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January 6 committee to hear from Facebook ‘whistleblower’, who all but accused platform of letting ‘insurrection’ happen – media

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US House investigators of the January 6 Capitol Hill riot are reportedly set to hear from Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, who previously accused the social network of enabling the “insurrection”.

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 events in Washington, DC may meet Haugen as soon as Thursday, CNN reported, citing three different sources. The development would likely be a shock to no one, considering that Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee who is also a member of the January 6 probe, tweeted his wish for such a session on Monday.

“The Select Committee will need to hear from her, and get internal info from Facebook to flesh out their role,” Schiff said, sharing a link to a story on the allegations Haugen made during her Sunday interview with ‘60 Minutes’.

Speaking to the CBS program, Haugen made a connection between Facebook’s decision to dissolve its Civic Integrity unit after the 2020 election and the January 6 violence. She explained: “Like, they basically said, ‘Oh good, we made it through the election. There wasn’t riots. We can get rid of Civic Integrity now.’ Fast forward a couple months, we got the insurrection.”

The unit was created by Facebook to tackle threats to democratic elections. Haugen was assigned to it and claims her intention of joining the Facebook team in the first place was to fight misinformation on the platform. The company said the functions of the unit were transferred elsewhere and not abandoned.

‘Betrayal of democracy’? Whistleblower blasts Facebook for prioritizing profits over fighting ‘hate speech & misinformation’

The tech giant disagreed with many of the characterizations of company policies that Haugen made during her interviews and this week’s testimony at the US Senate. Speaking to a subcommittee on consumer protection, product safety and data security, she accused her former employer of putting profit interest above all else.

“If social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world?” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wondered in his response to Haugen’s Senate appearance.

Facebook and other US-based social media have long been accused of failing to protect American society from various ills. After Donald Trump was elected president, popular networks were blamed for spreading ‘Russian misinformation’ by the many peddlers of the Russiagate conspiracy theory, among which Schiff was one of the most prominent and loud voices.

Collusion enthusiast Adam Schiff warns of Russian ‘deep fake’ videos in 2020

Silicon Valley bowed to pressure and agreed to ramp up censorship. One of the most controversial examples was the collective suppression of an October 2020 story published by The New York Post. It alleged that Hunter Biden was peddling influence on his father, Joe Biden.

Facebook’s Civic Integrity team decided to “reduce… distribution” of the story on its platform pending a “third-party fact checking”. The result of that verification process was never made public, but other outlets confirmed the authenticity of the key incriminating emails reported by the Post.

The January 6 riot, during which supporters of Trump, who disagreed with the outcome of the 2020 election, broke into the US Congress as lawmakers were about to certify it, was another tipping point for social media. They were widely accused of helping the rioters organize the event. Parler, a network that purported to be a free speech platform going against the trend of increased censorship, was effectively kicked off the internet for its alleged role in the January 6 events, after mainstream tech giants refused to provide any services to it.

The ongoing scandal is arguably the worst that Facebook faced since the 2017 revelation of how the firm Cambridge Analytica tricked Facebook users into sharing their personal data, which was later used for targeted political advertising. The 2016 Trump campaign used the company’s services, so the implication once again was that Facebook enabled manipulation of US voters, possibly making the Trump presidency a reality. Whether Cambridge Analytica’s claim that its methods allowed it to swing tight elections was truthful or just a bold marketing assertion remains in dispute.

Haugen’s accusations align with the goals of the Biden administration, which wants its fight against what it deems “misinformation” to be more swift and effective. The White House argued, for example, that someone banned by a single platform should be banned from all of them.

‘On-brand, really’: Zuckerberg wants Congress to crush any possible competition to Facebook, Snowden says

Facebook says it wants increased regulation of the tech industry. Sceptics say the company basically wants to have more restrictions imposed on the industry by the US government because that would protect its monopoly.

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TECHNOLOGY

How much YouTube pays for 1 million views, according to creators

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  • YouTube creators earn money from Google-placed ads on their videos.
  • A number of factors determine how much money they make, including video views.
  • Creators said how much YouTube pays for 1 million views ranged from $3,400 to $30,000.

While many factors — content niche and country, among them — determine how much money a YouTuber earns on any particular video, the number of views it gets is perhaps the most significant.

When a YouTube video hits 1 million views, there’s almost a guaranteed big payday for its creator. In some cases, creators can make five-figures from a single video if it accrues that many views.

Three creators explained how much money YouTube had paid them. YouTube pays $3,400 to $30,000 for 1 million views, these creators said.

When tech creator Shelby Church spoke with Insider, she had earned $30,000 from a video about Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). At the time, the video had accrued 1.8 million views.

Her RPM rate — or earnings per 1,000 views — are relatively high, she said, because of her content niche. Business, personal finance, and technology channels tend to earn more per view.

“YouTubers don’t always make a ton of money, and it really depends on what kind of videos you’re making,” she said.

Influencers can earn 55% of a video’s ad revenue if they are part of YouTube’s Partner Program, or YPP. To qualify for the program, they must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on their long-form videos.

They can also make money from shorts, YouTube’s short-form video offering. In order to qualify, creators need to reach 10 million views in 90 days and have 1,000 subscribers. YouTube pools ad revenue from shorts and pays an undisclosed amount to record labels for music licensing. Creators receive 45% of the remaining money based on their percentage of the total shorts views on the platform.

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Tesla employees shared sensitive images recorded by cars – Reuters

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Some pictures were turned into memes and distributed through internal chats, former workers told the agency

Tesla workers shared “highly invasive” images and videos recorded by customers’ electric cars, making fun of them on internal chat groups, several former employees of Elon Musk’s company have told Reuters.

The electric-car manufacturer obtains consent from its clients to collect data from vehicles in order to improve its self-driving technology. However, the company assures owners that the whole system is “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy,” the agency pointed out in its report on Thursday.

According to nine former workers who talked to the agency, groups of employees shared private footage of customers in Tesla’s internal one-on-one chats between 2019 and 2022.

One of the clips in question captured a man approaching his electric car while he was completely naked, one of the sources said.

Tesla recalls over 360,000 cars over self-driving threat

Others featured crashes and road-rage incidents. One particular video of a Tesla hitting a child on a bike in a residential area spread around the company’s office in San Mateo, California “like wildfire,” an ex-employee claimed.

“I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected… We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids,” another former worker told the agency.

Seven former employees also told Reuters that the software they used at work allowed them to see the location where the photo or video was made, despite Tesla assuring its customers that “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.”

The agency noted that it could not obtain any of the pictures or clips described by its sources, who said they were all deleted. Some former employees also told the journalists that they had only seen private data being shared for legitimate purposes, such as seeking assistance for colleagues. Tesla did not respond when approached for comment on the issue by Reuters.

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TECHNOLOGY

Nordic nation’s military bans use of TikTok – media

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Sweden’s Defense Ministry has reportedly barred employees from using the Chinese-owned app on their work phones

Sweden’s military has reportedly cracked down on TikTok, decreeing that staff members are no longer allowed to use the Chinese-owned video-sharing application on their devices at work because of security concerns.

The Swedish Defense Ministry on Monday issued its decision, which was viewed by Agence-France Presse, banning the use of TikTok. Security concerns were raised based on “the reporting that has emerged through open sources regarding how the app handles user information and the actions of the owner company, ByteDance,” the ministry said.

The move follows similar restrictions imposed by other EU countries in recent weeks. For example, France banned government employees from downloading “recreational applications,” including TikTok, on their work phones. Norway barred use of the app on devices that can access its parliament’s computer network, while the UK and Belgium banned it on all government phones. Denmark’s Defense Ministry and Latvia’s Foreign Ministry imposed their TikTok bans earlier this month.

China responds to TikTok allegations

“Using mobile phones and tablets can in itself be a security risk, so therefore we don’t want TikTok on our work equipment,” Swedish Defense Ministry press secretary Guna Graufeldt told AFP.

The US, Canada and New Zealand previously banned their federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, citing fears of ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Members of Congress may try to ban the app from the US market altogether after testimony at a congressional hearing last week by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew failed to ease their security concerns. “They’ve actually united Republicans and Democrats out of the concern of allowing the CCP to control the most dominant media platform in America,” US Representative Mike Gallagher said on Sunday in an ABC News interview.

Chinese officials have denied claims that TikTok is used to collect the personal data of its American users. “The Chinese government has never asked and will never ask any company or individual to collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters last week. She added that Washington has attacked TikTok without providing any evidence that it threatens US security.

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