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Fb to revive information pages for Australian customers in coming days

Facebook to restore news pages for Australian users in coming days

What are the changes?

As part of the amendments to the bill, the Australian government will consider trade agreements that digital platforms like Google and Facebook have already entered into with local news media companies before deciding whether the code will apply to the tech giants.

The government will also notify the digital platforms a month before the final decision.

It will also include a two month mediation period to allow digital platforms and publishers to broker business before entering into arbitration as a last resort.

The changes are intended to give digital platforms and news organizations “further clarity” on how the negotiating code will be implemented, the government said.

What happened before

Australia wants digital platforms to pay local media and publishers to link their content in news feeds or search results.

If both sides are unable to reach a trade deal, government-appointed arbitrators can decide the final price by deciding in favor of one party – the digital platform or the publisher – with no room for one, according to experts Funding agreement exists.

The arbitration clause was one of the main reasons Facebook raised objections.

– CNBC’s Will Koulouris contributed to this report.

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Business

Fb, Google and Twitter C.E.O.s to Face Lawmakers Once more: Dwell Updates

Jack Dorsey, left, the chief executive of Twitter; Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google; and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 25.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Lm Otero Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

The chief executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter will face skeptical lawmakers again next month when a congressional committee questions them about the ways disinformation spreads across their platforms.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee said Thursday that it would hold a hearing on March 25 with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google and Jack Dorsey of Twitter.

The committee has been examining the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that shields the platforms from lawsuits over much of the content posted by their users. The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, which included participants with ties to QAnon and other conspiracy theories that have spread widely online, has renewed concerns that the law allows the platforms to take a hands-off approach to extremist content.

“For far too long, Big Tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences,” a group of the committee’s top Democrats said in a statement. “Industry self-regulation has failed.”

Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook, said the company “believes it’s time to update the rules of the internet, and this hearing should be another important step in the process.”

The House Judiciary Committee announced its own set of hearings on the tech industry on Thursday. It said it would hold multiple hearings on how to update antitrust laws to address the power of the tech giants. The committee questioned chief executives before concluding a lengthy investigation into the companies last year.

The Judiciary Committee’s first hearing will take place on Wednesday.

An all-electric Renault Zoe. Renault’s chief executive, Luca de Meo, last month presented a plan to return the automaker to profitability.Credit…Samuel Zeller for The New York Times

Renault, the French carmaker, reported a loss of 8 billion euros, or $9.7 billion, in 2020 as the pandemic gutted sales, but the company said that was profitable in the later part of the year.

Most of the annual loss stemmed from Renault’s stake in its troubled partner, Nissan. Losses at the Japanese carmaker drained €5 billion from the bottom line, Renault said. In addition, Renault car sales plunged 20 percent for the year, to just short of three million vehicles.

“After a first half impacted by Covid-19, the group has significantly turned around its performance in the second half,” Luca de Meo, Renault’s chief executive, said in a statement, without giving a figure. He said that 2021 was “set to be difficult given the unknowns regarding the health crisis as well as electronic components supply shortages.”

In 2021, shortages of semiconductors, a problem for almost all carmakers, could cut production by as much as 100,000 vehicles, Renault said.

Mr. de Meo, who became Renault’s chief executive in July, last month announced a plan to return to profitability that includes cuts in production capacity, sales of fewer models and increased parts sharing among vehicles to simplify manufacturing.

A tractor trailer is stuck in the ice and snow in Killeen, Texas. The winter storms that wreaked havoc across the South and Midwest have affected futures for oil and natural gas prices.Credit…Joe Raedle/Getty Images

  • Oil futures are trending downward after jumping earlier in the week, while natural gas gyrated through the day. Both were affected by the fierce winter storms that caused millions of people to go without power across Texas this week.

  • West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark crude, was down 2 percent on Friday, to about $59.35 a barrel. It had jumped 6 percent between Friday and Wednesday, as oil production was hindered by the weather.

  • Natural gas futures, which rose as a result of the storms, have moved up and down in recent days. On Friday they initially fell 3 percent before rebounding and eventually gaining nearly 1 percent from Thursday’s close. They still remain elevated from last week.

  • Word that the Biden administration was offering to restart talks to restore an accord limiting Iran’s nuclear program was seen as weighing on oil prices. Lifting sanctions against Iran could allow it sell more oil on the global market. Brent crude, the international benchmark, was down 1.2 percent on Friday, to just over $63 a barrel.

  • Wall Street had an upbeat start of trading on Friday. The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent after falling 0.4 percent on Thursday, halting four consecutive days of gains.

  • Shares of Uber rose 0.5 percent after Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that the company’s drivers must be classified as workers entitled to a minimum wage and vacation time. The case had been closely watched because of its ramifications for the gig economy.

  • European markets were broadly higher, with the Stoxx Europe 600 up 0.5 percent and FTSE 100 in Britain gaining 0.2 percent. Asian markets closed mixed, with the Nikkei in Japan down 0.7 percent while the Shanghai composite in China rose 0.6 percent.

  • Purchasing managers index data for February, from Markit, showed a range of trends across Europe. The France composite output index hit a three-month low, reflecting the restrictions on business activity imposed by the latest lockdown. The Germany composite index rose, helped by an export-led manufacturing upturn.

  • In Britain, retail sales fell 8.2 percent in January compared with the preceding month, government data said, a downturn that was sharpened by a lockdown that started in the new year. But the decline was less than expected, and also not as bad as the 22 percent drop seen in April, when Britain went into an earlier lockdown. The Office of National Statistics said some of the improvement probably came from businesses learning to adapt to lockdowns, with more online and click-and-collect sales.

Manessa Grady and her sons Zechariah, 8, left, and Noah, 9, were among the millions of Texas residents who lost power this week.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

In California, wildfires and heat waves in recent years forced utilities to shut off power to millions of homes and businesses. Now, Texas is learning that deadly winter storms and intense cold can do the same.

Bill Magness, the president and chief executive of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, said on Thursday that Texas was “seconds and minutes” from a catastrophic blackout this week as rotating outages were used to control the flow of electricity.

The country’s two largest states have taken very different approaches to managing their energy needs — Texas deregulated aggressively, letting the free market flourish, while California embraced environmental regulations. Yet the two states are confronting the same ominous reality: They may be woefully unprepared for the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters caused by climate change.

Blackouts in Texas and California have revealed that power plants can be strained and knocked offline by the kind of extreme cold and hot weather that climate scientists have said will become more common as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere.

The problems in Texas and California highlight the challenge the Biden administration will face in modernizing the electricity system to run entirely on wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and other zero-emission technologies by 2035 — a goal that President Biden set during the 2020 campaign.

The federal government and energy businesses may have to spend trillions of dollars to harden electricity grids against the threat posed by climate change and to move away from the fossil fuels responsible for the warming of the planet in the first place. These are not new ideas. Scholars have long warned that American electricity grids, which are run regionally, will come under increasing strain and needed major upgrades.

“We really need to change our paradigm, particularly utilities, because they are becoming much more vulnerable to disaster,” Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, said about blackouts in Texas and California. “They need to always think about literally the worst-case scenario because the worst-case scenario is going to happen.”

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Congressman Calls Robinhood’s Help Line and Gets Voicemail

After telling the House Financial Services Committee about the suicide of Robinhood user Alex Kearns, who died believing he had lost $730,000 on the brokerage app, Representative Sean Casten called its help line.

June 2020, Alex Kearns, who was 20 years old at the time, from Naperville, Illinois, killed himself, largely thanks to a bug in the Robinhood system. The bug was that he turned on the app, it said he owed $730,000 that he did not have, because of options positions that he thought canceled out but didn’t appear to. He called the help line. The help line, of course, was not manned, as we’ve discussed. He sent several panicked emails — three, to be precise — did not receive a response. Ultimately there was a response from the emails saying that, in fact, his positions were covered. But by that point, it was too late, because he had taken his own life. The — this is a gentleman who is 20 years old. Under Illinois law, he was not allowed to buy a beer, but he was allowed to take on $730,000 in positions and exposure that he did not have the liquidity to cover. Your mission, Mr. Tenev, is to democratize finance. But the history of financial regulation is to protect people like Alex Kearns from the system. As the old joke goes, if you’re playing poker and you can’t figure out who the fish is at the table, you should leave the table because you’re probably the fish. And there is an innate tension in your business model between democratizing finance, which is a noble calling, and being a conduit to feed fish to sharks. So I’m nervous. I think I got an exposure. And I call your help line now. Let’s call and let’s listen in the time we have remaining to what I’m going to hear on the other end of the phone. Voicemail: “Thank you for calling Robinhood. Please visit us at robinhood.com or on our app for support. If you have an urgent trading need, please make sure to include details of it when reaching out. Thanks have a great day.”

Video player loadingAfter telling the House Financial Services Committee about the suicide of Robinhood user Alex Kearns, who died believing he had lost $730,000 on the brokerage app, Representative Sean Casten called its help line.CreditCredit…via C-Span

The chief executives of Robinhood, Reddit, Citadel and Melvin Capital Management were among the witnesses at a hearing on the GameStop trading frenzy held by the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday.

  • Vlad Tenev, the chief executive of Robinhood, was the target for both Democrats and Republicans, fielding more than half of the lawmakers’ questions. “I love your company because it does, when correctly managed, provide investment opportunities for individuals who are currently frozen out of the markets for one reason or another,” said Representative Anthony Gonzalez, Republican of Ohio. He added: “At the same time, though, I believe a vulnerability was clearly exposed in your business model.”

  • Representative Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, capped his sharp questioning of Mr. Tenev, in which he relayed the story of a 20-year-old college student who killed himself last summer believing that he’d lost more than $700,000, by dialing the Robinhood help line and letting everyone listen in as a short message was played and the call was terminated. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said Robinhood’s decisions had “harmed customers,” and accused it of passing on hidden costs to its customers.

  • Keith Gill — known on YouTube as Roaring Kitty — testified that his interest in the company was based on his belief that the market was underestimating the brick-and-mortar retailer’s value. His testimony included winking references — such as dangling what appeared to be his oft-worn red headband off a picture of a kitten visible over his shoulder and the statement “I am not a cat” — to internet meme culture.

  • Several harsh questions were directed at Kenneth C. Griffin, the chief of Citadel. Members of Congress asked skeptical questions about Citadel’s practice of paying to trade against customers at online brokers like Robinhood. Mr. Griffin tried to explain the intricacies of the business but was often cut off. “Our folks are tired of bailing you all out when you screw up and gamble with the retirement fund. And that’s exactly what happens every single moment,” Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, said to him.

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Business

The Week in Enterprise: Fb Filters Politics

The Week in Business: Facebook Filters Politics

Happy Valentines Day. Here’s your quick rundown of the top business and tech stories you should know for the week ahead, so you can spend the rest of your day eating (sorry, reading) the candies that you want for loved ones (or for yourself) bought. – Charlotte Cowles

The Biden government’s $ 1.9 trillion stimulus proposal winds its way through Congress. However, many leading economists have argued that the sweeping bailout plan is excessive and could lead to out-of-control inflation. In a speech on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell disagreed, urging policymakers to reduce inflation fears and focus on restoring full employment. He also pointed out that the latest unemployment figures do not tell the full story of the volatile labor market. Employment for workers with higher wages is down 4 percent (still strong), but the lower quartile of the workforce has seen a devastating 17 percent decline.

The online chat platform Reddit has completed its lead role in buying GameStop stock and raising $ 250 million in new funds. The company is valued at $ 6 billion and plans to double its workforce and expand its user base. Reddit’s message boards are not just a popular forum for stock market tips these days. They have also become an important information and community resource for unemployed Americans trying to navigate the complex system of unemployment benefits during the pandemic.

The 131-year-old pancake and syrup brand officially has a new name: Pearl Milling Company. Quaker Oats pledged to revamp the line, which has long been criticized for its history of racist imagery, following widespread protests against racial injustice last June. The redesigned packaging will hit the shelves this summer. Some other food brands that use racist imagery in their marketing, including Ben’s Original Rice Products (formerly Uncle Ben’s), Wheat Cream Muesli, and Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup, are currently undergoing a similar makeover.

If you are tired of your crazy uncle’s political abuse on Facebook, welcome this development: the social media platform is changing its algorithm to reduce the political content in people’s newsfeeds. The new algorithm, which makes political content less prominent but does not remove it, is being tested in several countries and will be rolled out to the US in the coming weeks. The change comes in response to popular requests: “One of the most important feedback we are currently hearing from our community is that people don’t want politics and struggles to take over their experience of our services,” said Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook. However, not all political offices are affected. Content from official government agencies is excluded from the change.

Facebook may tone down political content, but Twitter is struggling to keep it up – at least in India. The clash began when Indian farmers took to Twitter to protest new farming laws. The country’s government ordered Twitter to delete or mute more than 1,100 accounts alleged to have promoted violence or spread misinformation. Twitter complied with some of these requests, but refused to remove reports from journalists, activists, and others who are exercising their right to criticize the government and not violate company policies. Now the Indian government has accused Twitter of breaking its laws.

Regulators and policymakers are still trying to figure out how to react to the recent GameStop stock trading frenzy that hijacked the market in January and harmed investors large and small. Congress will hold a hearing on the matter this week, and key players – including Reddit executives, hedge fund Citadel and stock trading platform Robinhood – have been asked to testify.

A new analysis found that women’s participation in the US labor market fell to a 33-year low in January. Almost 80 percent of workers over the age of 19 who left the labor force in the past month were women. Bumble, a company that runs a dating app for women, went public on Thursday, making its 31-year-old founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, a billionaire and the youngest woman to go public. The sale of Chinese social media app TikTok to Oracle and Walmart, forced by the Trump administration, has been suspended indefinitely by the Biden administration while national security concerns are investigated.

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Business

Why Is Fb Rejecting These Trend Advertisements?

Why Is Facebook Rejecting These Fashion Ads?

Here’s how it works: a company creates an ad or creates a shop and sends it to Facebook for approval, an automated process. (If it’s a storefront, the products can also arrive through a feed, and everyone has to follow Facebook rules.) If the system indicates a potential violation, the ad or product will be returned to the company as non-compliant. However, the exact word or part of the picture that caused the problem is not identified. This means that it is up to the company to effectively guess what the problem is.

The company can then either challenge the ad / listing as it is, or change the image or wording it hopes will meet Facebook rules. In either case, the communication is sent back through the automated system where it can be verified by another automated system or an actual person.

According to Facebook, it has added thousands of reviewers in the past few years, but three million companies advertise on Facebook, most of which are small businesses. The Facebook spokeswoman did not identify what would result in an appeal being made to a human reviewer or whether there is a codified process by which this would happen. Often times, the small business owners feel trapped in an endless machine-controlled loop.

“The problem we keep running into is communication channels,” said Sinéad Burke, an inclusivity activist who consults with numerous brands and platforms, including Juniper. “Access has to mean more than just digital access. And we need to understand who is in the room when these systems are created. “

The Facebook spokeswoman said there were employees with disabilities across the company, including senior management, and that there was an accessibility team that worked across Facebook to embed accessibility into the product development process. While there is no question that the ad and store policy rules Facebook created were in part intended to protect their communities from false medical claims and counterfeit products, these rules, albeit inadvertently, block some of those communities from accessing Products made for you.

“This is one of the most typical problems we see,” said Tobias Matzner, Professor of Media, Algorithms and Society at the University of Paderborn in Germany. “Algorithms solve the problem of efficiency on a large scale” – by recognizing patterns and making assumptions – “but when they do, they do all sorts of other things, like hurting small businesses.”

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Health

Fb says it plans to take away posts with false vaccine claims.

Facebook says it plans to remove posts with false vaccine claims.

Facebook said Monday that it plans to remove posts with false claims about vaccines from its platform, including repealing claims that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract the coronavirus than vaccinations receive.

The social network has increasingly changed its content policies over the past year as the coronavirus has risen sharply. In October, the social network banned people and companies from buying advertisements containing false or misleading information about vaccines. In December, Facebook announced it would remove posts with claims exposed by the World Health Organization or government agencies.

Monday’s move goes even further by targeting unpaid posts to the website and, in particular, to Facebook pages and groups. Rather than just aiming at misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, the update includes incorrect information about all vaccines. Facebook said it had consulted with the World Health Organization and other leading health institutes to come up with a list of false or misleading claims regarding Covid-19 and vaccines in general.

In the past, Facebook had announced that it would only “rank down” or push down on people’s news feeds, leading to misleading or false claims about vaccines, making it harder to find such groups or posts. Now posts, pages and groups that contain such untruths will be completely removed from the platform.

“Building trust in these vaccines is critical, so we’re launching the world’s largest campaign to help public health organizations share accurate information about Covid-19 vaccines and encourage people to get vaccinated as soon as possible they have vaccines available, “said Kang-Xing Jin, director of health at Facebook, in a company blog post.

The company said the changes were in response to a recent decision by the Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body that reviews decisions made by the company’s policy team and determines whether they are fair. In a decision, the board said Facebook needed to create a new standard for health-related misinformation because its current rules were “inappropriately vague”.

Updated

Apr 8, 2021, 7:52 p.m. ET

Facebook also announced that it would provide US $ 120 million in advertising loans to ministries of health, non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies to help spread reliable Covid-19 vaccines and preventative health information. As vaccination centers became more prevalent, Facebook would help point people to places to get the vaccine.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, has been proactive against false information related to the coronavirus. He has Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, often hosted on Facebook for live video updates on America’s response to coronavirus. In his private philanthropy, Mr. Zuckerberg has also vowed to “eradicate all diseases” and pledge billions to fight viruses and other diseases.

However, Mr Zuckerberg was also a staunch advocate of free speech on Facebook and previously hesitated to contain most falsehoods, even if they were potentially dangerous. The exception was Facebook’s policy of not tolerating statements that could lead to “immediate, direct physical harm” to people on or outside the platform.

Facebook has been criticized for this stance, including for allowing President Donald J. Trump to stay on the platform until after the January 6 uprising in the U.S. Capitol.

Public health advocates and outside critics have questioned Facebook’s refusal to remove false or misleading claims about vaccines for years. This has resulted in an increase in false vaccine information, often by people or groups spreading other harmful misinformation on the website. Even when Facebook tried to update its guidelines, it often left loopholes that were exploited by misinformation spreaders.

Facebook announced on Monday that it was also changing its search tools to post relevant, authoritative results on coronavirus and vaccine information while making it harder to find accounts that are preventing people from getting vaccinated.

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Health

Fb will inform individuals the place they will get vaccinated

Facebook will tell people where they can get vaccinated

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Georgetown University in a “Free Speech Conversation” in Washington, DC on October 17, 2019.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images

Facebook this week will show its US users information on where and when they can get Covid-19 vaccines, the company said on Monday.

As part of the Covid-19 Information Center, Facebook will redirect users to the websites of local health authorities where they can obtain information about their eligibility for vaccination. The function will be expanded worldwide in the coming weeks.

The company will also provide public health authorities around the world with $ 120 million in advertising credits to run campaigns about Covid-19 vaccines.

In addition, the company announced that it worked with the World Health Organization to add to the list of false claims regarding Covid-19, which Facebook will remove from its services. This includes claims that Covid-19 was made by humans, claims that vaccines are not effective, and claims that vaccines can cause autism.

For groups that previously violated Facebook’s Covid-19 guidelines, the company temporarily requires administrators to approve all posts in their groups before they are posted. On Instagram, the company will make it harder for people to find accounts that are preventing people from getting vaccinated. Facebook and Instagram groups, pages and accounts that repeatedly share exposed Covid-19 claims could be removed entirely, the company said.

Facebook said it is also working with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to ensure information about the Covid-19 vaccines reaches communities where vaccine access may be lower. This includes Native American, black, and Latin American communities.

The company announced its plans in November to provide users with authoritative information about the Covid-19 vaccines.

Nominations are open to the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50, a list of private startups that are leveraging breakthrough technology to become the next generation of large public companies. Post through Friday, February 12th at 3 p.m. EST.

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Politics

Trump backer held on pipe bomb costs, mentioned attacking Twitter, Fb

Trump backer held on pipe bomb charges, discussed attacking Twitter, Facebook

Ian Benjamin Rogers

Source: Napa County Sheriff’s Office

A California man charged with possession of five pipe bombs spoke of targeting Democrats and social media giants Twitter and Facebook as part of a discussion of the “war” to ensure that former President Donald Trump would stays in the White House.

“I want to blow up a Democratic building that is that bad,” Napa County’s man Ian Benjamin Rogers wrote in a text message on a criminal complaint in the California Federal District Court. The complaint described a wide range of firearms, ammunition, bomb-making equipment and warfare manuals that were in his possession.

“The Democrats have to pay,” wrote Rogers, a married father of two who owns British Auto Repair from the Napa Valley.

In another text message, Rogers said he was “thinking of the first target of the Sac Office,” which an FBI agent suspects is the Sacramento office of California Governor Gavin Newsom.

“Then maybe bird and face offices,” wrote the 44-year-old according to the complaint.

“Sorry it came to that, but I’m not going down without a fight … These commies need to be told what’s going on.”

The agent said the text appears to refer to Twitter, whose logo is a blue bird, and Facebook “because both social media platforms blocked Trump’s accounts to prevent him from sending messages on those platforms,” ​​briefly After the January 6 uprising, the US Capitol was loved by a crowd of its supporters.

Rogers wrote in another text in which Trump was apparently the 45th president: “I hope 45 goes to war, if he doesn’t I will.”

Rogers admitted during an interview with FBI agents that “he built the pipe bombs but said they were for entertainment purposes only,” the complaint read.

However, the complaint states that these and other text messages indicated that Rogers mistakenly believed Trump won the 2020 presidential election and “his intention to attack Democrats and Democrat-affiliated venues to ensure Trump stays in office”.

“I continue to believe that the messages express Rogers’ intention to commit acts of violence locally in the absence of an organized ‘war’ to prevent Joe Biden from assuming the presidency,” the FBI agent wrote.

The agent noted that Rogers wrote in a January 10 text message, “We can attack Twitter or the Democrats you choose … I think we can either attack easily.”

When the person he texted suggested, “Let’s go after Soros” – well-known liberal investor George Soros – Rogers replied that Twitter or Democrats would be “easy” now while “Soros” had a “road trip” would require. “said the complaint.

Rogers, who is being held on $ 5 million federal gun charges, has yet to appear in federal court in San Francisco to be charged with unlawful possession of an unregistered destructive device.

Rogers’ attorney, Jess Raphael, said that a “disgruntled former employee” who had been fired by Rogers initiated the criminal investigation.

“The tipster had sent a handwritten document to the FBI in September that they were investigating and decided it was unrelated to terrorism and decided not to bring charges,” Raphael said in an email to CNBC.

“Apparently dissatisfied, the tipster sent a copy of his letter to the Napa sheriffs in October, who opened an investigation,” said the lawyer. “Nothing was done about it until January 15th after the Capitol Rebellion. I don’t know why they haven’t done anything for months.”

Raphael called Rodgers a “family man and a valued parishioner”. The lawyer also said, “I have 36 letters confirming his non-violence character.”

“He was a strong believer in President Trump and a gun collector,” said Raphael.

One person who answered the phone in Rogers’ workshop declined to comment, saying, “A lawyer advised us not to speak to reporters.”

The federal criminal complaint stated that the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, and the Napa Special Investigations Bureau found a large gun safe in his shop containing several guns and the five during the January 15 raids on Rogers’ home and business Contained pipe bombs.

Pipe bombs as shown in an FBI criminal complaint

Source: FBI

Other items found in the safe were materials used to create destructive devices, including gunpowder, pipes and end caps.

Authorities also found manuals such as The Anarchist Cookbook, US Army Improvised Munitions Handbook, Homemade C-4: A Recipe for Survival, US Army Special Forces Guide to Unconventional Warfare, and the Guerrilla Warfare Handbook the Army.

A Nazi flag was also found in his safe, according to a prosecutor.

In total, the authorities confiscated 49 firearms from his home and business, including around two dozen ammunition boxes with thousands of rounds of ammunition.

One of the firearms is “an apparently kit-built MG-42 belt-drive machine gun that can fire fully automatically,” says the complaint.

The MG-42 during World War II was made in Germany and used by Nazi forces.

According to the criminal complaint, a sticker on a Rogers vehicle has a symbol for the anti-government group of three percent.

Rogers is not being charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol by the thousands of Trump supporters who made violent but botched efforts to get Congress to reject Joe Biden’s election as president. Five people died in connection with the riot, including a Capitol policeman who was beaten by people in the crowd.

The FBI continues to search for people who left two pipe bombs outside the national headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committees on the same day as this riot.

Raphael, Rogers’ attorney, said in his email that “the so-called tube bombs were little tubes filled with gunpowder to fill bullets that were capped, which is all normal hardware store.”

“They were detonated by the sheriffs in tires stacked outside Mr. Rogers’ auto repair shop,” said Raphael. “They didn’t even seem to damage the tires, as I saw in the newspaper photos. His entire weapon collection and the so-called pipe bombs were kept in a large, thick metal weapon safe.”

The attorney also said that even the tipster who briefed law enforcement on Rogers said he “told the sheriff’s investigators that Mr. Rogers was not a militia, hate group or extremist.”

Raphael also said he believed the Napa Sheriffs Department had apparently abused the bail process by filing a motion to significantly increase Rogers’ bond, alleging that he was likely to flee the jurisdiction.

“The entirety of their statement concerned weapons and language, none of which had anything to do with threatened escape,” said the lawyer.

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.

Facebook did not have an immediate comment.

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Business

Fb and Twitter Face Worldwide Scrutiny After Trump Ban

Facebook and Twitter Face International Scrutiny After Trump Ban

LONDON – In Sri Lanka and Myanmar, Facebook continued to post warnings that they had contributed to the violence. In India, activists have called on the company to fight against positions held by politicians against Muslims. In Ethiopia, groups advocated the social network blocking hate speech after hundreds were killed in ethnic violence on social media.

“The offline problems that rocked the country are fully visible online,” wrote activists, civil society groups and journalists in Ethiopia in an open letter last year.

For years, Facebook and Twitter have rejected calls to remove hate speech or other comments from public figures and government officials that civil society groups and activists have said risk inciting violence. Companies stuck to guidelines, driven by American ideals of free speech, that give such numbers more leeway to use their platforms for communication.

But last week, Facebook and Twitter cut President Trump off their platforms for inciting a crowd to attack the U.S. Capitol. These decisions have angered human rights groups and activists who are now urging companies to apply their policies evenly, especially in smaller countries where platforms dominate communication.

“When I saw what the platforms were doing to Trump, I thought, ‘You should have done this before, and you should have done this consistently in other countries around the world,” said Javier Pallero, Policy Director at Access Now, one Human rights ombudsman group involved in the letter from Ethiopia: “All over the world we are at the mercy if they choose to act.”

“Sometimes they act very late,” he added, “and sometimes they don’t act at all.”

David Kaye, a law professor and former United Nations observer on freedom of expression, said political figures in India, the Philippines, Brazil and elsewhere deserve a review of their online behavior. But he said the actions against Mr. Trump raise difficult questions about how the power of American internet companies is being used and whether their actions set a new precedent for more aggressive police speech around the world.

“The question for the future is whether this is a new type of standard that they want to adopt for executives around the world and whether they have the resources to do so.” Mr. Kaye said. “There will be a real increase in demand to do this elsewhere in the world.”

Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, is the world’s largest social network with more than 2.7 billion monthly users. More than 90 percent of them live outside the United States. The company declined to comment, but said the actions against Mr Trump are based on his violation of existing rules and do not constitute a new global policy.

“Our guidelines apply to everyone,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, in a recent interview with Reuters. “The policy is that you cannot incite violence, you cannot be part of the incitement to violence.”

Capitol Riot Fallout

Updated

Jan. 17, 2021, 5:21 p.m. ET

Twitter, which has around 190 million users every day around the world, said its rules for world leaders are not new. When reviewing posts that could lead to violence, the context of the events is crucial.

“Offline damage from online speech is proven to be real and most importantly drives our policies and enforcement,” said Jack Dorsey, managing director of Twitter, in a post Wednesday. However, he said the decision “sets a precedent that I consider dangerous: the power an individual or a company has over part of the global public debate.”

There are signs that Facebook and Twitter have started to act more confidently. Following the attack on the Capitol, Twitter updated its policy to permanently ban the accounts of repeat offenders of its political content rules. Facebook has taken action against a number of accounts outside the United States, including the deletion of the account of a state-owned media company in Iran and the closure of government accounts in Uganda, where violence erupted before the elections. Facebook said the shutdowns had nothing to do with the Trump decision.

Many activists have recognized Facebook for its global influence and non-uniform application of rules. They said that in many countries there is a lack of cultural understanding to determine when posts could lead to violence. Too often, they said, Facebook and other social media companies don’t act even when they receive warnings.

In 2019, in Slovakia, Facebook did not cut down on posts by a member of parliament who was convicted by a court and robbed of his seat of government for incitement and racist remarks. In Cambodia, Human Rights Watch said the company was slow to respond to government officials participating in a social media campaign to tarnish a prominent Buddhist monk who campaigned for human rights. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte used Facebook to reach journalists and other critics.

After a wave of violence, Ethiopian activists said Facebook was being used to incite violence and promote discrimination.

“The truth is, despite good intentions, these companies do not guarantee uniform application or enforcement of their rules,” said Agustina Del Campo, director of the Center for Freedom of Expression Studies at the University of Palermo in Buenos Aires. “And often they lack context and understanding when they try.”

In many countries, it is believed that Facebook bases its actions on its business interests rather than human rights. In India, home of most of Facebook’s users, the company has been accused of not monitoring anti-Muslim content from political figures for fear of angering the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling party.

“The developments in our countries are not being seriously addressed,” said Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, a digital rights group in India. “Any abolition of content raises the question of freedom of expression, but inciting violence or using a platform for dangerous speech is not free speech, it is a question of democracy, law and order.”

But while many activists urged Facebook and Twitter to be more active in protecting human rights, they expressed their anger at the power companies have to control language and influence public opinion.

Some also warned that actions against Mr Trump would provoke a backlash, with political leaders in some countries taking steps to prevent social media companies from censoring the language.

Government officials in France and Germany raised alarm over the ban on Mr Trump’s accounts, questioning whether private corporations should be able to unilaterally silence a democratically elected leader. A draft law that is being examined for the European Union of 27 states would set new rules for the content moderation policy of the largest social networks.

Barbora Bukovská, senior director of law and politics at Article 19, a digital rights group, said the risk is particularly high in countries whose leaders have historically used social media to fuel divisions. She said the events in Washington sparked a bill in Poland by the ruling right-wing nationalist party that would punish social media companies for not removing explicitly illegal content, which could allow for greater targeting of LGBTQ people.

“These decisions about Trump were the right decisions, but there are broader questions that go beyond Trump,” said Ms. Bukovská.

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Behind a Secret Deal Between Google and Fb

Behind a Secret Deal Between Google and Facebook

The Wall Street Journal had previously reported on aspects of the draft complaint.

The recent antitrust proceedings against Google and Facebook have put Big Tech’s lucrative businesses at the center. In October, the Justice Department sued Google and signed an agreement with Apple to use Google as the pre-selected search engine for iPhones and other devices.

“This idea of ​​the big technology platforms competing against each other is very exaggerated,” said Sally Hubbard, a former assistant attorney general in the New York City Anti-Trust Office who now works at the Open Markets Institute, a think tank. “In many ways they strengthen each other’s monopoly power.”

Google and Facebook accounted for more than half of all digital advertising spending in 2019. In addition to displaying advertisements on their own platforms like the Google search engine and the Facebook homepage, websites, app developers and publishers rely on the companies to advertise their pages.

The agreement between Facebook and Google, codenamed “Jedi Blue” within Google, affects a growing segment of the online advertising market known as programmatic advertising. Online advertising generates hundreds of billions of dollars in global sales each year, and automated buying and selling of advertising space accounts for more than 60 percent of total sales, according to researchers.

In the milliseconds between when a user clicks a link to a webpage and the ads load on the page, bids are placed behind the scenes for available ad space on marketplaces known as exchanges. The winning bid will be forwarded to an ad server. With both ad exchanges and Google’s ad server dominating, the company often ran its own exchanges.

A method called header bidding was developed to reduce reliance on Google’s ad platforms. News agencies and other websites could collect offers from multiple exchanges at the same time, helping to increase competition and better prices for publishers. According to one estimate, more than 70 percent of publishers had adopted the technology by 2016.

Google has developed an alternative called Open Bidding that supports an alliance of exchanges. While Open Bidding allows other exchanges to compete with Google at the same time, the search company charges a fee for each winning bid, and competitors say there is less transparency for publishers.

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Trump Is Banned on Fb ‘at Least’ Till His Time period is Over

Trump Is Banned on Facebook 'at Least' Until His Term is Over

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook announced on Thursday that it would block President Trump on its platforms at least until the end of his tenure on Jan. 20, as much of the mainstream online world has vigorously tried to curtail the president after years of inactivity.

But Twitter, which suspended Mr. Trump’s account on Wednesday for posting violating his rules, lifted the ban and allowed the president to tweet. Late Thursday, Mr Trump marked his return to social media by posting a two-minute, 41-second video on Twitter saying he would support a peaceful change of power.

Facebook and Twitter said they made their opposing decisions for different reasons. Mark Zuckerberg, the executive director of Facebook, said in a post that the social network had decided to cut Mr. Trump off because a rampage by pro-Trump supporters in the capital of the country the day before, suggested by the president, had shown that he was trying to undermine the transition to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“We believe the risk that the president will continue to use our service during this time is simply too great,” wrote Zuckerberg. As a result, Facebook and its photo-sharing website Instagram would expand the blocks first set up on Wednesday for Mr Trump’s ability “until the peaceful transfer of power is complete”.

Twitter said on Wednesday that the company saw a “risk of harm” in Mr. Trump’s news, but would only suspend the president’s account permanently if he continued to break his rules. Mr Trump deleted the tweets that led to the suspension of his account, told Twitter Thursday, and started a countdown to get his access back on.

The various actions showed how social media companies are still grappling with moderating one of their most powerful and popular users. Mr Trump, who used the websites during his presidency to anger his supporters and harass his enemies, has been constantly harassing Facebook and Twitter by moving the envelope on what the world’s leaders are saying online to be ready.

Before Twitter reintroduced Mr. Trump’s account, it and other social media companies had been part of a growing revolt against Mr. Trump. Twitter began restricting online on Wednesday by temporarily suspending Mr. Trump’s account after posting tweets that violated the rules on calling for violence and discrediting voting.

Facebook followed later. Snap, the maker of Snapchat, has also blocked access to Mr. Trump’s Snapchat account. YouTube on Thursday issued a stricter electoral fraud misinformation policy to make it easier for the president to be suspended for posting false election claims. Twitch, a video streaming platform, also suspended Mr. Trump’s account on Thursday.

These actions were a remarkable change for a social media industry that has long refused to disrupt Mr Trump’s posts, which have often been filled with falsehoods and threats. Positioning themselves as defenders of free speech and public debate, Facebook and Twitter said it was in the public’s best interest to see what world leaders posted, even when critics attacked the platforms to denounce the unhindered flow of misinformation and allow toxic content.

Lawmakers and even company employees said the platforms waited too long to take serious action against Mr Trump. On Facebook, dozens of workers found the company only banned Mr. Trump from posting after the Democrats secured the presidency and control of the Senate, according to people familiar with the internal talks.

“I am pleased that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are taking long belated steps to combat the president’s continued abuse of their platforms to sow discord and violence. However, these isolated actions are too late and by far not enough.” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat from Virginia.

Derrick Johnson, the president and chief executive of the NAACP, praised Facebook’s decision to suspend Mr. Trump’s account and urged Twitter to do the same.

“The president’s social media accounts are a petri dish of disinformation designed to share and fuel violence at all costs,” said Johnson.

The transition of the president

Updated

Jan. 7, 2021, 8:25 p.m. ET

A White House spokesman said no one has been more successful with digital media than Mr Trump and that it was “incredibly ironic, but not surprising, that when the president spoke to the country at a critical time, Big Tech decided to give it censor and prevent him from doing so. Big tech is out of control. “

Over the past year, Facebook and Twitter had taken some steps to flag Mr Trump’s posts as inaccurate and to point users to reliable information. But they had mostly been unwilling to delete Mr. Trump’s messages or limit his account.

On Facebook, that aversion changed on Wednesday after Mr. Trump attacked his supporters on social media and a mob stormed the Capitol. From home, Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives – including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Head of Politics, Monica Bickert, Vice President of Integrity, Guy Rosen, and Head of International Politics and Communications, Nicholas Clegg – made a video call, to discuss what to do, said two people who were on the phone and were not authorized to speak publicly.

After Twitter suspended Mr Trump’s account late Wednesday, Mr Zuckerberg approved the removal of two posts from the president’s Facebook page, the two people said. By that evening, Mr Zuckerberg had decided to restrict Mr Trump’s Facebook account for the remainder of his tenure – and perhaps indefinitely, they said.

“What we saw and saw in real time on television – it was cruel, a violent riot, deeply troubling,” Zuckerberg said in a conference call with Facebook employees on Thursday that heard the New York Times. “You simply cannot have a functioning democracy without a peaceful change of power.”

Mr Zuckerberg also criticized Mr Trump directly on the phone call, saying the president had “fanned the flames of his supporters as they tried to overthrow the election result”.

Ms. Bickert added that while Mr. Trump’s posts were not direct calls for violence – the standard Facebook uses to remove posts – executives felt that those posts did more to reduce the risk of ongoing violence to decrease than to decrease it.

Alex Holmes, deputy general manager of The Diana Award nonprofit, said outside councils that he was a member of the advisory board on Facebook and Twitter on trust and safety had raised concerns about President Trump’s inflammatory social media posts however ignored.

“What was sometimes lost was understanding how things can lead to offline damage,” he said. “The world is watching now.”

On Twitter, the decision to temporarily suspend Mr Trump’s account on Wednesday came after a discussion among security and policy executives, said a person familiar with the company. They pointed to a clause in Twitter’s policy that said even world leaders could face consequences if they promoted terrorism or made clear and direct calls to violence.

Jack Dorsey, the executive director of Twitter, spent Thursday morning liking and retweeting comments calling for caution over a permanent ban on Mr. Trump, suggesting he would not deviate from the plan to see Mr. Trump again to be included in the service.

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment on Mr Dorsey.

The actions of the social media companies went beyond Mr. Trump. Twitter permanently suspended Lin Wood, an attorney who used his account to promote the QAnon conspiracy theory and push the mob on Wednesday. The company also removed a post from Dan Bongino, a Conservative podcast host, on Thursday.

This helped renew right-wing criticism that conservatives were being censored by the platforms headquartered in liberal Silicon Valley. Mr Trump has accused companies of censorship in the past and signed an executive order last year aimed at removing the platforms’ legal protection.

“Speech blocking is going to get worse,” tweeted Mr Bongino before posting the post, which would be removed and result in his account being banned.

Other conservatives railed against Facebook on alternative social media sites such as Parler and Gab, two Twitter-like platforms that the far-right party has joined for its laissez-faire attitude. On Parler, the hashtag #FacebookCensorship was trending on Thursday, while Gab’s “Trending” page featured a full-screen photo of Mr. Zuckerberg headed “Facebook Bans Trump”.

Parler and Gab did not respond to requests for comment.

“The cleanup will only intensify,” wrote a Gab user with the handle @ Winst0n_Smith. “People need to migrate to alternative social media.”

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Sheera Frenkel contributed to the coverage.