After Cybersecurity Director's Firing, Twitter Labels Trump's Tweet 'Disputed'

Twitter appended a label to fact-check President Donald Trump’s tweet about his firing of the nation’s top election security official Chris Krebs. Krebs’ recent statement that the Nov. 3 election “the most secure in American history” was “highly inaccurate,” the president wrote. “This claim about election fraud is disputed,” the label read.

Apple to Pay $113 Million Settlement for Slowing Down Older iPhones

Apple will pay $113 million to settle an investigation by nearly three dozen states into the tech giant’s past practice of slowing customers’ old iPhones in an attempt to preserve their batteries. The company’s much maligned throttling efforts drew nationwide scorn when they came to light in 2017, stunning consumers who at the time saw it as an attempt to nudge them into buying newer, more expensive devices.

Apple Reduces App Store Fees for Small Developers Amid Antitrust Scrutiny

Apple, facing growing antitrust scrutiny over what it charges other companies for access to its App Store, said that it would cut in half the fee it took from the smallest app developers. Developers that brought in $1 million or less from their apps in the previous year will pay a 15 percent commission on those app sales starting next year, down from 30 percent, the company said.

Groups Urge Congress to Act on Tech Reforms in Judiciary Report

A wide-ranging group of national organizations is urging congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle to embrace and prioritize recommendations to overhaul big tech companies as laid out in a House Judiciary Committee report last month. Fifty groups signed onto a letter sent to top House and Senate leaders on calling for them to “quickly act to enshrine the recommendations included in the report into law,” according to a copy.

Draft EU Guidelines Would Change How Tech Companies Share Data

Some companies likely will have to significantly change how they secure data to continue working with European companies, under draft guidelines issued by the European Union that require increased privacy safeguards for information transferred outside the bloc. Businesses could be forced to adopt strict encryption practices and ensure the personal data of Europeans can’t be decrypted if companies move that information to the U.S. and other countries outside the EU, the draft rules said.

TikTok Giving Parents More Options to Control How Children Use App

Video-sharing app TikTok said it is giving parents more control options, including the ability to monitor what their teenagers can view on the platform. Owned by Chinese company ByteDance, Tiktok said parents will now be able to decide what content, users, hashtags, or sounds their children can search for as well as decide if the account should be public or remain private.

GitHub Restores YouTube Download Tool Despite Recording Industry's Complaint

The source code for YouTube-dl, a tool you can use to download videos from YouTube, is back up on GitHub after the code repository took it down in October following a DMCA complaint from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Citing a letter from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (the EFF), GitHub says it ultimately found that the RIAA’s complaint didn’t have any merit.

Biden Expected to Maintain Strong Approach with China on Tech Security

President Trump set the United States on a new course with his years-long fight against Chinese technology, which he labeled a security threat and a tool for spreading Chinese influence. President-elect Joe Biden will probably tweak that approach, but Beijing shouldn’t anticipate a significant softening, foreign affairs and technology experts say.

Twitter Appoints Well-Known Hacker 'Mudge' as Head of Security

Social media giant Twitter Inc, under increased threat of regulation and plagued by serious security breaches, is appointing one of the world's best-regarded hackers to tackle everything from engineering missteps to misinformation. The company named Peiter Zatko, widely known by his hacker handle Mudge, to the new position of head of security, giving him a broad mandate to recommend changes in structure and practices.

Google, Justice Department Fail to Agree on Protective Order

Alphabet Inc’s Google and the U.S. Justice Department have failed to reach agreement over a protective order for third parties like Microsoft that provided data to the government for its lawsuit against the search and advertising giant. Google is pressing for two in-house attorneys to have access to the confidential data while the Justice Department and state attorneys general involved in the lawsuit have disagreed, Google said in a court filing.

EU Drafting New Rules to Curb Tech Companies' Anti-Competitive Behavior

Technology companies’ services could be banned from the European market if they do not heed EU regulation, Europe’s industry chief Thierry Breton told German weekly Welt am Sonntag, as the European Commission finalizes rules on internet companies. Breton will announce new draft rules known as the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act together with European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager on Dec. 2.

Trump Administration Gives ByteDance Two-Week Extension to Sell TikTok

The Trump administration gave TikTok’s Chinese owner more time to reach a deal to sell the app, after demanding that it divest its interest in the social media service over national security concerns. President Trump had signed an executive order in August requiring that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, sell any assets that allowed it to operate the app in the United States by November 12.

Commerce Department Says It Won't Enforce Order Banning TikTok

The Commerce Department said that it won’t enforce its order that would have effectively forced the Chinese-owned TikTok video-sharing app to shut down, citing a federal court ruling in Philadelphia. The department’s action delays implementation of a regulation, set to take effect Thursday, that would have barred U.S. companies such as Apple Inc. from offering TikTok as a mobile app, and companies including Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. from offering web-hosting service for TikTok — moves that would effectively make it inoperable.

Twitter Says It Labeled 300,000 Presidential Election Tweets as Disputed

Twitter said that it labeled as disputed 300,000 tweets related to the presidential election, or 0.2 percent of the total number of messages about the event, even as some users continued sharing misleading information about the outcome. The disclosure made Twitter the first major social media platform to publicly evaluate its performance during the 2020 election.

Top U.S. Cybersecurity Official Tells Associates He Expects to be Fired

Top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, who worked on protecting the election from hackers but drew the ire of the Trump White House over efforts to debunk disinformation, has told associates he expects to be fired, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Separately, Bryan Ware, assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, confirmed to Reuters that he had handed in his resignation.

ByteDance Asks Court to Extend Deadline on U.S. Effort to Ban TikTok

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance filed a petition asking the courts to extend a deadline for the company to divest the popular video-sharing app as outlined in an executive order from President Trump, a TikTok spokesperson confirmed to The Hill. In the petition filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Beijing-based ByteDance asks for an extension since a proposed deal tentatively approved by Trump in September has yet to be finalized, according to reports.

Facebook Extends Ban on Political Advertising for One More Month

Facebook said that it plans to continue a moratorium on political advertising for another month, a move that may affect Democrats and Republicans as they continue vying against each other in key Senate races in Georgia. “The temporary pause for ads about politics and social issues in the U.S. continues to be in place as part of our ongoing efforts to protect the election,” Facebook said in an update to its government and policy blog.

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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.