Trumps Twitter Deactivation Security Questions Arise

Trumps Twitter Deactivation Security Questions Arise

Twitter users were swift to point out the potential security implications: “It is shocking that some random Twitter employee could shut down the president's account. What if they instead had tweeted fake messages?” tweeted POLITICO editor @blakehounshell. Any impersonation would have been problematic given that the tweets are given weight as Trump’s preferred method of communication. The National Archives in fact plans to preserve the tweets as part of the president’s legacy of correspondence for future generations; where Abraham Lincoln had diaries and letters, this president has 140-character social media missives. World leaders also take the Twitter posts

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Trump Twitter Takedown Brings More Grief For Silicon Valley

Trump Twitter Takedown Brings More Grief For Silicon Valley

The incident also provoked some worries that a rogue Twitter employee could do something truly dangerous, such as taking over the president’s account and declaring war. But in practice, it may be much easier for an employee to deactivate an account than it would be to assume control of it. Instead, the real danger for Twitter might be the cultural perception that it is part of a Silicon Valley liberal culture that doesn't welcome conservatives. That tension has heightened as Silicon Valley faces flak amid the Russia investigation, policy fights over net neutrality and online sex trafficking, and a debate on whether some tech companies have gotten too big.

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Twitter Can Do It To You

Twitter Can Do It To You

Don’t chuckle at the Trump shut down. There’s nothing funny about it. The fact a self-appointed member of the thought police was able to do this to the most prominent voice in the world shows it could happen to anyone. At anytime. It could certainly happen to you.

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Facebook, Twitter and Google Put Our Ugliness On The Market

Facebook, Twitter and Google Put Our Ugliness On The Market

Underlying all this confusion was a simple question to which no one — neither members of Congress nor the technology representatives — seemed to have an answer: What exactly are these companies? They are not newspapers but have made themselves into the place where millions of citizens go every day to read news and discuss politics. They are not governments but enjoy enormous authority, reaching across borders and negotiating with governments. They are extraordinarily powerful but have so far evaded significant regulation — although that may change. They are not controlled by the constitutional limitations that bind U.S. government and yet have established themselves as the inadvertent custodians of the country’s democracy.

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Facebook, Twitter and Google: Johnny come latelies

Facebook, Twitter and Google: Johnny come latelies

Facebook, Twitter and Google defended their security measures and promised to do more to stop the misuse of their platforms by a foreign power. Richard Salgado, director of law enforcement and information security at Google, said: “We take this seriously. We’ve made changes and will continue to get better.”

But some senators were sceptical. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, called the companies “Johnny come latelies” and said: “There’s a lot that I think you could have done earlier.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein highlighted fake pages such as “Black Matters US” and “United Muslims of America”, which Russians used a custom audience tool to target. Stretch described such attempts to exploit divisions in society as “vile” and “cynical” and said there have been changes to ad targeting policies with added layers of review.


Senator Chris Coons struck a similar tone to Franken and again Facebook bore the brunt. He drew attention to an advert that claimed Hillary Clinton, along with Barack Obama, was despised by Americans and the army should be withdrawn from her control. Another advertised a non-existent “miners for Trump” rally. People were “duped”, Coons said.

Stretch responded: “That advertisement has no place on Facebook and we are committted to preventing that sort of behaviour happening again on our platform. You’re right to surface it. It makes me angry, it makes everyone angry.”

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Facebook too big to work?

Facebook too big to work?

When I say Facebook, I don’t mean exclusively the corporate entity, Facebook Inc. While Facebook has built the system, it now contains vastly more actors contributing to its functioning than Facebook employs or directly controls.

No one has ever seen a system like this because none has ever existed. It’s software and interfaces and tools. It’s a social network. It’s an advertising vehicle. It’s the key media distributor. But, like a city or a nation, it’s also human behaviors, habits, norms. Because much of it is built on machine learning, which transforms user behavior into new software adjustments, users and algorithms drive each other by design.

If everyone stops clicking on something, soon the software will stop showing it to anyone. If Facebook pushes video into feeds, people will watch more video. These feedback loops are what Facebook is as an attention-gathering machine. They ensure that the system is always calibrated for you and you and you. In the lethal struggle between Silicon Valley’s most valuable companies, which are also America’s most valuable companies, this ability to hold human attention as well as any invention since television is Facebook’s competitive advantage.

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