The Telegraph: China Floods Facebook with COVID-19 Propaganda Ads

Alexander Hall
April 7th, 2020 5:00 PM
Move over, Russia. News outlets run by the Chinese government are waging the new information war on Facebook. “Chinese state media is flooding Facebook and Instagram with undisclosed political adverts whitewashing its role in the coronavirus pandemic and pinning blame on Donald Trump,” The Telegraph reported in its April 5 coverage. This misinformation blitz is reportedly being carried out by “…
 

Google Under Fire for Allegedly Collecting Students’ Data

Alexander Hall
April 7th, 2020 10:42 AM
Could 1984-esque conditions really be heralded by the same Big Tech company that brought us cheerful Google doodles? If Google’s totalitarian monitoring of people’s locations amidst lockdown weren’t disturbing enough, now students are apparently suing the Big Tech company for collecting their facial and voice data. “[T]wo Illinois children have filed a lawsuit alleging that the multinational…
 

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Complains Twitter ‘Restricting’ His Tweets

Corinne Weaver
April 6th, 2020 4:57 PM

Twitter has been accused of shadowbanning prominent conservatives in the past. One conservative business owner says the company is still doing it — to him.

 

Twitter Lifts Ban on COVID-19-Related Ads, But Only for Specific Cases

Alexander Hall
April 6th, 2020 4:49 PM
Twitter quietly lifted its ban on coronavirus-related ads in early April, so long as companies play by a very specific set of rules.“Twitter and Google banned coronavirus-related ads in an effort to curb misinformation and stop some bad actors from trying to profit off of the crisis,” Axios summarized in its April 3 coverage. Since then, however, Twitter has refined its approach, “according to a…
 

Google Flip-Flops on Ad Policy After Dems Complain It May Help Trump

Alexander Hall
April 3rd, 2020 4:10 PM
What steers Google’s policy decisions? Liberal outrage, apparently. Google has made two major changes in its ad policies after massive pushback by liberals and the media. Google and YouTube completely reformed their approach to no longer allow microtargeting with ads in late 2019, something that Facebook continued to allow despite pushback. Liberals considered any allowance of Trump’s…
 

Biden Campaign Unsuccessfully Lobbies Twitter to Remove Trump Video

Corinne Weaver
April 3rd, 2020 3:41 PM
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign released a video in March deceptively depicting President Donald Trump calling the coronavirus a “hoax.” Twitter refused to label or take the video down, in accordance with its manipulated media policies.
 

Tucker Carlson, Harmeet Dhillon Call Out Twitter Hypocrisy on COVID-19

Alexander Hall
April 2nd, 2020 5:06 PM
Fox News host Tucker Carlson and his guest slammed Twitter for allowing communist regimes to spread misinformation while censoring scientific debate about the cure for COVID-19. Carlson, on his show Tucker Carlson Tonight, acknowledged that there is room for debate concerning the best course of action to solve the coronavirus pandemic. He and his guest, attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who serves on…
 

51% Tech Experts Say Gov't Shouldn’t Track Data to Limit Virus Spread

Michael Morris
April 2nd, 2020 4:53 PM
Worried about the spread of the coronavirus? Many are, but is allowing the United States government to track people using location data a good idea? A slim majority of 84 tech experts surveyed have said that the U.S. government should not harness Americans’ location data in an attempt to limit the spread of the coronavirus, reported The Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski March 30. Fifty-one percent…
 

Lone Conservative Censored by Lead Stories on Facebook

Corinne Weaver
April 1st, 2020 6:43 PM
Third-party fact-checkers have the ability to cause pages on Facebook to be suppressed. These fact-checkers, who are paid by Facebook, are putting efforts into fact-checking satire and editorial cartoons. In other words — opinion. Lone Conservative, a conservative media outlet designed for college students and recent graduates, was fact-checked by Lead Stories, an organization run by 8 CNN alumni…
 

Hannity SCHOOLS Top Tech Journo Swisher After She Slams Fox News

Alexander Hall
April 1st, 2020 4:50 PM
One of the internet’s foremost tech journalists accused Fox News of spreading a “fake news contagion,” downplaying COVID-19, and Fox News host Sean Hannity fired back. Recode co-founder and New York Times contributor Kara Swisher has a history of hating Fox News. She  condemned Fox News in her op-ed “Fox’s Fake News Contagion,” on March 31 and quipped that consuming Fox News content is like “…
 

Twitter ‘Mistakenly’ Suspends, Then Reinstates Iran’s Supreme Leader

Alexander Hall
March 31st, 2020 5:49 PM

Is Twitter going easy on dictators because the platform is too busy censoring conservatives? Several Twitter accounts belonging to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were suspended early Tuesday March 31, according to Al Arabiya English. Khamenei maintained multiple accounts in various languages that would tweet to audiences that spoke English, Farsi, Russian, and Spanish. After…

 

Twitter Censors Laura Ingraham for Violating Coronavirus Rules

Heather Moon
March 31st, 2020 5:16 PM

Fox News host Laura Ingraham ran afoul of Twitter’s new Coronavirus rules, and was punished for it. Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) tweeted: "Lenox Hill in New York among many hospitals already using Hydroxychloroquine with very promising results. One patient was described as ‘Lazarus’ who was seriously ill from Covid-19, already released."

 

Will Facebook’s $100M Investment to News Help Address COVID-19 Crisis?

Alexander Hall
March 31st, 2020 12:37 PM
Facebook is committing 100 million dollars toward local journalism hit hard in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Facebook has reportedly already invested $300 million in local news companies, but following recent events, Facebook will commit $100 million more. Facebook VP of Global News Partnerships Campbell Brown announced via a company blog on March 30 that Facebook will be making this…
 

Twitter Censors Rudy Giuliani, Charlie Kirk for Virus Violations

Corinne Weaver
March 30th, 2020 2:44 PM

Twitter was reportedly very eager to take down any tweets about hydroxychloroquine and coronavirus. But now that the FDA has approved the drug for the treatment of coronavirus, will Twitter restore some of the tweets it censored? A tweet from President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani and another tweet from Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk were removed from Twitter on March 27. Both…