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In response to Sen Grassley wrapping up questions about how Twitter executives wanted to address employee concerns about accepting ad money from Chinese compani

In response to Sen Grassley wrapping up questions about how Twitter executives wanted to address employee concerns about accepting ad money from Chinese companies, possibly with Chinese govt links (even while Twitter is banned in China): 28:25 [Mudge] "We're already in bed, it would be problematic if we lost that revenue stream, so figure out a way to make people comfortable with it." That isn't really surprising, but it's still bad. It's also worrying that some Americans complain about "big [US] government" to justify the very limited size and power of the FTC to regulate US big tech, while somehow overlooking the threat from the big Chinese government, its awful human rights record, and its track record of working to gain access into US companies. It's really easy to criticize these senators for not being tech ignorant, but this is the only govt we have, and it's the only one that can empower the FTC to do more.

schnable 4y ago
> It's also worrying that some Americans complain about "big [US] government" to justify the very limited size and power of the FTC to regulate US big tech, while somehow overlooking the threat from the big Chinese government, its awful human rights record, and its track record of working to gain access into US companies. How is a bigger/more powerful FTC an antidote to the bad behavior of the Chinese government, or a defense against them?
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Not that I necessarily believe in this, but you could imagine e.g. FTC or FCC requiring content-neutrality. In that world, China's asks for censorship go up against US's asks for no censorship. In this current world, China's asks for censorship go up against... employees' personal appetite for losing money (and potentially their jobs) in exchange for a non-China dominated information space?
- codyb 4y ago
  Maybe they could enforce rules notifying users where their ads were coming from?
- an1sotropy 4y ago
  I'm not sure. Threats from the Chinese govt include US national security, and the privacy and human rights of all Twitter users. FTC itself may not be the regulatory body to address those, but don't you think it is nonetheless a legitimate interest of the US govt to regulate, if Twitter is a US company? The hearing also shed light on how European regulation (France in particular, I think), was recognized within Twitter as something to take seriously, as opposed to how US regulation would result in, at worst, one-time fines. Another revelation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32566507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32566507 is that India had an agent working within Twitter. I don't know if that's a Dept of Labor regulation violation, but my general concern is that if you celebrate limits in US govt regulation, you may be celebrating having low vision of the harmful activities of foreign governments.
  - yazzku 4y ago
    The US government is also harmful outside of the US. Your comments here and above seem to have a tone of "US good, China bad". To be clear, this and the general issue of regulating American online spaces isn't about good vs evil, but about furthering one government's agenda or another's.
  - vinay_ys 4y ago
    > India had an agent working within Twitter Without proof, this is pure propaganda. India is a sovereign democracy with its own laws and regulations. India required all media platforms acting as intermediaries to have three permanent job roles with proper governance structure – a Chief Compliance Officer, a Resident Grievance Officer and a Nodal Contact Person – these job roles are expected to have specific responsibilities w.r.t dealing with consumer complaints. You can read the official government brief here – https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2021/jun/doc202162411.pdf https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documen... Twitter would have interviewed and hired competent people of their choice into these roles. If any motivated government/corporate wants to infiltrate twitter, I doubt they would go about it by engaging in high-profile court battles and democratic parliamentary processes to do it.
- kornhole 4y ago
  He is trying to bring it home to them and getting them excited about hearing that China, Russia, and anybody else knows where they are at all times, what they follow and so on. If I had to choose a government to surveil and manipulate me, it would not be my own US government and corporations. Of course I don't let any of them do it.
dereg 4y ago
He also testifies that the CTO, Parag, suggested that Russia be allowed to moderate the content on the platform because they are a “democratic country”. Really, really, really terrible optics. It seems like Parag was a terrible exec, is losing his job, and the market knows it. Twitter’s stock is the only social media platform whose stock is up today.
- hammock 4y ago
  Democratic /= free
  - lwansbrough 4y ago
    Democratic =/= democratic
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    They aren't Democratic. Putin is basically a monarch at this point. Even the Duma is gutted.
    - _8j50 4y ago
      "Basically" means in your opinion. Even north korea is democratic. The US picking between two parties is not so democratic either. Putin maybe a quasi dictator but their government isn't just one guy, are all the ministers in their legislature dictators too? Even with dprk of course they all vote for kim but what about other elections they have? My question is who cares? They are a sovreign nation and the form of government they have is an internal matter. Their leaders and government are recognized by the world (even America) as legitimate rulers of their country
      - vorpalhex 4y ago
        We care because having some unhinged old man with no checks on his power is bad. As you may be aware, said senile old man just invaded a neighboring country. The same issue we have with DPRK. Last time we did the "mind our own business" the jerk of the moment took most of Europe and killed several million people. Putin is doing his best to exterminate the Ukrainians now.
freewizard 4y ago
It seems not a twitter specific problem, every company selling click ads (=every tech and media company) has same problem. Not sure congress or FTC can do much. Ban click ads? Ban Chinese advertiser? Ban links to Chinese-owned websites? Ban BGP to China?
rrix2 4y ago
I still don't understand the attack-vector how buying targeted advertisements can be used to unmask particular individuals (the example in mudge's testimony: democracy-desiring Chinese citizens posting on twitter illegally). can someone explain this to me? if the users are accessing twitter + any ad clicks through a GFW-bypassing VPN, and china can target an advertisement to a single user, then they can figure out that that user uses a VPN if they click on the advertisement? how do they unmask the VPN IP address? my understanding is that VPN providers (should! i hope!) internally transit the traffic so that the exit node isn't the same as the IP address the GFW would see users connect to, so i'm not sure how they could correlate that traffic to a "real" IP/identity.
- netsharc 4y ago
  A possible scenario is: Chinese govt creates a honeypot site talking about e.g. Xinjiang, put Twitter ads pointing to it. Honeypot site has a tracking pixel from something like nothing-to-see-here.cn that sets a cookie on the user's browser (something like "visited=honeypot-site-about-xinjiang"). User disconnects from VPN, browses "normal" Chinese sites from their home IP, another Chinese site has another tracking pixel from nothing-to-see-here.cn, the user's browser connects to that site and sends the above cookie and gives away the user's home IP. Yeah it's poor opsec, but quite possible. The cookie can even store what pages and how long the user spent on the honeypot site. Or the cookie can just be an identifier, and the honeypot site can send which pages were visited (and at what time) to the nothing-to-see-here.cn, which builds a visitor's profile for the reeducation police.
  - rrix2 4y ago
    Thanks, I had dis-counted 3rd party cookies for some reason. Luckily the tide here is changing with firefox ETP, Safari cookie isolation, etc, but you're right that a lot of the world still has cross-domain cookies to contend with. Yikes!

schnable 4y ago

> It's also worrying that some Americans complain about "big [US] government" to justify the very limited size and power of the FTC to regulate US big tech, while somehow overlooking the threat from the big Chinese government, its awful human rights record, and its track record of working to gain access into US companies. How is a bigger/more powerful FTC an antidote to the bad behavior of the Chinese government, or a defense against them?

ethanbond 4y ago
Not that I necessarily believe in this, but you could imagine e.g. FTC or FCC requiring content-neutrality. In that world, China's asks for censorship go up against US's asks for no censorship. In this current world, China's asks for censorship go up against... employees' personal appetite for losing money (and potentially their jobs) in exchange for a non-China dominated information space?
codyb 4y ago
Maybe they could enforce rules notifying users where their ads were coming from?
an1sotropy 4y ago
I'm not sure. Threats from the Chinese govt include US national security, and the privacy and human rights of all Twitter users. FTC itself may not be the regulatory body to address those, but don't you think it is nonetheless a legitimate interest of the US govt to regulate, if Twitter is a US company? The hearing also shed light on how European regulation (France in particular, I think), was recognized within Twitter as something to take seriously, as opposed to how US regulation would result in, at worst, one-time fines. Another revelation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32566507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32566507 is that India had an agent working within Twitter. I don't know if that's a Dept of Labor regulation violation, but my general concern is that if you celebrate limits in US govt regulation, you may be celebrating having low vision of the harmful activities of foreign governments.
- yazzku 4y ago
  The US government is also harmful outside of the US. Your comments here and above seem to have a tone of "US good, China bad". To be clear, this and the general issue of regulating American online spaces isn't about good vs evil, but about furthering one government's agenda or another's.
- vinay_ys 4y ago
  > India had an agent working within Twitter Without proof, this is pure propaganda. India is a sovereign democracy with its own laws and regulations. India required all media platforms acting as intermediaries to have three permanent job roles with proper governance structure – a Chief Compliance Officer, a Resident Grievance Officer and a Nodal Contact Person – these job roles are expected to have specific responsibilities w.r.t dealing with consumer complaints. You can read the official government brief here – https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2021/jun/doc202162411.pdf https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documen... Twitter would have interviewed and hired competent people of their choice into these roles. If any motivated government/corporate wants to infiltrate twitter, I doubt they would go about it by engaging in high-profile court battles and democratic parliamentary processes to do it.
kornhole 4y ago
He is trying to bring it home to them and getting them excited about hearing that China, Russia, and anybody else knows where they are at all times, what they follow and so on. If I had to choose a government to surveil and manipulate me, it would not be my own US government and corporations. Of course I don't let any of them do it.

dereg 4y ago

He also testifies that the CTO, Parag, suggested that Russia be allowed to moderate the content on the platform because they are a “democratic country”. Really, really, really terrible optics. It seems like Parag was a terrible exec, is losing his job, and the market knows it. Twitter’s stock is the only social media platform whose stock is up today.

hammock 4y ago
Democratic /= free
- lwansbrough 4y ago
  Democratic =/= democratic
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  They aren't Democratic. Putin is basically a monarch at this point. Even the Duma is gutted.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    "Basically" means in your opinion. Even north korea is democratic. The US picking between two parties is not so democratic either. Putin maybe a quasi dictator but their government isn't just one guy, are all the ministers in their legislature dictators too? Even with dprk of course they all vote for kim but what about other elections they have? My question is who cares? They are a sovreign nation and the form of government they have is an internal matter. Their leaders and government are recognized by the world (even America) as legitimate rulers of their country
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      We care because having some unhinged old man with no checks on his power is bad. As you may be aware, said senile old man just invaded a neighboring country. The same issue we have with DPRK. Last time we did the "mind our own business" the jerk of the moment took most of Europe and killed several million people. Putin is doing his best to exterminate the Ukrainians now.

freewizard 4y ago

It seems not a twitter specific problem, every company selling click ads (=every tech and media company) has same problem. Not sure congress or FTC can do much. Ban click ads? Ban Chinese advertiser? Ban links to Chinese-owned websites? Ban BGP to China?

rrix2 4y ago

I still don't understand the attack-vector how buying targeted advertisements can be used to unmask particular individuals (the example in mudge's testimony: democracy-desiring Chinese citizens posting on twitter illegally). can someone explain this to me? if the users are accessing twitter + any ad clicks through a GFW-bypassing VPN, and china can target an advertisement to a single user, then they can figure out that that user uses a VPN if they click on the advertisement? how do they unmask the VPN IP address? my understanding is that VPN providers (should! i hope!) internally transit the traffic so that the exit node isn't the same as the IP address the GFW would see users connect to, so i'm not sure how they could correlate that traffic to a "real" IP/identity.

netsharc 4y ago
A possible scenario is: Chinese govt creates a honeypot site talking about e.g. Xinjiang, put Twitter ads pointing to it. Honeypot site has a tracking pixel from something like nothing-to-see-here.cn that sets a cookie on the user's browser (something like "visited=honeypot-site-about-xinjiang"). User disconnects from VPN, browses "normal" Chinese sites from their home IP, another Chinese site has another tracking pixel from nothing-to-see-here.cn, the user's browser connects to that site and sends the above cookie and gives away the user's home IP. Yeah it's poor opsec, but quite possible. The cookie can even store what pages and how long the user spent on the honeypot site. Or the cookie can just be an identifier, and the honeypot site can send which pages were visited (and at what time) to the nothing-to-see-here.cn, which builds a visitor's profile for the reeducation police.
- rrix2 4y ago
  Thanks, I had dis-counted 3rd party cookies for some reason. Luckily the tide here is changing with firefox ETP, Safari cookie isolation, etc, but you're right that a lot of the world still has cross-domain cookies to contend with. Yikes!