Reports of social media censorship from Facebook, Google, Instagram and Twitter indicate that users are becoming increasingly frustrated with those platforms' content moderation policies, Onlinecensorship.org reported Wednesday. The Electronic Frontier Foundation/Visualizing Impact project based its report on an analysis of user-generated content takedown reports between April and November. About 76 percent of 230 reports of social media content takedowns between March and October concerned Facebook, while 17 percent involved Twitter and about 4 percent concerned Instagram, the report said. Facebook this year faced criticism from congressional lawmakers and others over claims the website censored conservative news as well as the publication of several fake news stories (see 1605100032, 1605240059, 1605110048 and 1610310038). Onlinecensorship.org researchers also analyzed "content takedowns" from Google+ and YouTube users. The report said 36 percent of the reports related to account shutdowns. About 26 percent involved a takedown of a post, 19 percent involved a photo takedown and 6 percent involved a video, Onlinecensorship.org said. Most users don't have a clear understanding of why their content was removed with only 60 reports providing a reason, the project said. Election-related censorship complaints in particular showed that users desired to speak their minds about the presidential contest between Republican President-elect Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. “These companies have enormous impact on the public sphere, yet they are still private entities with the ability to curate the information we see and the information we don’t see at their sole discretion,” said Jillian York, Onlinecensorship.org co-founder, in a news release. “The user base is what powers these social media tools, yet users are feeling like they don’t have any control or understanding of the system.” Onlinecensorship.org recommended that social media platforms create best practices for content moderation, including a commitment to transparency in how such policies are enforced. Researchers also recommended improving the systems for appealing content takedown decisions when they're made in error. Facebook, Google, Instagram and Twitter didn't immediately comment.

Facebook said Wednesday that it's fixing more errors in its view count metrics, including the view counts for content posted on businesses' and individuals' professional profile pages. The visible view counts were showing the sum of all views, rather than counting views by unique visitors. Once the metrics are fixed in the coming weeks, the seven-day view count will drop by about 33 percent, while the 28-day summary view count will drop by 55 percent, Facebook said in a news release. The social media company said it had also undercounted views for videos watched to completion. Fixes to that metric will cause video view counts to increase by 35 percent, Facebook said. The company disclosed in September that it had overestimated video view counts for two years, drawing criticism from the Association of National Advertisers (see 1609290075).

As a way to help lawmakers and others find common ground and advance the encryption debate, BSA|The Software Alliance released an analytical tool to examine legislation and policy proposals, the industry group said in a Tuesday news release. They center around: improving data security; raising the capabilities of law enforcement; promoting privacy; protecting sensitive government data; encouraging innovation of data security tools free of government mandates; protecting critical infrastructure like banking and health; understanding the impact around the world; and increasing transparency of any legislative proposal.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks increased 71 percent year-over-year in Q3, Akamai reported Tuesday. DDoS attacks greater than 100 Mbps increased 138 percent, including two attacks attributed to the Mirai botnet. Mirai originated the October attacks against DynDNS, which caused outages and latency for major U.S. websites (see 1610210056). The DynDNS attacks have resulted in significant congressional interest in the cybersecurity of connected devices (see 1610260067). The House Communications and Commerce Trade subcommittees are set to hold a hearing Wednesday on IoT cybersecurity, partially in response to the DynDNS attacks (see 1611090063). In contrast, Akamai found that web application attacks decreased 18 percent, with U.S.-originating attacks down 67 percent.

The Trustworthy Accountability Group launched an anti-malware certification seal program for buyers, sellers and intermediaries in the digital advertising supply chain, said the ad industry initiative in a news release Tuesday. TAG, which was formed by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers and Interactive Advertising Bureau, said it's also building and hosting an information-sharing hub to disseminate real-time intelligence about malware attacks to the industry and law enforcement. Adform, AppNexus, Google and RocketFuel are some ad companies and agencies that agreed to participate in the certification program, which entails complying with certain guidelines and best practices for scanning content for malware. The program "uses a multi-prong approach that includes consumer education, industry best practices, information sharing, and law enforcement to shut down malware distributors and protect the advertising supply chain," said TAG CEO Mike Zaneis. The threat-sharing hub will permit some companies to get data on the most recent infections, "serving as a type of immune system for the industry in helping it respond to new and emerging threats," TAG said. The anti-malware program is the fourth and last program in the initiative's mission to stop fraudulent traffic, fight malware and internet piracy and promote transparency.

Addressing challenges in preventing abuse, bullying and harassment on Twitter, the social media website said in a Tuesday blog post that it's made progress in the areas of controls, reporting and enforcement to better help users. One feature called "mute," which enables users to stop seeing tweets from certain accounts, is being expanded, it said. "We’re enabling you to mute keywords, phrases, and even entire conversations you don’t want to see notifications about, rolling out to everyone in the coming days." The company will also give users a "more direct way" to report specific conduct that targets people based on their age, disability, disease, ethnicity, gender and gender identity, national origin, race, religious affiliation and sexual orientation. "This will improve our ability to process these reports, which helps reduce the burden on the person experiencing the abuse, and helps to strengthen a culture of collective support on Twitter," the company said. The site said it's "retrained" its support team on policies, "including special sessions on cultural and historical contextualization of hateful conduct, and implemented an ongoing refresher program." Twitter said it also improved internal tools and systems to effectively address abusive conduct when reported.

The Internet Association released a policy road map to President-elect Donald Trump to help his incoming administration focus on the industry's priorities. In a Monday letter to Trump, IA CEO Michael Beckerman wrote that his group "looks forward to working with you on policies that encourage this kind of growth, innovation, and consumer choice." The internet sector is responsible for 6 percent of the economy, or about $1 trillion of gross domestic product in 2014, he wrote. Among the policies listed in the 12-page letter are copyright, intermediary liability, the on-demand economy, an open and accessible internet, patent changes, privacy and data security, trade and global internet policy and workforce issues.

The FTC's Jessica Rich, who heads the agency's consumer protection bureau, will kick off a Dec. 7 event on smart TVs, featuring two panels that will explore advertising targeting technologies and data collection practices and safeguards, said the commission in a Monday news release with agenda details. The FTC said "virtually all" TV systems this year -- including apps, game consoles, set-top boxes, smart TVs and streaming devices -- track viewers' habits that allow advertisers to target ads even through consumers' phones and desktop browsers. The first panel -- with representatives from the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, comScore, Network Advertising Initiative, Samba TV and TiVo Research -- will discuss new measurement capabilities, how smart TVs are used in cross-device targeting and how consumer transparency and choice are being addressed. The second panel -- with experts from Consumer Reports, Direct Marketing Association, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Public Knowledge and the University of California, Berkeley -- will talk about what viewers' data is being collected and shared, how consumers can be more informed about such practices and the legal protections they have. The 1-4:30 p.m. event will be held at 400 7th St. SW.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang sees development of self-driving cars as perhaps the most “disruptive dynamic that's happening in the automotive industry,” he said on an earnings call. It's “almost impossible” to "imagine that in five years' time, a reasonably capable car will not have autonomous capability at some level, and a very significant level at that,” he said Thursday. The challenge of tackling a commercially viable autonomous vehicle “is not a detection problem, it's an AI computing problem,” Huang said of artificial intelligence. It's not just about “detecting objects” on the road that will be key, he said. It’s more about learning the “perception of the environment around you,” and that will be one of the important breakthroughs from AI computing, he said. Another key is developing the “reasoning” that must take place in AI computing, including how to teach the computer “to take action based on that reasoning, and to be continuously learning,” Huang said.

Most Americans and Chinese have purchased a product or service digitally over the past 12 months, while Chinese digital users lead the way on mobile purchases as well, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and IAB China said in a survey Thursday. Eighty-nine percent of Chinese and 84 percent of American digital users engaged in online commerce, a news release said. Chinese users were more bullish on mobile purchases over the past 12 months, with 67 percent engaged vs. 34 percent of American users. IAB said 24 percent of Chinese users make a mobile purchase daily while only 15 percent of U.S. mobile shoppers do. Much higher portions of both groups are interested in buying something through their mobile device over the next month, and IAB said security is an obstacle: "These feelings manifest in different ways depending on the country, with [American] shoppers concerned about information safety and privacy and Chinese shoppers fearing digital fraud and scams." Consulting firm Hypothesis Group conducted the digital survey of 1,000 online adults in the U.S. and China Sept. 19-Oct. 12.