Facebook announced Wednesday a policy requiring people and groups who buy ads promoting issues or political candidates to provide more information about who is responsible for paying for them.
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Facebook banned The Epoch Times from future advertising on its platform after reports showed the media outlet broke the company’s rules when it allegedly used sock puppet accounts to purchase pro-Trump ads.
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Facebook has released its report responding to accusations of bias against conservatives, however, it bears no resemblance to the similar audit it did for the Left reports the Media Research Center’s Corrine Weaver.
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Facebook’s critics were not persuaded after the company revealed its long-awaited audit Tuesday into whether the Silicon Valley giant is biased against conservatives.
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This past Thursday, Facebook suspended my personal account for three days after I shared a link to Rush Limbaugh’s website, where the nationally syndicated radio host commented on the new movie “The Hunt.”
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Facebook’s News Feed algorithm determines what users see on its platform – from funny memes to comments from friends. The company regularly updates this algorithm, which can dramatically change what information people consume.
As the 2020 election approaches, there is much public concern that what was dubbed “Russian meddling” in the 2016 presidential election could happen again. But what’s not getting enough attention is the role Facebook’s algorithm changes play, intentionally or not, in that kind of meddling.
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by Chris White Facebook spent several million dollars on lobbying efforts over the past few months as the Silicon Valley company’s algorithm changes continue to wallop small media outlets. The big tech company dropped more than $4 million during the second financial quarter, a record for Facebook up to this point, Washington Post writer Tony Romm noted in a tweet Tuesday. Google and Amazon came in second and third place, as they spent $2.9 million and $4 million, respectively. All three companies’ lobbying efforts come as Republican and Democratic lawmakers continue to scrutinize Facebook and Google’s death-grip on the tech industry. House Democrats opened a broad antitrust investigation in June into the tech industry’s power and impact on competition — Facebook in particular is taking heat as lawmakers believe the company is violating people’s privacy rights. President Donald Trump and other Republicans meanwhile argue big tech companies are unfairly censoring conservatives. Facebook, Google and Amazon’s spending carries on a trend. They dumped a combined $48 million into lobbying in 2018, up 13% from 2017, government disclosures from January show. Google was the biggest spender that year, increasing its lobbying contributions 18% to $21.2 million, while Facebook’s spending grew nearly…
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by Chris White Two of the country’s staunchest big tech critics are asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate social media companies’ perceived censorship practices. Facebook, Google and Twitter exercise lots of influence on Americans and they also use their tools to censor some content while amplifying others, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri wrote in a letter Monday to the FTC. They are asking the agency to open a public probe into the impact such policies have on people. “Companies that are this big and that have the potential to threaten democracy this much should not be allowed to curate content entirely without any transparency,” they wrote. “These companies can greatly influence democratic outcomes, yet they have not accountability to voters.” They added: “They are not even accountable to their own customers because nobody knows how theses companies curate content.” Cruz and Hawley are two of the biggest Republican critics of Google and Facebook, both of which are consistently accused of discriminating against conservative content. Hawley, for his part, introduced the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act in June that aims to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives online companies immunity only if they…
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by Rachael Brovard In a rare moment of bipartisanship last week, Democrats and Republicans joined hands to make a small, but fundamental change to our immigration system. Not to provide critically needed updates or wholesale reforms, but, rather, to toss a sop to the billionaires of Big Tech. Thanks to furious lobbying from Microsoft, Amazon, Hewlett Packard, Equifax, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, IBM, Cisco, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Eric Schmidt of Google’s group FWD.us, among others, the House this week passed H.R. 1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019. The bill, which was supported by 140 Republicans and 224 Democrats, removes the per-country cap for employment-based immigration visas. In other words, it makes it easier for the tech giants and billionaires of Silicon Valley to hire cheap foreign labor over highly skilled Americans. Current law requires that no country receive more than 7 percent of the employment-based green cards issued each year. This ensures that employment-based visas are limited to a global pool of talent in a wide variety of occupational sectors – and prevents one or two countries from dominating the distribution. The practical effect is that individuals from countries with high demand for…
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by Chris White Facebook recently changed its algorithms to steer focus away from explicitly political content, but now that alteration is laying waste to conservative and liberal outlets. Conservative pundit Deneen Borelli laid into Facebook last week, telling her followers on July 9 that the company’s bias against conservatives cost her a job. In fact, she is holding CEO Mark Zuckerberg chiefly responsible after BlazeTV cancelled her Facebook show, “Here’s the Deal.” “And Mark, I hold you responsible for the high-tech lynching of my job,” Borelli, a black conservative who gained a large following during her run, said in her final video on July 9, which received more than 374,000 views as of the posting of this article. Reports appear to show that Facebook’s algorithm shift is suppressing content across all platforms. A BlazeTV representative confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that her show was cancelled due to a lack of viewership. “My videos were not clickbait. I didn’t engage in over-the-top antics to get attention. I wasn’t shrill, and my videos were not challenged by a fact-check organization,” Borelli added. She told the DCNF she started seeing her content crater after she spoke at the Conservative Political Action…
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by Chris White Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is donating $1 million to the political arm of Planned Parenthood as the company wrestles with claims of a conservative bias. “I think this is a very urgent moment where the rights and the choices and the basic health of the most vulnerable women—the women who have been marginalized, often women of color—are at stake,” Sandberg told HuffPost on Friday. “And so all of us have to do our part to fight these draconian laws.” She said her decision was motivated in part by recent laws restricting abortion in Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri. Celebrities are also protesting Georgia’s “heartbeat bill,” which outlaws abortion after a child’s heartbeat is detected. “Planned Parenthood is going to fight back in the courts, in Congress, in the state houses, in the streets for women’s health and rights,” Sandberg said. “We all have to do everything we can to protect women.” She previously donated $1 million to the organization in 2017 amid reports that Republicans were planning on defunding the group. The Facebook executive was also a major supporter of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. Her decision comes after conservative…
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Facebook already rules daily communication for more than two billion people around the world. Now it wants its own currency, too. The social network unveiled an ambitious plan Tuesday to create a new digital currency similar to Bitcoin for global use, one that could drive more e-commerce on its services and boost ads on its platforms. But the effort, which Facebook is launching with partners including PayPal, Uber, Spotify, Visa and Mastercard, could also complicate matters for the beleaguered social network. Facebook is currently under federal investigation over its privacy practices, and along with other technology giants also faces a new antitrust probe in Congress. Creating its own globe-spanning currency — one that could conceivably threaten banks, national currencies and the privacy of users — isn’t likely to dampen regulators’ interest in Facebook. The digital currency, called Libra, is scheduled to launch sometime in the next six to 12 months. Facebook is taking the lead on building Libra and its underlying technology; its more than two dozen partners will help fund, build and govern the system. Facebook hopes to raise as much as $1 billion from existing and future partners to support the effort. Company officials emphasized Libra as…
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by Ned Ryu It’s time the American people woke up and understood what the big tech companies, many of which are now publishers and telecommunications companies masquerading as neutral platforms, are doing with their personal data. Respecting individual privacy is the most common concern you find in the media and elsewhere. But privacy is only part of the challenge before us—and a relatively small part at that. By feeding companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook untold amounts of personally identifiable data, Americans—specifically American workers—are helping sow the seeds of their own demise. Many people don’t take the time to consider what happens to their data when they give it away. Where does it go? With whom is it being shared? How is it being used to accelerate the growth of new technologies, including artificial intelligence and automation? The data being given freely to these tech companies and the amount of personally identifiable data being collected put the National Security Agency’s efforts to shame. Like it or not, all of this data isn’t being used simply to inform algorithms that help you make better movie selections or put funny cat videos into your Facebook feed or remind you that you’re…
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by Chris White The Department of Justice is preparing an antitrust probe against Google’s search engine and business model, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday night, citing people familiar with the issue. It would be the first such investigation since the Federal Trade Commission conducted a probe of Google but closed it in 2013 without taking action. The FTC and DOJ have discussed which agency would oversee a probe of the internet giant — the commission agreed to give DOJ officials jurisdiction, TheWSJ noted. The Trump administration is focusing its attention on Google’s business model related to the company’s search. Google and the DOJ have not responded to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Investigating Google was in some ways a long time in the making. Conservatives and liberals have become increasingly critical of big tech. Facebook was scrutinized after Russia used its platform to intervene in American politics. Lawmakers are also unsure about the companies assurances that they are careful handling private data. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for instance, proposed a bill in May that would essentially block tech companies from tracking people’s locations without direct…
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The State Department is now requiring nearly all applicants for U.S. visas to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers. It’s a vast expansion of the Trump administration’s enhanced screening of potential immigrants and visitors. In a move that’s just taken effect after approval of the revised application forms, the department says it has updated its immigrant and non-immigrant visa forms to request the additional information, including “social media identifiers,” from almost all U.S. applicants. The change, which was proposed in March 2018, is expected to affect about 15 million foreigners who apply for visas to enter the United States each year. “National security is our top priority when adjudicating visa applications, and every prospective traveler and immigrant to the United States undergoes extensive security screening,” the department said. “We are constantly working to find mechanisms to improve our screening processes to protect U.S. citizens, while supporting legitimate travel to the United States.” Extra scrutiny expanded Social media, email and phone number histories had only been sought in the past from applicants who were identified for extra scrutiny, such as people who’d traveled to areas controlled by terrorist organizations. An estimated 65,000 applicants per year…
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by Mary Margaret Olohan Facebook blocked Trump 2020 campaign advisory board member Jenna Ellis Rives from sharing a screenshot of a tweet by citing “hate speech,” but Rives believes this is a part of a deliberate attempt to censor conservative commentary until it is no longer timely. Rives took a screenshot of a tweet from conservative commentator Matt Walsh and attempted to post it to Facebook Wednesday night, captioning the photo only with an emoji. The tweet references several progressive viewpoints and implies that these viewpoints are incongruent with one another. “Gender is a social construct but I am woman hear me roar but anyone can be a woman but no uterus no opinion but transwomen are women but I demand women’s rights but men are women but men are scum but drag queens are beautiful but appropriation is evil,” Walsh’s Tuesday tweet reads. Gender is a social construct but I am woman hear me roar but anyone can be a woman but no uterus no opinion but transwomen are women but I demand women’s rights but men are women but men are scum but drag queens are beautiful but appropriation is evil — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 14,…
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by Robert Romano In John Stuart Mill’s magnum opus, On Liberty, which provides one of the most compelling defenses of free speech in human history, the philosopher warned how a tyranny of the majority could impose censorship that would be “more formidable” than even governmental censorship and that it could “enslav[e] the soul” with little room for escape. Mill wrote, “[W]hen society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.” Are we in danger of a social tyranny on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, where members of the community are being singled out and silenced because they hold unpopular…
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by Chris White Facebook is promoting Islamic State propaganda, a whistleblower alleges in a complaint Thursday to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The social media company is likely violating securities laws prohibiting companies from misleading shareholders and the public, according to a petition filed by the National Whistleblower Center (NWC). The complaint includes a study that shows Facebook used its auto-generating feature to produce videos that inadvertently help detail ISIS’s exploits throughout the year. One video begins the black flags of jihad and then cycles highlights of social media posts from a user calling himself “Abdel-Rahim Moussa, the Caliphate.” It then contains plaques of anti-Semitic verses, and a picture of men carrying more jihadi flags while they burn the American flag. One profile of an al-Qaeda affiliated group listed the users’ employer as Facebook. The video concludes with the salutation. “Thanks for being here, from Facebook,” the video concludes before flashing the company’s “thumbs up” image. Researchers monitored the Facebook pages of users in 2018 who affiliated themselves with groups the U.S. has designated as terrorist groups. Nearly 38 percent of the posts with symbols of extremist groups were removed, their research showed. Much of the banned content cited…
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by Chris White Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes thrashed CEO Mark Zuckerberg Thursday and called on the federal government to break up enormous sections of the massive social media company. “The most problematic aspect of Facebook’s power is Mark’s unilateral control over speech,” Hughes wrote in a New York Times editorial. The company is “far too big and far too powerful,” he explained, noting that Zuckerberg often used to talk about dominating other social media competitors. “There’s no precedent for his ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people,” Hughes wrote of his former college roommate, noting later: “Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American.” Hughes, who helped create Facebook’s now-famous News Feed, left the company in 2007 and sold all of his shares in 2012, a decision that netted him half a billion dollars. Hughes offered several controversial ideas to help break up the empire he helped build, such as requiring the Federal Trade Commission to reverse mergers with Instagram and WhatsApp, which he claims the agency “incorrectly approved.” He also wants Congress to create a new agency to regulate technology in addition to the FTC. “The agency should create guidelines for acceptable speech on…
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by George Rasley In a dystopian future envisioned by some of science fiction’s greatest authors, mankind is ruled not by elected leaders or by warlords who came to power through victory in battle. Instead, humans have become the virtual slaves of soulless totalitarian corporations that vie with each other for control of resources and populations. If you think that bizarre form of fascism is impossible or so unlikely to succeed that you don’t have to worry about it consider the following developments from the past few months. Facebook, the world’s largest social media “platform” has permanently banned a group of ostensibly conservative writers and thinkers it has labeled purveyors of “hate” and “dangerous individuals.” Among those banned are Alex Jones, host of InfoWars, its UK editor Paul Joseph Watson, ex-Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, former Republican congressional candidate Paul Nehlen, and independent journalist Laura Loomer. Keep in mind none of these individuals have killed anyone, threatened to kill someone or committed any crime of incitement or assault – it is their ideas, not their actions that are deemed to be “dangerous” by Facebook dictator Mark Zuckerberg. Not only are those individuals banned, but any reference to them or links to…
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by Chris White Conservatives are considering a slew of bold ideas to hold various social media companies accountable for nixing conservative-leaning content. Some analysts worry conservative activists’ mission to damage big tech sets a bad precedent. One of the best ways to ding Facebook is to make the company responsible for the content users post, according to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Other conservative thinkers believe depriving access to social media platforms is a type of civil rights abuse. Still others want to use anti-trust trust laws to punish Twitter. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri suggests that social media giants have discovered a way to benefit financially by short-circuiting people’s rational thinking. “The internal tensions of our goals seem irreconcilable. How do we preserve online data privacy for users of products whose very purpose is hyper-personalized service? Or how is it possible to keep the digital platform free of criminal activity without inserting their own political biases into the editorializing that they are doing?” Hawley said Thursday during a Hoover Institute discussion on big tech. “There is something deeply wrong with the social media economy. It is a source of peril. Users attention is bought and then…
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by Robert Romano Thanks to social media and big tech companies, finding content on the Internet that you want has never been easier. Want to find your friends and family online? Log onto Facebook. Want to see what opinion leaders or celebrities are up to? Check out Twitter. Want to find your favorite podcast? There’s Youtube or Apple. Want to go shopping or sell something? Amazon. Want to research something? Google it. It’s all there at your fingertips, and new and old media platforms have largely been net beneficiaries in the information age. Ideally, this has created a true marketplace of ideas and is most certainly the main attraction of the Internet — that is, so long as it remains a venue open to alternative perspectives. That is the upside. The downside comes once these companies have achieved dominant market positions and can decide to offer competitive advantages to one side of the debate over others, even on the margins. Silo viewpoints deemed undesirable to keep them inside of echo chambers. Shadowban users without them knowing it. Or, deplatform users with millions of followers with no avenue of appeal. It’s called censorship. And more and more, conservatives are complaining…
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The hugely popular social media site Facebook has banned Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and several others for hate speech. Facebook said Thursday that the individuals violated its policy against instigating violence. “Individuals and organizations who spread hate or attack or call for the exclusion of others on the basis of who they are have no place on Facebook … regardless of ideology,” a spokeswoman said. They are also barred from Facebook’s photo-sharing site, Instagram. Facebook did not say whether any specific posts from those named led to the ban. Jones is best known for theories claiming the government was behind the 9/11 terror attacks and that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut in 2012 was a hoax. He angrily responded to the ban, saying Facebook had “defamed” him. Another far-right commentator banned, Paul Joseph Watson, has been accused of racism and intense hatred of Muslims. He said he did not break any of Facebook’s rules and called on like-minded commentators to pressure the Trump administration to take action on their behalf. Farrakhan, the veteran leader of the black nationalist group Nation of Islam, has long been accused of anti-Semitism and black…
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Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it may have “unintentionally uploaded” email contacts of 1.5 million new users since May 2016, in what seems to be the latest privacy-related issue faced by the social media company. In March, Facebook had stopped offering email password verification as an option for people who signed up for the first time, the company said. There were cases in which email contacts of people were uploaded to Facebook when they created their account, the company said. “We estimate that up to 1.5 million people’s email contacts may have been uploaded. These contacts were not shared with anyone and we are deleting them,” Facebook told Reuters, adding that users whose contacts were imported will be notified. The underlying glitch has been fixed, according to the company statement. Business Insider had earlier reported that the social media company harvested email contacts of the users without their knowledge or consent when they opened their accounts. When an email password was entered, a message popped up saying it was “importing” contacts without asking for permission first, the report said. Facebook has been hit by a number of privacy-related issues recently, including a glitch that exposed passwords of millions of users…
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by Chris White Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will not be renominated to Facebook’s board of directors when the members meet in May for the company’s annual stockholder’s meeting, Facebook announced Friday night. The move comes less than three years after Hastings told fellow board member Peter Thiel that he intended to slam the PayPal co-founder’s performance review over his endorsement of President Donald Trump, who was in the heat of the 2016 campaign at the time. Hastings offered to resign in 2016 following his flare up with Thiel but CEO Mark Zuckerberg refused the offer. Facebook announced Friday the nomination of PayPal executive Peggy Alford to join the board. She will be the company’s first black woman to sit on Facebook’s board if elected. Erskine Bowles, president emeritus of University of North Carolina, will also not be renominated to Facebook’s board in May. “Peggy is one of those rare people who’s an expert across many different areas — from business management to finance operations to product development. I know she will have great ideas that help us address both the opportunities and challenges facing our company,” Zuckerberg said in a press statement announcing the decision. Reports in 2017 showed the degree of bad blood between the…
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“Its time for tech companies like Google and Facebook to start embracing the spirit of the First Amendment,” U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. The senator made the remarks during a hearing titled, “Stifling Free Speech: Technological Censorship and the Public Discourse.” Video of Blackburn’s remarks may be watched here. Blackburn called out media giants to use their power responsibly and to respect diverse viewpoints, particularly conservative voices. She tweeted, “Big Tech shouldn’t censor stories and posts in our newsfeeds. Let free speech flourish. My full questions at the @senjudiciary hearing on censorship:”. Big Tech shouldn't censor stories and posts in our newsfeeds. Let free speech flourish. My full questions at the @senjudiciary hearing on censorship: https://t.co/asy2FRD16S — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) April 10, 2019 Blackburn also on Wednesday introduced SB1116, the Balancing the Rights of Web Surfers Equally and Responsibly (BROWSER) Act, she said in a press release. The BROWSER Act requires communications and technology companies to provide users with clear and conspicuous notice of their privacy policies and the ability to opt-in to the collection of sensitive information and to opt-out of the collection of non-sensitive information. It also prohibits these companies…
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Two U.S. senators introduced a bill on Tuesday to ban online social media companies like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. from tricking consumers into giving up their personal data. The bill from Mark Warner, a Democrat, and Deb Fischer, a Republican, would also ban online platforms with more than 100 million monthly active users from designing addicting games or other websites for children under age 13. The bill takes aim at practices that online platforms use to mislead people into giving personal data to companies or otherwise trick them. The so-called “dark patterns” were developed using behavioral psychology. “Misleading prompts to just click the ‘OK’ button can often transfer your contacts, messages, browsing activity, photos, or location information without you even realizing it,” Fischer said in a statement issued by both senators. Restrictions on how social media companies collect information about users could hurt their ability to sell advertisements, a key source of profit. A website aimed at tracking dark patterns identifies behavior, such as a website or app showing that a user has new notifications when they do not. Warner said in an interview on CNBC that the legislation could be included in a federal privacy bill that lawmakers…
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by Chris White Google and Facebook executives were grilled Tuesday over their inability to govern white nationalism on their platforms, but they gave few answers about why their algorithms are dinging conservative content. Neil Potts, Facebook’s director of public policy, and Alexandria Walden, counsel for free expression and human rights at Google, spoke to the House Judiciary Committee alongside activists of the Anti-Defamation League, among other groups. House lawmakers asked the two executives about the effectiveness of their artificial intelligence. “That’s why hate speech and violent extremism have no place on YouTube,” Walden said during the House Judiciary Committee, noting what Google is doing to combat white nationalism on its platform. Walden and Potts also noted that their algorithms sometimes have a difficult time fleshing out the difference between legitimate forms of speech and language that is not permitted. “We don’t and we won’t always get it right, but we’ve improved significantly,” Potts added, referring to Facebook’s new stance on nixing white nationalism. He noted that the company is not prohibiting people from expressing their love for country and community, but it does not permit bigotry and hatred. Walden made similar comments. “Hate speech removals can be particularly complex…
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U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) on Monday called for a Federal Trade Commission investigation into online platforms over privacy concerns, data security and antitrust violations. Blackburn tweeted, “Today, @SenAmyKlobuchar and I urged the @FTC to hold tech companies like @Google and @Facebook accountable for securing their platforms. Tennesseans are rightly concerned about who owns their #VirtualYou.” Today, @SenAmyKlobuchar and I urged the @FTC to hold tech companies like @Google and @Facebook accountable for securing their platforms. Tennesseans are rightly concerned about who owns their #VirtualYou. pic.twitter.com/rQvvY0ZPce — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) April 8, 2019 The letter comes a few weeks after U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI-01), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, asked for the FTC to probe whether Facebook has violated antitrust laws, The Hill said. Blackburn said in a press release, “Tennesseans are rightly concerned about who owns their Virtual You. They want to be certain that their privacy is protected in both the physical and virtual space. The FTC has a responsibility to hold technology companies accountable for securing their platforms. My hope is that through this bipartisan effort we will shed light on the need to protect competition and online privacy to keep up…
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by Tim Pearce Ten international corporations contacted by The Daily Caller News Foundation got their start in the U.S. but stayed silent when asked if they saw themselves as “American” companies. Nine others responded to TheDCNF’s inquiry by either identifying with their American heritage, obscuring their loyalties or declining to comment altogether. TheDCNF wanted to gauge the commitment of international corporations with roots in the United States to keeping an “American” identity. TheDCNF did not define what an “American” company looks like or list out any principles or ideals that “American” companies are committed to, leaving each business to attach meaning to the name if one chose to stand by it. Representatives for Amazon, Apple, Chevron, General Electric and others did not respond to TheDCNF’s inquiry. A spokesman for the health care giant UnitedHealth Group asked for clarification of the question but never responded after clarification was given. The tech companies Google, Facebook and Twitter – all headquartered in California – are under distinct pressure to increase transparency and be upfront about their commitments, especially as it relates to censored content. Conservatives especially have taken issue with the tech giants’ policies, and U.S. politicians are wary of the companies’ operations in…
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by Jarrett Stepman Silicon Valley has enormous power over the flow of information that reaches people around the globe. That’s why it’s vital for Americans to understand how tech giants can manipulate information, either intentionally or unwittingly, to advance a political agenda. Now, 34 conservative leaders are banding together to call for tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google to “cut ties” with the Southern Poverty Law Center. The letter states in part, “It is now clear that the SPLC has proven to be a hate-filled, anti-Christian, anti-conservative organization and nothing more than a weapon of the radical Left, whose goal is to bully people into compliance with their ideology.” [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] As we’ve discussed on previous episodes of “Media Misses,” the SPLC is a far-left civil rights organization that has made wild claims about conservative organizations over the years, lumping them in with hate groups like neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. It has come under scrutiny after its founder, Morris Dees, resigned over accusations of discrimination and improper behavior. The issue has garnered the attention of those in Congress as…
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Reuters Facebook is lifting the lid on the algorithm that decides which posts appear in its news feed, as part of a drive to be more transparent and offer greater control to users. The feature “Why am I seeing this post?”, being rolled out from Monday, offers some insight into the tens of thousands of inputs used by the social network to rank stories, photos and video in the news feed, the foundation of the platform. “The basic thing that this tool does is let people see why they are seeing a particular post in their news feed, and it helps them access the actions they might want to take if they want to change that,” Facebook’s Head of News Feed John Hegeman told reporters on Monday. After a series of privacy scandals, Facebook needs to regain users’ trust as it prepares to roll out a single messaging service combining Facebook messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram that could make it even more central to users’ communications. The new news feed feature will show users the data that connect them to a particular type of post, Hegeman said, for example that they are friends with the poster and they’ve liked their…
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Facebook was charged with discrimination by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because of its ad-targeting system. HUD said Thursday Facebook is allowing advertisers to exclude people based on their neighborhood by drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map and giving advertisers the option of showing ads only to men or only to women. The agency also claims Facebook allowed advertisers to exclude people that the social media company classified as parents; non-American-born; non-Christian; interested in accessibility; interested in Hispanic culture or a wide variety of other interests that closely align with the Fair Housing Act’s protected classes. HUD, which is pursuing civil charges and potential monetary awards that could run into the millions, said Facebook’s ad platform is “encouraging, enabling, and causing housing discrimination” because it allows advertisers to exclude people who they don’t want to see their ads. The claim from HUD comes less than a week after Facebook said it would overhaul its ad-targeting systems to prevent discrimination in housing, credit and employment ads as part of a legal settlement with a group that includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Fair Housing Alliance and others. The technology at the heart…
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by Chris White President Donald Trump indicated on Twitter Tuesday that his administration is looking into reports that Facebook censored his social media campaign director. “I will be looking into this!” Trump said before adding the hashtag: #StopTheBias. The president was likely referring to media reports showing that White House social media director Dan Scavino Jr. was temporarily blocked from making public Facebook comments on Monday evening. I will be looking into this! #StopTheBias https://t.co/ZTWQolvmdM — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2019 Trump linked to a tweet from Washington Examiner columnist Paul Bedard that detailed the events that led up to Scavaino being temporarily blocked from the platform. Scavino posted a screenshot of the ban with the caption, “Dear Facebook— AMAZING. WHY ARE YOU STOPPING ME from replying to comments followers have left me – on my own Facebook Page!!?? People have the right to know. Why are you silencing me??? Please LMK! Thanks.” Facebook’s warning to Scavino noted that “some of your comments have been reported as spam,” and that “to avoid getting blocked again,” he should “make sure your posts are in line with the Facebook Community Standards.” The message does not specify which comments were…
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Two parents with children attending Williamson County Schools have created a Facebook page to help parents organize and get more information about what is going on within Williamson County Schools. Some parents say school system officials keep them in the dark. This, a week after The Tennessee Star revealed teachers in the school system had to watch “Cultural Competency” videos preaching “white privilege.” The Facebook page, WCS TN Parents Want Facts, went live Thursday night. The group’s two creators, Stefanie Miles and Karrie Marren, told The Star Friday they want to make the page a place for transparency — and not a place for political arguments. “We couldn’t find any kind of group of organized and concerned parents,” Miles said. “It sounded like a lot of people had concern, but I didn’t know where to go to talk with other parents and there didn’t seem to be any kind of organization in that regard, so I thought, ‘Well, let’s just start a page and see if we can start some conversations, just to find out facts.’” Miles said issues of “white privilege” and diversity and culture are important — but she also said “those are discussions for the home.” Miles…
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Mark Zuckerberg’s abrupt Wednesday declaration of a new ‘privacy vision’ for social networking was for many people a sort of Rorschach test. Looked at one way, the manifesto read as an apology of sorts for Facebook’s history of privacy transgressions, and it suggested that the social network would de-emphasize its huge public social network in favor of private messaging between individuals and among small groups. Looked at another way, it turned Facebook into a kind of privacy champion by embracing encrypted messaging that’s shielded from prying eyes – including those of Facebook itself. Yet another reading suggested the whole thing was a public relations exercise designed to lull its users while Facebook entrenches its competitive position in messaging and uses it to develop new sources of user data to feed its voracious advertising machine. As with many things Facebook, the truth lies somewhere in between. Facebook so far isn’t elaborating much on Zuckerberg’s manifesto. Here’s a guide to what is known at the moment about its plans. What’s happening to Facebook? In one sense, nothing. Its existing social network, with its news feeds and pages and 2.3 billion global users and $22 billion in 2018 profit, won’t change and will…
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by Chris White Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a plan Friday to wallop big tech companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon as the Massachusetts Democrat works to differentiate herself among fellow presidential candidates. Her proposal would impose new rules on tech companies with $25 billion or more in annual ad revenue, forcing Amazon and Google to dramatically reduce their hold on online commerce. The plan would also aim to curtail mergers between companies like Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. “Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation,” Warren wrote in a blog post Friday. She announced her bid to run against President Donald Trump in February. She added: “That’s why my Administration will make big, structural changes to the tech sector to promote more competition—including breaking up Amazon, Facebook, and Google.” Warren is expected to promote the idea Friday evening in Long Island City, New York, where Amazon was planning to build a monster campus before the online…
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by Grace Carr Political commentator and writer Gavin McInnes filed a Monday lawsuit against a group dedicated to combating intolerance, alleging that its actions have contributed to his loss of employment and slandering on social media. McInnes sued the U.S. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for its label of the Proud Boys as a hate group. The Proud Boys is made up of “western chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world,” according to its website. SPLC lists the Proud Boys’ ideology as “general hate,” describing the group as a white nationalist organization known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric. McInnes equates the description with defamation. He is a Vice Media co-founder and founded the Proud Boys in 2016. The Proud Boys allows and has members from multiple races. SPLC “combats hate, intolerance, and discrimination through education and litigation,” according to its Twitter handle. It was founded in 1971. McInnes filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Reuters reported. “They [SPLC] have harassed me, my family, and my friends to a level of tortious interference that goes well into sabotage,” McInnes said in a statement, according to Reuters. “I am doing…
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Apple says Facebook can no longer distribute an app that paid users, including teenagers, to extensively track their phone and web use. In doing so, Apple closed off Facebook’s efforts to sidestep Apple’s app store and its tighter rules on privacy. The tech blog TechCrunch reported late Tuesday that Facebook paid people about $20 a month to install and use the Facebook Research app. While Facebook says this was done with permission, the company has a history of defining “permission” loosely and obscuring what data it collects. “I don’t think they make it very clear to users precisely what level of access they were granting when they gave permission,” mobile app security researcher Will Strafach said Wednesday. “There is simply no way the users understood this.” He said Facebook’s claim that users understood the scope of data collection was “muddying the waters.” Facebook says fewer than five percent of the app’s users were teens and they had parental permission. Nonetheless, the revelation is yet another blemish on Facebook’s track record on privacy and could invite further regulatory scrutiny. And it comes less than a week after court documents revealed that Facebook allowed children to rack up huge bills on digital…
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by Peter Hasson Snopes, a left-leaning fact-checking website given preferential treatment by both Facebook and Google, flubbed its fact-check of American Indian activist Nathan Phillips’ false claim of being a Vietnam veteran. Phillips shot to national attention after a viral confrontation between him and a group of high school boys from Covington Catholic high school. Phillips, with the help of credulous national media outlets, said the boys mobbed and racially harassed him as he tried to leave the Indigenous People’s March. Video evidence debunked Phillips’s account. In addition to botching the details of the confrontation, media outlets also inaccurately reported that Phillips is a Vietnam veteran. Phillips described himself in interviews as a “Vietnam-times veteran” and groups affiliated with him told The New York Times that he fought in Vietnam. Phillips explicitly claimed in a 2018 Facebook video that he was a Vietnam veteran who served “in theater.” Military records show that Phillips never deployed to Vietnam, though his military service did include a long stint as a refrigerator technician. Snopes’s fact-check incorrectly labeled it “unproven” that Phillips had falsely claimed to be a Vietnam veteran. Snopes declined to change its misleading ruling despite definitive video evidence of Phillips doing exactly that. Both Facebook and Google give Snopes preferential treatment on their platforms, though…
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by Michelle Quinn Silicon Valley has enjoyed years of popularity and growing markets. But 2018 has been rocky for the industry. Data breaches, controversies over offensive speech and misinformation — as well as reports of foreign operatives’ use of their services — have left many people skeptical about the benefits of social media, experts say. Worries about social media in Congress meant tech executives had to testify before committees several times this year. “2018 has been a challenging year for tech companies and consumers alike,” said Pantas Sutardja, chief executive of LatticeWork Inc., a data storage firm. “Company CEOs being called to Congress for hearings and promising profusely to fix the problems of data breach but still cannot do it.” An apology tour Facebook drew the most scrutiny. The social networking giant endured criticism after revelations that its lax oversight allowed a political consulting firm to exploit millions of its users’ data. In the spring, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, went on what was dubbed “an apology tour” to tell users that the company would do a better job of protecting their data. The California firm faced other problems when data breaches at the site compromised user information. Other…
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by Chris White Facebook’s secretive rulebook regulating how employees censor certain forms of expression contains numerous biases and outright errors, according to internal documents The New York Times obtained Friday. The nearly 1,400-page document shows the Silicon Valley company’s guidebook is riddled with mistakes and is not nimble enough to handle cultural nuance, the report notes. The guidelines censor mainstream speech in one country while allowing extremist language to fester in others. Several dozen Facebook employees gather every other Tuesday to brainstorm rules that flesh out what people can and cannot say while navigating the platform, according to TheNYT. The guidelines that are agreed upon are then sent out to 7,500-plus moderators around the world. The Facebook employees, many of whom are young, attempt to distill complex issues into concrete yes-or-no categories. Much of the post-by-post moderation is outsourced to companies that enlist unskilled workers, the report states, citing documents from an employee who worried the rule book is too intrusive. Moderators often use Google Translator for the mind-numbing work. They must recall countless rules and apply them to the hundreds of posts a day, with the cultural context largely stripped. They suss through emojis, smiley faces and sometimes innocuous…
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by Tho Bishop As tech executives continue to be grilled in front of Congress, the growing Bernie Sanders-wing of the Democratic Party is preparing to push its misnamed “Medicare for All” into the political mainstream after its political gains in the midterms. While these two stories seem to have very little in common, it’s not difficult to imagine a not-so-distant future where the two are dangerously connected. After all, so long as the scope of government grows, the continued politicization of all aspect of life will follow – the inevitable consequences of which could be quite horrific. The State’s Shadow over Silicon Valley First let’s consider some of the overlooked causes behind the increased censorship from Silicon Valley. While Republican politicians relish in collecting cheap soundbites railing against the censorship practices of widely despised tech executives, few are willing to point out the obvious influence of government in Big Tech’s growing hostility to free speech. For example, just recently Facebook announced it was following the lead of Tumblr by cracking down on “sexualized content” on its platform. While both decisions were widely ridiculed by users and pundits alike, largely ignored was the role that recent Congressional laws aimed at…
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by Ryan McMaken The Creepy Line, a new documentary by director M.A. Taylor, is now streaming at Amazon Prime. It provides an interesting and revealing look at how Google and Facebook influence their users’ view of the world, and how the users we often presume to be the customers of these companies aren’t really the customers. The users are, in fact, the product being sold to third parties. The Creepy Line takes its title from a description of Google once uttered by Google executive Eric Schmidt who said Google’s mission was to “get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” In truth, though, by pioneering the “surveillance business model,” Google has arguably been stepping over “the creepy line” for years. Not that this has been much of a problem for the company. Few users seem motivated to stop using Google products. It is perhaps in its basic explanations of how this surveillance model works that The Creepy Line is most interesting: the filmmakers explain in simple terms how a small number of companies have come to compile extensive data profiles of many hundreds of millions of human beings, and how that user data is the real…
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by Ned Ryun It’s time for all of us to admit that Alphabet, Inc. is the 21st century equivalent of Ma Bell: it is an almost all-controlling monopoly that restricts consumer choice in order to maximize profit for the company. We all know what Ronald Reagan did to AT&T. He broke up that monopoly so Americans could have real choices and the free market could actually work. So it’s time for the Trump Administration to break up the Alphabet, Inc. monopoly. But unlike the Ma Bell monopoly, Alphabet, Inc.’s monopoly—which includes the search-engine behemoth Google—isn’t just about greater competition and more choices for the American people. It’s about so much more: free political discourse and our privacy rights as citizens. Last week in Washington D.C., the House called in Google CEO Sundar Pichai to question him about the bias against conservatives at his company, but also about data privacy and Google’s plans for working with China. Every last one of those issues should trouble every last American. The mainstream media, as the mindless propagandists of the deep state and Democratic Party, are still trying to maintain the miserable hoax of Russian collusion to cover up their own misdeeds and…
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by Chris White Google CEO Sundar Pichai appeared to catch Democratic lawmakers off guard Tuesday after disclosing in a congressional hearing the paltry amount of money Russia spent on ads on the 2016 election. Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler asked Pichai about the extent to which Russia used Google to interject itself in that year’s presidential election. Pichai’s answer seemed to genuinely surprise the New York Democrat. “We undertook a very thorough investigation, and in 2016, we now know of two main Russian accounts linked to Russia which advertised on Google for about $4,700 in advertising,” Pichai said. Nadler then asked him to repeat the number one more time. Facebook came under similar scrutiny in 2017, when the Silicon Valley company admitted to congressional investigators to selling political ads to a suspicious Russian outlet in 2016. Most of the ads did not focus on then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and the ad sales cost roughly $100,000. Instead, the ads touched on hot-button issues, like race, gun rights, gay rights and immigration. Meanwhile, Twitter told lawmakers it found about 200 Russian-linked accounts based on what Facebook had identified. Twitter sold more than $274,000 worth of ads to the news outlet RT, a…
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by Peter Hasson Snopes, a left-leaning fact-checking website given preferential treatment by Facebook and Google, botched its fact-check of a viral meme that was mocked within political circles for spreading false information. The meme showed a picture of President Donald Trump with Republican lawmakers and members of his administration following the House’s vote to repeal Obamacare in 2017. Thirty-three people in the photo Snopes used had a red X over their face, though it cropped out a 34th person included in others. The caption accurately claimed the photo was taken at the White House following the House’s Obamacare vote, then falsely claimed that “Everyone with an X has since been voted out of Congress.” https://twitter.com/JoePerticone/status/1063927192822915072 DeSantis ran for gov. Tom Price went into the Cabinet. Steve Pearce didnt run for the House This is quite literally insane fake news. — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 18, 2018 Amazing. This photo illustration — posted by @nicholaskitchel — is actually more incorrect than correct. — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 18, 2018 Or to be clear, it’s just flat out inaccurate. https://t.co/NH7xiCbbHq — Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) November 17, 2018 Politico reporter Jake Sherman observed that the meme “is actually more incorrect than correct.”…
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Facebook Inc let some companies, including Netflix and Airbnb, access users’ lists of friends after it cut off that data for most other apps around 2015, according to documents released on Wednesday by a British lawmaker investigating fake news and social media. The 223 pages of internal communication from 2012 to 2015 between high-level employees, including founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, provide new evidence of previously aired contentions that Facebook has picked favorites and engaged in anti-competitive behavior. The documents show that Facebook tracked growth of competitors and denied them access to user data available to others. In 2014, the company identified about 100 apps as being either “Mark’s friends” or “Sheryl’s friends” and also tracked how many apps were spending money on Facebook ads, according to the documents, referring to Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. The insight into the thinking of Facebook executives over that period could invite new regulatory scrutiny into its business practices. Facebook said it stood by its deliberations and decisions, but noted that it would relax one “out-of-date” policy that restricted competitors’ use of its data. One document said such competitor apps had previously needed Zuckerberg’s approval before using tools Facebook makes…
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by Zachary Loeb Amazon may have been expecting lots of public attention when it announced where it would establish its new headquarters – but like many technology companies recently, it probably didn’t anticipate how negative the response would be. In Amazon’s chosen territories of New York and Virginia, local politicians balked at taxpayer-funded enticements promised to the company. Journalists across the political spectrum panned the deals – and social media filled up with the voices of New Yorkers and Virginians pledging resistance. Similarly, revelations that Facebook exploited anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to undermine its critics’ legitimacy indicate that instead of changing, Facebook would rather go on the offensive. Even as Amazon and Apple saw their stock-market values briefly top US$1 trillion, technology executives were dragged before Congress, struggled to coherently take a stance on hate speech, got caught covering up sexual misconduct and saw their own employees protesting business deals. In some circles this is being seen as a loss of public trust in the technology firms that promised to remake the world – socially, environmentally and politically – or at least as frustration with the way these companies have changed the world. But the technology companies need to do…
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by Michelle Quinn Facebook says it is getting better at proactively removing hate speech and changing the incentives that result in the most sensational and provocative content becoming the most popular on the site. The company has done so, it says, by ramping up its operations so that computers can review and make quick decisions on large amounts of content with thousands of reviewers making more nuanced decisions. In the future, if a person disagrees with Facebook’s decision, he or she will be able to appeal to an independent review board. Facebook “shouldn’t be making so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a call with reporters Thursday. But as Zuckerberg detailed what the company has accomplished in recent months to crack down on spam, hate speech and violent content, he also acknowledged that Facebook has far to go. “There are issues you never fix,” he said. “There’s going to be ongoing content issues.” Company’s actions In the call, Zuckerberg addressed a recent story in The New York Times that detailed how the company fought back during some of its biggest controversies over the past two years, such as…
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