MC Weekly News Roundup 11/7: The Elon Musk JD Program

Moderated Content

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Elon Musk announced that Twitter will start charging $8 for users to keep or gain blue check marks on the platform, changing the meaning of the symbol to indicate subscribers to the “Twitter Blue” service. The company then delayed launch until after the midterms. - Ines Kagubare/ The Hill, @elonmusk
• Blue-chip companies including General Mills, Pfizer, and Volkswagen have all paused advertising on Twitter over concerns that Musk will limit content moderation on the platform. - Suzanne Vranica, Patience Haggin/ The Wall Street Journal
• After single-handedly hosting a call for Twitter with civil society and advocacy organizations, many of those participants were among the more than 60 advocacy and civil society organizations that called for an ad boycott on the platform. - Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Rebecca Kern, Mark Scott/ Politico
• Elon Musk responded to a right-wing influencer’s tweet suggesting he “has tortious interference claims” against activist groups involved in the ad boycott campaign. (spoiler: he doesn’t) - @elonmusk, Mark Frauenfelder/ Boing Boing
• People are leaving Twitter and fleeing to… Mastodon? - Rachel Metz/ CNN
• Rumble has suspended services in France, blaming government rules banning Russian state media and government accounts. - @rumblevideo
• Rumble is building its own cloud services, a move similar to Parler, but that would require a more expansive scale for more highly trafficked video content. - Kaitlyn Tiffany/ The Atlantic, Taylor Hatmaker/ TechCrunch
  
• “The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that ‘leaked’ documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming it reveals the ‘smoking gun’ of how the Biden administration was abusing government power to censor them on social media.” - Mike Masnick/ Techdirt
  • More: “The only problem? It shows nothing of the sort.”
• The Election Integrity Partnership published a blog on rumors and false and misleading narratives to expect on and after Election Day. - Election Integrity Partnership
  
• India is amending an IT law that regulates social media content moderation by adding a panel with three government-appointed members to review social media grievances. - Manish Singh, Jagmeet Singh/ TechCrunch, Scroll
• A revised Online Safety Bill is expected to head back to the UK House of Commons later this month with amendments that limit the government from forcing platforms to take action on “harmful but lawful” content. - Dev Kundaliya/ Computing, Chloe Chaplain/ i newspaper

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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