Welcome to the second week of the 404. Take a minute. Savour the moment.
The Headlines
On Wednesday afternoon Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Tim Cook testified to the antitrust subcommittee in a historic marathon hearing.
US Antitrust laws were written in 19th Century when large monopolistic companies dominated entire industries. They have since been adapted to accommodate new technologies.
Should they extend to big tech companies?
I sifted through the questions, the theatrics, and the technical recesses to find some key moments….
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On Friday night, Donald Trump announced to reporters present on Air Force One that he was going to ban Tik Tok.
The embattled social media platform responded through its official Twitter account. Earlier in the week, CEO Kevin Mayer published an open letter stating a ‘commitment to ensuring that TikTok remains a safe and secure platform...”
This is the latest development in a series of set backs for Tik Tok and parent company Bytedance. The controversy centres around purported security risks and data sharing with the Chinese government.
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UK Rapper Wiley was permanently suspended from Twitter following a long series of anti-semitic tweets. He was initially banned for seven days.
There are now calls for his MBE to be revoked.
A video originally published by Breitbart featuring false information on Covid-19 treatment was removed from Facebook, Youtube and Twitter this week.
Several versions of the the video were shared on Twitter by Donald Trump before it was taken down.
Mark Zuckerberg defended the decision to remove the video in Wednesday’s hearing when questioned by ranking committee member Rep. Jim Sesenbrenner.
In the past, Facebook in particular has been criticised for not removing political adverts containing false information. In October Sen. Elizabeth Warren posted an ad with deliberately false information about Zuckerberg to highlight the issue.
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From the old country
The Irish Data Protection Commission has ‘serious doubts’ as whether the collection of holiday makers’ welfare information was legal.
Since July 7th, there have been at least 104 cases where Pandemic Unemployment Payments have been stopped after claimants travelled abroad. Social welfare inspectors have been collecting information at Irish airports.
The government announced a ‘U-Turn’ on the policy on Wednesday.
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Further down the timeline
On Thursday, the US House of Representatives blocked a motion brought forward by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to prevent US military from recruiting on game streaming platform Twitch.
Earlier this month Twitch told the US Army to stop posting fake giveaway links which redirected to recruitment forms.
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Good to Know
A new UK Civil Service guide to creating social media campaigns warns against using emojis to ‘communicate a core message.’ 🙈