Adherents of the theory, who believe Trump is battling a cabal of “deep state” actors who worship Satan and traffic children for sex, have pushed it across the Internet for several years. Researchers said Facebook’s announcement that it would restrict the ability of QAnon followers to organize is less effective now, since the social network has already served as a critical platform for the movement.
“It definitely is too little too late, action needed to be taken three years ago when this was emerging,” said Alex Newhouse, digital research lead at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury.
The offline consequences of failing to moderate harmful online content are coming into focus.
Tech companies have been prepping new policies on QAnon content in recent weeks as researchers warn the movement has expanded exponentially during the coronavirus pandemic and run up to the 2020 election.
And on balance, Newhouse said it’s better that Facebook and Twitter, which also recently cracked down on QAnon, are taking this action now than a month from now, closer to Election Day.
But it could be difficult for the tech companies to put the genie back in the bottle.
Trump said yesterday during a White House news conference that he knew little about the movement, except that they like him “very much,” as my colleagues reported.
“QAnon believes you are secretly saving the world from this cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Are you behind that?” a reporter pressed.
“I haven’t heard that. Is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?” Trump responded. “If I can help save the world from problems, I am willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there. And we are actually, we’re saving the world.”
QAnon groups remaining on Facebook seized on the comments, celebrating the increased mainstream media attention. Kevin Roose of the New York Times shared the following images:
Researchers say Facebook’s move is a good first step to stop people from discovering the theory in the first place.
In addition to limiting QAnon content’s spread, the company said in a blog post yesterday that it would eliminate online forums related to QAnon altogether if the discussion in them involves potential violence, as Elizabeth Dwoskin and Isaac Stanley-Becker reported. The company targeted 3,280 pages and groups, as well as 10,000 accounts on Facebook-owned Instagram. A total of 790 groups and 100 pages were fully deleted.
“While we will allow people to post content that supports these movements and groups, so long as they do not otherwise violate our content policies, we will restrict their ability to organize on our platform,” Facebook said in a blog post.
Twitter announced last month that it took down or limited the reach of about 150,000 QAnon accounts, citing the online movement’s association with violence and real-world harm.
But it remains to be seen how effective Facebook will be at enforcing its new policies.
Facebook has struggled to ensure content that violates its terms of service or policies is actually removed from its social network, and to keep its promises to remove misinformation related to the coronavirus, according to researchers. And content related to the extremist “boogaloo” movement continued to surface on the service in recent weeks, even after Facebook adopted stricter rules on that.
In the hours after Facebook announced its new policy, Newhouse said the social network’s recommendation algorithms were still suggesting that he follow groups associated with QAnon.
Facebook and Twitter’s action are no panacea, since QAnon is widely spread on multiple websites.
Researchers say to tackle the theory’s spread, platforms will have to work together to tackle it.
“If platforms go more toward coordinating their action, that’s going to go a long way toward limiting the cross- platform spread,” said Zarine Kharazian, an assistant editor at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Tech companies are under increased pressure to do more to combat harmful services on their website. But they could face greater political risks for doing so now that Trump has spoken on the matter. Kharazian said it’s likely such action could open the platforms up to attacks that their services are biased against conservatives, which Republicans have repeatedly made with scant evidence and tech companies deny.
Just this morning, Trump was suggesting without evidence that Twitter’s Trending feature only highlights negative tweets about him and other Republicans:
Our top tabs
Airbnb filed to go public, despite a slump in travel related to the pandemic.
The confidential filing did not disclose the date the company plans to enter the market or its proposed stock price, Rachel Lerman reports. But the company is still feeling the financial impact of many of its customers staying home because of the coronavirus.
Airbnb laid off nearly a quarter of its staff this spring as the travel industry dramatically contracted amid widespread stay-at-home orders. Chief executive Brian Chesky told employees at the time that the company’s revenue for 2020 was expected to be less than half of what it was in 2019. The company also faces ongoing regulatory battles with local and state governments, which have accused the company of hurting local rental markets.
“It’s still obviously a tricky environment for anybody to be going public, but Airbnb does have a proof-of- concept-type of model,” said Davidson senior analyst Barry Oxford.
“Traveling is going to take a little longer to come back,” he said.
State election officials clashed with Facebook over its voter information initiative.
The social network’s Voter Information Center, which provides users guidance on how to vote, just launched last week, more than two months after Facebook announced it. The slow rollout and other setbacks ignited tensions with state election officials, according to emails obtained by a left-leaning nonprofit tech watchdog, the Tech Transparency Project.
“Good lord,” Vermont’s elections director Will Senning wrote in a message to staff when Facebook changed plans for a voter registration drive July 3 and 4 on Instagram, Messenger and Facebook. Instead, the company ran the initiative only on Facebook on July 3, the emails show. The company has set a goal of registering 4 million voters.
The report says Facebook scaled down the initiative after Trump campaign officials alleged the company was holding the drive to help Joe Biden.
Facebook denies that it made any changes to the plan, and it says it is committed to providing information about voting. “We are running the largest voting information campaign in American history and are using the reach of our full platform to ensure people have reliable information about how to cast a ballot, where to vote, and why it’s essential to register,” Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister said. “We have made no changes to this plan and any suggestion otherwise is pure fabrication by Facebook’s paid critics.”
State officials also ran into problems in getting Facebook to help share information about mail-in voting during the drive. Facebook also denied a request from the Illinois State Board of Elections to include specific information about mail-in voting in a July registration drive, citing unspecified “feedback,” the report says. Trump has criticized mail-in voting and has alleged without evidence that it results in widespread fraud.
A popular fertility app shared data with Chinese firms without users’ consent, researchers say.
Tonya Riley reports: “Premom’s app for Android collected a broad swath of data about its users and shared it without their permission with three Chinese companies focused on advertising, according to research the International Digital Accountability Council provided to The Washington Post. IDAC, a nonprofit that monitors and works with apps and developers to protect consumer privacy, sent letters on Aug. 6 to the Federal Trade Commission and the attorney general of Illinois, where Premom is headquartered, alleging the data-sharing was deceptive and potentially ran afoul of federal and state law. While many apps use third parties to collect analytics or target ads, IDAC researchers say Premom users had no way of opting out of this tracking by both the app and the third parties that received their data, which IDAC contends was a violation of Google’s rules.”
Premom, which has more than half a million users and consistently ranks among the top fertility apps, shared identifiers known as MAC addresses, which are unique numbers assigned to devices that can’t be reset, making them useful for advertisers and analytics firms as they build profiles of consumer behavior.
When The Post reached out to Premom for a response to the researchers’ findings, the company said it would stop sharing data with Jiguang, one of the Chinese companies researchers flagged. It said it did not currently use the other two flagged by researchers. Premom “prioritizes the safety of its users’ data above all, and is constantly evaluating its policies, procedures, and use of third-party tools to ensure the application is compliant with global data privacy laws,” its legal counsel and spokeswoman Desiree Moore said in an email.
Premom isn’t the first fertility app researchers have flagged for privacy concerns. An analysis by Consumer Reports earlier this year found that five top pregnancy apps all shared app data with advertisers. Privacy experts have also raised concerns about Ovia, a pregnancy tracking app that shares users’ data with their employers and insurers.
Rant and rave
Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren took the stage during the third night of the virtual convention. Here are some highlights:
Many viewers spotted this subtle Black Lives Matter reference in Warren’s spot. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee’s Ana Bretón:
“Momala” didn’t quite reach trending status last night, but there’s still time for it to make an impact on America’s vocabulary. CNN’s Alexis Benveniste:
Time for a reboot? Host Kerry Washington sparked some “Scandal” nostalgia and got Olivia Pope trending. CNN’s Ana Navarro-Cárdenas chimed in:
Inside the industry
Amazon removed merchandise using vulgar slurs against Harris and Biden.
The e-commerce retailer took down shirts Wednesday with the phrase “Joe and the Ho” after consumer outcry, CNN reported. The company said the products, which were listed by third-party sellers, violated selling guidelines. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post).
Coronavirus fallout
A Michigan college tracked its students using a contact tracing-app with serious privacy issues.
Students at Michigan’s Albion College also had no way of opting out of the tracking, TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker reports.
Vulnerabilities in the app, Aura, allowed unauthorized actors to infer a student’s coronavirus test status, TechCrunch found. Hackers also could have found names, addresses and dates of birth from the app’s database because of the vulnerability, a researcher found.
Researchers say the app is an example of the dangers of rushing out coronavirus-tracing technology.
Will Strafach, a security researcher and chief executive at Guardian Firewall, told TechCrunch the vulnerability could have been easily caught during a security review.
Albion has since launched a security review of the app, TechCrunch confirmed.
Trending
Daybook
- The Republican National Convention takes place Monday through Thursday.
