CNN surveyed 1,000 Americans about Facebook. What they found will embolden regulators and legislators. Here are the top-line results: 76% say Facebook makes society worse. This finding doesn’t vary much by gender, age, race, or among frequent Facebook users. Among Republicans, 82% feel this way. 53% support government regulation of Facebook. 49% say they know…
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley’s book The Tyranny of Big Tech is a diatribe against large tech platforms like Facebook and Google. It’s a remarkably radical, even quasi-Marxist critique for a Republican — one that proposes a series of regulations that would endear him to the most liberal of Democrats. I have problem with both Hawley’s…
Florida law now says it is illegal to throw a politician off a social network. This violates the First Amendment. First the facts. From Wired: On Monday, Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the Stop Social Media Censorship Act, which greatly limits large social media platforms’ ability to moderate or restrict user content. The bill is a…
I have a great deal of respect for Jeff Jarvis, the esteemed author and professor from the CUNY/Newmark School of Journalism. Today, he wrote a letter to Congress regarding its hearings on Internet regulation. While I have argued for regulating big tech platforms, he makes good points about the dangers of ill-considered regulations. Jarvis shows…
Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook won’t block political ads with lies in them. Facebook has changed its policy on — lets call it what is — false advertising. Zuckerberg characterizes this as a “free speech” issue. This is misdirection, a smokescreen. It’s utter bullshit. I refer you to what I wrote earlier this year, after another trust…
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on CNN that YouTube will never be free of offensive content. Fine. But let’s get some appropriate principles for content in place. Here’s some of what Pichai said: We’ve gotten much better at using a combination of machines and humans. . . . So it’s one of those things, let’s…