Newsweek 11/20/2020

1936 According to Newsweek, movie stars Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer “achieve[d] the finest performances of their careers” in the romantic drama, The Garden of Allah, an adaptation of the 1904 novel by Robert Hichens. This was the third feature film to use three-strip Technicolor, the same color process used in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s The Wizard of Oz in 1939. Today, the latest technological innovations in the industry include 3D―and immersive 4D―film experiences, more frames per second as seen in The Hobbit (2012) and even computer-generated imagery (CGI) to recreate actors who have died. 1963 Newsweek warned that the upcoming Surgeon General’s Smoking and Health Report could hurt “not only an $8 billion-a-year business…but also one of the most familiar and deeply ingrained national habits.” That year, roughly 67 million U.S. adults smoked cigarettes. The…

@thewildwong “Facebook has exposed tens of millions of Americans to falsehoods.” » P.16 IN A RESOUNDING VOTE IN FAVOR OF THE GIG economy, with broad implications beyond the Golden State, Californians this Election Day passed Proposition 22, a measure that advocates claim put the future of Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other app-based work companies on the line, along with the livelihoods of their drivers. The new law, which passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote after the companies spent a record-setting $205 million to help secure a win, maintains the status of these workers as independent contractors, rather than employees, while providing them with a few new benefits. The net result, labor experts say: The companies will save billions of dollars a year in operating costs, helping to ensure their survival and…

@GSDeutch LESS THAN A WEEK AHEAD OF THE U.S. presidential election, misinformation relating to voting and election security was still flourishing on Facebook, despite the platform’s pledge to curb such content, a News-Guard investigation found. NewsGuard identified 40 Facebook pages that are “super-spreaders” of election-related misinformation, meaning that they have shared false content about voting or the electoral process to their audiences of at least 100,000 followers. Only three of the 53 posts we identified on these pages—which together reach approximately 22.9 million followers—were flagged by Facebook as false. Four of the pages have managers based outside the U.S.—in Mexico, Vietnam, Australia and Israel—despite the pages’ focus on American politics. The myths identified by News-Guard include false claims of mail-in ballots getting thrown away, narratives that dead people’s cast ballots count as votes…

IN 1996 CONGRESS PASSED THE Communications Decency Act, which includes Section 230. The law provides interactive computer services with immunity from liability for almost all harms created by third-party users. It has promoted innovation and entrepreneurship, allowing start-ups to experiment with new ideas and products without having to employ a large team of lawyers tasked with policing forums, comment sections and event pages. Unfortunately, this widely misunderstood law is under bipartisan attack. At the core of Section 230 is personal responsibility. The law states that you—not the service you use to share content—are responsible for what you post. There are a few exceptions, but by and large Section 230 leaves the responsibility for online posts with the appropriate agent: the user. The law embraces the freedom of speech and association. In the…

SOME SLOPES REALLY ARE SLIPPERY. Two years ago, Twitter banned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from its platform, claiming that his account had “violated its abusive-behavior policy.” This month, Twitter locked the accounts of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, the official Team Trump campaign account and even The New York Post, over the publication of emails strongly suggesting that Hunter Biden peddled influence and sent kickbacks to former vice president Joe Biden. In other words, Twitter is running interference for the Biden-Harris ticket. Something is wrong, and it looks like there is finally momentum to use legislation to bring these arrogant tech behemoths to heel. Twitter’s recent actions have brought long-standing complaints about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to the forefront. In doing so, it has also brought forth…

EVEN BEFORE JOE BIDEN passed the 270 electoral votes he needed to win the U.S. presidency four days after Election Day, plans were being laid for his administration in Zoom rooms, on conference calls and in occasional in-person, socially distant meetings in Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, Delaware. For the many teams working under Biden-Harris transition chair Ted Kaufman, those tumultuous four days following Election Day, with their shifting results in swing states and an incumbent falsely declaring victory, might as well have occurred in an alternate universe. The teams stayed focused on creating a government-in-waiting, planning how to fill key positions and plotting strategies for the ambitious agenda the former vice president had laid out since winning the Democratic nomination this summer. What has changed since Election Day—and dramatically so: The…