Brian Fung @b_fung Twitter profile

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Brian Fung

10 months

So if we’re mutuals on Twitter and I’m not following you over there yet, please holler

CNN tech reporter. I try to make public policy relevant to your life. Previously: The Washington Post, National Journal, The Atlantic. 3K Followers.

www.threads.net

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Last Seen Profiles

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

HBO responds to Trump's GoT-themed tweet: “Though we can understand the enthusiasm for Game of Thrones now that the final season has arrived, we still prefer our intellectual property not be used for political purposes.”

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

5 years

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

NEW: The White House did not consult the FCC on a forthcoming executive order pertaining to social media companies, according to a person briefed on the matter. This suggests the draft order has not gone through the normal interagency review process.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Parler will be deplatformed from AWS at 11:59 pm Pacific time on Sunday for what Amazon told it was repeated examples of violent rhetoric and incitement. Amazon told Parler that it flagged 98 examples of this type of content and that it will no longer host Parler's website.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Amazon has fired the warehouse worker who organized a walkout yesterday to protest the level of coronavirus protections at the company’s Staten Island facility:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Tech platforms designing their policies

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

NEW: YouTube has suspended President Trump’s channel for a week, and potentially longer, after it removed a video that the company says incited violence.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

A little scoop from me: The FCC has launched a sweeping review of the companies it regulates, hunting for ownership ties to Russia in a possible prelude to a clampdown. The assessment in coordination with DOJ and DHS covers all FCC licensees.

FCC probes media and telecom sector for Russia ownership ties | CNN Business

The Federal Communications Commission is on the hunt for companies it oversees that may have ownership ties to Russia, in a prelude to possible clampdowns following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

www.cnn.com

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

YouTube confirms to me that Trump’s suspension is being extended again and that Rudy Giuliani will be barred from monetizing his channel for at least 30 days.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Awkward.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Confirming @BuzzFeedNews ' scoop, I've independently obtained a copy of the letter that Amazon sent to Parler announcing plans to boot the company off AWS.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Twitter confirms to me it's permanently banned Project Veritas (and temporarily locked James O'Keefe's account) for what the platform says is repeated violations of the company's anti-doxxing policies.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Amazon says the worker was fired because he was supposed to be under quarantine, not out and about. Amazon says that put others at risk. The worker, Chris Smalls, says Amazon is the one putting people at risk by not closing and sanitizing the warehouse.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

No masks or social distancing, FWIW

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

NEW: Twitter has updated the labels it applies to election misinformation. Now, false claims of election victory will carry labels naming Biden as president-elect, rather than saying the claims are merely “disputed.” The change is live now:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Facebook has banned "stop the steal" content from its platform — 69 days after the election.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Apple has banned Parler from the iOS App Store for hosting "threats of violence and illegal activity.” Here’s the message Apple sent to Parler explaining the decision, which Apple has provided:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

NEW: Amazon says it wants to depose President Trump and Defense Secretary Esper as part of its JEDI contracting protest, according to documents unsealed in court today. Amazon also says it wants to depose former Defense Secretary Mattis.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Just did a quick count. 50% of Trump’s tweets from the last 24 hours (original tweets, not counting RTs) have received a contextual label from Twitter.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

9 months

NEW: Two brands have pulled their advertising from Twitter / X after their ads and others' ran against an account promoting fascism. The brands pulling funding are pharmaceutical giant Gilead and NCTA, the cable industry's top trade group:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

DoorDash says in some cases the compromised info includes ORDER HISTORY. Now the hackers know how frequently you cave to sad weeknight takeout

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

New from me: Twitter has spent much of Wednesday battling a wave of blue-check verified impostor accounts posing as Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, LeBron James and even Nintendo — just hours after Twitter launched its paid verification feature

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Parler’s CEO confirms and says Parler could be off of the internet for up to a week:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

After six years at the @washingtonpost , next month I head to @CNN to cover business, tech and policy. I'm so grateful to all the incredible people at The Post who've supported me and helped me grow — as a D.C. native, it's been a privilege to write for this hometown paper.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Twitter has labeled Trump’s tweets about voting twice:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Also worth remembering that as a general practice, the FCC has repeatedly gone out of its way to avoid regulating websites and internet companies. The FCC’s GOP leadership made it a point to avoid “regulating the internet” when it rolled back its own net neutrality rules.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

TikTok says it’ll sue the Trump administration over its executive order: “To ensure that the rule of law prevails and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the Executive Order through the judicial system.”

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

The person briefed added that based on the lack of interagency review, it seems the draft EO was hastily conceived.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Worth remembering that with prior WH attempts to draft an executive order targeting social media companies, the FCC and FTC (which are led by Republican chairmen) privately pushed back on being deputized to police political speech on social platforms:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Twitter confirms that the now-disappeared Trump tweets from @POTUS were the result of Twitter enforcement.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

So to recap, Musk's test for enforcement will be: – Is the speech illegal? If not, then – Is the speech "destructive to the world"? Who gets to decide what that means, and which consequences will apply and when, will be the next big battle.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Twitter says it's going to start labeling Covid vaccine misinformation and warns repeat violators will face permanent bans, just like with violations of its civic integrity policy.

Updates to our work on COVID-19 vaccine misinformation

blog.twitter.com

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

JUST IN: Airbnb says it will cancel all reservations in DC for the week of inauguration, and that it's identified and banned "numerous individuals" on its platform who either participated in the Capitol riots or are linked to "known hate groups":

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

NEW: Twitter execs have tried to conceal enormous security vulnerabilities that put users, investors and even US national security at risk, according to a damning new whistleblower report by the company’s former head of security:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

A viral YouTube video with over a million views and that's been shared repeatedly in the top-performing Facebook group in politics claims Biden has lost his status as president-elect. Others claim CNN has altered its projections. Neither claim is true.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Live footage of Twitter vs. Trump

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

NEW: Twitter was forced to shut down its entire Sacramento data center due to extreme heat, and warned internally that if another data center goes down it could result in Twitter outages for some users, because Twitter is now in a "non-redundant state":

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

The Biden administration is dropping the Trump administration’s lawsuit against California’s net neutrality law, in a victory for state legislators and internet activists.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

It wasn't until security footage was shown at the impeachment trial — a *month* after the Capitol riots — that military leaders learned how close the nuclear football was to falling into the wrong hands

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

ALSO NEW: Facebook introduces a new policy against content that urges Americans to report to election sites as unauthorized poll watchers, if the content uses “militarized language” or if the intent is to intimidate voters.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Huge: Verizon is pulling its advertising from Facebook. That’s perhaps the biggest brand yet to join the #StopHateForProfit campaign.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

YouTube also says it’s taking the extra step of indefinitely disabling comments underneath Trump’s videos.

YouTubeInsider

@YouTubeInsider

3 years

2/ Given the ongoing concerns about violence, we will also be indefinitely disabling comments on President Trump’s channel, as we’ve done to other channels where there are safety concerns found in the comments section.

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@b_fung

4 years

NEW: @Starbucks pulling ads from *all* social media platforms, not just Facebook. While not officially part of #StopHateForProfit , this is a huge blow to FB; Starbucks was its 6th-largest advertiser last year, per Pathmatics, spending nearly $95 million.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Now NYAG Letitia James is getting involved, calling for an NLRB investigation and promising to consider “all legal options."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

New: The House Judiciary committee is launching a wide-ranging antitrust investigation into the tech industry, covering Facebook, Google, Amazon and others. Depositions, subpoenas, the whole nine yards.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Pretty dramatic congressional testimony here from Facebook’s former director of monetization, who admits he had a role in making Facebook as addictive as cigarettes. "We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook.”

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Update: US officials say multiple electronic items were stolen from senators’ offices, and documents too, which could have potential “national security equities.” w/ @KaraScannell :

Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

After Capitol rioters ransacked congressional offices and stole at least one government laptop, cybersecurity experts raised alarm bells over the potential for a data breach linked to the attacks:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

If you’re a PR person and you haven’t dumped your news yet, you’re doing it wrong

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

The previously unreported probe comes amid mounting scrutiny of Russian-backed programming on broadcast and social media. Russia's not known as a major player in the telecom space, but any company the FCC finds that it deems a security risk could end up like Huawei — blocked.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

I just keep reading this line over and over and can’t stop.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Twitter has now removed several of Trump’s tweets, including his tweet about Pence and the video to supporters earlier this afternoon.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

NEW: Smalls tells me he intends to file a complaint with the NLRB on his firing from Amazon. He gave no timeframe for it, saying his first priority is to get local government officials to close the Staten Island warehouse. But, he said: “Legal action will be taken in due time."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

The FTC has voted unanimously to endorse the principle known as “right-to-repair,” approving a policy statement committing the agency to investigating anti-competitive repair restrictions under both the nation’s antitrust laws and a key law governing consumer product warranties.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Parler now finds itself virtually homeless on the internet as the world's biggest tech companies have moved to boot it from their platforms:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki says Trump's account will be restored when the risk of violence has receded. Adds that it won't be soon in light of new concerns re: Capitol violence. "It's pretty clear right now," she says, "that there is still an elevated risk of violence."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

This policy *would* apply to Trump Jr’s “army” video if posted again, Facebook confirms. Facebook’s Monika Bickert told reporters that covered content would include posts that use the word “army” or “battle.” The policy is intended to get at “implicit” voter suppression.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

After Graham defended Amazon in opening remarks, blasting Sen. Sanders for holding a hearing for the "demonization" of an individual company, Smalls told Graham: "You forgot that the people are the ones who make these companies operate."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

And there it is: "The proposal would begin an inquiry into the vulnerabilities of the Internet's global routing system."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

Listening to the oral arguments on Texas's social media law and ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh One of the judges just conflated "interactive computer service" with "internet provider"

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

If you’re not following this week’s court decision on Texas’s social media law, you need to tune in. Right frickin’ now.

Texas has declared open season on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with censorship law | CNN Business

Texas residents can now sue Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for allegedly censoring their content after a federal appeals court sided Wednesday with the state’s law restricting how social media sites...

www.cnn.com

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

NEW: Apple has approved Parler to return to the app store, according to a letter from Apple to Congress obtained by CNN:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

In addition, the FCC may drop a notice of inquiry as early as today that looks into the security of internet traffic routing — specifically, the risk of BGP hijacking attacks, some of which have been linked in the past to suspected Russia-based actors.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Greene tried to get ahead of this story earlier today by claiming that the posts @emsteck and @KFILE found were by social media managers and “random users” who “did not represent my views." But the story links to a video where Greene is doing the talking.

Andy Kaczynski

@KFILE

3 years

In a speech that she posted on Facebook live, Green suggested that Nancy Pelosi could be executed for treason. She replied to a comment about hanging Obama and Clinton by saying "the stage is being set."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Separately: 1. YouTube tells me it has banned Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast channel and one other associated channel, and 2. Google tells me it has dropped Parler from the Google Play Store

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

So is Musk's "wrong and bad" test a two-pronged test? Must a tweet be both Wrong and Bad to invite enforcement? Or is it that enforcement will be applied to tweets that are Wrong and also tweets that are Bad?

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

A dunk tank for candidates who exceed their time.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

"This thing sucks. It's a headache and isn't worth the trouble." "Yeah, but we made Ed Snowden out to be the devil incarnate so agreeing with him now would be kind of awkward."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Today’s my last day at work before I head off on parental leave for a little while. I’ll mostly be not on this website (or any websites, hopefully) while I hang with my little girl. Please nobody make any news today, kthxbai

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

This is also tech reporters watching congressional hearings about Section 230

zaкovsкa

@sanjazakovska

3 years

Devs watching QA test the product

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

1 year

Former Twitter CEO @jack responds to Twitter's link-banning announcement: "Why?" and "doesn't make sense."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

Just in: @VP Harris and Labor Sec. Marty Walsh will meet **Thursday** at the White House, in person, with labor organizers including Christian Smalls of the Amazon Labor Union, per a WH official. Attendees also include organizers representing workers from Starbucks, REI & more.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

And importantly, authors of Section 230 such as @RonWyden have repeatedly said that the intent of the law was to ensure tech companies could *not* be sued into oblivion. For the WH to leverage 230 into obtaining the opposite outcome would be to undermine the purpose of the law.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

This is big: The NSA is recommending the White House abandon the controversial Section 215 phone-metadata surveillance program that national security officials once defended as a critical anti-terrorism tool:

NSA Recommends Dropping Phone-Surveillance Program

The National Security Agency has recommended that the White House abandon a U.S. surveillance program that collects information about Americans’ phone calls and text messages, saying the logistical...

www.wsj.com

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Still feels like Facebook and Twitter did the bare minimum with misinfo labeling and society was so desperate for any accountability system that it largely gave the platforms a pass on implementation.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

My earlier tweet was incomplete. Musk's test for enforcement is in fact more nuanced. It's actually: – Is the speech illegal? If not, then – Is the speech either "destructive to the world" or "wrong and bad"?

Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

So to recap, Musk's test for enforcement will be: – Is the speech illegal? If not, then – Is the speech "destructive to the world"? Who gets to decide what that means, and which consequences will apply and when, will be the next big battle.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Experts who study extremism: Deplatforming works. It may not eradicate conspiratorial thinking, but it prevents it from finding susceptible new audiences to corrupt.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Civil rights groups met tonight with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg via video conference to talk about Trump’s content. They’re extremely upset, calling Zuckerberg’s decision “incomprehensible.” From @vanitaguptaCR , @Sifill_LDF and @rashadrobinson :

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Twitter confirms to me that today is the first time any Trump tweets have been labeled as misleading by the platform. In these (two) cases, Twitter says, Trump’s tweets were flagged for "potentially misleading information about voting processes” and are labeled for context.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

More Amazon: "The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends.” With @ZcohenCNN :

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Much of the order could quickly get bogged down in a thicket of legal and constitutional questions. Just for example, the FTC reports to Congress, not the WH.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Twitter statement on permanently banning @TeamTrump , the Trump campaign’s official account. (The campaign account had been seen sharing the same thread that Trump tried to post from @POTUS .)

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

10 months

NEW: A seven-month congressional probe finds tax-prep companies spent years sharing taxpayer data with Meta and Google in potential violation of federal law — data that in some cases was misused for targeted ads:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

More Musk: "If there are tweets that are wrong and bad, those should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension, a temporary suspension is appropriate but not a permanent ban.”

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

NEW: Sen. Amy Klobuchar plans to hold multiple tech-related antitrust subcommittee hearings, including standalone hearings on app store policies and news publishing, she tells me. Other hearings will also cover consolidation in agriculture, cable, transportation, she says.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

NEW: Telegram acknowledges to me it's battling an uptick in violent extremism on its platform amid a surge in new users. In the last 24 hours, the company has shut down what it said are "dozens" of channels that had posted "calls to violence for thousands of subscribers."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Twitter says it’s banned more than 70,000 QAnon-promoting accounts since Friday, with many account-holders operating multiple accounts:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

Twitter is acknowledging a wave of "coordinated" and "malicious" activity on its platform as right-wing activists say they've been "weaponizing" the site's new private media policy:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

I visited Shadow Inc.’s address listed in the Iowa Dems’ disclosure filings. It led to a WeWork in this trendy Washington alley (steps from Maydan and La Colombe). But a receptionist told me Shadow moved out last month to an unknown destination. ???

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

2 years

When the daycare’s closed after a snowstorm, you gotta bring in the real expert on “high-frequency interference,” if you know what I mean

@JohnMone

2 years

@b_fung shout out to Brian Fung and Chloe for the assist on the talk back re: 5G

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Kamala Harris to Jake Tapper: "The president of the United States, in the year of our Lord 2020, refuses to condemn white supremacists."

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

1 year

@TwitterDev Does "verified gov" in this context mean that the government account must be a verified Twitter Blue subscriber in order to access the API for free?

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

More specifically, Giuliani will be able to reapply for the YouTube Partner Program after 30 days, provided that he addresses the issues that led to the initial suspension, YouTube told me.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

We’ve gotten copies of the draft order. Looking at the text, the main provisions look fairly similar to what we reported previously here:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Twitter is about to become a little more like reddit and Wikipedia, turning to users to add context to misleading tweets in a new pilot project known as Birdwatch:

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

This part in particular is wild.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

5 years

First two things I did in @thedivisiongame last night: 1. Made a carbon copy of myself 2. Hightailed it to my office at the @washingtonpost

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

NEW: Amazon has filed its reply to Parler's lawsuit, listing more than a dozen examples of what it said was violent content on Parler that violated AWS's terms. Amazon also invokes #Section230 , making this a high-profile test of the law Trump despises.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Here, have a cat.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

3 years

Parler has sued Amazon Web Services, alleging that being deplatformed will be Parler's "death knell" and that Amazon has (among other things) violated antitrust law by seeking to eliminate a "surging player" from the marketplace.

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@b_fung

3 years

JUST IN: Google bans all political advertising until "at least" Jan. 21, designating the Capitol riots, the impeachment, and inauguration as a "sensitive event" under its policies.

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Brian Fung

@b_fung

4 years

Trump here is seemingly daring Twitter to take action against an official government account. But remember, in the eyes of the law there is no difference — Trump’s personal account *is* a government account

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