Commentary: Time Is Running Out for the COVID Coverups

The Left has a word for misinformation that turns out to be true. They call it, “misinformation.” Over and over again, the tech giants, cheered on by power-drunk government officials, have censored and deplatformed people who have contradicted the official narrative regarding COVID and heavy-handed public health measures that restrict freedom with dubious health benefits.

Tellingly, the demands to censor Joe Rogan rarely identify the supposed “misinformation” he peddled. Even more tellingly, the censors totally fail to acknowledge that Rogan-promoted “conspiracy theories” have a better track record than many of the articles of faith his critics promoted.

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Senate Committee Advances Minnesota Sen. Klobuchar’s Legislation to ‘Rein in Big Tech’

Sen. Amy Klobuchar appeared on Fox News’ Special Report Thursday night, primarily to promote an antitrust bill aimed at reforming laws that govern Big Tech and increasing competition.

A bipartisan U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted 16-6 Thursday to advance the legislation — The American Innovation and Choice Online Act — as bipartisan lawmakers seek to curtail the power and influence of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and others.

In short, the bill would prevent companies from “unfairly preferencing their own products and services” on their platforms while prohibiting “specific forms of conduct that are harmful to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and consumers.”

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Facebook Exec Promises to Crack Down on ‘Falsehoods’ Targeting ‘Marginalized Communities’

Roy Austin, vice president of civil rights for Facebook parent company Meta, pledged to crack down on “misinformation” and alleged discriminatory conduct propagated by the social media platform.

“We’re living in a time and a society where there are people who propagate obvious falsehoods,” Austin said in an interview with Axios. “My position is, when those falsehoods injure historically and systemically marginalized communities, that they don’t belong.”

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Amazon and Facebook Spent More Money Than Ever Lobbying in 2021

Amazon and Facebook parent company Meta spent more money in 2021 lobbying lawmakers and officials than any year before, according to lobbying disclosure filings.

Amazon spent $20.3 million on lobbying while Meta spent $20.1 million in 2021, according to a review of lobbying disclosure filings by MarketWatch. The figures are record totals for both tech companies, who spent $18.9 million and $19.7 million on lobbying in 2020, respectively.

Google’s lobbying spend for 2021 clocked in at $11.5 million, while Microsoft spent $10.3 million and Apple spent $6.5 million, according to MarketWatch’s review.

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Zuckerberg, Pichai Signed Off On Backroom Facebook-Google Collusion, Lawsuit Alleges

Facebook and Google CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai signed off on a deal between the two companies to rig the digital advertising market, a recently unredacted lawsuit alleges.

The existence of the deal, dubbed Jedi Blue, was first revealed in a complaint filed by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in December 2020 which alleged that Google unlawfully abused its dominance in the digital ads market. The complaint alleged that Google struck a deal with Facebook in 2018 to give the social company secret advantages in its ad exchanges, known as Open Bidding auctions, to the detriment of competitors.

An unredacted version of the complaint filed Friday alleges that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally signed off on the deal. The complaint alleges Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg brokered the deal with top Google executive Philipp Schindler and pushed Zuckerberg to approve.

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Democratic U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna Calls out Twitter for Trying to Hide Hunter Biden Laptop Story

Ro Khanna

Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna criticized Twitter and Facebook for censoring the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden, saying the story should not have been blocked.

“I thought it was a mistake for Twitter to take down some of this stuff about Hunter Biden, or Facebook to do that,” Khanna said during an interview with Joe Lonsdale on the American Optimist podcast while promoting his book “Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us.”

The New York Post published a story in October 2020 detailing a meeting between Hunter Biden, then-Vice President Joe Biden and a top executive at Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2015, relying on data recovered from a laptop reportedly belonging to Hunter. Shortly after the story was published, Twitter blocked users from sharing the link and suspended accounts that attempted to tweet it out.

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Facebook Parent Company Will Make Its Office Workers Get the Vaccine Booster

Facebook parent company Meta will require its in-person workers to receive a booster shot in addition to a COVID-19 vaccine, the company announced Monday.

By March 28, Meta employees must have received the booster to use the in-person offices of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, The Wall Street Journal reported. Meta is reportedly delaying the reopening of its offices until late March due to the requirement.

“We’re focused on making sure our employees continue to have choices about where they work given the current COVID-19 landscape,” Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of human resources, said in a statement, CNBC reported. “We understand that the continued uncertainty makes this a difficult time to make decisions about where to work, so we’re giving more time to choose what works best for them.”

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Trump Calls Twitter, Facebook ‘Disgrace to Our Nation,’ Urges Americans to Abandon Platforms

Former President Donald Trump, who is building his own social media solution, on Monday night called Twitter and Facebook a “disgrace to our Nation” for their continued censorship of conservative voices and implored Americans to abandon their platforms.

Trump’s statement was released after a tumultuous 24-hour period in which freshman Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was banned permanently from Twitter and given a 24-hour timeout on Facebook for information she posted on COVID-19.

“Twitter is a disgrace to democracy. They shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country,” the former president said. “Marjorie Taylor Greene has a huge constituency of honest, patriotic, hard-working people. They don’t deserve what’s happened to them on places like low-life Twitter and Facebook.

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Facebook Bans Conservative Kid’s Book Publisher Heroes of Liberty From Running Ads

Facebook permanently suspended the ads account of Heroes of Liberty, a conservative children’s book publisher, claiming the company’s ads violated the tech giant’s policies against “Low Quality or Disruptive Content.”

“We began investing in Facebook four months before we launched our first book,” Bethany Mandel, Heroes of Liberty editor and board member, told Fox Business. “We invested most of our marketing budget on the platform, and now our budget (the money we’ve already spent), as well as our assets and data are gone. Marketing-wise we are back in square one, financially it’s even more challenging.”

Facebook initially banned Heroes of Liberty’s Facebook Ads account on Dec. 23, according to Mandel, claiming the account “didn’t comply with our policy on Low Quality or Disruptive Content.”

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Facebook Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene for 24 Hours

Smart phone with Facebook etched out

Facebook suspended the account of Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for 24 hours on Monday, one day after Twitter permanently suspended her account over repeated violations of COVID-19 misinformation policies.

Greene posted on Telegram that Facebook blocked her from posting or commenting for 24 hours for not abiding by the company’s “Community Standards” on Monday.

“This is because you previously posted something that didn’t follow our Community Standards,” Facebook’s temporary restriction announcement said, according to Greene.

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Most Americans Don’t Trust TikTok, Facebook to Keep Their Data Safe: Poll

Facebook logo with smartphone showing lock in front

A majority of Americans don’t trust major social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, to keep their data safe, according to a new poll.

Over 70% of American internet users say they don’t trust Facebook to responsibly manage their personal information or data related to their internet activity, according to the results of The Washington Post/Schar School poll released Wednesday. Similarly, 63% say they don’t trust TikTok to handle their data and 60% say they don’t trust Instagram.

Amazon and Apple were deemed the most trustworthy major tech companies, with just 40% of Americans saying they distrust the tech giants, according to the poll results.

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Judge Removed After Allegedly Calling Colleague Names, Making Employee Take Diet Pills, Using Fake Facebook Accounts to Threaten Litigants

Jefferson County, Alabama, Judge Nakita Blocton was removed from her job after numerous accusations of abuse against employees, colleagues and litigants while reportedly under the influence of Phentermine or other prescription drugs.

Blocton was accused of calling another judge a “fat bitch” and “Uncle Tom,” according to the judgment of the Alabama Court of the Judiciary.

One employee accused Blocton of forcing her and others to take Phentermine, a diet pill, to “pep” them up after working late in a complaint to the Alabama Judiciary.

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Zuckerberg-Funded Nonprofit Heavily Favored Democrats in Allotting Millions in Election Aid: IRS Filings

A Chicago-based nonprofit funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to local election offices in what critics charge was a bid to elect Democrats in the 2020 elections, newly released IRS filings show.

The Center for Technology and Civic Life’s IRS Form 990 filing for 2020, which Just the News obtained, reveals thousands of grants to election offices across the country. IRS 990s detail where organizations received and spent money.

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Commentary: Platform Transparency Can Help Build Antitrust Cases

There is growing bipartisan concern over the power Silicon Valley’s oligopolies wield over American society. Amazon alone controls 72% of U.S. adult book sales, Airbnb accounts for a fifth of domestic lodging expenditures and Facebook accounts for almost three-quarters of social media visits. Just two companies, Apple and Google, act as gatekeepers to 99% of smartphones, while two others, Uber and Lyft, control 98% of the ride-share market in the U.S. Yet, for government to take robust antitrust action against Silicon Valley requires the kind of data it currently lacks: documenting the harm this market consolidation inflicts on consumers. A new RealClearFoundation report offers a look at how amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to require platform transparency could aid such antitrust efforts.

When it comes to Silicon Valley’s social media platforms, they have long argued that antitrust laws don’t apply to them because their services are provided free of charge. In reality, users do pay for their services: with their data rather than their money. Companies today harvest vast amounts of private information about their users every day, using that data to invisibly nudge their users toward purchases and consuming ads, or the companies simply sell that data outright.

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Facebook Silent on Whether It Will Allow Pro-Kyle Rittenhouse Posts

Facebook is remaining silent as to whether it will change its content policy regarding Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, who was found not guilty of several charges Friday.

During riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020 after the shooting of Jacob Blake, Rittenhouse, then seventeen years old, shot three men in self-defense during an altercation, killing two of them. Rittenhouse was later arrested and charged with intentional homicide before being acquitted on all charges Friday afternoon.

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State Attorney Generals Launch Investigation into Instagram’s Effects on Kids

Young person on Instagram

A bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general launched a probe into Instagram on Thursday to examine whether the company violated state-level consumer protection laws.

The states are investigating whether Meta (formerly known as Facebook), which owns Instagram, promoted the image-sharing platform “to children and young adults” despite being aware of its negative effects, according to statements from the attorneys general. The probe cites internal Facebook communications and research leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen and published by The Wall Street Journal showing Meta was aware that use of Instagram could contribute to body image and mental health issues among teens.

“When social media platforms treat our children as mere commodities to manipulate for longer screen time engagement and data extraction, it becomes imperative for state attorneys general to engage our investigative authority under our consumer protection laws,” Republican Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said in a statement.

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Facebook Blocks Search Results for ‘Kyle Rittenhouse’

Person looking on Facebook with trending topics

Despite massive public interest in the court proceedings in Kenosha, Wisconsin,  this week, Facebook has blocked search results for the name “Kyle Rittenhouse.” Facebook shows zero posts when the query “Kyle Rittenhouse” is entered into the social media platform’s search bar. A message appears that states that “832,000 people are talking about this,” but no results show up.

An attempt to find Kyle Rittenhouse posts brings up a message informing the user that Facebook did not find any results with a prompt to make sure your spelling is correct.

Rittenhouse, 18, is currently on trial for shooting three people in Kenosha, Wisconsin,  killing two of them outright during a riot in August 2020. He is charged with two counts of homicide, one count of attempted homicide, recklessly endangering safety and illegal possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18.

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ANALYSIS: PolitiFact and Facebook Spread Gravely Dangerous Falsehood About the COVID-19 Survival Rate

In a PolitiFact article titled “Why the COVID-19 Survival Rate Is Not Over 99%,” staff writer Jason Asenso argues that about 1.7% of U.S. residents who contract COVID-19 die from it. However, he uses a naive approach to calculate this figure, and legitimate methods show that the average COVID-19 survival rate is firmly over 99%.

Medical journals have documented the deadly harms of exaggerating the fatality rate of COVID-19. Nevertheless, Facebook is amplifying PolitiFact’s false claim by using it to censor genuine facts about this issue.

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Cotton, Klobuchar Plan to Rein in Big Tech’s ‘Monopolistic’ Practices with New Bipartisan Bill

Amy Klobuchar and Tom Cotton

Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar unveiled a bipartisan bill Friday intended to restrict how major tech companies acquire and merge with smaller firms.

The bill, titled the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, is a companion to antitrust legislation advanced out of the House Judiciary Committee in June. If enacted, the law would shift the burden in antitrust cases to the acquiring party for mergers greater than $50 million, meaning that the acquiring firm would have to prove that its acquisition of another company was not anti-competitive.

The bill explicitly targets Big Tech companies, and it applies to firms with market capitalizations over $600 billion, at least 50,000,000 U.S.-based monthly active users or 100,000 monthly active business users. This would include Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple.

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New Facebook Lawsuit Alleges Tech Giant Conspired to ‘Crush’ Competition

Executives of a now-defunct photo app filed an antitrust complaint against Facebook on Thursday alleging the company schemed to end their company.

The complaint, filed by executives of a start-up image app called Phhhoto, alleges that Facebook employed anti-competitive business tactics to throttle the smaller company after it refused a business deal with the tech giant. Specifically, the suit alleges that Mark Zuckerberg personally downloaded the app, approached Phhhoto for a partnership and later pursued a campaign against the start-up after no deal materialized.

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Facebook to Shut Down Facial Recognition System, Delete Scans of One Billion People

Facebook announced Tuesday it was shutting down its Face Recognition system and deleting the scans of over one billion people’s faces.

Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Facebook, announced the changes in a blog post Tuesday, citing the technology’s possible negative effects as well as regulatory uncertainty as reasons behind the decision.

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Report: Facebook Lobbyists Are Being Ignored and Banned from Lawmakers’ Offices

Two men in suits shaking hands

Facebook lobbyists are struggling to meet with lawmakers, Politico reported, as the tech giant faces congressional scrutiny and negative press surrounding its business practices.

Several lawmakers’ offices are ignoring Facebook’s policy team and even refusing to meet with lobbyists, Politico reported. Several congressional aides told the outlet that recent news reports on Facebook’s business practices, including its knowledge of how its platform affects teen users and its amplification of “misinformation,” have contributed to lawmakers’ hostile attitudes.

“Mark Zuckerberg has done more to polarize the country probably than anyone else and yet despite that, the antipathy towards him is one of the most bipartisan things that remains in the country,” a Democratic House staffer told Politico.

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Facebook Changes Its Name to ‘Meta’

Illustration of two people looking out on a design of Meta, Facebook's new name

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday the tech giant was changing its name to “Meta.”

Zuckerberg announced the name change at the Facebook Connect 2021 conference. The new name reflects Zuckerberg’s goal to reorient his social media company to a technology conglomerate with several different products beyond the Facebook social network, focusing on “metaverse” technology. 

The “metaverse” is a virtual environment in which individuals can interact with one another through avatars and across multiple platforms and devices. Facebook called it a “new phase of interconnected virtual experiences using technologies like virtual and augmented reality” in which people interacting online can become much closer to the experience of interacting in person.”

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Commentary: The Data Mining of America’s Kids Should Be a National Scandal

As U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sat down for his first hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, denying a conflict of interest in his decision to investigate parents for “domestic terrorism,” there is a mother in the quiet suburb of Annandale, N.J., who found his answers lacking. And she has questions she wants asked at Garland’s hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee this Wednesday.

On a recent Saturday night, Caroline Licwinko, a mother of three, a law school student and the coach to her daughter’s cheerleading squad, sat in front of her laptop and tapped three words into an internet search engine: “Panorama. Survey. Results.”

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Facebook Is Under Government Investigation over Leaked Documents

Facebook is being investigated over leaked company documents and allegations by a former employee, according to financial filings.

The company’s 10-Q form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday mentions that Facebook is “subject to government investigations and requests” seemingly related to documents leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen that detail tech giant’s business practices and internal research.

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Two Border Patrol Agents Fired, Dozens More Punished for Involvement in Facebook Group ‘I’m 10-15’

Two U.S. Border Patrol agents have been fired in connection with a probe that found roughly 60 of them committed misconduct while participating in a private Facebook group that mocked migrants and lawmakers, investigators said Monday.

Most agents’ penalties were significantly reduced from those recommended by an internal agency review board, according to a House Oversight and Reform committee staff report obtained by the Associated Press.

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Facebook-Linked Grants Backed Democrats in Pennsylvania in 2020

A new report reveals that multiple private grants tied to the Big Tech giant Facebook overwhelmingly backed Democratic candidates and counties in the state of Pennsylvania in 2020, as reported by the New York Post.

The report by the publication Broad + Liberty (BL) reveals that one such grant, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), spent more money on turning out registered voters in Democrat-majority counties than Republican-majority counties. In addition to the increased push for voter turnout, these counties were given a jumpstart on this grant and information on how to apply by state officials.

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Facebook Employees Actively Censored Conservative Websites, Even in Defiance of Managers

Facebook logo with smartphone showing lock in front

A series of new leaks from Big Tech giant Facebook has revealed even more bias against conservatives from the company’s employees, even to the point of causing internal debates between employees and upper management, according to the New York Post.

The latest leaks come from message board conversations reviewed by the Post, which showed back-and-forth discussions within Facebook about how to deal with conservative news outlets during last year’s race riots by far-left domestic terrorist organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

Some employees expressed their desire to completely remove sites such as Breitbart from Facebook’s “News Tab” feature. When one such employee asked a manager about doing so, the manager responded by pointing out that “we saw drops in trust in CNN 2 years ago,” before rhetorically asking “would we take the same approach for them too?”

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Legislation Would Allow Pennsylvanians to Sue Big Tech Companies for Censorship

Two Pennsylvania state senators said recently they want to hold social media companies accountable for religious or political censorship.

Sens. Doug Mastriano, R-Gettysburg, and Scott Hutchinson, R-Oil City, said their Senate Bill 604, also called the Social Media Accountability Act, would create a private right of action to allow residents to sue social media companies like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter for banning or censoring their account due to sharing religious or political beliefs on the platform.

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Another Whistleblower Files SEC Complaint Alleging Facebook Didn’t Do Enough About ‘Hate Speech’, ‘Misinformation’

Person looking on Facebook with trending topics

Another former Facebook employee filed a whistleblower complaint Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that the tech giant misled its investors by failing to combat the spread of hate and misinformation on its platform, The Washington Post reported.

The former employee, whose name is not yet public, alleged that Facebook executives chose not to pursue adequate content moderation policies related to hate speech and misinformation for the sake of maximizing profits. The complaint also alleges that Facebook did not do enough about alleged Russian misinformation on the platform for fear of upsetting former President Donald Trump.

In particular, the complaint alleges that Trump and his associates received preferential treatment, according to the Post.

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Big Tech Companies Are Defying Texas’ Vaccine Mandate Ban

Man getting bandaid on vaccination shot

Major tech companies are continuing to require their employees to be vaccinated at their Texas facilities, in violation of Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order banning all vaccine mandates.

Abbott signed an executive order on Oct. 11 prohibiting “any entity,” including private businesses, government contractors and local schools, from imposing a requirement that employees be vaccinated as a condition of employment. However, Google, Facebook, HPE, Twitter and Lyft have yet to lift their vaccine mandates in response to the order, Protocol first reported.

HPE spokesman Adam Bauer confirmed the company had not changed its vaccine policy, and told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the company was making “vaccination a condition of employment for U.S. team members to comply with President Biden’s executive order and remain in good standing as a federal contractor.”

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Attorney General Garland Denies Knowledge of Claims that Zuckerberg ‘Bought’ 2020 Election

During Wednesday’s hours-long grilling of Attorney General Merrick Garland by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which mainly focused on the events of January 6 and Garland’s directive to investigate parents who speak School Board meetings, one critical question went almost unnoticed. 

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) questioned Garland about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $400 million spending spree during the 2020 election. The money was allocated through Zuckerberg-funded non-profits the Center for Tech and Civic Life, described by Influence Watch as an “organization [that] pushes for left-of-center voting policies and election administration,” and the Center for Election Innovation and Research. 

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‘Not Acceptable’: Facebook’s Oversight Board Says Company Hid Details on How It Privileges Popular Accounts

Facebook’s Oversight Board issued a transparency report Thursday scolding the tech giant for concealing details of its content review process and demanding more transparency.

The report criticized Facebook for failing to disclose the existence of its “cross-check” content review system, the details of which were leaked to The Wall Street Journal by Frances Haugen and published in September. The cross-check system applies different moderation standards to accounts belonging to celebrities or other popular accounts, which Facebook did not disclose when asked.

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Facebook Reportedly Plans to Change Its Name

Facebook is reportedly planning on rebranding and is set to announce a new company name next week, according to The Verge.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg intends to announce the new name at the Facebook Connect conference on Oct. 28, a source familiar with the matter told The Verge. The rebrand is reportedly an attempt by Zuckerberg to shift public perception of the company as a social media platform to a technology conglomerate with several different products beyond the Facebook social network.

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Facebook Fined Nearly $70 Million After Ignoring UK Government Orders

Facebook’s seemingly-unending stream of bad publicity continued this week, when it was fined nearly $70 million by the United Kingdom for what is being described as a deliberate lack of compliance into an anti-trust investigation. 

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been investigating Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy for nearly a year, and ordered the company to produce information “required information related to an initial enforcement order (IEO) placed on it by the watchdog, despite repeated requests for it to do so,” according to TechCrunch. 

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Facebook Settles with Department of Justice over Claims It Discriminated Against U.S. Workers

Facebook reached separate settlement agreements with the Department of Justice and Department of Labor on Tuesday, resolving claims that the tech giant discriminated against U.S. workers in hiring and recruiting.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Facebook in December 2020, alleging the company refused to hire or recruit qualified U.S. workers in thousands of open positions by reserving spots in its workforce for temporary visa holders through its permanent labor certification (PERM) program. The DOJ also alleged that Facebook intentionally tried to deter U.S. workers from applying for certain positions.

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‘Zuckerberg Should Be in Jail:’ Molly Hemingway’s New Book Hits Back at Silicon Valley over 2020 Election

Author and Senior Editor at The Federalist Mollie Hemingway held nothing back in her forthcoming book “RIGGED,” detailing the irregularities in the 2020 election.

One chapter of that book is titled “Zuckerberg Should Be in Jail,” referencing Facebook’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg.

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Second Facebook Whistleblower Offers to Testify in Congress

Another former Facebook employee says she is willing to testify before Congress on the tech giant’s business practices.

Sophie Zhang is a former Facebook data scientist and whistleblower who, in September 2020, revealed “influence” operations perpetrated by “authoritarian regimes” that took place on Facebook. Zhang told CNN in an interview Sunday that she provided information regarding “potential criminal violations” by Facebook to a U.S. law enforcement agency at the time. Zhang also said that she is willing to testify before Congress about her allegations of criminal conduct by Facebook.

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Commentary: Beware of Regime-Approved Whistleblowers

Ritual humiliation of social media companies is becoming something of a tradition. Most typically, social media CEOs are hauled before Congress, harangued for a day, promise to “do better,” and then go back to business as usual.

Last week a new kind of social media witness appeared: a whistleblower. Frances Haugen emerged with a great deal of fanfare, complete with a public relations firm, a verified account on Twitter, and a fawning entourage, including members of the press and Congress. But instead of denouncing social media for its excessive power, wealth, and hostility to traditional American values, Haugen pleaded for regulations that happen to align with the peculiar values and interests of Silicon Valley.

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Former President Trump Files Second Lawsuit Against Facebook in Effort to Reinstate His Account Immediately

Former President Trump has filed another lawsuit against Facebook, requesting that a federal judge order the Big Tech platform to reinstate his account.

Trump was suspended from most significant social media platforms in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. Later in the year, he filed class-action lawsuits against Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and their respective CEOs.

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Zuckerberg Responds to Whistleblower, Says Claims ‘Don’t Make Any Sense’

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg broke his silence on Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen late Tuesday, rebutting several of her allegations in a Facebook post.

“At the most basic level, I think most of us just don’t recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to Facebook employees posted to his account. “Many of the claims don’t make any sense.”

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‘Totalitarian Tyranny’: Parents Groups Slam Attorney General Garland for Turning FBI on Their Activism

Parents who protest public school policies on race, gender and COVID-19 are crying foul after Attorney General Merrick Garland promised to “discourage” and prosecute “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school boards, administrators, teachers and staff.

His “mobilization of [the] FBI against parents is consistent with the complete weaponization of the federal government against ideological opponents,” Rhode Island mother Nicole Solas, who is waging a public records battle with her school district over race-related curriculum, told Just the News.

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Facebook Whistleblower Says Company ‘Paying for Its Profits with Our Safety’

Facebook knowingly chooses to prioritize its profits over the safety of its users, Frances Haugen, a whistleblower and former Facebook employee, said in an interview with “60 Minutes” on Sunday.

“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” Haugen told Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes” Sunday night. “And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.”

Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, leaked thousands of internal company documents to The Wall Street Journal last month which detail the inner workings of the company. The leaked documents showed that Facebook employs a separate content review system for high-profile accounts, the company has conducted research into the harms its Instagram platform has on teen users, and it stokes controversy by boosting inflammatory content.

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Big Tech Down: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Experience Widespread Outages

Smartphone with display of social media apps

Platforms owned by Facebook all experienced outages at the same time late Monday morning, and could not be accessed.

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all went down Monday morning, according to outage tracking site Downdetector. Facebook was first reported down around 11:15 a.m., with reports peaking around 12 p.m. with over 100,000 reported outages, according to the site.

When users attempted to access Instagram, a message reading “5xx Server Error” appeared. A message reading “Sorry, something went wrong” appeared when users tried to access Facebook.

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Report: Facebook Researched How to Market to ‘Tweens,’ Studied Kids’ Playdates

Facebook researched how to market its products and services to preteen users, studying kids’ playdates and developing strategies to address parents’ concerns, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.

The tech giant established a three-year project beginning in 2018 to study and develop marketing strategies geared towards preteen users, company documents seen by The Wall Street Journal revealed. Facebook conducted over a dozen studies to figure out which services most appeal to children under the age of 13, and what are parents’ chief concerns.

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Facebook Suspends ‘Instagram Kids’ Following Investigation Into Platform’s Effect on Teens

Facebook has paused development of a version of its image-sharing platform Instagram specifically geared towards children, the company announced Monday.

The tech giant decided to suspend work on the project in order to “work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators,” and “demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today,” Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, wrote in a statement Monday.

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Facebook Reveals How It Decides What Content to Suppress

Person looking on Facebook with trending topics

Facebook released its updated Content Distribution Guidelines on Thursday, shedding more light on how the tech giant decides what content it suppresses.

While Facebook has previously provided some details on the types of content that receive reduced distribution in Facebook’s News Feed, the updated guidelines are designed to provide clarity and accessibility, Director of Product Management Anna Stepanov announced in a blog post Thursday.

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Commentary: Leaks Renew Concern over Facebook’s Fact-Checking Sway

Facebook logo with smartphone showing lock in front

This week the Wall Street Journal unveiled “The Facebook Files” – an investigative series based on leaked internal Facebook materials that offer an unvarnished look at how the social media giant sees its platform and its impact on society. A central theme of the reporting is the degree to which Facebook’s own research is at odds with its public statements, and that internally it has recognized the harms the platform causes for society even while publicly touting its benefits.

The Journal’s reporting raises myriad concerns over the state of social platforms generally today, from Instagram’s toxic influence on teenage girls to the impact of algorithmic changes on political discourse to how Facebook secretly shields influential users from its content moderation rules.

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