Facebook has followed through on its threat to ban Australians from seeing or posting news content on its site in response to the federal government’s news media code.
The tech giant’s Australian and New Zealand managing director Will Easton said that it would prevent links posted from Australian publishers, while all Australian users would not be able to share or see content from any news outlets both Australian or internationally as a result of the ban.
Its hypocritical attempts to clamp down on ‘misinformation’ are ultimately self-defeating
What do you do when your sources of information get corrupted? That is one of today’s great questions, as UnHerd discovered this week. On Wednesday, Facebook censored an article on these pages which was critical of the World Health Organisation, labelling it as “misinformation”. It was not UnHerd’s first run-in with the online censors, but it is perhaps the most baffling.
It looks like something plucked straight out of another age, a foreign culture where freedom of expression is always subject to a censor’s whims. Not only is it labelled ‘False Information’ but the accompanying image is greyed out, a design no doubt honed by the ‘user response experts’ at Facebook to dissuade users from clicking on it.
But this is the UK in 2021 and the post is an UnHerd article from yesterday that has now been labelled as misinformation by Facebook.
Suing technology firms when they mess up is already hard, especially when it’s over privacy violations. Now, Facebook, Google, and the trade groups representing all the big tech firms are asking the Supreme Court to make it even harder for class actions to pursue cases against them.
Facebook, Google, and all the others submitted a filing (PDF) to the Supreme Court this week essentially arguing that if you cannot prove the specific extent to which their screwup injured you, you should not have any grounds to be part of a lawsuit against them.
Facebook is planning on reducing the amount of political content Canadian users will be subjected to on its platform in response to recent unrest in the US and pressure from international governments to regulate social media.
Gee, I wonder who and what will be regulated?
The coordinated Big Tech deplatforming of Parler is looking more and more suspect. Last month, I reviewed every arrest report the DOJ had made available at that time, and the overwhelming number of social media posts cited in these reports were those posted on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. There was barely any mention of Parler.
Of the 223 government documents discussing charges against individuals who were involved in the Capitol riot, 73 mentioned Facebook. Parler, meanwhile, was only mentioned eight times.
I thought they said Trump incited it.
The owner of a small digital photo gallery has had pictures of wildlife, landscapes and buildings blocked by Facebook for supposedly containing “overtly sexual” content.
Examples include a photo of the England cricket team in a huddle and one of a cow standing in a field.
The blocks happen when Mike Hall tries to use the images as Facebook ads.
The investigative journalism group Project Veritas recently published a series of videos from an insider at tech giant Facebook which features top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, discussing the company’s plans and agendas.
Leaked video obtained by Project Veritas shows the founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, claiming that left-wing rioters who burned down multiple quarters of American cities last summer were somehow treated less leniently than the Capitol Hill rioters of January 6.
A trove of documents released by the Department of Justice reveal that their investigations leading to arrests in the Capitol riot focused almost entirely on big tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with little to no mentions of Parler. A stunning (to some) revelation that exposes the Left’s claim that Parler was uniquely responsible, and completely destroys big tech’s excuse for their deplatforming.
The head of public policy for Facebook Canada says it’s no longer sustainable for social media companies to self-police questionable content.
Kevin Chan told a House of Commons committee Friday that’s why his company would welcome regulations that could govern what can’t be posted.
OTTAWA – The minister and top bureaucrats responsible for Canadian Heritage say there was nothing wrong with how Facebook Canada’s head of public policy reached out to an official at the department — which is co-leading efforts to regulate Internet giants — to share a job posting for a policy worker.
“We came to a conclusion that sharing publicly available information is not a reprehensible act. I would also add that we are taking at heart issues regarding values and ethics… and I am very confident that my staff are meeting the highest standard with respect to conflict of interest and values and ethics,” Canadian Heritage Deputy Minister Hélène Laurendeau told members of the Heritage committee Friday.
Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook is working on new ways so that the political news is less visible to the people and the company is soon going to make changes in users’ news feed to make all this happen.
Facebook says it would welcome increased regulation by the Canadian government, including rules for what kind of content should — or should not — be allowed on social media platforms.
In an interview with CBC News, Kevin Chan, global director and head of public policy for Facebook Canada, said Parliament should make clear what kinds of content aren’t allowed.
“On this question of content regulation, we think that having platforms make decisions about all these things and in an uncoordinated fashion with different platforms having different postures, we think that’s not sustainable,” he explained. “So we think that public rules by Parliament would help clarify these things and obviously apply across the internet.”
Oh Lord.
