Category: Tech Media

Trump Says ABC’s License Should Be Yanked over Debate Moderators’ Performance

Daily Caller News Foundation
Debate Moderators

Republican nominee Donald Trump said on Wednesday that ABC’s license should be revoked over their alleged bias toward Vice President Kamala Harris at the presidential debate.

Trump told the co-hosts of “Fox & Friends” that ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were “dishonest” for not correcting Harris’s false statements about the Charlottesville riot in 2017, his support for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The former president said the ABC moderators unfairly fact-checked him while allowing Harris to state false and misleading claims.

Read More

Commentary: A Viewer’s Guide to Harris vs. Trump Debate

RealClearWire
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will soon meet in a high stakes nationally televised debate, perhaps the only one of this campaign.

In previous elections – 1960, 1976, 1980, 2000, and 2020 come immediately to mind – the election contests were heavily influenced by such encounters. This year, for sure, it is “high risk, high reward.” With an election so close, we believe this debate will be important – maybe even decisive – in determining the winner.

Read More

YouTube Takes Down Conservative Podcast Network Tied to DOJ Russia Indictment

Daily Caller News Foundation
Lauren Chen

YouTube terminated the accounts of a conservative influencer and her media company Thursday evening, one day after the Justice Department indicated the company was tied to a Russian scheme to influence the 2024 election.

The accounts for Tenet Media and Lauren Chen were removed one day after Attorney General Merrick Garland held a press conference Wednesday announcing an indictment of two Russians in an alleged scheme to influence the 2024 election. A note on Tenet Media’s channel states that it “violated our Community Guidelines” and Chen’s personal account on the Google-owned video site was listed as “not available” Friday morning.

Read More

Government’s Entrenched ‘Disinformation’ Policing Infrastructure Will Take a Decade to Dismantle, Free Speech Expert Says

Just the News

As the 2024 election fast approaches, a former State Department official turned free speech advocate told Just the News that the entrenched censorship regime created to police disinformation and misinformation along ideological lines will take considerable work to reverse. 

Read More

Big Tech Liable for Breaking Promises to Users that Led to Suicide, Death Threats: Appeals Court

Just the News
Smart Phone Filled with Apps

Days before the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent Big Tech lawyers scrambling by upending three decades of judicial precedents on Section 230 immunity from liability, its West Coast counterpart warned platforms their immunity had limits, too.

While far smaller in scope than the 3rd Circuit’s ruling that TikTok could be held liable for a little girl’s death by algorithmically recommending the video she fatally copied, likely to provoke Supreme Court intervention, the 9th Circuit ruling Aug. 22 against third-party Snapchat app developer Yolo also suggests judges are growing skeptical of maximalist views of the 1996 law.

Read More

Harris Campaign Selectively Barring Reporters from Campaign Coverage

Daily Caller News Foundation
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor Brandon McGinley

The Harris-Walz campaign has continuously denied reporters and photographers from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette access to the campaign events, reportedly due to labor action within the company, according to an op-ed from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor Brandon McGinley (pictured above).

Read More

Commentary: Time and Again, Kamala Harris Demonstrates She is ‘The Committee’s’ Candidate

American Greatness
Kamala Harris, CNN interview

So on Thursday, Kamala Harris was finally allowed out to meet the press.

Well, she was allowed to sit for about 18 minutes for a carefully scripted interview on a Dem-friendly network — CNN — with a partisan media head — Dana Bash — who came with a satchel of softballs. Apparently, Harris has yet to be certified for solo flight, however, since she was chaperoned by her pick for VP, Minnesota governor and serial fantasist Tim Walz.

Read More

Top Kamala Campaign Staffers Aided Biden-Harris Admin’s Social Media Censorship Efforts

Daily Caller News Foundation
Teenager on Computer

Two campaign staffers for Vice President Kamala Harris were previously involved in efforts to censor Americans for spreading purported “disinformation” about COVID-19 while working in the Biden-Harris White House.

Then-administration officials Rob Flaherty and Aisha Shah are named as having been involved in the government’s efforts to censor Americans in legal filings related to the Murthy v. Missouri lawsuit, which alleged that the federal government violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to censor content related to the pandemic and other hot-button topics. On the Harris campaign team, Flaherty is now a deputy campaign manager and Shah is the director of digital partnerships, according to their respective LinkedIn profiles.

Read More

Commentary: Cell Phone Bans in Schools Is a Growing Trend

Virginia Star Staff
Student with Cell Phone

Navigating the complexities of smartphone use in K-12 education is a collective effort that requires ongoing adaptation as technology evolves. We expect the Tennessee General Assembly to draft legislation on this issue in the next session. There is an increasing push to safeguard young individuals from spending too much time in front of screens.

States and public school districts are advocating cellphone bans in schools, driven by concerns about distractions and their adverse effects on student well-being. This growing trend should not just be about restrictions but about creating a more focused and conducive learning environment. Teacher buy-in is critical to this process.

Read More

Credit Card Debt Hits Record $1.14 Trillion

The Center Square
Credit Card

More Americans are struggling financially as savings are significantly down and debt and delinquencies are up compared to four years ago.

Savings and disposable income are significantly down when comparing federal data under the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations.

Read More

Commentary: Irresponsible School Districts Force Teachers to Create Amazon Wish Lists

Virginia Star Staff
Teacher

For several weeks, social media has been flooded by teachers’ posts with Amazon wish lists, soliciting others to stock their classrooms with basic supplies. Creating these lists has been commonplace in recent years as teachers look outside their schools and districts to fill their supply needs.

Some of the most popular requested items are dry erase markers, Kleenex, Lysol wipes, erasers, tape, pens, colored copy paper, file folders, and pencil sharpeners. Others request educational items such as a microscope, map, or globe, which seem essential for student learning.

Read More

Commentary: American Natural Gas Is America’s Clean Energy Standard

RealClearWire
Natural Gas Drilling

Abundant and affordable energy drives America’s powerful and productive economy. That’s been true throughout our nation’s history, and America’s recent achievement of energy independence provides the most concrete illustration of that fact.

But to keep our nation firing on all eight cylinders, we need government policies that prioritize providing adequate, reliable and secure domestic energy supplies.

Read More

Commentary: Cell-Phone Free Classrooms Will Unleash Student Success

RealClearWire
Students on Cell Phones

Amid the many battles over how to improve American schools, it’s often forgotten that what’s taught in the classroom is but one component of ensuring that students receive a high-quality education; it’s also important to remove barriers to children’s learning.

And the idea to remove one major impediment – cell phones in K-12 schools – has gained significant traction over the past year, most recently in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Read More

Study Finds TikTok Manipulates Content to Favorably Promote Chinese Government

Just the News
TikTok

TikTok uses an algorithm to promote content that puts the Chinese government in a favorable light in order to sway users’ views, according to a new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).

The study builds off a previous report from December that found the social media site likely promotes pro-China content, as the app faces bipartisan criticism over national security concerns. The app is already facing a potential ban in the United States if the Chinese parent company ByteDance doesn’t divest its shares of the platform on time.

Read More

Commentary: Every Leading Large Language Model Leans Left Politically

RealClearWire
LLMS

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrating into everyday life – as chatbots, digital assistants, and internet search guides, for example. These artificial intelligence (AI) systems – which consume large amounts of text data to learn associations – can create all sorts of written material when prompted and can ably converse with users. LLMs’ growing power and omnipresence mean that they exert increasing influence on society and culture.

So it’s of great import that these artificial intelligence systems remain neutral when it comes to complicated political issues. Unfortunately, according to a new analysis recently published to PLoS ONE, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Read More

Former Health Officials Slam FDA Duplicity on ‘Puberty Blockers’ in Light of New Evidence

Virginia Star Staff
David Gortler

Former officials in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration condemned what they described as the FDA’s duplicity in allowing off-label use of so-called puberty blockers while loudly condemning the use of far safer drugs to treat COVID-19.

“During the Trump administration, the media falsely accused us daily of ‘politicizing America’s public health agencies.’ Yet the same media is now silent on [Vice President Kamala] Harris and [President Joe] Biden’s FDA’s anti-science, purely political insanity,” Brian Harrison, former chief of staff at HHS and now a member of the Texas House of Representatives, told The Daily Signal in a written statement.

Read More

Dominion Ups Investments in Offshore Wind Energy as Virginia Industry Surges Forward

The Center Square
Offshore Wind Farm

As President Joe Biden’s presidential term comes to a close, the administration is bearing down on its goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy and 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2035.

As of 2021, the administration had approved two commercial-scale offshore wind projects, and seven have been approved within the past year.

Read More

Congress Opens Probe into Whether Google Search Misled Americans on Trump Assassination

Just the News

Already facing a potential breakup from a devastating antitrust court ruling, Google got more bad news Wednesday when the main congressional oversight committee announced it had opened a probe into whether the search engine misled Americans about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump last month.

Read More

Commentary: ‘Zuck Bucks’ Need to Be Stopped Cold

Daily Caller News Foundation

It is less than 90 days to Election Day, and right on queue the group behind the “Zuck Bucks” campaign of 2020 is back with a new scheme. This time, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) is doling out millions in grant dollars to rural election administrators in 19 states.

Election officers beware. The group is trying to turn the government offices that run elections into bastions of partisan progressive activism. Election officials striving for nonpartisanship should steer clear.

Read More

Virginia’s Open Records Laws Show Room for Improvement in Key Areas, Says Expert

The Center Square
Megan Rhyne

The Freedom of Information Act exists to promote governmental transparency, although it doesn’t always accomplish that end, according to the Executive Director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, Megan Rhyne.

And though Virginia’s not unique in that regard, it’s difficult to compare states’ open records laws because they can differ by many variables, according to Rhyne. 

Read More

Disinformation Police Officer NewsGuard Goes After Free-Speech Lawyer, Olympics Narratives as Peers Fall to Scrutiny

Just the News

Two months after the for-profit business NewsGuard came under congressional investigation for whether its business relationships with domestic and foreign governments are tantamount to state-sponsored censorship, the self-described “only apolitical service rating news sources” is taking on new targets like the Olympics and a high-profile free-speech lawyer.

Read More

Analysis: Newsela Is the ‘Media Literacy’ Provider Active in 90 Percent of American Schools

Foundation for Freedom Online
Newslea Media Literacy

One of the nation’s largest and fastest growing  educational technology platforms, Newsela, is also a foremost provider of “media literacy” lessons for schools. The platform started in 2013 has experienced tremendous growth. Its educational products are used in over 90 percent of schools.

Read More

New Platform Aims to Halt CCP Influence on States

Virginia Star Staff
Ryan Walker

There’s a new tool available for lawmakers and American citizens to combat the threat of the Chinese Communist Party. Today, Heritage Action for America launched the website CounterTheCCP.com, exposing the ways in which China stands to harm America’s sovereignty and offering model legislation and resources to deal with that threat.

“To win the new cold war with China, the United States needs a comprehensive strategy,” Ryan Walker, Heritage Action executive vice president, said in a statement.

Read More

Report Shows Harris and Emhoff Donated to Defund Police and Pro-Sanctuary City Group

Just the News
Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff

Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff donated to a liberal legal group in favor of defunding the police and permanently designating Washington, D.C as a “sanctuary city” that does not report illegal immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to their joint tax returns.

Harris and Emhoff donated $1,000 in 2021 and 2023 to Legal Aid DC, noted a Washington Examiner report.

Read More

Venezuelan Dictator Suspends X After Sparring with Elon Musk

Virginia Star Staff
Nicolas Maduro

Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro temporarily banned X from the country on Thursday after accusing the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, of using it to stoke opposition against him.

Maduro declared himself the victor in the country’s July 28 elections, despite credible concerns that the race was rigged against his political opposition. Musk has been publicly critical of Maduro’s refusal to step down from power, and Maduro has now suspended X from Venezuela in retaliation.

Read More

Kamala Harris Takes Questions from Reporters 18 Days After Becoming Nominee

Virginia Star Staff
Kamala Harris

On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) finally took questions from reporters after being criticized for dodging the media for nearly three weeks after becoming the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

As Fox News reports, Harris spoke to journalists on the tarmac at the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport after a rally in Michigan. Her unplanned press gaggle took place after former President Donald Trump held an hour-long press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in the early afternoon.

Read More

Advertising Coalition Accused of Censoring Conservatives Disbands amid Lawsuits

Admin

The influential advertising coalition known as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) announced their dissolution on Thursday after facing multiple lawsuits from social media companies accusing the group of censoring conservatives, Business Insider reported.

Read More

Bipartisan Bill Introduced to Better Monitor Terror Threats on Foreign Mobile Apps Like TikTok

Just the News
Rep. August Pfluger and Rep. Jimmy Panetta (composite image)

Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, and Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., introduced a bill to “conduct annual assessments on terrorism threats to the United States posed by terrorist organizations utilizing foreign cloud-based mobile or desktop messaging applications, and for other purposes.”

Pfluger said that cloud-based technology has given “terrorist groups even more tools to use in their pursuit of deadly chaos” more than 20 years since the 9/11 attacks.

Read More

Trump Suggests Congress Could ‘Shut Down’ Tech Giant over Alleged Censorship

Virginia Star Staff
Trump Google

Former President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that Congress could close down Google for its alleged bias and censorship.

Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall demanded in a Wednesday letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai that the company provide answers relating to its apparent “censorship” of the Trump assassination attempt from the tech giant’s “autocomplete” feature. Trump on “Mornings With Maria Bartiromo” said the company could face additional congressional scrutiny and possibly closure for how its handled political issues.

Read More

The Advertising Industry’s Deepening Role in Online Censorship

Virginia Star Staff
X User

In the arsenal of the censorship-industrial complex, few weapons have been more effective than advertiser boycotts. Long before online censorship reached its peak in 2020 and 2021, advocates of online censorship had identified online advertisers as the most important source of pressure on social media companies to restrict free speech. When direct appeals to social media platforms fail, pro-censorship campaigners use the threat of advertiser boycotts to produce the desired result.

Read More

Gaetz Demands DHS Hand Over Docs on Big Tech Ties, Alleged Censorship of Trump Assassination Attempt Info

Admin

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz demanded Wednesday that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas provide any key documents that could shed light on his agency’s ties to Big Tech and alleged efforts to censor online information surrounding the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

Read More

Trump Blasts Facebook, Google for ‘Wrongly Censored’ Photo of Assassination Attempt

The Center Square
Donald Trump in front of Google headquarters (composite image)

Former President Donald Trump blasted Facebook and Google Tuesday after Facebook admitted it had censored photos of Trump’s assassination attempt, images widely seen as a major moment and rallying point for the Trump campaign.

Users on X, formerly known as Twitter, began posting online this week that Google searches for Trump’s assassination, including the photo, were not being autocompleted like other searches. They also posted screenshots saying that searches for Trump turned up news for Trump’s opponent, Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Read More

Online Network Run by Chinese ‘Cyber Police’ Agent Promotes Prostitution, Sex Trafficking in the U.S.

Virginia Star Staff

A Telegram channel used by Chinese nationals to illegally immigrate to the U.S. also appears to be aiding and abetting prostitution and sex trafficking, a months-long Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.

The “American Self-Guided Tour Channel” on Telegram is one of several that facilitates Chinese illegal immigration into the U.S., serving as a hub for documents detailing things like border wall gaps and scripts for obtaining asylum, the DCNF recently reported. The 8,000-member channel is controlled by a self-proclaimed Chinese “cyber police” agent, who regularly bans accounts critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Read More

Google Insists ‘No Manual Action’ to Hide Trump Assassination Attempt from Search Suggestions

Just the News

Google’s search engine conspicuously left out Donald Trump in autocomplete suggestions for “assassination,” “assassination attempt” and even “president donald” Sunday, drawing criticism from social media users including X owner Elon Musk that it was censoring recent history.

Read More

ABC’s ‘This Week’ Interviews SWAT Sharpshooters: Group Had ‘No Communication’ with Secret Service Prior to Trump Assassination Attempt

Admin

The lead sharpshooter of the SWAT Team working alongside the U.S. Secret Service during the attempted assassination against former President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the group had “no communication” with the agency until after the shooting.

Read More

Justice Department Says TikTok Has Collected User Data on Issues Such as Gun Control and Abortion

Just the News

The Justice Department on Friday evening accused the social media app TikTok of gathering information on users’ opinions on social issues such as abortion and gun control.

Attorneys for the DOJ said in documents filed at an appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its parent company ByteDance used an internal web-suite system called Lark to get TikTok employees to communicate with ByteDance engineers in China.

Read More

Another Left-Wing News Outlet Tries to Re-Write History to Help Kamala Harris

Peter D'Abrosca

Another left-wing news outlet is scrambling to re-write history to prevent Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, from attacks by her opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Read More

Left-Wing Media Scrambles to Distance Kamala Harris from ‘Border Czar’ Title

Peter D'Abrosca

As Vice President Kamala Harris has become the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, the left-wing media has scrambled to erase her title as President Joe Biden’s “Border Czar.”

Read More

U.S. Voters Suspect AI Could Impact Their Lives as It Develops According to Poll

The Center Square
ChatGPT

New poll data of registered and potential voters reveals a general consensus that artificial intelligence could pose a threat to people as it further develops.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is technology broadly used to complete tasks, learn information, and enable computers to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. Recently, AI technology has become more sophisticated and more widely used at an increasing rate. 

Read More

Musk Moving X and SpaceX HQ from California over Parental Notification Law

Virginia Star Staff
Elon Musk

Elon Musk has announced that X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX headquarters will be leaving California and relocating to Texas.

The move comes after Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law on Monday requiring school districts to deny parents the right to know when their child is using a different name or pronoun at school.

Read More

American Auto Giant Pivots Plans to Build Electric Vehicles at Major Plant to Produce Heavy-Duty Pickups Instead

Virginia Star Staff
Ford EV plant

Ford is reversing course on plans to manufacture electric vehicles (EVs) at a major plant and instead will produce gas-powered, heavy-duty pickup trucks at the facility, Reuters reported Thursday.

The company initially planned to build three-row electric SUVs at its facility in Oakville, Canada, between 2025 and 2027, but the plant will now add capacity to produce 100,000 F-Series Super Duty trucks at the plant, according to Reuters. Ford said that it is still committed to producing those EVs on that timeline, though it is unclear which of its plants will handle that production.

Read More

Commentary: Consumer Choice over Automobile Mandates

RealClearWire

The most refreshingly true statements articulated by Gill Pratt at the RealClearEnergy Future Forum are “Not everyone is the same” and “One size does not fit all.” As Toyota’s chief scientist, Pratt understands very well the complex nature of a very diverse consumer base (check the video link above to see his part).

That is why a multi-path approach that enhances the customer’s quality of life is the most productive strategy. America’s motorists come from a variety of backgrounds who purchase vehicles for a variety of purposes. “Our job as a manufacturer is to adapt and provide customers with choices to satisfy their needs and desires,” says the executive.

Read More

Report Finds One Of Biden’s Favorite Green Industries to Miss 2030 Target by Years Despite Billions In Subsidies

Virginia Star Staff
Offshore Wind Farm

Offshore wind is likely to miss the Biden administration’s 2030 target for the industry despite receiving billions of dollars of subsidies, according to a Tuesday American Clean Power Association (ACP) report.

The administration has a stated goal of having the offshore wind industry provide 30 gigawatts (GW) of power by 2030, but the ACP report projects that capacity will only reach about 14 GW by then. The Biden administration has subsidized the industry to the tune of billions of dollars since assuming office in 2021, but those efforts appear unlikely to put the 2030 target in reach until at least 2033, per ACP’s analysis.

Read More

‘Headed For Obsolescence’: Chinese Automakers Could Be Poised to Wipe Out American Car Titans

Virginia Star Staff
BYD Chinese electric vehicle

American automakers will need to make major changes to their businesses if they want to remain competitive with Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) poised to flood the global market, according to analysis published by auto industry consultants.

U.S. manufacturers currently do tens of billions of dollars of business abroad, but Chinese competitors are poised to take over approximately one-third of the global market share by 2030 with particularly strong growth in Europe, South America and Asia driven by EVs and plug-in hybrids, AlixPartners projects in its report.

Read More

Meta Finally Lifts Lingering Restrictions on Trump Months Out from November

Virginia Star Staff
Trump Zuckerberg Shaking Hands

Tech giant Meta announced Friday it will be lifting former President Donald Trump’s “heightened suspension penalties” on Facebook and Instagram as the 2024 elections grow closer.

President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, released an updated statement on the company’s site, announcing the change to the protocols from January 2023, specifically for Trump’s restrictions, in order for users to “hear from political candidates.” The company stated the previous restrictions on Trump had been placed in “response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances” following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Read More