Facebook will lift its ban on political ads on Thursday, ending a self-imposed prohibition that began immediately after the November 2020 general election and remained active for months. Politico reports: Facebook informed top political advertisers of its decision by phone and email on Wednesday, according to sources with knowledge of the announcement. The social media giant banned political and social issue-related…
Tag: election
How Worried Should You Be About Those Tom Cruise Deepfakes?
Are the TikTok deepfake videos of Tom Cruise doing magic and playing golf a threat to global democracy? Not exactly. “[T]he reality is that they took a lot of time, technical expertise, and the skilled performance of a real actor,” reports VICE News. “Rather than predicting a dark future of disinformation for the masses, they’re simply another example of what can…
Colorado Bill Seeks To Force Social Platforms To Register With the State, Impose $5k/Day Fine For Allowing ‘Fake News’ or Conspiracy Theories
michaelmalak writes: The Colorado Senate President Pro Tempore, Kerry Donovan, is the prime sponsor of SB21-132,
Digital Communications Regulation, which if passed, would fine websites $5,000 per day as a class 2 misdemeanor if they “allow” user comments that: “…promote hate speech; undermine election integrity; disseminate intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news; or authorize, encourage, or carry out violations of users’…
Astrophysicists design ‘radically different’ world map
You know the old problem of how to portray the round globe of Earth on a flat map? Now a trio of map experts has worked together to solve this problem. Their new map is 2-sided and round. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/astrophysicists-new-design-world-map…
Did Facebook Change Its Rules to Placate the Right?
Former lobbyist/political advisor Joel Kaplan joined Facebook in 2011 to lead its Washington D.C. outreach, reports BuzzFeed news. But some employees said they were very unhappy with decisions made by both Kaplan and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: In April 2019, Facebook was preparing to ban one of the internet’s most notorious spreaders of misinformation and hate, Infowars founder Alex Jones. Then…
Twitter’s Misinformation-Fighting Tool ‘Birdwatch’ Makes Mistakes
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit journalism school and research organization, analyzed Twitter’s 1,000-user pilot test of its Birdwatch fact-checking platform. Their conclusion? It makes mistakes. On February 5, Twitter flagged a post from controversial YouTuber Tim Pool that said the 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. The platform noted that the claim was disputed and turned off engagement…
Facebook Blames ‘Technical Issues” for Its Broken Promise to the US Congress
Facebook is blaming “technical issues” for its broken promise to the U.S. Congress to stop recommending political groups to its users, reports The Markup: Facebook made the pledge once in October, in the run-up to the presidential election, and then falsely reiterated it had taken the step after rioters overtook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a deadly event partially coordinated…
Gina Carano, Who Plays Cara Dune On The Mandalorian, Will No Longer Be On the Show
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” said a Lucasfilm spokesperson. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.” io9 reports: The news comes after a day in which the hashtag #FireGinaCarano trended on Twitter for hours. The…
Facebook will start showing some of its users less political content
Facebook will start reducing the amount of political content users see while scrolling their primary feeds. From a report: The social media platform will “temporarily reduce the distribution of political content in News Feed for a small percentage of people” in Brazil, Indonesia and Canada this week, it said in a blog post on Wednesday. The changes will be applied to…
Ban on Wireless Modems In Voting Machines Should be Optional, Suggests US Election Agency
The U.S. agency overseeing elections has “quietly weakened a key element of proposed security standards…” reports the Associated Press, “raising concern among voting-integrity experts that many such systems will remain vulnerable to hacking.” The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is poised to approve its first new security standards in 15 years after an arduous process involving multiple technical and elections community bodies…