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Category: Social media

‘Boogaloo’ believers think a civil war is coming. Gun firms are openly marketing to them

‘Boogaloo’ believers think a civil war is coming. Gun firms are openly marketing to them

The Informant reports: In mid March, Fenix Ammunition, an ammunition manufacturer in Michigan, saw its daily online sales rise from $4,000 to $40,000. The pandemic had boosted demand for guns and ammunition around the country, and Fenix was reaping the fruits of the national following it has cultivated since its 2016 launch. In addition to record high civilian demand, Fenix also counted at least three local police departments, a law enforcement training center, and KelTec, one of the leading rifle…

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Facebook just lost one of the biggest advertisers in the world for the rest of 2020

Facebook just lost one of the biggest advertisers in the world for the rest of 2020

NBC News reports: The campaign to convince marketers to ditch Facebook has added one of the world’s largest advertising spenders. The global consumer packaged goods company Unilever announced Friday that it will halt its advertising on Facebook and Instagram, joining a growing movement to stop spending ad dollars on the social media platforms. The New Jersey-based conglomerate also said it would pull its advertising from Twitter because of a polarized climate on social media, which is being exacerbated by the…

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Ad agency counting BMW, PayPal and Pepsi as clients joins Facebook boycott

Ad agency counting BMW, PayPal and Pepsi as clients joins Facebook boycott

CNBC reports: Advertising agency Goodby Silverstein, owned by the Omnicom Group, has announced that it intends to join the ”#StopHateForProfit” campaign and pull advertising from Facebook next month. The agency’s clients include the likes of BMW, HP, PayPal, Pepsi, Doritos, and Adobe. Last week, a group of six organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Sleeping Giants and Color of Change, called on Facebook advertisers to halt their spending on the social media…

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The dirty secret behind Ben Shapiro’s extraordinary success on Facebook

The dirty secret behind Ben Shapiro’s extraordinary success on Facebook

Popular Information reports: The success of The Daily Wire, the website run by right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro, on Facebook is mind-boggling. The site has a small staff and primarily aggregates content from Twitter and other news outlets. Typically, its articles are very short, usually less than 500 words, and contain no original reporting. And yet, last month, The Daily Wire was the seventh-ranked publisher on Facebook, according to the analytics service NewsWhip. Articles published in The Daily Wire attracted 60,616,745…

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How Facebook allows climate misinformation to bypass its fact-checking process

How Facebook allows climate misinformation to bypass its fact-checking process

E&E News reports: A team of climate scientists working as approved fact checkers for Facebook evaluated a post last year by a White House-connected group that claims the world needs to burn more fossil fuels. The researchers found that the post by the CO2 Coalition was based on cherry-picked information to mislead readers into thinking climate science models are wrong about global warming. The post, which was published originally in the conservative Washington Examiner, was an opinion piece that had…

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The North Face becomes the first major company to boycott Facebook

The North Face becomes the first major company to boycott Facebook

Business Insider reports: The North Face has become the first major brand to boycott Facebook on the heels of mounting pressure from civil-rights organizations over the platform’s content-moderation policies and handling of hate speech in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. In a tweet saying “We’re in. We’re Out” the clothing company announced Friday it would stop buying Facebook ads in the US in solidarity with organizations including the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, and Sleeping Giants. In a follow-up statement…

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Facebook groups are destroying America

Facebook groups are destroying America

Nina Jankowicz and Cindy Otis write: The Covid-19 “infodemic” has laid bare how vulnerable the United States is to disinformation. The country is less than five months away from the 2020 presidential election, and Americans by the thousands are buying into conspiracy theories about vaccines containing microchips and wondering about the healing powers of hair dryers. Where does all this come from? Let’s not be too distracted by a fear of rumormonger bots on the rampage or divisive ads purchased…

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American police have a dangerous far-right media ecosystem of their own

American police have a dangerous far-right media ecosystem of their own

HuffPost reports: Around the time news broke on Monday afternoon that the New York City Police Department would disband plainclothes anti-crime units that had been tied to several high-profile police shootings, someone calling themselves “ltdad613” started a thread on Thee Rant, a police message board that purports to host current and former NYPD employees. “I wouldn’t want to be a [Commanding Officer] for the next few compstats,” ltdad613 wrote. “This is right from [New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio]….

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Facebook employees said they were ‘caught in an abusive relationship’ with Trump as internal debates raged

Facebook employees said they were ‘caught in an abusive relationship’ with Trump as internal debates raged

The Washington Post reports: At an emergency town hall meeting Facebook held this week, days after President Trump posted, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” on his account, 5,500 Facebook employees had a demand for Mark Zuckerberg. Before the meeting, the employees voted in a poll on which questions to ask the chief executive at the meeting, according to internal documents viewed by The Washington Post. The question that got the most votes: “Can we please change our policies…

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Facebook employees challenge Zuckerberg and stage virtual walkout to protest Trump posts

Facebook employees challenge Zuckerberg and stage virtual walkout to protest Trump posts

The New York Times reports: Dozens of Facebook employees, in rare public criticism on Monday of their own company, protested executives’ decision not to do anything about inflammatory posts that President Trump had placed on the giant social media platform over the past week. The employees, who said they refused to work in order to show their support for demonstrators across the country, added an automated message to their digital profiles and email responses saying that they were out of…

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Trump’s new executive order isn’t really about Twitter; it’s about Mark Zuckerberg

Trump’s new executive order isn’t really about Twitter; it’s about Mark Zuckerberg

Zeynep Tufekci writes: Trump’s salvo on social-media companies has primarily an audience of one: Mark Zuckerberg. And it is already working. After the executive order was issued, Facebook’s CEO quickly gave an interview to Fox News in which he said, “I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online.” He added, “Private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.” It’s important to…

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Facebook employees warn the company may become complicit in election violence

Facebook employees warn the company may become complicit in election violence

The Verge reports: Facebook’s decision not to take action against recent posts about mail-in ballots and the Minnesota protests by President Trump is roiling employees, some of whom are calling on executives to reconsider their stance. In response to an internal post explaining the company’s rationale, some employees criticized the company’s neutral posture. “I have to say I am finding the contortions we have to go through incredibly hard to stomach,” one employee wrote in a comment about the shooting…

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Troll farms from Macedonia and the Philippines pushed coronavirus disinformation on Facebook

Troll farms from Macedonia and the Philippines pushed coronavirus disinformation on Facebook

NBC News reports: One of the largest publishers of coronavirus disinformation on Facebook has been banned from the platform for using content farms from Macedonia and the Philippines, Facebook said on Friday. The publisher, Natural News, was one of the most prolific pushers of the viral “Plandemic” conspiracy video, which falsely claimed that the coronavirus is part of an elaborate government plot to control the populace through vaccines, and erroneously claimed that wearing a mask increases the risk of catching…

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‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’: The history behind Trump’s latest outburst of racist bigotry

‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’: The history behind Trump’s latest outburst of racist bigotry

NPR reports: Responding to clashes between protesters and police in Minneapolis following George Floyd’s death, President Trump took to Twitter Friday morning to denounce demonstrators and wrote “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” That phrase goes back to the civil rights era, known to have been invoked by a white police chief cracking down on protests in the 1960s and a segregationist politician. ….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just…

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Appeals court ruling suggests little legal traction for Trump’s anti-Twitter campaign

Appeals court ruling suggests little legal traction for Trump’s anti-Twitter campaign

Politico reports: A ruling that emerged from a powerful federal appeals court in Washington on Wednesday morning is strong evidence that the courts are unlikely to be receptive to President Donald Trump’s claims that he and his political supporters are being silenced by social media platforms like Twitter. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit resoundingly rejected a lawsuit the conservative legal organization Freedom Watch and right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer filed in 2018 against four major technology companies:…

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The Central Park bird watcher, that incident and his feelings on the woman’s fate

The Central Park bird watcher, that incident and his feelings on the woman’s fate

The New York Times reports: His binoculars around his neck, Christian Cooper, an avid birder, was back in his happy place on Wednesday: Central Park during migration season. He was trying to focus on the olive-sided flycatchers and red-bellied woodpeckers — not on what had happened there two days earlier. That was when Mr. Cooper, who is black, asked a white woman to put her dog on a leash. When she did not, he began filming. In response, the woman…

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