Tag: social media

Facebook says it will begin removing coronavirus vaccine misinformation

Facebook announced Thursday that it will begin removing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines as the immunizations are poised to be rolled out globally.

Posts containing false claims about “safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects” about the vaccines can be taken down, the social media giant said in a blog post.

“For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn’t on the official vaccine ingredient list,” it said.

The policy change comes as vaccines from three companies – Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna – near approval by health authorities.

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Obama: The internet is “the single biggest threat to our democracy”

Back in 2008, Barack Obama famously harnessed the internet and social media to help win the White House. He kept up the embrace once he got there.

Now he worries that the internet and social media have helped create “the single biggest threat to our democracy.”

Obama has been saying a version of this for four years — since he left the White House — but his words are getting steadily more pointed. He’s clearly sounding an alarm, but it’s not exactly clear what he thinks we should do about it.

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Introducing The Biden-Harris Paid-For Online Troll Farm

After a bit of research into the Biden-Harris digital operation, I found a likely answer to my question. It’s no secret to anyone in the digital subcontracting business that India’s troll farm industry is the largest in the world. It boasts a global clientele, and it is also the cheapest, and most decentralized and robust in the world. This service is available for anyone who is willing to pay – western PR agencies, fashion brands, entertainment companies, and political campaigns. The more money you have, the more online muscle you can flex. As it turns out, in 2020 one of this shady industry’s biggest and best paying clients has been the Biden-Harris campaign.

As one troll farm operator in India told Newsweek recently, “We don’t pick and choose. Joe Biden the person is irrelevant to us. We got a target in August to follow him and engage with his tweets, and we did. The agencies in Delhi who we work with don’t tell us any details, and we don’t ask.”

With very little popularity online and with the election drawing near, in August the Biden campaign reached out to troll farms in India in order to artificially boost Joe’s lack luster Twitter presence, and received an immediate injection of tens of thousands of fake followers which were literally purchased from troll farms located throughout rural India. On this point, Newsweek added:

“Within two weeks of Biden selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate on August 12, his Twitter following jumped by 738,595 new followers—a 9.1 percent leap. The number hit 11 million by the third week of October.”

If memory serves me correctly, aren’t these the very same practices that federal law enforcement agencies spent the last four years condemning as systemic during the 2016 presidential election?

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FBI launches open attack on ‘foreign’ alternative media outlets challenging US foreign policy

The FBI has publicly justified its suppression of dissenting online views about US foreign policy if a media outlet can be somehow linked to one of its adversaries. The Bureau’s justification followed a series of instances in which Silicon Valley social media platforms banned accounts following consultations with the FBI.

In a particularly notable case in 2018, the FBI encouraged Facebook, Instagram and Google to remove or restrict ads on the American Herald Tribune (AHT), an online journal that published critical opinion articles on US policy toward Iran and the Middle East. The bureau has never offered a clear rationale, however, despite its private discussions with Facebook on the ban.

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Report: Half of Trump’s Twitter and Facebook Posts Since Election Day Flagged as Misinformation

A recent report states that half of President Donald Trump’s posts since election day have been flagged as misinformation by Facebook and Twitter and censored on each platform.

Forbes reports that half of President Trump’s social media posts on Facebook and Twitter since election day have been labeled as false or questionable by the social media giants.

Of President Trump’s 22 posts on Facebook and Twitter, 11 have been labeled by the Silicon Valley tech firms. The posts include the President’s claims to victory and assertions of election fraud taking place. Twitter hid some posts on the President’s timeline and warned users that “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process,” and restricted users’ ability to like or retweet the tweets.

Underneath some of President Trump’s Facebook posts, the social media company warned users that “final votes may different from the initial vote counts” or “elections officials follow strict rules when it comes to ballot counting, handling and reporting,” but users were still able to reply to and share the posts.

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