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Government Hasn’t Justified A Tiktok Ban

March 25, 2023 Adam Schwartz and David Greene, Electronic Frontier Foundation. , , , ,
So we are troubled by growing demands in the United States for restrictions on TikTok, a technology that many people have chosen to exchange information with others around the world. Before taking such a drastic step, the government must come forward with specific evidence showing, at the very least, a real problem and a narrowly tailored solution. So far, the government hasn’t done so. Nearly all social media platforms and other online businesses collect a lot of personal data from their users. TikTok raises special concerns, given the surveillance and censorship practices of its home country, China. Still, the best solution to these problems is not to single-out one business or country for a ban.

Tiktok Campaign Targets Controversial Alaska Willow Oil Project

March 11, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, Ecowatch. , , , , , ,
With 161.5 million views and counting on TikTok alone, the #StopWillow social media campaign has left no question of the groundswell of opposition to the proposed oil development project Willow on Alaska’s remote North Slope. Social media users have been using the hashtag to voice their resistance to President Joe Biden’s failure to keep his campaign pledges to reduce oil drilling. “With all of the progress that the U.S. government has made on climate change, it now feels like they’re turning their backs by allowing Willow to go through,” said climate activist Hazel Thayer, who posted TikTok videos using the #StopWillow hashtag, as The Associated Press reported.

Metastasis

March 6, 2023 Rosa Miriam Elizalde, Resumen English. , , , , , ,
Meta has been at it again. It deactivated 363 Facebook accounts of Cuban users, in addition to 270 pages and 229 groups, as well as 72 from Instagram. The operation covered other social networks such as YouTube, TikTok and Twitter, and included hundreds of pages of Bolivian citizens. As is often the case, it hit two leftist governments without providing any evidence of violation of the platforms’ community policies. What’s new in this raid? Little, actually. It is not the first time it happens. Zuckerberg’s transnational is under the dictates of U.S. government figures, particularly groups associated with the Cuban-American gang in Florida. Facebook’s director of public affairs, Alex Burgos, previously worked for Senator Marco Rubio and was his campaign manager in 2016.

Europe’s Gas Lobby Exploits Energy Security Fears Over Past Year

February 28, 2023 Stella Levantesi, DeSmog. , , , , , ,
Europe’s gas industry has ramped up its messaging since Russia invaded Ukraine, exploiting fears over energy security to justify projects that risk locking the continent into long-term dependence on fossil fuels, DeSmog can reveal. Four big industry groups began to post many more tweets portraying investments in gas and related infrastructure as the key to secure energy supplies soon after the invasion started — and maintained this strategy throughout last year, an analysis of their social media accounts found. The lobby groups were Gas Infrastructure Europe; Gas For Climate; Eurogas; and the European branch of the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers, which represent companies operating pipelines, gas storage, and infrastructure to import liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Social Media Is Filled With Spooks!

January 20, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. , , ,
In this latest edition of “Behind The Headlines”, Lee Camp sat down with Mike Papantonio. Papantonio is one of the most successful lawyers in the U.S., and has built up a reputation for holding corporate America accountable. He has also hosted successful TV and radio shows, such as “Ring of Fire.” In this interview, the two discuss the power and influence of social media. Papantonio’s work has shown that social media is far more nefarious than most of us believe. “The empirical data is very clear. What’s happening right now is that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and all of them have figured out the formula for making a kid stay on their network for as long as possible,” he said. “The studies that these tech companies did were to figure out how to make that kid feel that they aren’t good enough. How do you make them feel like they don’t [shape] up with their peers?

Mass Twitter Walkout

November 18, 2022 Timothy Karr, Free Press. , , ,
On Thursday, hundreds of Twitter employees left the company, further depleting a workforce needed to maintain the integrity of the site and its content-moderation system. This follows Musk’s layoffs of half the Twitter staff, and a series of high-profile departures from key Twitter trust and safety; security; privacy; and compliance personnel. Musk had given Twitter's employees until 5 p.m. ET, Thursday, to decide whether they wanted to commit to his employment terms, which included a call to be “extremely hardcore” and work very long hours. Refusing to do so would effectively signal resignation, according to an email Musk sent to staff Wednesday. Upon seeing that few had accepted his terms by Thursday afternoon, Twitter decided to close company offices through Mon., Nov. 21.

Researchers Find Massive Anti-Russian ‘Bot Army’

November 8, 2022 Peter Cronau, Consortium News. , , , , ,
A team of researchers at the University of Adelaide have found that as many as 80 percent of tweets about the 2022 Russia-Ukraine invasion in its early weeks were part of a covert propaganda campaign originating from automated fake “bot” accounts. An anti-Russia propaganda campaign originating from a “bot army” of phony automated Twitter accounts flooded the internet at the start of the war. The research shows that of the more than 5 million tweets studied, 90.2 percent (both bot and non-bot) came from accounts that were pro-Ukraine, with fewer than 7 percent of the accounts being classed as pro-Russian. The university researchers also found these automated tweets had been purposely used to drive up fear amongst people targeted by them, boosting a high level of statistically measurable “angst” in the online discourse.

Meet The Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy

July 13, 2022 Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News. , , ,
It is an uncomfortable job for anyone trying to draw the line between “harmful content and protecting freedom of speech. It’s a balance”, Aaron says. In this official Facebook video, Aaron identifies himself as the manager of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook”, determining “what is acceptable and what is not.” Thus, he and his team effectively decide what content the platform’s 2.9 billion active users see and what they don’t see. Aaron is being interviewed in a bright warehouse-turned-studio. He is wearing a purple sweater and blue jeans. He comes across as a very likable, smiley person. It is not an easy job, of course, but someone has to make those calls. “Transparency is incredibly important in the work that I do,” he says. Aaron is CIA. Or at least he was until July 2019, when he left his job as a senior analytic manager at the agency to become senior product policy manager for misinformation at Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Cuba: One Year After 7/11

July 10, 2022 Rosa Miriam Elizalde, Resumen English. , , ,
On July 11, it will be one year since the riots in Cuba that made headlines around the world. Anger flared then with the explosive mix of pandemic effects, Donald Trump’s suffocating sanctions that Joe Biden kept intact in the midst of a global health emergency, the accumulated social problems, the economic crisis, the inclement temperatures in the island summer. The systemic and prolonged attack on the daily life of Cubans paid off and the 48 hours in which acts of vandalism were carried out in several cities of the country generated rivers of ink and the prognosis that the revolution would collapse, sooner rather than later.

Instagram And Facebook Remove Posts Offering Abortion Pills

July 1, 2022 Amanda Seitz, Associated Press. , , , , ,
Facebook and Instagram have begun promptly removing posts that offer abortion pills to women who may not be able to access them following a Supreme Court decision that stripped away constitutional protections for the procedure. Such social media posts ostensibly aimed to help women living in states where preexisting laws banning abortion suddenly snapped into effect on Friday. That’s when the high court overruled Roe v. Wade, its 1973 decision that declared access to abortion a constitutional right. Memes and status updates explaining how women could legally obtain abortion pills in the mail exploded across social platforms. Some even offered to mail the prescriptions to women living in states that now ban the procedure.

The NATO To TikTok Pipeline

May 2, 2022 Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News. , , , ,
Culver City, California – As the bloody conflict in Ukraine continues to escalate, so does the online propaganda war between Russia and the West. A prime example of this is the White House directly briefing influencers on popular social media app TikTok about the war and how to cover it. As the crisis spirals out of control, Americans have turned to TikTok to view real time videos and analysis of the invasion. With the app estimated to have around 70 million U.S. users, the White House is keenly aware of its impact. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest … so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source,” President Joe Biden’s director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, told 30 top TikTok influencers.

An Intellectual No-Fly Zone

April 27, 2022 Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News. , , , , , ,
Mountain View, California – Google has sent a warning shot across the world, ominously informing media outlets, bloggers, and content creators that it will no longer tolerate certain opinions when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, Google AdSense sent a message to a myriad of publishers, including MintPress News, informing us that, “Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.” This content, it went on to say, “includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim-blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.”

Notes From Wartorn Ethiopia, Part II

April 22, 2022 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Even the Embassy of Bangladesh is building new floors right across the street from my alleyway hotel. Mercedes drive in and out, and I wonder how such a poor country affords them, but Mercedes seem to be the ambassadorial vehicle of choice. Governments like Bangladesh, which don’t maintain embassies in many other countries, no doubt maintain them here because Addis Ababa is the seat of the African Union, and with the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam coming online, Ethiopia is emerging as a regional powerhouse, despite how much that dismays US policymakers. The European Union embassy flies its flag behind a concrete wall topped with barbed-wire several blocks around the corner from where I’m staying.

American Commissars

April 19, 2022 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
The ruling class, made up of the traditional elites that run the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, is employing draconian forms of censorship on its right-wing and left-wing critics in a desperate effort to cling to power. The traditional elites were discredited for pushing through a series of corporate assaults on workers, from deindustrialization to trade deals. They were unable to stem rising inflation, the looming economic crisis and the ecological emergency. They were incapable of carrying out significant social and political reform to ameliorate widespread suffering and refused to accept responsibility for two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East. And now they have launched a new and sophisticated McCarthyism. Character assassination. Algorithms. Shadow banning. De-platforming.

Twitter Bans African Anti-Imperialists

January 13, 2022 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Since November 3 and 4, when the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) started the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia by attacking a federal army base, Western policymakers and their stenographic press, especially in the U.S., have defended the TPLF, their former puppet, and maligned the Ethiopian government and its prime minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali. In December, Twitter began banning Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Somali activists who had created and built a Pan-African #NoMore movement. I spoke to Nebiyu Asfaw, founder of the Ethiopian American Development Council, who had his account permanently banned. Ann Garrison: Nebiyu Asfaw, tell us when you were suspended from Twitter. Nebiyu Asfaw: I was suspended on December 23, two days before Christmas, on the same day the #NoMoreHub account was suspended.
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