Twitter flags ‘misleading’ Trump tweet
The President claimed that Democrats were trying to steal the election.
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David Swan 5.15pm Twitter flags ‘misleading’ Trump tweet
Twitter has flagged US President Donald Trump’s tweet for being ‘misleading’ and covered it with a warning, after the President said that Democrats were trying to “STEAL” the Election.
“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election,” Mr Trump wrote from inside the White House, without providing any evidence. “We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!”.
We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020
I will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020
Twitter hid the post under a warning describing the post as misleading, citing its ‘civic integrity policy’, though the tweet is still online.
Social media companies including Facebook and Twitter have been under increasing pressure to fight misinformation on their platforms ahead of the vote.
Twitter had said before the election that if any candidate calls the race early, it would place warning labels such as “official sources called this election differently”, or “official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted”.
Mr Trump’s post remains online and unedited on Facebook, which has been more hands-off when it comes to the President’s posts.
D avid Swan 1.30pm 2021 ‘the year of 5G’
The federal government will hold two 5G spectrum auctions next year, with the high band and low band auctions set to make 2021 ‘the year of 5G’ according to Communications Minister Paul Fletcher.
“In April 2021, the government will allocate high-band 5G spectrum (in the 26 GHz band), which will enable extremely fast, high-capacity services,” Mr Fletcher said in a statement.
“In the second half of 2021, the government will allocate low band 5G spectrum (in the 850/900 MHz band), which will be crucial for broader geographic coverage of 5G services.”
The minister added that 5G is forecast to add up to $2,000 in gross domestic product per person after the first decade of the rollout.
He said the auctions would complement mid-band 5G spectrum that the government had already auctioned.
“We are making the low, mid and high bands available so that the telcos can provide better, faster and stronger 5G in Australia,” Mr Fletcher said.
David Swan 11.30am Bookipi raises $1.6m
Accounting software provider Bookipi has landed a $1.6m seed investment co-led by Australian venture capital firm Our Innovation Fund (OIF) and investment syndicate TEN 13, as the company moves to become the go-to accounting suite for freelancers and micro small businesses.
Bookipi, which now has over 640,000 users despite no external sales or marketing team, is now in more than 150 countries and more than 40 per cent of its users are in the US.
Its founder Tim Lee said that within three years of launch, Bookipi’s invoicing app now generates over $12 billion of invoices per year, making it one of the fastest growing and highest ranked invoicing apps globally.
The company has also hired a new chief operating officer, former Uber executive Chad Hardy.
“Our products are loved by our users and we’ve experienced immense growth in our user base and activity on our products in recent years,” Mr Lee said.
“The partnership with TEN13 and OIF adds incredible strategic expertise and value to help us materially scale our team, expand our product and enable our vision to assist more small businesses globally. The funds will be used to further grow our team and development resources and continue to build out our product suite. We couldn’t be more excited about the journey ahead.”
TEN13 Partner Stew Glynn described Bookipi as among a rare breed of startups that have bootstrapped their business to global scale and built a widespread customer base.
“We attribute a lot of this success to Tim’s capability as a founder as well and the hunger from SME’s to have the tools to run their businesses through digitally enabled processes,” Mr Glynn said.
“ We raise funds deal by deal at TEN13, and the demand for this investment amongst our members is a big endorsement for Tim and his vision in creating a globally scalable suite of book-keeping tools.”
Chris Griffith 7:50am: NewsGuard launches US poll “misinformation centre”
Online news tracking service NewsGuard has launched an “election misinformation tracking centre” to help voters and election watchers sift through what has turned into an explosion of misleading US election and voting information online.
The tracking centre details “red-rated” or unreliable websites NewsGuard analysts found to publish materially false information about voting, the election, and the ballot counting process.
“The identified sites are the result of countless hours of work our analysts have spent rating and reviewing over 6,000 news and information websites,” says NewsGuard.
It says the launch of the tracking centre today follows two other reports issued by NewsGuard last week, featuring the most trafficked election myths found on websites in NewsGuard’s database, along with a list of election misinformation ‘superspreaders’ on Facebook.
NewsGuard’s main service revolves around a browser plug in that gives readers a full history and trustworthiness rating of online news sites as people read news from those sources.
NewsGuard’s election misinformation tracking centre can be found here.
Facebook already has a voting information centre
7.30am: Social media on high alert
Social media firms are on high alert against election day misinformation and manipulation efforts as voters began in-person balloting across the United States following a tumultuous campaign.
Aiming to avoid the problems that occurred in the 2016 campaign, Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are implementing policies aimed at heading off the spread of false information designed to influence or intimidate voters at the last minute.
Facebook said it had activated its election hub which was monitoring the platform in real time.
“Our Election Operations Centre will continue monitoring a range of issues in real time — including reports of voter suppression content,” said a Facebook statement posted on Twitter.
“If we see attempts to suppress participation, intimidate voters, or organise to do so, the content will be removed.” Facebook said its election centre was also tracking other issues such as the actions by supporters of President Donald Trump to surround campaign buses for Democrat Joe Biden.
“We are monitoring closely and will remove content calling for co-ordinated harm or interference with anyone’s ability to vote,” Facebook said.
Facebook reiterated that it would place warning labels on any posts which seek to claim victory prematurely.
“If a presidential candidate or party declares premature victory, we will add more specific information in the labels on candidate posts, add more specific information in the top-of-feed notifications and continue showing the latest results in our Voting Information Centre,” the social giant said.
Along with other social platforms, the company has promised to stem misinformation around the election, including premature claims of victory, seeking to avoid a repeat of 2016 manipulation efforts.
Over the past days, Facebook and Twitter added disclaimers to Trump posts calling into question the integrity of mail-in ballots.
Trump’s post on Twitter said a slow vote count in battleground state Pennsylvania could lead to “rampant and unchecked cheating.” “It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!” he tweeted.
Twitter last month updated its “civic integrity policy” aiming to prevent efforts to manipulate or interfere in elections. That calls for actions against false claims for victory or any incitement to violence.
YouTube has also sought to limit the sharing of videos with election misinformation. Last month it began adding information panels to videos about voting by mail.
Mail-in voting was added to a short list of topics that YouTube considers prone to posts containing falsehoods, such as COVID-19 and landing on the Moon, according to the Google-owned video sharing platform.
The panel appears under such videos regardless of who is speaking or who uploads them, according to YouTube.
Some activists noted that efforts by social platforms to curb the spread of false information was being hurt loopholes and glitches.
The activist group Avaaz said it has found multiple examples of unverified election claims on Facebook in recent days.
Some comments say the “left” is planning a “coup” if Trump wins, while others argued without any factual basis that Trump would need to win Pennsylvania by four to five points “to overcome voter fraud,” according to Avaaz.
Facebook acknowledged this week that some political ads banned for containing misleading information were resurfacing, with political groups copying the same content for new messages to slip through filters.
AFP
4.48am: China’s Ant Group IPO postponed
China’s Ant Group must postpone its record-breaking IPO, the Shanghai Stock Exchange said, as the fintech giant co-founded by Alibaba’s Jack Ma faces growing pressure from Chinese regulators over potential risks.
The bourse decided to push back the $US34 billion listing originally set to take place in Hong Kong and Shanghai this week, citing concerns that Ant would “fail to meet the issuance and listing conditions or information disclosure requirements”, it said in a statement.
The notice comes after Ma and other executives were summoned to an unusual meeting with regulators on Monday, while state media have recently issued warnings about potential financial instability that could result from Ant Group’s rapid growth.
The firm, which has more than 700 million monthly active users, helped revolutionise commerce and personal finance in China, with consumers using the smartphone app to pay for everything from meals to groceries and travel tickets.
But Ant’s lending, wealth management and insurance ventures have also prompted concern in China’s state-controlled finance sector.
The Shanghai bourse said on Tuesday that the company had itself “reported major issues such as changes in the fintech supervisory environment”, and that concern over these unspecified issues had prompted the postponement.
AFP
New cold war? America fights back over DeepSeek
China outmanoeuvred the US with the launch of DeepSeek. But the US’s biggest tech companies are fighting back to maintain dominance in the AI race.
Atlassian founders add $4bn to their personal fortunes
The personal fortunes of two of the nation’s richest businessmen rocketed by a massive $4bn on paper Friday when investors responded to their tech company beating revenue expectations.