Tag Archives: Facebook

20 Kansas Reps Belong To Far-Right Facebook Groups

The Topeka Capitol-Journal reports: A think tank found 20 state lawmakers, or 12% of the Legislature, were members of Facebook groups deemed to be “far-right,” including ones spreading COVID-19 misinformation and raising concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election. Some groups began as a coalition of members pushing back on restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic but appear to have …

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Shapiro Spends Big To Push Pro-Johnny Depp Claims

Vice News reports: The Daily Wire spent tens of thousands of dollars promoting misleading news about the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial on social media, the Citizens and VICE World News can reveal. The conservative outlet, founded by Ben Shapiro, is currently the second most popular news publisher on Facebook. It has so far spent between $35,000 and $47,000 …

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FB To Open Physical Store To Sell Metaverse Gadgets

The Washington Post reports: Facebook said Monday that it’s opening its first physical retail space — its latest gambit to transform itself from a social media platform into a hardware giant inventing the “metaverse.” In the store, customers will be able to test out Facebook’s growing line of smart hardware devices including its virtual reality headset Quest 2, its smart …

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Facebook Removes Thousands Of Ukraine War Scams

Axios reports: Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Facebook says it has removed “tens of thousands of accounts, Pages and Groups” around the world for spreading misleading content about the conflict to build audiences and bring in cash. Spammers switched user names repeatedly to trick people into following them. They would then push their followings to other websites …

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Facebook Paid GOP Firm To Plant Anti-TikTok Articles

The Washington Post reports: Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok. The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and …

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FB Locks Out Users Who Didn’t Enable “Protect” Mode

The Verge reports: Early in March, Facebook users got a mysterious, spam-like email titled “Your account requires advanced security from Facebook Protect” and telling them that they were required to turn on the Facebook Protect feature by a certain date, or they would be locked out of their account. It actually wasn’t spam. In fact, it was real. The first …

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Russia Declares Meta Guilty Of “Extremist Activity”

Reuters reports: A Moscow court on Monday found Meta Platforms Inc guilty of “extremist activity”, but said its decision would not affect the WhatsApp messenger service, focusing its ire on the company’s already banned Facebook and Instagram social networks. Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court upheld a lawsuit filed by Russian state prosecutors on banning the activities of Meta on Russian territory, …

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Russia Blocks Facebook In Retaliation For Page Bans

Buzzfeed News reports: Facebook on Friday was blocked in Russia amid President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing military invasion of Ukraine. In a statement issued on Friday, Roskomnadzor, the country’s communications regulator, explained the decision was made to block access to the Facebook network after at least 26 cases of “discrimination against Russian media and information resources” since October 2020. The agency …

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Texas AG Sues Meta Over Use Of Facial Recognition

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., saying the technology conglomerate infringed on the state’s privacy protections by using facial recognition technology on its users without their consent. Paxton filed the suit, which he said could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties, in state court in …

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Foreign Troll Farms Behind US Trucker Facebook Groups

NBC News reports: There is growing momentum in the U.S. anti-vaccination community to conduct rallies similar to Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” that has paralyzed Ottawa, Ontario, and the effort is receiving a boost from a familiar source: overseas content mills. Some Facebook groups that have promoted American “trucker convoys” similar to demonstrations that have clogged roads in Ottawa are being run …

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Meta Threatens To Leave Europe Over Privacy Laws

Mashable reports: Buried in Meta’s dense annual report for the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed Thursday, is a surprisingly stark sentence laying out a scenario in which The Company Formerly Known as Facebook might have to entirely stop operating Instagram and Facebook in Europe. Yep, no Instagram, no Facebook, for all Europeans. At issue are European data regulations that prevent …

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Zuckerberg Loses Billions As Meta Stock Plunges

CNN reports: Late Wednesday, Meta reported a rare drop in profits, driven by spending on its vision for a so-called metaverse while simultaneously confronting advertising challenges on its existing services. The company’s shares plummeted in after-hours trading and are continuing their steep drop on Thursday. By mid-morning, the stock was down nearly 25%, making it the worst performer in the …

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Riot Panel Subpoenas Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Google

CNBC reports: The House select committee investigating the deadly Capitol riot has subpoenaed social media giants Twitter, Reddit and the parent companies of Facebook and Google, the panel’s chairman said Thursday. The bipartisan committee had asked for a trove of records last summer from those and other social companies, but said it received “inadequate responses” from some of the largest …

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Facebook Again Jails QAnon Rep For COVID Lies

In case you missed yesterday’s news: Twitter suspended a personal account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., for “repeated violations” of its Covid misinformation policy, the company said Sunday. “Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth,” Greene said. “That’s fine, I’ll show America we don’t need them and it’s time to defeat our enemies.” Five or …

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Facebook Bans Six Companies For Spying On Journos

NBC News reports: Spies for hire are secretly targeting journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents on behalf of corporations and governments to an extent not previously understood, Facebook’s parent company says in a new report, while banning six companies and a Chinese network named in the report from its social media platforms. “The global surveillance-for-hire industry targets people across …

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Reuters: FB Is Doing Nothing About Gateway Pundit

Reuters reports: The Gateway Pundit, a far-right news site, used its Facebook page – with more than 630,000 subscribers – to post fake stories alleging that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Some commentators responded with threats of violence. After Gateway Pundit posted a June story on Facebook that included debunked allegations of voter fraud in …

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POLL: 76% Say Facebook Makes US Society Worse

CNN reports: Roughly three-quarters of adults believe Facebook is making American society worse, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds, with about half saying they know somebody who was persuaded to believe in a conspiracy theory because of the site’s content. Americans say, 76% to 11%, that Facebook makes society worse, not better, according to the survey. Another 13% …

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Bipartisan Bill Requires Social Media Algorithm Opt-Out

Axios reports: A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced a companion to a Senate bill that would let people use algorithm-free versions of tech platforms, according to a copy of the text shared exclusively with Axios. Recent revelations about Facebook’s internal research findings have renewed lawmaker interest in bills that seek to give people more of a say in …

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Facebook To Shutter Facial Recognition Photo Feature

The New York Times reports: Facebook plans to shut down its decade-old facial recognition system this month, deleting the face scan data of more than one billion users and effectively eliminating a feature that has fueled privacy concerns, government investigations, a class-action lawsuit and regulatory woes. Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta, Facebook’s newly named parent company, …

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Hebrew Speakers Mock Zuckerberg: Meta Means Dead

The BBC reports: Facebook’s announcement that it is changing its name to Meta has caused quite the stir in Israel where the word sounds like the Hebrew word for “dead”. To be precise, Meta is pronounced like the feminine form of the Hebrew word. A number of people have taken to Twitter to share their take on the name under …

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