Most Americans don’t trust social media companies to police the content on their platforms, according to a poll published Tuesday from Gallup and the Knight Foundation. CNET reports: The poll found that 80% of Americans don’t trust big tech companies to make the right decisions about what content appears on their sites and what should be removed. People, especially conservatives, trust…
Tag: social media companies
Lawsuit Says Trump’s Social Media Crackdown Violates Free Speech
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: President Trump’s crackdown on social media companies faced a new legal challenge on Tuesday, as a technology policy organization claimed in a lawsuit that he violated the companies’ right to free speech with his executive order aimed at curtailing their legal protections. The nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology says…
Protesting Mark Zuckerberg Comments About Fact-Checking, Fake News About Mark Zuckerberg Goes Viral
“I don’t think that Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday. Since then, Vice reports, “Fake news about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is being shared widely on the internet, including on his own social network…” Zuckerberg’s quote is particularly confusing because Facebook does fact-check some news posts, and uses a byzantine, third-party…
Joe Biden Doesn’t Like Trump’s Twitter Order, But Still Wants To Revoke Section 230
Former Vice President Joe Biden still wants to repeal the pivotal internet law that provides social media companies like Facebook and Twitter with broad legal immunity over content posted by their users, a campaign spokesperson told The Verge. Still, the campaign emphasized key disagreements with the executive order signed by the president earlier this week. From a report: Earlier this year,…
Trump Signs Executive Order Targeting Protections For Social Media Platforms
President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday designed to limit the legal protections that shield social media companies from liability for the content users post on their platforms. Axios reports: “Currently, social media giants like Twitter received unprecedented viability shield based on the theory that they are a neutral platform, which they are not,” Trump said in the Oval Office….
Trump’s Disinfectant Talk Trips Up Sites’ Vows Against Misinformation
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said in March that promoting bleach as a cure for the coronavirus was “misinformation that has imminent risk of danger” and that such messages would immediately be removed from the social network. President Trump has now put Mr. Zuckerberg’s comments to the test. From a report: At a White House briefing last week, Mr. Trump suggested…
Conspiracy Theories Provoke 30 Arson Attacks and Vandalism Against UK Cellphone Towers
Conspiracy theorists have committed more than 30 acts of arson and vandalism against U.K. wireless towers and other telecom gear, reports the New York Times, citing police reports and a telecom trade group. But what’s stirring them up? For starters, over two million people watched a 5G conspiracy video on YouTube last month, the Times notes, adding that the misinformation is…
Turkey To Require Social Media Giants To Appoint Local Representatives
Turkey will require foreign social media companies with high internet traffic to appoint a representative in the country to address concerns raised by authorities over content on their platforms, a draft law seen by Reuters showed. From the report: Companies that do not comply with the new measure could face having their bandwith halved after 30 days by court order, and…
Twitter and Facebook Criticized For Not Removing False Claims About Iowa Voters
What happened when conservative activist Tom Fitton issued an inaccurate press release last week about Iowa’s voter registration rolls? After being debunked by Republican state officials — and identified as “false” by the Associated Press — the false claims simply remained on both Facebook and Twitter. The Associated Press reports:
Fitton, founder of Judicial Watch, tweeted a report claiming that eight Iowa…
India Likely To Force Facebook, WhatsApp To Comply With ‘Traceability’ Demand
New Delhi is inching closer to recommending regulations that would require social media companies and instant messaging app providers to help law enforcement agencies identify users who have posted content — or sent messages — it deems questionable, TechCrunch reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: India will submit the suggested change to the local intermediary liability…