Tag Archives: regulation

Twitter Meets Irish Data Protection Watchdog

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Twitter met Ireland’s data privacy watchdog on Monday following the departure of key executives from the social network, The Irish Times reported.

The meeting, held within days of the Irish regulator flagging concerns about changes at Twitter, indicates the urgency for both sides in avoiding misunderstandings that could lead to a crippling of the service in European Union states. It comes just over a fortnight after businessman Elon Musk completed his on-again, off-again takeover of the company in a $44 billion deal with a promise to restore it as a bastion of free speech.

According to The Irish Times, the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) last Friday requested a meeting with Twitter to establish whether the social media platform would continue to make decisions in terms of the processing of personal data for EU users from their Irish office.

“In light of the coverage over the last 24 hours about the departure of senior staff, including the data protection officer, we want to establish with Twitter that they are going to be continuing to make decisions from their Irish office,” Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner at the authority, told Bloomberg on Friday.

To be able to continue using Ireland as their EU base, “the decisions that are made in terms of processing of personal data for EU users must take place in that country, as well,” said Mr. Doyle. “If they’re not, that will have a knock-on effect on their ability to avail of the main establishment.”

TechCrunch reported: Helmed by erratic new owner Elon Musk, Twitter is no longer fulfilling key obligations required for it to claim Ireland as its so-called main establishment under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

According to TechCrunch: Our source, who is well placed, requested and was granted anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the issue – which could have major ramifications for Twitter and Musk.

Under the EU’s GDPR, Twitter is obligated – in just one very basic requirement – to have a data protection officer (DPO) to provide a contact point for regulators.

Hence the departure of Damien Kieran, its first and only DPO since the role was created at the company in 2018, has not gone unnoticed by its data protection watchdog in Ireland, TechCrunch reported previously. But the Irish Data Protection Commissions (DPC)’s concerns are already spiraling wider than Twitter’s compliance with notifications about core personnel.

Twitter has not commented publicly on the DPC’s warning nor on the departures of senior regulator-facing staffers. Indeed, since Musk took over, TechCrunch reported, its communications department appears to have been dismantled and the company no longer responds to press requests for comment – so it was not possible to obtain an official statement from Twitter about these departures or on the substance of their report.

TechCrunch wrote: If Twitter loses its ability to claim main establishment in Ireland, it would therefore drastically amp up the complexity, cost and risk of achieving GDPR compliance. (Reminder: Penalties under the regulation can scale up to 4% of the global turnover – so these are not rules a normal CEO would ignore.)

Things aren’t looking great for Twitter’s continued existence right now. Will Elon Musk somehow make changes that appease various regulators? Or will he have to sell Twitter to some other company that feels capable of cleaning up the mess that Elon Musk made of the social media site?

Kickstarter Accountability – Part II

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Kickstarter Logo Following on from my post last week about the role of patron at Kickstarter, NPR has run a piece called, “When A Kickstarter Campaign Fails, Does Anyone Get The Money Back?” This appears to have nudged Kickstarter into responding with a blog post, “Accountability on Kickstarter.”

I suggest that you read or listen to NPR’s show before reading Kickstarter’s reply but one of the key statements Kickstarter makes on this matter is below.

Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?

Yes. Kickstarter’s Terms of Use require creators to fulfill all rewards of their project or refund any backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill. (This is what creators see before they launch.) We crafted these terms to create a legal requirement for creators to follow through on their projects, and to give backers a recourse if they don’t. We hope that backers will consider using this provision only in cases where they feel that a creator has not made a good faith effort to complete the project and fulfill.

That’s great, but does it change anything in reality? Are you really going to take out legal action to recover $100? I  think not. Kickstarter even points out that it feels that legal action is only appropriate if the creator has failed to make a good faith effort.

Consequently, I don’t think this changes anything. Kickstarter is still a great site, but go in with your eyes open as to the possible outcomes, especially the one where you lose all your cash.

Note that UK folk may have some protection if they paid for a failed project using a credit card under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 as it appears to cover purchases outside of the UK too. I am not a lawyer, etc.

You are a Patron at Kickstarter

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Kickstarter LogoI like Kickstarter. It’s a world full of promise, where great ideas vie for money. I’ve pledged for a handful of projects, most of which met their funding targets and of those, all delivered on their promises. A few of the products weren’t as I expected but who hasn’t bought something that they later regretted?

For sure, it’s not always million dollar projects at Kickstarter. Plenty of projects fail to meet their targets and many of them rightly so. I’m not going to name names, but you don’t need to look very hard for projects that have no merit whatsoever (IMHO). Conversely, there are many worthwhile projects  that don’t make the cut too.

But what of those projects that do get funded but don’t deliver on their promises? Fortunately, there haven’t been too many of them and while Kickstarter distances itself from the projects themselves, it encourages project owners to return the funding if the project gets into difficulties. But there are no guarantees…if the money is gone, it’s gone.

In a consumer and customer-oriented world, an older world perhaps more accurately describes our role. Patron.

From Oxford Dictionaries, definition of a patron:
1. a person who gives financial or other support to a person, organization, or cause: a celebrated patron of the arts

The definition makes no mention of reward or goods and it’s easier to comprehend with the more artistic projects on Kickstarter given the historical context of the term. Regardless, it applies equally well to the technological ones in that there might be a hope of a product at the end of the project but there is no certainty.

Don’t get me wrong – I like Kickstarter and will continue to support projects there. However people need to understand the risks. At the moment, Kickstarter occupies a useful unregulated niche but I fear that a few high-profile failures losing millions of dollars will draw it to the attention of the authorities and regulation. I sincerely hope that day won’t come, but until then, remember you are patron at Kickstarter.

Is CNN Calling For Curbs On Free Speech?

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On July 23, 2010, CNN anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed on air the idea that bloggers should be somehow “held accountable” or perhaps regulated in some way. Here’s the video of that exchange.

It’s no secret that CNN and other so-called mainstream media outlets, both broadcast and print, have had for some time now an ongoing loss of viewers and readers. A number of traditional journalists from time to time have had and expressed an almost open hostility towards bloggers and the Internet. They perceive the Internet as a threat to their business models, and their vaunted self-appointed job as information “gatekeepers.”

If you look back over the past few years, almost every major story, particularly scandal stories, originated first on blogs. In many cases the mainstream media were dragged kicking and screaming into reporting stories. The clearly forged National Guard documents that ultimately ended up forcing CBS to fire evening news anchor Dan Rather comes to mind from a few years ago. Bloggers quickly picked up on the fact that the supposed National Guard documents had been typed up in the default template for Microsoft Word and then ran through a fax and/or copy machine a number of times to make the documents look dirty and/or old. The trouble was, Microsoft Word didn’t exist in 1973. If it weren’t for bloggers, this story would have likely never come to public light, and what is clearly a forgery and a made-up story would have passed into the public mind as the truth.

Should free speech be curbed? Should bloggers somehow be licensed or officially regulated in what is purportedly a free country? Should we be forced to get our news from “professional” or even “licensed” journalists?