Free Republic

In the absence of rigorous antitrust enforcement, the consumer internet has become too concentrated in a few dominant companies, creating easy targets for bad actors. There is a reason Congress did not have to investigate foreign meddling after the 2008 or 2012 elections. Back then the internet was still a diverse, decentralized network...This older form of online community building has largely been supplanted by tools provided by the dominant players... Google used to be the engine that drove the open web... Over time, Google’s philosophy shifted [to] making the internet less open and pluralistic than even a few years ago...Facebook’s...

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Top lawyers from Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that Russian-linked posts and advertisements placed on the social networks after Election Day sought to sow doubt about President Donald Trump's victory. Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a Senate Judiciary panel that content generated by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency after Nov. 8 centered on “fomenting discord about the validity of [Trump’s] election.” That's a change from Russia's pre-election activity, which was largely centered on trying to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a January report. “During the election,...

Regardless of your worldview, people are experiencing a quickening in their spirit with the anticipation that world-changing events are just over the horizon. Geopolitical, Social and Spiritual conflicts are heating up all over the globe at an unprecedented and frenzied pace to the point where even the discerning Christian may have trouble keeping track of this whirlwind of event. Luckily, there are still a few messengers, crying out in the wilderness of biblical babble that is permeating the collective conscience of our nation and world, warning believers and unbelievers alike of the signs that are converging toward the soon return...

Since July a midnight rosary is prayed in the parish of Villa Marina, Italy. The parish-priest, Father Mirko Bianchi, broadcasts the event live over his Facebook-profile. 15.000 to 20.000 persons participate. On October 26, Father Bianchi told La Fede Quotidiana that his Facebook-profile was blocked, "Facebook controls people's thinking. A persecution against Christians is ongoing.”

Representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter are all slated to testify before a Senate Judiciary panel on Tuesday, the day before company officials are set to appear in a pair of highly-anticipated intelligence hearings. Tuesday’s hearing is before Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) subcommittee on crime and terrorism and will focus on how to combat extremist and Russian propaganda online, his office announced on Friday. Facebook and Twitter will be represented by their general counsels, while Google will send its director of law enforcement and information security. On Wednesday, the general counsels for all three companies are scheduled to testify in...

Twitter has joined Facebook and YouTube in restricting social media accounts of popular dissident Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, in the face of intense Chinese pressure. Guo, a New York-based billionaire and critic of corruption among senior Chinese leaders, said several Twitter accounts he used to reach more than 700,000 followers had been suspended. A Twitter spokeswoman declined to comment citing a policy of not commenting on individual accounts. Earlier, YouTube restricted Guo's live streaming from his widely-watched channel used to post hour-long videos revealing tantalizing details of high-level corruption among Chinese leaders. Guo spent 28 years as an entrepreneur in...

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has been urged to hand over details of activities by Russian-linked accounts during the EU referendum and this year's General Election. The request comes from a group of MPs who are investigating the impact of "fake news" being circulated on social media. In a letter, Conservative MP Damian Collins told Mr Zuckerberg the House of Commons' Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee aims to uncover "the role of foreign actors abusing platforms such as yours to interfere in the political discourse of other nations". The Tory backbencher, who chairs the committee, highlighted how Facebook has already...

Watch out, publishers: a nightmare scenario for Facebook may soon be a reality.    The social network last week officially launched its secondary news feed called Explore. The feed generally features posts from Facebook Pages users don't follow. News Feed, meanwhile, hosts posts from friends and Pages users do follow.But that's not true for everyone. In six markets, Facebook has removed posts from Pages in the original News Feed and relegated them to another feed, Filip Struhárik, editor and social media manager at Denník N, wrote. That means Facebook's main feed is no longer a free playing field for publishers....

Now that the media are obsessively focusing on Facebook ads that were supposedly spread by the Russians to boost Donald Trump's campaign, the billionaire president himself has decided to fight back. On Twitter, Trump argued that the stories about how Facebook supposedly helped him are greatly exaggerated. In fact, he tweeted , Facebook was on Hillary Clinton's side. [TWEET] Trump also argued that, although some people (Russians?) may have bought Facebook ads that aimed at helping him and/or tearing down Hillary, the amounts involved were "tiny." He added: [TWEET] We are not supposed to talk about the positive free media...

Now that the media are obsessively focusing on Facebook ads that were supposedly spread by the Russians to boost Donald Trump's campaign, the billionaire president himself has decided to fight back. On Twitter, Trump argued that the stories about how Facebook supposedly helped him are greatly exaggerated. In fact, he tweeted , Facebook was on Hillary Clinton's side. QUOTE Trump also argued that, although some people (Russians?) may have bought Facebook ads that aimed at helping him and/or tearing down Hillary, the amounts involved were "tiny." He added: QUOTE We are not supposed to talk about the positive free media...

Three senators are putting pressure on internet giants like Facebook and Google to be more transparent about who is buying political ads on their sites in the wake of revelations that Russian-linked operatives placed ads on social media networks to sow division in the runup to the 2016 election. On Thursday, Republican Sen. John McCain announced he is joining Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner to co-sponsor the Honest Ads Act, which would require political ads sold on the internet to follow the same rules as ones sold on television, radio, and satellite networks, all of which have to...

The answer for digital campaigners moving forward isn’t to abandon experiments, testing, and analytics. The answer is to listen better and to continuously test standing assumptions. The 2016 Trump campaign’s digital director, Brad Parscale, was featured on 60 Minutes last week. Much of the interview focused on the central role of Facebook in Trump’s digital strategy. Parscale shared that he “understood early that Facebook was how Donald Trump was going to win. Twitter is how he talked to the people. Facebook was going to be how he won. …We did [ads] on Twitter, Google search, other platforms. Facebook was the...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-is-said-to-seek-staff-with-national-security-clearance

When a Redford, Michigan, man with outstanding warrants posted his challenge to local law enforcement, cops did not take long to respond.

In this follow-up American Pravda video, New York Times Audience Strategy Editor Nicholas Dudich explains how he can (and has) manipulated news reach based on his own personal agenda. Dudich also reveals that thanks to inside-baseball connections in Silicon Valley, he can exploit social media to his advantage for the Times.

In their book "Shattered," Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes report that within 24 hours of losing the presidential election, Hillary Clinton was ordering her campaign to argue that it was hacked by Russia. Just as reporters leaped to find "news" to corroborate her allegations of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" (VRWC for short) during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, they have lunged at stories of Russian interference to validate VRWC 2.0. Second verse, same as the first. The media outlets most deeply invested in the narrative about Russia having somehow masterfully manipulated the 2016 election are beginning to struggle as the actual...

People are shocked that Facebook and Google apparently "embedded" staff in the Trump campaign. • But big-spending advertisers get hands-on treatment from platforms all the time. • The tech giants made this offering available to Hillary Clinton, and also brands like Clorox. Did you hear that Facebook and Google helped swing the 2016 election by planting people in the Trump campaign? It was on 60 Minutes the other night, when a stunned Lesley Stahl quizzed Trump digital ad guru Brad Parscale on how the tech giants planted staffers inside Trump HQ: Brad Parscale: Well, we had our-- their staff embedded...

Why did Hillary Clinton lose the election? There are numerous reasons fair game for finger-pointing, but to truly leverage any of those elements required data and know-how. Russia clearly used both to help influence an election. They and others may have used that knowledge to spread fake news. One of the best catalysts for spreading the message — fake or otherwise — and reaching voters at the heart of their concerns was Facebook, which was right there with the campaigns, trying to help. But did one campaign accept more help than other other and, in doing so, help to sabotage...

Nearly a year after Facebook and Google launched offensives against fake news, they’re still inadvertently promoting it — often at the worst possible times. Online services designed to engross users aren’t so easily retooled to promote greater accuracy, it turns out. Especially with online trolls, pranksters and more malicious types scheming to evade new controls as they’re rolled out. […] Facebook and Google get caught off guard “because their algorithms just look for signs of popularity and recency at first,” without first checking to ensure relevance, says David Carroll, a professor of media design at the Parsons School of Design...