Technology

Though the Biden administration suggested it would not implement a federal COVID-19 verification system, Big Tech has taken the reins and plans to step in as Big Brother. Google and Apple have announced updates that will allow users to display their coronavirus vaccination status.

Facebook is taking action after pressure from the White House. The Biden administration blamed the platform for the majority of coronavirus “misinformation.”

The Federal Trade Commission has refiled its lawsuit against Facebook, arguing that the social media giant is a monopoly.

"Why Trump's banned and the Taliban aren't: they play by the rules." Such was the absurd comment tweeted by Technology Policy Editor of The Washington Post Mark Seibel. Facebook has issued a blanket ban on the Taliban, but Twitter allows an account purportedly run by its spokesman -- for now.

Amazon and its third-party sellers have outsold Walmart for the year, according to a report from The New York Times.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) appeared to be very unhappy with China’s new stake in TikTok. He called on the Biden administration to “take immediate action” to block the platform and its parent company ByteDance from operating in the United States. “Even before today, it was clear that TikTok represented a serious threat to personal privacy and U.S. national security," Rubio said in a press…

Lead Stories, a liberal fact-checker site, labeled a satire article from The Babylon Bee as “False.”

The Chinese Communist government has reportedly taken a stake and board seat in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. On April 30, ByteDance sold a one percent stake to WangTouZhongWen Technology, a Beijing company owned by three state entities in China, according to Reuters. The deal also reporptedly allows the Chinese government to appoint a board director to ByteDance.

YouTube received criticism from a U.S. congresswoman after it reportedly removed a video of a news conference that discussed a legal challenge to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “vaccine passports.”

A purported Taliban spokesman still has an active Twitter account, despite the platform suspended former President Donald Trump for “hateful” and “violent” content.

Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies says Google altered its news algorithm to directly target former President Donald Trump. Vorhis was a senior software engineer at YouTube and Google. He left after discovering the companies censored conservatives. Vorhis’s new book, Google Leaks: A Whistleblower’s Exposé of Big Tech Censorship, took a deep dive into Big Tech’s censorship of right-of-center…

Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson has been accused of publishing plagiarized articles under a false name.

Three Australian publishers have accused Facebook of taking their content for its newly-launched news service without compensation.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that mainstream news outlets should consider it their “duty” to reject Big Tech censorship before ultimately claiming “that's not going to happen.”