Tag: facebook

Facebook Still ‘Secretly’ Tracks Your iPhone—This Is How To Stop It

So, this isn’t good. Your iPhone settings enable you to tell Facebook you don’t want your location tracked. It’s clear and non-ambiguous. Why then, if you tell Facebook “never” to access your location, is the data harvesting giant doing exactly that?

Apple’s iOS 14.5 is just a few weeks old, and the data already suggests it has delivered the expected strike against Facebook . Unsurprisingly, more than 80% of users do not opt in to being tracked. Millions of you have seen through the brazen warnings that Facebook’s free apps won’t remain free unless we surrender our right to privacy.

Facebook generates almost all its revenue from digital advertising—targeting ads by harvesting as much data from you and about you as it can. “Facebook marketing is generally dominated by iOS,” one ad industry article laments, “it’s pretty safe to assume Facebook has lost at least half their data, arguably the most valuable half.”

All of which means that Facebook will be doing ever more with the data that remains. And there’s a hidden danger in all the iOS 14.5 publicity—a false sense of security for iPhone users, thinking that the Facebook data issue is suddenly over, that everything has now changed. That would be very wrong—it really hasn’t.

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How Facebook uses ‘fact-checking’ to suppress scientific truth

At the end of a recent 800-meter race in Oregon, a high-school runner named Maggie Williams got dizzy, passed out and landed face-first just beyond the finish line. She and her coach blamed her collapse on a deficit of oxygen due to the mask she’d been forced to wear, and state officials responded to the public outcry by easing their requirements for masks during athletic events.

But long before the pandemic began, scientists had repeatedly found that wearing a mask could lead to oxygen deprivation. Why had this risk been ignored?

One reason is that a new breed of censors has been stifling scientific debate about masks on social-media platforms. When Scott Atlas, a member of the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force, questioned the efficacy of masks last year, Twitter removed his tweet. When eminent scientists from Stanford and Harvard recently told Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that children should not be forced to wear masks, YouTube removed their video discussion from its platform. These acts of censorship were widely denounced, but the social-media science police remain undeterred, as I discovered when I recently wrote about the harms to children from wearing masks.

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Facebook, Social Media Giants Admit to Silencing Palestinian Voices Online

Activists reported that social media companies have been removing their content, stating it violated community guidelines or deeming it “hate speech.” Reports also included suspended and deactivated accounts and text-only content labeled “sensitive,” a designation usually reserved for photos and videos containing violence, gore or derogatory images. The “Save Sheikh Jarrah” Facebook group was also deactivated, according to Mohammed El-Kurd.

Reports were largely centered on Instagram and Twitter, with some restrictive behaviors conducted by Facebook and even TikTok.

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Federal Gov’t Telling Facebook to Silence Those With Vaccine Safety Concerns Says Lawsuit

It is no longer a random act — Facebook censorship has become so blatant and massive that they have indefinitely silenced the former president of the United States. Many pro-censorship advocates cheer this on because they dislike the voices silenced by Facebook. They attempt to justify the censorship with the claims that Facebook is a private company and can do what they want, a lawsuit filed against the social media giant says that is not the case.

A lawsuit filed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the chairman of the non-profit group Children’s Health Defense (CHD) — claims Facebook conspires with the federal government to squelch speech which advocates for vaccine safety.

According to the lawsuit, overseen by Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, Facebook started slapping warning labels on content posted on CHD’s Facebook page, including in September of 2020 when the social media giant posted a message directing users to seek “reliable, up-to-date information” about vaccines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Facebook also started labeling some of CHD’s content as “false information” based on research by third-party fact checkers, including a link to an article claiming vaccinated children “are more likely to have adverse health outcomes” in May 2020.

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Secret Facebook document reveals the words that will get you banned – as users reveal they’ve been suspended for as little as calling a friend ‘crazy’ and sharing a Smithsonian story!

Facebook users have shared stories of receiving bans after jokingly calling their friend ‘crazy’, sharing a Smithsonian magazine story on tribal New Guinea and labelling someone ‘sad’. 

The social media platform is understood to have internal guidelines which are not made public on moderation. In documents seen by The Wall Street Journal moderators are told the sentences that are and aren’t allowed.  

An example given for a sentence not allowed is: ‘It’s disgusting and repulsive how fat and ugly John Smith is.’ 

But the document adds: ‘We do not remove content like “frizzy hair,” “lanky arms,” “broad shoulders,” etc. since “frizzy,” “lanky,” and “broad,” are not deficient or inferior, and therefore not degrading.”’    

Recent graduate Colton Oakley says he was banned from posting for three days after calling those who are angry about loan cancellation ‘sad and selfish.’ 

Writer Alex Gendler claims he was stopped from posting after sharing a Smithsonian magazine story on tribal New Guinea. 

And history teacher Nick Barksdale told The Wall Street Journal he received a 30 day ban after writing to a friend ‘man, you’re spewing crazy now!’ 

Facebook said this removal was a mistake but Barksdale asked: ‘If you use the term ‘crazy,’ does that automatically get you banned?’

Artist Sunny Chapman, who has received bans, said: ‘What I’m learning about Facebook is not to talk on Facebook.’   

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“Content Modification” – Facebook’s New Campaign Should Have Free Speech Advocates Freaking Out

In 1964, Stanley Kubrick released a dark comedy classic titled “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” The title captured the absurdity of getting people to embrace the concept of weapons of mass destruction. The movie came to mind recently with the public campaign of Facebook calling for people to change her attitudes about the Internet and rethink issues like “content modification” – the new Orwellian term for censorship.

The commercials show people like “Joshan” who says that he was born in 1996 and grew up with the internet.” Joshan mocks how much computers have changed and then asks why our regulations on privacy and censorship cannot evolve as much as our technology. The ads are clearly directed at younger users who may be more willing to accept censorship than their parents who hopelessly cling to old-fashioned notions of free speech.  Facebook knows that it cannot exercise more control over content unless it can get people to stop worrying and love the censor.

There was a time when this would have been viewed as chilling: a corporate giant running commercials to get people to support new regulations impacting basic values like free speech and privacy. After all, Joshan shows of his first computer was a “giant behemoth of a machine” but that was before he understood “the blending of the real world and the internet world.”

The Facebook campaign is chilling in its reference to “privacy” and “content modification” given the current controversies surrounding Big Tech. On one level, the commercial simply calls for rethinking regulatory controls after 25 years. However, the source of the campaign is a company which has been widely accused of rolling back on core values like free speech. Big Tech corporations are exercising increasing levels of control over what people write or read on the Internet. While these companies enjoy immunity from many lawsuits based on the notion of being neutral communication platforms (akin to telephone companies), they now censor ideas deemed misleading or dangerous on subjects ranging from climate denial to transgender criticism to election fraud.

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Facebook’s ‘independent’ fact checker on vaccines is funded by … you guessed it

Accurate information about the vaccines and other vital COVID-related topics hinges upon the ability to disseminate the facts on major social media platforms like Facebook. In turn, Facebook relies on FactCheck.org, among other shady organizations, to rule on what information is admissible. FactCheck.org is funded by a grant from an organization run by Obama’s former CDC director, whose assets contain Johnson & Johnson stock. In other words, the vaccine companies control the flow of information about vaccines. Welcome to the world of “independent fact checkers.”POLL: What scares you the most?

Over the past year, Facebook has censored nearly every one of my articles and commentaries questioning the science behind lockdowns or mask mandates. More recently, it has placed a blockade on any information raising questions about the vaccines. Facebook has also blocked people from sharing my articles promoting cheap, lifesaving drugs, such as ivermectin, or even studies showing how sufficient doses of vitamin D and zinc can prevent critical illness from SARS-CoV-2.

In each instance of censorship, Facebook has posted a notice misleading anyone who wishes to share the article into thinking that the particular points raised in the article were independently fact-checked and found to be false. First, it’s critical to note that almost no article Facebook employees censor is fact-checked by anyone; they merely rely on an initial fact-check of one person’s article critical of masks — just to give an example — and then trot out that same fact-check as an excuse for zapping any article questioning the wisdom of mask-wearing, even if the points raised in said article are completely different from the issues addressed in the first fact-check.

However, there is something much more insidious going on with the fact-checking industry. The inmates are running the asylum and the foxes are guarding the henhouse. When the vaccines began to be dispensed to the public in December, FactCheck.org started “SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project” to specifically focus on the flow of information pertaining to the vaccines. The site has a disclaimer on the top of the website stating: “SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.”

Comically, the next sentence reads, “The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.”

In fact, the views expressed almost assuredly do reflect the views of the foundation. FactCheck.org claims, “The goal is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.” Yet have you ever seen the organization offer balanced coverage or flag a single post on the other side of this debate as false, no matter how outlandish the claim might be, including articles advocating experimental emergency use authorization vaccines for little children?

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