MC Weekly Update 3/13: Extremely Persuasive Dance Routines

Moderated Content

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

• Update on last week’s segment on Law Enforcement Data Requests:
  • California passed a law last year that seeks to block warrants requesting information about abortions from tech companies. - Andrea Vittorio/ Bloomberg Law
  • California lawmakers are looking at ways to stop dragnet reverse warrants and keyword search warrants. - Tonya Riley/ CyberScoop
• The FTC Takes on Twitter
  • The Federal Trade Commission is probing whether Twitter still has the staff and budget to comply with a 2011 consent decree for privacy and data protection standards and reporting. - Ryan Tracy/ The Wall Street Journal, Kate Conger, Ryan Mac, David McCabe/ The New York Times, Brian Fung/ CNN
  • House Republicans created an outrage fest about FTC investigations into Twitter’s compliance with its consent decree. - Jared Gans/ The Hill, Emily Brooks, Rebecca Klar/ The Hill
  • Not to say “we told you so,” but this FTC action was predicted in an episode last year which still provides a good primer on Twitter’s data security problems with the FTC. - Evelyn Douek, Whitney Merrill, Riana Pfefferkorn/ Stanford Law
• House Republicans passed an anti-jawboning law, H.R. 140, the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act. Of course, it does not apply to Congress, and it faces long odds in the senate. - Brian Fung/ CNN
• Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune (R-SD) introduced the RESTRICT Act, which would give the Secretary of Commerce authority to ban technology products from companies with ties to foreign adversaries, including TikTok. - Brian Fung/ CNN, Brendan Bordelon, Gavin Bade/ Politico
• Any user can lose access to social media accounts for refusing to verify their age and parental consent is required for children under 18 to create social media accounts under a bill, SB 152, that passed the Utah State Legislature and is soon expected to be signed into state law. - Kim Bojórquez, Erin Alberty/ Axios
• Twitter announced new enterprise packages for access to collect tweets through its API with the lowest tier priced at more than $500,000 per year. - Chris Stokel-Walker/ Wired
  • More: Academics currently receive free access. Now, most if not all academics will be priced out of even the lowest tier of data access.

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

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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