CBROEATNHINNG EEASCIERTi.docx

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SUCCESS STORIES FROM
THE CONNECTICUT ASTHMA
CONTROL PROGRAM
Asthma places an enormous
toll on the health of
Connecticut residents, and

its impact is growing. Our
program identifies the
populations that suffer the
greatest asthma burden,
and works with providers
and other partners to tailor
initiatives that meet the
needs of those who are
disproportionately
affected.
EILEEN BOULAY, RN
program manager
CONNECTICUT’S ASTHMA
CONTROL PROGRAM
THE PROBLEMS:
• In Connecticut, asthma is a
growing problem for kids
and adults. From 2000 to
2010, the number of adults
with asthma rose by almost
18 percent.

• In 2010, more than 11.3
percent of the state’s
children were living with
the chronic respiratory
disease.
• Asthma-related hospitaliza-
tions and emergency
department visits among
adults and children have
been on the rise.
• In 2009, Connecticut spent
more than $80.25 million
on asthma-related
hospitalizations and more
than $32.6. million on
asthma-related emergency
department visits.
THE PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSE TO ASTHMA:
The Connecticut Department of Public Health's (CT DPH)
Asthma Control Program and its partners
focus on communities with the greatest needs. They increase
asthma awareness, educate people
on how to avoid environmental asthma triggers, partner with
community stakeholders, and help
residents manage their own health. And their efforts are paying
off.
• The Putting on AIRS (Asthma Indoor Risk Strategies) Program
provides
one-on-one education and environmental assessments to asthma
patients
and their families. The program helps empower families with
the knowledge

and tools they need to effectively control asthma. In 3 years,
Putting on
AIRS and its local partners have reached 600 Connecticut
families. Health
officials report the effort resulted in a decrease in asthma-
related
hospitalizations and emergency department visits and fewer
school absences.
• The CT DPH Asthma Control Program and its partners have
trained about
1,100 Connecticut health care providers in the latest asthma
care and
management guidelines via the Easy Breathing© Program. The
training
helps providers determine asthma severity as well as develop
written
asthma action plans for patients. The program has resulted in
dramatically
better medication use as well as decreased hospitalization and
emergency
department visits among pediatric asthma patients.
• More than 800 Connecticut schools have received training on
creating
healthy indoor environments for students with asthma through
Tools for
Schools. The Asthma Program is now working to develop an
online
training curriculum for school nurses.
• The CT DPH is making a difference, and state policymakers
are taking
notice. As a result, efforts are underway to conduct a
reimbursement pilot
for asthma patient self-management education to provide an

evidence base
for future state Medicaid policy changes.
• In Connecticut, asthma results in millions of dollars in health
care costs —
costs that are largely preventable through an evidence-based,
public health
approach to asthma control.
CDC’s National Asthma Control Program
Connecticut is one of 36 states that receives funding and
technical support from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention's National Asthma Control Program. Since 1999,
CDC has been leading public health efforts to
prevent costly asthma complications, create asthma-friendly
environments, and empower people living with
asthma with the tools they need to better manage their own
health. Find out more at www.cdc.gov/asthma.
10/31/2019 Life in an Internet Shutdown: Crossing Borders for
Email and Contraband SIM Cards - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/world/africa/internet-
shutdown-economy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share 1/5
By Patrick Kingsley
Sept. 2, 2019
HARARE, Zimbabwe — When Zimbabwe turned off the internet
during a recent crackdown, Obert Masaraure, a prominent
government

critic, had no way of knowing when it was safe to emerge from
hiding.
He waited one day, then another. On the third day he broke
cover, hoping that a wave of arrests had come to an end.
He was seized at home by soldiers 12 hours later.
“If I had been connected,” Mr. Masaraure said, “maybe I would
have got information that it wasn’t safe to be out there.”
Internet shutdowns have become one of the defining tools of
government repression in the 21st century — not just in
Zimbabwe, but in a
growing number of countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, that
are seeking to quash dissent.
The shutdowns do more than stunt the democratic process. They
can batter whole economies and individual businesses, as well
as
drastically disrupt the daily life of ordinary citizens, turning the
search for mobile service into a game of cat and mouse with the
police and
driving people across borders just to send emails for work.
The Indian government employs the practice more frequently
than any other, most recently in Kashmir, but it is not alone: In
2018, there
were at least 196 shutdowns in 25 countries, up from 75 in 24
countries in 2016, according to research by Access Now, an
independent
watchdog group that campaigns for internet rights. In the first
half of this year alone, there were 114 shutdowns in 23
countries.
In all, more than a quarter of the world’s nations have used the

tactic at one point or another over the past four years.
Typically used during times of civil unrest or political
instability, a shutdown allows officials to stifle the flow of
information about
government wrongdoing or to stop communication among
activists, usually by ordering service providers to cut or slow
their customers’
internet access.
While authoritarian countries like China and Iran have long
blocked some international websites that they consider
subversive, like
Facebook, an internet shutdown is usually a temporary measure,
often wielded by governments that have historically had a less
systematic approach to internet censorship.
Life in an Internet Shutdown:
Crossing Borders for Email and
Contraband SIM Cards
Demonstrators filled the streets of Harare in January to protest
the deteriorating
economy. Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/Associated Press
https://www.nytimes.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/by/patrick-kingsley
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/world/africa/zimbabwe-
protests-emmerson-mnangagwa.html?module=inline
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/technology/india-kashmir-
internet.html?module=inline
https://www.accessnow.org/the-state-of-internet-shutdowns-in-
2018/

“People always had this simplistic view that technology could
only be used in one way — that it was this great tool for
democracy,” said
Kuda Hove, a digital rights researcher at the Media Institute of
Southern Africa. But after the emergence of the shutdown, he
said, “it
dawned on them that the government could use technology
against the people.”
Governments sometimes justify their actions as an attempt to
stop the spread of “fake news” or hate speech, or to keep
students from
cheating during exams. But these explanations often mask the
real motivation, said Berhan Taye, who leads research into
internet
shutdowns at Access Now.
“Internet throttling and internet shutdowns are an extension of
traditional forms of censorship,” Ms. Taye said. “This is not a
unique
phenomenon — it’s an extension of what’s happening in
countries where civil space is already shrinking.”
The economy often pays the price, research suggests. In
countries with a medium level of internet penetration — that is,
where 49 percent
to 79 percent of the population has internet access — a
shutdown might dent daily economic activity by $6.6 million
per 10 million people,
according to analysis by Deloitte, an international accounting
firm.

From July 2015 through June 2016, shutdowns caused global
losses of more than $2.4 billion, according to the Brookings
Institution, a
research group.
The six-day shutdown in Zimbabwe in January was meant to
target opposition demonstrations, but it also ended up severely
hindering
businessmen like Peter Makichi, a fuel merchant.
As the agent for a South African gas company, Mr. Makichi was
meant to wire his suppliers more than $100,000 every three
days. The
shutdown prevented him not only from transferring the money
for several days, but also from emailing his clients, who then
canceled his
contract.
The cancellation forced him to close three of his four branches
and fire 27 of his 35 workers, reducing his profits more than 90
percent
every month, Mr. Makichi said.
On the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, most customers
at Wisdom Fore’s grocery store had money to pay for food, but
not the
means to access it.
Because of a bank note shortage, many transactions in
Zimbabwe are made through mobile payment systems, even
small purchases. But
the system needs the internet to function, so Mr. Fore ended up
throwing away most of his perishable food and losing about half
his daily
turnover.

The shutdown even hit the music industry. Ameen Jaleel
Matanga, a popular singer who performs as Poptain, had
intended to release his
latest music video on the first day of the internet outage. The
shutdown prevented him from uploading it, and that delay
disrupted his
business plan for the whole year.
Outside an internet cafe in Harare. Shutdowns can batter
everyday businesses and whole
economies, as well as drastically disrupt the daily life of
ordinary citizens.
Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters
https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/technology-media-
and-telecommunications/articles/the-economic-impact-of-
disruptions-to-internet-connectivity-report-for-facebook.html
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/intenet-
shutdowns-v-3.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/world/africa/zimbabwe-
protests-emmerson-mnangagwa.html?module=inline
“Due to a network shutdown, the economy shuts down,” said
Mr. Fore. “The flow of everything slows.”
In some countries, that has even included the supply of crucial
medicines and the deployment of medical professionals.

In Sudan, the interim government shut down the internet for a
month, principally to obstruct opposition activity after the
ouster of
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. But it also stopped Sudanese
doctors from ordering new medicine, leading to shortages of
diabetes
treatment, and prevented protest leaders from using WhatsApp
to call for medical assistance, according to Dr. Sara Abdelgalil,
who
coordinates supplies in Sudan via the internet from her home
overseas.
“We had a WhatsApp group in which we’d say, ʻWe need a
surgeon in Omdurman, we need an anesthetist in Buri,’” said
Dr. Abdelgalil, the
president of the British chapter of the Sudanese Doctors’ Union,
which supports Sudan’s transition to civilian government. “All
that
became very difficult.”
In parts of the developing world, merchants derive most of their
revenue by advertising their products in public WhatsApp
groups, which
allow sellers to send advertisements to hundreds of recipients at
a time. During a shutdown, those groups turn into online ghost
towns.
Patrice Binwa Naledi runs a series of such forums in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, where the government stopped
the internet for 20
days this year, nominally to prevent rumors spreading while
votes were counted from the presidential election.
Normally, advertisers using Mr. Naledi’s groups can reach
about 70,000 people and make sales totaling as much as $10,000
a day, keeping

Mr. Naledi’s phones constantly buzzing with new messages.
But during the shutdown, “it was like the phones had stopped
working,” he said. “It was very calm — and when it’s calm, for
me it’s sad.”
Security forces on the streets of Srinagar, Kashmir. The Indian
government cut off
internet access in the region in August. Atul Loke for The New
York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/africa/sudan-omar-
hassan-al-bashir.html?module=inline
https://www.sdu.org.uk/team
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/world/africa/congo-
election-result-delay.html?module=inline
To circumvent a shutdown, citizens have sometimes traveled for
miles to get brief bursts of internet access.
In Cameroon, a shutdown blocked internet access in the restive,
English-speaking western regions of the country, on and off, for
240 days
in 2017 and 2018.
To keep communications flowing, residents there would draft
emails on their phones and hand them to friends and colleagues
who were
traveling to Francophone regions, said Rebecca Enonchong, an

internet entrepreneur in Cameroon.
Once the phones were carried over the invisible border between
English- and French-speaking provinces, the emails would send.
“Everyone was doing it,” Ms. Enonchong said. “You would give
someone the device, and they would come back with the device
at the end
of the day.”
But the workaround was not enough to save many digital-based
firms in the affected regions, which were the epicenter of the
Cameroonian technology business. “Imagine shutting down the
internet in Silicon Valley,” said Ms. Enonchong, who runs
digital
innovation centers in both Anglophone and Francophone areas.
“That’s the equivalent of what happened in Cameroon.”
In eastern Congo during the shutdown, businessmen were forced
to travel to Rwanda for the day to read their email. Arsène
Tungali, who
runs a translation business in Goma, Congo, regularly drove to
the border and waited for an hour to get his papers stamped,
before
heading to a Rwandan restaurant to set up a temporary office for
the day.
The cost of additional fuel, as well as food at the restaurant,
cost him an extra $100 a week. And the whole process created
untold
complications.
“If the email I was expecting hasn’t arrived, I have to decide
whether to go back across the border, or to wait until the person
I was waiting
for has got connected,” said Mr. Tungali. “But that means

delaying the things I need to do back in the office.”
In the capital, Kinshasa, people gained access to the internet by
secretly buying SIM cards from the Republic of Congo, a
separate country
just across the Congo River, at a vastly inflated price. Once
they were sure the police weren’t looking, they would loiter on
the riverbank
until they picked up nearby mobile networks.
“It became a bit like a drug deal,” said Lemien Sakalunga, a
journalist based in Kinshasa. “You’d buy a SIM, and you’d hide
it immediately.
The vendor would say: Hide it, hide it, hide it. Then you’d
move as quickly as you could, as far as you could.”
In Zimbabwe, a growing number of people have downloaded
virtual private networks, systems that allow users to circumvent
some
internet restrictions. But V.P.N.s are often themselves blocked
by the government, and those that work are often too slow to be
useful, said
Mr. Hove, the digital rights researcher.
Students using their phones at a cafe in Khartoum, Sudan, in
June after a nationwide
internet outage. Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse —
Getty Images
Residents outside shuttered shops in Srinagar, Kashmir, in
August. An internet shutdown
in the region also halted everyday transactions. Atul Loke for
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/world/africa/cameroon-
election-biya-ambazonia.html?module=inline

https://www.activspaces.com/
Besides, V.P.N.s might not be enough if governments adopt
more sophisticated forms of internet censorship.
The Zimbabwe government already appears to be harnessing the
internet to its advantage, using software to surveil opponents
and
sending armies of trolls against its critics, Mr. Hove said.
“The next battle in my view isn’t going to be against the
government shutting down the internet — that’s maybe too
obvious, and with the
level of international condemnation they received, they might
not do it again,” he said. “But they may step up attempts to
drown
democratic discourse online.”
10/31/2019 As Low-Power Local Radio Rises, Tiny Voices
Become a Collective Shout - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/us/low-power-radio.html
1/3
By Kirk Johnson

Jan. 6, 2018
SEATTLE — A knowledge of geography is essential if you are
running a tiny, 100-watt radio station. Hills are bad, for
example, as are tall
buildings. Salt water, though, which lies at this city’s doorstep,
can boost a radio signal for miles, like a skipped rock.
For a low-power FM radio station, anything measurable in miles
is good.
But on a recent Thursday night, one station, KBFG, was
struggling to even get on the air. The station’s signal, audible
since November in
an area measurable in square blocks, had flatlined. The Ballard
High School basketball team was about to take the court and the
live play-
by-play was in doubt.
“We’re bootstrapping it,” said Eric Muhs, a physics and
astronomy teacher. Headphones were slung around his neck, and
a mop of unruly
gray hair came further undone as he leaned into his laptop
trying to fix a software glitch. But Mr. Muhs, 60, one of
KBFG’s founders,
admitted that the stakes for failure were relatively low. “Almost
nobody knows that we exist,” he said.
Low-power nonprofit FM stations are the still, small voices of
media. They whisper out from basements and attics, and from
miniscule
studios and on-the-fly live broadcasts like KBFG’s. They have
traditionally been rural and often run by churches; many date to
the early
2000s, when the first surge of federal licenses were issued.

But in the last year, a diverse new wave of stations has arrived
in urban America, cranking up in cities from Miami to the Twin
Cities in
Minnesota, and especially here in the Northwest, where six
community stations began to broadcast in Seattle. At least four
more have
started in Portland. Some are trying to become neighborhood
bulletin boards, or voices of the counterculture or social justice.
“Alternative” is the word that unites them.
“It’s an unprecedented time in our radio history when we have
so many stations getting on the air at the same time,” said
Jennifer Waits,
the social media director at Radio Survivor, a group in San
Francisco that tracks and advocates for noncommercial radio.
Weird Is Good
Low-power FM stations can typically be heard for about three
and a half miles if a bigger station or obstacle does not block
the signal. Of
the nearly 2,500 low-power stations in some stage of licensing,
construction or active broadcast across the nation, more than
850 have a
license holder with a religious affiliation.
As Low-Power Local Radio Rises, Tiny Voices
Become a Collective Shout
Eric Muhs, a teacher at Ballard High School, listened to
KBFG’s broadcast of a basketball
game in December. Software glitches caused a last-minute rush
to get on the air.
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/by/kirk-johnson

http://www.radiosurvivor.com/about-2/
2/3
Many bigger stations, by contrast, are being programmed far
from the cities they serve, with corporate budgets to buy
transmitters that
can then boost a signal beyond its home base. The low-power
licenses are exclusively local, restricted to nonprofit groups that
might have
a civic cause — the South Philadelphia Rainbow Committee, for
example — or were formed solely for the sake of a station and
the dreams
that fuel its existence.
Washington has the second-highest concentration of them
among the nation’s 15 most populous states, with 68 stations for
7.4 million
people, according to the Federal Communications Commission,
second only to Florida. New York, by contrast, has 54 stations,
but nearly
three times Washington’s population. Oregon — while not
among the 15 most populous states, with 4.1 million people —
is even more
saturated than Washington and Florida; it has 80 low-power
stations, most in rural areas.
You want weird? Just turn the dial. One station in Seattle
invites listeners to phone their dreams and fantasies into a
recorded line, then
puts them on the air, at least the ones that don’t raise concerns

about F.C.C. indecency rules.
Russian-speaking residents in Portland, Ore., have their own
tiny station.
And if you want be charmed by a 5-year-old boy chatting with
his father at bedtime about dinosaurs, music and his sometimes
bothersome
sisters, you can find that at Tristan’s Bedtime Radio Hour,
broadcast on Sunday nights on KBFG in Northwest Seattle,
where Tristan lives.
It also streams on the web.
Help From Community Groups
What low-power urban radio creates, believers say, is a sense of
community, a defined physical stamp of existence that goes only
as far as
it can be heard. So new licensees and programmers are knocking
on doors near their antennas and holding fund-raisers at the
local
brewpub. That’s a stark contrast to the amorphous everywhere-
but-nowhere world of the web, and the web-streaming radio or
podcasts
that a few years ago seemed most likely to take center stage in
low-budget community communications.
“When you start broadcasting, it’s like you have a storefront,”
said Rebecca Webb, founder of the Portland Radio Project,
KSFL 99.1, which
broadcasts from two rooms above a closed silent-movie-era
theater built around 1915. The station promises to play a
Portland-area music
group every 15 minutes, and in a time of media consolidation,
Ms. Webb said, that’s a political act.
“The fact that we have gathered ourselves up by our bootstraps

and created a community radio station is in direct response to
the
ownership concentration of large media companies,” she said.
Many community groups with no money and often no
experience in radio got help in starting their stations. A Seattle-
based event
ticketing company with a social mission in working with
nonprofits allowed a staff organizer, Sabrina Roach, to help
people manage the
F.C.C. process with seminars, training and advice.
In Oregon and California, a group called Common Frequency
jumped in, especially in rural regions, helping people get
licenses as they
came available. In Philadelphia, the Prometheus Radio Project
led a fight to get the F.C.C. to relax rules to allow more low-
power FM
stations, especially in urban markets, which big broadcasters
had opposed.
Shelly Leavens, left, finished her show on Hollow Earth Radio
in Seattle, and handed the
mic off to Louise Bendall, right. Ruth Fremson/The New York
Times
https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/lpfm#SEARCH
http://fulcrumcc.org/tristans-bedtime-radio-hour/
https://www.prometheusradio.org/press_center/releases?page=1
3/3

The recent F.C.C. vote to end so-called net neutrality, under
which internet users were guaranteed equal speed and access,
might not
directly affect small radio broadcasters that do not livestream.
But advocates said the decision amplified the importance of
small voices,
however they are expressed.
“If it gets harder for independent media to stream online, the
low-power FM stations will become even more important,” said
Todd Urick, a
radio engineer who helped lead Common Frequency.
Voices From the Trenches
Clara Pluton, a stand-up comedian in Seattle who pays the bills
by waiting tables, hosts a radio show with Val Nigro, who also
does
comedy, every other Tuesday night on Hollow Earth Radio,
KHUH 104.9. The station began broadcasting in the Central
District of Seattle
in September, and Ms. Pluton and Ms. Nigro are now in their
second month of “queer talk,” as they describe their show.
There’s no salary,
no fame, no certainty of an audience of any kind, the women
said in an interview at the station, but deep rewards nonetheless
in knowing
that they speaking out about their lives and their city.
When things go wrong, she said, and they do — a curse word
slipping out, or a bad, skipping CD — it’s part of the
experience for
volunteers and listeners alike. Lack of polish is part of the
authenticity.
“It’s like members of the community broadcasting to members

of their community,” Ms. Pluton said.
Some volunteer D.J.s, like Bob Knowles in Portland, found a
place in local radio after 25 years fishing for halibut in Alaska.
He tuned in one
day to KSFL, the Portland Radio Project, and liked it so much
that he went in and got his own show, “Throwin’ it Back
Thursdays,” playing
obscure or forgotten musical tracks as one of the station’s 40-
odd volunteers.
Gary Dunn, a 17-year-old junior at Ballard High in Seattle who
was helping to broadcast the varsity basketball game, said he
liked the
surprise that KBFG offered of not knowing what might come
next, a song he has never heard, a perspective in politics or in
life that is
unfamiliar. He also likes the fact that radio is an old
technology, one his great-grandparents would have known. “Old
devices still help us,”
he said.
Mr. Muhs, the physics teacher, ultimately got his software back
up and running in time for Ballard Beavers’ tip-off against the
Franklin
High Quakers. But it wasn’t the Beavers night, and they lost 39
to 70.
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 7, 2018,
Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline:
For Voices of Low-Power Radio, a Collective Shout
http://www.hollowearthradio.org/
http://prp.fm/show/throwin-back-thursday/

11/2/2019 Weather Channel Is Sued Over Fatal Crash Involving
Storm Chasers - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/weather-channel-
lawsuit-storm-chasers.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share 1/2
By Matt Stevens
March 28, 2019
The mother of a man who was killed in a traffic collision
involving two storm chasers has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit
against the
Weather Channel that seeks $125 million in damages.
The man, Corbin Jaeger, who was 25, was killed on March 28,
2017, when the two storm chasers, Randall D. Yarnall and
Kelley G.
Williamson, ran a stop sign at about 70 miles per hour in pursuit
of video footage. All three were killed in the crash, which the
lawsuit
describes as a “horrific two-vehicle collision.”
Mr. Yarnall, 55, who was driving, and Mr. Williamson, 57, were
working for the Weather Channel at the time of the crash, the
lawsuit says.
They were seeking video of a tornado in Spur, Tex., for the
channel’s show “Storm Wranglers,” according to the lawsuit,
which was filed on
Tuesday in the Federal District Court for the Northern District
of Texas.
The two men “had a history of reckless driving” when in pursuit
of a storm and when filming, the lawsuit claims, saying that the
Weather

Channel was aware of this behavior and that network officials
allowed them to continue working. The lawsuit claims that the
Weather
Channel and several related defendants were grossly negligent.
The Weather Channel has a “culture of putting these guys out in
the field untrained, and whatever the cost is, they want them to
get the
story,” Robert A. Ball, a lawyer for Mr. Jaeger’s mother, Karen
Di Piazza, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “That’s a
culture that
is absurd that Karen is interested in trying to change.”
Mr. Jaeger was himself a storm-chasing enthusiast who had
planned to pursue a career as a meteorologist, Mr. Ball said.
The Weather Channel said in a statement that it could not
comment on pending litigation.
“We are saddened by the loss of Corbin Jaeger, Kelley
Williamson, and Randy Yarnall,” the statement said. “They
were beloved members
of the weather community and our deepest sympathies go out to
the families and loved ones of all involved.”
The lawsuit placed a spotlight once more on the inherent danger
of heading into bad weather as everyone else is fleeing. Apps on
smartphones that provide real-time data have made storm
chasing accessible to anyone thirsting for thrills and the
celebrity that comes
with posting dramatic videos on YouTube.
The litigation also showed that the threat of a hefty financial
penalty can hover over networks that sponsor and sign off on
what they see
as riveting and adventurous — if also risky — television.

Journalists and viewers have increasingly questioned the news
value of having
television crews stand in the middle of a dangerous storm.
Storm chasers can play a valuable role in helping to warn
people about bad weather, Mr. Ball said Thursday. But he said
they must abide
by the law. The Weather Channel, he said, had sought to
sensationalize the danger of the chase for television such that a
viewer might
watch and “think maybe these guys will be killed.”
The lawsuit filed this week claims that Mr. Jaeger had the right
of way at an intersection about 55 miles east of Lubbock when
the storm
chasers’ sport-utility vehicle ran the stop sign and hit Mr.
Jaeger’s Jeep, which was heading westbound, away from the
tornado, on a rainy
day. In his statement, Mr. Ball said the collision caused the
S.U.V. to catapult over a five-foot fence, traveling 150 feet
from the point of
impact.
The lawsuit said that employees of the Weather Channel had
been warned by other storm chasers that Mr. Yarnall’s and Mr.
Williamson’s
driving put others at risk, and that the employees had witnessed
this dangerous driving on live video feeds of their storm
chasing and in
editing sessions for “Storm Wranglers.” A review of 14 of the
more than 200 videos on Mr. Williamson’s YouTube channel
showed that the
pair had run about 80 stop signs, four red lights and one traffic
light that was out of service, the lawsuit says.
The Weather Channel “encouraged the pair’s recklessness,”

instructing them to “barrel into dangerous weather conditions to
obtain
footage” and setting “the stage for this tragedy,” the lawsuit
says.
The lawsuit also describes a text message conversation between
a producer for “Storm Wranglers” and a different storm chaser
who
appeared to warn that Mr. Yarnall and Mr. Williamson were
“very inexperienced” and a “liability.” Then, less than a month
before the
crash, the producer wrote back that Mr. Williamson had “put
himself in a VERY bad spot” after being shown on air traveling
over 90 miles
Weather Channel Is Sued Over Fatal Crash
Involving Storm Chasers
https://www.nytimes.com/by/matt-stevens
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/business/media/hurricane-
irma-broadcasts-safety.html?module=inline
11/2/2019 Weather Channel Is Sued Over Fatal Crash Involving
Storm Chasers - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/weather-channel-
lawsuit-storm-chasers.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share 2/2
per hour to try to reach a storm, the lawsuit said.
“God forbid if anything happened we would have seen it happen
live on air,” the producer wrote, according to the lawsuit. “NOT
GOOD.”

According to the lawsuit, the storm chaser responded later that
day, “I’m going to be honest with you — it’s only going to get
worse,”
adding later in the message, “I just hope he truly understands
the risks associated.”
On March 29, 2017, the day after the crash, the producer sent a
message to the storm chaser to check how the person was
holding up,
according to the lawsuit.
“I am obviously in a way dark place right now,” the storm
chaser responded. “I tried to tell him over and over.”
Christopher Mele contributed reporting.
10/31/2019 Twitter to ban all political ads amid 2020 election
uproar - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/30/twitter
-ban-all-political-ads-amid-election-uproar/ 1/4
Twitter to ban all political ads amid
2020 election uproar
The social network’s decision sets it apart from Facebook,
which has defended its
controversial policies.
By
Oct. 30, 2019 at 6:21 p.m. EDT
Twitter on Wednesday said it would ban all advertisements

about political candidates,
elections and hot-button policy issues such as abortion and
immigration, a significant shift
that comes in response to growing concerns that politicians are
seizing on the vast reach of
social media to deceive voters ahead of the 2020 election.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the move in a series of
tweets, stressing that paying
for political speech has the effect of “forcing highly optimized
and targeted political
messages on people.” The ban marks a break with Twitter’s
social media peers, Facebook
and Google-owned YouTube, which have defended their
policies on political ads in recent
weeks.
“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very
effective for commercial
advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where
it can be used to influence
votes to affect the lives of millions,” Dorsey said.
Twitter’s announcement covers ads intended to influence
elections, including ballot
measures, as well as those that address “issues of national

importance.” The new rules will
be applied globally, published by mid-November and take effect
later in the month, Dorsey
said.
Tony Romm and Isaac Stanley-Becker
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/tony-romm/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/isaac-stanley-becker/
The change drew a mixed reception, with some critics
highlighting that it would not affect
what users can tweet and share on their own. Teddy Goff, who
served as President Obama’s
digital director in 2012 and as senior adviser to Hillary Clinton
in 2016, said any update by
Twitter that does not address the “organic and algorithmic
spread of hate speech and
discrimination and dishonesty” is insufficient.
The political ad ban also might not have much impact on widely
followed accounts,

including President Trump’s, whose tweets already reach more
than 66 million users each
day. Some critics, including Democrats, have urged Twitter to
block or remove the
commander in chief’s tweets, arguing that his comments are
incendiary or incorrect.
Twitter has declined to take action, beyond stressing some
narrow cases in which it
would limit the reach of tweets from a head of state.
Still, the decision illustrates a sharp symbolic rift between
Dorsey and one of his peers,
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who on Wednesday stood by
his company’s controversial
policy that essentially allows politicians to lie in ads during the
tech giant’s third-quarter
earnings call.
“In a democracy, I don’t think it’s right for private companies
to censor politicians or the
news,” Zuckerberg said.
The controversy first arose earlier this month, when former vice
president Joe Biden, who
is seeking the Democratic nomination for the White House,
asked Facebook to remove a

Trump campaign ad that contained multiple falsehoods.
Facebook declined, prompting
backlash from other 2020 contenders.
In response, Zuckerberg has defended the policy in recent
weeks, stressing that the tech
giant should not stand in the way of political leaders’ speech.
During the earnings call, he
estimated that political advertising next year would make up
about 0.5 percent of
Facebook’s revenue. Based on the company’s 2018 revenue, that
would amount to $279
million. Facebook’s revenue next year is expected to be billions
of dollars higher.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/15/under-
pressure-suspend-trump-twitter-restates-that-world-leaders-
dont-always-have-follow-its-rules/?tid=lk_inline_manual_11
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/30/facebo
ok-reports-record-revenue/?tid=lk_inline_manual_14
ok-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-says-interview-he-fears-erosion-truth-
defends-allowing-politicians-lie-ads/?tid=lk_inline_manual_20
ok-mark-zuckerberg-testifies-congress-election-
libra/?tid=lk_inline_manual_20

“It would be unfortunate to suggest that the only option
available to social media
companies … is the full withdrawal of political advertising,”
Biden campaign spokesman
Bill Russo said about Twitter in a statement, “but when faced
with a choice between ad
dollars and the integrity of our democracy, it is encouraging
that, for once, revenue did not
win out.”
On Wednesday, Twitter executives labored to explain their
decision as a matter of
principle, acknowledging that political ad spending amounted to
less than $3 million
during the 2018 midterm elections. Jasmine Enberg, a senior
analyst at eMarketer, said it
is “likely that political advertising doesn’t make up a critical
part of Twitter’s core
business.”
For example, Trump has run not a single ad on Twitter over the
past seven days, while he’s
spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars on Facebook over the
same period, according to

the companies’ archives. Brad Parscale, the president’s 2020
campaign manager, still
blasted Twitter for the ban.
“This is yet another attempt to silence conservatives, since
Twitter knows President Trump
has the most sophisticated online program ever known,”
Parscale said in a statement.
Political advertising has long been a thorny issue for Silicon
Valley, a potential profit
windfall that has come at steep costs in recent years. During the
2016 election, agents tied
to the Russian government purchased promoted tweets and other
forms of online ads as
part of their campaign to stoke political discord, promote then-
candidate Trump and
undermine Democratic contender Clinton, according to
congressional investigators.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/16/new-
report-russian-disinformation-prepared-senate-shows-
operations-scale-sweep/?tid=lk_inline_manual_28

Regulators responded by lambasting social media sites for
failing to spot such efforts by a
foreign power to interfere in U.S. elections, and the pressure
resulted in major changes —
including efforts by Twitter and others to more clearly label
political ads, verify the people
purchasing them and cache them for the public to view. Still,
legislators threatened to pass
new laws, arguing that online ads were subject to far fewer, less
restrictive rules than
broadcast television.
In his tweets, Dorsey on Wednesday endorsed those calls for
new federal rules.
“Ad transparency requirements are progress, but not enough,”
he said. “The internet
provides entirely new capabilities, and regulators need to think
past the present day to
ensure a level playing field.”
Daniel Kreiss, a professor of media and journalism at the
University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, expressed some early concern that Twitter’s
decision to ban political ads could

spell particular trouble for down-ballot candidates with smaller
followings online. Twitter
ads, he said, are “one of the ways that candidates get their
message in front of a public
whose attention is extremely divided and fragmented.”
While Facebook has received much of the criticism for political
advertising policies, Twitter
also has experienced its share of controversy.
In August, Trump’s reelection campaign, along with major
Republican committees, pulled
advertising dollars from Twitter after the platform locked the
campaign account for Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Twitter said a video
of protesters making
threats against the Kentucky Republican violated its rules
against threatening or
promoting violence.
Marie C. Baca contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story underestimated
the likely contribution of
political advertising to Facebook’s revenue.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/09/return-
mitch-mcconnells-campaign-twitter-

account/?tid=lk_inline_manual_38
The Washington Post
Tech Policy
U.K. unveils sweeping plan to penalize Facebook and Google
for
harmful online content
By Tony Romm
April 7
British regulators on Sunday unveiled a landmark proposal to
penalize Facebook, Google and other tech giants
that fail to stop the spread of harmful content online, marking a
major new regulatory threat for an industry
that’s long dodged responsibility for what its users say or share.
The aggressive, new plan — drafted by the United Kingdom’s
leading consumer-protection authorities and
blessed by Prime Minister Theresa May — targets a wide array
of web content, including child exploitation,
false news, terrorist activity and extreme violence. If approved
by Parliament, U.K. watchdogs would gain
unprecedented powers to issue fines and other punishments if
social-media sites don’t swiftly remove the most

egregious posts, photos and videos from public view.
Top British officials said their blueprint would amount to
“world leading laws to make the U.K. the safest place
in the world to be online." The document raises the possibility
that the top executives of major tech companies
could be held directly liable for failing to police their
platforms. It even asks lawmakers to consider if regulators
should have the ability to order internet service providers and
others to limit access to some of the most
harmful content on the web.
ADVERTISING
https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech-policy/
Experts said the idea potentially could limit the reach of sites
including 8chan, an anonymous message board
where graphic, violent content often thrives and that played an
important role in spreading images of last
month’s mosque attack in New Zealand.
“The Internet can be brilliant at connecting people across the
world — but for too long these companies have
not done enough to protect users, especially children and young
people, from harmful content," May said in a

statement.
For Silicon Valley, the U.K.'s rules could amount to the most
severe regulatory repercussion the tech industry
has faced globally for failing to clean up a host of troubling
content online. The sector’s continued struggles
came into sharp relief last month, after videos of the deadly
shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand,
proliferated online, despite heightened investments by
Facebook, Google and Twitter on more human
reviewers — and more powerful tech tools — to stop such posts
from going viral.
The March shooting prompted Australia to adopt a content-
takedown law of its own, and it has emboldened
others throughout Europe to consider similar new rules
targeting the tech industry. The wave of global activity
stands in stark contrast to the United States, where a decades-
old federal law shields social-media companies
from being held liable for the content posted by their users.
U.S. lawmakers also have been reticent to regulate
online speech out of concern that doing so would violate the
First Amendment.
“The era of self-regulation for online companies is over," U.K.
Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright said in a
statement Sunday.

In response, Facebook highlighted its recent investments to
better spot and remove harmful content, adding
the U.K.'s proposal “should protect society from harm while
also supporting innovation, the digital economy
and freedom of speech.” Twitter said it would work with
government to "strike an appropriate balance between
keeping users safe and preserving the internet’s open, free
nature.” Google declined to comment.
The U.K.'s fresh call for regulation reflects a deepening
skepticism of Silicon Valley in response to a range of
recent controversies, including Facebook’s role in the country’s
2016 referendum to leave the European Union.
British lawmakers learned after the vote that an organization
created by Brexit supporters appeared to have
links to Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that
improperly accessed Facebook data on 87 million
users in order to help clients better hone their political
messages.
The revelation sparked a broad inquiry in Parliament, where
lawmakers unsuccessfully demanded testimony
from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In the aftermath, many
there have called for strict new regulation of the
social-networking giant and its peers.

“There is an urgent need for this new regulatory body to be
established as soon as possible,” said Damian
Collins, the chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Committee in the House of Commons. He said
the panel would hold hearings on the government’s proposal in
the coming weeks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/social-media-
platforms-were-used-like-lethal-weapons-in-new-zealand-that-
must-change-now/2019/03/15/aaeafbc8-471e-11e9-90f0-
0ccfeec87a61_story.html?utm_term=.3fb0a3758632
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/04/04/australia-
jail-social-media-executives-or-fine-platforms-if-they-fail-
remove-abhorrent-violent-material/?utm_term=.16554dd7481e
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/18/how-
social-medias-business-model-helped-new-zealand-massacre-
go-viral/?utm_term=.eb814f82c005
ok-intentionally-knowingly-violated-uk-privacy-competition-
rules-british-lawmakers-say/?utm_term=.6eaa5e71b4d4
For now, the U.K.'s plan comes in the form of a white paper that
eventually will yield new legislation. Early
details shared Sunday proposed that lawmakers set up a new,
independent regulator tasked to ensure
companies “take responsibility for the safety of their users.”
That oversight — either through a new agency or
part of an existing one — would be funded by tech companies,
potentially through a new tax.

The agency’s mandate would be vast, from policing large
social-media platforms such as Facebook to smaller
web sites’ forums or comment sections. Much of its work would
focus on content that could be harmful to
children or pose a risk to national security. But regulators
ultimately could play a role in scrutinizing a broader
array of online harms, the U.K. said, including content “that
may not be illegal but are nonetheless highly
damaging to individuals or threaten our way of life in the U.K.”
The document offers a litany of potential areas
of concern, including hate speech, coercive behavior and
underage exposure to illegal content such as dating
apps that are meant for people over age 18.
Many details, such as how it defines harmful content, and how
long companies have to take it down, have yet to
be hammered out. U.K. regulators also said they would prod
tech companies to be more transparent with users
about the content they take down, and why.
“Despite our repeated calls to action, harmful and illegal
content — including child abuse and terrorism — is
still too readily available online," said Sajid Javid, the U.K.'s
home secretary. “That is why we are forcing these
firms to clean up their act once and for all."

Tony Romm
Tony Romm is a technology policy reporter at The Washington
Post. He has spent more than eight years covering the ways
that tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google navigate
the corridors of government -- and the regulations that
sometimes res
https://twitter.com/tonyromm
10/31/2019 TV Networks Take Down Juul and Other E-
Cigarette Ads - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/business/juul-vaping-ads-
cbs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share 1/2
TV Networks Take Down Juul and
Other E-Cigarette Ads
Teenage vaping keeps climbing, suggesting that campaigns to
curb e-
cigarette use among minors were not working.
By David Yaffe-Bellany
Sept. 18, 2019
As health concerns mount over the rise in teenage vaping, CNN,
CBS and Viacom are ending advertisements by e-cigarette
companies.
The parent company of CNN, WarnerMedia, said on Wednesday
that it was removing the ads from its entire portfolio of
networks,
including TNT and TBS, in response to recent health warnings

from authorities including the American Lung Association and
the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We will continue to monitor the investigations by relevant
medical agencies and may re-evaluate our position as new facts
come to light,”
Jennifer Toner, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement.
A spokesman for CBS said Wednesday the network would also
no longer accept the advertisements. Viacom — which owns the
MTV,
Nickelodeon and BET networks — took the same stance.
Juul, the most popular e-cigarette company in the United States,
did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday
evening. Last
week, after the Trump administration said it would ban the sale
of most flavored e-cigarettes, Juul said it strongly agreed “with
the need
for aggressive category-wide action on flavored products.”
The decision by several major networks to pull the ads, reported
earlier by CNBC, reflected the way parents, doctors and
government
officials are increasingly treating e-cigarettes as addictive,
potentially dangerous products rather than smoking-cessation
devices. Under
federal law, tobacco companies have been barred from
advertising on television and radio since 1971.
In recent months, mysterious vaping-related illnesses have been
on the rise. Medical authorities have documented nearly 400
cases of
vaping-related sicknesses in nearly three dozen states. A
seventh death linked to vaping was reported in California this

week.
Investigations are underway by the C.D.C., the Food and Drug
Administration and state health departments. Federal officials
said
Wednesday that teenage vaping use continued to jump this year,
suggesting that campaigns to curb e-cigarette use among minors
were
not working.
On Sunday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced
emergency regulations to quickly ban the sale of flavored e-
cigarettes, and
state health officials approved the ban on Tuesday. Michigan
announced this month that it would also prohibit such products.
The e-cigarette industry has spent $57 million on TV ads this
year. Juul has spent the most, followed by brands like Vuse, Blu
Cigs and
Freeboxmod.com, according to iSpot.tv, a company that tracks
commercials.
As of this week, Juul had spent more than $30 million on TV
commercials, with almost 9,100 national ad airings, according
to iSpot.tv.
CBS was the biggest recipient of those dollars, getting $5.1
million for placements on shows like “Blue Bloods.”
WarnerMedia properties
accounted for $4.6 million of Juul’s ad spending, with airings
across CNN, TBS, TNT and HLN.
On Wednesday, the National Institute on Drug Abuse released
survey results that underscored the growing popularity of e-
cigarettes
among teenagers: Since 2017, the prevalence of vaping in the

eighth, 10th and 12th grades has more than doubled, researchers
at the
University of Michigan found.
In the survey, one in 11 eighth graders, one in five 10th graders
and one in four 12th graders reported vaping within the
previous 30 days.
Twelve percent of 12th graders said they had vaped at least 20
times during that period.
“Current efforts by the vaping industry, government agencies
and schools have thus far proved insufficient to stop the rapid
spread of
nicotine vaping among adolescents,” the researchers said.
Tiffany Hsu contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/by/david-yaffe-bellany
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/health/trump-
vaping.html?module=inline
https://newsroom.juul.com/2019/09/11/statement-regarding-
white-house-announcement/
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/18/cbs-warnermedia-drop-all-e-
cigarette-advertising-including-juul.html
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/01/congress-bans-
airing-cigarette-ads-april-1-1970-489882
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/health/vaping-marijuana-
ecigarettes-sickness.html?module=inline
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/health/vaping-teens-e-
cigarettes.html?module=inline
10/31/2019 TV Networks Take Down Juul and Other E-
Cigarette Ads - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/business/juul-vaping-ads-
cbs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share 2/2
Correction: Sept. 20, 2019
An earlier version of this article, using information from
iSpot.tv, incorrectly included one television show in citing
which programs had Juul
ads. Placements were on shows including “Blue Bloods,” but
not "The Big Bang Theory” on CBS.
10/31/2019 Braille for a New Digital Age - The New York
Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/arts/tablet-devices-blind-
braille.html 1/2
By Nazanin Lankarani
Sept. 3, 2018
When she was a graduate student in her native Bulgaria about
five years ago, Kristina Tsvetanova was once asked to help a
blind friend
sign up online for a class. Understanding why he could not do
so opened her eyes to the lag in technological innovation to
benefit blind
and visually impaired people.
“The shock that my friend couldn’t perform this simple task
stayed with me,” Ms. Tsvetanova said in an interview.
Ms. Tsvetanova, who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in
industrial management and a master’s in engineering, knew that

she had
stumbled onto an untapped opportunity.
“I realized that there was a gap in the market and a business
opportunity in developing technology to provide access to
content and
services for the blind,” she said. “I am a second-generation
entrepreneur, my father taught me to take risks.”
In 2014, Ms. Tsvetanova, who turned 30 last month, moved to
Vienna to take advantage of its more sophisticated business
culture, where
she co-founded the start-up Blitab Technology (a play on the
words blind and tablet). She is also the company’s chief
executive and has
since relocated to San Francisco for proximity to Silicon Valley
investors. Later this fall, she plans to introduce Blitab’s debut
product, a
portable tablet (also called Blitab) designed for blind and
visually impaired people.
“Blitab will soon be available for pre-order on our website,”
Ms. Tsvetanova said. “We plan to ship by the end of the year.”
Design-wise, Blitab looks like any other tablet-style device. It
is slightly thicker than an iPad, but with two separate display
fields. On the
tablet’s bottom half, a touch screen allows users to select an
application or web browse using their voice.
On the top half, the tablet’s glass is perforated into a grid with
holes, which allow Blitab’s liquid-based technology to create
tactile relief —
or “tixels” — that outputs content in the Braille alphabet — the
touch-reading system that has been the literacy tool for blind
people since

1824. The “smart” liquid alters the surface of the tablet to
convert text, maps and graphics into Braille, by creating a rising
sensation
under the user’s fingertips.
“Blitab can translate any type of content into Braille using our
cloud-based software and displays one page of content at a
time,” Ms.
Tsvetanova said.
Priced at around $500, Blitab could be the improved and
affordable alternative to existing portable Braille readers that
blind people have
long desired.
“With this tool, the blind can surf the net, connect with friends
and download books, like everyone else,” she said.
The impact of Blitab on the lives of visually impaired people is
potentially enormous.
Braille for a New Digital Age
Kristina Tsvetanova, co-founder of the start-up Blitab
Technology, which makes the Blitab
device. Jason Henry for The New York Times
10/31/2019 Braille for a New Digital Age - The New York
Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/arts/tablet-devices-blind-
braille.html 2/2
In 2017, the World Health Organization estimated that there

were 253 million people living with vision impairment across
the globe,
including 36 million blind people and 217 million with
moderate to severe vision impairment. Those numbers are
expected to triple by
2050.
Existing keyboards for the blind mostly operate via
piezoelectric technology, which uses pressure to generate
electricity, allowing them to
function as a Braille reader. The keyboards are often bulky,
limited in functionality and sell for thousands of dollars. There
are also
portable Braille readers, which have been around for two
decades, but typically offer only single-line displays.
“Can you imagine reading Harry Potter one line at a time?” Ms.
Tsvetanova said.
“Only 1 percent of published books is available in Braille,” she
said. “People with sight loss cannot actually read most books,
they can only
listen to them being read.”
Braille illiteracy contributes to high unemployment rates for
blind and visually impaired people, estimated to be 75 percent
in Europe
(according to the European Blind Union) and 70 percent in the
United States, according to Cornell University’s Disability
Statistics. These
numbers are even higher on a global scale.
Since Blitab’s founding, Ms. Tsvetanova has been recognized
for its potential to change the lives of people with sight loss.
She won the
Rising Innovator award in 2017 from the European Institute of

Innovation and Technology and was recognized in 2017 by MIT
Technology Review’s Spanish edition as one of its European
Innovators Under 35. Last year, Blitab was among 56 finalists
selected from
1,401 entries in the Index: Design to Improve Life, a design
competition based in Denmark, which awards about 500,000
euros (about
$580,000) in total prize money.
“This tablet will be especially impactful for the life progress of
young blind persons,” said Mette Laursen, a former board
member of the
Index competition.
“Just imagine the first time you used an iPad and the
possibilities it opened for you,” Ms. Laursen said. “Blitab can
do the same for the
blind.”
Ms. Laursen was also a member of the jury of the 2018 Cartier
Women’s Initiative Awards, an annual international business
plan
competition funded by the luxury jeweler that rewards
innovative projects by women entrepreneurs. At its awards
ceremony in April in
Singapore, Ms. Tsvetanova was the top prize winner, or
“laureate,” from Europe.
“Cartier’s prize is a springboard to help our laureates secure
investment from banks and investors who rely on our due
diligence and our
assessment that these businesses are viable,” said Cyrille
Vigneron, president and chief executive of Cartier.
While she awaits closing on a new round of financing this
month, Ms. Tsvetanova is negotiating with a number of

American service
providers in the telecom and banking sectors to integrate Blitab
into their businesses.
“With our technology, a visually impaired employee can review
a document unassisted, and a blind client can read a contract
before
signing it,” Ms. Tsvetanova said.
“Blitab means literacy,” she said. “Reading it yourself is a big
step toward independence.”
10/31/2019 Delta Airlines faces criticism for showing
“Booksmart,” “Rocketman” without same-sex love scenes - The
Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/31/delta-
booksmart-olivia-wilde-lesbian-scene-cut/ 1/5
A same-sex love scene was cut from a
movie on Delta flights. So was the word
‘lesbian.’
By
Oct. 31, 2019 at 7:04 a.m. EDT
Editor’s note: This story contains spoilers for “Booksmart” and
“Rocketman.”
Near the end of the 2019 film “Booksmart,” a tense bathroom
kiss between Amy, the film’s
timid, justice-minded lead, and Hope, her high school’s “basic

hot girl,” turns into more:
Hidden from a house party outside, they engage in a hookup
that’s been hailed as an
unusually frank, on-screen portrayal of sex between two women.
But watch “Booksmart” on a Delta Air Lines flight, and the R-
rated high school comedy will
skip right through that scene. Reportedly, the in-flight cut also
passes over the words
“vagina” and “genitals,” an exchange about a lesbian sex act,
talk of a urinary tract
infection, and a bit in which Amy and her friend watch porn in
the back of a ride-share.
Amid calls of censorship, those edits — made by an outside
company that works with the
airline — are drawing the ire and confusion of passengers and
Hollywood insiders alike, in
what’s at least the fourth instance when same-sex romance has
been stripped from an in-
flight Delta movie in recent years.
“If it’s not X-rated, surely it’s acceptable on an airplane,”
director Olivia Wilde said at an
awards show on Sunday night. “There’s insane violence of
bodies being smashed in half [in

other movies], and yet a love scene between two women is
censored from the film. It’s such
an integral part of this character’s journey. I don’t understand
it."
In a statement to The Washington Post early Thursday, Delta
said its “content parameters
do not in any way ask for the removal of homosexual content
from the film.”
Teo Armus
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evya5n/booksmart-beanie-
feldstein-raunchy-teen-movie-not-offensive-to-be-funny
https://twitter.com/oliviawilde/status/1189604895361507333?s=
20
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/booksmart-airline-
censorship-olivia-wilde-kaitlyn-dever-beanie-feldstein-
1203385951/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/teo-armus/
Washington Post
But it’s not the first time the airline has come under fire for the
situation — or, for that
matter, even the only time this week. On Tuesday, other Delta
passengers protested that

the in-flight cut of “Rocketman,” the Elton John biopic released
this year, was missing sex
scenes and even a chaste kiss between two men.
The same was true of “Carol,” which recounted a love story
between two women, and “Bad
Moms,” with its drunken smooch between two of the titular
mothers. As LGBTQ story
lines gain more visibility in Hollywood following years of
taboos, stereotypes and silence,
Delta’s critics say it represents a frustrating and perplexing
double standard that seems to
exist only aboard airplanes.
“It’s ridiculous,” said actress Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Amy,
upon learning about the edits.
“I don’t even know what to say to that. That makes me so mad.”
Her co-star, Beanie Feldstein, had previously hailed the
bathroom scene as a “radical”
element of the movie, which has also been praised for its
depictions of nuanced female
friendship.
“By showing queer sexuality, and making heterosexual people
relate to it is actually really

deeply meaningful,” Feldstein, who identifies as queer, told
People magazine in May. “By
doing that, you’re asking that to be the norm."
So when the actress first learned about the cuts on Sunday while
scrolling through Twitter
on her way to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences’ Governors Awards,
she told reporters on the red carpet that she was determined to
rectify the situation.
“Our movie is a beautiful representation of the queer experience
as young people,”
Feldstein said on the red carpet. “So we’re getting to the bottom
of it, don’t worry.”
All that she and Wilde have found so far, though, is the
complex, obscure backstory for how
movies get edited down from the silver screen.
https://ew.com/movies/2019/05/23/glaad-hollywood-2018-
report-lgbtq-representation/
1203385951/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/2019/05/23/booksmart
s-kaitlyn-dever-beanie-feldstein-were-immediately-drawn-
script-each-other/?tid=lk_inline_manual_16
https://people.com/movies/beanie-feldstein-says-sexuality-not-
her-defining-feature/
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/olivia-wilde-speaks-

out-against-censorship-lesbian-sex-scene-booksmart-n1073236
Washington Post
According to Variety, an outside editing company provides
Delta with both a cut-down
version of the film and the original version of the movie. (Delta
did not immediately
respond to requests for the company’s name.) If there’s
anything in the unedited film that
violates its standards, Delta goes with the stripped-down
version. It’s unclear what part of
“Booksmart” went against the airline’s guidelines, though a
travel news website noted that
editing companies also work with airlines to obey different laws
and customs worldwide.
As Wilde pointed out on Twitter, however, a passenger must
agree to a “parental advisory”
before starting the raunchy comedy, which warns them that
viewer discretion is advised.
“We value diversity and inclusion as core to our culture and our
mission and will review

our processes to ensure edited video content doesn’t conflict
with these values,” Delta said
in a statement to The Post. (It did not immediately identify the
editing company.)
The controversy spilled over into a film festival panel on
Tuesday, where Wilde noted that
the in-flight version kept plenty of curse words, as well as
depictions of men behaving
lewdly — including a scene in which a male character imitates a
sex act on a microphone
during karaoke. Yet, she added, the Delta edit cut out another
scene that shows two
characters as unclothed Barbie dolls.
“I’m just curious what a woman is supposed to take from that.
That it’s an obscenity? That
it’s inappropriate?” Wilde said. She later speculated that the
scene was cut because “it
might suggest to you that women, I don’t know, have bodies or
can experience pleasure, or
deserve it.”
olivia wilde
@oliviawilde
I finally had the chance to watch an edited version of

Booksmart
on a flight to see exactly what had been censored. Turns out
some airlines work with a third party company that edits the
movie based on what they deem inappropriate. Which, in our
case, is ... female sexuality?
23.2K 2:08 PM - Oct 30, 2019
1203385951/
https://thepointsguy.com/news/bleep-how-airlines-censor-in-
flight-
entertainment/?utm_source=twitter&utm_term=editorial&utm_c
ontent=B51FA134-FA97-11E9-AE0C-
C7DC4744363C&tw=1&utm_campaign=thepointsguy&utm_med
ium=social
https://twitter.com/oliviawilde/status/1189604891129450496?s=
20
https://filmfest.scad.edu/schedule
https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/olivia-wilde-calls-out-delta-
for-censoring-booksmart.html
https://twitter.com/oliviawilde
https://twitter.com/oliviawilde/status/1189604886142509058
https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1189604886142509058
https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175256
Washington Post

The airline drew similar criticisms of imposing a double
standard onto the in-flight version
of “Rocketman.” Passengers say the film kept a scene in which
John’s manager physically
abuses him, but not ones in which the two have sex or even kiss.
“What does it say that the edit left in a scene of John Reid
assaulting Elton but removed
any evidence of intimacy between them or for that matter Elton
and any man?” Shana
Naomi Krochmal, digital director at Entertainment Weekly,
wrote on Twitter. “What is that
saying is OK?”
4,233 people are talking about this
olivia wilde
@oliviawilde
I urge every airline, especially those who pride themselves on
inclusivity, to stop working with this third party company, and
trust the parental advisory warning to allow viewers to opt out
if
they choose.
4,936 2:08 PM - Oct 30, 2019
296 people are talking about this

olivia wilde @oliviawilde · Oct 30, 2019
Replying to @oliviawilde
What message is this sending to viewers and especially to
women?
That their bodies are obscene? That their sexuality is shameful?
shana
@shananaomi
shana @shananaomi · Oct 29, 2019
On @Delta today discovered that #Rocketman is stripped of
almost
every gay reference or scene that @eltonofficial fought to keep
in
the film’s mainstream release, including a simple chaste kiss.
This
is good context but it’s still frustrating.
twitter.com/thepointsguy/s…
The Points Guy @thepointsguy
[Bleep!] How airlines censor inflight entertainment
the.pointsg.uy/g3Bkqe1
https://twitter.com/shananaomi/status/1189344861067059200?re
f_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5
E1189344861067059200&ref_url=about%3Asrcdoc

https://twitter.com/_/status/1189604907944427520
https://twitter.com/shananaomi
https://twitter.com/shananaomi/status/1189344047208509440
https://twitter.com/Delta
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Rocketman?src=hash
https://twitter.com/eltonofficial
https://t.co/4CY4Tl8PHh
https://twitter.com/thepointsguy/status/1189301368479199232
Washington Post
The same was true of previous edits made for Delta: 2015′s
“Carol” kept a heterosexual kiss
involving a minor male character but cut out the love scene
between its two main
characters, the Advocate reported, while “Bad Moms” ditched
its woman-on-woman kiss
but not its woman-on-man hookup.
Following backlash in 2017, the airline said it would no longer
show edited versions of

films that go “beyond omitting explicit material to remove
scenes that reflect the diversity
of our employees and customers.”
Two years later, however, Delta is still facing accusations of
censorship.
To the audience at the film festival, Wilde said: “Make movies
that are authentic, and talk
about real things. And then protect those movies and don’t let
anybody censor you.”
As @yayponies pointed out in a very justified rant, what does it
say that the edit left in a scene of John Reid assaulting Elton
but
removed any evidence of intimacy between them or for that
matter Elton and any man? What is that saying is OK?
69 8:54 PM - Oct 29, 2019
See shana's other Tweets
https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2017/6/30/why-
delta-censoring-gay-kisses-its-flight-entertainment
https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2017/6/30/why-
delta-censoring-gay-kisses-its-flight-entertainment
https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/olivia-wilde-calls-out-delta-
for-censoring-booksmart.html
https://twitter.com/yayponies

11/2/2019 Opinion | Overlooked by the Media, Women Like Me
Took to Instagram - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/race-
black-latina-identity.html 1/6
Overlooked by the Media, Women Like
Me Took to Instagram
I rarely see Afro-Latinas on television. Online, it s̓ a different
story.
By Natasha S. Alford
Ms. Alford is the deputy editor of The Grio.
July 28, 2018
I was about 11 years old when I started to think I wasn’t like
the other Latina girls.
The summer before sixth grade, my mother put me in a beauty
pageant sponsored by a Hispanic community organization in
Syracuse, N.Y., where we lived. The stage wasn’t fancy — it
was in a gymnasium on the West Side, one of the poorest areas
of
the city. But there was a lot at stake. The winner would
represent the pride of the community during the Puerto Rican
Day
Festival parade.
I was mortified at the idea of competing. Aside from being a
nerd with thick plastic glasses and a school marching band
membership to match, I didn’t look Latina. At least not
compared with my pageant competitors or the women and girls I

saw
in the media.
Latinas in movies, TV and magazines were always fair-skinned.
Latinas had long blonde or brown hair that was straight or
wavy.
Latinas spoke Spanish, and they spoke it fast and well.
Latinas had small noses and mostly European-looking features.
I, on the other hand was a brown-skinned girl, with big black
frizzy hair and a full nose, thanks to a dark-skinned African-
American dad and a fairer-skinned Puerto Rican mom. I spoke
fluent English, but much less Spanish — and was too afraid to
risk being laughed at to try.
Did I even count as Latina? Despite my parents’ insistence and
constant reminders that I was — they would celebrate El Día
de los Reyes (Three Kings Day) in addition to Christmas, buy
bilingual books and teach me traditional salsa dances — I had
serious doubts.
The writer at age 11.
Natasha Alford

Miraculously, my uncertainty didn’t show up in my careful walk
down the runway. Thanks to the poofy-sleeved orange gown
my mom bought for me from a local thrift store, the saxophone
routine I’d practiced ad nauseam and my ability to keep cool
during the question-and-answer portion (during which I required
a translator), I won the pageant.
But instead of relishing the opportunity to ride in a convertible
and wave to fans wearing a tiara, I was self-conscious. Would
people on the parade route be whispering about whether I was
on the wrong float, or questioning how I’d managed to take
the crown? After all, I’d rarely seen anyone who looked like me
be recognized as a Latina — let alone as a beautiful Latina.
Today, I have. And it’s thanks in large part to the internet.
I now know that I belong to a much larger community of Afro-
Latinas (or Afro-LatinX people) around the globe, who are not
only African descendants, but are also proud of it. We exist in
places from Brazil to Venezuela, Panama to Puerto Rico, and
Colombia to the Dominican Republic.
Learning this as a young adult was important intellectually. But
when it comes to my sense of belonging, there’s something
else that’s helped emotionally: Instagram. Sure, a handful of
Afro-Latinas in mainstream media do exist — women like the
lawyer and commentator Sunny Hostin, the actress Gina Torres
and VH1’s “Love & Hip Hop Miami” star and singer Amara
La Negra, who has campaigned against colorism in the Latino
community — but they’re few and far between. Filling the
gaps are digital communities of Afro-Latina women. We are
purposely recognizing one another in ways we’ve never found
in popular media representations and sharing images and stories
that redefine the narrow Eurocentric definition of
Latinidad many of us have consumed for years.

Instagram accounts like @afrolatinas_ and @AintILatina post
photos of Afro-Latinas of all hues, showcasing them wearing
thick curls, Afros or locs, with uplifting messages and
quotations about self-love.
https://www.instagram.com/afrolatinas_/
https://www.instagram.com/aintilatina/
“Claim your space,” one image posted by @afrolatinas_ reads.
“Belleza ésta negrita/Black is beautiful,” reads another. It’s a
necessary reminder for many Afro-Latinas like me who haven’t
always felt that way.
“I was really going about life trying to figure out who I was,”
said Amanda Pericles, the Dominican-American creator of
@afrolatinas_.
afrolatinas_
The Well
View Profile
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750 likes
afrolatinas_
Got to chill with some of my favorite queens � yesterday at
#afrolatinofestnyc ! Were you there?

______________________
#orgullosamenteafrodescendiente #afrodescendientes
#blackpride
#blackwomen #blatina #afrolatina #afrolatino #afrolatinx
#blacklatina
#blacklatino #blacklatinx #africandiaspora #knowyourroots
#blackgirlmagic #loveyourself #latinx #melanin
#youraverageafrolatina
#curlyhair #naturalhair #panafrican #blackbeauty #iamlatina
#unapologeticallyblack #beautifulineveryshade #morena #negra
#50shadesoflatino #50shadesofblack
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In 2015, she started finding and posting photos of Afro-Latina
women embracing their hair texture. She attracted thousands
of followers. “I’m trying to make it a point to show people we
have differences here and there, but we’re all black,” she says.
I’m not the only one who’s found a sense of belonging on the
image-sharing platform.
“With social media is when I started to hear the terms LatinX
and Afro-Latino and I started to differentiate — ʻSo I’m a black
Puerto Rican,’” Cynthia Branch, an Afro-Puerto Rican who
grew up around mostly light-skinned Latinas, said at an April
meetup of Afro-Latinas in Harlem promoted through the
@Blactina account.
https://www.instagram.com/blactina/
These women’s perspectives reflect what I eventually learned in
college years after that beauty pageant: that it’s O.K. — and
more than that, something to celebrate — to be both black and
Latina. While doing research for my senior thesis, I
discovered two Afro-Puerto Rican female reggaeton artists, La
Sista and La Hill. La Sista wore dreadlocks and African-print
clothes and called her album “Majestad Negroide” (black
majesty). La Hill had deep, rich chocolate skin and declared in
one
song, “a dios gracias por darme este color” (thanks be to God
for giving me this color). I tracked down their contact
information and flew from Boston to New York City and Puerto

Rico to interview them.
blactina
7,873 followers
View Profile
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142 likes
blactina
Thank you @dulcecoco27 for Sharing your Story on What Being
a Blactina
Means to you!
________________________
What does being a #Blactina means to you? Share in the
Comment Below
⤵ #blactinatheseries #afrolatina #afrolatinx #latina #latinx
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Sista/dp/B000K7UH38
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I’m grateful for that life-changing journey 10 years ago. I’m

also grateful that, now, access to women who embrace what I
called a “morena consciousness” is only a click — rather than a
plane ticket — away.
Instagram is often criticized for showcasing unrealistic
lifestyles that can make users feel insecure. But for me, it plays
a
different role. It’s a place where I can go for much-needed
reminders that, despite what mainstream media might suggest,
my kind of beauty matters. It’s where I can lose myself in
photos that prove there’s a place where I belong.
A version of this article appears in print on July 29, 2018,
Section SR, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline:
Identity in an Instagram Feed
10/31/2019 Opinion | What Women Know About the Internet -
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/privacy-
feminism.html 1/2
What Women Know
About the Internet
The digital world is not designed to keep women safe. New
regulations should be.
By Emily Chang
Ms. Chang, an anchor at Bloomberg TV, is the author of
“Brotopia.”
April 10, 2019

Like too many women, I’ve been harassed online. The harasser
described in explicit detail how he intended to violate me,
though
somehow his threats didn’t violate Twitter’s terms of service.
Twitter, despite my repeated reports, did nothing.
So I did. I gradually tightened my privacy settings across
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I mostly stopped sharing
personal, nonwork-
related updates and deleted photos of my children; I haven’t
posted new pictures for more than a year.
I’m a tech journalist, so perhaps I am extra-sensitive to the
dangers of the internet. But my concerns are widely shared by
other women.
Several studies have found that women are more concerned
about privacy risks online than men and are more likely to keep
their profiles
private and delete unwanted contacts. Female Italian college
students are less likely to share their political views and
relationship status
than men and are more concerned about risks posed by other
users and third parties. Norwegian women post fewer selfies
than
Norwegian men.
In other words, digital privacy is a women’s issue. We just
don’t think about it that way, or discuss it that way. Of course,
privacy is a
concern for everyone, but this is also an issue, like health care,
on which women have a particular view. Women know, for
example, what
consent really means. It’s not scrolling through seemingly
endless “terms of service” and then checking a box. Online
consent, just as it is

with our bodies, should be clear, informed and a requirement
for online platforms.
These views are shaped by the reality that women experience
the internet differently, just as the experience of walking down
a dark alley,
or even a busy street, is different for women than it is for men.
One Pew study found that women are far more likely to be
sexually
harassed online and describe these interactions as extremely
upsetting. The Department of Justice reports that about 75
percent of the
victims of stalking and cyberstalking are women. And so women
look over our shoulders online, just as we do in real life.
It isn’t just that real-life harassment also shows up online, it’s
that the internet isn’t designed for women, even when the
majority of users
of some popular applications and platforms are women. In fact,
some features of digital life have been constructed, intentionally
or not, in
ways that make women feel less safe.
For example, you can’t easily use Facebook’s WhatsApp
messaging service without a phone number, which many women
don’t want to
share. Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has
promised to build encrypted communication into all its
platforms. Just as
important is giving users the option to make their messages
disappear, so that if a hostile ex somehow got into your phone
there would be
nothing to see.
Even well-meaning efforts at don’t always work that way for
women. Lyft’s car pool service shares the registered names of

passengers with everyone else in the car. The first name of an
incoming passenger flashes in lights across the dashboard, a
feature
intended to let riders know they are in the right car. A privacy
researcher told me that she once jumped into a Lyft shared ride
wearing a
sweatshirt with her company’s logo. The next day, she received
an email from a male passenger saying, “I found you!” Clearly,
he had
been able to use her first name and the name of her company to
track her down online.
What he may have thought was cute, she thought was creepy.
“Do I have any control over this interaction?” the researcher
asked. “You
want control over the self you’re putting online, just like you
want control over your body.” Note to Lyft: Some passengers
would be safer
if they were anonymous.
With Congress considering whether to draft new privacy
regulations, it is important that the specific concerns of women
be taken into
account now, while the rules are being debated.
[As technology advances, will it continue to blur the lines
between public and private? Sign up for Charlie Warzel’s
limited-run
newsletter to explore what’s at stake and what you can do about
it.]
transparency
http://www.scielo.mec.pt/pdf/obs/v12n1/v12n1a04.pdf
http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/02/24/main-findings-12/
http://www.scielo.mec.pt/pdf/obs/v12n1/v12n1a04.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440591/
https://www.pewinternet.org/2017/07/11/online-harassment-
2017/
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/svus_rev.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/technology/facebook-
privacy-blog.html?module=inline
https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/privacy-
project?action=click&module=inline&pgtype=Article
10/31/2019 Opinion | What Women Know About the Internet -
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/privacy-
feminism.html 2/2
California’s new privacy law is a case in point: It is a bold
piece of legislation, but it falls short for women. In the event of
a ,
for example, consumers in California will have the right to sue
if certain kinds of personally identifying information, like
Social Security
numbers or driver’s license numbers, are compromised. But that
may not include material like intimate emails or explicit photos.
The
current iteration of the law is so murky that it’s not clear
whether Jennifer Lawrence, the actress whose nude photos were
stolen from her
iCloud account in 2014 and made public, would have a case
against Apple if a similar incident occurred after the law goes
into effect next
year.
California’s “ ” also doesn’t go as far as Europe’s new privacy
legislation, the most sweeping data reform in history.
Under the California law, consumers have the right to delete

information they personally provide to companies. But if
someone else —
say, an unhappy ex — posted something about me online, I
would not be able to get that taken down. Under Europe’s new
law, though, I
would at least be able to request such a post be removed.
Although women’s groups have defended privacy as it pertains
to abortion, they haven’t yet broadly taken up the issue of
digital privacy.
Among the few to do so publicly is a grass-roots effort called
Catalina’s List, a backer of the California law. “Anything that
gives big
business an upper hand on individual choices is corrupting the
idea of personal choice, freedom and privacy,” a co-founder of
Catalina’s
List, Bobbi Jo Chavarria, told me.
Weaker federal privacy legislation could eventually override the
California law. Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all
contributed
money to groups opposing the California law, and last year
these companies and Apple spent more than $64 million
lobbying Congress on
privacy and other issues. Tech companies are pushing for what
they want; as the research shows, that’s not necessarily what
women want.
So what can Americans do? First, we must elect more women to
positions of power who can help write privacy legislation. I
don’t think
it’s a coincidence that two of the top digital policymakers in
Europe are women, including Margrethe Vestager, the European
Union’s
competition commissioner, and Elizabeth Denham, Britain’s
information commissioner.

The law, of course, will never be as fast as tech companies.
They should build products and services that respect . To do
that, these companies need to hire and consult more women.
Women hold just 25 percent of jobs across the tech industry and
an even
smaller percentage of prime engineering roles.
Most important, all of us must start thinking about privacy as a
feminist issue. We cannot wait for women’s concerns to be
addressed. The
stakes for us are far too high.
Emily Chang (@emilychangtv) is an anchor at Bloomberg TV
and the author of “Brotopia.”
Follow @privacyproject on Twitter and The New York Times
Opinion Section on Facebook and Instagram.
data breach
right to be forgotten
privacy by design
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/technology/california-
online-privacy-law.html?module=inline
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/arts/hack-jennifer-
lawrence-guilty.html?module=inline
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/technology/tech-industry-
federal-privacy-law.html?module=inline
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-22/google-

set-2018-lobbying-record-as-washington-techlash-expands
https://twitter.com/emilychangtv
https://twitter.com/privacyproject
https://www.facebook.com/nytopinion
https://www.instagram.com/nytopinion/
The Washington Post
PostEverything Perspective
China’s digital protectionism puts the future of the global
Internet
at risk
Its policies appear tailored toward undercutting foreign
competitors
and boosting homegrown platforms.
By Nithin Coca
In January, Microsoft’s Bing search engine was temporarily
unavailable for users in China. While it remains
unclear why the service was locked down, many observers
interpreted it as yet another instance of China’s
inclination toward digital censorship. Bing was, according to
this view, just the latest in a long list of foreign
apps, websites and platforms to run afoul of Beijing’s extensive
digital surveillance and cyber-control
apparatus, which restricts Chinese users’ access to the global
Internet.

However, the incident shows another, more worrying face to
China’s Internet controls — one that has more to
do with its global ambitions than its attempt to control its own
population. Microsoft had already complied
with China’s official censorship standards long before the
outage. Within China, Bing’s search engine only
shows approved results on sensitive topics such as 1989, the
year of the Tiananmen Square protests; the Dalai
Lama; the banned Falun Gong spiritual sect and others. Some
Microsoft products such as LinkedIn similarly
accept China’s content restrictions, while others, such as Skype,
have given the government direct access to
user data. In this context, the Chinese government’s possible
willingness to block Bing shows that the space for
foreign digital platforms to compete fairly in China is
shrinking. In fact, China is increasingly blocking foreign
apps and platforms for little reason other than protectionism,
which it pursues as part of its quest for greater
control of the Internet.
China blocks many digital platforms that are neither seeking to
expand political discourse nor provide access to
sensitive information. It tends, instead, to target platforms that
are potential competitors to state-connected

Chinese tech companies. China blocks e-commerce sites that
could compete with Alibaba (e.g. Rakuten,
Amazon), business apps, including Slack, Dropbox and
Slideshare, and nearly every chat app that could
compete with WeChat — including ones from Asia such as Line,
KakaoTalk and Viber.
“We’ll see a continuing role for natural gas—even if it shifts
over time—not just as a bridge fuel but as a foundation for
CONTENT FROM AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/23/18195200/microsoft-bing-
search-engine-blocked-in-china-internet-censorship
https://en.greatfire.org/analyzer
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-
firewall-of-china-xi-jinpings-internet-shutdown
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/04/linkedin-
tiananmen-posts-china-censorship
https://www.geek.com/news/china-spies-on-skype-users-not-
ready-589222/
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