July 22, 2019
Social Media: SEC Wants Better Monitoring Tools
Following the lead of other federal law enforcement agencies, the SEC is looking to increase its capabilities when it comes to monitoring social media platforms. Here’s an excerpt from this GCN article:
The Securities and Exchange Commission also issued a sources sought notice for a commercial, off-the-shelf social media monitoring subscription to help it track emerging risk areas and activities of market participants to identify potential securities law violations.
Less interested in Twitter than the FBI, the SEC wants the ability to monitor Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit as well as public forums, blogs and message boards. It also requests sentiment analysis capabilities and the ability to identify bot accounts and fake user accounts. Data should be available through an application programming interface as well as through a browser.
I don’t know if anybody in SEC procurement is reading this, but I’ve got an idea that will save the taxpayers a lot of money. If you’re interested in “sentiment analysis capabilities,” don’t bother buying some crappy software license – just click on any random “Me on Facebook v. Me on Twitter” meme. It will tell you everything you need to know. You can Venmo me my reward money along with the thanks of a grateful nation.
Tomorrow’s Webcast: “Company Buybacks – Best Practices”
Tune in tomorrow for the webcast – “Company Buybacks: Best Practices” – to hear Skadden’s Josh LaGrange, Hunton Andrews Kurth’s Scott Kimpel, Simpson Thacher’s Lee Meyerson and Foley & Lardner’s Pat Quick provide practical guidance about how to conduct a stock repurchase program, including analysis of whether it’s the best use of funds.
Transcript: “Navigating Corp Fin’s Comment Process”
We have posted the transcript for the webcast – “Navigating Corp Fin’s Comment Process.”
– John Jenkins