Google is facing a $5 billion class-action lawsuit over allegations that the internet giant invaded the privacy of millions of users by tracking their internet usage through Chrome browsers that were set to private or “incognito” mode.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been criticized by civil rights leaders and faced internal turmoil with employees over his decision on how to handle President Donald Trump’s posts on his platform. Civil rights groups issued a joint statement after meeting with Zuckerberg stating: “We are disappointed and stunned by Mark’s incomprehensible explanations for allowing the Trump posts to remain up.”
Social media giant Twitter recently claimed that it’s not attempting to take down all misinformation on the platform, only that with “the highest potential for harm.” Breitbart News has documented numerous examples of misinformation that did not receive a “fact check” by Twitter, as well as for threats of violence that remained on the platform for extended periods.
China-owned social media app TikTok stated on Monday that it will create a “creator diversity council” to address criticisms that it censors black creators.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees angered by the decision not to remove recent posts by President Donald Trump from the platform that the company may review its policies around the “discussion of state use of force,” potentially censoring President Trump and other world leaders.
To show support for the Black Lives Matters movement, social media users began sharing images of black squares across the #BlackLivesMatter and #BLM hashtags on multiple platforms, in many cases preventing information about protests and organizational donations from being seen.
Social media giant Twitter and the “front page of the Internet” Reddit have reportedly filed supporting evidence in a lawsuit against the United States government which challenges a requirement for visa applicants to provide their social media identities. According to the two companies, requiring a visa applicant to provide their social media accounts to the government “violates the First Amendment rights to speak anonymously and associate privately.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing criticism from employees for failing to censor comments made on the platform by President Donald Trump. Ryan Freitas, a director of product design for the Facebook News Feed, says: “Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind.”
On Sunday, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent a memo to employees addressing the recent killing of George Floyd which has sparked protests across the United States. According to Cook’s letter, Apple employees have told him they “feel afraid — afraid in your communities, afraid in your daily lives, and, most cruelly of all, afraid in your own skin.”
E-commerce giant Amazon published a statement on Sunday stating that the company is “standing in solidarity with the Black community” in the “fight against systemic racism and injustice.”
A video allegedly made by the hacking group known as “Anonymous” has been published online in which a masked figure threatens to “expose” the Minneapolis Police Department.
According to recent reports, 13 Philadelphia police officers have been injured and four police vehicles have been burned during riots.
As protesters across the United States express their anger over the death of George Floyd, in many cases devolving into rioting and looting, protesters in Washington DC locked hands and stood before White House police forming a human barricade to protect the officers.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales wasted no time in criticizing President Donald Trump for his recent executive order relating to social media, calling the President a “lunatic.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has cashed in the first portion of an incentive-based stock options payout for keeping the company’s market capitalization at $100 billion along with hitting revenue milestones. The award is valued at about $775 million.
Social media giant Twitter has failed to remove or tag a rapper’s tweet for “glorifying violence” more than 18 hours after it was posted. Rapper Key Nyaya threatened journalist Cassandra Fairbanks with his post, saying: “maybe you need a bullet in the back of your skull.”
In 2018, investigative news group Project Veritas investigated Twitter exposing the bias of many of its employees and the secretive tactics that Twitter used to suppress speech on the platform.
Social media giant Facebook criticized President Trump’s recent executive order aiming to place new restrictions on social media giants that censor Americans, claiming that the order will “restrict more speech online.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has called on the Justice and Treasury departments to launch a criminal investigation of Twitter over allegations that the firm is violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.
Just one day after Breitbart News reported that Twitter had failed to “fact check” Chinese accounts promoting conspiracy theories about the Wuhan coronavirus, Twitter has applied a “fact check” label to two posts by China Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian that were included in Breitbart’s report on the platform’s failure to hold the communist nation to account for its misinformation on the Chinese virus.
In 2018, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appeared before Congress where he made a number of claims, such as stating that Twitter is a “public square” and that the platform had unfairly filtered 600,000 accounts from search results, something Dorsey described as a failure of the company’s “intended impartiality.”
Arizona’s attorney general has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Google accusing the firm of illegally collecting smartphone users’ location data. According to Attorney General Mark Brnovich, “It’s nearly impossible to stop Google from tracking your movements without your knowledge or consent.”
In a recent series of Tweets, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defended his recent decision to “fact check” and place warnings on two of President Donald Trump’s tweets. According to Dorsey, Twitter “fact checking” the president does not make the company an “arbiter of truth,” claiming that instead, the site was attempting to “connect the dots of conflicting statements.”
Twitter recently added a “fact check” to President Trump’s tweets relating to his concerns about mail-in voting fraud. Here is how Twitter made the decision to suddenly start fact-checking public figures on its platform.
Recently Twitter added a “fact check” label to President Donald Trump’s tweets about the concerns surrounding mail-in voting fraud, but the social media site has failed to apply those same fact-checking measures to verified Chinese government accounts that spread coronavirus misinformation on the platform.
According to a recent report, local news stations across the United States have run news segments scripted and produced by e-commerce giant Amazon. Unsurprisingly, the segments were overly positive about Jeff Bezos’ company and its employment practices.
When the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic hit its peak, the Chinese government was quick to make use of smartphones to track citizens’ movements and isolate those who might be infected. Now, privacy experts are warning that these surveillance measures may stay in place once the pandemic has ended. One communist party official claims that Chinese people want to be surveilled, saying the app is “loved so much that you cannot bear to part with it.”
According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, teens across the United States are becoming almost nocturnal during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Teenagers have adopted “vampire schedules” of staying up all night gaming and watching videos, then sleeping well into the day as they aren’t required to attend school in the morning.
Twitter is reportedly having trouble using AI tools to accurately label “misleading” tweets about the Wuhan coronavirus, raising concerns about the use of artificial intelligence to accurately label content on the site. As one expert explained: “Arguably, labeling incorrectly does more harm than not labeling because then people come to rely on that and they come to trust it. Once you get it wrong, a couple hours go by and it’s over.”
A court in the Netherlands has ruled that a grandmother must delete the photographs of her grandchildren that she posted to Facebook and Pinterest without their parents’ permission due to Europe’s GDPR laws on data privacy.
