Advocates for children from around the world urged Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday to ditch plans for a version of Instagram geared toward preteens.Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Electronic Privacy Information Center were among nearly 100 groups and individuals from North America, Europe, Africa and Australia to make the plea in a letter to Zuckerberg.Instagram “exploits young people’s fear of missing out and desire for peer approval,” the letter contended.”The platform’s relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and well-being,” it said, building on concerns about predators, bullies and inappropriate content.On Oct. 6, 2020, Images of instagram corporate logos are displayed online on a laptop computer.Instagram is exploring the launch of a version of the image-centric social network for children under 13, with parental controls.Facebook-owned Instagram, like its parent company, allows only those older than 13 to join, but verifying age on the internet makes it challenging to catch all rule breakers.”The reality is that kids are online,” Instagram spokeswoman Stephanie Otway said in response to an AFP inquiry.”They want to connect with their family and friends, have fun and learn, and we want to help them do that in a way that is safe and age-appropriate.”Facebook is working with child development and mental health experts to prioritize safety and privacy, according to Otway.Instagram, which has more than a billion users, recently unveiled technology aimed at preventing underage children from creating accounts and at blocking adults from contacting young users they don’t know.The platform is also looking at ways to make it more difficult for adults who have been exhibiting “potentially suspicious behavior” to interact with teens.The children’s advocates were dubious about the proposed youth version.”Facebook’s long track record of exploiting young people and putting them at risk makes the company particularly unsuitable as the custodian of a photo sharing and social messaging site for children,” their letter said.”In short, an Instagram site for kids will subject young children to a number of serious risks and will offer few benefits for families.” 
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Predicting whether an outbreak is likely to happen is now possible with the COVID-19 Outbreak Detection Tool, a map that shows the coming hotspots for the disease, if accurate data is available.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.Producer: Elizabeth Lee
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South African mobile communications company Vodacom South Africa, with British parent company Vodafone and charity Hestia, has launched a free mobile phone application to support targets of gender-based violence, which has soared during the coronavirus pandemic.  The application, “Bright Sky,” provides information for people to identify gender-based violence and get counseling and emergency help. Franco Puglisi reports from Johannesburg.Producer: Rod James. Camera: Franco Puglisi. 
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The international Future City Competition recently announced its 2021 winners in the first ever all-virtual event. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Predicting whether an outbreak is likely to happen is now possible with the COVID-19 Outbreak Detection Tool, a map that shows the coming hotspots for the disease, if accurate data is available.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.Producer: Elizabeth Lee
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The international Future City Competition recently announced its 2021 winners in the first ever all-virtual event. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Religious organizations in the U.S. are a key part of a community’s response to a disaster.  As Mike O’Sullivan reports, a new smartphone app is helping coordinate that response between relief workers and faith groups while making it more effective.
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Plans by the world’s largest contract chipmaker for a record $100 billion capacity expansion will just mildly dent a growing worldwide shortage of semiconductors for gear such as high-speed notebook computers, 5G smartphones and newer vehicles, tech experts believe.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said in an April 1 legal notice to the Taipei stock exchange that it would use the money over three years on “leading technology” for manufacturing and R&D to “answer demands from the market.” The notice specifically cites demand for chips used in 5G-enabled and high-performance devices.That amount would set a dollar-value record for the company, which is better known as TSMC, said Brady Wang, an analyst in Taipei with the market intelligence firm Counterpoint Research.TSMC’s investment will ease “anxiety” among clients worried about semiconductor supply-chain instability caused in part by Sino-U.S. trade tension, said Kent Chong, managing director of professional services firm PwC Legal in Taipei. Its clients include multiple American hardware developers including Apple.“Overall, it would indeed increase capacity, without any question,” Chong said. American clients hope to source chips in the United States, he added. The company headquartered southwest of Taipei is already planning to open a $12 billion plant in the U.S. state of Arizona. “TSMC is obviously the forefront runner in bringing the whole supply chain to the U.S.,” Chong said.TSMC said in its stock market filing it is “working closely with our customers to address their needs in a sustainable manner.”Years-long shortageAnalysts caution, though, that the ever-growing demand for chips paired with the lag time in building new production plants will extend the shortage for years, despite TSMC’s investment.“You can throw a lot of money at it, but it’s not going to solve the problem,” said Sean Su, an independent political and technology consultant in Taipei.He pointed to popularity of home-use devices during the pandemic and a possible long-term reliance on this technology in “hybrid” online-offline economy after COVID-19 subsides.“Demand is off the ceiling,” Su said. “People want smartphones. People want this and that more than ever. People want tablets all of a sudden. Every single child in the house now needs a computer instead of sharing it.”Remote study and telework, two trends that emerged during the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, particularly raised demand last year for chips that run high-speed notebook PCs. That trend is piggybacking on prepandemic demand for 5G smartphones and new devices that run on artificial intelligence.Automakers joined the mix, too, last year as they placed orders for automated vehicles and electric cars. Because of the current chip shortage, they must wait until at least early 2022 as production capacity is now “fully loaded,” said Wen Liu, industry analyst with the Taipei-based Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute.Feeling an additional pinchWorld demand for chips should increase from $450 billion last year to about $600 billion in 2024, market research firm Gartner says. Industry revenue had already grown 5.4% from 2019 to 2020, according to fellow market research company IDC. TSMC and South Korean technology giant Samsung are the biggest chipmakers today and make the highest-grade chips.Chinese semiconductor clients will feel an additional pinch because of curbs introduced by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, Su said. The Trump administration barred companies, including those based offshore, from working with a list of Chinese firms considered national security risks.“They will be [affected in China] due to trade embargoes as is,” Su said. “Every year, companies fight over limited batches of top-end processors.”China-based chip buyers include developers of three of the world’s five biggest smartphone brands by market share in late 2020.Most of the world’s chipmakers, such as the growing China-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., lag in the equipment and knowhow to make chips that run fast on low power, tech analysts believe. TSMC’s investment will help it stay ahead of any up-and-coming peers, Wang said.“This is actually because [TSMC] saw a new opportunity, which would mainly be in 5G or high-performance PCs or demands for other digitization needs as that’s the demand following COVID-19,” Wang said. TSMC itself probably does not expect the planned $100 billion outlay to ease today’s chip shortage, he said.The company says in its stock exchange notice that “multiyear mega-trends…are expected to fuel strong demand for our semiconductor technologies in the next several years,” while the pandemic “accelerates digitalization in every aspect.”
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The Supreme Court sided Monday with Google in an $8 billion copyright dispute with Oracle over the internet company’s creation of the Android operating system used on most smartphones worldwide.To create Android, which was released in 2007, Google wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used 11,330 lines of code and an organization that’s part of Oracle’s Java platform.Google had argued that what it did is long-settled, common practice in the industry, a practice that has been good for technical progress. And it said there is no copyright protection for the purely functional, noncreative computer code it used, something that couldn’t be written another way. But Oracle said Google “committed an egregious act of plagiarism,” and it sued.The justices ruled 6-2 for Google Inc., based in Mountain View, California. Two conservative justices dissented.Justice Stephen Breyer wrote  that in reviewing a lower court’s decision, the justices assumed “for argument’s sake, that the material was copyrightable.””But we hold that the copying here at issue nonetheless constituted a fair use. Hence, Google’s copying did not violate the copyright law,” he wrote.Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Samuel Alito that he believed “Oracle’s code at issue here is copyrightable, and Google’s use of that copyrighted code was anything but fair.”Only eight justices heard the case because it was argued in October, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg but before Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court.The case has been going on for a decade. Microsoft, IBM and major internet and tech industry lobbying groups had weighed in, in favor of Google. The Motion Picture Association and the Recording Industry Association of America were among those supporting Oracle.The case is Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., 18-956.
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Chinese tech giants are expanding in Singapore as they face a crackdown at home and growing pressure in other key markets — but they may struggle to find talent in the city-state. Messaging-and-gaming behemoth Tencent is opening a hub and TikTok owner ByteDance is on a hiring spree after establishing a regional headquarters, while e-commerce giant Alibaba is investing in property and recruiting. The tech firms are shifting their focus to booming Southeast Asian markets as authorities tighten the screws at home amid concerns about the platforms’ growing power. China’s regulators have launched a blitz on the sector, hitting several firms with heavy fines, and threatening to slice up massive companies whose reach now extends deep into the daily lives of ordinary Chinese.  Meanwhile, festering tensions between Washington and Beijing after an assault on Chinese tech titans during Donald Trump’s presidency make the United States an unattractive prospect, and problems abound elsewhere. “Chinese tech companies are facing regulatory pressures and sanctions from governments in other countries, notably the U.S. but also other nations such as India,” Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit, told AFP.   India has banned a swathe of Chinese apps since a border clash last year, while the European Union and other Western powers recently imposed sanctions over China’s treatment of the Muslim Uyghur minority, prompting retaliatory sanctions.  But Singapore, a prosperous financial hub, maintains good ties with Beijing and the West, and tech firms have come to view it as a safe bet to expand their operations without upsetting either side.   In the current climate of geopolitical uncertainty “Singapore is considered as a more neutral country,” Chen Guoli, professor of strategy at the Singapore campus of business school INSEAD, told AFP. Hiring spree    In addition, long-running turmoil in traditional rival Hong Kong may have dimmed the territory’s appeal, although observers stress other factors are likely more important.   The influx of Chinese cash will be welcome in Singapore, whose economy has been hammered by the coronavirus and which is seeking to build itself up as a tech center. It is already home to major offices of U.S. tech titans Facebook, Google and Twitter, while ByteDance recently moved into bigger offices in the financial district and has launched a hiring drive. Between September and February, a third of ByteDance’s job postings were in Singapore, more than twice the ads it placed in China, with a focus on hiring specialized engineers, said Ajay Thalluri, an analyst with data and analytics firm GlobalData.   Meanwhile, Alibaba last year bought a 50 percent stake in an office tower, where its e-commerce unit Lazada is the main tenant, while its affiliate, fintech giant Ant Group, won a license to operate a wholesale digital bank in the city-state. Alibaba “is building teams in Singapore with significant key senior and mid-level job postings related to talent acquisition, product management, and legal compliance,” said Thalluri.   The e-commerce firm, co-founded by Jack Ma, has come under fierce pressure in China, with authorities pulling the plug on Ant’s record initial public offering in November.    Talent crunch    ByteDance and Tencent, which announced its Singapore expansion plans in September, say they are primarily focused on growing their businesses in Southeast Asia, a booming region of 650 million, rather than avoiding tensions elsewhere. By building up their Singapore presence, the tech giants are hedging their bets in case frictions with the West hit a new nadir, analysts say.   Chen of INSEAD said Chinese companies needed a “plan B” in case they had to separate their global and Chinese operations, in which case Singapore could become their international hub.  However, a major challenge in expanding in the city, with a population of just 5.7 million, is recruiting workers with the correct skills.  “Technology is developing and accelerating at a speed that far surpasses the supply of talent needed to scale,” said Daljit Sall, senior director for information technology at the Singapore office of global recruitment firm Randstad. Singapore is trying to attract overseas talent, although that may cause unease in a country where there are already concerns about the large foreign population, while schools are offering courses to prepare youngsters for tech jobs. Nevertheless, “there still remains an urgent need to fill these skills gaps now,” Sall said. 
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Professional social network LinkedIn is giving nearly all of its 15,900 full-time workers next week off as it seeks to avoid burnout and allow its employees to recharge, the company told AFP Friday.The Microsoft-owned firm said that the “RestUp!” week starting Monday is meant to give employees time for their own well-being.”There is something magical about the entire company taking a break at the same time,” LinkedIn said in reply to an AFP inquiry. “And the best part? Not coming back to an avalanche of unanswered internal emails.”During the week, LinkedIn will provide employees who may feel isolated the option of taking part in daily activities such as volunteering for worthy causes through “random acts of kindness,” according to the company.”A core team of employees will continue to work for the week, but they will be able to schedule time off later,” LinkedIn said.Major technology companies were among the first in the U.S. to adopt working from home last year to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, and most have yet to fully reopen their offices. Twitter has extended remote working indefinitely.LinkedIn does not expect employees to begin returning to its offices until September, and it plans to make it standard practice to let them work from home as much as half of the time.Microsoft in mid-2016 bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in cash, stepping into the world of social networking and adding a new tool for its efforts to boost services for business.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out a lawsuit accusing Facebook Inc. of violating a federal anti-robocall law.The justices, in a 9-0 decision authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, sided with Facebook in its argument that text messages the social media company sent did not violate a 1991 federal law called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).The case highlighted the challenge for the justices in applying outdated laws to modern technologies. The ruling sparked calls for Congress to update the law, enacted three decades ago to curb telemarketing abuse by banning most unauthorized robocalls.”By narrowing the scope of the TCPA, the court is allowing companies the ability to assault the public with a nonstop wave of unwanted calls and texts, around the clock,” Democratic Senator Edward Markey and Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo said in a joint statement.The court ruled that Facebook’s actions — sending text messages without consent — did not fit within the technical definition of the type of conduct barred by the law, which was enacted before the rise of modern cellphone technology.The lawsuit was filed in 2015 in California federal court by Montana resident Noah Duguid, who said Facebook sent him many automatic text messages without his consent. The lawsuit accused Menlo Park, California-based Facebook of violating the TCPA’s restriction on using an automatic telephone dialing system.Facebook said the security-related messages, triggered when users try to log in to their accounts from a new device or internet browser, were tied to users’ cellphone numbers.”As the court recognized, the law’s provisions were never intended to prohibit companies from sending targeted security notifications, and the court’s decision will allow companies to continue working to keep the accounts of their users safe,” Facebook said in a statement.’A disappointing ruling’Sergei Lemberg, Duguid’s lawyer, said anyone could avoid liability under the law if they use technology like Facebook’s.”This is a disappointing ruling for anyone who owns a cellphone or values their privacy,” Lemberg added.In this instance, the lawsuit asserted that Facebook’s system that sent automated text messages was akin to a traditional automatic dialing system — known as an autodialer — used to send robocalls.”Duguid’s quarrel is with Congress, which did not define an autodialer as malleably as he would have liked,” Sotomayor wrote in the ruling.The law requires that the equipment used must use a “random or sequential number generator,” but the court concluded that Facebook’s system “does not use such technology,” Sotomayor added.Duguid said that Facebook repeatedly sent him account login notifications by text message to his cellphone, even though he was not a Facebook user and never had been. Despite numerous efforts, Duguid said he was unable to stop Facebook from “robotexting” him.Facebook responded that Duguid had most likely been assigned a phone number that was previously associated with a Facebook user who opted in to receive the notifications.A federal judge threw out the lawsuit, but in 2019, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived it. The 9th Circuit took a broad view of the law, saying it bans devices that automatically dial not only randomly generated numbers but also stored numbers that are not randomly generated.The National Association of Federally Insured Credit Unions said the decision “to narrowly interpret autodialers is a win for the credit union industry.””We have long fought for this clarity to ensure credit unions can contact their members with important, time-sensitive financial information without fear of violating the TCPA and facing frivolous lawsuits,” the association said in a statement.  
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The record-breaking sale of a digital artwork in March is part of a rush to invest in previously unmarketable things like basketball highlights, video game art, and even tweets. Making it possible are NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens. Matt Dibble explains.
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Microsoft won a nearly $22 billion contract to supply U.S. Army combat troops with its augmented reality headsets.  
 
Microsoft and the Army separately announced the deal Wednesday.
 
The technology is based on Microsoft’s HoloLens headsets, which were originally intended for the video game and entertainment industries.
 
Pentagon officials have described the futuristic technology — which the Army calls its Integrated Visual Augmentation System — as a way of boosting soldiers’ awareness of their surroundings and their ability to spot targets and dangers.
 
Microsoft’s head-mounted HoloLens displays let people see virtual imagery superimposed over the physical world in front of them — anything from holograms in virtual game worlds to repair instructions floating over a broken gadget. Users can control what they see using hand gestures or voice commands.
 
The Army’s website says soldiers tested the gadgets last year at Fort Pickett in Virginia. It said the system could help troops gain an advantage “on battlefields that are increasingly urban, congested, dark and unpredictable.”
 
The Army first began testing Microsoft’s system with a $480 million contract in 2018 and said the headsets could be used for both training and in actual battle. The new contract will enable Microsoft to mass produce units for more than 120,000 soldiers in the Army’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force. Microsoft said the contract will amount to up to $21.88 billion over the next decade, with a five-year base agreement that can be extended for another five years.  
 
Microsoft President Brad Smith told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February that the system could integrate thermal night vision and facial recognition to provide soldiers with “real-time analytics” on remote battlefields. He also described how it could help in planning a hostage rescue operation by creating a “digital twin” of the building.
 
A group of Microsoft workers in 2019 petitioned the company to cancel its initial Army deal, arguing it would turn real-world battlefields into a video game.
 
Microsoft is among several tech companies that have sought to wow the gaming world with glitzy new virtual reality goggles over the past decade, though the efforts have largely fizzled. Microsoft pivoted away from consumer applications for its second-generation HoloLens 2, introduced in 2019, which is the basis for the Army’s new gadgets.
 
Although Microsoft recently demonstrated a way to use the goggles to play the hit game Pokemon Go, it mostly pitches the devices as work tools to help surgeons, factory crews and others.  
 
The headset deal is part of Microsoft’s broader work as a defense contractor. The Pentagon in September reaffirmed Microsoft as winner of a cloud computing contract potentially worth $10 billion, although the work has been delayed by a legal battle over rival Amazon’s claim that the bidding process was flawed.
 
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Four Republican U.S. lawmakers requested on Tuesday that Facebook Inc., Twitter, and Alphabet Inc.’s Google turn over any studies they have done on how their services affect children’s mental health.The request follows a joint hearing last week of two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees at which the companies’ chief executives discussed their content moderation practices in the wake of the siege on the Capitol in January.Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee’s ranking Republican, asked the CEOs at the hearing whether their companies had conducted internal research concerning children’s mental health.Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said he believed the company had, while Twitter’s Jack Dorsey said he did not believe so. Google’s Sundar Pichai said the company consulted with outside experts and invested “a lot of time and effort in these areas.”In letters to the companies on Tuesday, McMorris Rodgers asked for copies of any relevant research or internal communications, as well as information on any contractors and partners involved. They also requested any research the companies had done about how competitors’ products affect mental wellness of people under 18 years old.The requests also cover Google’s YouTube Kids service and Facebook’s Instagram, which is developing a version for people under 13 years old.The other lawmakers who signed the letter were ranking Republicans on various subcommittees, including Robert Latta, Gus Bilirakis and Morgan Griffith.They asked for the companies to respond by April 16. 
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX suffered another setback Tuesday when one of its experimental rockets malfunctioned during a test flight at the company’s Texas facility.
 
The incident occurred as the Starship SN11 prototype was attempting to land after what the company called a normal ascent to roughly 12 kilometers in altitude.
 
Heavy fog obscured observers from seeing exactly what happened, but an explosion seems most likely, as there were reports of fire and debris.
 
“At least the crater is in the right place!” Musk tweeted.
 
This is the third time the experimental rocket has crash-landed or exploded.
 
John Insprucker, a SpaceX engineer, said all was going well when data feeds and the on-board cameras stopped working as the vehicle entered a thick layer of fog while trying to land.  
 
The company said it will provide more information as it gets it but added it does not expect to be able to recover video footage.
 
Starship SN11 is the vehicle Musk hopes will carry the first humans to Mars.  
 
The company wants to send it into orbit by the end of the year. NASA has also awarded SpaceX a $135 million contract to potentially use the Starship SN11 to take astronauts to the moon.
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A robot conceived to roll on planets is being used by firefighters in the U.S. to give them “situational awareness” before going into dangerous situations. It’s called Squishy, and Michelle Quinn found out more.Camera: Michelle Quinn
Producer: Michelle Quinn  
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After canceling plans for undersea cables connecting the United States with Hong Kong because of U.S. government pressure, Facebook and Google now say they will run similar cables to Singapore and Indonesia.  
“Named Echo and Bifrost, those will be the first two cables to go through a new diverse route crossing the Java Sea, and they will increase overall subsea capacity in the trans-Pacific by about 70%,” Facebook’s vice president of network investments, Kevin Salvadori, told the Reuters news agency.
Salvadori would not comment on the cost of the project.
He said the Echo cable, which is being built in partnership with Google and Indonesian telecommunications company XL, would be completed by 2023.
Bifrost, which is being done in partnership with Telin, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s Telkom, and Singapore’s Keppel Corporation, should be completed by 2024, he said.
Both projects will need regulatory approval.  
Most Indonesians who have internet access get it via mobile phones, Reuters reported, adding that only 10% have broadband access. Many have no access at all.
Facebook said plans for the cable to Hong Kong were scrapped because the U.S. government cited national security concerns about direct communication links to Hong Kong.  
Facebook and Google are involved in other cable projects around the world.  
Facebook announced last May that it was going to build a 37,000-kilometer-long undersea cable around Africa.
Google’s project, the Equiano undersea cable, could connect Europe and Africa when finished.
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Facebook hired fact-checkers, Twitter labeled tweets and Google took down videos, but for tech companies, disinformation is the problem that won’t go away. The social media giants face intensifying pressure to curtail disinformation as lawmakers in the US talk about new regulations. Tina Trinh reports.
Producer: Matt Dibble
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Hackers in China used fake Facebook accounts and impostor websites to try to break into the computers and smartphones of Uyghur Muslims, the social network said Wednesday.The company said the sophisticated covert operation targeted Uyghur activists, journalists and dissidents from China’s Xinjiang region, as well as individuals living in Turkey, Kazakhstan, the U.S., Syria, Australia, Canada and other nations.The hackers tried to gain access to the computers and phones by creating fake Facebook accounts for supposed journalists and activists, as well as fake websites and apps intended to appeal to a Uyghur audience. In some cases, the hackers created lookalike websites almost identical to legitimate news sites popular with Uyghurs.The accounts and sites contained malicious links. If the targets clicked on them, their computers or smartphones would be infected with software allowing the network to spy on the targets’ devices.The software could obtain such information as victims’ locations, keystrokes and contacts, according to FireEye, a cybersecurity firm that worked on the investigation.Hundreds targetedIn all, fewer than 500 people were targeted by the hackers in 2019 and 2020, Facebook said. The company said it uncovered the network during its routine security work and has deactivated the fictitious accounts and notified individuals whose devices may have been compromised. Most of the hackers’ activities took place on non-Facebook sites and platforms.”They tried to create these personas, build trust in the community, and use that as a way to trick people into clicking on these links to expose their devices,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy.Facebook’s investigation found links between the hackers and two technology firms based in China but no direct links to the Chinese government, which has been criticized for its harsh treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. FireEye, however, said in a statement that “we believe this operation was conducted in support” of the Chinese government.China has imprisoned more than 1 million people, including Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups, in a vast network of concentration camps, according to U.S. officials and human rights groups. People have been subjected to torture, sterilization and political indoctrination, in addition to forced labor, as part of an assimilation campaign in a region whose inhabitants are ethnically and culturally distinct from the Han Chinese majority. 
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When Joe Biden took office as president, the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei Technologies saw at least a glimmer of hope that the U.S.-led campaign to shut it out of international markets might be eased somewhat. Once a global leader in smartphone sales, Huawei has seen its market share outside China plummet since the Trump administration began choking off its supply of technology key to producing modern 5G handsets. Likewise, the company’s business installing mobile telecommunications infrastructure, and especially new 5G-capable systems, has been severely damaged by a U.S. campaign against it.Biden had not signaled that he would be particularly easy on China — his appointment of China hawk Katherine Tai as U.S. Trade Representative confirmed that. But Huawei and other Chinese firms thought that, if nothing else, the two countries could step back from a Trump-era trade war footing.Huawei Executive Back in Court to Fight US ExtraditionUS wants Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Chinese telecom’s founder and chief financial officer of the company, extradited to face fraud chargesBiden tightens restrictionsEarlier this month, Huawei’s prospects for relief dimmed considerably when the Biden administration announced that it would not only continue some of the Trump administration’s export bans, but would tighten them.“The Biden administration appears to be maintaining the final Trump policy regarding which Huawei-related export licenses to approve or deny, which is more restrictive than the 2020 license policy,” said Kevin Wolf, a former assistant secretary of commerce for export administration in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.Now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump in Washington, Wolf added, “In order to make the license policy consistent and level the playing field, it has amended 2020 licenses limiting their scope so that they align with the final Trump license policy. In particular, licenses for shipments for items ‘for use in or with 5G devices’ will be denied or revoked.”Contentious MeetingAdditionally, on the eve of the first high-level meeting between Biden administration officials and representatives of Beijing, the Commerce Department announced that it had issued subpoenas to a number of Chinese companies as part of an investigation into national security threats.  Beijing Slams US Blacklisting of Chinese CompaniesChina’s commerce ministry on Saturday said it ‘firmly opposes’ the move, which will affect the country’s biggest chipmaker, SMIC, and vowed to ‘take necessary measures’ to safeguard Chinese companies’ rightsThe action stemmed from a 2019 executive order by Trump allowing the executive branch to prohibit purchases of technology deemed to present a national security threat. The Commerce Department did not name the companies it is investigating, but many experts assume that Huawei was among them.The next day, in a contentious meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Yang Jiechi, director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office of the Chinese Communist Party, blasted the U.S, saying, “It abuses so-called notions of national security to obstruct normal trade exchanges, and incite some countries to attack China.”Origins of banBeginning in fits and starts in 2019, a broad swath of export bans eventually cut Huawei off from an array of technologies that had been essential to the company’s operations. The U.S. push began partly in response to then-President Trump’s lengthy trade battle with China, and partly in response to very real national security concerns related to allowing Huawei to become a dominant player in global 5G — the next generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks.U.S. intelligence agencies have long asserted that Huawei is closely connected to the Chinese government. That, combined with the fact that Chinese law specifically requires companies to cooperate with the country’s intelligence services in collecting data, pushed U.S. officials to warn that Huawei components could potentially be used to create “backdoor” access for Beijing into sensitive government and private sector systems.Huawei says, ‘yes’Huawei officials have repeatedly expressed their frustration at being publicly treated as an arm of the Chinese government. Last week Andy Purdy, chief security officer for Huawei Technologies USA, told Bloomberg News that if the Biden administration is concerned about the company, “we hope that the U.S. government will partner with us and not point to the Chinese government, because Huawei speaks for Huawei.” Huawei Running Out of Smartphone Chips under US Sanctions Huawei is at the center of US-Chinese tension over technology and security, and the feud has spread to TikTok and WeChat Many industry experts, though, remain very dubious about the company’s protestations of independence. “The Chinese government may not speak for Huawei,” said Jim Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But when the Chinese government speaks to Huawei, Huawei says, “‘Yes.’”Broad impactThe Trump administration’s assault on Huawei was scattershot at times, but ultimately it was brutally effective.All Huawei phones had used the Android operating system made by Google, but in May of 2019, Google announced that it would comply with the administration’s order and refuse to license its operating system to any new phones made by the Chinese firm.U.S. microchip giants Intel and Qualcomm were likewise banned from selling their most advanced technology to the company, all but eliminating its ability to produce cutting edge handsets. The export restrictions also barred contract chipmakers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest, from selling advanced chips to Huawei.According to International Data Corporation, a business intelligence firm, as its chip supply dried up, Huawei’s share of the global smartphone market cratered. In the second quarter of 2020, Huawei shipped an industry leading 20.2% of handsets, but by the fourth quarter its share had dropped to just 8.6%.Other analysts predict that before 2021 is over, that number will have been halved again, to around 4% of the market.5G dominance bluntedThe pressure on allies to avoid Huawei’s 5G infrastructure offerings has also been broadly successful.  Huawei to Build First European 5G Factory in France to Soothe Western Nerves Huawei’s new French plant would create 500 jobs; Chinese firm says plans not part of ‘charm offensive’ Most major U.S. allies have barred national telecommunications firms from using Huawei-made equipment in their rollout of 5G services and some, like Britain, have committed to the expensive process of replacing existing Huawei components within their systems.Lewis, of CSIS, agreed that Huawei has been “shut out” of most major U.S. allies’ 5G systems, but said that the U.S. pressure campaign hadn’t been the only factor in making that happen.Over the years, there have been multiple charges leveled against Huawei of shady practices, and not all of them from Washington. A 2019 report revealed that British telecom firm Vodaphone had found hidden “backdoor” vulnerabilities in Huawei’s equipment. The company has also been accused of multiple instances of industrial espionage.“Some of it had to do with just telling people, hey, you need to look closely at Huawei, and it’s their own independent assessment,” Lewis said. “The Europeans have been looking at Huawei as a risk since before the Trump administration. So in some ways, Huawei is caught by its own practices.”
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Press freedom advocate Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is suing Facebook in France, saying the social media platform spreads misinformation. The suit was filed Monday with the Paris public prosecutor.  “Reporters Without Borders accuses Facebook of ‘deceptive commercial practices’ on the grounds that the social media company’s promises to provide a ‘safe’ and ‘error-free’ online environment are contradicted by the large-scale proliferation of hate speech and false information on its networks,” the group said in a press release. Specifically, the group says Facebook allows “hate speech” against the media, as well as misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. The group said Facebook allowed posts that were insulting and threatening against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, as well as targeting the TV program “Quotidien” and a regional newspaper, L’Union. Facebook said in a statement that it “has zero tolerance for any harmful content on our platforms,” Bloomberg reported. “Over the last few years, we’ve tripled the size of our safety and security team to 35,000 and built artificial intelligence technology to proactively find and remove harmful content,” the statement continued, according to Bloomberg. “While nobody can eliminate misinformation and hate speech from the internet entirely, we continue using research, experts and technologies to tackle them in the most comprehensive and effective way possible.” Should RSF win its case, the decision could have global repercussions for Facebook, as its terms of service are similar worldwide. Any change in France could trigger changes elsewhere. Facebook and other Big Tech companies have been under intense pressure to stop what some call misinformation. In December, the EU proposed new regulations that could hit companies with fines of up to 6% of their global revenue for not complying with orders to remove content deemed violent hate speech, according to Bloomberg. 
 
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A new outside report found that Facebook has allowed groups — many tied to QAnon, boogaloo and militia movements — to glorify violence during the 2020 election and in the weeks leading up to the deadly riots on the U.S. Capitol in January.
Avaaz, a nonprofit advocacy group that says it seeks to protect democracies from misinformation, identified 267 pages and groups on Facebook that it says spread violence-glorifying material in the heat of the 2020 election to a combined following of 32 million users.
More than two-thirds of the groups and pages had names that aligned with several domestic extremist movements, the report found. The first, boogaloo, promotes a second U.S. civil war and the breakdown of modern society. The second is the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against the “deep state” and a sect of powerful Satan-worshipping pedophiles who dominate Hollywood, big business, the media and government. The rest are various anti-government militias. All have been largely banned from Facebook since 2020.
But despite what Avaaz called “clear violations” of Facebook’s policies, it found that 119 of these pages and groups were still active on the platform as of March 18 and had just under 27 million followers.
Facebook acknowledged that its policy enforcement “isn’t perfect,” but said the report distorts its work against violent extremism and misinformation.
The company said in a statement that it has done more than any other internet company to stanch the flow of harmful material, citing its bans of “nearly 900 militarized social movements” and the removal of tens of thousands of QAnon pages, groups, and accounts. It added that it is always improving its efforts against misinformation.
On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are slated to testify before Congress about extremism and misinformation on their platforms.  
Facebook has tightened its rules against violence, hate and misinformation in the past year. In October, it banned QAnon groups across its platform. Before that, it would remove them only if they expressly supported violence. It has also banned extremist and militia movements and  boogaloo groups with varying degrees of success.  
For instance, while Facebook  banned “Stop the Steal” groups from its platform, Avaaz — like The Associated Press — found that such groups and the #stopthesteal hashtag remained active on the platform after the purge.
 
Facebook’s failures, Avaaz said, “helped sweep America down the path from election to insurrection.”  
According to the report, the social network provided a “fertile ground” for misinformation and toxicity that contributed to radicalizing millions of Americans, helping create the conditions in which the storming of the Capitol became a reality.
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Toyota, Nissan, Honda and other Japanese automakers scrambled on Monday to assess the production impact of a fire at a Renesas Electronics automotive chip plant that could aggravate a global semiconductor shortage. “We are gathering information and trying to see if this will affect us or not,” a Honda spokesperson said. Other car makers including Toyota and Nissan said they too were assessing the situation. The effect on car makers could spread beyond Japan to other auto companies in Europe and the United States because Renesas has around a 30% global share of micro control unit chips used in cars. Renesas said it will take at least a month to restart production on a 300 mm (millimeter) wafer line at its Naka plant in northeast Japan after an electrical fault caused machinery to catch fire on Friday and poured smoke into the sensitive clean room. Two-thirds of production at the affected line is automotive chips. The company also has a 200 mm (millimeter) wafer line at the Naka plant, which has not been affected. Concerns on the impact of the fire on production sent auto shares sliding in Tokyo on Monday, with the big three, Toyota, Honda and Nissan, down more than 2% by the midday break. Renesas shares tumbled as much as 5.5% and were down 3.9% midday. The benchmark Topix index shed 1.1%. “It will probably take more than a month to return to normal supply. Given that, even Toyota will face very unstable production in April and May,” said Seiji Sugiura, senior analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute. “I think Honda, Nissan and other makers will also be facing a difficult situation.” Semiconductors such as those made by Renesas are used extensively in cars, including to monitor engine performance, manage steering or automatic windows, and in sensors used in parking and entertainment systems.An employee wearing protective equipment pushes a cart at a semiconductor production facility for Renesas Electronics during a government organized tour for journalists in Beijing, May 14, 2020.Nissan and Honda had already been forced to scale back production plans because of the chip shortage resulting from burgeoning demand from consumer electronic makers and an unexpected rebound in car sales from a slump during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. Toyota, which ensured parts suppliers had enough stocks of chips, has fared better so far. “It could take three months or even half a year for a full recovery,” said Akira Minamikawa, analyst at technology research company Omdia. “This has happened when chip stockpiles are low, so the impact is going to be significant,” he added. Government promises help  Renesas said it customers, which are mostly automotive parts makers rather than the car companies, will begin to see chip shipments fall in around a month. The company declined to say which machine caught fire because of the electrical fault or which company made it. The Japanese government promised help for the auto industry. “We will firmly try to help the Naka factory achieve swift restoration by helping it quickly acquire alternative manufacturing equipment,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a regular news conference on Monday. The latest incident at the Naka facility comes after an earthquake last month shut down production for three days and forced Renesas to further deplete chip stocks to keep up with orders. The plant was closed for three months in 2011 following the deadly earthquake that devastated Japan’s northeast coast. 
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