More than 40 civil and human rights groups Thursday will release recommended corporate policies and terms of service to combat hate speech on online platforms, the Center for American Progress announced Friday. CAP joined Color of Change, Free Press, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others in studying terrorism, human rights and tech issues the past year. The groups will convene at 11 a.m. Thursday at CAP.
A key takeaway from the FTC’s 2017 information injury workshop was that privacy incidents erode consumer trust, driving down the ability for platforms to collect consumer data, agency staff said Friday. Participants noted the risk of informational injury should be balanced with the value of data collected, staff wrote. Participants cited a handful of studies showing consumers say they care deeply about privacy, but their behavior doesn’t always support that claim. Examples included people offering friends’ personal information for slices of pizza. Other examples include people allowing their photos to be taken, offering the last four digits of their Social Security number and offering their fingerprints in exchange for cookies. Staff said consumer harm from privacy and security breaches include: medical identity theft, targeted release of personal data and erosion of trust.
NTIA Administrator David Redl urged stakeholders to communicate with the White House as it develops an artificial intelligence strategy. In Brussels Thursday, Redl cited the White House Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence’s comment solicitation. The effort will “ensure that U.S. R&D investments remain at the cutting edge,” Redl said. On NTIA's effort to develop privacy principles (see 1810120053), the goal should be to “provide high levels of consumer protection while giving business legal clarity and flexibility to innovate,” he said.
The FTC and various agencies announced the launch of a national education campaign to help small businesses combat cyberthreats. The campaign from the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Small Business Administration includes fact sheets, videos and quizzes.
Compliance with the EU general data protection regulation and what to do with proceeds of auctions on new generic top-level domain (gTLD) names will be among hot topics at the Saturday to Thursday meeting in Barcelona, the internet body said. There will be sessions devoted to ICANN efforts to amend its Whois registration database to comply with the EU law, including the status of an expedited policy development process on ICANN's temporary specification for Whois and issues surrounding the creation of a system to allow third-party access to nonpublic registrants' data (see 1810080002). A Cross-Community Working Group will present its preliminary report on auction proceeds. Auctions were used as a last resort in 16 of 218 contested new gTLD applications, with proceeds placed in a separate reserve pending a decision by the community on how they should be used, the report noted. Other likely topics, stakeholders said: (1) The continuing review of rights protections mechanisms, considering whether to keep, narrow or expand them. (2) The nonprofit's failure, more than two years after accountability bylaws were enacted, to establish independent review panels. (3) Whether the organization has a strategy for dealing with expected battles at the Oct. 29-Nov. 16 ITU Plenipotentiary over who controls the domain name system root zone.
Netflix in Q3 outperformed its subscription forecasts, said the company's quarterly shareholder letter Tuesday. The service had 6.96 million net subscriber additions, above the 5 million it forecast in July. It added 1.09 million U.S. subscribers compared with the 650,000 forecast. Globally, it added 5.87 million, vs. an expected 4.35 million. In Q2, Netflix missed targets (see 1807160066). “As internet entertainment grows, more companies see the large opportunity,” said Netflix. “Within linear TV, New Fox appears to have a great strategy, which is to focus on large simultaneous-viewing sports and news,” it said. “These content areas are not transformed by on-demand viewing and personalization in the way that TV series and movies are, so they are more resistant to the rise of the internet. Other linear networks are likely to follow this model.” After regular-hours U.S. trading, the stock rose 12 percent to $386.28 by our deadline.
The Copyright Office adopted a final rule to “streamline the administration of digital audio recording technology (DART) royalty accounts and electronic royalty payment processes,” the office said Monday. Effective Nov. 14, it “gives the Register discretion to close out royalty payments accounts for a calendar year four years after the close of that year.”
FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips will keynote the agency’s fifth competition policy hearing, an event rescheduled from Sept. 14 to Nov. 1, the agency said Friday. The Georgetown University Law Center event will cover “vertical merger analysis and the role of the consumer welfare standard in U.S. antitrust law.” The agency previously released agendas for the fourth and fifth hearings (see 1810110056).
About 30 million Facebook users had “access tokens” stolen in the latest privacy breach (see 1809280036), it announced Friday. Vice President-Product Management Guy Rosen said the platform is cooperating with the FBI, “which is actively investigating.” Cooperation will continue with the FTC, Data Protection Commission Ireland and others, he said. Hackers accessed names, phone numbers and/or email addresses for 15 million people, Rosen said. For another 14 million people, hackers accessed the same information and additional profile details, he said. Data Protection Commission Ireland tweeted that Facebook’s update was “significant now that it is confirmed that the data of millions of users was taken by the perpetrators of the attack. @DPCIreland’s investigation into the breach and Facebook’s compliance with its obligations under #GDPR continues.” While 30 million users had tokens stolen, about 50 million are believed to be affected, Rosen said. He said Facebook hasn't ruled out smaller-scale attacks. The hackers “exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that existed between July 2017 and September 2018,” Rosen said.
The FTC banned a marketing group behind a “get-rich-with-Amazon” scheme from marketing and other business-related transactions, the agency announced in a $63.5 million settlement Thursday. The deal requires Jeffrey Gomez, Adams Consulting and Global Marketing Services to surrender $63.5 million, “which will be partially suspended when Gomez surrenders approximately $2.55 million in funds and assets.” Defendants falsely claimed their “Amazing Wealth System” would deliver profitable online business through Amazon sales, the agency said. Most customers “lost significant amounts of money” and many were suspended from the platform, the agency said. An attorney for the defendants didn’t comment.