Facebook
January 11, 2025 — John Hinderaker
In a rare Q and A session with reporters, Joe Biden was asked his opinion of Meta’s abandonment of third-party “fact checkers.” President Biden slammed Meta on Friday for ending its third-party fact-checking program, arguing that the change goes against American values and is “shameful.” “The whole idea of walking away from facts checking [sic] as well as not reporting anything having to do with, uh, um, discrimination regarding TPS
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January 10, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Meta announced today that it is saying goodbye to DEI. Its memo to employees, which I take it was signed by Mark Zuckerberg, is here. It begins: Hi all, I wanted to share some changes we’re making to our hiring, development and procurement practices. Before getting into the details, there is some important background to lay out: The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the
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January 7, 2025 — John Hinderaker
In another victory for free speech, Meta has announced that Facebook will no longer employ third-party “fact checkers.” Instead, it will adopt a system similar to X’s “community notes” feature: Meta is ending its fact-checking program in the US and replacing it with a “Community Notes” system similar to that on Elon Musk-owned X, the Facebook parent said on Tuesday. The Community Notes model will allow users on Meta’s social
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January 6, 2025 — John Hinderaker
In one of the most interesting corporate developments in a long time, Meta announced today that it is bringing three new members into its board of directors. One of them is Dana White, proprietor of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a speaker at the Republican National Convention, and one of Donald Trump’s closest friends. This is Meta’s announcement: Many corporations have been reaching out to Trump and his circle, contributing money
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July 19, 2024 — John Hinderaker
As I recall, Mark Zuckerberg spent several hundred million dollars in 2020 to help elect Joe Biden. His “Zuckbucks” went to install Democratic Party activists inside local offices that carry out elections, so that in some jurisdictions, the actual conducting of the election was outsourced to the Democratic Party. But this year, he says he is sitting it out. And even Zuckerberg was impressed by Donald Trump’s performance in Butler,
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June 10, 2024 — Steven Hayward
We’ve often cited the work of Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado, whose science Substack, The Honest Broker, is essential reading. What you should know about Roger (whom I know quite well) is that he is a centrist-liberal Democrat, believes climate change is a genuine future risk, and supports a carbon tax and other measures to fight it. But he also calls bull—- on a lot of climate
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August 9, 2023 — John Hinderaker
We now know that the federal government, led by the FBI, has engaged in a prolonged program of censorship that focused on social media. It began, as far as we know, during the Trump administration, and at that time was directed largely against the President. It has flourished during the Biden administration, in which the FBI and other agencies have acted as enforcers, suppressing dissent from the Biden administration’s line,
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April 21, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I developed a healthy respect for attorney John A. “Jack” Clifford many years ago when we represented adverse parties in an intellectual property dispute. Jack is of counsel with Merchant & Gould. P.C. Jack writes today: I hope you are doing well. I write to advise you that I copied the text of your ”The dirtiest trick” post to my Facebook feed this morning, including a link to the url
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November 6, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Hard on the heels of Elon Musk’s laying off half the staff of Twitter comes news of layoffs at Meta (Facebook): The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people. Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company officials already told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week, the
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August 26, 2022 — John Hinderaker
That’s what Mollie Hemingway says: The FBI rigged the 2020 election. https://t.co/GjRjMVUY8T — Mollie (@MZHemingway) August 25, 2022 She is talking about the interview that Mark Zuckerberg did with Joe Rogan. It has gotten a great deal of attention; the New York Post, for example, features Kevin McCarthy tweeting about the “bombshell interview on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience'”. Much as I admire Mollie, I think she overstates the case, at
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January 3, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The latest news from social media is that both Twitter and Facebook have banned Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal accounts. Twitter permanently suspended the personal account of Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over repeated violations of its COVID-19 misinformation policy, the company confirmed early Sunday. *** “We permanently suspended the account you referenced (@mtgreenee) for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” a Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Caller
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October 24, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The Wall Street Journal has obtained internal Facebook documents that shed light on how politics has affected the social media giant’s behavior in recent years. Some argue that the documents confirm suspicions that Facebook deliberately suppresses conservative views, but to me the story seems more complicated than that: Many Republicans, from Mr. Trump down, say Facebook discriminates against conservatives. The documents reviewed by the Journal didn’t render a verdict on
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July 30, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The dark night of censorship isn’t just threatening, it is already here. The most recent case–one of hundreds, if not thousands–is that of Dave Rubin, a popular conservative commentator with a large following on Twitter. Rubin tweeted this: They want a federal vaccine mandate for vaccines which are clearly not working as promised just weeks ago. People are getting and transmitting Covid despite vax. Plus now they’re prepping us for
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July 22, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The Biden administration has enlisted Facebook to police conversations among Americans. This is because the rest of us are too dumb to be trusted, and may fall for “misinformation.” So how does Facebook carry out its mission of uplifting our discourse? By censoring conversation about hoes in gardening groups: A group called WNY Gardeners has been repeatedly flagged by the social network for “violating community standards,” when its more than
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July 16, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Today saw a follow-up to the revelation that the Biden administration is instructing Facebook as to “misinformation” that Facebook should delete from its platform. Joe Biden was asked about his administration’s relationship with Facebook as he departed for Camp David. His response was striking: President Biden on Friday accused Facebook of “killing people,” just after White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration is “in regular touch” with
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June 18, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Some readers may remember that I was mysteriously booted off Twitter some months ago. Twitter was never my preferred medium, but I had around 14,000 followers. One day Twitter sent me an email saying that my account had been accessed by someone in Australia who had changed my email address. If you didn’t do that, Twitter’s email to my user name said, click here. I clicked there. The first thing
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June 4, 2021 — John Hinderaker
After the mostly-peaceful demonstrations in Washington last January 6, Facebook and Instagram suspended President Trump’s accounts. He appealed to Facebook’s Oversight Board, which upheld the suspension but said it should have a time limit. Today Facebook responded by decreeing that Trump is off its platforms for two years, and after that, they will see. Facebook’s suspension was based on two posts that President Trump did on January 6. Both called
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