Facebook/Meta

The Obamas are extending their presence in entertainment media with some upcoming social media video content. Michelle is reportedly partnering with ATTN: to launch a web series on Instagram for young people.  

Facebook is taking another shot at improving its fact-check process, by adding a large group of part-time contractors to help sort information from disinformation. In an attempt to assuage the concerns of conservatives and free speech advocates wary of Big Tech bias, Facebook will be partnering with YouGov to select a politically diverse community of reviewers. 

The 2020 election is going to be fought online and the left has decided to create its own fact-check unit. The Democratic National Committee started a “counter-disinformation unit” to “serve[] as a knowledge base and intelligence unit” for the party.

Facebook announced a new policy to label state-funded media on its platform. Qatar-backed outlet Al Jazeera has a problem with that. In a letter sent by the media outlet’s lawyers to Facebook’s Vice President Jennifer Gillian Newstead and Head of Global Policy Management Monika Bickert, Al Jazeera wrote that Facebook’s policy would cause “substantial and irreparable harm” to its reputation.

A former Facebook employee says that social media companies “owe it to democracy” to increase restrictions on Facebook’s political advertising and “fix the mess” they allegedly created. Facebook’s former government and politics client partner Clare O’Donoghue Velikić wrote an article for The Guardian on Dec. 6 on “how to fix social media’s political ads problem.”

One of the four constitutional scholars who testified at the impeachment hearings on Dec. 3 played an instrumental role in the building of Facebook’s Oversight Board. Noah Feldman, professor at Harvard Law School and director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, testified at the House Judiciary Committee’s public hearing.  

Sources claim that the Democratic National Committee ("DNC") directly lobbied Facebook to police the platform for “malicious actors” and “disinformation” from politicians.The DNC CEO Seema Nanda reportedly wrote the Nov. 21 letter to Facebook to “raise concerns about the company's ability to catch online trolls” and in hopes that the company would “change its political ad policy,” according to…

After taking a stand for free speech on several occasions, is Facebook now backsliding? Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to take a pro-free speech stand and allowed political ads without fact-checking as early as October 2019, and amidst pressure from the left, the Big Tech CEO has even doubled down on his pro-free speech remarks. But according to sources speaking to The Washington Post, “…

Dave Rubin has launched two platforms on the same day, which he believes could solve the free speech and censorship problem online. In a Dec. 4 livestream, the host of the Rubin Report Dave Rubin described two platforms he created, Locals.com and the Rubin Report app, which have gone public today. Rubin said that he created the platforms to help solve the “massive problems with Big Tech” that we…

Even after persistent attacks by liberal critics, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doubled down on defending one of America’s most iconic values -- free speech. Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan appeared in a “CBS This Morning” interview which aired this past Monday. During the interview, and in the face of media pressure, the couple defended Facebook’s recent policy changes in favor of free…

A Facebook employee lauded by the Trump campaign in 2016 as an “MVP” is not happy that he helped President Trump’s election strategy. James Barnes, a former member of Facebook’s political ad sales team, wrote in a Facebook post on Nov. 23 that he was joining ACRONYM, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the progressive movement

An actor and comedian famous for his shenanigans as the character Borat blasted the Big Tech community for being “the greatest propaganda machine in history” and knocking Facebook for its recent free speech stance. Sacha Baron Cohen gave a speech at the Anti-Defamation League's 2019 Never Is Now Summit on Anti-Semitism and Hate last Thursday, claiming that “hate and violence is being facilitated…

Facebook has become more open to some policies that the right has fought for. “President Donald Trump hosted a previously undisclosed dinner with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook board member Peter Thiel at the White House in October,” Facebook reportedly told NBC News yesterday. A Facebook spokesman told NBC News,“As is normal for a CEO of a major U.S. company, Mark accepted an…

Liberals complain about Big Tech platforms that allow for free and unfettered speech in political advertising. It seems as though some of these companies are listening. Google announced on Nov. 20 that it was restricting microtargeting on election ads on the platform.