Below: Twitter discloses a takedown of China-based operations seeking to influence U.S. politics, and the FTC accuses an educational technology firm of having weak cybersecurity practices. First:
If Meta’s dream of the metaverse comes true, regulators will face a whole new set of privacy concerns
Lately, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been offering a rosy picture about the future success of his company’s big bet on transforming human communication through immersive virtual worlds known as the metaverse. In response to dismal financial results last quarter, Zuckerberg told investors that the company’s new $1,500 virtual reality powered headset, Quest Pro, would help employees get their work done better than they ever could through ordinary computers.
“I think our work is going to be of historic importance and create the foundation for an entirely new way that we will interact with each other and blend technology into our lives, as well as a foundation for the long term of our business,” Zuckerberg told investors.
What Zuckerberg didn’t say was that policy watchers and industry representatives are already grappling with thorny ethical and regulatory issues that would arise if services such as Quest Pro do take off in popularity.
Among the trickiest questions facing Meta and other companies is what they do with the intimate information they collect about users and their interactions in these immersive virtual spaces. The Quest Pro improved upon earlier iterations of VR headsets by tracking the wearer’s eyeballs and facial muscles to help them express emotion through a virtual avatar.
Meta says face- and eye-tracking capabilities are completely optional and turned off by default, and that the images captured by the cameras are processed on the device and then thrown away. But as my colleague Geoffrey A. Fowler has reported, Meta will still be converting users’ facial reactions into data that they will send to some app makers that have asked for permission.
The XR Association, which counts Meta, Microsoft and Google as members, has said manufacturers should integrate privacy controls into their devices and make sure the public is aware how that information is being used. Companies could control where they process that data they collect or conceal the images of people who are simply standing near someone wearing AR or VR powered glasses or headsets, said XRA CEO Elizabeth Hyman.
“Our basic approach to this is privacy by design. Make sure the consumer understands what the technology does,” Hyman said. “And give that consumer or the user control” over how that data is used.
But Samir Jain, director of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, argues that the traditional model of tech companies notifying users about how they are using the information they collect and offering them some choice to opt out of it might not work in virtual reality. For starters, Jain said, the data these devices could collect is just far more intimate than information collected through text and video-based social media services.
“That model becomes particularly challenging when you’re talking about behaviors like heart rate or pupil dilation that are involuntary, that you may not be conscious of, and that may be quite revealing about your emotions,” he said. “It can be quite revealing about inner feelings that you aren’t otherwise expressing, or you may not even be fully aware of. I mean, you can even imagine someone being outed as a result of eye tracking.”
Save for a few legislative efforts to study virtual and augmented reality, the issue hasn’t quite climbed to the top of Congress’s legislative agenda. But both Jain and Hyman acknowledged that regulators would eventually have to weigh in if Zuckerberg manages to turn his metaverse dreams into reality.
Twitter cracks down on China-based operations trying to sway U.S. politics
The three China-based operations tried to covertly influence U.S. politics in the run-up to the midterm elections by amplifying polarizing topics, Jeremy B. Merrill, Joseph Menn and I report. The operations included nearly 2,000 accounts, some of which purported to be located in the United States, and weighed in on hot-button topics like 2020 election-rigging claims and criticism of the transgender community.
“Twitter’s takedown of the networks, which mostly operated between April and October, came during a stormy period for the social media giant as it prepared to be sold to billionaire Elon Musk and faced ongoing scrutiny over how it polices misinformation ahead of next week’s midterms, when political control of Congress is up for grabs,” my colleagues write. Twitter didn’t respond to a request for further comment.
FTC goes after educational technology firm Chegg over ‘careless security’
The Federal Trade Commission accused the company, a prominent provider of educational software, of having lax cybersecurity practices that led to data breaches that exposed personal information belonging to tens of millions of its users, the New York Times’s Natasha Singer reports. Chegg agreed to implement a comprehensive data security program to settle the charges, the FTC said.
“The FTC’s enforcement action against Chegg amounts to a warning to the U.S. education technology industry,” Singer writes.
It comes months after the FTC unanimously warned educational technology companies against illegally surveilling students and having weak cybersecurity programs. A May investigation by Human Rights Watch found that many educational tools were designed to send data to advertising firms, with few telling parents how they would use the data.
U.S. politicians’ use of TikTok raises questions about the app’s preparedness for misinformation
Politicians’ increased presence on the app signals that it could play a larger role in future elections. It also worries social media and national security experts, who worry that the app isn’t as prepared as other social networks to identify misinformation, Cat Zakrzewski, Naomi Nix and Taylor Lorenz report.
“Nearly 30 percent of all major-party candidates in Senate races have TikTok accounts, and one-fifth of all major-party House candidates have an account on the platform, according to a new analysis from the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a U.S.-based nonprofit group that examines efforts by foreign nations to interfere in democratic institutions,” my colleagues write.
- Democrats are more likely to embrace TikTok, with 34 percent of candidates for Senate, House, governor and state secretary of state having TikTok accounts, according to the report. Around 12 percent of Republican candidates in those races have accounts.
- Politicians are still learning how best to use the app, according to a Post review of those accounts. “Some clips attack their opponents or feature cameos from celebrity supporters,” my colleagues write. “Others encourage young people to vote.”
TikTok has announced new policies and initiatives in the run-up to the midterms, including adding labels for political content and directing users to an Election Center. TikTok takes “our responsibility to protect the integrity of our platform and elections with utmost seriousness,” spokesman Ben Rathe said. “We continue to invest in our policy, safety and security teams to counter election misinformation and verify accounts of politicians in the U.S.”
