Parler (French for "to talk") is a social media plafform started in 2018. Its mission is to be “an unbiased social media focused on real user experiences and engagement." It is touted as an alternative to Twitter that allows users to post content and comment like Twitter--without political bias. Many Republican politicians who believe Twitter is biased against conservatives, have migrated to Parler and are promoting it as a platform. Since Twitter and Snapchat recently moderated some of Donald Trump’s posts that have violated their community standards, conservative Republicans have switched to Parler. Ted Cruz joined Parler as did three Republican politicians Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik and Nikki Haley, as CNBC reported. Parler may become Republican lawmaker’s and Trump's favorite social media site. Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale accused Twitter and Facebook for biased censorship and stated that the campaign team may select an alternative platform, such as Parlor, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Parler ranked top news app in Apple’s app store and has 1.5 million users in 2020. By comparison, Twitter has over 145 million active users. 

Content moderation by Internet platforms has become a hot-button issue. In the past, platforms took permissive approaches in the name of free speech, but they soon realized the need to moderate some objectionable content posted by their user. Most people would agree with the idea that despite the importance of free expression and free flow of information, allowing everyone to post anything online may lead to false, illegal, and harmful content being shared. So Internet companies must exercise some moderation of user content, but the unsolved puzzle is: what the standards should be and who should decide them.

Touted by Republicans, Parler attracted many new users in the past few days. However, some users realized that the new hyped platform was not free of content moderation. Besides restraining the commonly prohibitive content outlined in Parler’s Community Guidelines such as spam, fighting words, pornography and criminal solicitation, Parler also makes clear in its User Agreement: “Parler may remove any content and stop your access to the Services at any time and for any reason or no reason, although Parler endeavors to allow all free speech that is lawful and does not infringe the legal rights of others … Although the Parler Guidelines provide guidance to you regarding content that is not proper, Parler is free to remove content and terminate your access to the Services even where the Guidelines have been followed.”

Some users who are liberals were reportedly banned from Parler. Techdirt compiled some of the user who were banned. Parler's banning of liberal users does not appear to be consistent with its motto as an "unbiased social media."  Even some conservative commentators criticized Parler for not abiding by its privacy policy as it asked for a driver's license from its users. The goal of a politically unbiased Internet platform may be a worthy one. But it remains to be seen whether Parler provides such a space. 

--written by Candice Wang

Overview of the Russian Interference Issue

The United States prides itself on having an open democracy, with free and fair elections decided by American voters. If Americans want a policy change, then the remedy most commonly called upon is political participation--and the vote. If Americans want change, then they should vote out the problematic politicians and choose public officials to carry out the right policies. However, what if the U.S. voting system is skewed by foreign interference? 

American officials are nearly unanimous in concluding, based on U.S. intelligence, that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential elections [see, e.g., here; here; and Senate Intelligence Report].  “[U]ndermining confidence in America’s democratic institutions” is what Russia seeks. In 2016, few in the U.S. were even thinking about this type of interference. The US’s guard was down. Russia interfered with the election in various ways including fake campaign advertisements, bots on Twitter and Facebook that pumped out emotionally and politically charged content, and through spread of disinformation or “fake news.” Social media hacking, as opposed to physical-polling-center hacking, is at the forefront of discussion because it can not only change who is in office, but it also can shift American voters’ political beliefs and understanding of political topics or depress voters from voting. 

And, if you think Russia is taking a break this election cycle, you'd be wrong. According to a March 10, 2020 New York Times article, David Porter of the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force says: "We see Russia is willing to conduct more brazen and disruptive influence operations because of how it perceives its conflict with the West."

"David Porter, an assistant section chief with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, accused Russia of conducting brazen operations aimed at spreading disinformation, exploiting" division and sowing doubt about the integrity of U.S. elections" @ETuckerAP https://t.co/D0WmNBfDWj

— Michael Tackett (@tackettdc) February 24, 2020

What Inteference Has to Do with Political Polarization

Facebook and Twitter have been criticized countless times by various organizations, politicians, and the media for facilitating political polarization. The U.S. political system of mainly two dominamnt parties is especially susceptible to political polarization. Individuals belonging to either party become so invested in those party’s beliefs that they do not just see the other party’s members as different but also wrong and detrimental to the future of the country. In the past twenty years, the amount of people who consistently hold conservative views or liberal views went from 10% to 20%, thus showing the increasing division, according to an article in Greater Good Magazine.

Political polarization is facilitated by platforms like Facebook and Twitter because of their content algorithms, which are designed to make the website experience more enjoyable. The Facebook News Feed “ranks stories based on a variety of factors including their history of clicking on links for particular websites,” as described by a Brookings article. Under the algorithm, if a liberal user frequently clicks on liberally skewed content, that is what they are going to see the most. Research shows this algorithm reduced the cross-cutting of political “content by 5 percent for conservatives and 8 percent for liberals.” Thus, the algorithm limits your view of other opinions.

So, you might ask, “Why is that bad? I want to see content more aligned with my beliefs.” Democracy is built on the exchange of varying political views and dissenting opinions. The US has long stood by the reputation of freedom of speech and encouraging a free flow of ideas. This algorithmic grouping of like-minded people can be useful when it comes to hobbies and interests, however when it comes to consistently grouping individuals based on political beliefs, it can have a negative impact on democracy. This grouping causes American users to live in “filter bubbles” that only expose them to content that aligns with their viewpoints. Users tend to find this grouping enjoyable due to the psychological theory of confirmation bias, which means that individuals are more likely to consume content that aligns with their pre-existing beliefs. So, all the articles about Trump successfully leading the country will be the first ranked on a conservative user’s Facebook newsfeed and will also be the most enjoyable for them. This filter bubble is dangerous to a democratic system because the lack of diverse perspectives when consuming news content encourages close-mindedness and increases distrust in anyone who disagrees.

During the 2016 presidential election, the Russian hackers put out various types of fake articles, campaign advertisements, and social media posts that were politically charged on either the liberal or conservative side. Because the Facebook algorithm shows more conservative content to conservatives and same for liberals, hackers had no problem reaching their desired audience quickly and effectively. On Facebook they created thousands of robot computer programs that would enter various interest groups and engage with their target audience. For example, in 2016, a Russian soldier successfully entered a U.S. Facebook group pretending to be a 42-year-old housewife, as reported by Time. He responded to political issues discussed on that group and he used emotional and political buzz words when bringing up political issues and stories. On Twitter, thousands of fake accounts run by Russians and computer robots were used to spread disinformation about Hillary Clinton by continuously mentioning her email scandal from when she was Secretary of State and a fake Democratic pedophilic ring called “Pizzagate.” These robots would spew hashtags like “#MAGA” and “#CrookedHillary” that took up more than a quarter of the content within these hashtags.

Facebook and Twitter’s Response to the 2016 Russian Interference

According to a Wall Street Journal article on May 26, 2020 and a Washington Post article on June 28, 2020, Facebook had an internal review of how Facebook could reduce polarization on its platform following the 2016 election, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives decided against the recommended changes because it was seen as "paternalistic" and would potentially affect conservatives on Facebook more. 

After becoming under increasing fire from critics for allowing misinformation and hate speech to go unchecked on Facebook, the company announced some changes to "fight polarization" on May 27, 2020. This initiative included a recalibration of each user’s Facebook News Feed which would prioritize their family and friends’ content over divisive news content. Their reasoning was that data shows people are more likely to have meaningful discourse with people they know, and this would foster healthy debate rather than ineffective, one-off conversations. They also mentioned a policy directly targeting the spread of disinformation on the platform. They say they have implemented an independent-fact-checking program that will automatically check content in over 50 languages around the world for false information.  Disinformation that will potentially contribute to “imminent violence, physical harm, and voter suppression,” will be removed. 

But those modest changes weren't enough to mollify Facebook's critics. Amidst the mass nationwide protests of the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's brutal killing of George Floyd, nonprofit organizations including Color for Change organized an ad boycott against Facebook. Over 130 companies agreed to remove their ads from Facebook during July or longer. That led Zuckerberg to change his position on exempting politicians from fact checking or the company's general policy on misinformation. Zuckerberg said that politicians would now be subject to the same policy as every other Facebook user and would be flagged if they disseminated misinformation (or hate speech) that violates Facebook's general policy. 

Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey not only implemented a fact-checking policy similar to Facebook, but also admitted that the company needed to be more transparent in their policy making. The fact checking policy “attached fact-checking notices” at the bottom of various tweets alerting users that there could be fake claims in those tweets.  Twitter also decided to forbig all political advertising on its platform. In response to Twitter's flagging of his content, President Trump issued an executive order to increase social media platform regulation and stop them from deleting users’ content and censoring their speech.

With the 2020 U.S. election only four months away, Internet companies are still figuring out how to stop Russian interference and the spread of misinformation, hate speech, and political polarization intended to interfere with the election. Whether Internet companies succeed remains to be seen.  But there's been more policy changes and decisions by Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat, Twitch, and other platforms in the last month than all of last year. 

-by Mariam Tabrez

In the aftermath of Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the company exploited Facebook to target and manipulate swing voters in the 2016 U.S. election, Facebook did an internal review to examine the company's role in spreading misinformation and fake news that may have affected the election, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced. In 2018, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook was making changes to be better prepared to stop misinformation in the 2020 election. Critics criticized the changes as modest, however. As WSJ reporters Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman detailed, Facebook executives largely rejected the internal study's recommendations to reduce polarization on Facebook. Doing so might be "paternalistic" and might open Facebook up to criticisms of being biased against conservatives.

Despite the concerns about fake news and misinformation affecting the 2020 election, Facebook took the position that fact checking for misinformation did not apply to the posts and ads by politicians in the same way as they applied to everyone else. Facebook's policy was even more permissive to political ads and politicians. As shown below, Facebook justified this hands-off position as advancing political speech: "Our approach is grounded in Facebook's fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process, and the belief that, especially in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is the most scrutinized speech there is. Just as critically, by limiting political speech we would leave people less informed about what their elected officials are saying and leave politicians less accountable for their words."

Facebook's Fact-Checking Exception for Politicians and Political Ads

By contrast, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey decided to ban political ads in 2019 and to monitor the content politicians just as Twitter does with all other users for misinformation and other violations of Twitter's policy.  Yet Zuckerberg persisted in his "hands off" approach: "“I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online." Zuckerberg even said Twitter was wrong to add warnings to two of President Trump's tweets as misleading (regarding mail-in ballots) and glorifying violence (Trump said, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts" regarding the protests of the Minneapolis police Derek Chauvin killing of George Floyd)  Back in October 2019, Zuckerberg defended his approach in the face of withering questioning by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

In May and June 2020, Zuckerberg persisted in his "hands off" approach. Some Facebook employees quit in protest, while others staged a walkout.  Yet Zuckerberg still persisted. 

On June 17, 2020, Color of Change, which is "the nation’s largest online racial justice organization," organized with NAACP, Anti-Defamation League, Sleeping Giants, Free Press, and Common Sense Media a boycott of advertising on Facebook for the month of July. The boycott was labeled #StopHateforProfit. Within just 10 days, over 130 companies joined the ad boycott of Facebook.  It included many large companies, such as Ben and Jerry's, Coca-Cola, Dockers, Eddie Bauer, Levi's, The North Face, REI, Unilver, and Verizon. 

On June 26, 2020, Zuckerberg finally announced some changes to Facebook's policy.  The biggest changes:

(1) Moderating hateful content in ads. As Zuckerberg explained on his Facebook page, "We already restrict certain types of content in ads that we allow in regular posts, but we want to do more to prohibit the kind of divisive and inflammatory language that has been used to sow discord. So today we're prohibiting a wider category of hateful content in ads. Specifically, we're expanding our ads policy to prohibit claims that people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status are a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others. We're also expanding our policies to better protect immigrants, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from ads suggesting these groups are inferior or expressing contempt, dismissal or disgust directed at them."

(2) Adding labels to posts, including from candidates, that may violate Facebook's policy. As Zuckerberg explained, "Often, seeing speech from politicians is in the public interest, and in the same way that news outlets will report what a politician says, we think people should generally be able to see it for themselves on our platforms.

"We will soon start labeling some of the content we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case. We'll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what's acceptable in our society -- but we'll add a prompt to tell people that the content they're sharing may violate our policies.

"To clarify one point: there is no newsworthiness exemption to content that incites violence or suppresses voting. Even if a politician or government official says it, if we determine that content may lead to violence or deprive people of their right to vote, we will take that content down. Similarly, there are no exceptions for politicians in any of the policies I'm announcing here today." 

Facebook's new labeling of content of candidates sounds very similar to what Zuckerberg criticized Twitter as being wrong. And Facebook's new policy on moderating hateful content in ads that "are a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others," including "people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status," seems a positive step to prevent Facebook being a platform to sow racial discord, which is a goal of Russian operatives according to U.S. intelligence. 

Facebook new policy on moderation of political ads and posts by politicians and others

The organizers of the boycott, however, were not impressed with Facebook's changes. They issued a statement quoted by NPR: "None of this will be vetted or verified — or make a dent in the problem on the largest social media platform on the planet. We have been down this road before with Facebook. They have made apologies in the past. They have taken meager steps after each catastrophe where their platform played a part. But this has to end now."

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Calls for safer transactions during the novel coronavirus pandemic have contributed to a 150% increase in the use of contactless payments since 2019. Experts estimate that mobile payment transactions will total $161.41 billion by 2021. Given the increased need for contactless payments, the American House of Representatives and Department of Justice, as well as the European Union’s European Commission, have launched investigations into Apple’s Apple Pay service. These investigations seek to evaluate Apple’s “power and potential anticompetitive behavior.”

According to a Washington Post article, two competition concerns drive the investigations into Apple Pay:

1. Apple’s exclusive control over iPhones’ “near-field communication” technology, essentially a chip in the iPhone that allows consumers to use their phones to pay at store checkout counters; and
2. Apple’s forced terms of agreement to merchants who accept Apple Pay. 

Apple in the Antitrust Spotlight

Antitrust laws are “rules of the competitive marketplace.” These laws protect consumers from destructive business practices, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The chief goal of antitrust laws is to encourage aggressive competition among sellers to give consumers “the benefits of lower prices, higher quality products and services, more choices, and greater innovation.”

Apple Pay – A Monopoly on Mobile Contactless Payments?

Apple Pay debuted in 2014, launching the mobile contactless payment market. Currently, Apple Pay controls the largest share of the mobile contactless payment market in the United States. It’s no surprise that Apple has collected a horde of rivals. Rivals’ antitrust complaints target Apple Pay and Apple Store. 

Apple Pay allows consumers to use their iPhones to pay for goods at participating stores. To make this work, Apple Wallet, a digital wallet, stores a digitized version of a consumer’s credit or debit card. Then, when at the checkout counter, a “near-field communication” (NFC) chip, located within the iPhone, communicates with the store’s contactless terminal.

“Viola! Look ma, no wallet!” The days of searching pockets and purses are over. Convenient, right?

Well, maybe not. The problem: Apple’s NFC chip is “closed.” So, only cards stored in a consumer’s Apple Wallet can access the chip and use the contactless payment feature. As a result, card issuers must enter into an Apple Pay agreement to permit its customers to make mobile contactless payments with their credit and/or debit cards. As reported in the Guardian, according to American and European government officials, this means denying consumers access to better quality, innovation, and competitive prices. Rivals allege the “closed” chip stifles iPhone users’ ability to pick from other mobile contactless payment services such as Google Pay and Microsoft Wallet, among others. These rivals allege Apple Pay significantly interferes with their ability to compete in the mobile contactless payment market.

In 2019, the Department of Justice began an unofficial antitrust investigation into Apple to determine if it has engaged in anti-competitive business practices. In a public statement, the DOJ announced it would review “whether and how market-leading online platforms have achieved market power and are engaging in practices that have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers.”

Last year, the House of Representatives launched a broad investigation into four major tech companies, including Apple.  The House has requested extensive documentation and Tim Cook’s presence at an antitrust committee hearing. It remains uncertain whether Cook will attend. Apple is also in the EU’s competition law crosshairs. France already fined Apple this past March nearly $1.2 billion for antitrust violations. While European Commission’s investigation largely targets the Apple Store, it is also investigating Apple Pay for the restriction placed on the iPhone’s NFC chip. Companies like PayPal allege this restriction stifles iPhone users from using rival payment options.

Although American and European officials have not completed their investigations into Apple Pay, it is likely more lawsuits against Apple are on the horizon. Until then, experts like Tim Derdenger, a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, urge legislators to act sooner rather than later.

-by Allison Hedrick