News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

Twitter to Remove Legacy Blue Check Marks by April 1

Twitter is set to begin “winding down” its legacy blue checkmarks for all users on the platform starting April 1.

The Elon Musk-owned company announced the move on Twitter on March 23, adding that users who want to keep their blue checkmarks, or verification badges, should sign up for the Blue subscription paid plan.

The decision will likely come as no surprise to most as Musk had posted back in December that the company would remove all legacy blue checks “in a few months” because “the way in which they were given out was corrupt and nonsensical.”

Since then, Twitter users who have accounts with the legacy blue tick have seen a pop-up message stating, “This account is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable,” when they click on the checkmark.
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In December, the platform rolled out the Twitter Blue subscription model that charges users $8 per month in the United States for verification, although it is slightly more expensive at $11 per month for users who sign up on the iOS app, to account for the 30 percent cut that Apple takes.

Under that plan, users also get early access to select features, like editing tweets and undoing them after publishing. Unlike the previous Twitter rules, user accounts do not have to be notable, although accounts made less than 30 days ago will not be eligible for the paid plan.

Additional gold and grey checkmarks are also available to verify businesses and government or multilateral organizations or government or multilateral officials, respectively.

Elsewhere on Thursday, Twitter announced that the Blue subscription service was now available worldwide. It is unclear how many users are currently using the paid subscription service.

‘Your Platform Should Be Banned’: Congress Grills TikTok CEO on CCP Ties

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is appearing before a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee for the first time ever, in an attempt to defend the company’s data privacy practices and links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state.

Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) opened the hearing with several salvos lambasting TikTok’s ties to the Chinese communist regime through its China-based parent company ByteDance.

“CCP laws require Chinese companies like ByteDance to spy on their behalf,” Rodgers said. “That means any Chinese company must grant the CCP access and manipulation capabilities as a design feature.”
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The hearing comes as Congress and the Biden administration explore the possibility of forcing TikTok to be sold to an American company or else banning the app from the United States completely due to national security concerns.

Though Chew has tried to distance TikTok’s image from that of the China-based ByteDance, he himself has deep ties to the company, having previously served as its chief financial officer in Beijing.

Similarly, Chew is reportedly one of only 12 executives who report directly to ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo, as first reported by The Information.

Moreover, the apparent inseparability of TikTok and ByteDance was on full display when Chew arrived for the hearing flanked by prominent ByteDance lobbyists including Michael Beckerman. Though Beckerman serves as TikTok’s top government relations official, he ultimately reports his activities to the U.S. government under ByteDance’s name.
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Similarly, Chew appeared to attempt to further obfuscate TikTok and ByteDance’s ties to the CCP by refusing to acknowledge that ByteDance was a Chinese company at all, repeatedly insisting it was a global company that conducted activities in China.

ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing and maintains a CCP party committee within the company.

When pressed on the issue of whether TikTok’s data would ever be given to the CCP due to Chinese laws that require all data to be surrendered to the regime upon request, Chew again refuted the claim.
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“ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew said.

“It is not owned or controlled by any government or state entity.”

 Now it's obvious that the TikTok CEO blatantly lied to the US Congress.

Utah Becomes First State to Require
Parental Consent for Minors to Use Social Media

Utah Governor Spencer Cox on Thursday signed two bills into law settling limits on social media use for minors—including requiring parental consent, making it the first U.S. state to do so.
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He said that one of the new laws, S.B. 152, also called the Utah Social Media Regulation Act, requires social media companies to verify that users in the state are at least 18 years old in order to open an account in platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Minors will need permission to open an account.

The new legislation, introduced by state Republican Sen. Michael McKell, also requires that social media companies allow parents full access to their child’s accounts, according to the governor’s website.

Under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, companies are prohibited from collecting data on those under age 13 without parental consent, and as such, social platforms ban children under 13 from signing up.

S.B. 152 also imposes a slew of restrictions intended to improve safety for minors. This includes creating a default curfew setting to block minors’ access to their accounts overnight, from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., which parents can adjust.

It also blocks direct messaging by anyone who the minor has not added as a friend or followed on the platforms. Minors are also barred from being included in search results on the platforms.

Social media companies are also blocked under the new law from collecting data from minors and targeting their accounts for advertising.

The other law, H.B. 311, prohibits the social media companies from implementing any designs or features that “causes addiction for a minor” to the company’s platform, Cox said. “This bill also makes it easier for people to sue social media companies for damages,” he added.

 These laws sound pretty reasonable indeed.

Meta Sued Over Youth Addiction to Social Media

The San Mateo County Board of Education is suing Facebook’s parent company, Meta, claiming that CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s company has contributed to the mental health crisis among youths by intentionally designing its social media platform to be manipulative and addictive.

The Board of Education added Meta to a complaint it filed on March 13 in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco against a string of other social media giants, including Google, TikTok owner Bytedance, and Snap Inc.
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The lawsuit states that the nation’s children, adolescents, and teenagers are facing what is perhaps the “most serious mental health crisis” ever.

“Powerful corporations who wield unmatched, highly concentrated technology in pursuit of profit are knowingly creating this unprecedented mental health crisis,” the plaintiffs wrote.

“YouTube, Snap, TikTok, Meta, and their related companies have carefully cultivated the crisis, which is a feature—not a bug—of their social media products,” they wrote.

...“the public can now fairly conclude that the social media defendants’ conduct was no accident, but rather that defendants acted knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally,” they added.

With regards to Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, plaintiffs claim that the company has “expended significant resources to attract youth, teens, and preteens to its platform in an effort to maximize revenue and advertisement profits” through various design features and products that appeal to them.

“Meta unambiguously targets teenagers. In 2018, Instagram committed nearly its entire $390 million annual marketing budget toward teens,” the plaintiffs wrote.

BBC Urges Staff to Delete TikTok from Corporate Phones

The BBC has urged its staff to delete TikTok from their corporate phones over privacy and security concerns about the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.

The BBC is the first British media organization to issue this kind of guidance regarding TikTok—and just the second in the world after Denmark’s public service broadcaster did the same earlier this month.

British media outlets reported that BBC staff received an email on Sunday that read: “We don’t recommend installing TikTok on a BBC corporate device unless there is a justified business reason. If you do not need TikTok for business reasons, TikTok should be deleted.”

The message further noted that the decision was “based on concerns raised by government authorities worldwide regarding data privacy and security.” Experts have pointed out that the app is capable of illegally gathering vast swathes of information from individual users, including emails, contacts, geo-data, personal information, etc.

BBC employees who have TikTok on their personal phones but also use the device for their work were asked to reach out to the company’s information security team to assess the risks and discuss the type of information that they are working with.

Despite the security concerns, the BCC will, for now, continue to use the platform for editorial and marketing purposes.

Meta Launches Subscription Service in US

Meta Platforms Inc. on Friday launched its subscription service in the U.S., which would allow Facebook and Instagram users pay for verification in the same vein as Elon Musk-owned Twitter.

The Meta Verified service will give users a blue badge after they verify their accounts using a government ID and will cost $11.99 per month on the web or $14.99 a month on Apple’s iOS system and Google-owned Android, Meta said in a statement.

The service, which Meta said it was testing in February, follows in the footsteps of Snap Inc.-owned Snapchat as well as messaging app Telegram and marks the latest effort by a social media company to diversify its revenue away from advertising.