As Twitter defends its counterterror work, experts fear a spike under Musk |  Twitter owner Elon Musk has announced plans to revive a slew of suspended accounts. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters) | | | Twitter and other social media platforms took to the Supreme Court this week to defend their efforts to police against terrorist content, arguing that a lawsuit alleging they bear responsibility for aiding a 2017 terrorist attack in Istanbul is meritless. But as Twitter defends its past work to crack down on terrorism, there's mounting concern among researchers that the company's protections against violent extremism could be weakened under new owner Elon Musk. In a pair of filings to the court on Tuesday, Twitter, Facebook and Google argued that a lower court erred in finding that they could be held liable for allegedly aiding and abetting the killing of a Jordanian citizen during an Islamic State attack by hosting the group online. The case is set to test what responsibility platforms bear to curb such content under anti-terrorism laws. Twitter argued in its filing that the plaintiffs — the family of the victim — failed to show that the company substantially assisted in the attack itself, and that a company should not be held liable simply for knowing that "terrorist adherents" were among its userbase. Twitter also cited its policies prohibiting the promotion of terrorist content and said that it has "terminated over 1.7 million accounts for violating those rules since August 2015." Experts on online extremism say those efforts are now up in the air under Musk, who has downsized the company's content moderation teams and pledged to bring back a slew of suspended accounts. | | Musk last week announced that the company would be providing a "general amnesty" to suspended accounts "provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam." Musk has also said that "incitement to violence" will result in suspensions. It's unclear, however, how that policy may apply to accounts that were previously suspended under Twitter's rules banning users that "threaten or promote terrorism or violent extremism." (Twitter, which gutted its communications team, and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.) Researchers said that gaps in Musk's stated amnesty plans could leave room for accounts engaged in radicalization or recruitment efforts that might not be illegal to make a comeback. "A lot of terrorist content is about recruitment rather than calls to action … so that seems like a major gap in how they're approaching it," said Graham Brookie, senior director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, a think tank that researches extremism. While Twitter is defending its counterterror work in court, researchers said the company under Musk has yet to reaffirm its commitment to tackling the issue meaningfully. "Musk's rhetoric on the issue and even a lot of the tweets that he's posted himself are clearly signaling either a disinterest or clearly a disengagement from counterterrorism," said Pauline Moore, a political scientist at the Rand Corp. think tank. The researchers said it's still too early to assess the full impact Musk's overhaul may have on the company's counterterrorism efforts. But one early analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank found 450 Islamic State accounts on Twitter in the first 12 days after Musk's takeover, "a 69 per cent increase over the previous 12 days." "There's some early data that shows that extremist actors are recognizing that they have an opportunity to get back onto a platform that they had had success on previously and then lost their foothold on over the last few years," said William Braniff, director of the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. Even if Twitter's counterterror and anti-extremism policies don't change under Musk, Braniff said, his cuts to key content teams will probably mean more content goes undetected. | | Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, signaled he shares that concern. "I'm incredibly concerned about the impact of the significant reductions in Twitter's content moderation workforce," Warner said in a statement, adding that platforms "have a responsibility to protect their users and prevent their sites from becoming tools for spreading hate, facilitating scams, and allowing violent extremists and terrorists to cause injury and harm." | | |  | Our top tabs | | Elon Musk faces an uphill battle in his war against Apple |  Musk said Apple threatened to remove Twitter from its app store. Apple hasn't confirmed the allegation. (Samuel Corum/AFP/Getty Images) | | | The Twitter owner needs Apple more than the phone maker needs him, Naomi Nix reports. Apple's privacy plans could affect Musk's targeted advertising ambitions, Apple gets a 30 percent fee from app sales, and Apple was even Twitter's top advertiser in the first quarter. Musk has called Apple's App Store a "monopoly" and questioned whether the company supports censorship. He said Apple threatened to remove Twitter from its app store, which Apple hasn't confirmed. Musk has also signaled that he plans to "go to war" with the company. "If there's one company for him not to pick a fight with in the world, it's Apple, and he just poked the bear," said Dan Ives, a financial analyst with Wedbush Securities. "It's just another head-scratching battle that Musk has waged since his ownership of Twitter." | Twitter no longer enforcing covid misinformation policy, company says |  The company introduced the policy in 2020. (Mark Leong for The Washington Post) | | | The shift has worried some public health experts, who say it could make people less safe as the coronavirus continues to take a toll, Taylor Lorenz reports. It's the latest pivot announced by the company in the wake of Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. "Twitter introduced its policy against covid misinformation in 2020 during the early days of the pandemic," Taylor writes. "Since then, the company suspended more than 11,000 accounts and removed more than 100,000 pieces of content for violating the policy, according to a report from the company. Several high-profile figures ran afoul of the policy, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), whose personal account was suspended in January for violating the policy by casting doubt on the efficacy of the vaccines. Her account was reinstated last week." | Tim Cook visits Washington, plans to meet with Republican lawmakers |  It comes weeks before House Republicans are set to take over leadership of committees that can affect the tech industry. (Jeff Chiu/AP) | | | Apple chief executive Tim Cook has scheduled meetings with Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Bloomberg News's Emily Birnbaum and Mark Gurman report. Jordan and McMorris Rodgers will probably lead House committees that scrutinize the tech industry beginning in January. "The meetings were likely scheduled weeks ago," before Twitter owner Elon Musk began publicly criticizing the company, they write. "Still, Apple faces intensifying heat from conservatives. Some Republicans are rallying behind Musk, who on Monday attacked Apple and Cook in a series of tweets, claiming that the company threatened to remove Twitter from Apple's app stores and paused its advertising on Twitter's platform." Apple and the lawmakers' offices didn't respond to Bloomberg News's requests for comment. | | |  | Rant and rave | | | Twitter took note of the wording of Elon Musk's latest email to Twitter engineers. Journalist Zoë Schiffer: | | |  | Workforce report | | | |  | Agency scanner | | | |  | Trending | | | |  | Mentions | | - Marissa Mitrovich is joining the Fiber Broadband Association as its vice president of public policy. Mitrovich previously worked as vice president of federal legislative affairs for Frontier. She has also worked for Verizon and the Wireless Infrastructure Association.
| | |  | Daybook | | - Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), National Institute of Standards and Technology Director Laurie Locascio and other officials speak at the Quantum World Congress in Washington today and Thursday.
- Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius speaks at an event on extremism and social media hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies today at 10:30 a.m.
- A Senate Finance Committee panel holds a hearing on the digital economy's trade policy opportunities and challenges today at 3 p.m.
- Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Rostin Behnam testifies at a Senate agriculture committee hearing on lessons from the collapse of FTX on Thursday at 10 a.m.
- Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, speaks at an Atlantic Council event on Ukraine's digital resilience on Friday at 1 p.m.
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