( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter helped right-wing populists take power. Can they now help rein them in? By John Feffer | April 14, 2021 One insidious way to torture the detainees at Guantanamo was to blast music at them at all hours. The mixtape, which included […]
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Internet
Is Facebook Collaborating with Turkey to Censor Free Expression?
By Jack Gillum | – ( ProPublica) – Facebook’s move to censor social media posts of a Syrian militia group in 2018 at the request of the Turkish government raises serious questions about the company’s commitment to free expression, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee wrote in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg […]
Facebook’s news blockade in Australia shows how tech giants are swallowing the web
By Jennifer Grygiel | – When Facebook disabled Australians’ access to news articles on its platform, and blocked sharing of articles from Australian news organizations, the company moved a step closer to killing the World Wide Web – the hyperlink-based system of freely connecting online sites created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Though the […]
Hating on Muslims in Western Media is based on the Big Lie
By Stuart Chambers | – Although anti-Muslim sentiments certainly existed long before 2001, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the response to them intensified anti-Muslim tropes, namely the presumption that Islam is inherently violent or that Muslims have a propensity for terrorism. Since 9/11, specific individuals have turned Islamophobia into an industry, scapegoating Muslims to […]
Why is False News about Iran All Right? No, Khamenei didn’t Threaten Trump on Golf Course, and no, his Twitter account wasn’t Banned
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – No, Ayatollah Ali Khameni’s twitter account did not carry an image of Donald Trump being droned on a golf course, and no, his twitter account was not canceled. A small twitter account run by unknown persons with only 8,000 followers posted the image of someone (it wasn’t a picture of […]
Six Days to Go: Nukes, Trump, and Cybersecurity
Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Should American citizens feel relieved that Speaker Pelosi has met with General Milley to discuss the nuclear command structure? I am not. From the start of the nuclear age we have been asked to believe that as long as these weapons of mass destruction were under the […]
Vanilla ISIL: Social Media is forced to Treat Trump and Trumpists Like Terrorists
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Not everyone who mobbed the Capitol on 1/6 was a terrorist, but there were many terrorists among them. Some people came armed, or with ties for taking congressional representatives and senators hostage. Some were desperately looking for Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi in order to assassinate them for, in their […]
Far-right activists on social media telegraphed violence weeks in advance of the attack on the US Capitol
By Alex Newhouse | – The attack on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 was shocking, but no one following right-wing activity on social media should have been surprised. The attempt by President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters to violently stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote and formalizing Joe Biden’s election victory was […]
Thanks to our Generous and Wonderful Readers
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – We’re pretty sure that when all is said and done, we made our fundraising goal again this year. We can’t thank our generous and wonderful readers enough. This is what it truly means to be a reader-supported site. Those of you who are expecting copies of The Rubaiyat of Omar […]
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