Justice Department Drops Lawsuit Over California's Net Neutrality Rules

The U.S. Department of Justice under President Joe Biden has dropped a department lawsuit filed under former President Donald Trump that challenged California's net neutrality rules. California's law, considered more strict than federal rules adopted during the Obama administration, could set the baseline for future federal rules. Interim Federal Communications Commission chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat who supported the original Obama-era rules and opposed the Republican repeal, said she was "pleased that the Department of Justice" had withdrawn the lawsuit.

  • Read the article: CNET

Huawei Asks Court to Overturn U.S. Designation as National Security Threat

Huawei is asking for the Federal Communications Commission’s designation of the Chinese telecommunications giant as a national security threat to be overturned by a U.S. court. In a case filed with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the company argued that the agency overstepped its authority by finalizing a ban on U.S. companies from using the FCC’s Universal Service Fund to purchase Huawei equipment in December.

Senators Criticize Federal Response to Hacking at SolarWinds

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) criticized the “disorganized” federal response to the recently uncovered Russian hack of IT group SolarWinds, calling for agencies to designate a leader. The senators expressed these concerns in a letter sent to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and the leaders of the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Advocacy Groups Ask Facebook to Remove Pages for Marjorie Taylor Greene

A coalition of civil rights, gun control and other advocacy groups is calling on Facebook to permanently remove the campaign and congressional pages of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Facebook allowed Greene “to exploit their platform to spread dangerous lies and grow her own popularity for years without taking action,” the organizations wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg in a letter.

Hackers Access Internal Network of Company Behind Cyberpunk

The company behind “Cyberpunk 2077” said its internal systems were breached in a cyberattack and the purported hacker threatened to release the software code underpinning the blockbuster videogame and other works in progress, a disclosure that sent its stock tumbling and presented a fresh challenge for the embattled developer. CD Projekt SA said an unidentified hacker accessed its internal network and collected corporate data in what the company described as a targeted attack.

Journalist Sues Facebook in England Over Gathering Users' Data

Facebook is facing a second London High Court class action over allegations it failed to protect the personal details of about one million people in England and Wales, in the latest lawsuit to spring from a scandal over data harvesting. Journalist and writer Peter Jukes said he had filed a lawsuit for unspecified but “substantial” damages three years after the social media giant was fined in Britain over how third-party app “This Is Your Digital Life” gathered Facebook users’ data without consent between 2013 and 2015.

Company Agrees to Change Shape of Pear Logo After Apple's Opposition

Last August, the routine story of a trademark opposition captured the world’s imagination, when Apple declared that Super Healthy Kids (yes, that’s the real name of a company) shouldn’t be allowed to trademark its pear logo because it might “cause dilution of the distinctiveness” of Apple’s own famous fruit-shaped intellectual property. Six months later, the case is now settled, and it seems Apple didn’t actually have a pear-shaped problem after all — because Super Healthy Kids has agreed to change the shape of the leaf atop that pear, and Apple has agreed that’s good enough to let the trademark go forward.

Europe's Antitrust Chief Warns Apple About Privacy Notices on Its Own Apps

Europe’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, has warned Apple Inc. to give equal treatment to all apps on its platform amid the iPhone maker’s privacy changes that have drawn charges of anti-competitive practices from rival Facebook Inc. Apple will in the spring ask iPhone users for consent to track their data for personalized ads in what it says is a move to protect users’ privacy but which will limit apps’ ability to gather data from people’s phones that can be used for targeted advertising.

Twitter Wants to Discuss India's Order to Remove Certain Accounts

Twitter said it was seeking talks with India’s technology minister, days after the country asked the U.S. social media giant to take down 1,178 accounts it says are spreading misinformation about ongoing farmers’ protests. New Delhi wrote to Twitter on Feb. 4 asking it to remove the accounts, which it said were backed by arch-rival Pakistan or operated by sympathizers of Sikh separatists, two technology ministry sources said, adding the company had yet to comply.

China Blocks Clubhouse App to Stop Conversations About Banned Topics

Officials in China moved to block the live hangout app Clubhouse in an apparent response to a rise of conversations on the platform about banned topics, including the country's treatment of Uighur Muslims and Taiwan. Reports from multiple media outlets indicated that many users were disconnected mid-conversation, receiving only an error code from the app.

Hacker Tried to Change Setting on Florida City's Water Treatment System

Officials from Pinellas County in Florida announced that an unidentified hacker remotely gained access to a panel that controls the City of Oldsmar's water treatment system, and changed a setting that would have drastically increased the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water supply. During a press conference, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said that a legitimate operator saw the change and quickly reversed it, but signaled that the hacking attempt was a serious threat to the city's water supply.

  • Read the article: Vice

Facebook to Start Removing Posts with Erroneous Claims About Vaccines

Facebook said that it plans to remove posts with erroneous claims about vaccines from across its platform, including taking down assertions that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract Covid-19 than to receive the vaccinations. The social network has increasingly changed its content policies over the past year as the coronavirus has surged.

House Committee Investigating Parler Asks About Trump's Interest

A House committee investigating conservative social media site Parler demanded answers about its ownership, possible ties to Russia and whether the company offered a significant stake to former president Donald Trump to entice him to join the platform. The letter from the House Oversight and Reform Committee cites numerous news reports about the site, which has struggled to return to full operation for weeks and which fired its chief executive last week.

Twitter Permanently Suspends Founder of Gateway Pundit Website

Twitter issued a permanent suspension for the account run by Jim Hoft, founder and editor-in-chief of far-right news website Gateway Pundit, for violations of its “civic integrity policy.” A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the news to The Hill, citing “repeated violations” of its policy that bars users from tweeting messages “for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes,” including misinformation regarding the outcome of an election.

Extremists Using Cryptocurrency, Other New Tools to Raise Funds Online

A mysterious $500,000 Bitcoin transfer. Online stores selling sham nutritional supplements and buckets of protein powder. Inane, live-streamed video game sessions, full of dog whistles and racial slurs, fed by a steady flow of cryptocurrency donations in the form of virtual lemons. Some of the income streams exploited by America's extremist movements have come under increased scrutiny after last month’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, for which some far-right extremists fundraised online.

Social Media Services Asked to Preserve Documents in Dominion Lawsuit

Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems have asked Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Parler to preserve posts about the company, even if the material was already removed for spreading misinformation. The posts need to be kept “because they are relevant to Dominion’s defamation claims relating to false accusations that Dominion rigged the 2020 election,” according to the demand letters from Dominion’s law firm Clare Locke.

Clubhouse Attracting Users from China to Avoid Censorship

Private social audio app Clubhouse is attracting masses of new users from mainland China, where the U.S. app remains uncensored by authorities despite flourishing discussions on rights, national identity and other sensitive topics. Western social media apps including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are banned in China, where the local internet is tightly censored to weed out content that could undermine the ruling communist party.

Owner of 'TheDonald' Web Forum Defends Himself Against Former Compatriots

The story of TheDonald, a furiously pro-Trump forum that became an online staging ground for the Capitol assault, is a cautionary tale about the Internet’s dark side. What began on Reddit as an online political rally for an upstart presidential candidate turned increasingly foul as Williams fought — and often lost — against what he said were “nefarious forces” determined to advance the most extreme ideologies, including white supremacy. Jody Williams — who controlled the Web address where the forum moved after Reddit expelled it last year — finally took decisive action on Jan. 21, two weeks after the Capitol assault, after waking to news that a group of other moderators had started their own site and used it to attack him.

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