Social Media Policies
Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey will testify in a hearing on misinformation and disinformation on online platforms before US House lawmakers on March 25.
"Whether it be falsehoods about the Covid-19 vaccine or debunked claims of election fraud, these online platforms have allowed misinformation to spread, intensifying national crises with real-life, grim consequences for public health and safety," so the Committee's chairs. "For far too long, big tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences. Industry self-regulation has failed. We must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation."
In a blog post published Monday, Facebook announced that they will remove "additional refuted claims" about the coronavirus and vaccinations in general, following consultations with the World Health Organization (WHO). Effective immediately, Facebook also plans to include disproven claims that the coronavirus is man-made, that vaccinations don't really protect, and that surviving the disease itself is much safer than getting vaccinated.
Russian authorities are warning social networks, especially the video platform TikTok, popular with young people, to stop advertising for jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
"We request that you immediately take comprehensive measures to prevent the dissemination of such unlawful information on the TikTok platform," reads a statement from telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor.
Specifically, the authority refers to calls disseminated via TikTok to participate in a demonstration for Kremlin critic Navalny that had been announced for Saturday but had not been approved.
Twitter has on Sunday temporarily blocked the account of Republican Congresswoman and "QAnon" supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Greene had violated company rules on multiple occasions, the online platform said. The congresswoman had written on Twitter that voter fraud had occurred in the Senate elections in Georgia. According to U.S. broadcaster CNN, Greene had spread several conspiracy myths and false reports at once in a lengthy thread.
The congresswoman's Twitter messages were then flagged with a notice that their content was controversial. A few hours later, the online network decided to suspend Greene's account for twelve hours.
German government criticizes the permanent blocking of Trump's social media accounts. Merkel pointed out that freedom of expression as a fundamental right should only be restricted by legislation and not by companies.
In principle, the German government condemns statements inciting hatred and violence and is in favor of regulating social networks.
YouTube bans Steve Bannon's podcast channel hours after Rudy Giuliani appeared on an episode and blamed the Capitol siege on Democrats.
Twitter took action against a pair of President Trump's close associates Friday, banning them from the platform as part of a broader effort to contain the QAnon conspiracy movement. In recent months, each figure has promoted QAnon, an elaborate constellation of conspiracy theories purporting that President Trump is waging a secret battle against a cabal of political enemies who engage in child sex trafficking, among other baseless claims. As part of Trump's post-election legal team, Powell became a heroic figure to the QAnon crowd, which believes that a master plan being orchestrated behind the scenes will give the president a second term.
Twitter has stated that "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
Twitter has stated that three tweets of the United States President Donald Trump have been removed because they were in "severe" violation of Twitters "Civic Integrity policy".
This means that Trump needs to remove the tweets and his account will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of the tweets.
In future, services such as Facebook and YouTube will have to delete terrorist propaganda in the EU within one hour of being requested to do so by the respective authority of an EU state. Negotiators from the European Parliament and EU member states agreed on this on Thursday. For systematic violations, the operators of the sites face fines of four percent of their annual turnover.
The government of the Solomon Islands has announced that Facebook will be banned in the nation.
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has stated that the country has a "duty to cultivate national unity and the happy coexistence of our people" adding that Facebook would undermine "efforts to unite this country".
Internet and telecommunications providers in Solomon Islands will meet with communications officials to discuss how they will block the world's largest social media network.
YouTube has stated that "Starting today we'll begin slowly rolling out ads on a limited number of videos from channels not in YouTube Partner Program,". Previously the terms of service for users in the United States had been changed and YouTube states that it has "the right to monetize all content on the platform and ads may appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program". This means that YouTube will earn money on videos even if the content creators do not fulfill the requirements for the YouTube Partner Program to get a share of the revenue.
Twitter permanently suspended an account associated with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon after he suggested in a video posted online Thursday that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded.
Facebook has rejected a total of 2.2 million ads and withdrawn 120,000 posts for attempting to "obstruct voting" in the upcoming 2020 US election, said Facebook VP of Global Affairs and Communications Nick Clegg.
Clegg also said: "Thirty-five thousand employees take care of the security of our platforms and contribute for elections. We have established partnerships with 70 specialised media, including five in France, on the verification of information."
On Twitter, it will be forbidden in the future to question the historically proven crimes of the Nazis. According to the service's statement, this also applies to the denial or trivialization of other "violent events" or their glorification, while Facebook's regulation specifically covers the Holocaust. "We strongly condemn anti-Semitism and hate has no place on our platform," a Twitter spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Facebook has announced an update to the site's hate speech policy. In the press release, the social network states that following the "well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people" a new policy will now "prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust" on Facebook.
According to a 6,600-word memo that has been obtained by BuzzFeed News, a former Facebook data scientist accuses Facebook of ignoring political manipulation on a global scale.
In the memo, Sophie Zhang gives "concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion".
One of the examples given is that 672,000 fake accounts have been removed that globally manipulated the narrative during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Zhang also stated that she has "personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count".
In its sixth Community Standards Enforcement Report, Facebook has released data showing that the platform has removed seven million posts that contained false information about the Covid-19 pandemic, a cure or the virus itself.
In addition, 22,5 million posts have been removed on the grounds of hate speech and 8,7 million which are in connection to extremist organizations.
The lawyers and civil rights experts Laura Murphy and Megan Cacace have conducted and published a 100-page civil rights audit analyzing how Facebook treats hate speech and misinformation on the platform.
The report states that "it is important to acknowledge that the Civil Rights Audit was a substantive and voluntary process and that the company used the process to listen, plan and deliver on various consequential changes that will help advance the civil rights of its users".
Though the auditors state that Facebook failed "to grasp the urgency" of the problems which will have "direct and consequential implications" on the presidential elections of the United States in November adding that "Facebook has a long road ahead on its civil rights journey".
Facebook announced Wednesday the removal of 35 accounts, 14 Pages, 1 Group and 38 Instagram accounts that were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior in Brazil. Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, Facebook investigation found links to individuals associated with the Social Liberal Party and some of the employees of the offices of Anderson Moraes, Alana Passos, Eduardo Bolsonaro, Flavio Bolsonaro and Jair Bolsonaro.