Cat Zakrzewski
@Cat_Zakrzewski
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@washingtonpost national tech policy reporter. Previously: @WSJVC + @MedillSchool Threads: @cqzakrz
Washington, DC
Joined September 2012
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NEW: “I worry that we’re going to head into the election with a blindfold over our eyes.”
@NaomiNixWrites
and I report how a GOP legal campaign is dismantling misinformation research, amid a singularly chaotic presidential race.
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Strong statement from FTC, following the security and privacy departures at Twitter: "We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern. No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees."
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Just in: Twitter applied its new manipulated media label for the first time to a deceptively edited video of Joe Biden. It was shared by White House social media director Dan Scavino, and retweeted by the president.
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New: Sen. Warner has sent letters to the CEOs of Alphabet, Meta, Reddit, Telegram, TikTok and Twitter, calling them to take steps to limit Russian information operations amid the conflict in Ukraine.
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Tonight civil rights leaders joined Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to discuss FB's decision to allow Trump's post. It didn't go well.
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@rashadrobinson
just called me, expressing his disappointment with the call. "This is just another reminder that companies will say black lives matter, and then do a whole bunch of things to make it clear they could care less about black lives."
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Vanita Gupta, Sherrilyn Ifill and Rashad Robison just released the following statement:
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"Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”
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Also just a reminder to those watching the rapid changes to checkmarks on Twitter: That new consent order requires Twitter to assess the privacy and security risks of any product changes or new features.
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North Face says it will discontinue ads on Faceboook, after civil rights groups call on brands to stop paying for ads on the social network.
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The departures are also attracting scrutiny in Europe, where rules require companies to have a data protection officer. Spokesperson for the Irish Data Protection Commission tells me it's seeking more information.
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The warning is not showing up in the Tweet detail right now, but it is in individuals' timelines. The company is working on a fix.
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Breaking: Twitter to restrict Russian state media in Europe, after the EU announced sanctions this morning on RT and Sputnik.
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Story now on here:
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More to come in tomorrow morning's Technology 202 newsletter.
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Another BIG departure: Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, has left. Under Musk, Yoel became the public face of the company’s content moderation efforts, especially around the midterms.
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Here we go. Hours before Election Day, Twitter has shielded a tweet from Trump because it “is disputed and might be misleading about an election.” It can’t be retweeted or liked.
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“What was clear coming out of that meeting is Mark has no real understanding of the history or current impact of voter suppression, racism or discrimination,"
@rashadrobinson
told me.
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In the letter to Alphabet, Warner says his office observed YouTube ads monetizing content related to the conflict in Ukraine from RT, Sputnik and TASS, "malign actors affiliated with the Russian government."
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BREAKING: The FTC refiled its antitrust case against Facebook, arguing no other social network comes close to its scale
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NEW: In an explosive whistleblower complaint, Twitter's former security chief claims the company deceived regulators and its own board about its defenses against hackers and efforts to fight spam. w/
@josephmenn
and
@lizzadwoskin
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The civil right leader also addressed protesting Facebook employees, saying he sees them. "And I hope that they accept nothing less than real change -- not platitudes, not empathy, but actual real change.”
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Here's our story, with more details from the call, in this morning's Technology 202 newsletter:
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Rep.
@AOC
’s social media clout could uniquely position her to take on a complex problem that has so far eluded her more senior peers — potential bias in algorithms used for policing. Read more in The Technology 202:
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Musk has now emailed employees, saying that the company will “do whatever it takes to adhere to both the letter and spirit of the FTC consent decree. Anything you read to the contrary is absolutely false.”
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.
@yoyoel
has changed his Twitter bio to “Former Head of Trust & Safety,” confirming his departure from the company.
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Elizabeth Warren's campaign is out with a new billboard in San Francisco today about her plan to breakup Big Tech. It's near the Caltrain station at 4th and Townsend -- typically prime real estate for tech startup ads.
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More to come in tomorrow's Technology 202 newsletter, make sure you're signed up here:
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Facebook is fueling confusion by declining to say what platform the shooter used to send these private messages. But it's important to remember that Gov. Abbott has a strong political incentive to shift the policy debate away from gun policy and toward social media.
@Walldo
The messages Gov. Abbott described were private one-to-one text messages that were discovered after the terrible tragedy occurred. We are closely cooperating with law enforcement in their ongoing investigation.
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NEW: Amazon’s Alexa has been claiming the 2020 election was stolen. The answers foreshadow a new information battleground in 2024.
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I’m very excited to share that I’ll be taking on a new role covering technology policy for The Washington Post later this summer
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Patagonia tells me it's joining the boycott as well, making it the fourth company to say it will halt advertising on Facebook in July.
Upwork is also pausing Facebook advertising in July, at least the third company to sign onto the
#StopHateForProfit
pledge.
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Exclusive: Women of color running for office are four times as likely as white candidates to face violent threats on social media, a new CDT study found. They’re also twice as likely as other candidates to be targeted with mis and disinformation.
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VCs aren't laughing about
@AndrewYang
's plan to give 10 families $1,000 per month. Today w/
@tonyajoriley
in The Technology 202:
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NEW: Records show Facebook-funded American Edge backed minority business groups, conservative think tanks and small business alliances to create the appearance of grassroots opposition to antitrust regulation
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NEW: The Jan. 6 committee's report omitted key findings about social media companies' failures to address online extremism, amid fear of reprisals from Republicans and powerful tech companies. w/
@viaCristiano
and
@drewharwell
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AOL founder and venture capitalist Steve Case backs Talkspace's decision to pull out of a six-figure deal with Facebook over the Trump post. It will be interesting to watch if other business partners or advertisers take a similar stand.
Proud of
@Revolution
-backed
@Talkspace
& CEO
@OrenFrank
for taking this stand.
@Facebook
is an awesome platform & a terrific entrepreneurial success story. And I certainly understand the challenges of managing online communities. But with great power comes great responsibility.
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NEW: D.C attorney general sues Mark Zuckerberg, alleging he was directly involved in decisions that enabled the Cambridge Analytica scandal
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The case against Zuckerberg is one in a series of articles that The Post published on the Facebook Papers, which show how the company inflamed offline harms.
@viaCristiano
has a helpful breakdown of the top takeaways:
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I'm so excited to share that I'm joining the
@washingtonpost
later this month!
Seriously excited to welcome
@Cat_Zakrzewski
to helm our forthcoming
#Tech202
newsletter...get excited, people.
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NEW: After two years of threats, election workers are bracing for a new wave this week. Officials say both tech companies and law enforcement need to do more to protect them
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The same post that Twitter just labeled remains on Facebook with no warning, where it’s been shared more than 15k times. This underscores the challenge of different rules/policies at different social networks.
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Developing: Twitter dissolved its Trust and Safety Council on Monday night, the latest sign that Elon Musk is unraveling years of investments in content moderation. w/
@josephmenn
@NaomiNixWrites
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ICYMI: Whistleblower Frances Haugen spoke to The Post about her concerns that Facebook is dangerous in its current form. She’s particularly concerned about misinformation in non-English speaking countries.
NEW: I spoke to Frances Haugen about how Facebook in its current form is dangerous, and how she believes that the company hid key information that policymakers need to regulate social media. Our updated story:
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Elon Musk is attempting to shape foreign policy in 280 characters or less. His recent Twitter diplomacy is raising national security concerns about his plans to buy the influential social network. W/
@josephmenn
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The list is growing. Here's a Google doc tracking the boycotting companies from
@slpng_giants
:
Verizon will boycott Facebook ads in July after joining the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign against Facebook that’s being organized by the Anti-Defamation League, Common Sense Media, and others. Biggest company by far to join the boycott.
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Facebook now also applied a label to Scavino's post of the edited Biden video, noting that fact checkers have found the video has "partly false information."
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We have now published a copy of the Purple Team’s report on social media and the Jan. 6 attacks. Read it here:
NEW: The Jan. 6 committee's report omitted key findings about social media companies' failures to address online extremism, amid fear of reprisals from Republicans and powerful tech companies. w/
@viaCristiano
and
@drewharwell
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Major brands announced a temporary Facebook ad boycott. I interviewed The North Face’s Steve Lesnard in today’s newsletter about the company’s decision
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Pressure mounting on Twitter to do more than simply slapping labels on Trump’s tweets.
@jack
@Twitter
@TwitterSafety
As someone who has served on your Trust and Safety Board since its inception and counseled you since 2009, time is now to suspend President Trump’s account. He has deliberately incited violence, causing mayhem with his lies and threats.
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“Shock, hatred and depression.”
@GerritD
and I spoke to people in Russia about the toll of the digital iron curtain that is deepening long-standing ideological divisions.
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@josephmenn
@lizzadwoskin
The whistleblower, Peiter Zatko, is a well-known hacker who goes by Mudge. He says his decision to go public is an extension of his previous work exposing flaws in cybersecurity.
@josephmenn
has more about his career here
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NEW: Young people who met the alleged gunman online said he had threatened to kidnap and rape. But they said their reports were ignored, or that his kind of angry misogyny was just “how online is.” w/
@SilviaElenaFF
@NaomiNixWrites
@drewharwell
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NEW: D.C. and several state attorneys general are expected to sue Google today, arguing that the company deceived users about how it profits from their location data
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Rep. Ro Khanna was booked to join us at Post Live today for an interview about AI policy. Instead, he is walking out with
@PostGuild
to demand fair pay for journalists.
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EXCLUSIVE: Gigi Sohn has withdrawn her nomination to the FCC, following a bruising 16-month lobbying battle that has left the agency deadlocked.
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The same message remains unlabeled on Facebook, where it has 33k shares, 164k likes and 36.8k comments.
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@josephmenn
@lizzadwoskin
The Post obtained a redacted copy of Zatko's 84-page whistleblower complaint through a Congressional source. It's embedded in our report so you can read it.
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With today's tirade against Apple, Musk is going to war against the company's top advertiser. Internal Twitter docs show that Apple was the company's biggest ad buyer in Q1 of 2022, spending $48 million on ads. w/
@faizsays
and
@jeremybmerrill
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NEW: Only Facebook knows the extent of its misinformation problem. And it’s not sharing, even with the White House, with
@lizzadwoskin
and
@tylerpager
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Read this morning's Technology 202 newsletter for the latest updates on Twitter's "manipulated media" flag. Facebook has now also labeled Dan Scavino's post of the edited video:
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Baseless tweets linking Damar Hamlin’s collapse to vaccines went viral, after Elon Musk’s Twitter rolled back its covid misinformation policy. W/ my new colleague
@LaurenWeberHP
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“Take a tech platform that collects massive amounts of user data, combine it with what appears to be an incredibly weak security infrastructure and infuse it with foreign state actors with an agenda, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster,”
@ChuckGrassley
said.
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Twitter has now shielded the post with a label and prevented it from being retweeted. It was up for more than 3 hours before the company took this step.
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@josephmenn
@lizzadwoskin
The allegations could factor into the ongoing litigation between the company and Elon Musk, who is trying to prove Twitter broke the contract they made when he agreed to acquire the company
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Shots fired. Pelosi is significantly escalating her criticism of Facebook -- calling the social network "willing enablers of the Russian interference in our election."
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I’m back from vacation and starting my first day as The Post’s new tech policy reporter. Please send tips to cat.zakrzewski
@washpost
.com or DM me for Signal.
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And the perfect score goes to… my much cooler friend, who is letting me crash in her beautiful Brooklyn living room this weekend 😆
Nice mantel view. Art. We are pro radiator. Classic 60s design hand chair is a pop culture classic for the win. 10/10
@Cat_Zakrzewski
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Ex-CIA officers
@SpanbergerVA07
and
@ElissaSlotkin
just won seats in Congress. Read today’s Cyber 202 to learn about how they want to improve security policy
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Changing a company's name won't change its problems. If anything, online hate, bullying, violence could become much worse in VR/AR.
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NEW from the Facebook Papers: India is Facebook's largest market. But internal documents show that Facebook didn't invest in key safety systems there that it has had in the United States for years
@GerritD
@ShibaniMahtani
@NihaMasih
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Activists and researchers have warned for years that biased facial recognition systems could lead to false arrests.
@kashhill
speaks to a man in Michigan who was held in custody for 30 hours for a crime he didn’t commit, all because of a flawed algorithm.
In January, in the first known case of its kind, a man in Michigan was arrested for a crime he did not commit due to a flawed algorithmic facial recognition match. I told his story here:
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Some news! Today we launched The Technology 202 Network, an invite-only panel of more than 100 technology leaders who will vote in regular surveys on the most pressing issues in the field. Check out the full list here:
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@viaCristiano
@drewharwell
The staffers collected depositions from Twitter employees who described how the company gave Trump special treatment, counter to Republicans' accusations that tech companies have a liberal bias.
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NEW: FTC plans to bar Meta from monetizing teens' data, following allegations that the company violated its 2020 privacy order
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The same post is visible on Facebook, but with a label that warns voting by mail and in person have “a long history of trustworthiness in the U.S.” It’s been shared more than 3,000 times in the hour since it was posted.
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NEW: Pressure is mounting on Apple, Facebook, YouTube and other large tech companies to take a tougher line against Russia.
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New: Republicans set to quiz tech CEOs on election misinformation tweeted
#StopTheSteal
themselves
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JUST IN: An appeals court has ruled in favor of the tech companies in the legal battle over Florida's social media law. Read the full opinion from the 11th circuit here
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BREAKING: Facebook moves to again dismiss the FTC's antitrust complaint, argues it lacks 'valid factual basis'
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I’ve found a lot solace in turning to history throughout the uncertainties of the last year, especially in
@DorisKGoodwin
’s Master Class and books. Can’t stop thinking about her quote in
@PhilipRucker
’s exceptional article today.
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"The European Union (EU) sanctions will legally require us to withhold certain content in EU member states, and we intend to comply," Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough said in a statement.
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Biden says he’s putting Kamala Harris in charge of broadband expansion, a key focus of his infrastructure plan.
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The complaint includes multiple serious allegations, including that Twitter broke the terms of its 11-year settlement with the FTC by claiming it had a strong security plan.
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Today was my last day writing The Technology 202. Here’s what I’ve learned and what’s next
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@viaCristiano
@drewharwell
We viewed a 122-page draft report from staffers investigating social media, which said: “These platforms enabled the mobilization of extremists on smaller sites and whipped up conservative grievance on larger, more mainstream ones.”
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“In the Soviet Union, this isolation was developed through years if not decades. It took a lot of time,” said
@AndreiSoldatov
. “Now what makes this unique is that Putin wants to build information control in a matter of days.”
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BREAKING: Federal judge rules that the FTC's complaint against FB can proceed, in a reversal of fortune for the agency. Says refiled complaint offers more 'more robust and detailed' evidence
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NEW: Biden will call for tougher regulation of Silicon Valley in his State of the Union address, which will touch on antitrust and privacy protections. w/
@tylerpager
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Exclusive: Benchmark led a $9.5 million investment in Hipcamp, an Airbnb-like marketplace for campsites
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I’m excited to be in DC this week for my first week with
@washingtonpost
. Right now I’m just trying to get my email set up, but stay tuned for more info about my new tech policy newsletter launching this fall
#washpostlife
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The complaint is already prompting scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where the leaders of three major Congressional committees say they're looking into the allegations.
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@viaCristiano
@drewharwell
The committee also warned of continued risks, writing "nothing about America’s stormy political climate or the role of social media within it has fundamentally changed since January 6th."
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Outlook's suggested response to my editor's email is a little less chipper than the "Sure!" or "Great!" that Google usually recommends.
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This follows similar announcements earlier this week from Facebook parent Meta, YouTube and TikTok. Story here with
@lizzadwoskin
and
@GerritD
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Scoop: Elizabeth Warren calls on DOJ and SEC to probe whether Facebook misled advertisers and investors. The letter underscores the continued fallout of the Frances Haugen revelations
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Breaking: Justice Department sues Uber, accusing the company of violating the Americans With Disabilities Act by charging "wait time" fees to passengers who may need additional time to enter a vehicle
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Breaking: The 5th Circuit sided with conservatives and upheld a controversial Texas law that regulates social media companies. Tech industry groups are likely to appeal, setting up a potential Supreme Court battle.
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