The Place To Get The Truth
Facebook-owned Instagram on Wednesday censored as “false” a user’s post that President-elect Joe Biden’s 1994 crime law added to the mass incarceration of black people – a fact that was even supported by the Black Lives Matter organizers in the early days of the Primary season.
Rather than simply alerting friends halfway around the world to what their internet pen pals are doing, Facebook has vowed to inform nearby users via a new and improved algorithm if it thinks the pair might be compatible – a semi-creepy feature that could either cement actual friendships or foment algorithmic stalking.
The company’s Facebook account was suspended on Friday after a recent post that criticized fascism. Redfish said Facebook deleted the page on the grounds that its posts commemorating the Holocaust and the defeat of Italian fascism violated its community standards.
Here are 12 examples of the type of posts that are not allowed (the full list is at www.facebook.com/help/230764881494641/):
1. “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.” Facebook does not allow posts that say the COVID-19 vaccines or their ingredients are toxic, poisonous, harmful or dangerous. It also prohibits any content calling to action, advocating or promoting that others not get the shot.
2. “The COVID-19 vaccines were not tested against a placebo during clinical trials.” Facebook will remove inaccurate claims about how the vaccine was developed or its ingredients. That includes claims that the vaccine contains toxic or harmful ingredients, microchips, animal products or anything not on the vaccine ingredient list. Also prohibited: claims that the vaccine was not tested, or that people died as a result of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine during clinical trials.
Facebook has been the king of social media for quite some time now and its constant evolution shows that it has no plans of stepping down from its throne anytime soon! One problem that has been a mainstay on the social networking platform is an abundance of fake profiles.
While Facebook has taken important steps to get rid of this problem, the number of fake profiles or bots hasn’t gone down significantly. But now, it looks like the social media service has finally cracked the code of how to get this issue under control!
Recently, renowned social media consultant Matt Navarra tweeted about Facebook adopting a new way to verify if an account was created by a real person. Yes, that’s right, people will now have to take a video selfie of themselves to convince Facebook that it’s them behind a particular account. Navarra got wind of the news from a Twitter user (W.S).
Navarra’s tweet also included a couple of screenshots (featured below) through which we can get a better idea of Facebook’s latest initiative to battle fake accounts. Basically, you will be required to create a video selfie of yourself in which you will turn your head in different directions.
A 15-year-old in upstate New York committed suicide just hours after someone he was communicating with on Facebook threatened to release embarrassing photos of him unless he paid thousands of dollars.
The harrowing story unfolded in Potsdam, New York, a town northeast of Syracuse.
Riley K. Basford, a sophomore at Potsdam High School, reportedly began an online interaction with someone on Facebook before he committed suicide on March 30.
His family said the state police informed them of the interactions after they investigated the contents of Basford’s cellphone.
Basford was apparently the victim of an extortion scheme that culminated with a demand for money. Police said that the other party obtained embarrassing photographs from Basford, who thought he was in a relationship, and then threatened to release them to his friends, family and on social media.
His family said he had just started a new job as a dishwasher and likely panicked because he didn’t have the amount they were demanding: $3,500.
“He couldn’t reason out what was happening to him and it was happening so fast,” his mother said to the Watertown Daily Times. “They put him into such a panic that he went out of his mind.”
His family said that the blackmail messages came on a normal and uneventful day. Basford went to get braces, got a milkshake, spoke to his uncle, and fed the family’s cows.
“He was normal and happy,” said his stepmother Melissa Marion.
What do you do when your sources of information get corrupted? That is one of today’s great questions, as UnHerd discovered this week. On Wednesday, Facebook censored an article on these pages which was critical of the World Health Organisation, labelling it as “misinformation”. It was not UnHerd’s first run-in with the online censors, but it is perhaps the most baffling.
In the article in question, Ian Birrell suggested that there are very many reasons to be suspicious of the WHO’s recent report into the origins of the coronavirus. Its investigations were brief, its research was flimsy and the composition of its team was questionable. But most glaring of all was surely its attempt to exclude from consideration anything which might be inconvenient for the Chinese Communist Party. It concluded, for example, that there was no evidence that the virus had come either from the Wuhan wet market, or from the government-run laboratory in the area.
Ben Nimmo, a former NATO press officer and current senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, has announced Facebook has hired him to “lead global threat intelligence strategy against influence operations” and “emerging threats.” Nimmo specifically named Russia, Iran and China as potential dangers to the platform.
His announcement was greeted with joy by several NATO officials but was not met with such enthusiasm by others. “More censorship on the way as the former NATO press officer turned Pentagon-funded ‘researcher’ who labeled real people as Russian bots and peddled disinformation to link Jeremy Corbyn to Russian active measures moves to big tech,” responded investigative journalist Max Blumenthal.
More censorship on the way as the former NATO press officer turned Pentagon-funded “researcher” who labeled real people as Russian bots and peddled disinformation to link Jeremy Corbyn to Russian active measures moves to Big Tech https://t.co/XcfGbdPJtv
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 7, 2021
Nimmo’s questionable past certainly raises questions over whether such an official having a substantial say in what 2.8 billion Facebook users worldwide see in their feeds is such a positive step for the free and open exchange of information.
While Silicon Valley tech giants spent the last two weeks purging President Trump and tens of thousands of his followers over ‘dangerous conspiracy theories’ and ‘inciting violence’ during the so-called “Capitol insurrection” on January 6, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have yet to remove a video by far-left Russiagate conspiracy theorist Dan Winslow which is the definition of incitement.
“They are hidden among us, disguised behind regular jobs,” Winslow warns. “They are your children’s teachers. They work at supermarkets, malls, doctor’s offices, and many are police officers and soldiers.”
