Social Media

The New York Daily News reports: While the rest of America obsessed Saturday over the course Sen. Chuck Grassley and his colleagues might chart in replacing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, the Iowa lawmaker fixed his attention on a downed pigeon. Grassley has gained a reputation for flying funky, oddly punctuated missives onto social media. In 2012, …

Reuters reports: Popular video-sharing app TikTok has asked a U.S. judge to block the Trump administration from enforcing a ban on the Chinese social media network, according to court documents filed late on Friday. TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance Ltd., filed a complaint in a Washington federal court challenging the recent prohibitory moves by the Trump administration. The U.S. …

Reuters reports: The U.S. Commerce Department said it will issue an order Friday that will bar people in the United States from downloading Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat and video-sharing app TikTok starting on September 20. Commerce officials said the ban on new U.S. downloads of TikTok could be still rescinded by President Donald Trump before it takes effect late Sunday …

The Washington Post reports: Teenagers, some of them minors, are being paid to pump out the messages at the direction of Turning Point Action, an affiliate of Turning Point USA, the prominent conservative youth organization based in Phoenix, according to four people with independent knowledge of the effort. Their descriptions were confirmed by detailed notes from relatives of one of …

The Verge reports: Facebook is launching a recruitment drive for poll workers this weekend, putting messages into users’ News Feeds with links to poll worker registration sites in their state. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post announcing the drive that it was part of the company’s larger voting information campaign, which has a goal of helping 4 million people …

Politico reports: Twitter said Thursday it will label or remove posts that prematurely declare victory in the upcoming U.S. election, making it the latest social media company to set out a plan for a prolonged vote count and a president who appears primed to dispute results if he does not win. The social network’s rules currently prohibit a narrower set …

Politico reports: Facebook said it would take down videos of a recent interview in which Trump urged North Carolina residents to vote twice to test the state’s vote-by-mail system if the posts did not “correct the record” about voter fraud. A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that video of the remarks “violates our policies prohibiting voter fraud” and will …

The New York Times reports: Facebook on Thursday moved to clamp down on any confusion about the November election on its service, rolling out a series of changes to limit voter misinformation and to prevent interference from President Trump and other politicians. The social network, in one of its most sweeping sets of election actions, said it planned to bar …

Forbes reports: Jacob Wohl told Forbes his Facebook and Instagram accounts were disabled Monday night without any warning or explanation. In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the company removed Wohl’s accounts for “violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior,” as Wohl has admitted to creating deceptive accounts “to steer the left-wing votes in the primaries to what we feel …

The Washington Post reports: Facebook plans to block new advertising the week before the presidential election — the first time the company has taken action to limit political advertising in the United States, the company said Thursday. The move to limit ads, part of a spate of election-related announcements, is an attempt to reduce misinformation that is expected to flood …

Fox News reports: The high-profile attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with fatally shooting two people in Kenosha, said he was locked out of his Twitter account Tuesday after posting about raising money for Rittenhouse’s legal defense. L. Lin Wood argued the action against his account is the latest example of Twitter censorship of conservative voices and he intends …

The Washington Post reports: Facebook took down a small network of fake accounts and pages associated with Russian operatives that had recruited U.S. journalists to write articles targeting left-leaning readers on topics such as racial justice, the Biden-Harris campaign, and President Trump’s policies, the company said Tuesday. The network of 13 fake accounts and two pages was in its early …

The Verge reports: Twitter said Monday it will begin displaying warning labels on shared posts that contain misleading or doctored videos after facing complaints that it failed to do enough to limit the spread of deceptive clips targeting Joe Biden’s campaign. Until now, the labels did not appear when users shared the posts through what the platform calls “quote tweets …

CNN reports: Twitter on Sunday took down a tweet containing a false claim about coronavirus death statistics that was made by a supporter of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory — a post that President Donald Trump had retweeted earlier in the day. The tweet — which has been replaced with a message saying, “This Tweet is no longer available because …

The Washington Post reports: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged in a video post Friday that the company erred by not taking down an event listing for a militia group that encouraged armed civilians to defend the streets of Kenosha, Wis., from civil unrest before the fatal shooting of two people this week. Facebook removed the page for the “Kenosha …

How utterly unsurprising: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed concerns about TikTok’s ties to China during meetings with officials and lawmakers, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. The Journal reported that Zuckerberg discussed TikTok with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) before the government began its national security investigation into the app owned by the China-based ByteDance. Zuckerberg also made the case to …

The New York Times reports: Facebook spent years preparing to ward off any tampering on its site ahead of November’s presidential election. Now the social network is getting ready in case President Trump interferes once the vote is over. Employees at the Silicon Valley company are laying out contingency plans and walking through postelection scenarios that include attempts by Mr. …

ABC News reports: Facebook says it will restrict the right-wing conspiracy movement QAnon and will no longer recommend that users join groups supporting it, although the company isn’t banning it outright. Facebook said Wednesday it is banning groups and accounts associated with QAnon and a variety of U.S.-based militia and anarchist groups that support violence. But the company will continue …

Complex reports: Bill Mitchell, the far-right conspiracy theorist was permanently banned from the platform after he attempted to dodge a temporary ban over an undisclosed violation. Per a Twitter spokesperson: “[Mitchell’s account] has been permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules by using one account to evade the suspension of another account.” Mitchell, the host of the far-right program YourVoice …

The Wrap reports: People don’t like to speak ill of the recently deceased, but that courtesy didn’t extend to the deceased’s estate on Wednesday after the Twitter account that belonged to Herman Cain shared a link to an article attacking Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — two weeks after the businessman and Republican politician’s unfortunate death. Hermain Cain’s family said …