“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”
Decision here.
New York Times- Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era
That same day at Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said.
The times, they are a-changing.
BREAKING: Mark Zuckerberg announces sweeping changes to Facebook and Instagram to move toward Free Speech including:
-Ending Third-Party Fact Checking and Replacing it with Community Notes like
-Removing Reduction of Political Content
-Lifting Topic Restrictions pic.twitter.com/9Y2DVQSrpk— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 7, 2025
And more: Meta Platforms Appoints UFC’s Dana White as a New Director
Everything old is blue again.
This week I was invited by a colleague to try out the BSky app as an alternative to X/Twitter. They told me that it is far more welcoming for discussion about energy and climate. Sure, I thought, I’ll give it a try.
I actively posted there for a bit and learned that climate activists have created a Bsky climate “blocklist” that focuses on me and anyone who mentions me — Matt Yglesias of Slow Boring and Ted Nordhaus of The Breakthrough Institute are also on it. The blocklist prevents those on it from seeing the posts of those who join and creates a disincentive for anyone to mention those on the list, lest they get added to it. This is not a new strategy for some climate scientists and journalists.
People are free to create their social media echo chambers however they like, of course, but one detail is worth mentioning — One person promoting the block list is one of the lead scientists of the U.S. National Climate Assessment. That degree of intolerance among those selected to represent the climate science community is a problem for climate science and politics.
A senior engineer at Meta admitted in a secret recording that posts critical of Vice President Kamala Harris are “automatically demoted.”
“Say your uncle in Ohio said something about Kamala Harris is unfit to be a president because she doesn’t have a child, that kind of sh*t is automatically demoted,” the Meta employee told an undercover journalist working for O’Keefe Media Group. The software engineer went on to explain that the person would be unaware this happened but may notice a decline in engagement with their post, and if they had this happen on several occasions, they would then be “redlisted.”
In a post sharing the undercover footage, O’Keefe said the software engineer explained “that Meta’s ‘Integrity Team’ is responsible for controlling content through ‘civic classifiers,’ a system that ‘shadowbans’ posts without notifying users.”
“Gyawali also revealed a specialized Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) team that was created at Meta, stating, ‘There is a SWAT team that’s already set up since April… just to think about all the scenarios of how the platform could be abused,'” O’Keefe’s post continued.
Asked whether Meta has the ability to influence the 2024 election, he said “yes” and claimed that Mark Zuckerberg will help Democrats this cycle.
Oh, shit.
US Capitol Hit by Massive Dark Web Cyber Attack: Reports.
The personal information of more than 3,000 congressional staffers has been leaked across the dark web in a wide-ranging cyberattack on the Capitol.
"Many of these leaks likely occurred because staffers used…
— Tired of being politically correct (@USBornNRaised) September 24, 2024
JUST IN – Zuckerberg regrets working with the Biden-Harris administration to censor Covid era information online.
App Store- Genesia – AI Friend & Partner
Genesia AI is the perfect companion for anyone who wants a friend they can always count on. Whether you’re looking for emotional support, a mentor, or just someone to talk to, this app is there for you.
h/t Scott
Bill Rice Jr- Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!
Have you ever wondered why wildly-popular TV and Internet sites get virtually no advertising from the world’s largest advertisers?
Damien Slash- It’s time to extradite Elon Musk.
James Lindsay- The Woke “ball bearing factory”
Telegraph- EU offered secret deal to censor Twitter, claims Musk
He said: “The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not.
“We look forward to a very public battle in court so that the people of Europe can know the truth.”
All is forgiven.
Associated Press- Facebook lifts restrictions on Trump, giving him equal footing with Biden on the social media site
Savage.
Globe and Mail- Federal officials asked Facebook to take down false allegations about Trudeau
The country’s top civil servant directed bureaucrats to ask Facebook to remove a “false and inflammatory” story about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the 2019 election campaign, but did not make a similar request of WeChat, which spread false information about Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole and MP Kenny Chiu in the 2021 election, the public inquiry into foreign interference heard Friday.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed suit on Monday against Media Matters for America for refusal to cooperate with a Missouri State investigation.
This comes after AG Andrew Bailey sued Media Matters in December for violating state consumer protection laws and defrauding Missourians.
AG Andrew Bailey accused Media Matters of using fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to bully advertisers.
Attorney General Andrew Bailey made this explosive accusation, “We have reason to believe Media Matters used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to bully advertisers into pulling out of X, the last platform dedicated to free speech in America.”
The Missouri Attorney General did not hold back in his attacks on Media Matters alleging the enemies of free speech, like Media Matters for America, are attempting to kill Twitter-X because they cannot control it now that Elon Musk took over. Bailey added, “I’m fighting to ensure progressive tyrants masquerading as news outlets cannot manipulate the marketplace in order to wipe out free speech.”
Elon Musk reveals Twitter had FBI ‘portal that auto-deleted all comms’ after 2 weeks.
Musk also revealed that “there’s a little-known agency in the state department called the Global Engagement Center, which most people have never heard of, but they might have been the single worst offender because they demanded the suspension of over 250,000 accounts which I think all Twitter largely complied with.”
“The suspension demands were so broad that they accidentally demanded a suspension of a journalist on CNN and an elected Canadian politician.
LIVE: SCOTUS HEARS ARGUMENTS in Murthy v. Missouri (Missouri v. Biden)
Related: Why the TikTok ban is so dangerous.
Gay, because of course.