The world’s largest social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and others will have to crack down on illegal and harmful content or else face hefty fines under the European Union’s Digital Services Act from as early as August 25.
The European Commission today will designate 19 very large online platforms (VLOPs) and search engines that will fall under the scrutiny of the wide-ranging online content law. These firms will face strict requirements including swiftly removing illegal content, ensuring minors are not targeted with personalized ads and limiting the spread of disinformation and harmful content like cyberbullying.
“With great scale comes great responsibility,” said the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton in a briefing with journalists. “As of August 25, in other words, exactly four months [from] now, online platforms and search engines with more than 45 million active users … will have stronger obligation.”
The designated companies with over 45 million users in the EU include:
— Eight social media platforms, namely Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snapchat;
— Five online marketplaces, namely Amazon, Booking, AliExpres, Google Shopping and Zalando;
— Other platforms, including Apple and Google’s app stores, Google Maps and Wikipedia, and search engines Google and Bing.
These large platforms will have to stop displaying ads to users based on sensitive data like religion and political opinions. AI-generated content like manipulated videos and photos, known as deepfakes, will have to be labeled.
Companies will also have to conduct yearly assessments of the risks their platforms pose on a range of issues like public health, kids’ safety and freedom of expression. They will be required to lay out their measures for how they are tackling such risks. The first assessment will have to be finalized on August 25.
“These 19 very large online platforms and search engines will have to redesign completely their systems to ensure a high level of privacy, security and safety of minors with age verification and parental control tools,” said Breton.
External firms will audit their plans. The enforcement team in the Commission will access their data and algorithms to check whether they are promoting a range of harmful content — for example, content endangering public health or during elections.
Fines can go up to 6 percent of their global annual turnover and very serious cases of infringement could result in platforms facing temporary bans.
Breton said one of the first tests for large platforms in Europe will be elections in Slovakia in September because of concerns around “hybrid warfare happening on social media, especially in the context of the war in Ukraine.”
“I am particularly concerned by the content moderation system or Facebook, which is a platform, playing an important role in the opinion building for example for the Slovak society,” said Breton. “Meta needs to carefully investigate its system and fix it, where needed, ASAP.”
The Commission will also go to Twitter in the U.S. at the end of June to check whether the company is ready to comply with the DSA. “At the invitation of Elon Musk, my team and I will carry out a stress test live at Twitter’s headquarters,” added Breton.
TikTok has also asked for the Commission to check whether it will be compliant but no date has been set yet.
The Commission is also in the process of designating “four to five” additional platforms “in the next few weeks.” Porn platforms like PornHub and YouPorn have said 33 million and 7 million Europeans visit their respective websites every month — meaning they wouldn’t have to face extra requirements to tackle risks they could pose to society.
This article has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday condemned Russians forces as “beasts” over the execution of a Ukrainian soldier, who appeared to be beheaded while still alive in a video published on social media.
Zelenskyy’s reaction comes as Kyiv is ramping up diplomatic pressure over Moscow’s presence in international forums ranging from the U.N. Security Council to the Olympics.
“There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill,” the Ukrainian president said in a video posted on Twitter.
“This video, the execution of a Ukrainian captive, the world must see it,” he added. “This is a video of Russia as it is, what kind of creatures they are, there are no people for them: a son, a brother, a husband, someone’s child.”
In recent days, two videos have appeared. One supposedly filmed by Wagner group mercenaries shows the bodies of two Ukrainian soldiers, whose heads and hands were cut off, and appeared on pro-Russian social channels. Another — seeming shot in the summer — shows a Russian use a knife to sever the head of Ukrainian prisoner, who appears to be pleading with his killer.
Ukrainian social media and street conversations are charged with anger and pain as people discuss yet more potential evidence of a Russian war crime in Ukraine. Officials from the Defense Ministry of Ukraine asked people not to share the video to spare the feelings of the relatives of the soldier, who might recognize him on the video. Other soldiers, tweeting from the frontline express grief and anger.
“Each of us could and can be in the place of that guy whose head was cut off by the Russians,” Vitaly Ovcharenko, a Ukrainian serviceman from Donbas, tweeted.
And Yaryna Chornohuz, Ukrainian marine and combat medic currently serving near the frontline town of Bakhmut, claimed the Russians posted the decapitation video to trigger a feeling of defenselessness, and helplessness in the face of evil. She saw it as a sign of cowardice.
“It is important not to become like the enemy who commits atrocities, because that is what they are counting on. The enemy expects that we will also cut off heads, and they will feed it to their zombie population. Such videos are spread on purpose with this goal, to raise the degree of severity and take advantage of it,” Chornohuz said in a post.
POLITICO was not able to independently verify the videos.
Last month, another video showed a Ukrainian soldier saying “Slava Ukraini” (Glory to Ukraine) shortly before being executed by Russian troops.
Zelenskyy called on world leaders to act, saying “action [was] required now.”
“This is is not an accident, this is not an episode. This was the case before,” the Ukrainian president added.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also reacted to the execution video, saying Russia, which is currently presiding over the United Nations Security Council, “must be kicked out of Ukraine and the UN, and be held accountable for [its] crimes.
Slovakia’s prime minister, Eduard Heger, also strongly condemned the execution, saying that the video shows Russia has “no legal or human limits in evil doing,” calling the beheading “ISIS style” and adding that this will be punished and not forgotten.
Ukrainian authorities have called for the creation of a special tribunal to rule over war crimes committed by Russian forces since the launch of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has already started an investigation into this alleged war crime. “We will find these non-humans. If necessary, we will get them wherever they are: from underground or from the other world. But they will definitely be punished for what they have done,” SBU Head Vasyl Malyuk said in a statement.
Moscow has denied committing war crimes in Ukraine — in spite of numerous reports showing otherwise, as well as the issuance of an arrest warrant last month against President Vladimir Putin over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
“We are not going to forget anything. Nor are we going to forgive the murderers,” Zelenskyy said in his video address Wednesday.
Wilhelmine Preussen contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Billionaire-entrepreneur Elon Musk acknowledged he has made mistakes on social media, in an at-times bizarre interview with the BBC overnight.
“Have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes,” Musk said. “I think I should not tweet after 3 a.m.”
Revealing the scale of the job cuts at Twitter since Musk bought the company for $44 billion last October, Musk said around 1,500 people currently work for the social media platform, down from “just under 8,000,” after a series of what he described as “painful” layoffs.
Musk defended the job cuts, claiming they were necessary to stave off bankruptcy. “This is not a caring, uncaring situation. It’s like if the whole ship sinks then nobody’s got a job,” Musk said, claiming that he had been “under constant attack” since buying Twitter.
The “pain level has been extremely high” since buying Twitter, Musk said. “Were there many mistakes made a long the way? Of course. But all’s well that ends well, I feel like we’re headed to a good place.”
The billionaire defended Twitter’s move to phase out its previous system of verifying notable accounts and personalities with a blue tick, and introduce a system where any user can pay for the tick instead. Several news organizations, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have said they would not pay to keep their blue ticks.
“It’s a small amount of money, so I don’t know what their problem is,” Musk said. “We’re going to treat everyone equally.”
He said legacy blue ticks would disappear next week.
Asked whether he would sell Twitter for the same amount he paid for it, Musk said he wouldn’t — unless the buyer was as committed to telling the truth as he claimed to be. Last month, Musk said he thought the company was now worth $20 billion.
The live interview took place in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, and the BBC was given “about 20 minutes’ notice” that it would be going ahead, according to the British public broadcaster. Asked why he had agreed to sit down with the BBC, Musk said: “Spontaneity.”
Addressing a row over the decision by Twitter to label the BBC’s Twitter accounted as “government-funded media,” Musk said the tag would be updated. “I actually do have a lot of respect for the BBC,” Musk said. “We want it as truthful and accurate as possible — we’re adjusting the label to ‘publicly funded.'”
The interview took some strange turns, with Musk at one point saying he was “no longer the CEO of Twitter” and repeating his claim that his dog had replaced him in the top job.
The interview went for longer than expected, with James Clayton, the BBC journalist interviewing Musk, attempting to end the discussion on several occasions, but the entrepreneur insisting on answering questions from users on Twitter Spaces.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
A man sentenced to two years in prison in a case launched against him after his daughter drew an anti-war picture at school is on the run from the authorities, a spokeswoman for a provincial court told journalists.
Earlier Tuesday, a judge in the town of Yefremov in Russia’s Tula region, south of Moscow, found Alexei Moskalyov guilty of discrediting the Russian army on social media and sentenced him to two years in a penal colony.
Moskalyov was not present at the hearing.
Once the proceedings were over, a court spokeswoman, responding to inquiries as to Moskalyov’s whereabouts, said: “The defendant, Mr. Moskalyov, was not present when the verdict was announced because he fled house arrest last night.”
Her words were met with applause and several cries of “Bravo!” from some of those in attendance.
Formally, Moskalyov was sentenced for two comments he made on social media in which he described Russian soldiers as rapists and Russia’s leadership as “terrorists.”
But Moskalyov’s defense team and rights activists have argued his persecution is in fact retribution for a drawing made by his daughter Masha at school in April last year, when she was 12.
In the drawing, a woman and child stand next to a flag reading “Glory to Ukraine” in the path of a rocket shower coming from the direction of a Russian tricolor flag labeled: “No to war.”
According to an interview given by Moskalyov to independent media before his arrest, Masha’s teacher informed the director of the school, who then got the police involved, triggering a chain of interrogations that he claimed involved threats and beatings.
Moskalyov was eventually detained in early March and his daughter, now 13, taken into state care. While Moskalyov was soon released under house arrest, Masha remains in what the authorities call “a social rehabilitation center” and has been denied any communication with the outside world.
The ruling on Tuesday, though not a surprise, has been decried as a further crackdown on those who oppose Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and described by some as a return to the Stalinist practice of targeting the children of “enemies of the state.” А petition calling for Masha’s release has received more than 140,000 signatures.
Speaking to journalists outside the court on Tuesday, Moskalyov’s lawyer Vladimir Biliyenko said he had been unaware of his client’s plan to flee. He said the last time they saw each other was at a court hearing a day earlier.
In another development, Moskalyov’s supporters on Tuesday attempted to visit Masha at the so-called social rehabilitation institution where she is supposedly being held, only to be told that she was not there.
According to comments from the center’s director cited by independent Russian media, Masha was attending a “culinary tournament” out of town, fueling speculation about her actual location.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
A DIPR photograph showing Lt Gov Manoj Sinha laying the foundation stone of Dubai based Emaar Group’s Kashmir Mall on March 19, 2023.
Burj Khalifa developer who runs Emaar Group makes an entry in Kashmir and his Mall of Srinagar witnessed the bhumi pujan by LG Manoj Sinha last week. Spread over 10 lakh sq feet, the mall will have around 500 shops. The group is also constructing an IT tower in Sempora and Jammu. Emaar Properties CEO Amit Jain said that most of the shops in the mall are expected to be run by companies based out of the UAE. The group is pumping Rs 500 crore including Rs 250 crore in the mall. “This is the start, we should inspire people, and people should aspire to follow us. This is a one million square feet mall with 500 shops and will generate around 7,000 to 8,000 jobs,” Jain said. “As Emaar group, we bring along strong relationships with leading retail brands of UAE, most of which will be launching their presence in India through this initiative,” Jain said. Emaar and Magna Waves Buildtech, the mall is set to become operational by 2026. Lalu Group which is already working with Kashmir will also operate from this mall with a 100 thousand sq ft anchor store. Sinha termed the day historic as it was the first FDI in Kashmir ever since the industrial policy was announced.
For the first time in history, the Jammu and Kashmir Cable Car Corporation Ltd, which runs the Gondola Gulmarg, recorded a turnover of Rs 100 crore.
GWALIOR
Lt Goverbnor, Manoj Sinha addressed the Republic Day gathering in Jammu in 2023.
Courted a controversy, Jammu Kashmri LG, Manoj Sinha said that Mahatma was only a matriculate and a diploma. “There is a misconception among educated people that Mahatma Gandhi had a law degree. Gandhi had no degree,” Sinha said while delivering Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Memorial Lecture at ITM Gwalior. “Who will say Gandhi was not educated? I don’t think anyone can dare to say so. But do you know that he did not have a single University degree or qualification? There are many of us who think that Gandhi had a law degree. No, he didn’t. His only qualification was a high school diploma. He qualified to practice law but did not have a law degree. He had no degree. Just look how educated he was. He became the father of the nation.”
Divisional Commissioner Kashmir VK Bidhuri said the day-long job fair is aimed at providing employment opportunities to 2500 youth in 141 companies.
JAMMU
social media
The employees of the government in Jammu and Kashmir can neither criticise the government nor can comment upon any policy, according to the new social media rules made public by the government. The Deputy Commissioner’s and heads of department have been directed to “immediately proceed against the employees indulging in unwarranted debates, discussions and sharing/commenting/posting inappropriate posts/content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Instant Messaging applications like WhatsApp and Telegram etc.” The directions have been issued after invoking the Jammu and Kashmir Employees Conduct Rules, 1971. “No Government employee shall, in any radio broadcast or in any document published in his own name or anonymously, pseudonymously or in the name of any other person or in any communication to the press or in any public utterance make any statement of fact or opinion which has the effect of an adverse criticism of any current or recent policy or action of the Government of India, Government of Jammu and Kashmir or any other State Government,” the direction said. Besides, the employees have been prevented from “unauthorized communication of official information” or “dissemination of patently wrong or misleading information, airing of political or communal views etc under their real or assumed identities.” Employees have been asked not to publish a post or release “any information on social media that is considered confidential or that is not meant for public dissemination”.
2022 witnessed around 648 road accidents in which 93 persons were killed on Jammu-Srinagar national highway.
WASHINGTON
A number of Kashmiris are making news while being offshore apparently engaged in diplomacy. A news report said six separatist loyalists were forcibly removed from the National Press club in Washington when they repeatedly disrupted a panel discussion Kashmir: From Turmoil to Transformation. Moderated by columnist Se Hoon Kim, it was addressed by Mir Junaid, and Touseef Raina. Reports appearing in the media said the separatist-loyalists disrupted the discussion when Junaid was responding to a question on the reasons why the Kashmiri Hurriyat leaders were in jail. They had gone to the US at the invitation of the International Centre for Peace Studies.
In Geneva, two Kashmiri women – Tasleema Akhter and Bushra Mahajabeen spoke at the UNHRC. Akhter has praised the development that is happening in Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of article 370. She has said developmental projects worth US $700 million are under implementation right now. Reports said Tasleema works for women’s empowerment and rehabilitation of terror victims, whereas Bushra Majajabeen is a terror attack survivor. The latter has lost her sister in a 2003 militant attack and lost her hand in an attempt to snatch the killer’s gun. Former lawmaker Shuaib Lone also spoke to the UN Body.
In their last of the five-year term, the Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) including Municipal Corporations, Councils and Committees are expected to get Rs 1550 crore in 2023-24.
TEETWAL
A brand new Sharda Peth temple is coming up at Teetwal (Karnah0 on the banks of Kishanganga river, barely at a stone’s throw from the Line of Control.
In 2023 Navreh, the idol of goddess Sharda was installed in the new Shrada Devi Temple that was constructed on the Line of Control. The spot had a temple that was devastated in 1947. The idol was installed amid chanting of Vedic hymns by more than 100 Pandits from Shingeri Math in Karnataka where the murti was brought. The temple existed till 1947 and it was the base camp for undertaking a journey to Sharda path, located on the other side of the LoC. A gurdwara also existed there on the banks of the Neelum river. Save Sharda Committee’s Ravinder Pandita was the main person who led the reconstruction of the temple. Pandita said Swami Nand Lal Ji was the last Kashmiri Pandit Saint who used to worship at this temple prior to partition. The foundation stone for the temple and Gurdwara was laid at Teetwal on December 2, 2021. Home Minister, speaking on the occasion said his government will make efforts to open a corridor in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) for Sharda Peeth pilgrimage on the lines of the Kartarpur corridor in Punjab. He addressed the occasion virtually. PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti Wednesday welcomed the opening of the Sharda Devi Temple near the Line of Control (LoC). “This is very good. We have always been saying that we need to engage, reconcile and resolve things. The opening of Sharda temple is a very good thing. It is something that the Kashmiri Pandits were looking forward to, they really wanted it to be opened,” Mehbooba told reporters. “I also hope that the business which was conducted on Muzaffarabad Road and Rawalakot road, also is resumed.”
National Commission for Women (NCW) has received 412 complaints of atrocities against women in last three years – 79 in 2020, 157 in 2021, 144 in 2022 and 32 till March 2023.
AHMADABAD
‘Dr’ Kiran J Patel, the Gujarat conman who took Jammu and Kashmir administration for a ride for most of February till he was arrested on March 3, 2023. This photograph shows the so called PMO officer at Kama
Finally, the arrest of Conman, Kiran Patel in Srinagar has started impacting the ground. Gujarat police have booked the Ghodasar (Ahmedabad) resident for posing as a top official of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), on cheating and criminal conspiracy charges for trying to usurp a senior citizen’s bungalow here using the same tactic. In the Gujarat case, Malini Patel, his wife, is a co-accused. Patel has four cases against him registered in Gujarat and all of them are of the same nature. The latest case accuses him of attempting to grab a bungalow in a posh Shilaj locality in Ahmadabad by winning the trust of its owner, Jagdish Chavda, 63, through false claims of being a “Class 1 officer in the PMO” and having close relations with politicians. Under intense pressure from Delhi, the two other Gujarat residents – Amit Pandya and Jai Sitapara, who were with Patel the day he was arrested but were freed by police, were summoned to Srinagar for interrogation. Pandya is the son of an additional public relation officer of the Gujarat Chief Minister’s office. The PR man in Gujarat CMO has finally given up his position after serving the institution for a very long time.
Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbag Singh said 56 foreign militants were killed in counter-insurgency operations in 2022.
DODA
Doda town, an aerial view
Residents of Malanu village in Thathri (Doda) have accused the village sarpanch of allowing the construction of a volleyball ground on the sole helipad meant for medical emergencies. Evacuations of critically ill patients were done from this spot thrice since 2007 when it was constructed. Now, the district administration has asked the Jammu, and Kashmir Sports Council and the PWD to provide information about it. Sarpanch Zafarullah Magray is holding Sports officials responsible. “I showed them two places but they said machines wouldn’t be able to reach those sites. They asked me to allow construction on the helipad. I asked them to get a no-objection certificate before starting the work,” he said. “The helipad has been used twice or thrice since its construction in 2007. The construction of the volleyball ground started in December last year. No one spoke at that time, but they are now accusing me of scam.”
DELHI
Irfan Mehraj, A Kashmir based Journalist
Federal investigator, the National Investigation Agency arrested Srinagar-based freelance journalist Irfab Mehraj in connection with an ongoing probe into Kashmir-based non-profits that are facing accusations of sponsoring activities “prejudicial to the unity, integrity, sovereignty and security of India.” A resident of Mehjoor Nagar, Irfan was summoned to the local NIA office and later flown to Delhi where a court has given the investigator a 10-day remand. The arrest was condemned by the Press Club of India, the Editors Guild of India, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Amnesty International. NIA said he was arrested under UAPA. Irfan has contributed to a number of media organisations during his journalism career. NIA has also taken custody of JKCCS coordinator Khuram Parvez and he is also on 10-day remand. Irfan has worked with him at the JKCCS.
SRINAGAR
Mehbooba Mufti (PDP) cast her vote for Ram Noth Kovind as the president of India on July 17, 2017.
Mehbooba Mufti has said she won’t contest the Assembly election till Article 370 is restored. “I am never going to fight Assembly elections as long as Article 370 is restored. It’s more of an emotional issue for me,” she said. ““Whenever I took an oath, it was under two Constitutions- the Constitution of India and the Constitution of J&K – with two flags at the same time. It’s more of an emotional issue for me.” Her counterpart, Omar Abdullah feels the elections are being deferred because BJP was “not brave enough to face voters’’. He said: “They are not ready to face people but are escaping from (Assembly) elections on one pretext or the other. They used the pretext of delimitation of constituencies and revision of electoral rolls which stands completed long back. They talked about the weather not being conducive but have no justification to further delay the polls.”
BEJBEHARA
A team of doctors at Sub District Hospital (SDH) Bijbehara is being praised by all for their unwavering commitment to their patients as they performed an emergency LSCS (Lower Segment Caesarean Section) during the intense tremors. It was incidentally recorded on phone and went viral. The team was led by Dr Shabeena Shah, the gynaecologist. “Alhamdulillah, it was a team effort. At the moment, my whole team was there for the patient. Patients are our first priority, we stood despite the earthquake and thankfully we successfully performed the LSCS,” later said. “While the memory of the recent earthquake in Turkey lingered in the back of our minds, the team pushed forward, ultimately delivering a healthy baby and ensuring the patient’s well-being.”
PARIS — In a typically French move, France’s top lawmakers are refusing to side with the United States and single out China’s TikTok.
This week, top members of France’s National Assembly strongly encouraged fellow MPs to “limit” their use of social media apps and messaging services, according to a damning internal email seen by POLITICO. The recommendation does include Chinese-owned TikTok — at the heart of a storm on both sides of the Atlantic — but also features American platforms such as Snap and Meta’s WhatsApp and Instagram, alongside Telegram, founded by Russian-born brothers, and Signal.
“Given the particular risks to which the exercise of their mandate exposes MPs using these applications, we wish to appeal to your extreme vigilance and recommend that you limit their use,” wrote Marie Guévenoux and Eric Woerth from Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party and Eric Ciotti from conservative Les Républicains.
France’s narrative of putting Chinese and American companies in the same basket is in stark contrast to moves by other European countries, including the Dutch government, which decided to target apps from countries that wage an “offensive cyber program” against the Netherlands, such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
But refusing to pick sides and follow the United States’ geopolitical lead is a long political tradition in France, which is often accused of anti-American bias. During the Cold War, French President Charles de Gaulle tried to position his country as an alternative between the U.S.’s capitalism and the Soviet Union’s communism.
“France has not mourned the loss of its power and is trying to resurrect the so-called third way, also carried by [European commissioner] Thierry Breton,” said Asma Mhalla, a tech geopolitics lecturer at Columbia University and Sciences Po. “This will serve as a political argument to put French sovereignty and French tech back on the table,” she added, arguing that the next step will likely be to promote French apps instead.
And indeed, the top lawmakers’ letter encourages members of parliament to use French software WIMI for project management and collaborative work.
Their main issue with foreign social media apps is that Chinese and American laws are extraterritorial. The personal data gathered via the platforms — including contacts, photos, videos, and both professional and personal documents — could be used by foreign intelligence services, they argued in their email.
During Macron’s tenure, France has fought tooth and nail against the U.S. Cloud Act, a piece of legislation that allows American authorities to seize data stored on American servers even if they’re located abroad. Paris has even come up with a specific set of rules for cloud services to try and shield European data from Washington’s extraterritorial reach.
In China, an intelligence law also requires domestic technology companies to hand over data to state authorities on subjects anywhere in the world.
“The U.S. are well aware that all their arguments used against TikTok — namely that Chinese law is extraterritorial — awkwardly echo what the Europeans have been reproaching them for some time,” said Mathilde Velliet, a researcher in tech geopolitics at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
“On the other hand,” she added, “the U.S. also believes they cannot be put on the same footing as China, because they’re a European ally with a different political and security relationship, and because it’s a democracy.”
Washington and EU capitals including Paris and Brussels also engage in dialogue on data security issues and cyber espionage, which is not the case with Beijing.
In the National Assembly’s corridors, however, the top lawmakers’ decision to call out foreign platforms from both the U.S. and China was very much welcome. “It’s all starting to look like a third way, which would be European sovereignty,” said Philippe Latombe, an MP from Macron’s allied party Modem. “And that’s good news.”
Océane Herrero contributed reporting.
This article has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Western governments are ticked off with TikTok. The Chinese-owned app loved by teenagers around the world is facing allegations of facilitating espionage, failing to protect personal data, and even of corrupting young minds.
Governments in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and across Europe have moved to ban the use of TikTok on officials’ phones in recent months. If hawks get their way, the app could face further restrictions. The White House has demanded that ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, sell the app or face an outright ban in the U.S.
But do the allegations stack up? Security officials have given few details about why they are moving against TikTok. That may be due to sensitivity around matters of national security, or it may simply indicate that there’s not much substance behind the bluster.
TikTok’s Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew will be questioned in the U.S. Congress on Thursday and can expect politicians from all sides of the spectrum to probe him on TikTok’s dangers. Here are some of the themes they may pick up on:
1. Chinese access to TikTok data
Perhaps the most pressing concern is around the Chinese government’s potential access to troves of data from TikTok’s millions of users.
Western security officials have warned that ByteDance could be subject to China’s national security legislation, particularly the 2017 National Security Law that requires Chinese companies to “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. This law is a blank check for Chinese spy agencies, they say.
TikTok’s user data could also be accessed by the company’s hundreds of Chinese engineers and operations staff, any one of whom could be working for the state, Western officials say. In December 2022, some ByteDance employees in China and the U.S. targeted journalists at Western media outlets using the app (and were later fired).
EU institutions banned their staff from having TikTok on their work phones last month. An internal email sent to staff of the European Data Protection Supervisor, seen by POLITICO, said the move aimed “to reduce the exposure of the Commission from cyberattacks because this application is collecting so much data on mobile devices that could be used to stage an attack on the Commission.”
And the Irish Data Protection Commission, TikTok’s lead privacy regulator in the EU, is set to decide in the next few months if the company unlawfully transferred European users’ data to China.
Skeptics of the security argument say that the Chinese government could simply buy troves of user data from little-regulated brokers. American social media companies like Twitter have had their own problems preserving users’ data from the prying eyes of foreign governments, they note.
TikTok says it has never given data to the Chinese government and would decline if asked to do so. Strictly speaking, ByteDance is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, which TikTok argues would shield it from legal obligations to assist Chinese agencies. ByteDance is owned 20 percent by its founders and Chinese investors, 60 percent by global investors, and 20 percent by employees.
There’s little hope to completely stop European data from going to China | Alex Plavevski/EPA
The company has unveiled two separate plans to safeguard data. In the U.S., Project Texas is a $1.5 billion plan to build a wall between the U.S. subsidiary and its Chinese owners. The €1.2 billion European version, named Project Clover, would move most of TikTok’s European data onto servers in Europe.
Nevertheless, TikTok’s chief European lobbyist Theo Bertram also said in March that it would be “practically extremely difficult” to completely stop European data from going to China.
2. A way in for Chinese spies
If Chinese agencies can’t access TikTok’s data legally, they can just go in through the back door, Western officials allege. China’s cyber-spies are among the best in the world, and their job will be made easier if datasets or digital infrastructure are housed in their home territory.
Dutch intelligence agencies have advised government officials to uninstall apps from countries waging an “offensive cyber program” against the Netherlands — including China, but also Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Critics of the cyber espionage argument refer to a 2021 study by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which found that the app did not exhibit the “overtly malicious behavior” that would be expected of spyware. Still, the director of the lab said researchers lacked information on what happens to TikTok data held in China.
TikTok’s Project Texas and Project Clover include steps to assuage fears of cyber espionage, as well as legal data access. The EU plan would give a European security provider (still to be determined) the power to audit cybersecurity policies and data controls, and to restrict access to some employees. Bertram said this provider could speak with European security agencies and regulators “without us [TikTok] being involved, to give confidence that there’s nothing to hide.”
Bertram also said the company was looking to hire more engineers outside China.
3. Privacy rights
Critics of TikTok have accused the app of mass data collection, particularly in the U.S., where there are no general federal privacy rights for citizens.
In jurisdictions that do have strict privacy laws, TikTok faces widespread allegations of failing to comply with them.
The company is being investigated in Ireland, the U.K. and Canada over its handling of underage users’ data. Watchdogs in the Netherlands, Italy and France have also investigated its privacy practices around personalized advertising and for failing to limit children’s access to its platform.
TikTok has denied accusations leveled in some of the reports and argued that U.S. tech companies are collecting the same large amount of data. Meta, Amazon and others have also been given large fines for violating Europeans’ privacy.
4. Psychological operations
Perhaps the most serious accusation, and certainly the most legally novel one, is that TikTok is part of an all-encompassing Chinese civilizational struggle against the West. Its role: to spread disinformation and stultifying content in young Western minds, sowing division and apathy.
Earlier this month, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency warned that Chinese control of TikTok’s algorithm could allow the government to carry out influence operations among Western populations. TikTok says it has around 300 million active users in Europe and the U.S. The app ranked as the most downloaded in 2022.
A woman watches a video of Egyptian influencer Haneen Hossam | Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Reports emerged in 2019 suggesting that TikTok was censoring pro-LGBTQ content and videos mentioning Tiananmen Square. ByteDance has also been accused of pushing inane time-wasting videos to Western children, in contrast to the wholesome educational content served on its Chinese app Douyin.
Besides accusations of deliberate “influence operations,” TikTok has also been criticized for failing to protect children from addiction to its app, dangerous viral challenges, and disinformation. The French regulator said last week that the app was still in the “very early stages” of content moderation. TikTok’s Italian headquarters was raided this week by the consumer protection regulator with the help of Italian law enforcement to investigate how the company protects children from viral challenges.
Researchers at Citizen Lab said that TikTok doesn’t enforce obvious censorship. Other critics of this argument have pointed out that Western-owned platforms have also been manipulated by foreign countries, such as Russia’s campaign on Facebook to influence the 2016 U.S. elections.
TikTok says it has adapted its content moderation since 2019 and regularly releases a transparency report about what it removes. The company has also touted a “transparency center” that opened in the U.S. in July 2020 and one in Ireland in 2022. It has also said it will comply with new EU content moderation rules, the Digital Services Act, which will request that platforms give access to regulators and researchers to their algorithms and data.
Additional reporting by Laura Kayali in Paris, Sue Allan in Ottawa, Brendan Bordelon in Washington, D.C., and Josh Sisco in San Francisco.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Elon Musk pledged Twitter would abide by Europe’s new content rules — but Yevgeniy Golovchenko is not so convinced.
The Ukrainian academic, an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen, relies on the social network’s data to track Russian disinformation, including propaganda linked to the ongoing war in Ukraine. But that access, including to reams of tweets analyzing pro-Kremlin messaging, may soon be cut off. Or, even worse for Golovchenko, cost him potentially millions of euros a year.
Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter is shutting down researchers’ free access to its data, though the final decision on when that will happen has yet to be made. Company officials are also offering new pay-to-play access to researchers via deals that start at $42,000 per month and can rocket up to $210,000 per month for the largest amount of data, according to Twitter’s internal presentation to academics that was shared with POLITICO.
Yet this switch — from almost unlimited, free data access to costly monthly subscription fees — falls afoul of the European Union’s new online content rules, the Digital Services Act. Those standards, which kick in over the coming months, require the largest social networking platforms, including Twitter, to provide so-called vetted researchers free access to their data.
It remains unclear how Twitter will meet its obligations under the 27-country bloc’s rules, which impose fines of up to 6 percent of its yearly revenue for infractions.
“If Twitter makes access less accessible to researchers, this will hurt research on things like disinformation and misinformation,” said Golovchenko who — like many academics who spoke with POLITICO — are now in limbo until Twitter publicly decides when, or whether, it will shut down its current free data-access regime.
It also means that “we will have fewer choices,” added the Ukrainian, acknowledging that, until now, Twitter had been more open for outsiders to poke around its data compared with the likes of Facebook or YouTube. “This means will be even more dependent on the goodwill of social media platforms.”
Meeting EU commitments
When POLITICO contacted Twitter for comment, the press email address sent back a poop emoji in response. A company representative did not respond to POLITICO’s questions, though executives met with EU officials and civil society groups Wednesday to discuss how Twitter would comply with Europe’s data-access obligations, according to three people with knowledge of those discussions, who were granted anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.
Twitter was expected to announce details of its new paid-for data access regime last week, according to the same individuals briefed on those discussions, though no specifics about the plans were yet known. As of Friday night, no details had yet been published.
Still, the ongoing uncertainty comes as EU regulators and policymakers have Musk in their crosshairs as the onetime world’s richest man reshapes Twitter into a free speech-focused social network. The Tesla chief executive has fired almost all of the trust, safety and policy teams in a company-wide cull of employees and has already failed to comply with some of the bloc’s new content rules that require Twitter to detail how it is tackling falsehoods and foreign interference.
Musk has publicly stated the company will comply with the bloc’s content rules.
“Access to platforms’ data is one of the key elements of democratic oversight of the players that control increasingly bigger part of Europe’s information space,” Věra Jourová, the European Commission vice president for values and transparency, told POLITICO in an emailed statement in reference to the EU’s code of practice on disinformation, a voluntary agreement that Twitter signed up to last year. A Commission spokesperson said such access would have to be free to approved researchers.
European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová said “Access to platforms’ data is one of the key elements of democratic oversight” | Olivier Hoslet/EPA-EFE
“If the access to researchers is getting worse, most likely that would go against the spirit of that commitment (under Europe’s new content rules),” Jourová added. “I appeal to Twitter to find the solution and respect its commitments under the code.”
Show me the data access
For researchers based in the United States — who don’t fall under the EU’s new content regime — the future is even bleaker.
Megan Brown, a senior research engineer at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, which relies heavily on Twitter’s existing access, said half of her team’s 40 projects currently use the company’s data. Under Twitter’s proposed price hikes, the researchers would have to scrap their reliance on the social network via existing paid-for access through the company’s so-called Decahose API for large-scale data access, which is expected to be shut off by the end of May.
NYU’s work via Twitter data has looked at everything from how automated bots skew conversations on social media to potential foreign interference via social media during elections. Such projects, Brown added, will not be possible when Twitter shuts down academic access to those unwilling to pay the new prices.
“We cannot pay that amount of money,” said Brown. “I don’t know of a research center or university that can or would pay that amount of money.”
For Rebekah Tromble, chairperson of the working group on platform-to-researcher data access at the European Digital Media Observatory, a Commission-funded group overseeing which researchers can access social media companies’ data under the bloc’s new rules, any rollback of Twitter’s data-access allowances would be against their existing commitments to give researchers greater access to its treasure trove of data.
“If Twitter makes the choice to begin charging researchers for access, it will clearly be in violation of its commitments under the code of practice [on disinformation],” she said.
This article has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Doubts are growing about the wisdom of holding the shattered frontline city of Bakhmut against relentless Russian assaults, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is digging in and insists his top commanders are united in keeping up an attritional defense that has dragged on for months.
Fighting around Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donbas dramatically escalated late last year, with Zelenskyy slamming the Russians for hurling men — many of them convicts recruited by the Wagner mercenary group — forward to almost certain death in “meat waves.” Now the bloodiest battle of the war, Bakhmut offers a vision of conflict close to World War I, with flooded trenches and landscapes blasted by artillery fire.
In the past weeks, as Ukrainian forces have been almost encircled in a salient, lacking shells and facing spiking casualties, there has been increased speculation both in Ukraine and abroad that the time has come to pull back to another defensive line — a retrenchment that would not be widely seen as a massive military setback, although Russia would claim a symbolic victory.
In an address on Wednesday night, however, Zelenskyy explained he remained in favor of slogging it out in Bakhmut.
“There was a clear position of the entire general staff: Reinforce this sector and inflict maximum possible damage upon the occupier,” Zelenskyy said in a video address after meeting with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyy and other senior generals to discuss a battle that’s prompting mounting anxiety among Ukraine’s allies and is drawing criticism from some Western military analysts.
“All members expressed a common position regarding the further holding and defense of the city,” Zelenskyy said.
This is the second time in as many weeks that Ukraine’s president has cited the backing of his top commanders. Ten days ago, Zelenskyy’s office issued a statement also emphasizing that Zaluzhnyy and Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, agreed with his decision to hold fast at Bakhmut.
The long-running logic of the Ukrainian armed forces has been that Russia has suffered disproportionately high casualties, allowing Kyiv’s forces to grind down the invaders, ahead of a Ukrainian counter-offensive expected shortly, in the spring.
City of glass, brick and debris
Criticism has been growing among some in the Ukrainian ranks — and among Western allies — about continuing with the almost nine-month-long battle. The disquiet was muted at first and expressed behind the scenes, but is now spilling into the open.
On social media some Ukrainian soldiers have been expressing bitterness at their plight, although they say they will do their duty and hold on as ordered. “Bakhmut is a city of glass, bricks and debris, which crackle underfoot like the fates of people who fought here,” tweeted one.
A lieutenant on Facebook noted: “There is a catastrophic shortage of shells.” He said the Russians were well dug in and it was taking five to seven rounds to hit an enemy position. He complained of equipment challenges, saying “Improvements — improvements have already been promised, because everyone who has a mouth makes promises.” But he cautioned his remarks shouldn’t be taken as a plea for a retreat. “WE WILL FULFILL OUR DUTY UNTIL THE END, WHATEVER IT IS!” he concluded ruefully.
Iryna Rybakova, a press officer with Ukraine’s 93rd brigade, also gave a flavor of the risks medics are facing in the town. “Those people who go back and forth to Bakhmut on business are taking an incredible risk. Everything is difficult,” she tweeted.
A Ukrainian serviceman gives food and water to a local elderly woman in the town of Bakhmut | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
The key strategic question is whether Zelenskyy is being obdurate and whether the fight has become more a test of wills than a tactically necessary engagement that will bleed out Russian forces before Ukraine’s big counter-strike.
“Traveling around the front you hear a lot of grumblings where folks aren’t sure whether the reason they’re holding Bakhmut is because it’s politically important” as opposed to tactically significant, according to Michael Kofman, an American military analyst and director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses.
Kofman, who traveled to Bakhmut to observe the ferocious battle first-hand, said in the War on the Rocks podcast that while the battle paid dividends for the Ukrainians a few months ago, allowing it to maintain a high kill ratio, there are now diminishing returns from continuing to engage.
“Happening in the fight now is that the attrition exchange rate is favorable to Ukraine but it’s not nearly as favorable as it was before. The casualties on the Ukrainian side are rather significant and require a substantial amount of replacements on a regular basis,” he said.
The Ukrainians have acknowledged they have also been suffering significant casualties at Bakhmut, which Russia is coming ever closer to encircling. They claim, though, the Russians are losing seven soldiers for each Ukrainian life lost, while NATO military officials put the kill ratio at more like five to one. But Kofman and other military analysts are skeptical, saying both sides are now suffering roughly the same rate of casualties.
“I hope the Ukrainian command really, really, really knows what it’s doing in Bakhmut,” tweeted Illia Ponomarenko, the Kyiv Independent’s defense reporter.
Shifting position
Last week, Zelenskyy received support for his decision to remain engaged at Bakhmut from retired U.S. generals David Petraeus and Mark Hertling on the grounds that the battle was causing a much higher Russian casualty rate. “I think at this moment using Bakhmut to allow the Russians to impale themselves on it is the right course of action, given the extraordinary casualties that the Russians are taking,” retired general and former CIA director Petraeus told POLITICO.
But in the last couple of weeks the situation has shifted, said Rob Lee, a former U.S. Marine officer and now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the kill ratio is no longer a valid reason to remain engaged. “Bakhmut is no longer a good place to attrit Russian forces,” he tweeted. Lee says Ukrainian casualties have risen since Russian forces, comprising Wagner mercenaries as well as crack Russian airborne troops, pushed into the north of the town at the end of February.
The Russians have been determined to record a victory at Bakhmut, which is just six miles southwest of the salt-mining town of Soledar, which was overrun two months ago after the Wagner Group sacrificed thousands of its untrained fighters there too.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has hinted several times that he sees no tactical military reason to defend Bakhmut, saying the eastern Ukrainian town was of more symbolic than operational importance, and its fall wouldn’t mean Moscow had regained the initiative in the war.
Ukrainian generals have pushed back at such remarks, saying there’s a tactical reason to defend the town. Zaluzhnyy said on his Telegram channel: “It is key in the stability of the defense of the entire front.”
Volodymyr Zelensky and Sanna Marin attend a memorial service for Dmytro Kotsiubailo, a Ukrainian serviceman killed in Bakhmut | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Midweek, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials have been urging the Ukrainians since the end of January to withdraw from Bakhmut, fearing the depletion of their own troops could impact Kyiv’s planned spring offensive. Ukrainian officials say there’s no risk of an impact on the offensive as the troops scheduled to be deployed are not fighting at Bakhmut.
That’s prompted some Ukrainian troops to complain that Kyiv is sacrificing ill-trained reservists at Bakhmut, using them as expendable in much the same way the Russians have been doing with Wagner conscripts. A commander of the 46th brigade — with the call sign Kupol — told the newspaper that inexperienced draftees are being used to plug the losses. He has now been removed from his post, infuriating his soldiers, who have praised him.
Kofman worries that the Ukrainians are not playing to their military strengths at Bakhmut. Located in a punch bowl, the town is not easy to defend, he noted. “Ukraine is a dynamic military” and is good when it is able “to conduct a mobile defense.” He added: “Fixed entrenches, trying to concentrate units there, putting people one after another into positions that have been hit by artillery before doesn’t really play to a lot of Ukraine’s advantages.”
“They’ve mounted a tenacious defense. I don’t think the battle is nearly as favorable as it’s somewhat publicly portrayed but more importantly, I think they somewhat run the risk of encirclement there,” he added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MOSCOW — As Russia enters the second year of its war against Ukraine, fans of Joseph Stalin are enjoying a renewed alignment with the Kremlin.
On Sunday, the hundreds of Stalinists who came to Red Square to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet dictator’s death were full of bravado and admiration for a man responsible for mass executions, a network of labor camps and forced starvation.
But that was not a side of the dictator that was at the forefront of the minds of those who showed up to commemorate him.
“Stalin stood up to Nazism,” Maxim, a 19-year-old medical student in a blue wooly hat, who like others interviewed for this article declined to give his last name, told POLITICO. “And now our current president has led the charge to take it on again.”
Irina, a 35-year-old marketer, brought a bouquet of red carnations to lay at Stalin’s grave at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. On February 24 last year when President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine, a triumphant Irina posted a picture of a hammer and sickle on Instagram. “That symbol for me said it all.”
Standing in front of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum on Red Square, longtime Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told journalists Putin could learn “lessons” from Stalin: “It’s time to take action and start fighting in a real way.”
But as Stalin’s reputation undergoes this rehabilitation, those dedicated to documenting Soviet-era mass repression have felt the full force of the state apparatus used against them.
Across town from Red Square, in Moscow’s north-eastern Basmanny district, about two dozen people gathered outside a faded yellow four-storey building on Sunday. They came to install a plaque commemorating the site as the last home of Vladimir Maslov, an economist accused of spying for Poland in a fabricated case and shot at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge. One of the attendees wore an olive-green jacket adorned with a Dove of Peace — a risky political statement in Putin’s Russia.
The “Last Address” campaign, which attaches the plaques to the former homes of the victims of Soviet repression, is one of very few such projects remaining after a merciless purge of Russia’s most established human rights groups — Memorial, the Sakharov Center and the Moscow Helsinki Group have all been forced to close.
For now, their loosely organized volunteers, armed with drills and step stools to attach the plaques on façades, have been spared. But they face increasing hurdles: The required unanimous consent of a particular building’s residents has become harder to come by; plaques have even been taken down.
“People have become more careful, they are scared that acknowledging the dark episodes of the past will be taken as a nod to what’s going on today,” said volunteer Mikhail Sheinker. “In times like these, past and present converge until they almost blend together.”
The day Stalin’s death was announced — March 6, 1953 — is seared into Sheinker’s memory: “I was four at the time and was making the usual ruckus, but my mother told me to be quiet out of respect.”
Russian Communist party supporters march to lay flowers to the tomb of late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
Today, in wartime Russia, the specter of Stalin could once again be used to further silence dissent.
On Sunday, state-run news agency RIA Novosti published an opinion piece headlined: “Stalin is a weapon in the battle between Russia and the West” arguing criticizing Stalin is “not just anti-Soviet but is also Russophobic, aimed at dividing and defeating Russia.”
But while World War II — which Russians refer to as “the Great Patriotic War” — continues to be a central trope of Putin’s rhetoric when it comes to his invasion of Ukraine, the president casts himself more as a successor to the czars than Soviet leaders. Accordingly, state media paid relatively little attention to the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s death.
Former Kremlin adviser Sergei Markov said that’s because Stalin is still too divisive and Russia’s ruling elite is loathe to commit to any specific ideology. But “if Russia is going to suffer further setbacks [in Ukraine], Stalin will become a main theme,” Markov wrote on Telegram.
Strange bedfellows
The alliance between Putin’s Kremlin and revanchist Communists is an uneasy one.
In Russia’s lower house, or the State Duma, the Communist Party closely toes the Kremlin line — but at a regional level, its members are at times less disciplined.
Last month, Mikhail Abdalkin, a Communist lawmaker in the region of Samara, posted a video of himself listening to Putin’s annual address to the entire ruling elite with noodles hanging from his ears. It was a nod to a Russian idiom “hang noodles on one’s ears” that refers to being taken for a ride or being fed nonsense.
A Russian Communist party supporter holds a portrait of late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
Last week, Abdalkin said he had been charged with discrediting Russia’s armed forces, with the case to be heard on March 7. If he’s convicted, Abdalkin could be fined.
On Red Square on Sunday, some Communist supporters volunteered criticism of Putin, too — but not of his war on Ukraine.
“Stalin gets criticized for having blood on his hands. But what about Putin’s policies? Outside big cities, people need to travel hundreds of kilometers on muddy roads to get health care,” said Alexander, a pensioner in his 60s.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
