YouTube/Facebook/Twitter
Online media titans met today in San Francisco to discuss how to prevent meddling in the upcoming midterm elections.
Even as conservative voices are being rapidly tossed by the services or allegedly shadowbanned, a process to restrict comments – an issue that President Donald Trump vowed to look into – the meeting of a dozen firms took place in San Francisco at Twitters offices, according to several media reports.
Facebook was the key coordinator, according to BuzzFeed News, which claimed to have obtained an email detailing the meeting. The email, from Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebooks head of cybersecurity, called it “a follow-on discussion.”
“As Ive mentioned to several of you over the last few weeks, we have been looking to schedule a follow-on discussion to our industry conversation about information operations, election protection, and the work we are all doing to tackle these challenges, Gleicher reportedly wrote in the email.
Reps from Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Snapchat were expected to attend the meeting. Allegedly on the agenda: progress reports on preventing misinformation, current problems, and a vote on whether such meetings should be held more regularly.
The meeting among competitors to discuss their actions follows a similar gathering in May, when representatives from Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oath, Snap and Twitter reportedly met with Christopher Krebs, an undersecretary at the US Department of Homeland Security, and Mike Burham from the FBIs foreign influence task force. That meeting also discussed the midterm election.
Google announced in the last two days that it removed 58 accounts believed to belong to Irans state broadcaster, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).
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