When I was working for The Washington Times, we did not seek to prevent the distribution of The Washington Post, nor during my years as a correspondent for The American Spectator have we ever sought to silence any competing publication. Yet CNN and other so-called “mainstream” media operations are now actively engaged in a smear campaign intended to “de-platform” alternative voices online.
Facebook has banned Republican congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng’s campaign video ad about communist crimes that led her family to flee Cambodia for the U.S., claiming the platform doesn’t allow “shocking, disrespectful, or sensational” content.
Elizabeth Heng, who is running for California’s 16th congressional district seat, made the video about her parent’s escape from mass-murder by the Khmer Rouge communists in the 1970s.
More: Twitter Suspends Libertarian Accounts, Including Ron Paul Institute Director
h/t Shamrock
If Donald Trump doesn't trust-bust the Silicon Valley alt-left cartels, they'll bust him. And they mean to do it this November. cc. @parscale https://t.co/pB3DvnDhZs
— Ezra Levant 🇨🇦 (@ezralevant) August 6, 2018
Twitter shares drop 19 percent after reporting declining monthly active users.
Faster, please.
President Donald Trump accused Twitter on Thursday of “discriminatory and illegal practice,” vowing in a tweet to “look into” the matter.
Investors, already unnerved by Facebook’s plunge, shed Twitter shares. The stock was down 4.3 percent in early trading Thursday, including a 1 percent additional decline immediately after Trump’s comments.
Related.
Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.
Grab a coffee,
GOADING TWITTER TO SELF-DESTRUCT.
It’s as if the Titanic were taking on water and the Captain is boasting about how nice the table settings look.
CNBC: Forty percent of those surveyed had deleted at least one social media account in the past year because of privacy concerns and 62 percent wanted more regulation of such platforms.
Your Phone Is Listening and it’s Not Paranoia.
Facebook confirms data sharing with Chinese companies…
As Facebook sought to become the world’s dominant social media service, it struck agreements allowing phone and other device makers access to vast amounts of its users’ personal information.
Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said. The deals allowed Facebook to expand its reach and let device makers offer customers popular features of the social network, such as messaging, “like” buttons and address books.
But the partnerships, whose scope has not previously been reported, raise concerns about the company’s privacy protections and compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found. […]
“It’s like having door locks installed, only to find out that the locksmith also gave keys to all of his friends so they can come in and rifle through your stuff without having to ask you for permission,” said Ashkan Soltani, a research and privacy consultant who formerly served as the F.T.C.’s chief technologist. [… ]
Immediately after the reporter connected the device to his Facebook account, it requested some of his profile data, including user ID, name, picture, “about” information, location, email and cellphone number. The device then retrieved the reporter’s private messages and the responses to them, along with the name and user ID of each person with whom he was communicating.
The data flowed to a BlackBerry app known as the Hub, which was designed to let BlackBerry users view all of their messages and social media accounts in one place.
Fake news? Facebook denies…
Baby, you can drive my car…
An “unlikely” string of events prompted Amazon’s Echo personal assistant device to record a Portland, Ore., family’s private conversation and then send the recording to an acquaintance in Seattle, the company said Thursday.
The woman told KIRO-TV in Seattle that two weeks ago an employee of her husband contacted them to say he thought their device had been hacked. He told them he had received an audio file of them discussing hardwood floors, she said.
h/t Captain Obvious
We’d all still live in caves, but with really, really fancy curtains.
Founded by the charismatic Stanford dropout in 2003, its promises to revolutionize blood-testing—and by extension, the vast industry of medical diagnostics—would be swallowed whole by most of the technology press, which would lavish Holmes with glowing coverage. (WIRED was not exempt). Only later—in October 2015—would the truth come out: Theranos was a fraud built on secrecy, deliberate fabrication, and hype. After I revealed that fraud, the company would begin an implosion that continues to this day.
h/t Steve from Rockwood
I Tried to Watch a Video of a Puppy and Accidentally Sent Every Photo I’ve Ever Taken to Google.
[H]umans weren’t meant to be connected on a global scale. The entire history of humanity – recorded and unrecorded – reflects that. Tribes, clans, and countries have warred for years. The disparity between cultures, morals, ideals, priorities and more have consistently put differing people at odds with one another. Social media didn’t create that. In fact, it magnified it.
The driver of a Tesla electric car had the vehicle’s semi-autonomous Autopilot mode engaged when she slammed into the back of a Utah fire truck over the weekend, in the latest crash involving a car with self-driving features. […]
South Jordan police said the Tesla Model S was going 60 mph (97 kph) when it slammed into the back of a fire truck stopped at a red light. The car appeared not to brake before impact,