Following the release of new features to tackle abuse on its network yesterday, Twitter has begun suspending the accounts of users associated with the alt-right political movement, reports USA Today. That includes the one belonging to Richard Spencer, who heads up the National Policy Institute (NPI) think tank. The organization concerns itself with the identity of “people of European descent in the United States, and around the world,” and publishes related writings on its sister site, Radix Journal. Accounts for both bodies have also been suspended, along with those of well-know alt-righters Paul Town, Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn and John…
Because Trump wasn’t spending as much on TV ads, it seemed like his team wasn’t investing in changing minds. But they were: they were just doing it online
Following the conclusion of the US presidential elections which saw Donald Trump emerge victorious, there’s been a lot of talk about how social networks and fake news contributed to the outcome.
In the wake of the Trump election — a triumph of fake news — both Google and Facebook have announced that they will take countermeasures to exclude “fake news” from their services, downranking them in the case of Facebook and cutting them off from ad payments in Google’s case.
Facebook has been under fire this past week for supposedly influencing the election by not doing enough to stop the rise of fake news. In an interview at the Real Future Fair conference, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said that while this is certai…
Despite Facebook’s arguments to the contrary, its social network helped Donald Trump win the US election… if not for the reasons you’d suspect. Wired has learned that the Trump campaign focused very heavily on its Facebook strategy, eclipsing a Cli…
As the media autopsies the various forces at play in last week’s election results, online social platforms — particularly Facebook — are coming under increased scrutiny for their role in spreading blatantly false news stories.
Can the presidential election result be blamed on failed algorithms? Facebook had taken the brunt of that claim in the days of shock following Donald Trump’s election. Then, on Monday, Google stumbled into the fray, and by the end of the day, it’s own mini-outrage produced a significant change in how Google does business.
As election results came in last Tuesday night, ProPublica started seeing a big increase in donations. In the first days after Donald Trump was elected, ProPublica’s donations were “running at about 10 times the rate that we’re used to,” said president Richard Tofel.
There’s nothing like being authentic about fakery.
That’s what Melissa Zimdars has figured out in the past 24 hours, as her earnest attempt to separate fake news from the real stuff has gone viral.
Spurred in part by the phony 70News.com site, which itself spurred an overnight change in how Google and Facebook are doing business, Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication and media at Massachusetts’ Merrimack College, published her own tally of questionable news sites. Her list of about 130 problematic “news” sites includes those she considers to be “false, misleading, clickbait-y, and satirical ‘news’ sources.”
In the last week, Facebook’s been battling the accusation that fake, often inflammatory stories showing up in users’ Newsfeeds influenced how people voted in the presidential election. The social media giant vowed it is currently taking the issue ser…
Google made headlines recently about the top search result for ‘final election numbers’ being patently false. Now the company is going to keep fake-news sites from using its nigh-ubiquitous AdSense program according to the Wall Street Journal.
Ever since America opted to elect that guy to its highest office, a lot of accusatory fingers have been pointed toward Facebook. After all, the social network has the attention of hundreds of millions of voters and has a reputation for proliferating…I spent yesterday in Bogota, Colombia, as the invited guest of the Premio Nacional de Periodismo Simón Bolívar, offering a speech on the future of civics and the future of journalism. It’s a wonderful event – roughly 1100 people came to celebrate Colombia’s equivalent of the Pulitzer prize. I had a great time meeting the amazing Colombian journalists who served as the jury for the award as well as the team behind the event.
The modern newsroom is facing growing challenges for how to cover conflicts around the world.
Journalism and environmental defense: two hazardous activities in Latin America
“Until comprehensive measures are taken to sever the ties between crime and State structures, certain groups will remain vulnerable and the violence directed at them will persist.” Interview. Español
An environmental activist holds a poster that reads in Spanish “No to deforestation” to protest an open-pit gold mining project in Costa Rica. AP Photo/Kent Gilbert. All rights reserved.
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