A Democratic senator and others told us they're wary of Donald Trump attacking Amazon. The latest salvo from the president came Thursday, when he ordered reassessment of the financial situation of the U.S. Postal Service, which Trump says loses money because of Amazon. Trump also attacked The Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, for its coverage of the administration.
Karl Herchenroeder
Karl Herchenroeder, Associate Editor, is a technology policy journalist for publications including Communications Daily. Born in Rockville, Maryland, he joined the Warren Communications News staff in 2018. He began his journalism career in 2012 at the Aspen Times in Aspen, Colorado, where he covered city government. After that, he covered the nuclear industry for ExchangeMonitor in Washington. You can follow Herchenroeder on Twitter: @karlherk
While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers Wednesday his personal information was scraped in the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, he avoided committing to minimizing user data collection yet said regulation of social media companies is “inevitable.” His wide-ranging testimony at the House Commerce Committee was a second consecutive day of congressional testimony (see 1804100054).
It was “clearly a mistake” for Facebook to trust Cambridge Analytica had deleted ill-gotten user data in 2015, and the platform needs to proactively police to ensure its tools are used for good, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told nearly half the Senate in a hearing Tuesday (see 1804090026). Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters separately about a “privacy bill of rights” they are crafting in response to the controversy. The bill is modeled after the EU’s general data protection regulation, they said. An aide for Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said the senator is working on his own legislative proposal.
After a data scandal affecting some 87 million platform users, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blamed himself for not taking a “broad enough view of our responsibility.” The remarks come in testimony prepared for presentation to Congress Wednesday in which he also casts blame on scholar Aleksandr Kogan and Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook will require identity and location disclosure for political advertisers, it announced Friday, also endorsing a key bill to thwart foreign interference in elections and becoming perhaps the first major tech company to do so. "Election interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform, and that's why we support" the Honest Ads Act (see 1803260045), CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Friday. "This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online." The bill would pave the way to apply some disclosure rules to online ads that are now required for ads on more traditional media. The Cambridge Analytica intrusion and Facebook's role also came up at length at a panel discussion Friday (see 1804060057)
The FTC isn't strong enough to be the only consumer protection cop policing online platforms, Commissioner Terrell McSweeny said Thursday, while blasting as unjustified Congress’ 2017 decision to repeal FCC broadband privacy rules. Speaking at a New America event, McSweeny said it’s “100 percent the right question to ask” how Cambridge Analytica could have allegedly abused private data of 87 million Facebook (see 1804050024) users in spite of a 2011 FTC consent decree that the social network agreed to following privacy concerns.
An online sales tax case before the Supreme Court, South Dakota v. Wayfair (see 1803080066), has divided members of Congress and pitted online retailers against more than 40 states. Central to the case is whether online sellers can be required to collect the same sales taxes as local stores. The high court could decide whether to repeal 1992's Quill v. North Dakota decision, which established that sales tax laws were too complicated for retailers to know how much tax to collect unless they were physically present in the customer’s state. Oral argument will be April 17.
An active shooter was reported at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, Tuesday evening Eastern time, and details were emerging. The San Bruno Police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tweeted that they responded to a shooting. “Please stay away from Cherry Ave & Bay Hill Drive,” San Bruno Police wrote. Google tweeted that it's "coordinating with authorities and will provide official information here from Google and YouTube as it becomes available.” YouTube employee Vadim Lavrusik tweeted: “Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers,” before tweeting that he safely evacuated. The closest emergency room to the YouTube campus wasn’t treating any gunshot victims, but it’s not a trauma center and such nearby facilities may have received patients, a spokesman for the Kaiser healthcare system told us. We couldn’t reach anyone immediately at area hospitals with trauma centers. Following its initial tweet, Google said: "We have advised those who are currently at the SBO office to continue to shelter in place until further notice."
Consumer Watchdog and other privacy groups said Facebook should end campaign contributions and “electioneering,” and hire an independent auditor to monitor the platform’s use of personal data in relation to election advertisements (see 1803270043). Facebook should be barred from election efforts, given the platform’s influence over the U.S. electorate, said Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court during a conference call Wednesday. “This is all about stealing America,” Court said, accusing Facebook of allowing the personal data of 50 million Americans to improperly fall into the hands of Cambridge Analytica, which he described as electioneers.
A source at Facebook said Tuesday the company is in touch with lawmakers but wouldn't confirm that CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreed to testify before Congress, as reported by multiple outlets after the Cambridge Analytica controversy.