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Category: Social media

Marco Rubio is using real censorship to fight fake censorship

Marco Rubio is using real censorship to fight fake censorship

Mike Masnick writes: The U.S. government just banned five people from entering the country because it doesn’t like their speech. This ban, according to the State Department, is necessary to protect free speech. If that sounds insane to you, congratulations on your reading comprehension. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s State Department announced the “Announcement of Actions to Combat the Global Censorship-Industrial Complex,” which will take “decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American…

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‘It’s frightening’: How far right is infiltrating everyday culture

‘It’s frightening’: How far right is infiltrating everyday culture

The Guardian reports: The two men chop peppers, slice aubergines and giggle into the camera as they delve into the art of vegan cooking. Both are wearing ski masks and T-shirts bearing Nazi symbols. The German videos – titled Balaclava Kitchen – started in 2014 and ran for months before YouTube took down the channel for violating its guidelines. But it offered a glimpse of how far-right groups have seized on cultural production – from clothing brands to top 40…

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More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds

More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds

The Guardian reports: More than 20% of the videos that YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found. The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop. Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m)…

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Trump officials move to screen visa applicants’ social media posts for ‘anti-American’ speech

Trump officials move to screen visa applicants’ social media posts for ‘anti-American’ speech

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is widening efforts to screen visa applicants for online speech considered dangerous and “anti-American” as the government moves to restrict legal migration and remove people from places the president has called “garbage.” The State Department earlier this month expanded new regulations requiring foreign students and people on academic and cultural exchange programs to disclose five years of their social media histories and make all of their posts public. All applicants for H-1B employment…

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Trump regime rewards tech fascists with travel bans on European tech regulators and researchers

Trump regime rewards tech fascists with travel bans on European tech regulators and researchers

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is barring five prominent Europeans from the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Tuesday, accusing them of being involved in online censorship of Americans, a claim they have disputed. The action sharply escalated the administration’s fight against European efforts to monitor content on major social media platforms, including Elon Musk’s X as well as Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta. The five include Thierry Breton, a former member…

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Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup hacked, exposing phone farm

Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup hacked, exposing phone farm

WebProNews reports: In the shadowy underbelly of social media’s content machine, a recent hack has pulled back the curtain on a sophisticated operation blending artificial intelligence, venture capital muscle, and old-school automation tactics. A hacker, operating under the pseudonym “Kira,” infiltrated the systems of Doublespeed, a startup backed by powerhouse investor Andreessen Horowitz, known as a16z. What they uncovered was a sprawling network of over 1,100 mobile phones housed in a nondescript warehouse, all programmed to churn out AI-generated influencer…

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The most powerful politics influencers don’t typically speak about politics

The most powerful politics influencers don’t typically speak about politics

Wired reports: Donald Trump’s appearances on the podcasts of Joe Rogan and Theo Von, among others, were seen by many as a key part of securing his second term in office. But while Trump was speculating about alien life on Mars with Rogan, he had a team of acolytes appearing on dozens, if not hundreds, of much smaller niche podcasts hosted by right-wing content creators who typically don’t talk about politics. This is how, just six days before the election,…

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People are ditching a life led on screens for the real thing

People are ditching a life led on screens for the real thing

John Harris writes: If 2025 has had any kind of defining cultural theme, it perhaps boils down to people’s increasing sense that a life completely beholden to screens is no life at all. To this, add two connected trends: a drop in millions of people’s use of social media, and a rising yearning for experiences that are more authentic. This is not, just to be clear, any kind of suggestion that we are about to reject digital technology and wind…

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White-supremacist influencer, Nick Fuentes, is laying the groundwork to go even bigger

White-supremacist influencer, Nick Fuentes, is laying the groundwork to go even bigger

Ali Breland writes: Before each episode of America First With Nicholas J. Fuentes begins, a surreal mix of images and video clips runs, like a screen saver, for an unpredictable and seemingly eternal amount of time. Gentle plains of swaying grass, trickling streams, and the show’s logo flash across the screen. EDM kicks in. Psychedelic depictions of Christian imagery, including Jesus’s crucifixion, come and go. So do snippets of Fuentes talking about, among other things, borders, drag queens, and his…

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Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content

Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content

The Guardian reports: Meta has removed or restricted dozens of accounts belonging to abortion access providers, queer groups and reproductive health organisations in the past weeks in what campaigners call one of the “biggest waves of censorship” on its platforms in years. The takedowns and restrictions began in October and targeted the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts of more than 50 organisations worldwide, some serving tens of thousands of people – in what appears to be a growing push by…

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Trump’s new social media rule poses threat to World Cup and U.S. tourism industry

Trump’s new social media rule poses threat to World Cup and U.S. tourism industry

Politico reports: U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to require tourists to hand over their social media data ahead of next year’s World Cup generated outrage on Wednesday. An elected European official, human rights groups and fan organizations condemned the move and urged the world football governing body, FIFA, to pressure the Trump administration to reverse course. Visitors to the U.S. — including those from visa-free countries such as France, Germany and Britain — would have to submit five years of…

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Authorities monitor online criticism of New Orleans immigration crackdown

Authorities monitor online criticism of New Orleans immigration crackdown

The Associated Press reports: State and federal authorities are closely tracking online criticism and protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in New Orleans, monitoring message boards around the clock for threats to agents while compiling regular updates on public “sentiment” surrounding the arrests, according to law enforcement records reviewed by the Associated Press. The intelligence gathering comes even as officials have released few details about the first arrests made last week as part of “Catahoula Crunch”, prompting calls for…

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The bad reasoning in the Meta antitrust ruling isn’t even the worst part

The bad reasoning in the Meta antitrust ruling isn’t even the worst part

Tim Wu writes: On Tuesday, the federal judge James Boasberg dismissed the U.S. government’s main antitrust case against Meta, ruling that the company, worth more than $1.5 trillion, does not possess a monopoly in personal social networking. He did so in the face of strong evidence to the contrary, not to mention common sense. But to dwell on the shortcomings of Judge Boasberg’s reasoning is to overlook something even worse: the message that his ruling sends to the country. The…

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Elon Musk’s X where nothing is as it appears and everything is possible

Elon Musk’s X where nothing is as it appears and everything is possible

Charlie Warzel writes: Over the weekend, Elon Musk’s X rolled out a feature that had the immediate result of sowing maximum chaos. The update, called “About This Account,” allows people to click on the profile of an X user and see such information as: which country the account was created in, where its user is currently based, and how many times the username has been changed. Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, said the feature was “an important first step…

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How Trump lost control of the Epstein spin cycle

How Trump lost control of the Epstein spin cycle

David Gilbert writes: For almost a decade, President Donald Trump has managed to control the conspiracy theory spin around disgraced financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The conspiracy theories benefited him; they were one of the factors buoying him to office. It’s only been in the last few weeks—spurred by the release of new Epstein documents and the public defection of GOP lawamkers—that the complex web of misinformation has spun out of Trump’s control. It all began with QAnon….

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The rise of the white-nationalist streamer, Nick Fuentes, should worry us even more than it already does

The rise of the white-nationalist streamer, Nick Fuentes, should worry us even more than it already does

Jay Caspian Kang writes: Part of what separates Fuentes from his fellow-streamers is that he is capable of keeping his thoughts in a coherent, if odious, order. He once offered a trollish, occasionally captivating, and always grossly bigoted hour-long act; that has evolved into something more like a daily address, one that presents a code of behavior and a set of distinct ideas. As recently as a year ago, I’m not sure I could have told you what Fuentes thought…

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