Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and his counterpart at Google, CEO Sundar Pichai, secretly struck a deal in 2018 to carve up the digital advertising market between the two tech giants, according to newly revealed allegations from top state law-enforcement officials.
Facebook has suspended the page of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), an action that came fast on the heels of Twitter permanently banning the Republican congresswoman’s account.
Mark Zuckerberg urged his employees not to apologize for Facebook’s ills as staffers called lawmakers in Washington, DC, in an effort to discredit whistleblower Frances Haugen, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
In an effort to stop Democrats and Republicans from uniting in opposition to Facebook, which recently changed its name to Meta, the company’s Washington team reached out to Republicans and claimed that Haugen was a Democratic activist who wanted to boost President Biden’s party, according to the Journal.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby announced a new “extremism” policy being rolled out by the Pentagon under President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that the Department of Defense says provides “increased clarity” on what amounts to “extremist activities” or “prohibited activity” by service members.
Photos of beheadings, extremist propaganda and violent hate speech related to Islamic State and the Taliban were shared for months within Facebook groups over the past year despite the social networking giant’s claims it had increased efforts to remove such content.
The posts — some tagged as “insightful” and “engaging” via new Facebook tools to promote community interactions — championed the Islamic extremists’ violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, including videos of suicide bombings and calls to attack rivals across the region and in the West, according to a review of social media activity between April and December. At least one of the groups contained more than 100,000 members.
This is hilarious. BCF’s fan page constantly has photos hidden by FB because they may upset “community members.”
After a long discussion about how there are posts and/or comments on Facebook that were racist or expressed bigotry toward minorities and those hosting non-heterosexual biases, the Post article noted that there was an issue because most of the hate speech caught by Facebook’s algorithms caught anti-white or anti-male hate speech.
Facebook employees urged executives to exclude criticism directed towards white people and men from the company’s hate speech policies, according to internal documents reported on by The Washington Post.
Facebook researchers tried to change the company’s content moderation algorithms that automatically delete hate speech, because they viewed the algorithms as inadequately protecting minority users, The Washington Post reported, citing internal memos and research. The effort came following a document from April 2020 which showed that around 90% of hate speech algorithms were detecting and removing content directed towards white people and men.
… Score a win for privacy, now that Facebook will delete its digital trove of facial recognition data of people who might not even be Facebook users, right?
Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Facebook, announced the changes in a blog post Tuesday, citing the technology’s possible negative effects as well as regulatory uncertainty as reasons behind the decision.
Ten publishers are responsible for 69% of digital climate change denial content on Facebook, a new study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has found. The outlets, which the report labels the “toxic ten”, include several conservative websites in the US, as well as Russian state media.
BCF didn’t make the list. Sorry. We’ll try harder.
The extent to which corporate media rigs elections for Democrats has been rigorously documented since at least Tim Groseclose’s 2012 book, “Left Turn.” In that book, the political scientist concluded through data-driven analysis that media bias on average shifts the electorate 20 points to the left on a 100-point political worldview scale. Without media bias, he argued, the average American state would be as Republican-leaning as Texas or Kentucky, and those two states would be even more conservative.
Americans are aware Big Tech has been censoring, shadow banning, and/or de-platforming people for years. These social media sites regularly suppress information they don’t like, and outright ban those with views that are antithetical to their ideology.
The argument from the political right and the left is basically that Congress should regulate these entities. Conservatives say more content should be allowed; Liberals say there should be much less.
Regardless of any potential congressional regulations, you know Big Tech is shutting down your voice, but what you may not know is that Big Tech may also be shutting down your vote.
The announcement by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the social media giant will change the name of its holding company to Meta in a virtual-reality rebrand has prompted dismay and bemusement.
On Thursday, Zuckerberg said Meta would encompass Facebook as well as apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp and the virtual reality brand Oculus.
“Announcing Meta — the Facebook company’s new name,” the tech giant said in a tweet. “Meta is helping to build the metaverse, a place where we’ll play and connect in 3D. Welcome to the next chapter of social connection.”
Meta refers to the ‘metaverse,’ which is the company’s new venture into shared augmented reality and virtual world environments for working and playing that people can access via the internet.
