Oct. 12 (UPI) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday that the company will update its hate speech policy to ban Holocaust denial.
Zuckerberg made the announcement in a Facebook post.
“We’ve taken down posts that praise hate crimes or mass murder, including the Holocaust. But with rising anti-Semitism, we’re expanding our policy to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust as well,” the post read. “If people search for the Holocaust on Facebook, we’ll start directing you to authoritative sources to get accurate information.”
The update reverses Facebook’s earlier policy on the issue.
In 2018, Zuckerberg said in a Recode Decode podcast interview that the social media company does not want to ban Holocaust denial posts because people should be able to make unintentional mistakes.
“I don’t think they’re intentionally getting it wrong,” Zuckerberg said on the podcast at the time.
Pakistan officials have announced a ban on TikTok after receiving complaints of unlawful content on the popular short-form video-sharing app. It’s the latest country to block the app after India instituted a similar ban and the U.S. attempted to do the same because of a squabble over who owns TikTok’s American business, which is currently the Beijing-based Bytedance.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said in a statement Friday that it came to the decision after TikTok failed to censor “immoral and indecent” content on its platform, the Associated Press reports. After receiving several complaints and petitions calling for the app to be banned, the authority gave TikTok a final warning in July to meet its guidelines and take down unlawful content (the Muslim-majority country has several media regulations intended to preserve conservative values), which the company purportedly failed to do.
SAN FRANCISCO — The federal government on Thursday appealed a judge’s ruling that prevented the Trump administration from imposing a ban on TikTok, the viral video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
In a filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the Justice Department argued that a preliminary injunction issued last month by Judge Carl Nichols in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia should be lifted.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said it had no further comment beyond the appeal. TikTok declined to comment. It was not immediately clear when the court might act on the government’s appeal.
The government’s decision to appeal the injunction, which delayed TikTok from being banned in U.S. app stores, further escalates the battle between the White House and ByteDance. The move is part of a Cold War between the United States and the Chinese government.
The open-ended ban on political advertising is especially significant, after Facebook resisted calls to remove the ads for months. Last month, the company had said it only would stop accepting new political ads in the week before Election Day, so existing political ads would continue circulating. New political ads could have resumed running after Election Day.
But Facebook lags other social media companies in banning political ads. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, banned all political ads from the service a year ago because, he said, they could rapidly spread misinformation and had “significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.” Last month, Google said it, too, would ban all political and issue ads after Election Day.
Mr. Zuckerberg has said that ads give less well-known politicians the ability to promote themselves, and that eliminating those ads could hurt their chances at broadening their support base online.
Facebook’s update suggests the rules don’t take effect until late October.
USA TODAY
Facebook said Tuesday it is escalating the campaign against QAnon, pledging to remove any Facebook pages, groups and Instagram accounts aligned with the conspiracy group.
Until now, Facebook only said it would take action against QAnon activity containing discussions about potential violence.
That action, which began in mid-August, came after sharp criticism that it had allowed the extremist conspiracy movement to spread largely unchecked on its platforms. In the month since taking that action, Facebook said it removed more than 1,500 QAnon-related pages and groups for discussions of potential violence and more than 6,500 pages and groups “tied to more than 300 Militarized Social Movements.”.
“But we believe these efforts need to be strengthened when addressing QAnon,” Facebook said in a post on its website.
President Trump & social media: Facebook pulls Trump post comparing COVID-19
OAKLAND — Facebook said it will ban groups that openly support QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that paints President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and “deep state” government officials.
The company said Tuesday that it will remove Facebook pages, groups and Instagram accounts for “representing QAnon” — even if they don’t promote violence. The social network said it will consider a variety of factors to decide if a group meets its criteria for a ban, including its name, the biography or “about” section of the page, and discussions within the page, group or Instagram account.
Mentions of QAnon in a group focused on a different subject won’t necessarily lead to a ban, Facebook said. Administrators of banned groups will have their personal accounts disabled as well.
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Facebook said it will ban groups that “represent” QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that paints President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and “deep state’ government officials.
The company said Tuesday that it will remove Facebook pages, groups and Instagram accounts for “representing QAnon” — even if they don’t promote violence. The social network said it will consider a variety of factors to decide if a group meets its criteria for a ban, including its name, the biography or “about” section of the page, and discussions within the page, group or Instagram account.
Mentions of QAnon in a group focused on a different subject won’t necessarily lead to a ban, Facebook said.
Less than two months ago, Facebook said it would stop promoting the group and its adherents, although it faltered with spotty enforcement. It said it would
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge said on Tuesday he would hold a Nov. 4 hearing on whether to allow the U.S. government to bar transactions with TikTok, a move that the Chinese-owned short video-sharing app has warned would effectively ban its use in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington issued a preliminary injunction on Sept. 27 that barred the U.S. Commerce Department from ordering Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google app stores to remove TikTok for download by new users.
Nichols must now decide whether to block the other aspects of the Commerce Department order set to take effect on Nov. 12. Nichols’ new hearing is scheduled for one day after the presidential election.
Talks are ongoing to finalize a preliminary deal for Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to take stakes in a new company, TikTok Global, that would oversee U.S. operations. U.S. President Donald
The short-form video app is still accessible, but its fate in the country is far from certain.
The court ruling is only temporary, and could be appealed by the US government. The ruling could also eventually be thrown out: The judge only weighed in because TikTok challenged the ban, and the company could lose its court case.
To make things more confusing, TikTok’s court case isn’t the only thing governing the future of the app.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, is racing to close a deal with the American firms Oracle and Walmart that might be enough to satisfy the Trump administration’s concerns
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Friday said it was appealing a judge’s decision to block the government from barring Apple Inc <AAPL.O> and Alphabet Inc’s <GOOGL.O> Google from offering Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat for download in U.S. app stores.
The government said it was appealing the Sept. 19 preliminary junction issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The injunction blocked the U.S. Commerce Department order, which would also bar other U.S. transactions with Tencent Holding’s <0700.HK> WeChat, potentially making the app unusable in the United States.
A U.S. spokesman for Tencent did not immediately comment.
The Justice Department said earlier that Beeler’s order was in error and “permits the continued, unfettered use of WeChat, a mobile application that the Executive Branch has determined constitutes a threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United
![The logo of TikTok is seen on a smartphone screen in New York, the United States, Aug. 30, 2020.](https://www.msn.com/{"default":{"load":"default","w":"80","h":"45","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB19JGU7.img?h=450&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"},"size3column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"35","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB19JGU7.img?h=352&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"},"size2column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"35","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB19JGU7.img?h=352&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"}})
