Free Speech

An automated service will no longer label people as male or female, according to a report from Business Insider. Google’s Cloud Vision API, a “computer vision” product that has the ability to “[a]ssign labels to images and quickly classify them into millions of predefined categories,” might be making some changes to two specific labels.

A leaked demo revealed a new system that may change the way Twitter users get information on the platform.Twitter confirmed a leaked demo of upcoming anti-“misinformation” features, reported NBC News. The demo was one of a few variants of possible anti-“misinformation” policies that are being prepared for a March 5 rollout. As NBC News described, “disinformation or misleading information posted…

Facebook’s plans for regulating Big Tech have not met the expectations of some bigwigs in EU leadership. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg toured Brussels earlier this week, meeting with press and politicians and also publishing a white paper on regulating Big Tech called “Charting the Way Forward: Online Content Regulation.” 

In his introductory statement made to the Department of Justice Section 230 Workshop, Attorney General William Barr discussed the problems brought on by the rise of Big Tech. “No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts,” said Barr to the Feb. 19 panels. “They have become titans of U.S. industry.”

Facebook is finding some forms of government regulation to be too much for the company, even as CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls for more of it. Facebook has been "legally compelled," according to Bloomberg News, by the government of Singapore to block access to a fringe news website States Times Review (STR) after it posted rumors about the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Facebook…

The fate of free speech on the internet could be discussed at an upcoming discussion hosted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The News Media Alliance (NMA), a thousands-strong coalition of U.S. news organizations, is criticizing the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provided legal protection for tech companies from the consequences of users’ posts. The NMA seeks…

The origin of the coronavirus is still being debated, but Twitter has responded to one skeptic outlet by censoring it. The ZeroHedge founder reportedly, under the pseudonym Tyler Durden, asked “Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?” and theorized about the coronavirus’s true origins. 

In a country where the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the Democratic Party may be getting led astray by a small but vocal minority on social media. A Pew Research Center study released Feb. 3 found that “The political views and primary candidate preferences of Democrats on Twitter differ from those who are not on the platform.” The report released some dire numbers, including how “The 29% of…

Instagram announced in May of 2019 that it would be fact-checking and “reducing distribution” for what it considered to be “disinformation.” Since then, it seems to be targeting pro-life content. Brazilian third-party fact-checker Aos Fatos reviewed and labeled a story from pro-life news organization LifeNews as “Falso” on Feb. 14. Instagram, a sister company to Facebook, took the rating (which…

Twitter defines “sensitive content” as something that might contain “violence or nudity.” So why did a photo of a Nascar racer and the president get flagged by the platform as potentially sensitive content? NASCAR star Hailie Deegan posed for a picture with President Trump and first lady Melania Trump at the Daytona 500 on Feb. 16. After she posted it to Twitter, some of her followers noted that…

YouTube, once again, is doing everything it can to stop discussion about the alleged “whistleblower.” YouTube removed a clip of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) of him speaking on the Senate floor, the National Review reported. In the video, Paul asked “why Chief Justice John Roberts had blocked a question of his, which some have speculated contained the name of the Ukraine whistleblower.” In response, he…

The man whose complaints single handedly caused an entire adpocalypse on YouTube has returned to the platform to “flood its airwaves with leftist propaganda.” Carlos Maza is leaving Vox to establish his own channel according to The Verge, where he will “talk about media, propaganda, and socially conscious topics that relate to how people get their news from a progressive perspective.” The New…

How dangerous is a single tech-savvy conservative? Enough to politically divide Silicon Valley itself and get a CEO to rant about the future of “democracy.” Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint, in an article-filled tweetstorm, ranted about Facebook’s free speech stance on political advertising. He condemned how the social media giant will reportedly make a profit of “$800mil in political ads,”…

Major social media platforms are removing Iranian disinformation and coordinated behavior from their platforms. But Republicans don’t think that’s enough. Four Republican senators wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Feb. 6 saying that the company needed to halt its services to U.S.-sanctioned Iranian leaders.