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Senate Intel Chair on TikTok: ‘If I Had Young Kids, I Wouldn’t Want Them on TikTok’

Yahoo!Finance reported:

TikTok has become enormously popular with teens and young adults globally, and one U.S. senator is sounding the alarm on the security risks that the Chinese-operated app poses to the general public.

“My kids are now in their early 30s and late 20s, so I can’t completely regulate what they’re doing,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) recently said on Yahoo Finance Live. “But if I had young kids, I wouldn’t want them on TikTok.”

Warner, a former technology and telecommunications executive who is currently the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, added that TikTok is “literally like a communications network” for the Chinese Communist Party. Because China’s laws require a company to make its first allegiance to the Party rather than shareholders or customers, he explained, the Party has the ability to effectively adjust content.

“TikTok is at a level even greater than Facebook was at its peak, absorbing enormous amounts of information about any user, literally down to the keystrokes to your eye movements,” Warner said. “Not only the information in your posting but all kinds of things that are happening in the background. And a whole lot of that information, no matter what they say, because the code is being written in Beijing, is ending up somewhere in China.”

Elon Musk Says He Plans to Publish ‘the Twitter Files’ About Free-Speech Suppression on the Social-Media Platform

Insider reported:

Elon Musk has teased the release of what he described as “the Twitter Files” about “free-speech suppression” by the social-media platform. Twitter’s new owner tweeted on Monday: “The Twitter Files on free-speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened …”

Musk’s “Twitter files” tweet on Monday night came amid a longer tirade specifically against Apple. Musk, a self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist” claimed the tech giant has “mostly stopped” advertising on Twitter. He also alleged that Apple threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store without telling the company why.

Musk ended the string of tweets on Monday by claiming his self-declared “war” with Apple was “a battle for the future of civilization.” He added: “If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”

Twitter Stops Policing COVID Misinformation Under CEO Elon Musk and Reportedly Restores 62,000 Suspended Accounts

CNBC reported:

In a recent update to its website, Twitter said that effective Nov. 23, it is no longer enforcing its COVID-19 misleading information policy. It means the company will no longer prioritize removing or tagging misleading health information related to COVID-19.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been a vocal critic of how health officials reacted to the coronavirus pandemic. He said during the company’s first-quarter 2020 earnings call that the stay-at-home orders were “forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights.” He also said on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in 2020 that the mortality rate of COVID-19 was much lower than health officials estimated.

The change comes as technology newsletter Platformer says employees are scrambling to restore more than 62,000 suspended accounts. That figure could include some of the more than 11,000 accounts that were suspended for violating the company’s COVID-19 misinformation rules.

Google and YouTube Are Investing to Fight Misinformation

Mashable reported:

Misinformation is continuously in the spotlight, as its rise has prompted social media giants to take significant action against all forms of fake news.

Today, Google and YouTube are the latest to make a move against misinformation, announcing a $13.2 million grant to the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), a part of nonprofit media institute Poynter. The grant will fund the formation of the Global Fact Check Fund, to support a network of 135 fact-checking organizations, operating from 65 countries in over 80 languages. The money will go towards scaling existing operations and launch new initiatives to elevate information and reduce misinformation.

The fund will open in 2023. This is Google and YouTube’s single largest grant toward fact-checking to date. Since 2018, the Google News initiative has invested close to $75 million in projects and partnerships with the intention of strengthening media literacy and fighting fake news.

You’re Not Wrong — Websites Have Way More Trackers Now

TechRadar reported:

The average website has 48 trackers monitoring every visitor’s every move and compiling sensitive data, shocking new research has claimed. The findings from NordVPN also suggest that with so many trackers, websites are putting their visitors at plenty of risk of identity theft.

Using three different tracker blockers (Brave, Privacy Badger, and uBlock Origin), analysts for the company measured the number of trackers (cookies or tracking pixels) present across the 100 most popular websites in 25 countries around the world, as according to SimilarWeb.

Social media websites seem to be the worst of the bunch, with the average site containing 160 trackers. Health websites take up second place, with 46 trackers on average. Digital media sites are fitted with 28 trackers on average.

Recognizable third parties were found to own most of these trackers. Almost a third (30%) belong to Google, 11% to Facebook and 7% to Adobe, with the data often being used for marketing purposes.

Hackers Release Millions of Twitter IDs and User Info for Free

Gizmodo reported:

Twitter’s API once held such an easily exploitable flaw that hackers managed to grab 5.4 million user details. Now, according to reports and mentions from users in hacker forums, there are several million more points of user data floating around on the internet.

BleepingComputer reported Monday that the 5.4 million user records containing passwords, phone numbers, emails and more may have been just the tip of the iceberg for a much larger breach in company data.

The data had been originally jacked from Twitter using a flaw in the platform’s application programming interface (API), but is now being shared openly online.

​As summarized at the start of this year by HackerOne, hackers found there was a way to allow anyone to get the Twitter ID of a user by submitting their phone number or email to the system, even if the user had turned off that option in their account.

HHS Moves to Overhaul Privacy Rules for Substance Abuse Patients

Axios reported:

The federal health department is trying to harmonize privacy protections covering the records of patients being treated for substance use disorder. Why it matters: Syncing the landmark 1996 privacy law HIPAA with tougher standards Congress passed in the CARES Act more than two years ago could prevent instances in which providers unknowingly prescribe opioids as treatment for someone with a history of addiction.

Catch up quick: The Department of Health and Human Services on Monday put forward a rule aimed at aligning privacy protections known as 42 CFR Part 2 with HIPAA — a change behavioral health advocates have said it a critical step to confronting the opioid crisis.

Details: To facilitate information sharing between providers, HHS on Monday proposed requiring one-time patient consent for disclosure of treatment and allowing HIPAA-covered entities to access those records.

The HHS rule would also give patients the right to know where and when their information was disclosed and to request restrictions on what providers are allowed to know. It would further prohibit courts from using Part 2 records against the patient in civil or criminal proceedings.

Clinics Across Massachusetts Offering $75 Gift Cards for COVID Vaccines and Boosters

CBS News reported:

Clinics across Massachusetts are offering $75 gift cards through the end of the year, or while supplies last, as an incentive for people in the state to get vaccinated and boosted.

The Department of Public Health’s “Get Boosted” website lists nearly 250 locations where vaccines will be offered in the coming weeks. The clinics are in 20 “Vaccine Equity Initiative” communities, plus communities of color and areas with low booster rates.

The gift card is available to all Massachusetts residents, including children, who are getting a COVID vaccine dose. No ID or health insurance is required to get the vaccine. Some clinics may encourage pre-registration, but an appointment is not required.

Data shows least 92% of Massachusetts residents have had at least one COVID shot, but only 61% have received a booster dose as of Nov. 21. About half of residents over the age of 65 have received a second booster, and that percentage is much lower for younger populations.

Alberta Not Proceeding With Premier Smith’s Bill to Protect COVID Unvaccinated

CTV News reported:

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is reversing a promise to enshrine human rights protections for the COVID-19 unvaccinated in law this fall. Instead, Smith said she is phoning up organizations with vaccine mandates to urge them to change their minds, tying it to government funding if need be.

Smith is also asking Albertans to call her government to report on those imposing vaccine mandates. “The Arctic Winter Games wanted $1.2 million from us to support their effort and they were discriminating against the athletes, telling them they had to be vaccinated.

“So we asked them if they would reconsider their vaccination policy in the light of new evidence and they did. And I was pleased to see that.”

Smith said she heard an Alberta film production has a similar policy for its hairdressers, so she has directed a cabinet minister to call the company to urge it to reconsider.

Dating Apps and Telegram: How China Protesters Are Defying Authorities

Reuters reported:

Opponents of China’s anti-COVID measures are resorting to dating apps and social media platforms blocked on the mainland to evade censors, spread the word about their defiance and strategy, in a high-tech game of cat and mouse with police.

Videos, images and accounts of the opposition to China’s tough COVID-19 curbs have poured onto China’s tightly censored cyberspace since weekend protests, with activists saving them to platforms abroad before the censors delete them, social media users say.

Protesters came out in several Chinese cities for three days from Friday in a show of civil disobedience unprecedented since President Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago.

U.K. Minister Defends U-Turn Over Removing Harmful Online Content

The Guardian reported:

The U.K. culture secretary, Michelle Donelan, has defended removing a provision in the online safety bill to regulate “legal but harmful” online material, after the father of teenager Molly Russell said it was a “watering down” of the bill.

Ministers have scrapped the provision after MPs raised free speech concerns. It would have included offensive content that does not constitute a criminal offence, but instead Donelan said platforms would be required to enforce their terms and conditions.

If those terms explicitly prohibit content that falls below the threshold of criminality — such as some forms of abuse — Ofcom will then have the power to ensure they police them adequately.

The bill, which returns to parliament on Dec. 5 after being paused in July, also contains new provisions on protecting children. Overall, the legislation imposes a duty of care on tech firms to shield children from harmful content.