On Facebook, you no longer have to see political ads if you don’t want to. The ability to hide political ads went in place Tuesday and will roll out to all U.S. users of Facebook and Instagram over the next few weeks, Facebook vp of product management and social impact Naomi Gleit announced in a…
Reddit users want the site to do more to root out racism and hate speech on the platform. More than 200 communities on the site signed an open letter today addressed to CEO Steve Huffman, urging him to take on a series of reforms they believe will help cut down the behavior. The letter, which…
This week, leaked audio files of LinkedIn general counsel Blake Lawit made the rounds, in which he addressed how the professional network would handle content from President Donald Trump and other elected officials in cases where it could spur violence or contains misinformation. Today, LinkedIn confirmed the authenticity of the audio, obtained by Patrick Coffee…
Twitter removed a video tweeted by two of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign accounts for copyright infringement Thursday, leading the president to once again accuse the social platform of censoring him. As first reported by Politico, the video was a Trump-narrated tribute to George Floyd, the Black man killed by Minneapolis police officers last week whose…
Facebook will start rolling out labels for state-controlled media outlets ahead of this year’s U.S. elections, an initiative the company first announced in October. “We’re providing greater transparency into these publishers because they combine the influence of a media organization with the strategic backing of a state, and we believe people should know if the…
Twitter and Facebook executives have been at opposite ends of a crucial debate over the acceptability of President Donald Trump’s posts. Their interpretations of the same message call into question how other social media platforms will consider the president’s posts moving forward and what it means for private users with accounts on those websites, particularly…
Snapchat will no longer promote President Donald Trump’s account on its Discovery channel following statements he made off the platform this weekend, the company said today. “We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover,” a Snapchat spokesperson confirmed to Adweek. “Racial violence and injustice have…
As civil unrest was percolating last week, President Donald Trump posted a tweet that escalated both the level of national tension and the fraying relationship between the president and his preferred platform, Twitter. Twitter had already taken the unprecedented step of adding fact-checking information around two of Trump’s earlier tweets about mail-in voting, and the…
Some of 2020’s most viral political ads have come from a liberal organization called MeidasTouch, and if you’d never heard of the group before the past few weeks, there’s a good reason: they didn’t exist yet. Created in quarantine by three brothers originally from Long Island, MeidasTouch is technically a liberal PAC but in practice…
Tensions are escalating inside Facebook over the social platform’s laissez-faire approach to the president’s posts. While Twitter took an active approach to Donald Trump’s account last week–including flagging a tweet that encouraged shooting unarmed protesters–Facebook chose to interpret Trump’s message differently and has not modified the same post. Some Facebook employees are upset over the…
While one social network took a stand against potentially misleading information and statements glorifying violence posted by President Donald Trump, another held firm to its policy of inaction, despite pressure from both inside and outside of the company. The first social network is Twitter, which labeled two tweets by Trump Tuesday regarding mail-in ballots with…
As an uprising ravaged Minneapolis, Minn., in the aftermath of the police killing of a black man, George Floyd, the president tweeted (at 12:53 a.m.): I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his…
President Trump signed an executive order Thursday to try and limit liability protections long afforded to social platforms, an action that many experts say is on dubious legal footing. The order comes after two days of tension between the president and Twitter–typically the president’s preferred method of communicating–after the social media company took the unprecedented…
President Donald Trump is not happy with Twitter, usually his favorite social media platform. On Tuesday night, he accused Twitter of “interfering” with the 2020 presidential election and “stifling free speech” by placing a fact-check label on two of his tweets. It’s the first label Twitter has put on one of the president’s tweets, and…
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., introduced a bill today that would restrict microtargeting efforts on political advertisements. The Banning Microtargeted Political Ads Act would bar online platforms from targeting political ads based on users’ demographic and behavioral data, though it would still permit geographic targeting and any targeting to which users voluntarily opt in. The bill…
Believe it or not, leaders and legislators besides President Donald Trump use Twitter, too, and Pew Research Center examined usage trends by national leaders and legislators in five predominantly English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. Researchers from Pew examined more than 1.3 million tweets posted between Jan. 1 and June…
We know Joe Biden, presidential candidate. We know Joe Biden, rogue talker. But do we know Joe Biden, style icon? Well, now you can emulate Biden’s most memeable look: his aviator sunglasses. The presumptive Democratic nominee’s campaign released an augmented reality lens on Snapchat that allows users to “try on Joe’s favorite aviators.” The stunt…
Snapchat said 52% of its U.S. users between the ages of 18 and 24 will be voting for the first time in November’s presidential election, and Snap Inc. shared some data on how it impacted the midterm elections in 2018 and its potential to do the same this year. According to Democracy Works, 450,000 Snapchatters…
The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sent a letter to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) Wednesday urging him to stop blocking Twitter users from his @JohnCornyn account due to differing viewpoints. Cornyn’s office had not responded to a request for comment at the time of this post. The letter stops short of threatening legal…
Democratic senators have introduced legislation today that will require major airlines to offer “full cash” refunds for all tickets canceled during the Covid-19 pandemic. While it’s unclear how far the partisan bill will get, the legislation was spearheaded by Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Chris Murphy, D-Conn.,…
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