Tag: Meta Platforms

International leaders push social media companies to ban anti-Zionist speech

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

The international effort to criminalize criticism of Israel is hitting new strides. Bringing the weight of numerous Western governments, the so-called Interparliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism has renewed efforts to label criticism of Israel as antisemitism and to thereby enable online censorship of any such criticism.

International leaders push social media companies to ban anti-Zionist speech

Google to expand misinformation ‘prebunking’ in Europe

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Google to expand misinformation ‘prebunking’ in Europe

The tech giant plans to release a series of short videos highlighting the techniques common to many misleading claims. The videos will appear as advertisements on platforms like Facebook, YouTube or TikTok in Germany. A similar campaign in India is also in the works.

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Google will announce its new German campaign Monday ahead of next week’s Munich Security Conference. The timing of the announcement, coming before that annual gathering of international security officials, reflects heightened concerns about the impact of misinformation among both tech companies and government officials.

Perfect timing!

GOP Stops Pretending It Ever Actually Cared About ‘Antitrust Reform’

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

GOP Stops Pretending It Ever Actually Cared About ‘Antitrust Reform’

To be clear, despite the press narrative to the contrary, I don’t think either party is particularly serious about antitrust reform. Congress is simply too grotesquely corrupt, and the combined cross-industry lobbying opposition to meaningful reform too great, to currently be overcome without some sort of major policy and cultural trajectory shift and a massive upheaval in Congress.

Related:

Big Tech Antitrust Push in Congress Is Blunted by GOP-Led House

The appointment of Massie, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained inventor who has filed dozens of patents, signals that the Judiciary Committee under Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio will shift its focus away from legislation aimed at curbing the power of the largest tech companies. Jordan has been more focused on free-speech issues, including big tech’s perceived liberal bias.

“We’re all united in wanting to stop the censorship of conservatives and the suppression of free speech,” Jordan said in an interview. “That’s going to be a focus of the full committee work.”

Funny, that’s not what Massie told Breitbert. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Facebook Protects Nazis to Protect Ukraine Proxy War

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced on January 19 that the company no longer considers Ukraine’s Azov Regiment to be a “dangerous organization.” The far-right paramilitary group grew out of the street gangs that helped topple Ukraine’s president in the US-backed 2014 coup. Originally funded by the same Ukrainian oligarch that backed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s rise to power, Azov was on the front lines of civil war in Eastern Ukraine, and was later fully integrated into the Ukrainian national guard.

Facebook Protects Nazis to Protect Ukraine Proxy War

I thought that this was old news but I guess I was wrong.

U.S. Press Starts To Figure Out College TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

U.S. Press Starts To Figure Out College TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance

One, the bans are generally designed to agitate a xenophobic base and give the impression the GOP is “doing something about China.” But the party that couldn’t care less about rampant corruption or privacy violations isn’t doing much of anything meaningful to thwart China. In fact, letting adtech, telecom, and app companies run rampant with little oversight runs contrary to any such goal.

Two, the bans distract the public and press from our ongoing failure on consumer privacy and security issues. Banning TikTok, but doing nothing about the accountability optional free for all that is the adtech and data-hoovering space, doesn’t actually fix anything. China can just obtain the same data from a universe of other international companies facing little real oversight on data collection.

Three, the ban is really just about money. Trump gave the game away with his proposal that TikTok be chopped up and sold to Oracle and Walmart. That cronyistic deal fell through, but it’s pretty clear that this moral panic is designed to either help TikTok’s competitors (Facebook lobbyists are very active on this front), or force the sale of the most popular app in modern history to GOP-allies. At which point they’ll engage in all the surveillance and influence efforts they pretend to be mad about.

Related:

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Politicians and commentators are blocked online in Brazil after censorship order targets Bolsonaro support

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The censorship power lies with a single judge, Alexandre de Moraes.

Politicians and commentators are blocked online in Brazil after censorship order targets Bolsonaro support

Related:

Tech companies under fire after Brazilian riots repeat Jan. 6 pattern

[SumOfUs] Researchers analyzed five livestream broadcasts from far-right YouTubers taking part in the riots and mapped how the content was posted across other platforms, mainly Facebook.

How Meta and Google enabled and profited from the terrorist attacks in Brazil’s capital (PDF)

Stop the Steal 2.0: How Meta and TikTok Are Promoting a Coup (PDF)