Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

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caltrek
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TikTok Is No Longer The World's Most Popular Website
by James Felton
June 16, 2022

Introduction:
(IFL Science) Late last year, the tech world had a bit of a shock as everyone's favorite search engine was knocked off the top spot of the Earth's most popular website.

According to Cloudflare Radar's popularity ranking, the tech giant was knocked down to the second most popular domain by a surprise (relative) newcomer. No, despite Microsoft's crafty trick of making Bing the default search tool for the Edge browser (fun fact: the most popular search term typed into Bing is "Google") it did not manage to beat Google, and its ever-growing array of services including Maps, Translate, Photos, Flights, Books, and News.

Late last year, this is how rankings stood.

Top 10 most popular domains in late 2021
1) TikTok.com
2) Google.com
3) Facebook.com
4) Microsoft.com
5) Apple.com
6) Amazon.com
7) Netflix.com
8) YouTube.com
9) Twitter.com
10) WhatsApp.com
The two most popular domains the last thirty days preceding June 16, 2022:
1) Google.com
2) TikTok.com
Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/tiktok-is-n ... ite-64091
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caltrek
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Nobelist Maria Ressa: Social Media is Corroding U.S. Democracy
by Sara Kehaulani Goo
June 28, 2022

Introduction:
(Axios) The U.S. is "far worse off than you think" when it comes to social media undermining its democracy, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and journalist Maria Ressa told Axios.

Why it matters: Ressa, a Filipino American co-founder of news organization Rappler, says the next wave of elections around the world, including the U.S. midterms in November, provides another opportunity for social media to spread disinformation, divide people against one another and incite violence.

• "Most people, they don't realize they're being manipulated, that these platforms are biased against facts. You don't get facts. It's toxic sludge. Social media encourages anger, hate, conspiracy theories. There's violence," and it's getting worse, Ressa said in an exclusive interview ahead of a Tuesday speech in Honolulu at the East-West Center International Media Conference.

• "Online violence is real-world violence," Ressa says, citing incidents around the world, including the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and recent mass shootings by radicalized killers.

She argues nations need to require accountability for tech firms like Meta, which owns Facebook, and Twitter.
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/06/28/maria ... democracy
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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caltrek
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Re: Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

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Hate Sites Using the Wider Abortion Argument to Spread Racism and Extremism
June 28, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) White supremacists are using the debate around women’s reproductive rights to promote racist and extremist agendas, finds a new study released today – following news on Friday that millions of women in the US will lose the constitutional right to abortion.

US white nationalists are heading on to a Neo-Nazi website, ‘Stormfront’, in order to recruit more people to their way of thinking. Whilst online they describe abortions by white women, as ‘murder’ and look to “weaponize” the procedure. However, the extremists reason abortion by non-white women as ‘acceptable’ or even ‘desirable’ because, they argue, the procedure could solve threats to white dominance – including the “urgent need to limit third world populations”.

The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Information, Communication & Society, come following a detailed computer-aided analysis of more than 30,000 posts, spanning over two decades on the site.

The study authors warn that their evidence highlights how white extremists “weaponize” abortion arguments to attract recruits, using the political debate as a gateway argument that invites them to dive deeper into white male supremacy ideology.

“Our study shows that science, medicine, and conspiracy theories meet on the dark corners of the internet,” says lead researcher Dr Yotam Ophir at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/957100
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Time_Traveller
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Facebook and Instagram removing posts with mentions of abortion pills
Tue 28 Jun 2022

Facebook and Instagram have begun removing posts related to abortion pills, as posts about such medication spiked following the supreme court’s ruling stripping away constitutional protections for abortions.

Memes and status updates explaining how people can obtain abortion pills in the mail have exploded across social platforms in recent days.

A woman sits holding her phone which is displaying a period tracking app. On the low table before her is a basket full of menstrual products.

General mentions of abortion pills, as well as posts mentioning specific versions such as mifepristone and misoprostol, suddenly spiked on Friday morning across Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and TV broadcasts, according to an analysis by the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs. By Sunday, Zignal had counted more than 250,000 such mentions.

Some of the posts demonstrated how people can legally obtain medication abortion by mail across the US, through abortion telehealth services like Hey Jane, Just the Pill, and Choix in states where such healthcare is legal.

In other posts individual users offered to mail prescriptions to women living in states that criminalized abortion following Friday’s supreme court decision.

Meanwhile, underground abortion pill networks have begun to pop up, said Eric Feinberg, a researcher at the Coalition for a Safer Web. Screenshots provided to the Guardian showed Mifepristone for sale in private Facebook groups with names like “MTP Kit and Other Pills” and “Cleaning and Abortion Pills”.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ills-posts

Reminds me of the 1920s in America with the Prohibition.
"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

-H.G Wells.
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caltrek
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Elon Musk Officially Tries to Bail on Buying Twitter
by Jacob Kastrenakes
July 8, 2022

Introduction:
(The Verge) Elon Musk is officially trying to pull out of his $44 billion agreement to purchase Twitter. In a filing Friday afternoon, Musk’s team claimed that he was backing out of the deal because Twitter was in “material breach” of their agreement and had made “false and misleading” statements during negotiations.

“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,” Musk’s team writes. “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”

Musk has been setting the stage to abandon the deal since just weeks after he signed the agreement, claiming that Twitter released misleading stats about the prevalence of spam bots on its platform. It’s entirely unclear, however, that Musk can legally abandon his agreement simply because he isn’t happy about the presence of spam on Twitter — something he could have investigated prior to signing the deal.

Twitter has gone to great lengths to show compliance with Musk’s requests. In early June, the company opened up “firehose” access to its service so that Musk could receive and analyze every tweet as it’s posted.
Read more here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/8/232 ... contract
Don't mourn, organize.

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weatheriscool
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Re: Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

caltrek wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 2:43 pm Hate Sites Using the Wider Abortion Argument to Spread Racism and Extremism
June 28, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) White supremacists are using the debate around women’s reproductive rights to promote racist and extremist agendas, finds a new study released today – following news on Friday that millions of women in the US will lose the constitutional right to abortion.

US white nationalists are heading on to a Neo-Nazi website, ‘Stormfront’, in order to recruit more people to their way of thinking. Whilst online they describe abortions by white women, as ‘murder’ and look to “weaponize” the procedure. However, the extremists reason abortion by non-white women as ‘acceptable’ or even ‘desirable’ because, they argue, the procedure could solve threats to white dominance – including the “urgent need to limit third world populations”.

The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Information, Communication & Society, come following a detailed computer-aided analysis of more than 30,000 posts, spanning over two decades on the site.

The study authors warn that their evidence highlights how white extremists “weaponize” abortion arguments to attract recruits, using the political debate as a gateway argument that invites them to dive deeper into white male supremacy ideology.

“Our study shows that science, medicine, and conspiracy theories meet on the dark corners of the internet,” says lead researcher Dr Yotam Ophir at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/957100

This doesn't make any sense as blacks kill their babies at a far higher percentage then whites and most plannedparenthoods are built in the innercity. It is like they're trying to erase blacks and you'd think racist would be cheering for such.
weatheriscool
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Re: Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

caltrek wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:37 pm Elon Musk Officially Tries to Bail on Buying Twitter
by Jacob Kastrenakes
July 8, 2022

Introduction:
(The Verge) Elon Musk is officially trying to pull out of his $44 billion agreement to purchase Twitter. In a filing Friday afternoon, Musk’s team claimed that he was backing out of the deal because Twitter was in “material breach” of their agreement and had made “false and misleading” statements during negotiations.

“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,” Musk’s team writes. “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”

Musk has been setting the stage to abandon the deal since just weeks after he signed the agreement, claiming that Twitter released misleading stats about the prevalence of spam bots on its platform. It’s entirely unclear, however, that Musk can legally abandon his agreement simply because he isn’t happy about the presence of spam on Twitter — something he could have investigated prior to signing the deal.

Twitter has gone to great lengths to show compliance with Musk’s requests. In early June, the company opened up “firehose” access to its service so that Musk could receive and analyze every tweet as it’s posted.
Read more here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/8/232 ... contract

Fucking coward. I was really hoping that he would be the guy to spread freedom of speech as it should but he pussied out. Well, I guess Elon probably should just focus on rockets and getting us to mars but it would have been nice.
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caltrek
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Trump Removed as Director of His Media Company
July 8, 2022

Introduction:
(AFP via Courthouse News) — Former President Donald Trump was removed as director of his own media company shortly before the firm was subpoenaed, according to a legal filing seen by AFP on Friday.

The document also showed that Trump’s son, Donald Jr., and several others were also removed in June as directors of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which includes his social media platform Truth Social.

Truth Social said the story, first reported on Thursday by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the Florida city where TMTG is based, was “fake news” and insisted Trump still served as the company’s chairman.

TMTG is under investigation by U.S. financial regulators and prosecutors in New York over its use to go public of a shell company called Digital World.

TMTG’s filing to the Florida Department of State to remove Trump as director was dated June 8, just weeks before it and Digital World were served with legal papers ordering directors and other executives to testify.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/trump- ... company/
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weatheriscool
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Re: Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

Twitter sues Elon Musk, setting stage for epic legal battle
Source: Washington Post
Twitter filed suit Tuesday against Elon Musk to force the billionaire to make good on his promise to purchase the company, issuing the first legal volley in what is expected to be one of most high-profile business trials in recent history.

For months Musk has publicly threatened to walk away from the sale of the influential social network, efforts that culminated last week in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing claiming he was “terminating” the agreement because Twitter hadn’t given him enough information about spam and bots on its service. Now a judge in a specialized business court in Delaware must determine whether the world’s richest man can exit the $44 billion deal, despite a contract binding him to complete the acquisition barring a major change to the company’s business.

Experts said they anticipated months of agonizing legal drama to play out in the Delaware Court of Chancery, a tiny, clubby court that has decided the outcomes of some of the biggest business squabbles in the U.S. The court has just seven judges — one chancellor and six vice chancellors — who have enormous discretion to force companies to take specific actions.

The process will likely submit Twitter to a grueling level of public scrutiny, forcing the platform to open up its books and expose internal deliberations in ways that might further damage its stock price and reputation, already-battered from the market downturn and months of sparring with Musk.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... k-lawsuit/
Vakanai
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Re: Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

Post by Vakanai »

weatheriscool wrote: Wed Jul 13, 2022 5:30 am Twitter sues Elon Musk, setting stage for epic legal battle
Source: Washington Post
Twitter filed suit Tuesday against Elon Musk to force the billionaire to make good on his promise to purchase the company, issuing the first legal volley in what is expected to be one of most high-profile business trials in recent history.

For months Musk has publicly threatened to walk away from the sale of the influential social network, efforts that culminated last week in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing claiming he was “terminating” the agreement because Twitter hadn’t given him enough information about spam and bots on its service. Now a judge in a specialized business court in Delaware must determine whether the world’s richest man can exit the $44 billion deal, despite a contract binding him to complete the acquisition barring a major change to the company’s business.

Experts said they anticipated months of agonizing legal drama to play out in the Delaware Court of Chancery, a tiny, clubby court that has decided the outcomes of some of the biggest business squabbles in the U.S. The court has just seven judges — one chancellor and six vice chancellors — who have enormous discretion to force companies to take specific actions.

The process will likely submit Twitter to a grueling level of public scrutiny, forcing the platform to open up its books and expose internal deliberations in ways that might further damage its stock price and reputation, already-battered from the market downturn and months of sparring with Musk.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... k-lawsuit/
He'll be fine - the courts are largely conservative these days, and as much as the conservatives hate Elon they probably hate Twitter banning Trump more.
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