CNET: TikTok removed more than 104M videos in the first half of the year. “TikTok removed more than 104 million videos from its platform during the first half of 2020, according to the company’s latest transparency report, released [September 22]. TikTok said that’s less than 1% of all videos uploaded to the popular app between Jan. 1 and June 30.”
content removal
NPR: Twitter, Facebook Remove Trump Post Over False Claim About Children And COVID-19
NPR: Twitter, Facebook Remove Trump Post Over False Claim About Children And COVID-19 . “Twitter temporarily blocked the Trump election campaign account from tweeting until it removed a post with a video clip from a Fox News interview from Wednesday morning, in which the president urged schools to reopen, falsely claiming that children are ‘almost immune from this disease.’ Facebook also removed a post containing the same video from Trump’s personal page. Both Facebook and Twitter said the post violated their rules on COVID-19 misinformation.”
CNN: The video of my daughter’s murder is still on YouTube and Facebook. They should have to take it down
CNN: The video of my daughter’s murder is still on YouTube and Facebook. They should have to take it down. “My daughter Alison was murdered on live television on August 26, 2015. To this day, the video of her murder is still being hosted on YouTube and Facebook. Both platforms took down the original videos, but the videos were reposted by conspiracy theorists and other bad actors. Along with my advocacy for gun violence prevention, I’ve spent the last five years trying to get Facebook and Google, which owns YouTube, to take down the reposted videos.”
TorrentFreak: Google Takes No Action for 99.2% of Copyright Notices Targeting Internet Archive
TorrentFreak: Google Takes No Action for 99.2% of Copyright Notices Targeting Internet Archive. “Copyright holders and anti-piracy groups might want to consider best use of their resources when sending takedown notices to Google targeting the Internet Archive. According to data published by Google, 99.2% of complaints against IA result in ‘no action taken’, with just 0.1% of complaints resulting in some kind of takedown.”
Techdirt: Patent Troll Gets Court To Order Startup It Sued To ‘Edit’ Blog Post; Troll Now Asks Startup To Get Us To Change Our Techdirt Post
Techdirt: Patent Troll Gets Court To Order Startup It Sued To ‘Edit’ Blog Post; Troll Now Asks Startup To Get Us To Change Our Techdirt Post. “So, first off, I don’t see how this is possibly allowed under the 1st Amendment. Directly ordering a company to edit a blog post to remove a request to share the blog post on social media seems like a fairly blatant infringement of the 1st Amendment. A company should certainly have the right to notify its community that it is in the middle of a costly legal battle (one that it believes is frivolous), and part of getting people to understand how serious it is is asking for that information to be shared.”
CNN: Social media giants remove viral video with false coronavirus claims that Trump retweeted
CNN: Social media giants remove viral video with false coronavirus claims that Trump retweeted. “A video featuring a group of doctors making false and dubious claims related to the coronavirus was removed by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube after going viral online Monday. The video, published by the right-wing media outlet Breitbart News, featured a group of people wearing white lab coats calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” staging a press conference in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC.”
Reclaim the Net: UK parliamentary committee on Russian disinformation calls for new social media content removal protocols
Reclaim the Net: UK parliamentary committee on Russian disinformation calls for new social media content removal protocols. “A UK parliamentary intelligence committee report on Russian ‘disinformation and influence’ has called for the UK Government to establish a protocol with social media companies to remove covert hostile state material and to commit to “clear timescales” for removal.”
CNN: Twitter’s rigid fact-check rules allow Trump to continue spreading false information about the election
CNN: Twitter’s rigid fact-check rules allow Trump to continue spreading false information about the election. “The world took notice on May 26, when Twitter fact-checked President Donald Trump for the very first time. Trump posted a series of blatant lies about mail-in voting, and declared that ‘this will be a rigged election.’ Twitter responded swiftly, saying that the viral posts contained “potentially misleading” information, and slapped a fact-check label on them. But seven weeks later, and after a dozen similarly untruthful tweets from the President, that extraordinary step by Twitter looks more like a one-time aberration than the new normal.”
Mother Jones: Black Activists Warn That Facebook Hasn’t Done Enough to Stop Racist Harassment
Mother Jones: Black Activists Warn That Facebook Hasn’t Done Enough to Stop Racist Harassment. “Despite Facebook’s recent proclamations and donations designed to indicate backing for America’s swelling anti-racist movement, the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been targeted by such activists largely because of the platform’s appeasement of President Donald Trump, even as he posts misinformation about voting and exhortations to violence. Meanwhile Facebook is also home to a chorus of Black people who use the site to fight racism but whose own posts and pages are often penalized for calling out bigotry, even as vitriol against them remains on the platform.”
Bloomberg Quint: Google, Facebook Would Face FTC Over Policies in Democratic Bill
Bloomberg Quint: Google, Facebook Would Face FTC Over Policies in Democratic Bill. “A top Democratic lawmaker wants to empower the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to take action against Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc., among other technology platforms, if they fail to remove content that violates their terms of service and community standards.”
Techdirt: Just Like Every Other Platform, Parler Will Take Down Content And Face Impossible Content Moderation Choices
Techdirt: Just Like Every Other Platform, Parler Will Take Down Content And Face Impossible Content Moderation Choices . “Like Gab before it, the hot new Twitter-wannabe service for assholes and trolls kicked off of Twitter is Parler. The President and a bunch of his supporters have hyped it up, and the latest is that Senator Ted Cruz (and Rep. Devin Nunes) have recently joined it, and like others before them they have hyped up the misleading claim that Parler supports free speech unlike Twitter…. But, I did want to take a closer look at the claims that Parler supports free speech, because it does so in basically the same way every other platform — including the way Twitter, Youtube and Facebook do: by saying that they can remove your content for any reason they want.”
Variety: Facebook Adds Tool to Bulk-Delete Old Posts, Hide Content From Other Users
Variety: Facebook Adds Tool to Bulk-Delete Old Posts, Hide Content From Other Users. “Facebook is making it easier for users to wipe out embarrassing or otherwise personally painful posts. The social-media giant announced Manage Activity, a new feature to make it easier for users to delete or hide many posts at once.”
Wired: How to Clean Up Your Old Social Media Posts
Wired: How to Clean Up Your Old Social Media Posts. “If your social media life spans more than a few years then you might not want friends, family, or prospective employers looking back on the sort of person that you used to be. Here we’ll show you how you can scrub your timelines on the three biggest social platforms, using both built-in tools and third-party add-ons.”
Engadget: Facebook suspended hundreds of anti-racist skinheads and musicians
Engadget: Facebook suspended hundreds of anti-racist skinheads and musicians. “Facebook’s determination to crack down on hate speech swept up some innocent people. OneZero has learned that Facebook temporarily suspended ‘hundreds’ of anti-racist activists from SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice), as well as the reggae and ska communities, for allegedly violating site standards. It even included ska legend Neville Staple of The Specials. “
Reuters: Facebook takes down white nationalist and fake antifa accounts
Reuters: Facebook takes down white nationalist and fake antifa accounts. “Facebook Inc (FB.O) said Tuesday it has suspended accounts associated with white nationalist groups after some advocated bringing weapons to the current wave of anti-racist protests. Company officials also said they removed accounts falsely claiming allegiance to antifa in order to bring discredit to the anti-fascist movement.”