Pakistan’s telecommunications regulator ordered providers to block the popular social media app TikTok on Friday due to the company’s inability to remove “immoral” and “indecent” content. In a statement, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said it gave TikTok “considerable time to respond and comply” with its instructions to moderate “unlawful online content” but said the…
Election season is known to be a particularly heavy fundraising time of year. Candidates, PACs and nonprofits send emails, make phone calls and text us. For many of us, it becomes white noise, until you see something that stands out–which is Aidy Bryant. SNL’s Aidy Bryant took a creative approach to helping a candidate from…
Joe Biden became perhaps the most prominent voice in the Twitter chatter around Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate with a bit of trolling about the fly that lingered in Vice President Mike Pence’s hair. The former vice president and current presidential candidate was far from the only one to notice that a fly spent a…
“I’m speaking.” What kind of time are we living in when a woman in power speaking has to repetitively ask a man to stop interrupting her? Sad to say, we are still living it. Women on social cheered, twitter memes went viral and GIF’s were already circulating–all in support of Sen. Kamala Harris during Wednesday’s…
Facebook will temporarily halt all political ads on its platform after the polls close on election night in the U.S. The company previously said new political ads had to be bought more than a week prior to the election, but did not specify the policy after polls closed. Facebook said today that ads are an…
Twitter shared its plans for the vice presidential debate Wednesday night, during which incumbent Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) will go head-to-head. The debate will be livestreamed on Twitter, free-of-charge, available at the top of many users’ timelines or through the social network’s 2020 U.S. Election Hub. Users can request a push alert…
Lawn signs are one of the most reliable and impactful staples of an election. Over the years in presidential elections, there have been some iconic designs that political junkies associate with specific candidates. In a new campaign, echoing one of the most crucial issues of our time, the names of those killed through police brutality…
The bald eagle has always been a complicated icon of the United States. Ben Franklin famously referred to it as a “bird of bad moral character” due to its nature as a scavenger that would take food from other predators because the eagle is “too lazy to fish for himself.” But Franklin’s judgmental anthropomorphizing aside,…
After tonight’s vice presidential debate ends, Starz will be making a political statement of its own. The premium cable network has purchased its first-ever debate ad, to promote its limited series, The Spanish Princess, with a charged message aimed at viewers: “Fight Like a Woman.” That’s the name of the spot and the tagline for…
President Donald Trump is back at the White House, plans to hit the campaign trail again soon and fully intends to participate in the second presidential debate set for next Thursday, two weeks after he was diagnosed with Covid-19. The president’s diagnosis and how Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign continues to respond to it, will…
If you wrote a script about this year’s catastrophes–a global pandemic, murder hornet invasion in Washington and California, Oregon’s wildfire devastation–no one would believe it. But if you turn those unprecedented events into a hair-raising remake of the iconic slasher flick Scream, now you have people’s attention. That’s what sports journalist and TV host Rachel…
Antitrust watchdogs in the U.S. House of Representatives issued a report today proclaiming that Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook have abused their market power and called for government intervention. While these companies have delivered “clear benefits to society,” it has “come at a price,” legislators wrote. “To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy,…
YouTube debuted YouChoose 2020, a series of interactive videos related to the 2020 U.S. election. The YouTube Originals series allows viewers to start with a single introductory video, and then watch separate videos focused on different elements of the voting process. These extra videos have different YouTube meme themes (like cooking, dancing, and auto repair),…
Snapchat is helping its users learn about voting in the 2020 U.S. election via its Elections 2020 hub. This hub includes a Voter Guide, which features information about voting by mail, voting early and more. Our guide will show you how to access the Voter Guide in the Snapchat application. Note: These screenshots were captured…
With Election Day almost a month away and major platforms like Facebook not accepting political ads in the days leading up to Nov. 3, marketers are looking to take messaging outside. Adomni, the digital out-of-home (OOH) ad-tech company, is welcoming political marketers with open arms, offering them a chance to display ads in more than…
Snapchat shared a milestone Thursday, saying that it has helped over 1 million of its users register to vote for the 2020 presidential election, doubling the total from its similar efforts for the 2018 midterm elections in the U.S. Based on data from TurboVote, Snap Inc.’s partner for its nonpartisan, in-application voter registration tools, Snap…
Twitter removed roughly 130 accounts that appeared to originate in Iran for attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first presidential candidates’ debate Tuesday night. The social network said in a Twitter Safety tweet that it took action based on intelligence provided by the FBI. The accounts were identified and removed, and full details…
Ahead of the November elections, Facebook is continuing to tweak its advertising policies. The social media company announced Wednesday evening that it will ban ads that executives believe “delegitimize the outcome of an election” and will formally ban ads that promote QAnon conspiracy theories. Ads on Facebook and Instagram that call voting methods “inherently fraudulent…
Within hours of the year’s first nationally televised presidential debate on Tuesday night, T-shirts with the words, “Stand back, stand by,” and the Proud Boys logo were selling on Amazon. President Donald Trump coined the phrase during his heated, 100-minute exchange with Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Asked by moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News whether…
After a summer of extra attention on how social media platforms handle moderating content, Facebook revealed new details about how it will operate its oversight board as criticism continues to pour in. The board is expected to begin hearing cases of whether the company should reverse decisions to remove organic posts in “mid-to-late October” and…
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