Twitter slapped labels on six of Trump’s tweets in the last 10 hours, as he suggested without evidence that there was a “voter dump” being set up against Republican candidates as Democrats pulled ahead in the race.
The company also slapped labels on similar false claims about the vote count from White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and from conservative commentator Tomi Lahren, who claimed that votes being accurately counted in favor of Democrats were being scrounged up “from mystical places again.” Facebook meanwhile also placed more general info boxes on the same missives from Trump posted on its service, warning users that the U.S. has laws to ensure the integrity of elections and directing them to get accurate election info from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The next 24 hours will be critical for Silicon Valley.
The false claims of fraud in Georgia are hitting social media on the same day of a critical congressional vote that will certify the results of the presidential election. That’s led to a resurgence of baseless claims about fraud in the general election – and even calls to violence in some pro-Trump online forums.
The barrage of inflammatory content underscores how tech companies are still exceptionally vulnerable in the final days of Trump’s presidency. The president’s brazen attempts to invalidate the outcome of the election has prompted some experts to warn of the first attempted coup d’etat in U.S. history, my colleague David Nakamura reports.
His efforts to galvanize supporters online are having concerning consequences. The conservative social media site Parler and the encrypted app Telegram are filling up with references to potential violence as Trump called his supporters to gather in D.C. to protest the congressional vote, which has traditionally been a largely ceremonial process, my colleagues Craig Timberg and Drew Harwell report.
Social media companies are taking different strategies to address the continued fallout.
Twitter did not shield Trump’s tweets from view, as it did with some of the president’s most egregious claims during the vote count in the presidential race, prompting experts studying disinformation to question whether the company’s tactics were effective. From Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab:
Meanwhile Facebook is continuing the broad ban it introduced on political ads to avoid amplifying the spread of disinformation in the aftermath of the election. It briefly created a special carveout that allowed advertisers to target voters in Georgia with political ads after strategists from both parties warned that its blanket blackout could harm voter turnout. But the company announced that early today, they were again shutting down political ads in the state.
“Any ads about the Georgia runoff elections will be paused and advertisers will no longer be able to create new ads about social issues, elections, or politics,” the company said in a blog post. The blog post did not specify when it would resume political advertising.
Meanwhile, Google is the outlier.
The company lifted many of the additional defenses it had in the aftermath of the presidential election to prevent the spread of disinformation already. It is now allowing political ads again. The company said last month it no longer considered the post-election period to be a “sensitive event.”
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Tech-stock futures fell as investors bet that Democrats would retake control of the Senate.
Futures tied to the technology-heavy Nasdaq-100 index fell 1.3 percent on predictions that a Democrat-controlled Congress could lead to tighter regulations on the industry, the Wall Street Journal’s Will Horner reports. Biden and Democrats have promised greater scrutiny of the tech giants, and a change of control in Congress could increase their odds of pushing through legislation.
Big Tech was hit hard in premarket trading. Amazon, Alphabet and Netflix stock were all down more than 2 percent before the markets opened. Facebook fell 3 percent.
“The negativity today is concentrated in these large cap, growth stocks, where, frankly, valuations are already quite high,” Mike Bell, a global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, told the Journal.
Trump signed an executive order banning transactions with eight Chinese apps including WeChat Pay.
The order takes effect in 45 days, leaving its fate up to the Biden administration, Jeanne Whalen reports. It refers to the apps as security threats, highlighting how Trump is escalating his campaign against Chinese technology in his final days in office.
The order claims the apps “automatically capture vast swaths of information from millions of users in the United States, including sensitive personally identifiable information and private information, which would allow [China] and [the Chinese Communist Party] access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”
WeChat Pay and Alipay, another app targeted by the order, are accepted by some U.S. retailers in order to business with Chinese tourists and visitors. Other apps included in the order are CamScanner, QQ Wallet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate and WPS Office.
The action follows a similar pair of executive orders blocking transactions with Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat. The government has cited alleged national security concerns for both bans, pointing to a law that allows the Chinese government to compel companies to share data. But so far, federal courts have blocked those bans from taking effect following lawsuits from app’s supporters.
Yesterday’s order doesn’t detail what transactions would be banned, leaving that up to the Commerce Department to define and determine.
Amazon is pledging more than $2 billion for affordable housing in three of its employment hubs.
It intends to disburse the investment over the next five years in Seattle, Arlington, Va., and Nashville, Tenn., Nicole Friedman reports for the Wall Street Journal. It’s the latest tech company to make such an investment as job growth has outpaced the new housing supply in many major cities. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post).
The majority of the investment will be through low-cost loans to maintain or build more affordable housing. The company also plans to offer grants to minority-led housing organizations.
“We don’t have control over how the [housing] markets respond to a large employer coming into the market or expanding in the market, but we can play a role in how Amazon’s growth is impacting our local communities,” Catherine Buell, head of community development for one of Amazon’s philanthropic arms, told the Post. “Particularly as we’re expanding our corporate presence, we’re working to get ahead of the issue as much as we can.”
Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft have made similar pledges in the respective cities where they operate.
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Gary D. Cohn, a Trump economic adviser, is joining IBM.
Cohn is joining the company as it goes through a major overhaul after years of struggles. He brings a vast range of government contacts as well as corporate ties from his tenure at Goldman Sachs, and will work on business development, public advocacy and client-relationship management, the company said in a news release.
“As a senior representative of IBM, his knowledge of technology and business transformation, combined with policymaking expertise, will bring unique value to our clients and stakeholders as we accelerate our hybrid cloud and AI strategy,” said IBM CEO Arvind Krishna in a statement.
Cohn said he was honored to join IBM as it helps clients be more resilient “in unpredictable times.”
Few other senior Trump officials have joined the leadership ranks of tech companies, as many former Obama officials did after leaving the White House.
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– The Washington Post’s David Ignatius will interview Palantir chief executive Alex Karp to discuss how the company is helping foreign governments manage their coronavirus responses on Jan. 7 at 10 a.m. EST.
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All eyes are on Mike Pence today. Even late-night comedians’:
