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or Google or any of them,” he begins the video, before making a quick vanity-dig about winning the 2016 election regardless of the “powerful” platforms being “totally against me”, as he glibly claims — entirely failing to mention that Facebook actually allowed its network to be a free and unfettered conduit for millions of pieces of anti-Clinton, pro-Trump propaganda cooked up in Russia.

Instead, he segues into a claim that the platforms have taken their power to a “a new level”, as he puts it — accusing them of “suppressing the corruption of Joe Biden” by ‘not letting the stories out’.

This is a direct reference to Trump’s Democrat challenger for the White House, and an indirect reference to a controversial New York Post story about a cache of emails purported to have been found on laptop hardware owned by Biden’s son Hunter — but which carry the distinct whiff of another election-focused political disinformation operation.

Suspect provenance of Hunter Biden data cache prompts skepticism and social media bans

The big difference this time around is that ‘big tech’ is rather more alive to the reputational risks to their platforms and companies if they’re found ignoring another orchestrated episode of election interference.

Hence both Facebook and Twitter limited the sharing of the Post’s story.

Twitter initially blocked links to it citing its hacked materials policy — though it later revised the policy after Republicans screamed ‘censorship’. And CEO Jack Dorsey got plenty more grilling on that theme at yesterday’s Senate hearing as Republican senators used the hearing as an opportunity to try to mint gotcha soundbites on bogus claims of big tech’s ‘anti-conservative bias & censorship’.

The tech CEOs mostly had to sit there and be bashed as it’s not politic for them to suggest Republicans might be experiencing more content moderation vs liberals because they break the rules more. Instead the electioneering pantomime ran on for hours.

Trump is just closing the loop on the politically biased soundbite fest by trying to turn tedious and trumped up claims of anti-conservative bias into a bald ‘get out the vote’ message to his base.

“Big tech has to be spoken to and probably in some form has to be stopped,” is the closest he gets to an actual policy position here. So Trump voters shouldn’t get their hopes up that he might actually deliver a break up of Facebook et al either.

The ironies are of course hot and heavy, given evidence shows social media algorithms’ baked in preference for spreading controversial/outrageous content further and faster than the blander, more nuanced stuff that’s likely to be closer to the truth. Simply put, it’s human nature to click on the crazy stuff — and ad-funded platforms are fuelled by eyeball engagement. So lies have been great for big tech’s bottom lines.

That then means these very same ‘big tech’ platforms tend to amplify Republican messaging — certainly of the Trumpian flavor, i.e. where trumped up claims, lacking in evidence and/or reality, are preferred. (Like, say, Trump calling Mexicans rapists or claiming the pandemic is over as thousands continue to die. Or that he has immunity from COVID-19 when the scientific consensus is we don’t know how long a person may be immune after fighting off the virus and we know some people have been reinfected with COVID-19, and so on.)

So the scale of the nonsense being peddled by Trump’s Republican party is indeed very strong and very powerful. But then, well, we haven’t been in Kansas for a long time.

At the time of writing Twitter has also not placed any kind of contextual labelling on Trump’s tweet — despite the contents of the video arguably containing misinformation about big tech itself. But that’s just one more irony to add to the steaming pile.

And if you’re feeling a pang of pity for the tech CEOs caught in this partisan bind it pays to remember they made their bed by claiming to operate community and content policies they didn’t — and still don’t — properly enforce. Which makes Trump their very own monster.

Section 230 barely rates a mention in Senate’s hasty pre-election flogging of tech CEOs

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