SOCIAL
EU eyes deal to tame internet ‘Wild West’

The EU’s internal markets commissioner say the internet is like the “Wild West” – Copyright AFP Aleksey Filippov
Daniel ARONSSOHN
The European Union on Friday homed in on new regulation to require Big Tech to remove harmful online content, the bloc’s latest move to rein in the world’s online giants.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) — the second part of a massive project to regulate tech companies — aims to ensure tougher consequences for platforms and websites that violate a long list of banned content ranging from hate speech to disinformation and paedophilia images.
EU officials and parliament members started talks in Brussels to hammer out the deal, hoping to reach an agreement later in the day on legislation in the works since 2020.
The text is the companion to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which targeted anti-competitive practices among tech behemoths like Google and Facebook and was concluded in late March.
The legislation has faced lobbying from the tech companies and intense debate over the extent of freedom of speech.
“What’s forbidden offline must be forbidden online,” tweeted EU internal markets commissioner Thierry Breton, who has previously described the internet as the “Wild West”.
Tech giants have been repeatedly called out for failing to police their platforms — a New Zealand terrorist attack that was livestreamed on Facebook in 2019 caused global outrage, and the chaotic insurrection in the US last year was promoted online.
The dark side of the internet also includes e-commerce platforms filled with counterfeit or defective products.
– Clinton praise –
The proposed regulation would require platforms to swiftly remove illegal content as soon as they are aware of its existence. Social networks would have to suspend users who frequently breach the law.
The DSA would force e-commerce sites to verify the identity of suppliers before proposing their products.
While much of the DSA’s stipulations cover all companies, it lays out special obligations for “very large platforms”, defined as those with more than 45 million active users in the European Union.
The list of companies has not yet been released but will include giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, as well as Twitter and probably the likes of TikTok, Zalando and Booking.com.
These players will be obliged to assess the risks associated with the use of their services and remove illegal content.
They will also be required to be more transparent about their data and algorithms.
The European Commission will oversee yearly audits and be able to impose fines of up to six percent of their annual sales for repeated infringements.
Among the practices expected to be outlawed is the use of data on religion or political views for targeted advertising.
Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state and presidential candidate, applauded the EU for taking action.
“For too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it,” Clinton tweeted on Thursday.
“I urge our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act across the finish line and bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”
Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen caused a huge stir last year when she accused her former bosses of prioritising profits over the welfare of its users.
She hailed in November the “enormous potential” of the European regulation project, which could become a “reference” for other countries, including the United States.
However, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) fears the text does not go far enough.
It wants a ban on all advertising based on the surveillance of internet users and random checks on online vendors’ products.
Source link
SOCIAL
Musk regrets controversial post but won’t bow to advertiser ‘blackmail’

Elon Musk’s comments at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Slaven Vlasic
Elon Musk apologized Wednesday for endorsing a social media post widely seen as anti-Semitic, but accused advertisers who are turning away from his social media platform X of “blackmail” and said anyone who does so can “go fuck yourself.”
The remark before corporate executives at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence.
Earlier, Musk had apologized for what he called “literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done.”
In a comment on X, formerly Twitter, Musk on November 15 called a post “the actual truth” that said Jewish communities advocated a “dialectical hatred against whites,” which was criticized as echoing longtime conspiracy theory among White supremacists.
The statement prompted a flood of departures from X of major advertisers, including Apple, Disney, Comcast and IBM who criticized Musk for anti-semitism.
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” Musk said Wednesday. “It was foolish of me.”
He told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin that his post had been misinterpreted and that he had sought to clarify the remark in subsequent posts to the thread.
But Musk also said he wouldn’t be beholden to pressure from advertisers.
“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money?” Musk said. “Go fuck yourself.”
But the billionaire acknowledged that there were business implications to the advertiser actions.
“If the company fails… it will fail because of an advertiser boycott” Musk said. “And that will be what will bankrupt the company.”
Musk, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel earlier this week, insisted in the interview that he holds no discrimination against Jews, calling himself “philo-Semitic,” or an admirer of Judaism.
During the interview, Musk wore a necklace given to him by a parent of an Israeli hostage taken in the Hamas attack on October 7. The necklace reads, “Bring Them Home.”
Musk told Sorkin that the Israel trip had been planned earlier and was not an “apology tour” related to the controversial tweet.
SOCIAL
TikTok Encourages Creators To Make Longer Videos, With Focus On Ad Revenue 11/30/2023

A new report by The Information shows the company’s recent efforts to convince
creators to put out longer videos in order to provide more room for ad placements.
According to the …
SOCIAL
X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

Next time you go to embed an X post, you may notice a new step:
Now, X will enable you to choose whether you want to embed the video element in isolation, or the whole post, as normal.
And if you do choose to embed just the video (or GIF), it’ll look like this:
Which could be a helpful way to present X-originated video on third-party websites, and add context to, say, your blog post, without the clutter of the full X framing.
But it could also reduce brand exposure for X, which is likely why Twitter didn’t enable this before, though it did once provide an “embedded video widget” which essentially served the same purpose.

Twitter gradually seemed to phase that out as the platform evolved, and there’s no specific reason that I can find as to why it removed it as an option. But either way, now, it’s back, so you have more options for using X-originated content, and putting more focus on video elements specifically.
Though I don’t know why they didn’t also take the opportunity to remove the ‘Tweet’ reference. Since the re-brand to X, the platform seems to have gone to little effort to weed out all the tweet and bird terminology, but then again, with 80% fewer staff, that’s probably understandable as well.
-
FACEBOOK6 days ago
Indian Government Warns Facebook, YouTube About Deepfakes, Misinformation Violations
-
MARKETING5 days ago
Whiteboard Friday Recap 2023: AI Edition
-
SOCIAL7 days ago
Meta Stock: Still Room For Upside In A Maturing Market (NASDAQ:META)
-
SOCIAL7 days ago
Instagram Will Now Enable All Users to Download Publicly Posted Reels Clips
-
MARKETING7 days ago
OpenAI: The return of the king
-
MARKETING6 days ago
Making the Most of Electronic Resumes (Pro Tips and Tricks)
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
No Estimate To Share For Completion Of Google November Core & Reviews Updates
-
SEARCHENGINES4 days ago
Google Merchant Center Automatically Creating Promotions
You must be logged in to post a comment Login