Social Media

Politico reports: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hosting informal talks and small, off-the-record dinners with conservative journalists, commentators and at least one Republican lawmaker in recent months to discuss issues like free speech and discuss partnerships. The dinners, which began in July, are part of Zuckerberg’s broader effort to cultivate friends on the right amid outrage by President Donald …

The Associated Press reports: On Friday, Visa and MasterCard announced their departures from the Libra project, as did e-commerce giant eBay and payments startup Stripe. Last week, PayPal became the first major company to drop out of Libra. The exodus comes amid growing — not to mention stronger-than-anticipated — regulatory pushback against Libra in the U.S. and elsewhere. “It’s a …

“It’s hard to think of a company that’s hurt this country more than Twitter. Maybe there are some. I can’t think of one. If you look at the hate and the division and  the cruelty that’s now common, it wasn’t common 10 years ago, Twitter is a huge part of that.” – Tucker Carlson, interviewing Rep. Devin Nunes last night …

The Daily Beast reports: The company behind the non-partisan news site RealClearPolitics has been secretly running a Facebook page filled with far-right memes and Islamophobic smears, The Daily Beast has learned. Called “Conservative Country,” the Facebook page was founded in 2014 and now boasts nearly 800,000 followers for its mix of Donald Trump hagiography and ultra-conservative memes. One recent post …

Popular Information reports: Last week, Facebook quietly changed the language of its advertising policies to make it easier for politicians to lie in ads. On Tuesday, the Trump campaign launched a new ad on Facebook, which includes a claim that was ruled false by Facebook-approved third-party fact-checkers. On the surface, such an ad appears to violate Facebook’s rules against false …

Public Information reports: The “Police Lives Matter” Facebook page accumulated over 170,000 fans, with viral content that reached more Facebook users than some of the largest media outlets. The page purported to be run by U.S. police officers, with cops posting about the “first dayshift of my career with a K9” or being “brand new dad.” What these posts did …

Politico reports: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said today that content by politicians would stay up on the video-sharing website even if it violates the company’s standards, echoing a position staked out by Facebook this week. “When you have a political officer that is making information this is really important for their constituents to see, or for other global leaders to …

Reuters reports: Twitter has continued a crackdown on what it considers improper content by removing more than 10,000 accounts for spreading political misinformation and unrest. According to a company blog post, most of the accounts were engaged in fomenting political dissent through the spread of false information. It said many of the accounts in the UAE, for example, “were often …

The Independent reports: Twitter suspended the account of former Saudi royal court adviser Saud al-Qahtani on Friday, nearly a year after he was sacked over his suspected role in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The social network also separately removed accounts linked to Saudi Arabia’s “state-run media apparatus” and others in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, …

The Sacramento Bee reports: Twitter is refusing a judge’s request to disclose the identities of two anonymous social media users who are are critical of Rep. Devin Nunes and are being sued by the California Republican. Nunes, R-Tulare, demanded the names of anonymous writers through a lawsuit he filed in Virginia against them, Twitter and a Republican political strategist. The …

The Guardian reports: Facebook has suspended a chatbot on Benjamin Netanyahu’s official page after it breached hate speech policy by sending visitors a message warning of Arabs who “want to destroy us all”. Battling a tight election race in the run-up to the 17 September polls, the Israeli prime minister has sought to appeal to far-right religious and nationalist voters …

CNBC reports: New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced Friday she is launching a multi-state investigation into Facebook for possible antitrust violations. Facebook shares were down about 0.5% in Friday’s premarket, but did not seem to react to James’ announcement. Attorneys general of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and the District of Columbia will join the …

TechCrunch reports: Are Americans ready to trust Facebook with their dating life? Barely more than a month has passed since the U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook a record $5 billion over its privacy lapses, and imposed a modified corporate structure to hold the company more accountable for its decisions over user privacy. In the wake of this historic action, …

The Verge reports: YouTube’s teams have removed more than 100,000 videos and 17,000 channels since the company implemented changes to its hateful content policies in June. Those numbers are approximately five times as many than the company’s last quarter, according to a new blog post from YouTube about the company’s attempts to tackle a growing number of hateful and dangerous …

TechCrunch reports: Facebook is making facial recognition in photos opt-in by default. Starting today, it’s rolling out its Face Recognition privacy setting, which it first introduced in December 2017, to all users. If you have Face Recognition turned on, Facebook will notify you if someone uploads a photo of you, even if you aren’t tagged. You can then tag yourself, …

Buzzfeed News reports: The Twitter account of Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, appears to have been hacked. On Friday afternoon, the @jack account tweeted a link to a Discord chat and RT’d a series of tweets, including one that read, “follow me i am jacks daddy.” The account also tweeted the N-word, and antisemitic remarks. Discord took down the …

The Sacramento Bee reports: A Virginia judge has asked Twitter to provide more information about the authors of two anonymous parody accounts that heckle California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes before deciding whether to dismiss the congressman’s lawsuit against the social media company. Judge John Marshall is weighing a request from San Francisco-based Twitter to dismiss Nunes’ lawsuit on the grounds …

CNN reports: The Justice Department asked a federal court of appeals on Friday to reconsider a case where President Donald Trump was told he couldn’t legally block Twitter users from seeing his tweets. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals has not yet said if it would rehear the case. The request comes following a three-judge appellate panel having decided …

The Verge reports: Google just published a blog post revealing that it has disabled 210 YouTube channels that the company says “behaved in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.” Google cites the behavior as being “consistent with recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter.” The accounts were …

NBC News reports: The Epoch Times, a conservative news outlet that has spent more money on pro-Trump Facebook advertisements than any group other than the Trump campaign in the last six months, shifted its spending on the platform in the last month, according to results seen on Facebook’s advertising archive. These new pages obfuscate their connection to ads that promote …