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He tweeted: We need to change, especially the Brazilian gamer community, from threatening and trying to make the person on the other side feel afraid to punish something that was done and we dont like it. This in no way reflects our essence as a people.

He wasnt done. While underlining the general warmth and joy Brazilians are known to bring to sport, and life in general, he added: To defend ourselves we dont need to incite fear, violence or punish others for being wrong. We are better than that.

At the heart of the matter that triggered these thoughts were a series of controversial results that occurred in the first half of the VALORANT season this year, where simmering tension between Brazil and North America escalated further in the wake of certain decisions.

Like the one where Riot was accused of lack of consistency in punishing exploits as VKs (the Brazilian outfit) win was overturned to give Ascend a victory. At the time, the organisers said one of the Brazilian players had abused a Cypher cam glitch. Immediately in the aftermath of that result, there was mayhem from the fans on social media.

Prior to VKs reversal, there was another storm when a close affair between Sentinels and FURIA was stopped just when it seemed as if FURIA had seized the advantage. A tech pause over a jump exploit was deemed to be the official reason, but the Brazilian fans were having none of it. They alleged the 15-minute stoppage was the reason for FURIAs loss from there on.

Even if it just ended in a simple warning, the mayhem they caused online was as if the team had been served a ban. Social media profiles of opposition players received plenty of hate, bile, abuse and threats enough to cause grief to the most disconnected of personalities who detach sporting results to the maximum extent possible.

If its grief from the Brazilian fans in VALORANT, the Korean fans have taken it up a notch at League of Legends. They have waged online wars to the extent that superstar mid-laner Lee Faker Sang-hyeok even took fans to court, after being subjected to a barrage of online insults and harassment directed at him and his family. The players lawyers even confirmed there would be no plea nor favourable arrangement deals.

The issue stemmed from slanders towardsFakers mother and obscene drawings that would be considered unspeakably foul. Faker has long accepted assessment of performances and the scrutiny that comes with them are part and parcel of superstardom, but he wasnt going to take such hate lying down.

By extension, the hate that Fakers received has transferred onto T1 too, seemingly because of their unprecedented success in LoL. Their prominence has led to flashpoints and online mobs with fans. Players have in the past spoken about personal attacks while taking it in stride, but that trend is slowly changing.

The overwhelming sentiment now has moved from tolerance and pleas for better behaviour to fighting fire with fire. Players now want to respond to serve a lesson to not indulge in online bullying or cause mental anguish to players and their families.

We would like to ask fans to keep their distance for their safety and their privacy, T1 said in a statement. Please show your respect for the players when they are near HQ, especially before and after the games, as they need to prepare in peace. We ask the fans for your cooperation to protect and respect the players privacy as well as create a safe fan/player culture.

But it isnt just fans who have been at the centre of such abuse. In 2017, a professional League of Legends player in China had been fired from his team, after it had emerged that he had beaten his girlfriend and had inadvertently live-streamed the incident. It emerged later that the trigger for his behaviour was intense competition from a rival he wanted to beat at any cost.

There have been a few cases of physical abuse, as mentioned above, but its mostly online abuse and trolling that has been central to leagues and esports the world over. Theres no denying that social media is a double-edged sword.

Fans are there to cheer and root for their team irrespective of the end result, but a layer of anonymity can at times provide fodder to those with nefarious intentions to abuse players. Its something several organisations have now woken up to, trying to take the matter seriously. Some have appointed mental health experts to chat with their players from time to time, others have tried to deal with it in their own way, like Faker has.

Two superstars in the Overwatch League in America Atlanta Reigns Kai Kai Collins and Toronto Defiants Andreas Logix Berghmans have completely steered clear of social media because its probably the worst place for abuse. Jiri LiNkzr Masalin from the Vancouver Titans believes subjecting oneself to social media after games can be the most depressing feeling, and not a good hobby to have for a pro player because nothing can prepare you for that. Then there are forums like Reddit where abuse has been taken to another level, as Los Angeles Gladiators off-tank Indy SPACE Halpern has experienced.

So how can such issues be tackled? Can rules be tweaked to antagonise fans less? At least VALORANT is looking at options, such as trying to do away with the existing mass reporting system that automatically suspends players. This system has caused numerous false bans and can be infuriating to players and fans alike. Riot, the organisers, can also do well to place more resources in their tribunal department.

The number of reports a player receives should only be a trigger of priority for reviewing manually. This will ensure all reports are reviewed, which would then reduce the likelihood of false bans, which in-turn could lead to fewer flashpoints between fans. Also in VALORANT, the current toxicity detection system is only limited to text chat. But with VALORANT encouraging voice chat, the organisers should look to implement a system that can sift through voice communication upon receiving reports.

Valorant has taken measures to increase communication restrictions, queue bans and account suspension of players indulging in such behaviour. Extending this to fans is easier said than done, and given how access is a lot easier in the online world, a foolproof method to keep serial abusers and trolls away hasnt yet been devised.

If any, the awareness around such behaviour and toxicity has led to more players and teams talking about it openly, which has led to them trying to also address such issues, which may have earlier been brushed under the carpet.

In any case, the bottom line is this. Sport has no place for abuse. Trolls will just be trolls. As long methods are devised to weed out such disruptive forces from games, players and teams can breathe easy knowing theyre on the right track. A full-blown process may take time, but just that its coming up for discussion is a massive leap towards weeding out this problem of plenty.

With esports having been mentioned as a possible Olympic sport it was included as a demonstration event at the 2018 Asian Games this crackdown couldnt have come at a better time.

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Toxicity in Esports is Out of Control - Hotspawn

Three hundred current employees at TikTok and its parent company ByteDance previously worked for Chinese state media publications, according to public employee LinkedIn profiles reviewed by Forbes.

Twenty-three of these profiles appear to have been created by current ByteDance directors, who manage departments overseeing content partnerships, public affairs, corporate social responsibility and media cooperation.

Fifteen indicate that current ByteDance employees are also concurrently employed by Chinese state media entities, including Xinhua News Agency, China Radio International and China Central / China Global Television. (These organizations were among those designated by the State Department as foreign government functionaries in 2020.)

Fifty of the profiles represent employees that work for or on TikTok, including a content strategy manager who was formerly a Chief Correspondent for Xinhua News.

The LinkedIn profiles reviewed by Forbes reveal significant connections between TikToks parent company, ByteDance, and the propaganda arm of the Chinese government, which has been investing heavily in using social media to amplify disinformation that serves the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese state media outlets have a large presence on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but so far, they have been relatively quiet on TikTok.

Unlike the other major platforms, however, TikTok does not currently label accounts controlled by Chinese state media. In March, TikTok announced a plan to label some state media entities, but a Forbes review of Chinas largest state media entities on the platform, including China News Service, Xinhua News Service, CGTN and the Global Times, found no added context or labels indicating the accounts state control. (Disclosure: In a previous life, I held policy positions at Facebook and Spotify.)

ByteDance and TikTok did not contest that the 300 LinkedIn profiles represent current employees or deny their connections to Chinese state media. None of the state media outlets named in this story responded to a request for comment.

Jennifer Banks, a spokesperson for ByteDance, said that ByteDance makes hiring decisions based purely on an individuals professional capability to do the job. For our China-market businesses, that includes people who have previously worked in government or state media positions in China. Outside of China, employees also bring experience in government, public policy, and media organizations from dozens of markets."

In response to the 15 profiles that show ByteDance employees concurrently employed by Chinese state media, she added that ByteDance does not allow employees to hold second or part-time jobs, or any outside business activity, that would cause a conflict of interest.

People spend more time on TikTok today than they do on any other app. In recent months, the app has been hailed as a powerful driver of American culture, and has rapidly emerged as a critical player in our electoral and civic discourse. The LinkedIn profiles raise further concerns that China could use TikToks broad cultural influence in the US for its own ends, a fear that led a cohort of US politicians, including former president Donald Trump, to call for a ban on the app in 2019.

ByteDance Headquarters on January 6, 2022 in Shanghai, China.

The profiles also provide critical insight into how ByteDance manages its relationship with Chinese state media entities. In addition to TikTok, ByteDance runs numerous other websites and services, including two of mainland Chinas most popular apps: Douyin (a short form video app) and Toutiao (a news aggregator). Chinese state media entities are among the most popular accounts on Douyin, where they have many millions of followers. Many of the LinkedIn profiles detail work on Toutiao and Douyin, which must comply with stringent Chinese censorship laws.

But 50 profiles also specifically mentioned work on TikTok, in areas including policy, strategy, operations, monetization, user experience and localization (the process of adapting a product to fit the needs of foreign markets).

One profile, representing a current TikTok feature strategy lead, says that person previously worked for the China Internet Information Center, or china.org.cn, a state-run web portal whose editor-in-chief is also a party secretary and former deputy head of propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party. Banks said that this individual could not have held a senior-level position because they are not a Chinese national. She confirmed they do work on ByteDances businesses outside of China.

Per LinkedIn, the TikTok employee worked as an editor for the centers China Development Gateway (chinagate.cn). During their tenure, chinagate.cn published headlines including, "Safeguarding Xi's core position is the key: communique," "Under Xi's watch, China's sunshine island basks in warmth of opening up," and "Xi stresses importance of The Communist Manifesto."

Both TikTok and ByteDance declined to answer questions about if they have collaborated with Chinese state media entities to produce or distribute content.

James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Forbes that he wasnt surprised that a lot of Chinese state media employees would eventually move over to ByteDance and TikTok. Its probably a normal career path; Im sure ByteDance pays more, he said, but ties back to the old homestead might be concerning.

In recent months, concern about TikTok has risen due to a string of new reports about the apps links to the Chinese government. In June, BuzzFeed News reported that ByteDance employees in China had repeatedly accessed sensitive information about US TikTok users, setting off a flurry of responses from legislators and regulators in the US and abroad. (TikTok confirmed the reporting in a late-June letter to nine Republican senators.)

In July, BuzzFeed News reported allegations by former employees that ByteDance had pushed pro-China messages to Americans in its now-defunct news app, TopBuzz, which was active between 2015 and 2020. (ByteDance denied the claims.) The TopBuzz report marked the first claims that TikToks parent company had attempted to use its content distribution engine to influence Americans views about China. Just days later, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese government asked TikTok for permission to set up a stealth propaganda account in 2020, which TikTok confirmed.

According to Bloomberg, members of TikToks policy department declined to grant the Chinese governments request for such an account. But a LinkedIn profile representing ByteDances deputy general manager of media cooperation suggests there may be more collaboration between Chinese state media and ByteDance than that story suggests.

The profile states that the deputy general manager is responsible for the formulation of the cooperation strategy between the company and the central media and cooperate[s] with partners in content planning, data mining, product interaction, business, etc. (Some quotes from LinkedIn profiles in this article were originally written in Chinese and translated by Google.)

An interview request sent to this profile went unanswered. ByteDance declined to specify what cooperation strategy the deputy general manager was referring to.

For this employee and the other ByteDance employees mentioned below, ByteDance's Banks confirmed that they "exclusively work on the companys China market businesses.

The LinkedIn profiles raise further concerns that China could use TikToks broad cultural influence in the US for its own ends.

Another employee, now ByteDances vice general manager of media partnerships, previously ran social media for china.org.cn. Among the portals social media posts during his tenure were Facebook posts titled, Why China needs Xi Jinping as its core leader and Human Rights Hype Isn't Good For The US Or China, and a tweet asking, Is Western ideology doomed to fail? The employee did not respond to an interview request.

Other profiles also suggest expertise in tailoring messages based on users online behavior: A profile for a current ByteDance director of government affairs cooperation described past work for Peoples Dailythe newspaper of record of the Chinese Communist Partywhere the now-director analyz[ed] the reading habits of Internet audiences and the identity characteristics of mainstream party media audiences and without violating the partys propaganda policy, actively carr[ied] out special news planning with local government offices. An interview request to this profile received no response.

Fifteen profiles also listed both ByteDance and a state media organization as a persons current employer. The profile for one such employee, who has served as an editorial director at ByteDance since March 2019, says that she is also a current member of the editorial boards of the China News Service, which is run by the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party, and China Weekly, which is supervised by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. The editorial director did not respond to an interview request.

The profile for another such employee, a director of public relations, says that she is also a current senior reporter and operations manager at Beijing TV. The profile for a third employee, an Internation [sic] Operation Manager at ByteDance, says that person is also the current chief editor for international news at Beijing Time (btime.com), a news website affiliated with Beijing TV. Neither of these employees responded to interview requests.

According to its About Us page, Beijing Time takes the dissemination of positive energy, mainstream voices, and Chinese excellent culture as its own responsibility, and builds a media communication platform for Beijings patriotism education base for the Beijing Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department.

Chinese state media entities have long used social media to target and influence Western audiences. Earlier this year, China Central Television (CCTV) and its global arm, China Global Television Network (CGTN), promoted Russian disinformation on Facebook about Ukraine. The outlets previously ran ads on the platform denying extensively documented human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government against Muslim minorities. CCTV/CGTN did not reply to a request for comment.

Forbes identified 49 LinkedIn profiles for TikTok and ByteDance employees who previously worked for CCTV and CGTN. Among them were CCTVs former editor-in-chief, who now serves as ByteDances director of media content partnerships, and a ByteDance overseas market operator whose profile says he is still an editor for CCTV.

Just last month, Xinhua News Agency denied that China has forced ethnic minorities into manual labor in Xinjiang, calling the reports fabricated false information. The agency has repeatedly posted denials of the governments abuse of Uyghur communities, while also promoting the local folk artists of Wondrous Xinjiang. In 2019, the outlet ran ads on Facebook and Twitter to smear protestors in Hong Kong; earlier this year, it ran more, blaming Russias invasion of Ukraine on NATOs ambition to expand eastward. Xinhua News did not reply to a request for comment.

The Communist Party loves TikTok and Im sure theyre trying to figure out how to use it, which is bad news for ByteDance.

Forbes found 39 profiles for current TikTok and ByteDance employees that previously worked at Xinhua. According to those profiles, one former Xinhua reporter, who is now the head of cooperation at ByteDance, won several government journalism awards. Another, who works in internal communications, is a former reporter for both Xinhua and Beijing Daily. Neither employee responded to an interview request.

According to LinkedIn, another 24 TikTok and ByteDance employees formerly worked for Peoples Daily, an outlet that press freedom advocacy group Freedom House has deemed the official Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece. Others have worked for China Daily and China Radio International (both registered foreign agents, per the State Department) and China Youth Daily, the newspaper of the Communist Youth League of China.

ByteDances extensive connections to Chinese state media publicationsalong with its lack of policies for designating and monitoring their content on TikTokmake it an outlier among social media giants. While LinkedIn shows that Google and Meta also employ people who previously worked for Chinese state media, the numbers are different by an order of magnitude.

Forbes identified 23 profiles that appear to represent current employees at Google or YouTube, and 14 profiles of current employees at Meta, Facebook, and Instagram, who previously worked for Chinese state media. One of these people, Googles senior most communications official for greater China, spent more than 15 years at China Global Television Network, where he was a director, editor, reporter and anchor. (He did not respond to an interview request.) Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels declined to comment. Meta spokesperson Andrea Beasley acknowledged a request for comment, but did not offer comment by press time.

Lewis, the scholar at CSIS, cautioned against reading too far into any individual employees work history. But, he said, The Chinese government is probably trying to poke around to figure outhow can they use the information theyre getting from watching TikTok to better tailor their propaganda for a Western audience?

None of this is good for ByteDance, especially as scrutiny about its ties with the government heightens. The Communist Party loves TikTok and Im sure theyre trying to figure out how to use it, which is bad news for ByteDance, Lewis said. Because being the Communist Partys favorite child means unwanted attention.

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LinkedIn Profiles Indicate 300 Current TikTok And ByteDance Employees Used To Work For Chinese State MediaAnd Some Still Do - Forbes

In the weeks after President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election, the Fox Business host Lou Dobbs claimed to have tremendous evidence that voter fraud was to blame. That evidence never emerged but a new culprit in a supposed scheme to rig the election did: Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election technology whose algorithms, Mr. Dobbs said, were designed to be inaccurate.

Maria Bartiromo, another host on the network, falsely stated that Nancy Pelosi has an interest in this company. Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News personality, speculated that technical glitches in Dominions software could have affected thousands of absentee mail-in ballots.

Those unfounded accusations are now among the dozens cited in Dominions defamation lawsuit against the Fox Corporation, which alleges that Fox repeatedly aired false, far-fetched and exaggerated allegations about Dominion and its purported role in a plot to steal votes from Mr. Trump.

Those bogus assertions made day after day, including allegations that Dominion was a front for the communist government in Venezuela and that its voting machines could switch votes from one candidate to another are at the center of the libel suit, one of the most extraordinary brought against an American media company in more than a generation.

First Amendment scholars say the case is a rarity in libel law. Defamation claims typically involve a single disputed statement. But Dominions complaint is replete with example after example of false statements, many of them made after the facts were widely known. And such suits are often quickly dismissed, because of the First Amendments broad free speech protections and the high-powered lawyers available to a major media company like Fox. If they do go forward, they are usually settled out of court to spare both sides the costly spectacle of a trial.

But Dominions $1.6 billion case against Fox has been steadily progressing in Delaware state court this summer, inching ever closer to trial. There have been no moves from either side toward a settlement, according to interviews with several people involved in the case. The two companies are deep into document discovery, combing through years of each others emails and text messages, and taking depositions.

These people said they expected Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, who own and control the Fox Corporation, to sit for depositions as soon as this month.

The case threatens a huge financial and reputational blow to Fox, by far the most powerful conservative media company in the country. But legal scholars say it also has the potential to deliver a powerful verdict on the kind of pervasive and pernicious falsehoods and the people who spread them that are undermining the countrys faith in democracy.

Were litigating history in a way: What is historical truth? said Lee Levine, a noted First Amendment lawyer who has argued several major media defamation cases. Here youre taking very recent current events and going through a process which, at the end, is potentially going to declare what the correct version of history is.

The Trump Investigations

The Trump Investigations

Numerous inquiries. Since Donald J. Trumpleft office, the former president has been facingseveral different civil and criminal investigationsacross the countryinto his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at some notable cases:

The Trump Investigations

Jan. 6 investigations. In a series of public hearings, the House select committeeinvestigating the Jan. 6 attack laid out a powerful accountof Mr. Trumps efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This evidence couldallow federal prosecutors, who are conducting a parallel criminal investigation,to indict Mr. Trump.

The Trump Investigations

Georgia election interference case. Mr. Trump himself is under scrutiny in Georgia, where the district attorney of Fulton County has been investigating whether he and others criminally interfered with the 2020 election in the state. This case could pose the most immediate legal perilfor the former president and his associates.

The case has caused palpable unease at the Fox News Channel, said several people there, who would speak only anonymously. Anchors and executives have been preparing for depositions and have been forced to hand over months of private emails and text messages to Dominion, which is hoping to prove that network employees knew that wild accusations of ballot rigging in the 2020 election were false. The hosts Steve Doocy, Dana Perino and Shepard Smith are among the current and former Fox personalities who either have been deposed or will be this month.

Dominion is trying to build a case that aims straight at the top of the Fox media empire and the Murdochs. In court filings and depositions, Dominion lawyers have laid out how they plan to show that senior Fox executives hatched a plan after the election to lure back viewers who had switched to rival hard-right networks, which were initially more sympathetic than Fox was to Mr. Trumps voter-fraud claims.

Libel law doesnt protect lies. But it does leave room for the media to cover newsworthy figures who tell them. And Fox is arguing, in part, thats what shields it from liability. Asked about Dominions strategy to place the Murdochs front and center in the case, a Fox Corporation spokesman said it would be a fruitless fishing expedition. A spokeswoman for Fox News said it was ridiculous to claim, as Dominion does in the suit, that the network was chasing viewers from the far-right fringe.

Fox is expected to dispute Dominions estimated self-valuation of $1 billion and argue that $1.6 billion is an excessively high amount for damages, as it has in a similar defamation case filed by another voting machine company, Smartmatic.

A spokesman for Dominion declined to comment. In its initial complaint, the companys lawyers wrote that The truth matters, adding, Lies have consequences.

For Dominion to convince a jury that Fox should be held liable for defamation and pay damages, it has to clear an extremely high legal bar known as the actual malice standard. Dominion must show either that people inside Fox knew what hosts and guests were saying about the election technology company was false, or that they effectively ignored information proving that the statements in question were wrong which is known in legal terms as displaying a reckless disregard for the truth.

A judge recently ruled that Dominion had met that actual malice standard at this stage, allowing it to expand the scope of its case against Fox and the kind of evidence it can seek from the companys senior executives.

In late June, Judge Eric M. Davis of Delaware Superior Court denied a motion from Fox that would have excluded the parent Fox Corporation from the case a much larger target than Fox News itself. That business encompasses the most profitable parts of the Murdoch American media portfolio and is run directly by Rupert Murdoch, 91, who serves as chairman, and his elder son, Lachlan, the chief executive.

Soon after, Fox replaced its outside legal team on the case and hired one of the countrys most prominent trial lawyers a sign that executives believe that the chances the case is headed to trial have increased.

Dominions lawyers have focused some of their questioning in depositions on the decision-making hierarchy at Fox News, according to one person with direct knowledge of the case, showing a particular interest in what happened on election night inside the network in the hours after it projected Mr. Trump would lose Arizona. That call short-circuited the presidents plan to prematurely declare victory, enraging him and his loyalists and precipitating a temporary ratings crash for Fox.

These questions have had a singular focus, this person said: to place Lachlan Murdoch in the room when the decisions about election coverage were being made. This person added that while testimony so far suggests the younger Murdoch did not try to pressure anyone at Fox News to reverse the call as Mr. Trump and his campaign aides demanded the network do he did ask detailed questions about the process that Foxs election analysts had used after the call became so contentious.

Foxs legal team has cited the broad protections the First Amendment allows, arguing that statements about Dominion machines from its anchors like Mr. Dobbs and Ms. Bartiromo, and guests like Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, were protected opinion and the kind of speech that any media organization would cover as indisputably newsworthy.

When the president and his lawyers are making allegations, that in and of itself is newsworthy, Dan Webb, the trial lawyer brought in by Fox several weeks ago, said in an interview. To say that shouldnt be reported on, I dont think a jury would buy that. And thats what I think the plaintiffs are saying here.

Mr. Webbs most recent experience in a major media defamation case was representing the other side: a South Dakota meat manufacturer in a lawsuit against ABC for a report about the safety of low-cost processed beef trimmings, often called pink slime. The case was settled in 2017.

But Fox has also been searching for evidence that could, in effect, prove the Dominion conspiracy theories werent really conspiracy theories. Behind the scenes, Foxs lawyers have pursued documents that would support numerous unfounded claims about Dominion, including its supposed connections to Hugo Chvez, the Venezuelan dictator who died in 2013, and software features that were ostensibly designed to make vote manipulation easier.

According to court filings, the words and phrases that Fox has asked Dominion to search for in internal communications going back more than a decade include Chavez and Hugo, along with tampered, backdoor, stolen and Trump.

Fox News and Fox Business gave a platform to some of the loudest purveyors of these theories, including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, and Mr. Giuliani, the presidents personal lawyer, in the days and weeks after major news outlets including Fox declared Joseph R. Biden Jr. the president-elect. In one interview, Mr. Giuliani falsely claimed that Dominion was owned by a Venezuelan company with close ties to Mr. Chavez, and that it was formed to fix elections. (Dominion was founded in Canada in 2002 by a man who wanted to make it easier for blind people to vote.)

Mr. Dobbs, who conducted one of the interviews cited in Dominions complaint, responded encouragingly to Mr. Giuliani, saying he believed he was witnessing the endgame to a four-and-a-half-year-long effort to overthrow the president of the United States. Fox canceled Mr. Dobbss Fox Business show last year, though it has never issued a retraction for any of the commentary about Dominion.

Dominion has also filed separate lawsuits against Mr. Giuliani, Ms. Powell and Mr. Lindell.

Dominion says in its complaint that in the weeks after the election, people started leaving violent voice mail messages at its offices, threatening to execute everyone who worked there and blow up the headquarters. At one office, someone hurled a brick through a window. The company had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on security and lost hundreds of millions more in business, according to its complaint.

The harm to Dominion from the lies told by Fox is unprecedented and irreparable because of how fervently millions of people believed them and continue to believe them, its complaint said.

The company has tried to draw a connection between those falsehoods and the Jan. 6 siege at the Capitol. These lies did not simply harm Dominion, the company said in the complaint. They harmed democracy. They harmed the idea of credible elections.

As part of its case, it cites one of the most indelible images from the Jan. 6 attack: a man in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, clutching zip ties in his left hand. Also in the suit is a second photo of the man, later identified as Eric Munchel of Tennessee, in which he is brandishing a shotgun, with Mr. Trump on a television in the background. The television is tuned to Fox Business.

But the hurdle Dominion must clear is whether it can persuade a jury to believe that people at Fox knew they were spreading lies.

Disseminating The Big Lie isnt enough, said RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor and First Amendment scholar at the University of Utahs S.J. Quinney College of Law. It has to be a knowing lie.

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Lawsuit Against Fox Is Shaping Up to Be a Major First Amendment Case - The New York Times

TikToks looking to give users more insight into how their personal data is being used for ad targeting in the app, with the addition of a new About this Ad info panel that outlines all of the various targeting elements that TikTok has used to display each ad to each user.

As explained by TikTok:

We're introducing a new 'About this ad' feature, so users will be able to tap on any ad in their feed and view some reasons why we're showing this particular ad to them. This is another step we're taking to bring more transparency into our advertising practices and help users understand how ads work on TikTok.

As you can see in the above example sequence, now, youll be able to see more info about the ads that youre shown in the app, by tapping on the About this Ad button in the ad info screen. There, youll also be able to switch off ad personalization based on third-party data - though whether its on or off, TikTok will still be able to use your in-app activity in its ad targeting process.

The update will move TikTok more into line with other social apps, which offer similar ad transparency features - though its also worth noting that TikTok has been working to continue utilizing personalized ad tracking, in various ways, despite regulations and restrictions around such getting tighter in certain regions.

Last month, TikTok was forced tosuspend a planned change to its privacy policyrelating to the use of user insights for targeted advertising, amid questions over whether the change is actually legal under the latest EU provisions for data protection and control.

The planned update would have seen the app do away with asking users for their consent to run personalized ads, with TikTok seeking to process such data under whats essentially a legal loophole in this respect, via the provision for legitimate interest. By implying that personalized ads fall under legitimate interest grounds, TikTok was seeking to circumvent the EU ePrivacy Directive, but authorities called for a review of the process before it could go into effect.

In other words, while on one hand TikToks looking to be more upfront about how your personal information is being used for ad targeting, on the other, its seeking to avoid restrictions on such, through questionable means.

European authorities will now need to review TikToks case before it can go ahead with the change.

In addition to the new About this Ad element, TikTok has also launched an updated ad data usage overview to help users understand how they can be targeted with ad content, while users can also now choose whether the ads they are shown are based on estimates of their interests and/or gender.

For example, users can choose to turn off the interest category "Beauty" so they will receive fewer ads that target to match this interest. Users can change their gender setting or input any gender of their choosing. These updates can be changed at any time in the app and apply only to users' ad settings, which does not affect other TikTok services.

So, again, this brings TikTok more into line with other apps, which already offer similar ad data control options, which could help to ensure more relevant ads are shown to TikTok users, while also giving users more capacity to manage how theyre targeted with such in the app.

Its a good update, though it will be equally interesting to see how TikTok works to manage its other data mitigation efforts to avoid the full impacts of Apples ATT update and other control measures.

TikTok should give users more control, but the app is also developing a reputation for questionable activity, in counter to accepted moderation and data usage parameters.

You can read more about TikToks new ad targeting transparency tools here.

Originally posted here:
TikTok Launches New Ad Targeting Transparency Tools to Help Users Manage How Their Data is Used in the App - Social Media Today

The latest victims include Latif Simsek, a journalist who was attacked by the nationalist parliamentarian Cemal Enginyurt and his bodyguard during a break in a TV100 studio debate on the evening of 6 August, after a heated exchange between them. In this case, the Istanbul prosecutors office has launched an investigation, but judicial impunity and political polarisation are fuelling concern about a new wave of violence against journalists in the run-up to the June 2023 elections.

On 4 August, interior minister Sleyman Soylu launched a verbal attack on the left-wing daily newspaper BirGn (Day), accusing it of being the PKK press mouthpiece an implicit threat because the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers Party) is banned in Turkey. He also accused it of trying to smear him by publishing a photo linking him to Yedi Iklim (Seven Climates), a publishing house alleged to have leaked public sector employee exam questions.

The newspaper had specified that the photo was taken at an interior ministry ceremony in 2017 with candidates for deputy prefect positions, and that the publishing house had used it for a campaign promoting its branch in the northwestern city of Bursa.

Ultra-nationalist party threatens TV channel

The leadership of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) the ultra-nationalist party that is the main ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) threatened the HaberTrk (Turkish News) TV channel on 3 August over comments made by a studio guest. The guest, former republican parliamentarian Behran Simsek, had said the dismissed head of the Students Examination Centre (YSM) had links to the MHP and that he was unhappy with the growing influence of religious groups.

In their response, MHP president Devlet Baheli and vice-president Semih Yalin accused Turgay Ciner, the CEO of the company that owns HaberTrk, the Ciner Media Group, of imposing an editorial line that was hostile to the Presidential Alliance, and openly threatened him, saying, He will pay for this.

Those who join in the mission of accusing and slandering the Presidential Alliance constitute the cornerstones of indecency and will have to pay, Baheli said. Everything will be done so that those who dare to toy with the tranquillity and hopes of our nation will certainly regret it.

Defending HaberTrk, the TV channels news and current affairs coordinator, Krsad Oguz, said: Semih Yalins comments were broadcast live. Neither myself nor our presenter expressed any criticism of the MHP or the YSMs former president in this connection. This criticism came from one of our guests, which is normal in an open discussion.

On 3 August, a pro-Erdogan activist calling himself Dr Mustafa Ycel used his Twitter account to threaten two well-known anchors working for critical TV channels Zafer Arapkirli (KRT) and Aysenur Arslan (Halk TV) because of their support for Esin Davutoglu Senol, a specialist in infectious diseases who has been targeted by Turkish anti-vaxxers. Ycel called them enemies of Erdogan, Islam and the State. He was previously arrested for threatening Senol but was released under judicial control.

The AKP-MHP Alliances defeat in the March 2019 local elections was followed by several months of violence against republican journalists and journalists close to Iyi, a new party formed by a group that broke away from the MHP in October 2017. Three journalists were attacked in the street by ultranationalists Yavuz Selim Demirag in Ankara, Hakan Denizli in Adana and Idris zyol in Antalya for criticising the AKP-MHP Alliance.

Although not yet officially launched, the 2023 elections are expected to be very tense. The Presidential Alliance will be pitted against the National Alliance a coalition of six very different parties (CHP, Iyi, Gelecek, Deva, Saadet and Demokrat) that are calling for a return to the parliamentary system. Several polling companies say the president is running behind this opposition alliance. This is unprecedented in 20 years of rule by Erdogan.

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Nationalist threats against Turkish journalists and media critical of government - Reporters sans frontires