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WhatsApp has filed a suit against Isreali technology company NSO Group after NSO spyware targeted WhatsApp users. What are WhatsApp’s specific grievances and what does the suit reveal about tech companies’ new posture toward spyware makers?
An overview of the research and analysis used by Facebook in developing the company’s new oversight mechanism.
What are the key takeaways from the emerging battle between Facebook and NSO group?
If Congress had done in almost any other setting what it’s done to online speech, the unconstitutionality would have been immediately apparent.
Speaking at Georgetown University on Oct. 17, Mark Zuckerberg said what many did not want to hear: Facebook would not be doing more to restrict “bad” speech.
“My problem isn’t terrorists, it’s the KKK,” a senior social media company executive told us. We’d asked him about the challenges of countering terrorist groups like the Islamic State, only to receive an education about the difficulties of countering nonviolent hate groups. He had a point.
Editor’s note: This article grew out of work done in our Georgetown University class on national security and social media. The class tackled an array of questions related to how hate groups exploit social media, exploring issues ranging from privacy and human rights concerns to technological and legal barriers. Working in teams, students conducted independent research that addressed a difficult issue in this problem space. —Dan Byman & Chris Meserole
David Kaye, the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the freedom of opinion and expression, recommended in June 2018 that social media companies adopt international human rights law as the authoritative standard for their content moderation. Before Kaye’s report, the idea was fairly out of the mainstream. But the ground has shifted.
Should American companies—the National Basketball Association (NBA), Apple, Facebook—be doing business in China? Many people appear to have strong feelings about this question, particularly after a series of controversies have erupted in the past two weeks.
Last week, a controversy in the National Basketball Association (NBA) ignited widespread public conversation about the perils of doing business in China. In a now-deleted post, Daryl Morey, who is the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted a picture of an image that said “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” The Rockets’s owner pushed back, tweeting that Morey “does not speak for” Houston’s team.