Alex Bolton

“You have these two constitutional principles butting up against each other … and I don’t think you can necessarily say that one always trumps the other,” said Alex Bolton, the program manager of the University of Washington’s Tech Policy Lab that studies the intersection of law, politics, cybersecurity and other tech issues.

At the crux of the issue isn’t just data collection, but that data could be used to influence the American public, said Alex Bolton, the program manager of the University of Washington’s Tech Policy Lab. Lawmakers are concerned ByteDance could tweak TikTok’s algorithm to show content that would benefit Chinese government interests and influence public opinion in the U.S., Bolton said.

Facebook comments took an ugly turn for the Everett Police Department as people started posting threats of violence against officers and the agency, and earlier this week, the comment section got shut down. The police chief indicated that the comments section will be enabled again but offered no timeline. Alex Bolton, program manager for the Tech Policy Lab at the UW, is quoted.

“The claim [that] they’re making is that it’s under consumer protection,” Alex Bolton, program manager at the UW School of Law’s Tech Policy Lab, said. “That they basically knew that it caused these problems for younger people, and because they didn’t disclose it and didn’t make changes to it, that it’s basically deceptive.”