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Below: A major Facebook ranking failure exposes users to harmful posts, and two Amazon union votes are coming down to the wire. First: | Democrats are calling on LinkedIn to crack down on misinformation, too |  LinkedIn, known for its professional focus, is rarely discussed in the same vein as other social networks. (Jason Alden/Bloomberg News) | | | An unexpected tech platform is facing new pressure from Democrats to step up its policies against misinformation: LinkedIn. The Microsoft-owned networking site is the latest major platform added to the Democratic National Committee's misinformation scorecard, which for years has graded platforms based on their rules against false or misleading content. LinkedIn joins Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit and Snapchat as platforms Democrats are pressing to "take responsibility for information quality on their sites," according to a forthcoming announcement shared exclusively with The Technology 202. The platform is rarely discussed in the same vein as those peers, largely due to its career and business focus. But it's still a substantial source of news for American adults, and Democratic officials say it deserves scrutiny, particularly when it comes to misinformation. Concerns over tech companies' content moderation practices are slowly extending to a wider pool of social networking sites, even as larger platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter remain the most common targets. The DNC's rubric rates companies on a number of fronts, including whether their algorithms surfaced "authoritative news" over "highly engaging news," if they police rules against hate speech and incitement "consistently and comprehensively," and whether they remove "maliciously manipulated media and deepfakes." In their latest update, the DNC said that while the company fared well against its peers when it came to its misinformation rules, the information they disclose about their policies is lacking. | | "Our analysis suggests that while the company has strong policies in place to combat misinformation, its lack of transparency makes it difficult to evaluate their effectiveness," said Timothy Durigan, the top analyst for the DNC's "Counter Disinformation Program." LinkedIn did not return a request for comment. Unlike other platforms that restrict or prohibit specific types of misinformation, such as posts about the covid-19 pandemic, LinkedIn's policies explicitly tell users not to "share content in a way that you know is, or think may be, misleading or inaccurate." LinkedIn's rules say that the platform "may prevent you from posting content from sites that are known to produce or contain misinformation." They also prohibit users from posting "misleading or deceptive information about yourself," or engaging in "spam or scams." But the DNC knocked LinkedIn in its report for providing "little transparency into how it ranks content in feeds" and not making "public content or engagement data available to researchers." LinkedIn holds a unique position among major tech platforms: it's one of the most widely used social networks in the United States, and yet much like its parent company, Microsoft, it has faced little-to-no scrutiny in recent years from Washington. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who sits on Microsoft's board, is also one of the Democratic Party's most prominent megadonors — a relative rarity among prominent tech moguls, who have come under pressure in recent years to remain largely apolitical. While the platform is known more for career updates and business news than politics and current events, LinkedIn has faced its fair share of misinformation challenges. In its sweeping report detailing Russian meddling online during the 2016 U.S. elections, the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote that LinkedIn discovered activity on the platform linked to the notorious Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency during the election cycle. The panel noted that while the activity appeared to be "limited," LinkedIn is still "a significant target for foreign intelligence services" because its users post "significant personal and professional data in pursuit of networking opportunities." | | "This renders the platform a valuable source of information on an array of sensitive intelligence targets — including the identities of government employees, active duty military personnel, cleared defense contractors, and others," the panel wrote in its 2019 report. In 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory "are increasingly going public on LinkedIn, expanding their online presence and prompting the professional-networking site to take steps to limit the spread of the community." (A company spokesperson said at the time that "QAnon misinformation is not tolerated on LinkedIn.") Later that year, my colleagues Cat Zakrzewski and Rachel Lerman reported that "users shared articles and videos that pushed false claims about the election results" on the site. The scorecard may be a sign that more scrutiny is incoming. | | |  | Our top tabs | | Massive Facebook ranking flub exposed users to harmful content for months |  The revelations are sure to stoke the ire of lawmakers in Washington. (Tony Avelar/AP) | | | "A group of Facebook engineers identified a 'massive ranking failure' that exposed as much as half of all News Feed views to 'integrity risks' over the past six months," the Verge's Alex Heath reports, citing a report obtained by the publication. According to the report: "Instead of suppressing dubious posts reviewed by the company's network of outside fact-checkers, the News Feed was instead giving the posts distribution, spiking views by as much as 30 percent globally. Unable to find the root cause, the engineers watched the surge subside a few weeks later and then flare up repeatedly until the ranking issue was fixed on March 11th." The revelations are sure to stoke the ire of lawmakers in Washington, who have long criticized the platform over allegations it amplifies harmful material. | Amazon union vote too close to call early on |  Signs supporting the union push are shown near an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., on March 10. (Jay Reeves/AP) | | | A pair of union elections at Amazon warehouses in Alabama and New York are too close to call after the first day of voting, and their future will hinge on contested and uncounted ballots, my colleagues Rachel Lerman and Gerrit De Vynck report. The dead heat so far is "keeping open the potential for a historic turnaround in the efforts to unionize workers at the e-commerce giant," Rachel and Gerrit report. They added, "If either warehouse votes yes, it would result in the first successful unionization effort at the nation's second largest private employer and would generate major momentum for the labor movement there." Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. | Treasury hits Russia's tech sector in new sanctions |  The Biden administration has come under increasing pressure to escalate its economic campaign against Russia. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News) | | | The new sanctions "target parts of the Russian technology sector that enable Moscow to acquire technology critical for its military, including one firm that is Russia's largest microchip producer," my colleague Jeff Stein reports. The Biden administration has faced growing pressure to ratchet up its economic restrictions against Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. The White House previously targeted Russia's central banks and its technology imports, and has banned Russian energy imports. "We will continue to target Putin's war machine with sanctions from every angle, until this senseless war of choice is over," Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a statement Thursday. | | |  | Inside the industry | | | |  | Competition watch | | | |  | Privacy monitor | | | |  | Workforce report | | | |  | Before you log off | | | That's all for today — thank you so much for joining us! Make sure to tell others to subscribe to The Technology 202 here. 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