MC Weekly Update 2/13: Oversight Hearings, PART 1

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• A full-day House Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter’s decision to temporarily block a New York Post article on Hunter Biden’s laptop delivered on political theater, but failed to produce much new information or a “gotcha” moment from the former executives on the panel who agreed the decision was a mistake, but refuted claims of government influence. - Cat Zakrzewski, Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Will Oremus, Cat Zakrzewski, Cristiano Lima / The Washington Post, Tech Policy Press
  • More: Alex’s beautiful face was featured on a poster during the hearing as he was name-checked by a congresswoman who displayed correspondence where he suggested a contact that Facebook and Twitter staffers could reach out to for more information about claims about a fake poll worker on Election Day 2020.
• It turns out that Republicans also contact social media platforms to complain about posts they don’t like. In one such case, the Trump administration contacted Twitter about a string of swears tweeted by Chrissy Teigen to describe the former president. In fact, there were so many requests that Twitter made a database to handle them all. - Adam Rawnsley, Asawin Suebsaeng/ Rolling Stone
• Turkey initially blocked access to Twitter in the aftermath of powerful earthquakes that resulted in mass casualties. The Turkish government is using special powers to remove content critical of the country’s response and even launched a new app to report “disinformation.” - Adam Satariano/ The New York Times, @fahrettinaltun
• The Guardian tested AI tools used by tech companies to measure how sexually suggestive posts are, finding that photos of women working out or with partial nudity received significantly higher ratings than those with men — resulting in less visibility. Should companies have different rules for where to draw the line on “raciness”? What kind of transparency could verify biases?  - Gianluca Mauro, Hilke Schellmann/ The Guardian
• Graphika discovered the first known deepfake influence operation, featuring fictitious newscasters pushing pro-China news. Is the “information apocalypse” finally here? - Adam Satariano, Paul Mozur/ The New York Times, Graphika
• What does the balloon mean for geopolitics in an era of deflating relations and entangled economics for China and the U.S.? - Fareed Zakaria/ The Washington Post
• Donald Trump officially had access restored to his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Anyone checked on YouTube lately? - Lauren Feiner/ CNBC, Jason Abbruzzese/ NBC News

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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