Tag: Terms of Service

Elon Musk says Joe Biden and the US government are the ones to blame for the Crimea Starlink debacle, not him

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Elon Musk has been scrambling to defend his decision to block Ukraine’s access to Starlink in 2022 near Crimea — and his latest explanation involves blaming the US government.

Elon Musk says Joe Biden and the US government are the ones to blame for the Crimea Starlink debacle, not him

Previously:

Musk Comes Under Fire for Preventing Ukraine Attack on Russia

U.S. Government Seeks Extensive Oversight over TikTok

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Source.

The U.S. government, through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), proposed a draft agreement last summer that would grant it extensive access and control over TikTok‘s operations. This move comes as an attempt to address national security concerns related to the Chinese-owned app. A draft agreement, sourced from Forbes, outlines the following potential powers for the U.S. government:

U.S. Government Seeks Extensive Oversight over TikTok

Senators Warren & Graham Want To Create New Online Speech Police Commission

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The regulation will continue until internet freedom improves, apparently. Last year we wrote about Senator Michael Bennet pushing a terrible “Digital Platform Commission” to be the new internet speech police, and now we have the bipartisan free speech hating duo of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham with their proposal for a Digital Consumer Protection Commission.

Senators Warren & Graham Want To Create New Online Speech Police Commission

Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Meta unit’s systems for fostering communities have guided users to child-sex content; company says it is improving internal controls

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Among other platforms popular with young people, Snapchat is used mainly for its direct messaging, so it doesn’t help create networks. And TikTok’s platform is one where “this type of content does not appear to proliferate,” the Stanford report said.

Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network

Bankruptcy Judge Says Celsius Crypto Investors Don’t Own Their Accounts

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A bankruptcy judge has dashed the dreams of investors hoping to retrieve their crypto funds from Celsius. It turns out, assets placed in the now-defunct crypto exchange’s high interest “Earn Accounts” belong to Celsius, not the account holders, according to a Wednesday ruling from Judge Martin Glenn.

Bankruptcy Judge Says Celsius Crypto Investors Don’t Own Their Accounts

H/T: Steve Lehto

The FBI Paid Twitter $3.4 Million for Processing Requests

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

The FBI Paid Twitter $3.4 Million for Processing Requests

There’s been ample insinuation that these agencies were politically motivated. But all of this was happening at a time when President Donald Trump was in power and his people were running DHS and the FBI. Rather than agencies intent on swaying the 2020 election for Biden, their actions seem like run-of-the-mill paranoia and attempts at control.

This brings us back to the money the FBI gave Twitter for “time spent processing requests.” In the last installment of the Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi reported on some of those requests, many of which were related to potential election misinformation. Twitter looked into the flagged tweets and accounts, sometimes complying with the FBI and sometimes not.

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Twitter’s “Guidelines for law enforcement” does state under a section titled “Cost reimbursement” that “Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).” But the fact that this garnered millions from the FBI was not, as far as I can tell, known until now.

Related:

No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’

So, who was the Trump Administration targeting?!

But this is a misreading/misunderstanding of how things work. This had nothing to do with any “influence campaign.” The law already says that if the FBI is legally requesting information for an investigation under a number of different legal authorities, the companies receiving those requests can be reimbursed for fulfilling them.

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I do think it remains a scandal the way that 2703(d) orders work, and the inability of users to push back on them. But that is the law. And it has literally nothing whatsoever to do with “censorship” requests. It is entirely about investigations by the FBI into Twitter users based on evidence of a crime. If you want, you can read the DOJ’s own guidelines regarding what they can request under 2703(d).

2703(d) order:

Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, law enforcement must obtain a court order under 18 U.S.C. §2703(d) (2703(d) order) to compel a provider to disclose more detailed records about a customer’s or subscriber’s use of services, such as the following