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Browser maker Opera adds built-in TikTok support to desktop sidebar function • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Opera, Social, TikTokNo Comments

Web browser developer Opera announced today that it added a built-in TikTok feature to the sidebar of its desktop browser, allowing users to scroll through TikTok videos and post content without opening a separate app or creating a new tab. To enable the feature, Opera users must right-click on the browser sidebar and go to the Messengers section. Once enabled, users can open the sidebar and scroll through their TikTok feed on the left-hand side of their screen before returning to what they were doing on their main page. While adding sidebar functionality isn’t new, Opera claims to be the only browser to integrate TikTok in its sidebar. Opera has already added various messengers and social media platforms to its sidebar, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Twitter. Joanna Czajka, Product Director at Opera, said in a statement, “Typically, people who have started using the messengers and social media platforms available through Opera’s sidebar do not want to go back to a world without them.” Plus, according to Opera’s survey, the built-in TikTok feature was widely requested by respondents between 18 and 35 years old, the company told ZebethMedia. Fifty-four percent of Opera users in the U.S. from the 18-25 age group use TikTok. Still, it’s an interesting move for Opera to roll out a built-in TikTok feature since many users opt for the mobile app. Sensor Tower recently reported that TikTok was the highest-grossing app in the world. In the first quarter of 2022, the social video app had been downloaded over 175 million times. What’s more, app intelligence firm data.ai found that users in more than 12 worldwide markets spend four to five hours per day on apps, with TikTok being among the top apps based on downloads, consumer spend and monthly active users. So, while it’s unlikely the billions of TikTok users will use the lesser-known Opera browser to entertain themselves in between tasks, many Opera users will probably get a kick out of the new feature. “TikTok has developed from a platform full of short funny videos to a source of entertainment, news, and inspiration. With this release, Opera is answering our users’ requests to have TikTok at their fingertips,” added Czajka.

Is Elon Musk’s Twitter about to fall out of the GDPR’s one-stop shop? • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 14, 2022Posted in Elon Musk, GDPR, Government & Policy, Privacy, Social, TwitterNo Comments

Helmed by erratic new owner Elon Musk, Twitter is no longer fulfilling key obligations required for it to claim Ireland as its so-called “main establishment” under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a source familiar with the matter has told ZebethMedia. Our source, who is well placed, requested and was granted anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the issue — which could have major ramifications for Twitter and for Musk. Like many major tech firms with customers across the European Union, Twitter currently avails itself of a mechanism in the GDPR known as the one-stop shop (OSS). This is beneficial because it allows the company to streamline regulatory administration by being able to engage exclusively with a lead data supervisor in the EU Member State where it is ‘main established’ (in Twitter’s case Ireland), rather than having to accept inbound from data protection authorities across the bloc. However, under Musk’s chaotic reign — which has already seen a fast and deep downsizing of Twitter’s headcount, kicking off with layoffs of 50% of staff earlier this month — questions are being asked over whether its main establishment status in Ireland for the GDPR still holds or not. The resignation late last week of key senior personnel responsible for ensuring security and privacy compliance looks like a canary in the coal-mine when it comes to Twitter’s regulatory situation — with CISO Lea Kissner; chief privacy officer Damien Kieran; and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty all walking out the door en masse. It’s not clear whether any adequately qualified individuals will be willing to step into these critical compliance roles for privacy and security at Twitter given the current Musk-driven craziness — since anyone signing up for that level of responsibility risks opening themselves up to personal liability should regulatory requirements be breached on their watch. As we reported Friday, Musk’s attorney and now head of legal at Twitter, Alex Spiro — who has reportedly been given a key role in the overhaul of the platform — emailing all staff on behalf of “Elon” to claim they face no personal liability will surely sound alarm bells at regulators over Twitter’s direction of travel. Last week, The Verge also reported on turmoil inside Twitter’s privacy and security function as standard review procedures were dispensed with and engineers were asked to “self certify” compliance with FTC rules. Its report also cited an unnamed company lawyer who it said had Slacked employees to warn them that changes to how Twitter operates is piling personal, professional and legal risk onto engineers instructed to implement Musk’s will regardless of consequences. Under the EU’s GDPR, meanwhile, Twitter is obliged — in just one very basic requirement — to have a data protection officer (DPO) to provide a contact point for regulators. Hence the departure of Kieran, its first and only DPO since the role was created at the company in 2018, has not gone unnoticed by its data protection watchdog in Ireland — as we also reported Friday. But the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC)’s concerns are already spiralling wider than Twitter’s compliance with notifications about core personnel: Last week, the authority — currently Twitter’s lead EU DPA under the GDPR’s OSS — put the social media firm on watch by signalling public concern when it said it would be putting questions to the company about the status of its main establishment in Ireland at a meeting scheduled for early this week, to discuss all the recent privacy changes since the Musk takeover. Twitter has not commented publicly on the DPC’s warning nor on the departures of senior regulator-facing staffers. Indeed, since Musk took over, its communications department appears to have been dismantled and the company no longer responds to press requests for comment — so it was not possible to obtain an official statement from Twitter about these departures or on the substance of our report. (We’re happy to add a response if Twitter or Musk wants to send us one.) For Twitter’s business itself, there are a number of potential consequences in play if its ability to meet regulatory requirements falls. If the DPC assesses (or is informed by Musk) that it no longer has its main establishment in Ireland the company will crash out of the OSS — opening it up to being regulated by data protection authority across the bloc’s 27 Member States which would become competent to oversee its business. In practice, that means any EU data protection authority would be able to act directly on concerns it has that local users’ data is at risk — with the power to instigate their own investigations and take enforcement actions. So Ireland’s more business friendly regulator would no longer be leading the handling of any GDPR concerns about Twitter; probes could be simultaneously opened up all over the EU — including in Member States like France and Germany where data protection authorities have a reputation for being quicker to the punch (and/or more aggressive) in responding to complaints compared to Ireland. If Twitter loses its ability to claim main establishment in Ireland it would therefore drastically amp up the complexity, cost and risk of achieving GDPR compliance. (Reminder: Penalties under the regulation can scale up to 4% of annual global turnover — so these are not rules a normal CEO would ignore.) The GDPR does not set out specific criteria for assessing main establishment. But, in Twitter’s case — in order for it to be able to fulfil the regulation’s requirement of “effective and real exercise of management activities determining the main decisions as to the purposes and means of processing through stable arrangements” actually taking place locally, in Ireland, despite Twitter product development being led out of the US — we understand that the company devised a careful legal framework which was designed to empower an Irish entity to be the data controller for EU users by ensuring that this Ireland-located Twitter company, which has its own board of directors subject to

222 wants to match perfect strangers for bespoke, real-life experiences • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 14, 2022Posted in App, Apps, Social, startup, StartupsNo Comments

As anyone who’s moved to a city sight unseen can tell you — this reporter included — making platonic connections isn’t easy. Adult friendships are fickle beasts in metros of millions, where casual friends are cheap currency. Statistics back up my anecdotal evidence. According to a 2021 survey conducted by the Survey Center on American Life, an increasing number of people can’t identify a single person as a “close friend.” In 1990, only 3% of Americans said that they had no close friends, while in 2021, that percentage rose to 12%. Many a startup has attempted to “solve socializing” with apps, algorithms and social nudges, or a combination of those three things. Bumble, for instance, has experimented with a communities feature that lets users connect with one another based on topics and interests. Patook took a Tinder-like approach to matching potential friends, using AI both to connect users and block flirtatious messages. But not everyone’s found these experiences to be especially fulfilling. “[I’m alarmed] by the tech industry’s lack of focus on building social products that are truly social rather than purely built to capture attention and exploit our desire for external validation,” Keyan Kazemian told ZebethMedia in an interview. He’s one of the three co-founders of 222, a social events app that aims to — unlike many that’ve come before it — facilitate meaningful and authentic connections. “Our society’s brightest minds — our fellow scientists, engineers and product managers — are being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars not to solve the existential problems of loneliness, climate change, space travel, cancer and aging but to instead find new ways to keep an already mentally ill society consuming endless content, always fighting for more of their attention,” Kazemian continued. “We’re building a product to swing the pendulum in the other direction.” Kazemian co-launched 222 in late 2021 with Danial Hashemi and Arman Roshannai. They initially came together over a university-funded project around predicting social compatibility among a group of strangers. Toward the end of the pandemic, Kazemian, Hashemi and Roshannai — all Gen Zers (at 23, Kazemian is the oldest) — curated intimate dinners in Kazemian’s backyard over wine and pasta for friends of friends who’d never met each other, using machine learning and a psychological questionnaire to craft the guest lists. “Folks loved the backyard dinners so much they convinced us to try to replicate it with real venues,” Kazemian said. “In early 2022, we moved to Los Angeles and started partnering with brick and mortar locations, creating a marketplace between hyperlocal venues and members looking to discover their city and meet new people through unique social experiences.” That marketplace became 222. Today, anyone between the ages of 18 and 27 can sign up for an account — the founding team is focused on the Gen Z crowd presently. There’s no app — just a basic Typeform workflow — and the sign-up process is designed to be simple. Once you provide your name, email address and date of birth, 222 has you answer roughly 30 Myers-Briggs-type questions covering topics from movie, music and cereal preferences to political views and religious affiliation. 222’s onboarding survey. Some are uncomfortably personal — you’ll be asked about your income level, sexual orientation and college major — but Kazemian says it’s in the interest of narrowing down potential matches. “All of our data is encrypted and used only to better each 222 member’s social experience,” he added when asked about 222’s privacy practices. 222’s small print also indicates that data from the app is being analyzed as a part of a university social science project — a continuation of the one Kazemian, Hashemi and Roshannai led a year ago. Opting out requires contacting the company. Image Credits: 222 After answering additional questions about your personality (e.g. “Is social activism is incredibly important for you?”, “Are you willing to have uncomfortable and difficult conversations with your friends?”) and go-to social activities (e.g. drinking, watching sports, going out to nightclubs), 222 has you list dietary restrictions and your ZIP code. You’re then asked to choose which factors you find most important in meeting new people (e.g., social scene, political leanings), and it’s finally off to the races. Or it should be. When I tried to sign up, the website threw an internal server error. I eventually received a text confirming my enrollment, but it included a link to a webpage that endlessly loaded. Kazemian chalked it up to teething issues and promised a fix. When the Typeform is working properly, Kazemian says, an algorithm behind the scenes factors in the answers to those 30-some questions to determine which of 16 categories your personality falls into. Once that’s decided, you’ll be notified if you’re selected for a 222 event — for example, dinner at a local venue partner of 222’s — which are currently held weekly and cost $2.22 to attend. Those who aren’t recruited for the dinner can choose to join for post-event mingling. So is the algorithm any good? Kazemian asserts that it is, and that, furthermore, 222 is one of the few social apps directly training and matching based on real-life experiences. “Most dating apps don’t do any sort of matching at all and rather focus solely on an Elo-type score, like in chess. Users on those products are only exposed to those that have a similar ‘yes-swipe-to-no-swipe ratio to themselves,” Kazemian said. “[By contrast,] based on our member’s onboarding questionnaire, 222 develops a psychological profile for each new sign up … Our algorithm will then not only pair each member with the best possible group of strangers for a given experience, it will also curate an itinerary for the evening with the best possible consumer experience — which speakeasy, café, concert or restaurant will this group of individuals have the best time at.” That’s quite a claim to make considering Tinder and even Facebook has dabbled with helping strangers connect at events. But algorithmic robustness aside, users might be wary of attending events

Musk says orgs will soon verify affiliated accounts; Blue sign-ups and name changes will be reinstated end of this week • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 14, 2022Posted in Social, TwitterNo Comments

Twitter Blue, Twitter’s paid tier, appears to be on ice at the moment as the company tries to navigate how to control it from being abused by impersonators while still promoting it as a mass market product to build out a new revenue stream among “official” users and the hundreds of millions of others who use Twitter. No biggie! In the absence of any official announcements, Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk is reverting to type and pushing out some social guerilla marketing around how brands, other organizations, and the rest of us use the platform. Yesterday, Musk said in a Tweet that the company soon would be letting “organizations to identify which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them.” In later notes, he clarified this meant organizations would be able to manage their own affiliations and affiliated accounts, but that Twitter would likely be the arbiter of what counted as a primary organization. Rolling out soon, Twitter will enable organizations to identify which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022 It’s not clear if managing affiliations will be a tool only for organizations that pay for the privilege to use it — a la a Twitter Blue-style tier for orgs, brands and influencers — or if it will be something that any verified account will be able to do. Where Verified blue-check accounts will sit in relation to paid Blue blue-check accounts is in itself still a big question mark, since Twitter has made so many changes around the product in the last week that most people have now lost track of what is going on. In any case, if it all goes to plan — Twitter’s business plan as meted out in Tweets, that is — Twitter Blue, plus another related service that was paused due to impersonation abuse — a current lock on verified users changing Twitter screen names — should both be reinstated by end of week, Musk noted. Without doubt, Twitter is trying to make some lemonade out of lemons here. Musk’s tweets are coming on the back of an unbelievably chaotic couple of weeks of the company operating under new ownership, spearheading a different business model (focusing on subscriptions and paywalls rather than just ads while also going from publicly-traded to privately-held), and in some ways maybe most critically, as of last week with half the staff it had compared to a week before. That’s meant not only sharp turns in what the company is doing, and how it’s carrying things out (the latest as of this morning: a freeze on code changes) but very little communication about any of it. Case in point: Twitter Blue has expanded, been pretty mercilessly trolled and abused, contracted, and ultimately paused in the space of little more than a week. Yet the service’s own “Official” Twitter account has not sent a single Tweet out, nor made any actual announcements, since October 18 — a full 10 days before Musk closed his deal to buy the company. On the other hand, if Musk’s hint of the new feature does get rolled out and it has to do with managing affiliated accounts (rather than creepily keeping tabs, say, on how employees discuss the company in their individual accounts), it’s actually long overdue. One of the problems with Twitter had been that accounts that were getting impersonated typically had to proactively find and request take-downs of other accounts, and even then the process was not always instantaneous. (Ditto abusive and harassing accounts.) Something like this could effectively turn that problem on its head by making it easier for organizations to track and report those unaffiliated accounts, which would be one step towards Twitter sweetening the deal for getting organizations to sign up to (and pay for?) “official” tiers, and for Twitter improving its credibility with brands and organizations, which appears fairly poor at the moment. Indeed, just as it’s downright hard for us regular people to stake much faith on what might happen next, brands and organizations have somewhat been left out in the cold, too. We’ve received some research passed to us from Battenhall, a London-based marketing agency that works with brands and companies on social media strategy. It lays bare the state of Twitter’s current interface with commercial organizations. The long and short of it: like the rest of Twitter right now, it’s all over the place. One of Twitter’s attempts at clearing up the confusion (hah) between “Blue” paid accounts, the pre-existing blue-check verification status and impersonations that were running riot exploiting the Blue paid tier, was to create a “double verification” route, where “real” accounts were denoted with both “official” notes and blue checkmarks. But taking just the FTSE 100 top companies in the U.K., Battenhall found that only 23% of them had been given that double verification status as of late Friday. Further to that, 39% of FTSE 100 companies had just a single blue tick verification. But as Battenhall founder Drew Benvie pointed out to me, “That can signify either a verified account or an $8 per month Twitter Blue pay-for-verification account.” Sounds inconsistent? On top of this, a full 38% of FTSE 100 companies did not have any form of verification at all. “Burberry, the brand with the largest Twitter following in the FTSE 100, has not been given ‘official’ white tick status, ranking it equally in prominence to $8 Twitter Blue subscribers,” Benvie added. Burberry’s Twitter account, which does have the blue check, has around 8.2 million followers. Phoenix Group, which 4,100, has the smallest following among FTSE 100 companies with 4,100 followers, yet it does have double verification. Other FTSE 100 organizations with the double include AstraZeneca, BP, Diageo, Sainsburys, Tesco and Vodafone. “There is no clear pattern to which accounts are verified, official, or even really who they say they are as blue ticks can be purchased for £6.99 or $8,” Benvie noted. “I believe (although don’t categorically know) that the verification

Musk’s lawyer tells Twitter staff they won’t be liable if company violates FTC consent decree • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in consent decree, FTC, Social, TwitterNo Comments

Following a warning shot from the FTC to Twitter yesterday, ZebethMedia has obtained an internal email sent by Elon Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, to all remaining employees — in which he seeks to calm staffers’ concerns by claiming that they do not have individual liability for upholding the requirements of the FTC consent decree. We’ve reproduced the full text of the email (sic) below — which was sent by Spiro to Twitter staff at 5:21PM, November 10: Elon – questions have arisen today regarding the consent decree in effect at the time you took over the company. We have our first upcoming compliance check with the ftc since taking over and we will handle it. The only party to the decree is Twitter- not individuals who work at Twitter. It is Twitter itself (not individual employees) who is a party and therefore only Twitter the company could be liable. I understand that there have been employees at Twitter who do not even work on the ftc matter commenting that they could to to jail if we were not in compliance- that is simply not how this works. It is the company’s obligation. It is the company’a burden. It is the company’s liability. We spoke to the FTC today about our continuing obligations and have a constructive ongoing dialogue. We will of course remain in compliance with the consent decree and the legal department is handling it and happy to answer any questions Thanks Alex The 2011 consent decree required Twitter to establish and maintain a program to ensure and regularly report that its new features do not further misrepresent “the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy, confidentiality, or integrity of any nonpublic consumer information.” In a note (first reported by The Verge) posted in Twitter’s internal slack and visible to all employees, a departing internal attorney said that in fact, individual engineers do engender “personal, professional and legal risk,” seemingly in contradiction to what Spiro sent in the above email. On Thursday, key Twitter executives including the company’s Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth, as well as its Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner, Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty and Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran all abruptly departed the company. The FTC noted that they are watching with “deep concern” the ongoing situation at Twitter in light of the consent decree. The FTC fined Twitter $150 million earlier this year after finding a breach of the settlement related to user data provided for security purposes being used for ad targeting. We’ve reached out to the FTC for clarification regarding the consent decree and individual employee liability and will update if we receive more information.

Numerous social apps see gains in wake of Twitter chaos, new data shows • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Apps, Elon Musk, Social, social apps, TwitterNo Comments

The drama at Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition has seen some users looking for an exit. In recent days, alternative social apps and microblogging platforms have seen strong gains, including, most notably, the open-source decentralized Twitter alternative Mastodon. The service’s founder and CEO recently announced Mastodon had topped 1 million monthly active users, after more than half a million users joined the network since the October 27th deal’s closure. But Mastodon isn’t the only app profiting from Twitter’s upheaval. In a new report, app intelligence firm Sensor Tower analyzed social app growth after Musk took over. It noted Mastodon has seen approximately 322,000 new downloads from U.S. app stores in the 12 days following Twitter’s acquisition (Oct. 27 through Nov. 7), which is more than 100x the 3,000 it had seen in the prior 12-day period. Globally, the app grew 657% to 1 million installs during that same Oct. 27-Nov. 7 timeframe, up from 15,000 in the 12 days prior. Other third-party Mastodon clients saw a bump, too, with Metatext and Tootle both growing from less than 1,000 installs to 19,000 and 7,000, respectively, between the two time periods. But Mastodon isn’t the only network seeing an uptick in app installs, as it turns out. Tumblr also saw its U.S. app installs grow 96% from 47,000 to 92,000 between the two time periods. Plus, its global installs grew 77% from 170,000 to 301,000. Image Credits: Sensor Tower In addition, alternative social app CounterSocial grew 2,300% to 24,000 installs in U.S. app stores in the 12 days following the acquisition, and grew 3,200% globally, with 33,000 installs, the report said. Another app intelligence firm, data.ai, sliced the data in a slightly different way. It examined various social apps’ worldwide download growth during a 7-day period following the acquisition (Oct. 27 through Nov 2), then compared that with the prior 7-day period. Its data, shared exclusively with ZebethMedia, also confirmed the sizable gains made by Mastodon and CounterSocial in terms of the growth in global installs between the two time periods. Mastodon’s installs jumped 2,200% and CounterSocial’s grew 1,200% its analysis found. But Data.ai looked further up and down the apps stores’ charts and found that a number of other social apps were seeing bumps, beyond just direct Twitter alternatives. These included David’s Disposable (up 83% during the two time periods), nFollowers (up 50%), CocoFun (up 46%), Substack Reader (up 24%), Tribel (up 11%), Tumblr (up 7%), and Pinterest (up 2%). Substack, in particular, has been marketing itself as a social community following the Twitter acquisition, even launching a new discussions feature that allows writers and their audience to engage in threaded chats. Dispo had fun trolling Twitter’s chaos in a couple of tweets and memes, like one that celebrated how Musk doesn’t own the Dispo app. Image Credits: data.aiThis isn’t to say the drama has been all bad for Twitter. Surprisingly, some people have even newly installed the app since the acquisition, as it turns out. Data.ai shows Twitter’s app installs jumped 17% after the acquisition, while Sensor Tower’s look at the slightly longer timeframe saw a 21% increase. The latter said Twitter saw 7.6 million global installs and $502,000 in consumer spending in the 12 days after the acquisition, an increase from 6.3 million installs and $303,000 in spending in the prior 12-day period. These consumer spending numbers, however, should be taken with a grain of salt for now as Twitter Blue’s launch was put on pause after being live for only a couple of days. There’s no reason to believe that these figures indicate, as of yet, a significant increase in demand for the subscription with long-term staying power. That data will come in time. If anything, it shows Musk’s ability to market things to his fanbase and users’ general curiosity about what’s going on with Twitter’s products at present. Image Credits: sensor tower Though Twitter may have seen slight gains this week, not everyone is happy about the changes. Some angrier Twitter users took out their angst over the acquisition in the Twitter app’s reviews on the App Store. On Nov. 5, 2022, the app saw a spike in negative ratings as 119 1-star iOS reviews were added — the most it has seen in a single day during this latest surge in negative reviews, also according to data from Sensor Tower. However, this isn’t the biggest surge of negative reviews Twitter has ever seen, we understand. Other incidents have caused larger bumps. After Trump was banned, for instance, Twitter saw 801 1-star reviews on Jan. 9, 2021. It also saw a surge in March 2022 after the new timeline was rolled out and in April and when Elon Musk said he was buying Twitter. Its largest spike in negative reviews this year wasn’t even this week — it was on Oct. 28, when Musk’s deal was finalized. Overall, however, it was the Israel-Palestine crisis in May 2021 that resulted in the highest volume of new negative reviews, followed by the Trump ban.

Twitter’s lead EU watchdog for data protection has fresh questions for Musk • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in DPC, Elon Musk, GDPR, Government & Policy, Privacy, Social, TwitterNo Comments

In parallel with the FTC’s ominous warning to Elon Musk’s Twitter yesterday — that ‘no CEO or company is above the law‘ — the microblogging platform’s lead regulator in the European Union is on its case in the wake of senior staffers in charge of security and privacy compliance walking out the door. Graham Doyle, a deputy commissioner at Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which currently leads oversight of Twitter under the EU’s General data Protection Regulation (GDPR), told ZebethMedia it’s in contact with the company following media reports yesterday that its data protection officer (DPO) had resigned. A meeting between the DPC and Twitter will take place early next week, according to Doyle. He also confirmed to us that Twitter had not informed the regulator of the DPO’s departure prior to the media reports. Getting clarity over the DPO situation will be top of the meeting agenda, per Doyle. But he said the regulator now has another concern it wants to discuss with Twitter — regarding whether Twitter’s main establishment, for GDPR purposes, is still located in Ireland… Next stop: One-stop-shop stopped? “One of the issues that we want to discuss is the issue around main establishment,” Doyle told ZebethMedia. “They’re obliged to have a data protection officer in place and provide us with the details but equally, under the [GDPR] one-stop-shop (OSS) mechanism in order to get a main establishment to engage with one regulator, the decision making processes — in terms of the processing of EU data — needs to take place in that country. That’s one of the principles of main establishment. And what we want to establish is that that is continuing to be the case for Twitter.” Ireland being Twitter’s lead regulator for the GDPR under the OSS is important because it puts the Irish watchdog in the driving seat when it comes to opening inquiries (or not), or otherwise acting on concerns over Twitter’s compliance (such as following up on the un-notified resignation of its DPO now). From Twitter’s point of view, the arrangement is advantageous because it streamlines compliance since it only needs to liaise with one (lead) regulator over any issues, rather than handling inbound from multiple data protection agencies (potentially in different languages). Ireland has a lead supervisor role for Twitter because the company was able to notify its Dublin office as its “main establishment” in the EU — what the regulation refers to as either the place of “central administration in the Union” or “where the main processing activities take place in the Union”. However were Twitter to be deemed to no longer have this processing base in Ireland there would be an immediate regulatory reconfiguration and data protection authorities across the bloc, from any of the EU’s 27 Member States, could instigate inquiries or act on local complaints themselves — cranking up the regulatory complexity, velocity and risk for Twitter’s European business. With Musk slashing 50% of Twitter’s headcount globally just last week — and a reported “carnage” in the Irish office, per an Irish Times report which said more than 50% of local staff were affected — questions have arisen in Dublin over the stability of its main establishment status for the GDPR. “We’ve made contact with Twitter.. And for us one of the issues we want to discuss with them is the issue of main establishment — is there any change? With the announcement of the departures — including the DPO — is there any plans to change the decision making process that’s in place that allows them to avail of the main establishment,” Doyle reiterated. Reports that all was not well up at the senior echelons of Twitter’s security and privacy function spilled out onto Twitter yesterday afternoon. Platformer journalists, Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer, reported that Twitter’s CISO, chief privacy officer and chief compliance officer has all resigned — citing messages shared in Twitter Slack which they had obtained. Soon afterwards, the Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski tweeted that the Irish DPC was “seeking more information” from Twitter. According to messages shared in Twitter Slack, Twitter’s CISO, chief privacy office, and chief compliance officer all resigned last night. An employee says it will be up to engineers to “self-certify compliance with FTC requirements and other laws.” — Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 10, 2022 NEW: A senior member of Twitter’s legal team just posted this message in Slack:“Everyone should know that our CISO, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer ALL resigned last night. This news will be buried in the return-to-office drama. I believe that is intentional.” — Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) November 10, 2022 Twitter CISO Lea Kissner later confirmed her departure in a tweet — as did Damien Kieran, Twitter’s now ex chief privacy officer. While Marianne Fogarty, Twitter’s (reportedly ex) chief compliance officer, tweeted what may be an indirect confirmation too late yesterday — writing: “Therapy Thursdays have taken on new meaning of late. #LoveTwitter”. Enquiries to Twitter’s press line have gone unanswered since Musk took over so it’s not been possible to obtain an official line on what’s going on. The company’s communications department appears to have been a major casualty of the 50% headcount reduction Musk swiftly applied on taking over — with press staffers either entirely or almost entirely laid off. It also not clear how many of Twitter’s staff in Ireland were laid off last week. There is no obligation on the company to report overall layoffs numbers to the DPC. Nor is the criteria a regulator should use for assessing main establishment clear as it is not stipulated in the GDPR itself — but rather left up to regulators to determine. (On determining main establishment, the regulation states: “The main establishment of a controller in the Union should be determined according to objective criteria and should imply the effective and real exercise of management activities determining the main decisions as to the purposes and means of processing through stable arrangements” — further stipulating that “criterion should not

Facebook, TikTok, Twitter failed election integrity test in Kenya’s elections • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Media & Entertainment, meta, political misinformation, Social, TikTok, TwitterNo Comments

Social media platforms Facebook, TikTok and Twitter did not live up to their election integrity pledges during Kenya’s August elections, according to a new study by the Mozilla Foundation. The report says content labeling failed to stop misinformation, as political advertising served to amplify propaganda. The study found that hours after voting ended in Kenya these social media platforms were awash with mis- and disinformation on candidates that were purported to have won the elections, and that labeling by Twitter and Tiktok was spotty and failed to stop the spread of these falsehoods. It says that the spotty labeling of posts calling the elections ahead of the official announcement affected some parties more than others, which made the platforms seem partisan. Facebook failed majorly on this front by not having “any visible labels” during the elections, allowing the spread of propaganda — like claims of the kidnapping and arrest of a prominent politician, which had been debunked by local media houses. Facebook recently put a label on the original post claiming kidnapping and arrest of the prominent politician. “The days following Kenya’s federal election were an online dystopia. More than even, we needed platforms to fulfill their promises of being trustworthy places for election information. Instead, they were just the opposite: places of conspiracy, rumor, and false claims of victory,” said Odanga Madung, the Mozilla Tech and Society Fellow who conducted the study and previously raised concerns over the platforms inability to moderate content in the lead up to the Kenya’s elections. Mozilla found similar failures during the 2021 German elections. “This is especially disheartening given the platform’s pledges leading up to the election. In just a matter of hours after the polls closed, it became clear that Facebook, TikTok and Twitter lack the resources and cultural context to moderate election information in the region.” Prior to the elections these platforms had issued statements on measures they were taking in the lead up to Kenya’s elections including partnerships with fact-checking organizations. Madung said that in markets like Kenya, where the trust level of institutions is low and challenged, there was need to study how labeling as solution (which had been tested in western contexts) could be applied in these markets too. Kenya’s general election this year was unlike any other as the country’s electoral body the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) released all results data to the public in its quest for transparency. Media houses, parties of main presidential contenders– Dr. William Ruto (now president) and Raila Odinga, and individual citizens conducted parallel tallies that yielded varying results, which further “trigger[ed] confusion and anxiety nationwide.” “This untamed anxiety found its home in online spaces where a plethora of mis- and disinformation was thriving: premature and false claims of winning candidates, unverified statements pertaining to voting practices, fake and parody public figure accounts…” Madung added that platforms implemented interventions when it was too late, and ended soon after elections. This is despite knowledge that in countries like Kenya, where results have been challenged in court in the last three elections, more time and effort is required to counter mis- and disinformation. Political advertising The study also found that Facebook allowed politicians to advertise 48 hours to the election day, breaking Kenya’s law, which requires campaigns to end two days before the polls. It found that individuals could still purchase ads, and that Meta applied less stringent rules in Kenya unlike in markets like the U.S. Madung also identified several ads containing premature election results and announcements, something Meta said it did not allow, raising the question of safety. “None of the ads had any warning labels on them — the platform (Meta) simply took the advertiser’s money and allowed them to spread unverified information to audiences,” it said. “Seven ads may hardly be considered to be dangerous. But what we identified along with findings from other researchers suggests that if the platform couldn’t identify offending content in what was supposed to be its most controlled environment, then questions should be raised of whether there is any safety net on the platform at all,” said the report. Meta told ZebethMedia that it “relies on advertisers to ensure they comply with the relevant electoral laws” but has set measures that ensure compliance and transparency including also verifying persons posting ads. “We prepared extensively for the Kenyan elections over the past year and implemented a number of measures to keep people safe and informed- including tools to make political ads more transparent, so people can scrutinize them and hold those responsible to account. We make this clear in our Advertising Standards that advertisers must ensure they comply with the relevant electoral laws in the country they want to issue ads,” said Meta Spokesperson. Mozilla is calling on the platforms to be transparent on the actions they take on their systems to uncover what works in stemming dis- and misinformation, and to initiate interventions early enough (before elections are held) and after sustain the efforts after the results have been declared.

Musk flip-flops on Twitter verification — brings back (some) ‘Official’ badges (in some parts of the world) • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Elon Musk, Social, Twitter, verificationNo Comments

Strap back in for another Musk-Twitter U-turn: After a wave of impersonation chaos that hit a number of high profile brands and celebrities in recent hours, including an account pretending to be pharma giant Eli Lilly tweeting that insulin in “now free” — surely cooling the last embers of any advertiser ardour for the social media platform — Twitter’s new billionaire owner, Elon Musk, seems to have had another rethink as it appears that an extra layer of “Official” verification has been brought back. Just, er, it depends on where you’re viewing the platform from. (Quick reminder: After the Twitter owner/chaos edgelord’s decision on taking over to devalue Twitter’s legacy ‘blue check’ verification system — by opening it up to anyone who’ll pay him $8 — some of the sane people still left at the company (following Musk’s 50% headcount cull) apparently tried keep up with the madness by rushing out the grey check ‘Official’ badge layer of verification that was applied to some of the legacy verified Twitter accounts (including, briefly, @ZebethMedia). But a few hours later the badges had gone and Musk tweeted that he’d “killed it”.) The Verge spotted the re-reversal (if we can put it that way) earlier, writing that “brands such as Coca-Cola, Twitter, Wired, and Ars Technica have the new-old gray checks”. ZebethMedia’s account has also been re-badged “Official”. However, at the time of typing (and lord knows what might happen in an hour or two at Musk-Twitter), the truth looks a little, uh, greyer — because these returned “Official” badges/grey check marks are not always visible, depending on where in the world you’re looking at Twitter. For eg, if you’re looking at ZebethMedia’s Twitter account with an IP address inside the US the “Official” stamp is visible (below, top). However in some locations outside the US (including the UK and Spain) the verification badge is missing (for now). Although a colleague in India was able to see the Official stamp on our account. So, er, fresh chaos reigns! Now you see it officially badged (top, US IP), now you don’t (above, UK IP)… (Natasha Lomas/ZebethMedia) Is this ‘regional Official verification’ another Musk joke now that he has his hands on the Twitter steering wheel — perhaps aimed at trolling mainstream media? Or is this just a slow global rollout of the U-turn, given he liquidated half the staff and a bunch more have been walking out the door. Frankly, who tf knows. We can’t confirm officially with the company because Twitter sacked its comms department and messages to the press email and individuals still working at Twitter since Musk took over have been ignored. What else is coming? It’s anyone’s guess but Musk tweeted recently (in reply to a Twitter user called “BiasedGirl”) to imply that Official verification status won’t be universally granted to legacy-verified Twitter users — saying: “Far too many corrupt legacy Blue “verification” checkmarks exist, so no choice but to remove legacy Blue in coming months”. Far too many corrupt legacy Blue “verification” checkmarks exist, so no choice but to remove legacy Blue in coming months — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 10, 2022 In another recent emission from the previously self-styled Chief Twit, Musk has also stipulated that “parody impersonation” accounts must clearly label themselves as such in their name, not just in their Twitter bio. “Basically, tricking people is no ok,” he added. Advertisers will surely be flocking back to a version of Twitter that’s flooded with verified parody impersonation accounts whose priority tweets trashing their brands are flooding the feeds of the remaining, very confused users. Not. To be more precise, accounts doing parody impersonations. Basically, tricking people is not ok. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 11, 2022