Social Media

Group Accuses X Of Selling Checkmarks To Terrorists

Ars Technica reports: A watchdog group’s investigation found that terrorist group Hezbollah and other US-sanctioned entities have accounts with paid checkmarks on X, the Elon Musk-owned social network that still resides at the twitter.com domain. The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit that is critical of Big Tech companies, said in a report today that “X, the platform formerly known …

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DeSantis Likely To Veto Social Media Ban For Minors

Florida Politics reports: Florida’s Governor is again throwing cold water on a legislative proposal to ban youth social media use because he doesn’t know if the “expansion beyond the current federal law” would hold up in court. “I think that I’m not going to be supporting if I don’t think it’s going to be something that’s going to pass legal …

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Biden Campaign Launches TikTok Account [Video]

CNBC reports: President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign launched an official TikTok account Sunday evening. The account is noteworthy because TikTok is currently banned on most U.S. government-issued devices. The TikTok account, with the handle ”@bidenhq,” debuted Sunday during Lunar New Year celebrations in China and Super Bowl 58 in the U.S. In late 2022, Biden signed legislation that barred most …

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Judge Orders Musk To Testify In SEC’s Twitter Probe

Reuters reports: A federal judge ordered Elon Musk to testify again in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s probe of his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, giving the regulator and the billionaire a week to agree on a date and location for the interview. Judge Laurel Beeler’s order, issued on Saturday night, formalized a tentative ruling she made in December …

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Meta Platforms To Stop Promoting Political Content

Variety reports: In a blog post Friday, Instagram, the popular photo and video app owned by Meta, said it will no longer “proactively recommend” political content from accounts that users do not already follow. The same policy applies to Threads, the Twitter-copycat app launched last summer under the Instagram brand. “We want Instagram and Threads to be a great experience …

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Rubio: Courts Will Ax FL’s Social Media Ban For Minors

Florida Politics reports: Legislation that passed the Florida House and is now moving through the Senate that would ban Floridians under the age of 16 from having social media accounts is drawing doubts from Florida’s senior Senator. Marco Rubio said he thinks courts would strike it down. His “only concern about it would be that social media is not a …

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Florida’s Social Media Ban For Minors Nears Finish Line

Florida Politics reports: Legislation barring most children in Florida from social media advanced in the Florida Senate. But it still contains no exceptions for children logging on with parental consent, something Gov. Ron DeSantis has questioned. Sen. Erin Grall, a Fort Pierce Republican, said Big Tech’s current practices pose too great a threat against children to ignore. “If we as …

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Meta Board Wants Stronger Rules Against Fake Videos

The Guardian reports: Meta’s oversight board has found that a Facebook video wrongfully suggesting that the US president, Joe Biden, is a paedophile does not violate the company’s current rules while deeming those rules “incoherent” and too narrowly focused on AI-generated content. The board, which is funded by Meta – Facebook’s parent company – but run independently, took on the …

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WSJ: Musk Execs Are Pressured To Do Drugs With Him

The Insider reports: Elon Musk has created a culture of peer pressure among his friends and business associates that encourages them to use drugs with him, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal that details how board members and directors of his various companies either participate in or enable his substance use to stay close to the …

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Meta To Investors: Zuckerberg’s Hobbies Could Kill Him

The New York Post reports: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s love of “high-risk activities” pose a “risk of serious injury and death,” the company warned investors in its latest Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The warning was included for the first time under “risk factors” in Meta’s 10-K filing — a comprehensive report on the tech behemoth’s activities throughout 2023 — …

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Zuckerberg Apologizes To Families Harmed By Meta

The Guardian reports: Following an intense line of questioning with Mark Zuckerberg, Republican senator Josh Hawley asked the Meta executive if he would like to apologize to families of victims who are sitting in the audience of today’s Senate hearing, many of whom hold photos of children they say died or were harmed due to his platform. Zuckerberg stood up …

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Graham Tells Social Media CEOs They Have “Blood On Their Hands” In Senate Hearing On Online Child Abuse

The Independent reports: At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on social media safety, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told major tech CEOS they have “blood on their hands.” “Mr Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands, you have a product that’s killing people,” …

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X Says It Will Hire 100 Child Abuse Content Moderators

Reuters reports: Social media company X is in the process of hiring 100 content moderators for a new office in Austin, Texas that will focus on fighting child abuse content, a goal it hopes to complete by the end of the year, an X executive said on Saturday. The Elon Musk-owned company announced the new “Trust and Safety center of …

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NYT: Musk Spreads Election Lies Without Restraint

The New York Times reports: In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims. “Get the facts about mail-in voting,” a content label read. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter …

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REPORT: Musk To Tour Auschwitz Concentration Camp

NBC News reports: Tech and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who caused an uproar in November by endorsing a bogus Jewish conspiracy theory on his social media site, X, is expected to head to Poland on Monday to take part in a panel on online antisemitism and will tour the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz. Vile anti-Jewish posts have continued to …

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Musk Shares Porn-Ish Image In Praise Of Javier Milei

The Insider reports: The Tesla CEO used his AI chatbot, Grok, to take his annual shot at the gathering of business and political leaders in the World Economic Forum conference in Switzerland by “roasting” WEF chief Klaus Schwab in a post on X. Grok, which Musk has said was designed to have a “rebellious streak” and give satirical answers, described …

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Court Won’t Re-Hear Case On Trump’s Twitter DMs

CNN reports: A federal appeals court said Tuesday it won’t re-hear a case concerning executive privilege and Twitter after special counsel investigators in the 2020 election interference case were allowed to access data from Donald Trump’s account without telling him. The case has centered around questions about protection of communication around the presidency, and if Trump should have been informed …

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SEC’s X Account Hacked, Posted Bitcoin Fake News

The Hill reports: The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) account on the platform formerly known as Twitter was breached Tuesday, the agency said, after it appeared to announce the approval of several bitcoin investment funds. The SEC’s account on X posted a message earlier Tuesday — featuring a picture of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler — announcing the approval of exchange-traded …

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X Inks Show Deals For Tulsi Gabbard And Don Lemon

Reuters reports: Social media company X on Tuesday announced three new content deals with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, former U.S. congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and sports radio host Jim Rome, part of an effort to grow video content on the site. The Elon Musk-owned platform, formerly Twitter, has struggled to retain advertisers amid of series of controversies ever since the …

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X Suspends Prominent Journalists And Progressives

The Messenger reports: The accounts of several prominent journalists and progressive-leaning influencers have been suspended by Elon Musk’s X platform for apparently violating X’s rules. The affected users include Ken Klippenstein, an investigative journalist who is on staff at The Intercept, and Texas Observer reporter, Steven Monacelli. Monacelli told The Messenger that he did not receive an explanation for the …

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