Free Republic

The European Commission plans to attack citizens’ right to online privacy, insisting that state-issued ID cards should be used to log into platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and even Uber. The Vice President for the Digital Single Market on the European Commission, former Communist Andrus Ansip, is behind the next European Union (EU) raid on personal freedoms, promoting the idea of using national ID cards to log in to online services.

It’s been two weeks since Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with leaders of conservative media to “calm down” accusations that it was censoring conservative news and opinion. After the meeting, one of the attendees, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell, characterized the meeting “between Zuckerberg and conservative leaders as generally positive and ‘cordial’ – but, also expressed a cautious wait-and-see reaction to Facebook’s promises of reform, citing the social media giant’s loss of public trust.” He also said “We’ll see how the [internal] investigation turns out.” Bozell’s caution was well-founded. The internal investigation took only a few days, and Facebook...

The European Commission has today announced a partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft in order to crack down on what it classes as “illegal hate speech” while “criminaliz[ing]” perpetrators and “promoting independent counter-narratives” that the European Union favours. A press release from the Commission this morning claims the new initiative has been set up “to respond to the challenge of ensuring that online platforms do not offer opportunities for illegal online hate speech to spread virally”. The move has been branded “Orwellian” by Members of the European Parliament, and digital freedom groups have already pulled out of any further...

Tech giants are cracking down on hate speech. Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft have all agreed to the European Commission's new "code of conduct," which aims to combat illegal hate speech and terrorist propaganda. These new regulations, which were announced Tuesday, will require the tech companies to review the majority of hateful online content within 24 hours of being notified—and remove the post if it's truly offensive and malicious. Tech companies will also have to promote independent counter-narratives to hate speech published online.

The European Commission has today announced a partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft in order to crack down on what it classes as “illegal hate speech” while “criminaliz[ing]” perpetrators and “promoting independent counter-narratives” that the European Union favours.

Contending that "so-called free speech is delusional," DePaul University sociology professor Dr. Shu-Ju Cheng has resigned her post in protest. The event that spurred Dr. Cheng's protest was the aborted speech of Milo Yiannopolis on the University's campus last week. Despite paying the University for security, student thugs were permitted to seize the stage and disrupt the speech. Cheng was outraged, not that thugs were allowed to drown out views with which they disagreed, but that Yiannopolis was invited "to air his anti-progressive message." "The whole concept of freedom of speech is an antiquated idea derived from dead white men,"...

Facebook announced Monday it was sending employees out for retraining and would discontinue some of its practices as it sought to defend itself against charges of political bias against conservatives. The online giant denied that it’s shown “systematic political bias,” but admitted employees played a bigger role than previously acknowledged in determining what news is highlighted in the trending topics section. Facebook also acknowledged that rogue employees may have unintentionally discriminated against conservative stories or even acted with malice in “isolated improper actions.” In one instance Facebook rejected a story this year about the opening of the annual Conservative Political...

Glenn Beck’s blog on Medium dishing on his trip to Facebook headquarters declares that the employees he met, while left-wing, were not “progressives,” a term he has used to label Republican politicians such as Newt Gingrich.

Mark Zuckerberg invited prominent conservative media figures, including Glenn Beck and Dana Perino, to a meeting at Facebook's headquarters this week. The meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, is aimed at addressing the alleged suppression of conservative news stories in Facebook's "trending" stories section. Along with Perino and Beck, other confirmed attendees include Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, CNN conservative commentator SE Cupp, and Zac Moffatt, co-founder of tech firm Targeted Victory. Moffatt was previously Mitt Romney's digital director.

Reports that Facebook moderators routinely suppress trending news favorable to conservatives were vigorously denied by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who claimed "I don't even know who the leaders of the conservative movement are. So how can I or my employees be biased against them?" This is the second display of ideological bias to issue from Zuckerberg this year. Earlier, the Facebook executive berated employees for abusing a company-granted "freedom-of-expression" policy to write "all lives matter" on a wall devoted to free expression in the company's Melo Park, California headquarters. "I could not allow the insensitivity toward the 'Black lives matter' meme...

But the documents show that the company relies heavily on the intervention of a small editorial team to determine what makes its "trending module" headlines -- the list of news topics that shows up on the side of the browser window on Facebook's desktop version. The company backed away from a pure-algorithm approach in 2014 after criticism that it had not included enough coverage of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in users' feeds. The guidelines show human intervention -- and therefore editorial decisions -- at almost every stage of Facebook's trending news operation, a team that at one time was as...

In the national TV-news world, only Fox News reported that Obama national-security communications whiz Ben Rhodes told The New York Times he created an “echo chamber” with a compliant national media to promote the Iran arms deal, even misleading the public as to when those talks began. They actually began in July 2012, but the administration claimed it began after “moderate” Hassan Rouhani’s election in June 2013. The same only-Fox-cares pattern happened after Fox diplomatic correspondent James Rosen reported that the State Department edited out an on-camera admission by Psaki in 2013 that it was necessary for the Obama administration...

A number of former Facebook employees have revealed that the popular social media site adjusts the news stories it presents in order to encourage a liberal bias. The whistleblowers, who asked to remain anonymous, told Gizmodo that the site’s “news curators” were told to modify the “trending news” section by hiding stories that supported conservative attitudes and promoting others that interested liberals. […] One of the most direct examples described in Gizmodo was the Black Lives Matter movement, which largely grew out of social media posts. While it was in its early stages, Facebook decided to actively intervene in order...

It’s not often that a U.S. government agency gets caught red-handed abiding by its charter and performing its publicly-avowed and legislatively-approved duties. But last week the AP "broke" a long and breathless story from Havana that nailed the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) for just that. In their own words, "a secret plan aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government," was courageously exposed by the AP’s intrepid Havana bureau. Such is the magnitude of the scandal that a red-faced and snarling Senator Patrick Leahy is now chairing hearings on Capitol Hill where he grills USAID director Rajiv Shah on...

Surprised? Not really. I know what you’re thinking. “There are people who get their daily news from social postings on Facebook?” Sadly, the answer to that is yes. At any given moment there are over 150 million users roaming Mark Zuckerberg’s monstrosity, and you can bet that some percentage of them rarely read anything outside the online utopia. So, while we may not like to admit it, the “trending” section at the upper right of the page has become frighteningly important. Facebook swears that it determines what’s “trending” by analyzing reader preference. If it’s popular on the site - meaning...

10570 SHARES facebook icon FACEBOOK 10537 twitter icon TWITTER email icon EMAIL more icon Facebook Admits to Censoring Conservative Websites… Steven Crowder Wednesday May 4 2016 facebook I mean, censoring conservatives on social media really shouldn’t be shocking. Especially coming from Facebook, who actively works with other countries to censor what citizens can see (read “Zuckerberg Caugh on Live Mic Telling Merkel that Facebook Will Delete Anti-Islamic Migrant Posts” here). But now, we’ve got the SJW leftists at Facebook on the record, They were also told to select articles from a list of preferred media outlets that included sites like...

The Chinese government has banned all depictions of gay people on television, as part of a cultural crackdown on “vulgar, immoral and unhealthy content”. “No television drama shall show abnormal sexual relationships and behaviours, such as incest, same-sex relationships, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual violence, and so on.” The ban also extends to smoking, drinking, adultery, sexually suggestive clothing, even reincarnation. China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television told television producers it would constantly monitor TV channels to ensure the new rules were strictly adhered to.

An Apple Store in Beijing. Facing a slowdown in sales of iPhones in the United States, Apple is looking to China for growth. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times For years, there has been a limit to the success of American technology companies in China. Capture too much market share or wield too much influence, and Beijing will push back. Apple has largely been an exception to that trend. Yet the Silicon Valley company is now facing a regulatory push against its services in China that could signal its good relations in the country may be turning. Last...

Facebook employees admit they are willing to manipulate social media to prevent a Donald Trump presidency Last month, Facebook employees used a company poll to ask Zuckerberg whether the company should try “to help prevent President Trump in 2017.” Their believing that Facebook has a responsibility to influence the 2016 election is very concerning. It shows that Facebook employees are willing to censor opinions they don't agree with in the name of "social justice." If you've ever been suspended from Facebook for something extremely mild, this probably explains why. Facebook already proudly censors negative views on refugees In January is...

The totalitarian attitude on campus hit me in a very personal way on March 30 as I was sitting on an airplane at Reagan National Airport on my way to Albany, New York. I was informed that a campus debate I was scheduled to participate in later that day had been cancelled. I was told to get off the plane and go home. I believe this is the first time on a college or university campus that a left-right debate has been cancelled because of objections to one side of the debate. It appears the totalitarian left is so determined...