Tag Archives: social media

The Verge reports: Facebook content moderators in Europe and the US are calling on the company to put an end to overly restrictive nondisclosure agreements that discourage people from speaking out about working conditions. In a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the CEOs of Covalen and Accenture, moderators say these NDAs aren’t limited to user data and …

The Verge reports: Twitter is working on new upvote and downvote reactions for tweets to accompany the usual options to retweet and reply. Twitter confirmed it was testing the feature for a small group of users on iOS, and it’s already been spotted according to multiple tweets from users that are part of the test group. Twitter writes that iOS …

The Washington Post reports: “They’re killing people,” Biden said Friday on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One on his way to Camp David for the weekend. “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.” Biden was asked to clarify those comments Monday after giving a speech about increasing support …

The New York Times reports: Facebook and the Biden administration engaged in an increasingly rancorous back and forth over the weekend after the administration denounced the social media giant for spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines. On Sunday, the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, reiterated warnings that false stories about the vaccines had become a dangerous health hazard. “These platforms have …

Axios reports: Facebook fired back on Friday evening after President Biden earlier said that social media platforms are “killing people” by allowing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on their sites.  “We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts,” a spokesperson for the tech giant said in a statement Friday. The Facebook response followed Biden’s commentary on the …

The Verge reports: Facebook plans to pay out $1 billion to creators over the next year and a half as part of an effort to court content makers to its many services. The money will be awarded to creators who use Facebook products in different ways: on Facebook, creators can get a cash bonus for running ads on their videos …

Axios reports: “Oh f—, how did we miss this?” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asked, looking around at the somber faces of his top executives, the N.Y. Times’ Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang write in their book, “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination,” out Tuesday. In an excerpt provided first to Axios, the authors write that the executives met …

Politico reports: Violent videos and misinformation are amplified by YouTube’s algorithm, despite the company’s rules meant to limit their spread, according to a Mozilla Foundation report published July 7. The foundation — a nonprofit that advocates on privacy issues — found 71 percent of all videos that volunteers reported as disturbing were recommended by the video-sharing platform’s algorithm. They included …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet’s Google have privately warned the Hong Kong government that they could stop offering their services in the city if authorities proceed with planned changes to data-protection laws that could make them liable for the malicious sharing of individuals’ information online. A letter sent by an industry group that includes the internet …

Here’s what started it all: Some eye catching billboards urging businesses to consider a move to Ohio are garnering attention across New York City. There are three print billboard placements and 13 programmatic in Manhattan along with four print and seven programmatic in Brooklyn, and the marketing campaign is the brainchild of private nonprofit economic development corporation JobsOhio. One board …

The Insider reports: GETTR, the new social media platform set up by allies of former President Donald Trump, was been hacked on the day of its July 4 launch. The platform’s most popular verified users, mostly former Trump aides, had their accounts compromised. GETTR’s official support page was also targeted. Jason Miller, who founded the platform and was formerly a …

CNN reports: There’s a new TikTok star, and his name is Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Tell all of your TikTok buddies to get vaccinated,” Fauci said this week in a video posted on TikTok by Nia Sioux, the social media and former “Dance Moms” star. “I will, I’ll tell all my besties,” Sioux replied. In the latest push from the White …

CNN Business reports: Some Facebook (FB) users in the United States are being served a prompt that asks if they are worried that someone they know might be becoming an extremist. Others are being notified that they may have been exposed to extremist content. It is all part of a test the social media company is running that stems from …

Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump’s team quietly launched a new social media platform on Thursday, billing it as an alternative to Big Tech sites. The platform, called GETTR, advertised its mission statement as “fighting cancel culture, promoting common sense, defending free speech, challenging social media monopolies, and creating a true marketplace of ideas.” Trump’s former spokesman, Jason Miller, is …

USA Today reports: A federal judge on Wednesday night blocked a Florida law that would penalize social media companies for barring the speech of politicians, striking a blow to conservatives still fuming over the suspension of former President Donald Trump and allegations that Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube censor right-wing views. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle of …

Raw Story reports: YouTube has reconsidered their deletion of the Right Wing Watch account. After huge backlash, trending on Twitter most of Monday, and multiple news stories about YouTube’s decision, the account was brought back. Ironically, what RWW found was that many of the videos that they cut and uploaded for their own purposes came from larger clips that were …

The Daily Beast reports: Right Wing Watch has been permanently suspended from YouTube, the organization announced on Twitter on Monday. According to screenshots posted by RWW, the Google-owned video platform informed the group that their official YouTube channel would be permanently removed from the site due to numerous violations of its community guidelines. Right Wing Watch senior fellow Kyle Mantyla …

The Verge reports: Facebook’s Clubhouse competitor, Live Audio Rooms, is making its way stateside. The company announced today that some US-based public figures, as well as certain groups, can start hosting rooms through the main Facebook iOS app. (People can join, however, from both iOS and Android.) Anyone can be invited up as a speaker with up to 50 people …

The Verge reports: Following a recommendation from its Oversight Board, Facebook says it will update its community standards to be clearer about how it handles satirical content, the company said in a blog post. “We’ll add information to the Community Standards that makes it clear where we consider satire as part of our assessment of context-specific decisions,” according to the …

The Associated Press reports: A seven-month investigation by the Associated Press and the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at Oxford University, found that China’s rise on Twitter has been powered by an army of fake accounts that have retweeted Chinese diplomats and state media tens of thousands of times, covertly amplifying propaganda that can reach hundreds of millions of people …