SAN FRANCISCO, June 4 (Reuters) – Facebook Inc will start labeling Russian, Chinese and other state-controlled media organizations, and later this summer block any ads from such outlets that target U.S. users, it said on Thursday.
Russia’s Sputnik, Iran’s Press TV and China’s Xinhua News are on the list of organizations that will receive the label from world’s biggest social network.
U.S. news outlets will not be labeled, as the company has determined that even U.S. government-run organizations have editorial independence, said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, in an interview.
Facebook, which has acknowledged its failure to stop Russian use of its platforms to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, announced broad plans last year to create a state media label.
FILE PHOTO: Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks at an event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. June 2, 2020. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – State-backed hackers from China have targeted staffers working on the U.S. presidential campaign of Joe Biden, a senior Google security official said Thursday. The same official said Iranian hackers had also recently targeted email accounts belonging to President Donald Trump’s campaign staff.
The announcement, made on Twitter by the head of Google’s Threat Analysis Group, Shane Huntley, is the latest indication of the digital spying routinely aimed at top politicians of all stripes.
Huntley said there was “no sign of compromise†of either campaign.
Iranian attempts to break into Trump campaign officials’ emails have been documented before. Last year, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) announced that a group often nicknamed Charming Kitten had tried to break into email accounts belonging to an unnamed U.S. presidential campaign that sources identified as Trump’s.
Earlier this year, the threat intelligence company Area1 said that Russian hackers had targeted companies tied to a Ukrainian gas firm where Biden’s son once served on the board.
Google declined to offer details beyond Huntley’s tweets, but the unusually public attribution is a sign of how sensitive Americans have become to digital espionage efforts aimed at political campaigns.
The Trump and Biden campaigns did not immediately return messages. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to messages.
Reporting by Christopher Bing; Additional reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington and Jack Stubbs in London; Editing by Chris Sanders and Lisa Shumaker
“We’re like the National Guard for small businesses,†Mr. Gondolfi of Justine Petersen said. “I love the idea of us being dispatched.†His organization has long had a presence in Ferguson. After vandals destroyed businesses there during protests following the killing of an unarmed local teenager, Michael Brown, by a police officer in 2014, the group made small loans to around two dozen businesses to help them get up and running again.
“Historically, events like these have a 10 to 20-year impact,†said Paul Calistro, the founder of Cornerstone West, a community development organization in Wilmington. Mr. Calistro is working with other groups to contact small businesses that were damaged last weekend and provide the funds they need to rebuild. But, he said, “it’s not just in money, it’s in time.â€
C.D.F.I.s have helped revive poor neighborhoods, replacing empty storefronts with active commercial spaces, increasing local economic activity, building residents’ wealth and reducing crime. Because they make a wide variety of loans, including housing loans, they amass deep knowledge of the neighborhoods where they work and can tailor their activities to suit a particular area’s needs.
Over the past 35 years, they have made loans that helped launch more than 400,000 small businesses around the country, according to the Opportunity Finance Network, the trade group that represents them. Around 85 percent of their borrowers are minorities, according to the trade group’s data. Their lending, which is a mix of small business loans and loans to housing and community facility projects, has totaled more than $74 billion over that time period.
In Minneapolis, a trio of organizations that focus on minority businesses has helped transform the Midtown neighborhood from a depressed area with few active businesses to a trendy spot where small businesses flourish and city residents flock. The charitable aspect of the groups’ missions has helped to keep the ills of gentrification at bay.
But the current violence is threatening that progress.
Minneapolis is where the bulk of the destruction has occurred so far, and local officials said it was the result of premeditated attacks on black- and Hispanic-owned businesses.
Jeff Hayden, a Minnesota state senator whose district includes the Midtown neighborhood, said state officials found evidence that fire-starting materials had been stashed in the neighborhood ahead of recent planned protests and that businesses had been marked for attack.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has used a coronavirus vaccine pledge to bolster his public image in the face of criticism at home | Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images
‘The UK is trying to claw back legitimacy and leadership in global health.’
LONDON — At home, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is being slammed for his public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, with calls for a public inquiry as the country’s death toll is now the highest in Europe.
But on the global stage Thursday, Johnson got a break from the criticism.
The prime minister hosted Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance’s replenishment conference, which aimed to raise $7.4 billion to vaccinate 300 million children against existing viral infections over the next five years.
At the end of the conference, Johnson bragged he had the “scoop” that they had raised $8.8 billion for Gavi.
The conference was a necessary step in securing money so that routine vaccination isn’t left behind while the focus is on battling COVID-19. But it was also a chance for Johnson to reassert the U.K.’s role as a health leader.
“Everyone thought that the U.K. was a leader and would walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Now they are not doing that, it’s embarrassing†— Clare Wenham, assistant professor at the London School of Economics
In both his introductory and concluding statements, Johnson wasn’t shy about touting the U.K.’s role on the global stage, boasting that the “most promising” coronavirus vaccine candidates are being developed in the country, highlighting a partnership between the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.
“Just as the U.K. is the single biggest donor to the international effort to find a coronavirus vaccine, we will remain the world’s leading donor to Gavi,†he said, before committing £1.6 billion to the Gavi replenishment.
Johnson also referenced the “ingenuity” of British doctor Edward Jenner — who developed the first vaccine in the 18th century — as the reason the world has vaccines in the first place.
Notwithstanding those achievements, the government has come under fire over its domestic coronavirus response, with the country’s death toll exceeding 39,700, surpassed only by the U.S.
Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics, pointed to a “big juncture†between what the U.K. can do for global health elsewhere in the world and what it can do at home.
Prior to the pandemic, she said, the U.K. “demonstrated widespread leadership in global health.â€
“Everyone thought that the U.K. was a leader and would walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Now they are not doing that, it’s embarrassing,†she said. “At the moment they are trying to claw back that legitimacy and leadership in global health.â€
Still, the tone on Thursday stayed positive.
International leaders, from Australia to Canada to Singapore, thanked Johnson for hosting the conference, while philanthropist Bill Gates praised the U.K.’s generous support for Gavi “from the beginning.”
But perhaps the biggest praise came from World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who thanked his “friend†Johnson “for his leadership in this very vital area of public health.â€
Johnson even managed to get U.S. President Donald Trump to make a brief appearance during the pledging drive. Trump began his message by telling Johnson he has “tremendous respect for you and everything you do.â€
The race is on to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus | Koen Van Weel/ANP/AFP via Getty Images
“He called and said, ‘Do you think you can do something? Maybe around the Oval Office or right by the Oval Office?’ I said, ‘Why not?’†Trump recalled, pointing to the Oval Office in the background of his video.
Trump said it will take international cooperation to defeat the “mean†and “nasty†coronavirus, and ended his message by sending his “regards to Boris.â€
The global limelight did not mean Johnson was off the hook at home.
He faced increasing concern Thursday over the return of MPs to parliament.
On Wednesday, Business Secretary Alok Sharma went into self-isolation after appearing ill while taking part in a debate in the House of Commons. Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael tweeted that the incident should be a “wake up call†and that by returning to parliament, MPs “risk the safety of people across the country.â€
Downing Street hasn’t ruled out whether Johnson, who had a 45-minute socially distanced meeting with Sharma on Wednesday, would need to self-isolate if the business secretary tested positive.
Cristina Gallardo contributed reporting.
This article is part of POLITICO’s premium policy service: Pro Health Care. From drug pricing, EMA, vaccines, pharma and more, our specialized journalists keep you on top of the topics driving the health care policy agenda. Email pro@politico.eu for a complimentary trial.
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Minister, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has asked the courts to dismiss the application by a tobacco association which has challenged government’s ban on cigarette sales.
The Fair-Trade Independent Tobacco Association (Fita) approached the Pretoria High Court in May, seeking that the regulation on tobacco products – which could extend until Level 1 lockdown restrictions – be set aside.
Safeguarding public healthÂ
On Wednesday 3 June, Dlamini-Zuma submitted an answering affidavit at the court, which cited “studies†stating that smoking could result in more severe COVID-19 symptoms, among other things.
She said that the tobacco-related regulation imposed by the government’s National Command Council (NCC) was put in place to prevent a possible strain on public health, with South Africa still anticipating a period of peak infections in the coming weeks.
“Prohibiting the sale of tobacco products during level 4 of the lockdown serves to reduce these risks,†Dlamini-Zuma said.
Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
Experts back tobacco banÂ
Her view is supported by Professor Kennedy Nyamande – a pulmonology expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, whose affidavit is cited in the document.
Another expert on the subject in support of government’s tobacco ban is Catherine Egbe – head of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council.
Dlamini-Zuma said banning the sale of tobacco products was an approach fitting of a “responsible governmentâ€.
“Prohibiting the sale of tobacco products during lockdown serves to reduce these risks, not only in respect of smokers themselves, but also those who would otherwise be exposed to second-hand smoke under lockdown conditions.â€
Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Cogta Minister
Meanwhile, following the High Court’s judgement stating that Level 3 lockdown regulations were unlawful, Minister in the Presidency Jackson Mthembu revealed on Thursday afternoon that government had made a decision regarding the ruling.
He said that government had chosen to appeal the court’s decision.
“Government will ask that its appeal be heard on an urgent basis so that it can obtain certainty on the regulations. The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma will be joined in this appeal by President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Minister of Health, Dr Zweli Mkhize.â€
Jackson Mthembu, Minister in the Presidency
South Africa has, as at Wednesday 3 June, 37 525 cases of the coronavirus, with 792 reported fatalities.
Mkhize is expected to issue out another update on the stats on Thursday night.
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Andres Pantoja, an up-and-coming Silicon Valley sous chef, spent his pre-pandemic evenings delicately preparing the $115 plate of lamb chops and deboning the $42 Psari Plaki whole fish at a fashionable restaurant here. It is frantic work serving 200 upscale meals a night.
His new gig is proving way more chaotic, though — making thousands of free meals that seem priceless to those being served: the gardeners, janitors, construction workers, housekeepers and others who have seen their meager income dwindle further as the coronavirus ravages the economy. Mr. Pantoja has become part of a large-scale effort to help feed the poorest families in a region with one of the nation’s widest income gaps.
Call it tech-to-table, a Silicon Valley effort to feed the hungry engineered by a local Boys & Girls Clubs chapter. The organization’s chief executive, Peter Fortenbaugh, a Harvard M.B.A., employed his background working at McKinsey & Co. and lots of connections to turn what had been an education-centric program for underprivileged students into one of the busiest takeout operations in the Bay Area.
Two sites serve more than 2,000 free meals a night, one in East Palo Alto, and the other in Redwood City, where Mr. Pantoja runs the show with exuberance.
“Jambalaya tonight: Chicken, andouille sausage, some shrimp,†he said on a recent night, as one of his fellow chefs stirred in the rice. The seasonings? “So many things: paprika, cumin, chili powder. The rest is a secret blend.â€
This week, the group served its 100,000th meal, spending now $30,000 a week. A recent infusion of $218,000 came in from a bike fund-raiser, 784 participants with a quarantine twist.
“Most of the riders were on a Peloton,†said Tina Syer, who as chief advancement officer heads up fund-raising for the organization. Eighty dollars per rider was given by, among other donors, Jeff Weiner, who recently stepped down as chief executive of LinkedIn and Dr. Michelle Sandberg, sister of Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.
Food insecurity — a mild term for terror of being hungry — has become central to the Covid-19 story as job losses grow chronic. So go the stories from the people lined up starting at 4 p.m. outside the two Boys and Girls Club sites: a house cleaner with four children whose income has dropped to $110 a week from $400; a 57-year-old janitor who lost his job when Macy’s shut and lives in a home with seven people, none now employed; a mother of three whose husband, a painter, gets only occasional jobs now.
“The owners of the houses don’t want him to come near them,†said the woman, who is undocumented and gave only her first name, Josefina, to avoid trouble from immigration officials. She and others described the food as particularly helpful, given that rent has to come first.
At least half of those who visit are undocumented immigrants, according to local officials, including a member of the East Palo Alto City Counsel. The population faces a double threat from lost jobs and a particular vulnerability to the virus because of the dense living conditions and jobs that, when they aren’t lost, aren’t the kind that can be done over Zoom.
Mike Francois, a good Samaritan community member, uses his 1986 Silverado pickup to take 25 meals each night from the East Palo Alto clubhouse to give to families in the neighborhood, including a struggling family with six children, five of them teenage boys. “They always come to my truck smiling,†he said.
The operation elicits mixed emotions in the person in charge, Mr. Fortenbaugh, chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, which he took over 16 years ago after a brief tech career and a stint at McKinsey & Co.
“I have two emotions,†Mr. Fortenbaugh said. “I’m really sad. Most of America doesn’t realize how hard this is on the low-income immigrant community. But part of me is optimistic and proud we can do something.â€
Ditto and bravo, said Russell Hancock, president and chief executive of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a think-tank whose research shows the vastness of the region’s income gap: 75 percent of wealth in the region is now held by 13 percent of the residents, the largest ever such span measured here.
“Then this crisis sets in,†Mr. Hancock said, “and suddenly we’re no longer just lamenting that some people are well off and some people less well off. Now it’s a question of survival itself.â€
Ever the technologist, Mr. Fortenbaugh loves the efficiency and energetic feel of a start-up at the free-food enterprise. Until Covid-19 hit, the club focused on tutoring, college preparedness and after-school events for families. It served 350 meals in-person to the students who stayed late at the clubs to study.
Kitchen capacity expanded, partly through donation or low-cost rental of convection ovens, a fryer, a new stovetop, and through partnerships and networking. Some nights, in addition to the meals, boxes of food are given out with supplies from a second nonprofit, called Second Harvest, that has chipped in from its stores of eggs, pasta, vegetables and fruit.
When this all unfolded in mid-March, Mr. Fortenbaugh visited the Palo Alto restaurant Taverna, where he knows the owner. There he saw a sous-chef who had grown up coming every day after school to the Redwood City Boys & Girls clubhouse: Mr. Pantoja, who had risen from the ranks of upscale restaurants.
Mr. Fortenbaugh lured him away from the restaurant, and now Mr. Pantoja, 29, despite being told he is wanted back at Taverna, has decided to become the chef full-time at the clubhouse, even after the pandemic ends.
As the cars pulled up out front collecting his jambalaya creation — which came with bread roll, salad and corn — Mr. Pantoja stood out back in the yard where he once played and where he’s now planted lavender, rosemary, fennel, red lettuce and potatoes.
“I grew up here. I painted the mural on the wall,†he said. “This is the cycle of life.â€
Forces loyal to Libya’s internationally recognized government said Thursday they had fully recaptured the capital city of Tripoli after more than a year of fighting with renegade commander Khalifa Hifter. Â
“Our heroic forces have full control of Greater Tripoli right up to the city limits,” said Mohammed Gnounou, a spokesperson for the Government of National Accord (GNA).Â
Since April 2019, Hifter’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) has waged an offensive on Tripoli, the seat of the UN-backed government. His forces have suffered a series of setbacks in recent weeks, as the GNA, backed by Turkish-supplied drones and fighters, pushed the LNA out of several key towns.Â
Last month, GNA forces captured the strategic Al-Watiya air base from the eastern-based troops, and on Wednesday they took control of Tripoli’s international airport, which had been closed since 2014.Â
For the past six years, the oil-rich country has been embroiled in conflict between the two administrations and their array of foreign backers, which have flooded the country with illegal arms.Â
Hifter, a former US ally who controls much of the eastern portion of the country and its oil facilities, counts Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia among his supporters. The UN-backed GNA enjoys military support from Turkey and Qatar.Â
The recapture of Tripoli comes days after the UN missions to the country announced the rival governments had agreed to resume talks aimed at securing a lasting cease-fire.Â
A truce brokered in January by Russia and Turkey, which support opposite sides in the war, failed to quell the fighting. As of mid-May, the UN said it had documented more than 850 cease-fire violations.Â
Image caption
Paramedic Thomas Knowles said he had to deal with misinformation multiple times each day
A paramedic has described how a patient with symptoms of a heart attack refused treatment after reading on Facebook that she would die if she went to hospital during the Covid-19 crisis.
The account was among hard-hitting testimony given by medics to MPs about the damage misinformation on social media is doing to frontline healthcare.
The doctors called for tougher action on Google, Twitter and Facebook.
All three firms told MPs they were working hard to tackle the problem.
The social media giants were giving evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports committee’s inquiry into online harms and disinformation.
The MPs also questioned Facebook about its decision to let recent messages by US President Donald Trump appear unaltered on its app, despite Twitter adding fact checks and a warning label to identical posts to its platform.
Salt water
Paramedic Thomas Knowles told MPs: “There were days when I was having multiple calls per day dealing with elements of misinformation.”
He added a lot of it was “deliberate, well-constructed and peddled” by people describing themselves as health practitioners. They had thousands of followers, he said, and made money from their false claims.
Dr Megan Smith, a consultant anaesthetist, said “doctors across the board” had similar stories about patients not going to hospital because they had read on social media that Covid-19 was a mild illness, or because they had believed remedies such as gargling salt water would help.
She said that social media sites “facilitated the distribution” of these falsehoods.
In written evidence, one New York-based disease specialists added that deaths could have been prevented “if we’d tightened our grip on misinformation”.
Rotten state
Monica Bickert, head of product policy at Facebook, said millions of Facebook users had viewed the official health information it had been promoting from sources such as the NHS since January.
Image copyright Parliament TV
Image caption
Facebook’s Monica Bickert admitted she had not read a letter from former employees about how the site dealt with content
She was asked why a post mocking the death George Floyd, the black man who died in police custody last week, was not removed when it was flagged to them.
She admitted the process of content removal was “not perfect”.
She was also questioned about Facebook’s controversial decision not to intervene over President Trump’s post about looting, despite the fact that Twitter had hidden it behind a warning that it glorified violence.
She was asked what she thought about a letter sent to the New York Times by former employees expressing their dismay.
“It looks to me like something is rotten in the state of Facebook,” commented one MP.
Ms Bickert said she had not read the letter.
“The decision we made last week, the post did not violate our policies. These are longstanding policies. We allow people to discuss government use of force,” she said.
Promoting conspiracies
YouTube was grilled by Home Affairs Committee chair Yvette Cooper, who joined the session as a guest, over the ways it promotes certain content.
She told YouTube executive Leslie Miller that she had searched on the platform for clips related to 5G and David Icke, and had then been recommended an anti-vaccination video, even though she had not searched for anything on the topic.
“That is what I’ve been encouraged by YouTube to watch. Surely this is utterly irresponsible?” she asked.
Image copyright Parliament TV
Image caption
Leslie Miller, YouTube’s head of public policy, faced a barrage of questions about why conspiracy theories were promoted
In response Ms Miller said: “I can’t speak to that specific example but where there are videos that violate our policies we do work to remove them and reduce the availability of that content.”
She added that videos suggesting that 5G was causing coronavirus were being continually removed and David Icke’s personal account had been taken down.
Power of tweets
Twitter’s director of public policy Nick Pickles was asked whether the firm’s decision to begin labelling some of President Trump’s tweets had changed it from a platform into a publisher.
“Sometimes you don’t want to remove the content but you do want to add context to help people understand and avoid people being confused, so that’s the intervention that we deployed,” he responded.
When it came to content around Covid-19 he said it was “very complicated particularly when there are pre-publication, non-peer-reviewed papers being discussed”.
But he added that the benefit of social media over traditional media was that it gave “many, many people a voice”. He used the example of the events around the killing of George Floyd, which he said had led to 10 million tweets using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.
“That was the most that movement had ever been talked about, and that can’t happen in the traditional media world.”
This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.
We’ve gotten used to thinking of the internet as a unified language across the world. Whether we live in Mumbai or Miami, we have Facebook and YouTube in common. Spotify, Netflix, TikTok and Uber are popular in many countries.
But as the internet morphs from a nice-to-have luxury into an essential service for billions of people, it’s becoming less like an online Esperanto and more like the cacophony of languages in the real world.
As the already popular (and mostly American or Chinese) digital powers like Google and Alibaba try to expand their reach to nearly every corner of the globe, they’re competing more and more — particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America — with powerful local or regional companies.
That competition boils down to a question: Will the internet be one world, or will it have borders?
Having totally different online hangouts in different countries could be messy. Will the world become more fractured if we don’t even share a love of the same app?
But no matter the challenges, we should all be excited if local companies succeed and help make our online lives more dynamic.
You can see the tussle of global versus local perhaps most starkly in India. There, Amazon is trying to grab the devotion of hundreds of millions of Indians coming online for the first time, and it’s competing with companies like Flipkart and Jio that originated in India and likewise want to reshape how people shop.
In India, the music streaming service Gaana is more popular than Spotify. Uber has been fighting it out there with Ola. Paytm and Flipkart’s PhonePe want consumers to use their apps to pay for stuff instead of using cash. So do Google and Facebook.
I’m jealous of Indians who have so many companies competing for their online attention and dollars. New ideas are springing up faster, better and more tailored to Indians’ needs than they would be without both international and local companies battling for dominance.
Even for those of us who live elsewhere, these skirmishes matter. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter refashioned their apps to use less data on cellphones in India and other countries where the price of smartphone internet connections can be prohibitively expensive. Those companies took what they learned in India and made their apps more efficient on my phone, too.
If you loved watching “The Mechanism†or “Dark,†thank Netflix’s ambitions to get bigger in Brazil and Germany.
I don’t want to oversimplify what’s happening. Homegrown digital powers, like the KakaoTalk chat app in Korea and the Argentine online shopping giant Mercado Libre, are not a new phenomenon. China, which has more people online than any other country, is largely a digital planet separate from the rest of the world.
And international powers sometimes team up with or outright buy regional tech powers. It’s not clear if that dilutes what makes those local companies great in the first place, or strengthens them.
Still, what’s happening now is the next evolution of the internet from a relatively homogeneous blob moving from rich countries to the rest of the world, into something that more closely resembles the diversity of the world. It’s a mess, and it’s wonderful.
Your take
How are we being shaped by the machines?
After I wrote in Wednesday’s newsletter about the flourishing of expression on TikTok, a reader named Bob emailed me to say that he was concerned about the app using its computer systems to determine which videos to feed people.
I’m with Bob. This computerized feed is both a great element of TikTok, and the most concerning. I don’t know how to reconcile my feelings about this.
Like Facebook and YouTube, TikTok trains its computer systems to suggest videos that we might like. If you linger on a lot of TikTok videos about hamsters, you might see a bunch more adorable animal videos.
This kind of automated sorting or suggesting is a central feature of the internet as we know it, and it can be useful. It’s why we can open TikTok and see silly dances without having to think twice, and Netflix can help us select a movie we might like.
But as The Times technology columnist Kevin Roose has explained about YouTube, computer systems designed to recommend more of what we like can push people to ever darker and more fringe views. In a column on Wednesday, Gillian Tett of the Financial Times wrote that she was worried that her teenage daughter was missing out on different views and voices by hanging out online in what was often a bubble of people who are like her, or think like her.
So, Bob, I’m worried, too — particularly because we usually aren’t aware of how the computer systems influence what we think, buy and do. (Read Kevin again on exactly this point.)
This might feel like the work of some neutral robots, but it’s not. TikTok, Facebook and YouTube program the computers, based on a secret set of factors typically with the goal of grabbing our attention. They tweak those programs constantly, and we’re usually not aware of what they’re doing or how they’re influencing us.
Before we go …
The essential dilemma of online expression: Snap said on Wednesday that it had stopped promoting the Snapchat account of President Trump, although anyone could still find it in the app, my Times colleagues Cecilia Kang and Kate Conger wrote. Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat have been debating how to handle inflammatory posts and messages from Mr. Trump and other officials. (Read more from The Interface newsletter about freedom of speech versus “freedom of reach.â€)
Trying to identify the roots of online harassment: People in Brazil who criticize President Jair Bolsonaro regularly find themselves targeted by overwhelming and often vile online smears. The Washington Post reported that investigators and prominent politicians believe that at least some of the disinformation is generated by people close to the president — even his children. He and his sons have denied the allegations, which they say are politically motivated, according to The Post.
What’s the line between health care innovation and exploitation? To generate insights that could improve people’s health, the Mayo Clinic has arrangements with 16 companies to provide patient data stripped of individuals’ identification, Stat News reported. Ethics experts worry that patients weren’t notified about the use of their data, and personal information could still be misused, according to Stat News. This debate is going to continue as health care increasingly leans on technology to analyze information and find better treatments.
Hugs to this
Irish dancing by a priest, the deacon and a sacristan during a mass that streamed online.
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com.
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