Free Republic

And so it begins. In fact, it hardly ever stops – another election cycle in well on its way in the US. But what has emerged these last few years, and what continues to crop up the closer the election day gets, is the role of the most influential social platforms/tech companies.Pressure on them is sometimes public, but mostly not, as the Twitter Files have taught us; and it is with this in mind that various announcements about combating “election disinformation” coming from Big Tech should be viewed.Although, one can never discount the possibility that some – say, Microsoft –...

Out today, Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, Their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life, blows the lid off of Meta’s pattern of intentionally using harmful and aggressive tactics to get users addicted to social media apps like Facebook and Instagram and documents a shocking rise in depression and suicide that some scientists have linked to social media use. This comes just weeks after dozens of state attorneys general (AGs) filed suit against Facebook’s and Instagram’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta), and three of its subsidiaries, for harming children by addicting them to the social media...

Young people attending a New York City anti-Israel rally have admitted that they learned to hate Israel by watching pro-Palestinian videos on Chinese-owned app TikTok and Mark Zuckerbeg’s Instagram. More than a dozen young protesters who skipped school to join an anti-Israel rally in Manhattan on Thursday told the New York Post that their opinions about the Israel-Hamas war were shaped mainly by China’s TikTok and Facebook-owned Instagram, as well as their teachers. [cut] Another 17-year-old who identified herself as Adama told the New York Post that she follows Palestinian accounts on TikTok who are based in Gaza, saying, “Places...

Oct 24 (Reuters) - Dozens of U.S. states are suing Meta Platforms (META.O) and its Instagram unit, accusing them of fueling a youth mental health crisis by making their social media platforms addictive. In a complaint filed on Tuesday, the attorneys general of 33 states including California and New York said Meta, which also operates Facebook, repeatedly misled the public about the dangers of its platforms, and knowingly induced young children and teenagers into addictive and compulsive social media use "Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens," according to the complaint...

Paddy Cosgrave's resgnation comes after he tweeted that "War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are."Paddy Cosgrave, chief executive officer and founder of Web Summit, one of the biggest technology conferences in Europe, has resigned from his role as CEO after comments he made about Israel received pushback. On Oct. 13, Cosgrave tweeted that he was “shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments, with the exception in particular of Ireland’s government, who for once are doing the right thing. War crimes are war...

Google appears to have swiftly censored a list of students named as supporters of Hamas this week after the Palestinian terror group launched the deadliest attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.Well, that didn't take long. After less than 12 hours, Google has taken down the site with public information about which student groups endorse Hamas terrorism. Only @X allows the truth!Users who try to access the “College Terror List” posted on a Google site are taken to a 404 error page less than 12 hours after the page was posted. Aaaand google censored it https://t.co/N9VT3JoW21— Max Meyer (@mualphaxi) October...

China-owned TikTok is reportedly testing a new feature that integrates Google Search within its app, a development that experts believe could significantly boost traffic and ad revenue for both the fanatically leftist American tech giant and its Chinese communist counterpart. Business Insider reports that TikTok, the Chinese social media giant, is in the testing phases of a pioneering partnership with Google, aiming to enhance its search features. This integration was discovered by app researcher Radu Oncescu, who noted that some searches conducted within the TikTok app now present an option to extend the search on Google. This feature directs users...

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, people fought over voting machines, mail-in ballots, signature validation, etc. Meanwhile, Technocrats disguised as the 800-pound gorilla stole the election well before the first ballot was cast – in fact, 6 million of them. Google has been demonstratively caught, but who cares? Google’s smoke-and-mirror response: “Who, us?

A spokesman for Meta confirmed to AFP that it would not take part in this year's event, with Google telling the Irish Independent that it too would not be making the trip to Lisbon. We're now on WhatsApp. Click to join. Irish entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder of the Web Summit, wrote on social media platform X last week that he was "shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments." "War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are," Cosgrave wrote on October 13. Hamas militants...

The European Union (EU) sent formal requests to Meta and TikTok on Thursday for details about their handling of disinformation and illegal content, as the bloc ramps up pressure on social media companies to comply with its new online regulations. Both companies received warning letters from EU Commissioner Thierry Breton last week, following the outbreak of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas and a resulting deluge of misinformation and graphic content online. Neither company responded to a request for comment Friday. The formal request marks a more aggressive step by the EU, which noted in Thursday’s...

Facebook parent company Meta responded to legal threats by the European Union over its attempts to regulate misinformation related to the Israel war by launching an operating center. Meta released an updated content monitoring action plan on Friday detailing its approach for handling misinformation arising out of the war between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. The plan arrived in response to a letter from EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who threatened legal action against them over the Digital Services Act, a law that tightens the region's content moderation laws. The EU has already launched an inquiry into X, formerly known...

A 19-year-old woman named Chloe Cole, who was medically transitioned as a minor and has since detransitioned, was censored by Instagram over the weekend. It’s unclear why Cole was censored, but the teen captioned a photo of her bio on the social media platform, wherein she identifies herself as a detranstioner. Cole’s bio notes that she’s “female” with two X chromosomes and a “former trans kid.” It also says that she was started on testosterone and puberty blockers at age 13, underwent a double mastectomy at 15, and finally detranstioned at 16. “The big tech overlords think I’m too cute...

Facebook has suspended an Australian fact checking operation from policing content on its platform after a Sky News Australia investigation uncovered a secret foreign-funded bid to influence the upcoming Voice referendum. The powerful Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Factlab operation - which was being paid up to $740,000 a year by Meta - will be banned from judging what is true or false on social media while Meta and the International Fact Checking Network probe its operation. Sky News Australia’s investigation, dubbed The Fact Check Files, revealed the university’s fact checking director Russell Skelton was campaigning for the Voice...

News sites have seen traffic plummet in recent months due to a lack of referral clicks from Facebook, whose pivot away from hard news has taken a toll on media organizations. Media executives told CNN that their firms have seen traffic dip by as much as 40% year-over-year due to the shift made by Facebook parent company Meta. “Facebook nuked everyone’s traffic,” one news publisher told CNN. Another media executive told CNN: “If you’re a major publisher, you’ve gotten nicked.”

Canadians’ access to news on Facebook and Instagram will be cut off in the coming weeks after Meta said Tuesday that a “fundamentally flawed” law is forcing the company to make the tough decision. Canada’s Online News Act, passed by its leftist legislature earlier this summer, requires Big Tech companies to negotiate agreements with Canadian news outlets and pay them for news content shared on social media platforms, Reuters reported. Meta spokesman Andy Stone slammed the law in a tweet on Tuesday and said ending access to news on its platforms was the only option. “Today we’ve begun the process...

Mark Zuckerberg’s hundreds of millions of tax-deductible “Zuckbucks” that boosted turnout in heavily Democrat areas in 2020 made him my enemy. I feel no shame at reveling in his mounting misfortunes in business, even as Meta, his rebranded name for Facebook, remains robustly profitable. Actually, that profitability, the result of Facebook and Google utterly dominating the online advertising business, and this depriving AT and every other conservative website of the ad dollars we need to stay alive (while keeping a lid on the viral distribution we need), is yet another reason to hate him, come to think of it. So,...

As commercial and residential vacancy rates continue to reach all-time highs in San Francisco, many big tech buildings have been left abandoned. One of the largest offices there comes from Google, which owns a whopping 1.4-million-square-foot building that has remained on the market for sublease. Other big tech companies, like Meta and Roku, have also put up space for sale. Back in March, Intel even listed its 505,000-square-foot office. “As a hybrid-first company, we are continuing to assess and optimize our space utilization to create more vibrant workspaces for our employees when they are on-site, while also achieving cost reductions,”...

Key PointsFacebook's Twitter-killer, Threads, has seen drops in daily active users and time spent on app since the weekend, according to SensorTower and SimilarWeb.But with 100 million signups in only 5 days, it's still one of the fastest-debuting apps of all time, and seems to be siphoning some traffic from Twitter.What comes up must come down — at least in the case of user engagement on Threads, Meta ’s new Twitter competitor. Last week, the text-based social media platform reported a record 100 million sign-ups in just five days, but according to data from Sensor Tower and Similarweb, the service...

Threads, the soon-to-be-launched app touted by Facebook (now known as Meta) as the “sane” alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter, will — much like other Facebook apps — collect a dizzying array of details about its users. Screenshots of the app, which is available for pre-download on the App Store, shows it will collect data on users’ health & fitness, financial information, contact information, user content, browsing history, usage data, diagnostics, purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers, sensitive info, and more. Many other apps, including Twitter, collect data on their users, but Facebook (along with Google) is particularly notorious for it....

Three of America's largest tax preparation companies have been accused of sharing tens of millions of taxpayers' sensitive financial data with tech giants Google and Meta without their consent. A seven-month congressional probe, led by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, alleges H&R Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer used visitor tracking technology embedded in websites to share the information. In a potential violation of federal law, the investigation found data was in some cases misused by Facebook parent company Meta for targeted advertising. According to the report, alongside sharing data such as addresses and phone numbers, companies also shared details about taxpayers' filing...