Censorship
Shortly after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) brought up violent Facebook threats against Republicans during a congressional hearing, the page vanished from Facebook. Facebook, however, says it is not responsible.
In a departure from President Trump’s previous attitude towards Silicon Valley, Trump on Thursday tweeted a defense of Google against a fine levied by the European Union.
Following The Daily Caller’s revealing the identity of its founder, the lefty ad-targeting group known as Sleeping Giants took to Twitter to defend itself.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently been trying to strike a balance between cracking down on fake news, hoaxes, and hate speech and allowing a diversity of opinions on the site. In a recent interview with Recode, Zuckerberg took one of his strongest approaches in defense of free speech on the platform.
President Trump’s team appears to be bucking the mainstream media for positive publicity and, instead, is relying on Facebook advertisements. A study shows that from May until June, Trump and his political action committee have reportedly spent approximately $274,000 on Facebook ads.
Liberal news sources appear to have a problem with more than just InfoWars: now they’re going after the Daily Caller. According to The Wall Street Journal, during an off-the-record meeting with Facebook last week, editors from BuzzFeed and HuffPost took offense to even including the Daily Caller in the meeting.
Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, came out swinging at the House Judiciary hearing about censoring conservatives. He criticized Facebook’s eagerness to address Democrat questions about Russian use of the platform, but less so about GOP inquiries.
The controversy over social media censorship of conservatives has not died down, and the House Judiciary Committee is holding a second hearing on the topic.
In a truly ridiculous line of questions during ABC’s This Week on Sunday, fill-in host and White House correspondent Jon Karl badgered National Security Adviser John Bolton about President Trump’s combative relationship with the press and whether it helped Russian President Vladimir Putin crackdown on reporters there.
CNN attempted to test the limits of Facebook’s new campaign against fake news by questioning the presence of InfoWars on its site.
On Monday, YouTube announced a $25 million investment in the “future of news.” According to its official blog, one of the three members of YouTube’s original working group is Vox Media, which runs liberal news site Vox.com.
On CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday, Vox.com's Ezra Klein lamented the attention President Donald Trump continues to receive, whining that his rallies and tweets are crowding out "other important issues." Klein wants the establishment press and cable news — by that, he clearly means everyone but Fox — to pay less attention to Trump, even though he effectively admitted that doing so would cause hits to ratings and online traffic (Earth to Ezra: You're in charge of a business). Fox, which is already crushing its rivals, would probably love it if the rest of the press were to follow Klein's suggestion.