Big Tech News Articles
Venture capital and military startup firms in Silicon Valley have begun aggressively selling a version of automated warfare that will deeply incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). This surge of support for emerging military technologies is driven by the ultimate rationale of the military-industrial complex: vast sums of money to be made. Untold billions of dollars of private money now pouring into firms seeking to expand the frontiers of techno-war. According to the New York Times, $125 billion over the past four years. Whatever the numbers, the tech sector and its financial backers sense that there are massive amounts of money to be made in next-generation weaponry and aren’t about to let anyone stand in their way. Meanwhile, an investigation by Eric Lipton of the New York Times found that venture capitalists and startup firms already pushing the pace on AI-driven warfare are also busily hiring ex-military and Pentagon officials to do their bidding. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt [has] become a virtual philosopher king when it comes to how new technology will reshape society. [Schmidt] laid out his views in a 2021 book modestly entitled The Age of AI and Our Human Future, coauthored with none other than the late Henry Kissinger. Schmidt is aware of the potential perils of AI, but he’s also at the center of efforts to promote its military applications. AI is coming, and its impact on our lives, whether in war or peace, is likely to stagger the imagination.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI from reliable major media sources.
The New Mexico attorney general, Raúl Torrez, who has launched legal action against Meta for child trafficking on its platforms, says he believes the social media company is the “largest marketplace for predators and paedophiles globally”. The lawsuit claims that Meta allows and fails to detect the trafficking of children and “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”, concluding that “Meta’s conduct is not only unacceptable; it is unlawful”. Torrez says that he has been shocked by the findings of his team’s investigations into online child sexual exploitation on Meta’s platforms. Internal company documents obtained by the attorney general’s office as part of its investigation have also revealed that the company estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day. The idea of the lawsuit came to [Torrez] after reading media coverage of Meta’s role in child sexual exploitation, including a Guardian investigation that it was failing to report or detect the use of Facebook and Instagram for child trafficking. If it progresses, the New Mexico lawsuit is expected to take years to conclude. Torrez wants his lawsuit to provide a medium to usher in new regulations. “Fundamentally, we’re trying to get Meta to change how it does business and prioritise the safety of its users, particularly children.”
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
During one of his many visits to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Siddharth Kara ... met a young woman sifting dirt for traces of cobalt. Priscille told him she had suffered two miscarriages and that her husband, a fellow “artisanal” miner, died of a respiratory disease. It is just one of many devastating personal accounts in Cobalt Red, a detailed exposé into the hidden world of small-scale cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The “quaint” moniker of artisanal mining, Mr. Kara points out, belies a brutal industry where hundreds of thousands of men, women and children dig with bare hands and basic tools in toxic, perilous pits, eking out an existence on the bottom rung of the global supply chain. If you own a smartphone, tablet, laptop, e-scooter, [or] electric vehicle ... then it is a system in which you are unwittingly complicit. Around 75 per cent of the world’s cobalt is mined in the DRC. The rare, silvery metal is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery. Congolese miners ... have experienced life-changing injuries, sexual assault, physical violence, corruption, displacement and abject poverty. Cobalt Red also documents many unreported deaths, including those of children buried alive in makeshift mining tunnels, and their bodies never recovered. Cobalt is toxic to touch and breathe in, and can be found alongside traces of radioactive uranium. Cancers, respiratory illnesses, miscarriages, headaches and painful skin conditions occur among adults who work without protective equipment. Children in mining communities suffer birth defects, developmental damage, vomiting and seizures from direct and indirect exposure to the heavy metals. Female miners, who earn less than the average two dollars per day paid to men, typically work in groups as sexual assault is common in mining areas. Major tech and EV companies extol commitments to human rights, zero-tolerance for child labor, and clean supply chains. Mr. Kara described these statements as “utterly inconsistent” with what’s happening on the ground.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
For the past few weeks, journalists have been reporting on what they've found in the "Twitter Files." The revelations have been astonishing and deeply troubling, exposing solid evidence of collusion between top executives at the FBI and their cozy counterparts at Twitter. FBI leadership and Twitter censors conferred constantly about how to shut down political speech based on its content, confirming the suspicions of, well, anyone who was paying attention. And it proves without a doubt that over the past few years, countless Americans have undergone a real violation of their First Amendment rights. The First Amendment mandates that government can't abridge—meaning limit or censor—speech based on its content. Even if attempting to advance the noblest of causes, government actors must not collide with this constitutional guardrail. The Constitution simply isn't optional. The government can't enlist a private citizen or corporation to undertake what the Constitution precludes it from doing. When Twitter acquiesced to the FBI's urging, it essentially became an agent and of the government. FBI officials created a special, secure online portal for Twitter staff, where the two sides could secretly exchange information about who was saying what on the platform and how that speech could be squelched. In this virtual "war room," the FBI made dozens of requests to censor political speech. Twitter chirpily complied.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Justin Rosenstein had tweaked his laptops operating system to block Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and imposed limits on his use of Facebook. He was particularly aware of the allure of Facebook likes, which he describes as bright dings of pseudo-pleasure that can be as hollow as they are seductive. And Rosenstein should know: he was the Facebook engineer who created the like button. There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called continuous partial attention, severely limiting peoples ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. One recent study showed that the mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity even when the device is turned off. But those concerns are trivial compared with the devastating impact upon the political system that some of Rosensteins peers believe can be attributed to the rise of social media and the attention-based market that drives it. Drawing a straight line between addiction to social media and political earthquakes like Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, they contend that digital forces have completely upended the political system and, left unchecked, could even render democracy as we know it obsolete. It is revealing that many of these younger technologists are weaning themselves off their own products, sending their children to elite Silicon Valley schools where iPhones, iPads and even laptops are banned.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
A trove of internal records from a secret society for powerful figures in US politics, finance, and tech was left exposed online. The group, called Dialog, is a private, invitation-only organization cofounded in 2006 by the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. It convenes US officials, foreign government figures, and Silicon Valley executives at off-the-record annual retreats. Dialog has spent two decades declining to disclose its members. A directory in the website's code was first revealed by the Swiss hacktivist maia arson crimew. Known for exposing the US government’s No Fly List and breaching the surveillance-camera company Verkada, crimew tells WIRED the directory surfaced via an anonymous tip. The registration records list General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's supreme allied commander Europe and the head of US European Command, who took the post in July 2025 and is recorded on the leaked list as having attended Dialog gatherings since 2021. The website directory names sitting Trump administration officials, two US senators, six members of the Paypal Mafia, a former Middle East chief of intelligence, and a sitting ambassador to the United States, along with the founders and directors of many of the country's largest surveillance, data-broker, and advertising-data companies. What ties the roster together more than any title or office is a shared preoccupation with artificial intelligence, longevity, and the near future.
Note: Read how Thiel worked with the CIA to influence the origins of Facebook. Watch a 7-min video with WTK Director Amber Yang and Joe Martino from Collective Evolution discussing the links between Thiel, Palantir, Jeffrey Epstein, the Rothschild banking family, and intelligence agency operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech.
Dialog, the private network cofounded by Peter Thiel, grades its event attendees on a hidden scale, ranking them by wealth and fame, tracking their relationships, and using algorithms to help decide who they should meet, who they should sit with, and who no longer belongs. Founded in 2006 by Thiel and data broker Auren Hoffman, Dialog is a private club that convenes politicians, investors, entrepreneurs, military leaders, executives, academics, and journalists for invitation-only, off-the-record retreats. According to a Dialog document shared by a past participant, it has “over 1,000 paying members,” and more than 2,500 people have attended its annual retreats. Dialog assigns people grades before they join. Of the 192 dossiers examined by WIRED, 130 are tagged as members. The rest are prospects with files bearing markings like “First Time Dialoger” or “Warm.” Everyone—members and prospective invitees alike—is assigned a grade of A, B, or C. The “C” grade appears reserved for the most famous and influential; only one in seven received it. Most people—141 of 192—received a “B.” The final tier, “A,” appears primarily assigned to older, established members whom the graders consider less notable. The leak also points to a built-in matchmaking system that pairs members for both networking and dating. (Roughly 10 percent of respondents opted into a singles pool.) More than three-quarters already have a list of algorithm-suggested matches.
Note: Is this Dialog Society the Bohemian Grove of Big Tech? Read how Thiel worked with the CIA to influence the origins of Facebook, and how Palantir software helped the NSA spy on the entire planet.
In a landmark decision, a Los Angeles jury has found that social media company Meta and video streaming service YouTube harmed a young user with addictive design features that led to mental health distress, including body dysmorphia, depression and suicidal thoughts. Commentators have referred to this as social media’s “Big Tobacco” moment and further lawsuits are pending. Neuroscience shows that heavy social media use can overstimulate the teen brain’s still-developing reward pathways in ways similar to addictive behaviours like gambling. This immature system also makes teenagers more sensitive to social feedback and less able to cope with rejection. Many Canadian teens describe [being] constantly connected online, yet increasingly disconnected in real life. They report pressure to present idealized versions of themselves and to keep up with peers. Trial data in a case between the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Meta show that only a small fraction of time on Meta platforms involves engaging with friends — about seven per cent on Instagram and 17 per cent on Facebook. The rest is mostly scrolling and watching rather than interacting. This results in an illusion of connection while deepening a sense of isolation. Research involving more than 9,000 adolescents across eight countries found a strong association between problematic social media use and higher rates of depression and anxiety. Large studies across high-income countries consistently link heavy social media use to poorer physical health outcomes too, including shorter sleep and higher rates of obesity.
Note: Former Facebook executive Tim Kendall told Congress that the company intentionally made its product as addictive as cigarettes. Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams told US senators that the company targeted teenage girls with beauty and weight-loss advertisements during moments of heightened vulnerability such as after deleting a selfie. According to her testimony, Meta could detect when users were feeling "worthless," "helpless," or like a "failure," and then make that information available to advertisers. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.
In the absence of strong privacy laws, surveillance-based advertising has become the norm online. Companies track our online and offline activity, then share it with ad tech companies and data brokers to help target ads. Law enforcement agencies take advantage of this advertising system to buy information about us that they would normally need a warrant for, like location data. They rely on the multi-billion-dollar data broker industry to buy location data harvested from people’s smartphones. We’ve known for years that location data brokers are one part of federal law enforcement's massive surveillance arsenal. But a document recently obtained by 404 Media is the first time CBP has acknowledged the location data it buys is partially sourced from the system powering nearly every ad you see online: real-time bidding (RTB). As CBP puts it, “RTB-sourced location data is recorded when an advertisement is served.” Apps for weather, navigation, dating, fitness, and “family safety” often request location permissions to enable key features. But once an app has access to your location, it could share it with data. Here are two basic steps you can take to better protect your location data: 1. Disable your mobile advertising ID, and 2. Review apps you’ve granted location permissions to. If you can’t disable location access completely for an app, limit it to only when you have the app open or only approximate location instead of precise location.
Note: The owner of a data broker company once bragged about having highly detailed personal information on nearly all internet users. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
The American weapons maker Anduril ... is partnering with EDGE Group, a weapons conglomerate controlled by the United Arab Emirates, a nation run entirely by the royal families of its seven emirates that permits virtually none of the activities typically associated with democratic societies. In the UAE, free expression and association are outlawed, and dissident speech is routinely and brutally punished without due process. A 2024 assessment of political rights and civil liberties by Freedom House, a U.S. State Department-backed think tank, gave the UAE a score of 18 out of 100. The EDGE–Anduril Production Alliance, as it will be known, will focus on autonomous weapons systems, including the production of Anduril’s “Omen” drone. The UAE has agreed to purchase the first 50 Omen drones built through the partnership. EDGE Chair Faisal Al Bannai explained in a 2019 interview that EDGE was working to develop weapons systems tailored to defeating low-tech “militia-style” militant groups. Nathaniel Raymonds, who leads the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health ... argued that “not since Operation Cyclone,” the CIA effort to arm the Afghan mujahideen, “has there been a covert action by any nation state to arm a paramilitary proxy group at this scale and sophistication and try to write it off as just a series of happy coincidences.”
Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.
As scientists who have worked on the science of solar geoengineering for decades, we have grown increasingly concerned about the emerging efforts to start and fund private companies to build and deploy technologies that could alter the climate of the planet. The basic idea behind solar geoengineering, or what we now prefer to call sunlight reflection methods (SRM), is that humans might reduce climate change by making the Earth a bit more reflective, partially counteracting the warming caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases. Many people already distrust the idea of engineering the atmosphere—at whichever scale—to address climate change, fearing negative side effects, inequitable impacts on different parts of the world, or the prospect that a world expecting such solutions will feel less pressure to address the root causes of climate change. Notably, Stardust says on its website that it has developed novel particles that can be injected into the atmosphere to reflect away more sunlight, asserting that they’re “chemically inert in the stratosphere, and safe for humans and ecosystems.” But it’s nonsense for the company to claim they can make particles that are inert in the stratosphere. Even diamonds, which are extraordinarily nonreactive, would alter stratospheric chemistry. Any particle may become coated by background sulfuric acid in the stratosphere. That could accelerate the loss of the protective ozone layer.
Note: Modifying the atmosphere to dim the sun involves catastrophic risks. Regenerative farming is far safer and more promising for stabilizing the climate. In our latest Substack, "Geoengineering is a Weapon That's Been Rebranded as Climate Science. There's a Better Way To Heal the Earth," we present credible evidence and current information showing that weather modification technologies are not only real, but that they are being secretly propagated by multiple groups with differing agendas.
Loneliness not only affects how we feel in the moment but can leave lasting imprints on our personality, physiology, and even the way our brains process the social world. A large study of older adults [found] that persistent loneliness predicted declines in extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness—traits associated with sociability, kindness, and self-discipline. At the same time, higher levels of neuroticism predicted greater loneliness in the future, suggesting a self-reinforcing cycle. Although social media promises connection, a large-scale study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that it may actually fuel feelings of loneliness over time. Researchers found that both passive (scrolling) and active (posting and commenting) forms of social media use predicted increases in loneliness. Surprisingly, even active engagement—often believed to foster interaction—was associated with growing disconnection. Even more concerning was the feedback loop uncovered in the data: loneliness also predicted increased social media use over time, suggesting that people may turn to these platforms for relief, only to find themselves feeling even more isolated. Lonely individuals also showed greater activation in areas tied to negative emotions, such as the insula and amygdala. This pattern suggests that lonely people may be more sensitive to social threat or negativity, which could contribute to feeling misunderstood or excluded.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on mental health and Big Tech.
Data brokers are required by California law to provide ways for consumers to request their data be deleted. But good luck finding them. More than 30 of the companies, which collect and sell consumers’ personal information, hid their deletion instructions from Google. This creates one more obstacle for consumers who want to delete their data. Data brokers nationwide must register in California under the state’s Consumer Privacy Act, which allows Californians to request that their information be removed, that it not be sold, or that they get access to it. After reviewing the websites of all 499 data brokers registered with the state, we found 35 had code to stop certain pages from showing up in searches. While those companies might be fulfilling the letter of the law by providing a page consumers can use to delete their data, it means little if those consumers can’t find the page, according to Matthew Schwartz, a policy analyst. “This sounds to me like a clever work-around to make it as hard as possible for consumers to find it,” Schwartz said. Some companies that hid their privacy instructions from search engines included a small link at the bottom of their homepage. Accessing it often required scrolling multiple screens, dismissing pop-ups for cookie permissions and newsletter sign-ups, then finding a link that was a fraction the size of other text on the page. So consumers still faced a serious hurdle when trying to get their information deleted.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
In Silicon Valley, AI tech giants are in a bidding war, competing to hire the best and brightest computer programmers. But a different hiring spree is underway in D.C. AI firms are on an influence-peddling spree, hiring hundreds of former government officials and retaining former members of Congress as consultants and lobbyists. The latest disclosure filings show over 500 entities lobbying on AI policy—from federal rules designed to preempt state and local safety regulations to water and energy-intensive data centers and integration into government contracting and certifications. Lawmakers are increasingly making the jump from serving constituents as elected officials to working directly as influence peddlers for AI interests. Former Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., a former lobbyist appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the seat of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, left Congress last year and returned to her former profession. She is now working as a consultant to OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT. Former Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., recently registered for the first time as a lobbyist. Among his initial clients is Lazarus AI, which sells AI products to the Defense Department. The expanding reach of artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping hundreds of professions, weapons of war, and the ways we connect with one another. What's clear is that the AI firms set to benefit most from these changes are taking control of the policymaking apparatus to write the laws and regulations during the transition.
Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and Big Tech.
Beginning in 2004, the CIA established a vast network of at least 885 websites, ranging from Johnny Carson and Star Wars fan pages to online message boards about Rastafari. Spanning 29 languages and targeting at least 36 countries directly, these websites were aimed not only at adversaries such as China, Venezuela, and Russia, but also at allied nations ... showing that the United States treats its friends much like its foes. These websites served as cover for informants, offering some level of plausible deniability if casually examined. Few of these pages provided any unique content and simply rehosted news and blogs from elsewhere. Informants in enemy nations, such as Venezuela, used sites like Noticias-Caracas and El Correo De Noticias to communicate with Langley, while Russian moles used My Online Game Source and TodaysNewsAndWeather-Ru.com, and other similar platforms. In 2010, USAID—a CIA front organization—secretly created the Cuban social media app, Zunzuneo. While the 885 fake websites were not established to influence public opinion, today, the U.S. government sponsors thousands of journalists worldwide for precisely this purpose. The Trump administration’s decision to pause funding to USAID inadvertently exposed a network of more than 6,200 reporters working at nearly 1,000 news outlets or journalism organizations who were all quietly paid to promote pro-U.S. messaging in their countries. Facebook has hired dozens of former CIA officials to run its most sensitive operations. As the platform’s senior misinformation manager, [Aaron Berman] ultimately has the final say over what content is promoted and what is demoted or deleted from Facebook. Until 2019, Berman was a high-ranking CIA officer, responsible for writing the president’s daily security brief.
Note: Dozens of former CIA agents hold top jobs at Google. Learn more about the CIA’s longstanding propaganda network in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a nonprofit privacy rights group have called on several states to investigate why “hundreds” of data brokers haven’t registered with state consumer protection agencies in accordance with local laws. An analysis done in collaboration with Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) found that many data brokers have failed to register in all of the four states with laws that require it, preventing consumers in some states from learning what kinds of information these brokers collect and how to opt out. Data brokers are companies that collect and sell troves of personal information about people, including their names, addresses, phone numbers, financial information, and more. Consumers have little control over this information, posing serious privacy concerns, and attempts to address these concerns at a federal level have mostly failed. Four states — California, Texas, Oregon, and Vermont — do attempt to regulate these companies by requiring them to register with consumer protection agencies and share details about what kind of data they collect. In letters to the states’ attorneys general, the EFF and PRC say they “uncovered a troubling pattern” after scraping data broker registries. They found that many data brokers didn’t consistently register their businesses across all four states. The number of data brokers that appeared on one registry but not another includes 524 in Texas, 475 in Oregon, 309 in Vermont, and 291 in California.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of Global Public Policy for Facebook and author of the recently released tell-all book “Careless People,” told U.S. senators ... that Meta actively targeted teens with advertisements based on their emotional state. In response to a question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Wynn-Williams admitted that Meta (which was then known as Facebook) had targeted 13- to 17-year-olds with ads when they were feeling down or depressed. “It could identify when they were feeling worthless or helpless or like a failure, and [Meta] would take that information and share it with advertisers,” Wynn-Williams told the senators on the subcommittee for crime and terrorism. “Advertisers understand that when people don’t feel good about themselves, it’s often a good time to pitch a product — people are more likely to buy something.” She said the company was letting advertisers know when the teens were depressed so they could be served an ad at the best time. As an example, she suggested that if a teen girl deleted a selfie, advertisers might see that as a good time to sell her a beauty product as she may not be feeling great about her appearance. They also targeted teens with ads for weight loss when young girls had concerns around body confidence. If Meta was willing to target teens based on their emotional states, it stands to reason they’d do the same to adults. One document displayed during the hearing showed an example of just that.
Note: Facebook hid its own internal research for years showing that Instagram worsened body image issues, revealing that 13% of British teenage girls reported more frequent suicidal thoughts after using the app. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.
The owner of a data brokerage business recently ... bragged about the degree to which his industry could collect and analyze data on the habits of billions of people. Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun said that ... his company [can] deliver “personalized messaging at scale” to some 91 percent of the internet’s adult web users. To deliver that kind of “personalized messaging” (i.e., advertising), Publicis must gather an extraordinary amount of information on the people it serves ads to. Lena Cohen, a technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that data brokers like Publicis collect “as much information as they can” about web users. “The data broker industry is under-regulated, opaque, and dangerous, because as you saw in the video, brokers have detailed information on billions of people, but we know relatively little about them,” Cohen said. “You don’t know what information a data broker has on you, who they’re selling it to, and what the people who buy your data are doing with it. There’s a real power/knowledge asymmetry.” Even when state-level privacy regulations are passed (such as the California Consumer Privacy Law), those cases are often not given enough focus or resources for the laws to be enforced effectively. “Most government agencies don’t have the resources to enforce privacy laws at the scale that they’re being broken,” Cohen said. Cohen added that she felt online behavioral advertising—that is, advertising that is based on an individual web user’s specific browsing activity—should be illegal. Banning behavioral ads would “fundamentally change the financial incentive for online actors to constantly surveil” web users and share their data with brokers, Cohen said.
Note: Read more about the disturbing world of online behavioral ads, where the data isn't just used to sell products. It's often accessed by governments, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and other actors—sometimes without warrants or oversight. This turns a commercial ad system into a covert surveillance network. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook has done “too much censorship” as he revealed the social network is scrapping fact-checking and restrictions on free speech as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House. The 40-year-old tech tycoon — who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago the day before Thanksgiving and gave him a pair of Meta Ray Ban sunglasses, with Meta later donating $1 million to his inaugural fund — claimed on Tuesday that the dramatic about-face was signal that the company is returning to an original focus on free speech. The stunning reversal will include moving Meta’s content moderation team from deep-blue California to right-leaning Texas in order to insulate the group from cultural bias. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our team,” the Meta boss said. Facebook will do away with “restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse,” Zuckerberg said. “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas,” he said, adding: “It’s gone too far.” In late July, Facebook acknowledged that it censored the image of President-elect Donald Trump raising his fist in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
Note: Read a former senior NPR editor's nuanced take on how challenging official narratives became so politicized that "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that should have been guiding our work." Opportunities for award winning journalism were lost on controversial issues like COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and more. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.
Mark Zuckerberg has announced he is scrapping fact-checks on Facebook, claiming the labels intended to warn against fake news have “destroyed more trust than they have created”. Facebook’s fact-checkers have helped debunk hundreds of fake news stories and false rumours – however, there have been several high-profile missteps. In 2020, Facebook and Twitter took action to halt the spread of an article by the New York Post based on leaked emails from a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. As coronavirus spread around the world, suggestions that the vaccine could have been man-made were suppressed by Facebook. An opinion column in the New York Post with the headline: “Don’t buy China’s story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab” was labelled as “false information”. In 2021, Facebook lifted its ban on claims the virus could have been “man-made”. It was months later that further doubts emerged over the origins of coronavirus. In 2021, Facebook ... was accused of wrongly fact-checking a story about Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. A British Medical Journal (BMJ) report, based on whistleblowing, alleged poor clinical practices at a contractor carrying out research for Pfizer. However, Facebook’s fact-checkers added a label arguing the story was “missing context” and could “mislead people”. Furious debates raged over the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of Covid-19. Facebook’s fact-checkers were accused of overzealously clamping down on articles that questioned the science behind [mask] mandates.
Note: Read a former senior NPR editor's nuanced take on how challenging official narratives became so politicized that "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that should have been guiding our work." Opportunities for award winning journalism were lost on controversial issues like COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and more. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.
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