The Latest: Senator blasts Google for reply on China search

7:30 p.m.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is blasting Google for a response to lawmakers’ inquiries about its reported plans to launch a search engine in China that would comply with censorship laws. Warner says he is “truly disappointed” with a letter from Google CEO Sundar Pichai that arrived Friday, before a Senate hearing Wednesday in which Google will not have a representative present. Pichai said in the letter he wasn’t able to answer detailed questions and said the question of whether it would release a search engine in China “remains unclear.” Warner says any Google effort to get back into China could help the Chinese government repress its citizens. Google says despite pulling its search engine from China in 2010, it still employs hundreds of workers there.

5:50 p.m.

A nonprofit watchdog group says it bought ads on Google as recently as June while posing as the Russia propaganda agency that sought to influence the 2016 U.S. election. The ads pointed to websites tied to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, used rubles, and used the agency’s tax ID. The Campaign For Accountability says in a report published Tuesday that the ads were approved in as little as 24 hours. The campaign says the quick approval shows that Google is not doing enough to stop bad actors from abusing its platforms. Google has accused rival Oracle and groups it works with of performing a stunt to impersonate Russian trolls. It says it has since disabled those accounts and has taken further action to upgrade its vetting process.

'3:15 p.m.

Google won’t have an executive testifying alongside Twitter and Facebook before a Senate intelligence committee hearing Wednesday. The committee invited Larry Page, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet. Google offered another executive instead, and the committee said no. The other executive is chief legal officer and senior vice president of global affairs Kent Walker. Google says Walker will still submit testimony and brief members on the subject of the hearing, which is foreign influence operations and their use of social media platforms. Walker’s written testimony says the company found “limited activity” around government-backed election interference following the 2016 vote and took “swift action” once it did. Google says it continues to use “advanced technologies” to increase security and fight manipulation on its platforms.

3:10 p.m.

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg says the company is getting better at finding and combating adversaries who try to use the platform. The company’s No. 2 executive says in prepared testimony ahead of a Senate intelligence committee hearing Wednesday that those adversaries include financially motivated troll farms and “sophisticated military intelligence operations.” The Menlo Park, California-based company revealed last year that a Russian internet agency had used the platform to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Earlier this year, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians behind the social media effort. Sandberg says in the testimony that Facebook regularly looks for and discloses state-sponsored threats to law enforcement but does not make the details of these reviews public for security reasons.

2:20 p.m.

Twitter’s CEO says the company isn’t biased against Republicans or Democrats and is working on ways to ensure that debate is healthier on its platform. In prepared testimony released before a congressional hearing Wednesday, Jack Dorsey says he wants to be clear about one thing: “Twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions, whether related to ranking content on our service or how we enforce our rules.” The testimony comes as some Republicans say conservatives have been censored on social media. Dorsey offered an explanation of how San Francisco-based Twitter uses “behavioral signals,” such as the way accounts interact and behave on the service. Those signals can help weed out spam and abuse. He says such behavioral analysis “does not consider in any way political views or ideology.”

https://apnews.com/a51af23a42fb46059a1dfe5c48e7e50a

>>2880436

Everything they do is premeditated, to invoke a narrative or change the headlines, my belief is there is something bigger in the news we have not found yet..digging for it now.

Twitter says Trump not immune from getting kicked off

Twitter said Tuesday that not even President Donald Trump is immune from being kicked off the platform if his tweets cross a line with abusive behavior. The social media company's rules against vitriolic tweets offer leeway for world leaders whose statements are newsworthy, but that "is not a blanket exception for the president or anyone else," Twitter legal and policy chief Vijaya Gadde told POLITICO in an interview alongside CEO Jack Dorsey.

Trump regularly uses Twitter to heap abuse on his perceived enemies and at times raise the specter of violence, such as when he tweeted last year that if North Korean leaders continued with their rhetoric at the time, "they won’t be around much longer!” Critics say the tweets violate Twitter’s terms of service and warrant punitive action. Dorsey, who's due to testify before two congressional committees Wednesday about his company's content practices, said he receives notifications on his phone for Trump's Twitter account. But asked if he would weigh in personally to remove Trump from the platform, he declined to get into specifics. "We have to balance it with the context that it’s in," he said. "So my role is to ask questions and make sure we’re being impartial, and we’re upholding consistently our terms of service, including public interest."

Trump's Twitter threats and taunts have repeatedly prompted calls for his removal from the platform, such as when he tweeted about Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani in July, "NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.” In August, Trump, in tweets, called former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman “wacky,” “deranged” and a “dog.“ Amid controversy over Trump's tweeting back in January, Twitter posted to its corporate blog an unsigned explanation of its thinking around "world leaders" — without calling out Trump by name. It said blocking such leaders or removing their tweets "would hide important information people should be able to see and debate." Dorsey tweeted the policy, saying "we want to share our stance."

Dorsey is under intense pressure from both the left and right in Washington over how Twitter decides which tweets and advertisements are allowed to run on its platform. He's in Washington to testify twice on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, first before the Senate Intelligence Committee on foreign use of social media to interfere in U.S. elections and later in the House on allegations that Twitter is biased against conservatives. The Twitter CEO also denied a Wall Street Journal report that he personally intervened to keep far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and white supremacist Richard Spencer on the site. "I ask questions. I don’t think I’ve ever overruled anything," he said.

Dorsey agreed to testify before the House Energy and Commerce committee after tense negotiations, with committee staff at one point raising the possibility of a subpoena. The Twitter CEO said he was reluctant to appear solo without the other internet giants, Facebook and Google, which have also been accused of anti-conservative bias. “We’re happy to have a conversation with our peers, because we don’t think this is an issue focused on just us alone. So we were attempting to get our peers up there as well and be joined by them, rather than be singled out,” Dorsey said. “We don’t think that’s fair.” Dorsey said it's never Twitter’s intention to be biased against any one political affiliation or group. Asked why he thinks conservatives — including the president and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — keep raising the charges of "censorship," he would not speculate. "I don’t know why they are repeating it, but for our part, we can do a better job of explaining our principles," he said. "And anytime we recognize mistakes, we’ve been fairly vocal about it, and then correcting. So that’s what we’re going to focus on."

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/04/twitter-trump-kicked-off-766101

Why Rahm bailed on reelection

The Chicago mayor might have won a third term, but only after a long, painful reelection slog.

His polling numbers were sliding, and had even bottomed out in some city wards. With Chicagoans weary of the violence playing out in their neighborhoods, frustrated with a struggling school system and blaming him for a series of tax and fee hikes, Rahm Emanuel faced a long, painful reelection slog with an uncertain payoff. Still, the city was stunned when the brash Chicago mayor who never lost an election announced Tuesday that he was throwing in the towel. He had a sizable fundraising advantage and was the favorite to win in a crowded mayoral field. As he stood in City Hall declaring he would not run for reelection, with his wife at his side, a teary Emanuel believed there was a path to victory, said several Democrats close to the decision. Yet it would have come at great cost, and only after an election more closely resembling trench warfare than anything else. In the end, Emanuel concluded the daily battle would be too punishing, said one top Illinois Democrat with knowledge of the decision. There were too many political variables outside of his control. Even if he were victorious next spring, he’d emerge bloodied and politically weakened, only to stare down the barrel of four years of financial instability.

Longtime ally and confidant David Axelrod said the decision was gut-wrenching for Emanuel, a sharp-elbowed pol who carved out a role on the national stage and wasn’t built to back down from a tough challenge. “He agonized over it. He didn’t make a decision until the last week and finally had to be honest with himself about whether it was good for him and good for the city to sign up for another four years. It’s a tough decision to make,” Axelrod said in an interview. “I admire him for it. No one has ever doubted his energy or ambition for himself or the city. It was a thoughtful decision on his part to conclude this is the right time.” Layered on top of it all was the specter of Laquan McDonald, the Chicago teen who was fatally gunned down by Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke. The issue had haunted Emanuel for years — he was accused of suppressing a dash cam video showing the shooting until after his 2015 election. Protesters had taken to the streets in protest for weeks in late 2015, calling for the mayor’s resignation and at one point shutting down business on the ritzy Magnificent Mile shopping district. Van Dyke’s trial on first-degree murder charges began Tuesday and — in addition to whispers of what evidence could emerge to further damage Emanuel — there was perhaps an even bigger political fear: that Van Dyke could be acquitted, unleashing another round of unrest in an already racially divided city.

Challengers were already squeezing Emanuel on both sides of the issue. Lori Lightfoot, who headed a police reform panel in Chicago, has stoked the issue of deep racial and economic divisions in the city and blasted the mayor for overseeing a police force in dire need of change. Another challenger, former Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, has curried support from police officers who felt alienated during the McDonald fallout and shunned a new round of reforms they say make it difficult to do their jobs."This has been the job of a lifetime, but it is not a job for a lifetime. You hire us to get things done, and pass the torch when we've done our best to do what you hired us to do,” Emanuel said during his City Hall announcement. “Today, the time has come to make another tough choice. As much as I love this job, and will always love this city and its residents, I've decided not to seek reelection.” Emanuel was deeply conflicted and spent weeks mulling his decision, according to several sources familiar with his decision, seeking counsel from longtime confidants and allies, including political adviser Larry Grisolano of AKPD, friend and businessman Michael Sacks, and his family.

The mayor also consulted with two former presidents for whom he worked in the White House — Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — a testament to his durability and political pedigree. After a stint in the Clinton White House, Emanuel became a popular Chicago congressman and was credited as the architect of the Democrats’ 2006 House takeover. He left the House at Obama’s request to serve as the then-president’s first chief of staff. Both former presidents released statements thanking Emanuel for his service.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/04/rahm-emanuel-reelection-mayor-chicago-806457

>>2880698

I think you seriously under estimate these people anon.

>>2880653

And not a moment too soon for Jackie boy!