Overnight Tech: Trump to discuss school violence with video game execs | Equifax finds new breach victims | Twitter looks to improve its 'health' | Facebook drops newsfeed experiment

View in your browser     TRUMP TO MEET VIDEO GAME EXECS: President Trump will meet with executives of the video games industry next week to discuss school violence in response to the deadly shooting in Parkland, Fla., the White House announced on Thursday. "Next week he'll also be meeting with members of the video game industry to see what they can do on that front as well," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters at Thursday's briefing. "This is going to be an ongoing process and something that we don't expect to happen overnight. But something that we're going to be engaged in and continue to look for the best ways possible to make sure we're doing everything we can to protect schools across the country," she said. At a recent meeting at the White House with lawmakers and administration officials, Trump raised concern about the influence of violence in movies and video games. He floated the idea of launching a ratings system, which already exists for both games and films in the United States. "I'm hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people's thoughts. And you go one further step and that's the movies. ... Maybe they have to put a rating system for that," Trump said at last week's White House meeting. The president additionally met with a group of lawmakers from both parties at the White House on Wednesday where he called on Congress to pass a host of gun restrictions, putting him at odds with most Republicans and the National Rifle Association. Read more here.     Please send your tips, comments and compliments to Ali Breland (abreland@thehill.com) and Harper Neidig (hneidig@thehill.com) and follow us on Twitter: @alibreland and @hneidig. We're also on Signal and WhatsApp. Email or DM us for our numbers.   EQUIFAX FINDS NEW VICTIMS OF 2017 BREACH: Equifax has identified 2.4 million victims of its massive 2017 data breach that were not previously counted in the number of people affected by the hack, the credit bureau announced Thursday. The company says hackers stole partial driver's license information from the newly identified group. Equifax said that in the vast majority of these cases, the breach did not expose home addresses, the states in which the licenses were issued or expiration and issuance dates. The company said these victims had not been identified previously because the forensic investigation had focused on stolen Social Security numbers. "This is not about newly discovered stolen data," Paulino do Rego Barros Jr., Equifax's interim CEO, said in a statement. "It's about sifting through the previously identified stolen data, analyzing other information in our databases that was not taken by the attackers, and making connections that enabled us to identify additional individuals." Read more here.   REPORT FINDS RUSSIA USED SOCIAL MEDIA TO INFLUENCE ENERGY MARKETS: Russia used several American social media accounts in an attempt to disrupt U.S. energy markets, according to a House committee report released Thursday. The report from the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology concluded that Russia exploited social media platforms Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in an effort to influence the United States' domestic energy policies, sometimes taking conservative positions to stir up tensions. Looking at information provided to them by U.S. social media companies, the committee found that between 2015 and 2017 there were about 9,097 Russian posts or tweets about U.S. energy policy and events on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Read more here.   TWITTER PUTS OUT CALL FOR IDEAS TO IMPROVE HEALTH OF PLATFORM: Twitter is soliciting submissions for ideas to help the company create a measure of the "health" of conversations on its platform. In a post, the company said that it believes that having such metrics will help make Twitter better. "Twitter's health will be built and measured by how we help encourage more healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking; conversely, abuse, spam and manipulation will detract from it," it said in its call to action. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey elaborated on the goals of the new project in a Twitter thread. Read more here.   IBM CALLS ON LAWMAKERS TO CRACK DOWN ON INTERNET PLATFORMS: IBM is calling for lawmakers to crack down on internet platforms, arguing that companies like Google and Facebook face little regulation and enjoy broad legal immunity over what happens on their services. Christopher Padilla, IBM's vice president for government affairs, argued in a blog post on Thursday that internet companies need to be held in check by the government in the same way firms in other industries are. "Over the last year, it has become increasingly clear that something is out of balance in that equation," Padilla wrote. "Governments, advertisers, and even ordinary users are demanding that companies take more responsibility for the societal effects their services can have on children, on civic dialogue, on elections, or in facilitating criminal or terrorist activity. Read more here.   FACEBOOK DROPS NEWSFEED EXPERIMENT: Facebook is ending an experiment where it placed publisher's news content in a separate feed after criticism that it led to a rise in misinformation. "In surveys, people told us they were less satisfied with the posts they were seeing, and having two separate feeds didn't actually help them connect more with friends and family," said Adam Mosseri, the head of News Feed at Facebook, in a statement Thursday announcing the decision. "We also received feedback that we made it harder for people in the test countries to access important information, and that we didn't communicate the test clearly," he added. Read more here.   IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Op-ed: Do we really need a new constitutional amendment to protect privacy online? TechCrunch: Uber launches Uber Health, a ride-hailing platform for healthcare The Guardian: EU gives Facebook and Google three months to tackle extremist content The Wall Street Journal: Pushed from the U.S., they find hope in Mexico's 'Silicon Valley' Bloomberg: Google sued by ex-recruiter over alleged anti-white, Asian bias     Join The Hill on Wednesday, March 21, for Leadership in Action: The Hill's Newsmaker Series featuring Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Reps. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), and Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.). RSVP Here         Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up for Technology Newsletters     Forward Technology Newsletters       Privacy Policy  |  Manage Subscriptions  |  Unsubscribe  |  Email to a friend  |  Sign Up for Other Newsletters   The Hill 1625 K Street, NW 9th Floor, Washington DC 20006 ©2016 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.