Twitter has reportedly purged over 70,000 accounts from its platform for sharing “harmful QAnon-associated content.”
The social media website began cracking down on Twitter activity after rioters supporting President Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol on Wednesday, committing acts of vandalism and postponing the certification process as members of Congress were forced to evacuate the building.
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Last week Silicon Valley silenced the president. In unison, the social media giants, with an assist from Amazon and Apple, also eliminated their most popular conservative competitor and announced that their own moderation policies would now extend to other companies. Meanwhile, CNN openly called for Fox News to be banned from cable, while a major talk radio network issued new speech rules to its hosts, extending tech’s moderation policies to the offline world. Beyond all this, Congress and the European Union called for powerful new regulation of online speech.
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A legislative counsel member from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Friday warned that the suspension of President Donald Trump’s social media accounts wielded “unchecked power” by large tech companies, Breitbart reported.
Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU warned in a statement that the decision to suspend Trump from social media platforms could set a precedent for big tech companies to silence less privileged voices.
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Many Twitter users are vowing to leave the platform after President Donald J. Trump was permanently banned from using the service Friday evening.
“Twitter bans Trump, but won’t check communist Chinese propaganda defending brainwashing & forced sterilizations of minorities,” the Georgia Log Cabin Republicans said, adding the hashtag #twexit.
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Tens of thousands of posts containing news stories from The Star News Network’s Facebook pages were temporarily deleted Wednesday.
“Hi, we are currently experiencing an issue with Facebook and because of that the sharing is stopped and your Facebook accounts are paused,” a third party software used by The Star News Network to schedule and post stories to social media said by email.
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Are you tired of Big Tech deciding what posts you see on social media? Do you feel anxious posting your political opinions online? Do you wish you could exercise your right to free speech without worrying about political correctness or being “cancelled”?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, Parler may be the best thing to happen to you in 2020! It’s been a year, we all need some good news, so please read on.
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The CEOs of Twitter and Facebook returned Tuesday to Capitol Hill, this time to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
While focused on Twitter’s blocking of a New York Post story about the Biden family’s business dealings overseas and the social media giants’ immunity from lawsuit under the Communications Decency Act, the hearing veered into other topics as well.
Texas attorney Kellye SoRelle and members of Lawyers for Trump sent a copy of a video to Texas Scorecard of individuals moving what she claims are ballots in the middle of the night on Nov. 4 in Detroit.
In the video, a white van is seen parked in front of polling location at 2:40 a.m. A box is taken out of the van and placed into a red wagon, which is then pulled inside the facility. SoRelle video recorded and photographed the activity, which Texas Scorecard published on its website.
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After a series of mishaps involving muted senators, virtual cross-talk, and “connectivity issues” befuddling one of the world’s most tech-savvy men, the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday for what has now become a performative ritual: senators of both parties yell about different aspects of social media, the tech giants respond with bland, vague, noncommittal statements. And nothing substantive happens.
This is exactly where the Senate Commerce Committee found itself on Wednesday, when Big Tech was confronted with a host of critics and without any defenders—but ultimately very little in the way of committed follow-up from legislators.
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It’s safe to say that Big Tech hasn’t had a great month.
Google received a beating at the Supreme Court for allegedly stealing the coding needed to create Android. Congress subpoenaed Facebook and Twitter for deliberately blocking news coverage potentially damaging to one political party — a move that culminated in a high-profile hearing yesterday. And now, the Department of Justice has charged Google with illegally maintaining its search and advertising monopoly.
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A year ago, University of Georgia professor Cas Mudde took to Twitter and asked: “How do you manage to stay informed about political news and stay mentally balanced?” In his next tweet, he confessed too much time on social media was contributing to anxiety and depression.
With this, Mudde expressed a sentiment many social media users share. As we discuss policy issues tied to social media—tech regulation, free speech, foreign influence—we shouldn’t lose sight of the damaging psychological effects of today’s information environment. You may not want to hear this a week before the election, but social media addiction is a public health issue. Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco.
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With next week’s election looming, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google were scolded by Republicans at a Senate hearing Wednesday for alleged anti-conservative bias in the companies’ social media platforms and received a warning of coming restrictions from Congress.
Lawmakers of both parties are assessing the companies’ tremendous power to disseminate speech and ideas, and are looking to challenge their long-enjoyed bedrock legal protections for online speech.
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After Collin College received backlash from a story by Campus Reform regarding a professor calling Vice President Mike Pence “a demon” and to “shut his little demon mouth up,” the college president publicly came out and condemned the comments.
President Neil Matkin wrote in a public statement on the school’s website that the professor’s comments were “hateful, vile, and ill-considered.”
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A group of Democratic political operatives and journalists circulated a fake email on Twitter on Sunday that the Iowa Farm Bureau retracted its endorsement of Sen. Joni Ernst, a move which would have been a heavy blow to the Republican’s re-election bid.
The fabricated email asserted that the farm bureau was retracting its support for Ernst because of her debate performance earlier this week against challenger Theresa Greenfield.
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Twitter removed a tweet from a top White House coronavirus adviser, saying that, contrary to official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, masks don’t prevent the spread of the virus.
On Saturday, Dr. Scott Atlas tweeted that evidence showed masks don’t work, according to NBC News. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released guidance in April urging Americans to wear masks in public to prevent the spread of coronavirus after weeks of recommending the opposite.
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Twitter will begin removing posts containing Holocaust denial, a Twitter spokeswoman told Bloomberg News just days after Facebook also implemented a policy banning posts that deny the Holocaust.
“We strongly condemn anti-semitism, and hateful conduct has absolutely no place on our service,” the spokeswoman told Bloomberg News in a statement. “We also have a robust ‘glorification of violence’ policy in place and take action against content that glorifies or praises historical acts of violence and genocide, including the Holocaust.”
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The Republican National Committee has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Twitter after the platform censored a New York Post expose on Hunter Biden published earlier this week. In a letter to the FECs general counsel on Friday, the RNC accused Twitter of violating federal campaign finance laws: “Through its ad hoc, partisan suppression of media critical of Biden, [Twitter] is making illegal, corporate in-kind contributions as it provides unheard-of media services for Joe Biden’s campaign.”
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Twitter and Facebook have both limited distribution of an Oct. 14 report from the New York Post’s Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge entitled, “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad” detailing an alleged meeting between former Vice President Joe Biden and Burisma executive Vadym who Biden’s son, Hunter, used to work for, in April 2015.
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Federal Communication Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced Thursday that he intends to move forward with a rulemaking to “clarify” the meaning of Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act.
Pai’s announcement comes one day after Twitter prohibited users from posting links to a New York Post story about alleged emails involving Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden and the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Twitter’s suppression of the story led President Donald Trump to call for the repeal of Section 230, which indemnifies internet companies from liability over content posted by their users.
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On Wednesday morning, the Star published my commentary on free speech. Little did I know when I wrote it or the editors when they published it, the whole concept of free speech online was about to blow up in an incredibly spectacular way.
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C-SPAN suspended its political editor Steve Scully indefinitely Thursday after he admitted to lying about his Twitter feed being hacked when he was confronted about a questionable exchange with former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci.
The news came on the day of what was supposed to be a career highlight for the 30-year C-SPAN veteran. Scully was to moderate the second debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, which was canceled after Trump would not agree to a virtual format because of his COVID-19 diagnosis.
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Twitter partially suspended the Democratic National Committee’s account Thursday for sharing a tweet from President Donald Trump that contains a video of the president suggesting children are “almost immune” to coronavirus.
The company made the move after the DNC tweeted a clip of Trump’s Wednesday appearance on Fox News in which the president made the claim relating to children and the pandemic, CNN reported. The account intended to retweet the post with the intention of criticizing the president for spreading misinformation, but Twitter’s moderators flagged the post instead.
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Twitter partially suspended President Donald Trump’s campaign Twitter account on Wednesday for posting a tweet containing a video of Trump suggesting children are “almost immune” to coronavirus.
The post contains an interview Trump gave to Fox News Wednesday morning in which the president made the claim relating to children and the ongoing pandemic, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. Facebook removed a post Wednesday that contained the same video, marking the first time the social media platform has nixed a Trump post over coronavirus misinformation.
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Twitter has twice subjected the American people to the ignominy of seeing their own elected president censored for supposedly “glorifying violence.”
Legacy journalists, meanwhile, continue to brazenly promote violence without a hint of consequence.
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Twitter says the hack that compromised the accounts of some of its most high-profile users targeted 130 people. The hackers were able to reset the passwords of 45 of those accounts.
The San Francisco-based company said in a blog post Saturday that for up to eight of these accounts the attackers also downloaded the account’s information through the “Your Twitter Data” tool. None of the eight were verified accounts, Twitter said, adding that it is contacting the owners of the affected accounts.
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Unidentified hackers broke into the Twitter accounts of technology moguls, politicians, celebrities and major companies Wednesday in an apparent Bitcoin scam.
The ruse included bogus tweets from former President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The fake tweets tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.
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Twitter has put up billboards in cities across the country featuring tweets from Black Lives Matter activists, including one billboard in downtown Minneapolis.
“Protesters aren’t trying to start a race war – we’re trying to end one,” states the Minneapolis billboard.
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Twitter has blocked a Trump campaign video tribute to George Floyd over a copyright claim, in a move that adds to tensions between the social media platform and the U.S. president, one of its most widely followed users.
The company put a label on a video posted by the @TeamTrump account that said, “This media has been disabled in response to a claim by the copyright owner.” The video was still up on President Donald Trump’s YouTube channel and includes pictures of Floyd, whose death sparked widespread protests, at the start.
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President Trump’s long-hoped-for Executive Order on social media censorship is a good first step in dismantling the Left’s dangerous influence over these 21st-century communications vehicles. (You can read the draft that was available online when this article was posted through this link to The National Pulse, edited by Raheem Kassam.)
We particularly agree with this part of the EO’s statement of principles, “In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey online. This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.”
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Twitter censored the White House’s official Twitter account after it shared and quoted a President Donald Trump tweet Friday that the company’s moderators hit for “glorifying violence.”
The account shared a tweet Trump composed early Friday morning in which he called people rioting and looting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, “THUGS” and suggested that he will send in the military, adding that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter hid Trump’s tweet under a banner noting that the post violates company rules against glorifying violence.
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After years of warning, President Donald Trump took action Thursday in the form of an Executive Order to remove a key protection companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google enjoy that shields the tech giants from lawsuits by individuals and other entities with claiming bias, censorship, and otherwise unfair treatment.
The Order, titled “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship” comes two days after Twitter added a controversial “fact-check” of two of his tweets about fraud and absentee ballots, NPR reported.
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took sole responsibility Wednesday night after his company applied a fact-check on a tweet from President Donald Trump suggesting California’s mail-in ballot move is “fraudulent.”
Trump’s tweet Tuesday suggesting mail-in ballot votes are fraudulent could mislead people into believing they don’t have to register to get a ballot, Dorsey wrote on Twitter. He also asked people to lay off his employees.
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The Twitter official overseeing the tech company’s efforts to combat misinformation is a left-wing partisan who in the past has derided President Donald Trump as a “wretched orange man” and said he donated to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site security, is the man in charge of the platform’s fight against election-related misinformation. Some of Roth’s past political comments from 2016 and 2017 began making the rounds in conservative circles Tuesday after Twitter fact-checked a Trump tweet predicting that universal mail-in voting would result in widespread fraud.
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Twitter has declined to take action against Chinese officials who spread coronavirus misinformation even after the company fact-checked President Donald Trump for suggesting California’s mail-in ballots are fraudulent.
A tweet from Chinese politician Lijian Zhao in March suggesting that the U.S. inserted coronavirus into China has not been removed or fact-checked. Twitter has previously said that Zhao’s tweets do not violate the company’s rules, but Twitter updated its policies on May 11, effectively making tweets from world leaders subject to misinformation labels.
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President Donald Trump is considering forming a commission to review anti-conservative bias on social media platforms, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the idea.
A potential White House-created commission would examine allegations of online bias and censorship, according to the report. The administration will also encourage the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission to conduct similar reviews, the sources told the WSJ.
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The ground is shifting quickly beneath our feet when it comes to tech, privacy, and power. And, although tech companies, their advocates, and even some policymakers, would like us to imagine these issues are cut and dried, they are not.
In their book The Sovereign Individual, published on the eve of the year 2000, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg attempt to grapple with the forthcoming technological changes that the new millennium inevitably would bring. “As technology revolutionizes the tools we use,” they wrote, “it also antiquates our laws, reshapes our morals, and alters our perceptions.”
This is the dynamic that has been unfolding slowly over the last 20 years, as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have transformed how we engage with communications, culture, commerce, and one another.
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Twitter suspended and then reinstated without explanation the account for “War Room: Pandemic,” a radio program founded by Steve Bannon and one of the first shows in the country to warn about the dangers of COVID-19.
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Big tech companies began the Trump era as a foil to the president amid concerns the companies are politically biased, but many of them are becoming crucial cogs in the president’s virus response.
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Twitter will now include a blanket ban on using language that “dehumanizes” people on the basis of their age, the social media platform announced Thursday.
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A Republican donor reportedly purchased a major stake in Twitter with the intention of pushing out CEO Jack Dorsey, who the billionaire says is too distracted with other ventures.
Activist investor Elliott Management wants to make changes at the social media company, the Bloomberg News report noted Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. Paul Singer, the billionaire behind Elliott, once opposed President Donald Trump’s campaign but has since grown more supportive.
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The lead juror at Roger Stone’s trial said in a written questionnaire for prospective jurors that she was “not sure” whether she posted online about the Russia investigation or Stone, and that she “may have shared an article” on social media on the topics, according to a portion of the document reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
But Tomeka Hart’s Twitter feed shows that she indeed posted multiple times about the Russia probe and at least once about Stone, who was sentenced on Thursday to 40 months in prison in a case that stemmed from the special counsel’s investigation.
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Twitter is refusing to pull down a President Donald Trump’s tweet threatening future strikes against Iran despite calls from an Obama-era official to do something about the president’s account.
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Do non-conforming voices have a prayer against Silicon Valley in November’s critical election? Before the cycle even begins, disturbing new developments show how conservatives and others already may have been marginalized by Big Tech behemoths.
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently announced that the social media platform will no longer run political advertisements of any kind.
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On Sunday night, Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) confirmed that he was the owner of an alternate Twitter account that had previously tweeted in his defense, according to The Hill.
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President Donald Trump went after Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney on Twitter Saturday morning after Romney condemned the president’s call with Ukraine’s president.
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On Friday’s Battleground State Report with Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett – a one-hour radio show from Star News Digital Media in the early stages of national weekend syndication rollout – Leahy and Kellett discussed the mental state of the nation and how people have either succumbed to the age of unreason or outrage. Leahy did, however, give kudos to the concept of social media as it helped launch the Tea Party movement in 2009.
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by Victor Davis Hanson The new post-Mueller media narrative is “weariness” and “exhaustion” with President Trump’s tweets, his cul de sac Sharpie controversy, his ideas about buying Greenland, his unorthodox art-of-the-deal foreign policy that resulted in a plan to talk to Taliban leaders in the United States, and his…
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The New York Times faced backlash after its opinion section tweeted “offensive” comments Saturday while promoting a piece about allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
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About a week ago I began scrutinizing how the New York Times’ 1619 Project relied upon the work of the controversial “New History of Capitalism” genre of historical scholarship to advance a sweeping indictment of free markets over the historical evils of slavery. The problems with this literature are many, and prominent among them is its use of shoddy statistical work by Cornell University historian Ed Baptist to grossly exaggerate the historical effect of slave-produced cotton on American economic development. Baptist’s unusual rehabilitation of the old Confederacy-linked “King Cotton” thesis is unsupported by evidence and widely rejected by economic historians. His book The Half Has Never Been Told has nonetheless acquired a vocal following among historians and journalists, including providing the basis of a feature article in the Times series on slavery.
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