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  • Twitter users blocked by Trump cry foul, take the President to court

    Twitter users blocked by Trump cry foul, take the President to court

    President Donald Trump may be the nation’s tweeter-in-chief, but some Twitter users say he’s violating the First Amendment by blocking people from his feed after they posted scornful comments.

    Lawyers for two Twitter users sent the White House a letter Tuesday demanding they be un-blocked from the Republican president’s @realDonaldTrump account.

    “The viewpoint-based blocking of our clients is unconstitutional,” wrote attorneys at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York.

    The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The tweeters – one a liberal activist, the other a cyclist who says he’s a registered Republican – have posted and retweeted plenty of complaints and jokes about Trump.

    They say they found themselves blocked after replying to a couple of his recent tweets.

    The activist, Holly O’Reilly, posted a video of Pope Francis casting a sidelong look at Trump and suggested this was “how the whole world sees you.” The cyclist, Joe Papp, responded to the president’s weekly address by asking why he hadn’t attended a rally by supporters and adding, with a hashtag, “fakeleader.”

    Blocking people on Twitter means they can’t easily see or reply to the blocker’s tweets.

    Although Trump started @realDonaldTrump as a private citizen and Twitter isn’t government-run, the Knight institute lawyers argue that he’s made it a government-designated public forum by using it to discuss policies and engage with citizens. Indeed, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Trump’s tweets are “considered official statements by the president.”

    The institute’s executive director, Jameel Jaffer, compares Trump’s Twitter account to a politician renting a privately-owned hall and inviting the public to a meeting.

    “The crucial question is whether a government official has opened up some space, whether public or private, for expressive activity, and there’s no question that Trump has done that here,” Jaffer said. “The consequence of that is that he can’t exclude people based solely on his disagreement with them.”

    The users weren’t told why they were blocked. Their lawyers maintain that the connection between their criticisms and the cutoff was plain.

    Still, there’s scant law on free speech and social media blocking, legal scholars note.

    “This is an emerging issue,” says Helen Norton, a University of Colorado Law School professor who specialises in First Amendment law.

    Morgan Weiland, an affiliate scholar with Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, says the blocked tweeters’ complaint could air key questions if it ends up in court. Does the public forum concept apply in privately run social media? Does it matter if an account is a politician’s personal account, not an official one?

    San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. declined to comment. The tweeters aren’t raising complaints about the company.

     

  • President Trump gets ‘new Twitter bot Press Secretary’

    President Trump gets ‘new Twitter bot Press Secretary’

    The often flippant, emotional stream of tweets from President Trump never ceases to amaze, particularly since it is, for all intents and purposes, filled with official messages from the White House.

    Now, thanks to one clever Twitter user, we can view those often bombastic, poorly worded, and downright trivial tweets in their proper context: official White House statements.

    On Sunday, Twitter user Russel Neiss launched a new Twitter bot called Real Press Sec., which takes Trump’s tweets and presents them in the familiar form of an official White House press statement. The effect of seeing Trump’s social media bloviation as history-framed, official-looking statements from the nation’s highest office is devastatingly poignant.

    https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot/status/871475865942503425

    Neiss says he was inspired to create the bot, which took just an hour of coding to put together (since the code was based on his work on an earlier Twitter bot, @stl_manifest), by tweets from former Obama White House staffer Pat Cunnane‏ and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

    The bot searches for new @realdonaldtrump tweets every 15 minutes and if it finds a new one posts it on the Real Press Sec. Twitter account in White House statement format.

    https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot/status/871475906535084032

    Since Trump took office, he’s continued sending the same kinds of colorful messages via Twitter he sent while operating as a private citizen.

    But in recent months, the running logic from some Trump supporters has been that we shouldn’t take those messages from the president that seriously since “it’s just Twitter.”

    But this Twitter bot destroys that pretense and reminds us that the man who has his “finger on the button” as leader of the United States, is using the country’s most powerful office to say things many thought they’d never hear come from the halls of the White House.

     

     

    Mashable

     

  • London terror attack: Internet must be regulated to stop terrorism – May

    London terror attack: Internet must be regulated to stop terrorism – May

    Prime Minister Theresa May has called for closer regulation of the internet following a deadly terror attack in London.

    At least seven people were killed in a short but violent assault that unfolded late Saturday night in the heart of the capital, the third such attack to hit Britain this year.

    May said on Sunday that a new approach to tackling extremism is required, including changes that would deny terrorists and extremist sympathizers digital tools used to communicate and plan attacks.

    “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said. “Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide.”

    “We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning,” she continued. “We need to do everything we can at home to reduce the risks of extremism online.”

    May’s call for new internet regulations was part of a larger strategy to combat terror, including what she described as “far too much tolerance of extremism in our country.”

    The attack comes as tech giants come under increased pressure in Europe over their policing of violent and hate speech.

    Europe’s top regulator released data last week that showed that Twitter has failed to take down a majority of hate speech posts after they had been flagged. Facebook and YouTube fared better, removing 66% of reported hate speech.

    In the U.K., a parliamentary committee report published last month alleged that social media firms have prioritized profit over user safety by continuing to host unlawful content. The report also called for “meaningful fines” if the companies do not quickly improve.

    “The biggest and richest social media companies are shamefully far from taking sufficient action to tackle illegal and dangerous content,” the report said. “Given their immense size, resources and global reach, it is completely irresponsible of them to fail to abide by the law.”

    Forty-eight people were injured in Saturday’s attack on London Bridge and Borough Market. Police officers pursued and shot dead three attackers within eight minutes of the first emergency call, London police said.

     

     

    CNN

     

  • Social media firms have increased removal of Hate Speech, says EU

    Social media firms have increased removal of Hate Speech, says EU

    Social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube have stepped up both the speed and number of removals of hate speech on their platforms in response to pressure from the European Union to do more to tackle the issue, according to the results of an EU evaluation.

    Facebook won particular praise for reviewing most complaints within a 24-hour target timeframe set down in a code of conduct agreed in December by the European Commission, Facebook, Microsoft , Twitter and YouTube.

    Calling the results “encouraging” for the Commission’s push for self-regulation, Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said the proportion of offending items taken down had doubled and action was being taken more quickly than when the EU checked six months ago.

    “This … shows that a self-regulatory approach can work, if all actors do their part. At the same time, companies … need to make further progress to deliver on all the commitments,” Jourova said in a statement, adding that firms should provide more feedback to people who brought abuses to their attention.

    Facebook scored highly on this, Twitter and YouTube less so.

    The voluntary code of conduct obliges firms to take action in Europe within 24 hours, following rising concerns about the proliferation of racist and xenophobic content on social media triggered by the refugee crisis and attacks in Western Europe.

    This included removing or disabling access to the content if necessary, better cooperation with civil society organizations and the promotion of “counter-narratives” to hate speech.

    Facebook assessed notifications of hateful content in less than 24 hours in 58 percent of cases, up from 50 percent in December, according to the report.

    Twitter also sped up its dealing with notifications, reviewing 39 percent of them in less than 24 hours, as opposed to 23.5 percent in December, when the Commission first reviewed the companies’ progress and warned them they were being too slow.

    YouTube, on the other hand, slowed down, reviewing 42.6 percent of notifications in less than 24 hours, down from 60.8 percent in December, the results showed.

    “IT companies have all been improving time and response to notifications on manifest illegal hate speech,” Jourova said at a meeting of the EU High Level Group on combating racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance on Wednesday.

    “There are differences among the companies … but we can objectively say that all have improved.”

    All the companies significantly increased the number of removals. Overall, content was removed in 59.2 percent of cases, more than double the rate in December which was 28.2 percent.

    The proliferation of hate speech on social media has increased pressure on the companies to remove the content swiftly as they face the prospect of legislation at both EU and national level.

    Last week EU ministers approved plans to force social networks to take measures to block videos with hateful content while the German government approved a plan in April to fine companies up to EUR 50 million if they fail to remove hateful postings quickly.

    The most common ground of hate speech the Commission identified was xenophobia, including expressions of hatred against migrants and refugees, together with anti-Muslim hatred, followed by ethnic origin.

    The spread of fake news and racist content has taken on more urgency in Germany after the arrival of about a million migrants over the last two years.

  • #covfefe: Donald Trump ridicules self with gibberish tweet

    Social media was trying to make sense of Donald Trump early Wednesday, after a nonsensical late-night tweet set off a storm of jokes about the U.S. president.

    The Twitter post, sent shortly before midnight local time, reads “inspite the negative press covfefe,” in an apparent reference to the press coverage that Trump has often derided as “fake news.”

    The post was still available more than three hours after it appeared on his feed and no clarification has been given.

    Using the hashtag “covfefe,” Twitter users speculated over the reasons behind the tweet. Was the president tired? Or drunk? Or had he perhaps just given away a secret nuclear code?

    Taking aim at Trump’s controversial relations with Russia, one woman on Twitter quipped that she had translated #covfefe into Russian, attaching a doctored image that showed the gibberish word to be a translation of “I resign.”

    Before long, the word had its own Urban Dictionary definition: “When you want to say ‘coverage’ but your hands are too small to hit all the letters on your keyboard.”

  • We are sorry for enthroning Trump President, Twitter co-founder apologises

    We are sorry for enthroning Trump President, Twitter co-founder apologises

    The co-founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, on Saturday apologised for the social media platform’s role in Donald Trump’s victory in the last United State’s presidential election.

    Williams made this known in an interview with the New York Times on Saturday, saying he recently learned that President Trump said he believed Twitter put him in the White house.

    Williams said, “It’s a very bad thing, Twitter’s role in that,” he said. “If it’s true that he wouldn’t be president if it weren’t for Twitter, then yeah, I’m sorry.”

    The White House did not respond to a request for a comment on Williams’ statement, reports said.

    The 45-year-old entrepreneur criticised the internet for rewarding extremes calling it, “broken”.

    Trump has often used Twitter to dispute reports seen in the news.

    Recently, Trump took to the social media platform to deny that he or his campaign had any involvement with Russia in influencing the results of the presidential election.

    “Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians and Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election,” he tweeted on May 12.

    In another tweet this week, the U.S president described the media’s reporting of the matter the “single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.”

    But Williams said he was wrong for thinking that the world would be a better place if there was a platform for everyone to freely speak and exchange ideas.

    “Some would say that’s what we deserve for giving the power of tweets to Donald Trump,” he said in a speech at the University of Nebraska this month.

     

  • Twitter says it uses Deep Learning to recommend tweets on timelines

    Twitter says it uses Deep Learning to recommend tweets on timelines

    Making a transition from algorithmic timeline, micro-blogging site, Twitter has started using deep learning, a trendy type of artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend certain tweets on its 328 million monthly active users’ timelines.

    Twitter had introduced algorithmic timeline last year that ranked tweets based on relevance instead of them being in reverse chronological order.

    ImageFile: Twitter says it uses Deep Learning to recommend tweets on timelines
    Twitter uses a trendy type of AI to recommend tweets on your timeline

    Twitter has brought on people who are talented in this area through acquisitions of companies and it has open-sourced some of its deep learning software, CNBC reported on Tuesday.

    “The company is evaluating and scoring thousands of tweets per second to determine what’s worth recommending in timelines, taking into consideration an increasing number of factors, including whether tweets contain images or videos, the number of retweets and likes, and your previous interactions with other account holders,” Twitter’s software engineers said in a blog post.

    Other tech giants like Facebook, Google and Microsoft have previously attempted to improve various products using deep learning, a trendy type of AI.

    “Before putting the deep learning system into production recently, Twitter was using less computationally intensive machine learning methods such as decision trees and logistical regression,” the software engineers stated.

  • Families of San Bernardino Shooting sue Facebook, Google, Twitter

    Families of San Bernardino Shooting sue Facebook, Google, Twitter

    Family members of three victims of the December 2015 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, have sued Facebook, Google and Twitter, claiming that the companies permitted Islamic State to flourish on social media.

    The relatives assert that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided “material support” to the group and enabled attacks such as the one in San Bernardino.

    “For years defendants have knowingly and recklessly provided the terrorist group ISIS with accounts to use its social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits,” family members of Sierra Clayborn, Tin Nguyen and Nicholas Thalasinos charge in the 32-page complaint, which was filed in US District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

    “Without defendants Twitter, Facebook and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the complaint said.

    Spokeswomen for Twitter and Google declined to comment on the lawsuit. Representatives for Facebook could not immediately be reached by Reuters on Thursday afternoon.

    Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday gathering of Farook’s co-workers at a government building in San Bernardino on December 2, 2015, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.

    Farook, the 28-year-old, US-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, 29, a Pakistani native, died in a shootout with police four hours after the massacre.

    Authorities have said the couple was inspired by Islamist militants. At the time, the assault ranked as the deadliest attack by Islamist extremists on US soil since the September 11, 2001, attacks. In June 2016, an American-born gunman pledging allegiance to the leader of Islamic State shot 49 people to death at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was killed by police.

    In December 2016 the families of three men killed at the nightclub sued Twitter, Google and Facebook in federal court on allegations similar to those in the California lawsuit.

    Federal law gives internet companies broad immunity from liability for content posted by their users. A number of lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking to hold social media companies responsible for terror attacks, but none has advanced beyond the preliminary phases.

     

     

     

    NDTV

  • Trump 100 days in office: 10 tweets that have defined his Presidency

    Trump 100 days in office: 10 tweets that have defined his Presidency

    Since entering office, President Donald Trump has used Twitter to issue declarations on everything from America’s geopolitical rivals to his personal feuds with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

    As Trump prepares to mark 100 days in office this weekend, AFP looks back at 10 Tweets that have characterized the opening phase of his presidency:

    “We will follow two simple rules: BUY AMERICAN & HIRE AMERICAN” — setting out his governing mantra on January 20 after his inauguration.

    “We must keep ‘evil’ out of our country!” — justifying his ban on travellers from a group of mainly Muslim countries, on February 3.

    “What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come into U.S.?” — reacting after the ban was subsequently blocked.

    Friend or foe?

    “North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been ‘playing’ the United States for years. China has done little to help!” — voicing frustration with both Pyongyang and Beijing over North Korea’s nuclear program on March 17.

    “Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem? We will see what happens!” — Trump has an apparent change of heart towards Beijing on April 16.

    “Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!” — Trump takes aim at German leader Angela Merkel, a traditional US ally, after a frosty summit in Washington on March 18.

    The other guy

    “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” – Trump accuses his predecessor Barack Obama on March 4 of wiretapping his Manhattan skyscraper during the elections.

    “Don’t believe the main stream (fake news) media. The White House is running VERY WELL. I inherited a MESS and am in the process of fixing it” — defending his performance on February 18 after his first four weeks in office

    Enemies of the people

    “The FAKE NEWS media (@nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” — letting rip at some of the biggest names in the US media landscape on February 17.

    Hasta la Vista

    “Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show” –– Trump reacts on March 4 to the departure of the “Terminator” star, an outspoken critic of the president and his successor as host of the former reality TV show.

     

     

    AFP