Free Speech

If competitive soccer games are too toxically masculine for your taste, and if your idea of “diversity” is an all-black cast, The New York Times has some games for you! The Times in mid-October posted “Fear, Anxiety and Hope: What It Means to Be a Minority in Gaming,” a roundup of diverse and (uniformly) progressive video game creators who The Times hopes will replace gaming’s “toxic” culture.…

The left was not pleased with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to promote the value of “free expression.” After Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown University, where he disavowed expanding the definition of hate speech and defended Facebook’s new policies for political ads, Democrats came after both him and the social media platform.

Facebook and its developers have been in the race to define and correct what the platform calls hate speech. But in a speech given to Georgetown University, CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested a different direction for the company.

With experts warning about hackers and insider sabotage as Amazon expands into the business of elections, should American voters worry about officials putting all their eggs in one basket? Amazon Web Services (AWS) has increasingly become involved with both “state and local elections,” noted Reuters inn an article titled “How Amazon.com moved into the business of U.S. elections.”  “More than 40…

Big tech has presented many problems for the legislators in Washington to tackle. One of those is regulation. Many politicians on both sides of the aisle have discussed government regulation of Big Tech. Government regulation and amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act are seen as a solution to the scandals plaguing tech companies.

Twitter Inc. released a blog post titled “World Leaders on Twitter: principles & approach” on Oct. 5, which aimed to give “more context” on their “principles and process” for censoring tweets by world leaders. 

The two female faces of the Democratic run for the presidential nomination can’t seem to agree about policy points. On CNN’s Oct. 15 Democratic Party presidential primary debate, the discussion turned to Big Tech and what the candidates would do about it if they became president.  

A proposed commission to bully online platforms into cracking down harder on speech has civil rights advocates outraged, The Hill reported. At least three bills were discussed, including ones targeting cybersecurity, drones and online platforms. The last bill was the “National Commission on Online Platforms and Homeland Security Act,” which Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) explained by saying: 

The intolerant left has a long list of things they consider unforgivable sins. One of them includes simply talking and dining with those on the right. Politico published a story Oct. 14, which said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “has been hosting informal talks and small, off-the-record dinners with conservative journalists, commentators and at least one Republican lawmaker.”

Facebook is now Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) biggest boogeyman, but she’ll attack the social media platform … by using its ad services. The Democratic presidential primary candidate ran the confrontational ad on Facebook, which she announced on Oct. 12 on her Twitter page.

Facebook has finally realized it’s impossible to uphold the American concept of freedom of speech while appeasing other governments around the world. Global Policy Management VP Monika Bickert complained in an October 14 post for Facebook that an EU court order “raises critical questions for freedom of expression.”

If you’re not preparing now to serve our future robot overlords, then you’d better start. Amazon, since at least Jan. 2019, has been hard at work developing what it calls a “fully-electric delivery system – Amazon Scout – designed to safely get packages to customers using autonomous delivery devices.” Amazon has already developed Amazon AI. You know her as Alexa, and her counterpart is the Echo.…

Apple has no problem being woke, except when it might cost the company billions of dollars. Apple removed an app, called HKmap.live, from the app store after it received criticism from the Chinese government. People’s Daily, the Chinese state newspaper, wrote a piece on Oct. 8 criticizing Apple. Two days later, Apple pulled the app down, saying it “threatens public safety.” Quartz Investigative…

The company behind “World of Warcraft” has been vilified by its fans and its employees have walked out in protest after it banned a professional gamer for supporting Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters.Activision Blizzard employees walked out of work on Tuesday at their campus in Irvine, California. The walkout happened after Blizzard announced a one-year suspension and withheld prize money from…