Tag Archives: social media

Reuters reports: Advertisements for more than 400 brands including Coca-Cola and Starbucks are due to vanish from Facebook on Wednesday, after the failure of last-ditch talks to stop a boycott over hate speech on the site. U.S. civil rights groups have enlisted the multinationals to help pressure the social media giant into taking concrete steps to block hate speech in …

Engadget reports: Facebook isn’t just limiting the spread of “boogaloo” groups on its platform — it’s tossing many of those groups out. The social media giant has banned accounts and pages from the pro-civil-war group after deeming a violent network that breaks the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy. Facebook primarily removed 220 accounts, 106 groups, 28 pages and 95 …

The Verge reports: YouTube has banned several prominent white supremacist channels, including those belonging to Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, and Richard Spencer. Other channels banned include American Renaissance (with its associated channel AmRen Podcasts) and the channel for Spencer’s National Policy Institute. The channels repeatedly violated YouTube’s policies, a YouTube spokesperson said, by alleging that members of protected groups were …

The Verge reports: Twitch has temporarily banned President Donald Trump, in the latest surprise and high-profile suspension from the streaming service. Trump’s account was banned for “hateful conduct” that was aired on stream, and Twitch says the offending content has been removed. One of the streams in question was a rebroadcast of Trump’s infamous kickoff rally, where he said that …

Market Watch reports: Starbucks announced Sunday in an online statement that it is “pausing” ads on all social media platforms, two days after consumer-products conglomerate Unilever said it was halting U.S. advertising on Facebook and Twitter through year-end over ineffective policing of hate speech, leading to a sharp Friday selloff in both stocks. The coffee giant said it would “continue …

CNBC reports: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said the company will change its policies to prohibit hate speech in its advertisements. Under its new policies, Facebook will ban ads that claim people from a specific race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, gender, sexual orientation or immigration origin are a threat to the physical safety or health of anyone else, Zuckerberg said. …

Axios reports: Verizon announced on Thursday it will pull advertisements from Facebook and Instagram, per the company’s chief media officer. Why it matters: Verizon is one of the largest companies to join a growing boycott of the social network over its content moderation policies, including how it polices misinformation about Black Lives Matter protests, and handles content posted by President …

The Fresno Bee reports: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) cannot include Twitter in his lawsuit against two parody accounts and a Republican strategist he accuses of defaming him on the platform, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Twitter cannot be held legally liable for statements by the accounts and strategist Liz Mair, Judge John Marshall ruled, citing federal law. Lawyers for Twitter …

Variety reports: The primary account of Carpe Donktum, a prominent pro-Donald Trump meme maker, has been permanently suspended by Twitter, which cited “repeated” violations of copyright infringement. Twitter’s move to kick Carpe Donktum off the platform came just days after a video from the account — tweeted by Trump — was pulled after a copyright complaint from the original video’s …

Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed to stamp out any protesters seeking to establish a so-called “autonomous zone” in the nation’s capital, echoing conservative outrage over the prospect of police-free enclaves cropping up in major American cities. The president’s social media post comes after U.S. Park Police officers on Monday thwarted efforts by protesters to tear down the …

NBC News reports: Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., unveiled his latest attack on tech’s liability shield in a new bill Wednesday. The “Limiting Section 230 Immunity to Good Samaritans Act” would allow Americans to sue tech companies that censor political speech or hide content from competitors. Republicans have long complained that tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter censor conservative speech. The …

CNET reports: The Justice Department will propose rolling back the legal protections online platforms have had since the ’90s, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, to make sites more vigilant about policing content. It follows President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting social media companies. The proposal could be announced on Wednesday, reported the Journal, citing a Trump administration official. …

Wired reports: The Internet Research Agency is infamous for flooding mainstream social media platforms with compelling disinformation campaigns. The GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, deploys strategic data leaks and destabilizing cyberattacks. But in the recent history of Russia’s online meddling, a third, distinct entity may have been at work on many of the same objectives—indicating that Russia’s disinformation operations went …

The New York Times reports: China has stepped up its effort to spread misinformation on Twitter, creating tens of thousands of fake accounts that discussed protests in Hong Kong and the Communist Party’s response to the coronavirus, Twitter said on Thursday. The company said it had discovered and removed 23,750 accounts that were “highly engaged” in a coordinated effort to …

Mediaite reports: As many as 70 percent — or 56.3 million — of President Donald Trump’s Twitter followers are fake or inactive, according to an expert interviewed by Mediaite. “Our tool defines ‘fake followers’ as accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets either because they are spam, bots, propaganda, or no longer active on Twitter,” said …

Axios reports: At the request of the Trump administration, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is working on new legislation targeting the tech industry’s liability shield, a source familiar with the effort told Axios. Why it matters: The Hawley bill will be an additional threat against platforms like Facebook and Twitter following President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at curbing their legal …

Axios reports: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday that the company will review a number of its policies and decision-making processes, including for content about state use of force. Facebook has faced backlash for its decision to leave up a post from President Trump because it didn’t violate the social media company’s policy about inciting violence. Zuckerberg’s public announcement …

Reuters reports: Facebook announced Thursday it will no longer allow state-controlled media outlets to run ads on its social networks, effective this summer. The move is part of its efforts to prevent foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. election and follows massive criticism that it failed to do so in the 2016 election. “Later this summer we will begin blocking …

Business Insider reports: Twitter said Wednesday it will not tackle all the misinformation on its platform but will instead focus on posts with the “highest potential for harm” as it works to curb false or misleading information from spreading. The social media giant said it is responding to a survey from last year in which respondents said that “Twitter shouldn’t …

Digital Trends reports: Snapchat announced it would no longer promote President Donald Trump’s account on the video-sharing platform. “We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover,” a Snap spokesperson told Digital Trends. “Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek …