Online supporters of President Donald Trump are scattering to smaller social media platforms, fleeing what they say is unfair treatment by Facebook, Twitter and other big tech firms looking to squelch what they label misinformation and threats of violence.
Extreme measures such as banning Trump highlight the extraordinary power that Twitter and other Big Tech companies can wield without accountability or recourse, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote.
Twitter had been President Trump’s primary megaphone, the tool he tapped to push his policies, disperse falsehoods, savage his critics and speak to more than 88 million users almost every day.
In an unprecedented step, Facebook and Twitter suspended President Donald Trump from posting to their platforms Wednesday following the storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
The Federal Trade Commission is ordering Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, TikTok’s parent and five other social media companies to provide detailed information on how they collect and use consumers’ personal data and how their practices affect children and teens.
The problem affected users across the world, but appeared especially widespread in the northeastern United States, Britain and other parts of Europe.
The lawsuits together represent the most significant political and legal threats to Facebook in its more than 16-year history, setting up a high-profile clash between U.S. regulators and one of Silicon Valley’s most profitable firms that could take years to resolve.
Federal regulators on Wednesday sued to force a breakup of Facebook as 48 states and districts accused the company in a separate lawsuit of abusing its market power in social networking to crush smaller competitors.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, has until Thursday to sell off its U.S. operations under an executive order that Trump signed in August.
The push against Facebook and Twitter accelerated Thursday after Republican senators threatened the CEOs of the companies with subpoenas to force them to address accusations of censorship in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign.
Twitter was wrong to block web links to a political story, CEO Jack Dorsey said on Friday, as the company responded to criticism over its handling of an article that led to cries of censorship.
Chief of Staff Thomas Cook told IBJ in an email that the “weekend post was intended to be a joke about my relationship with my coworkers, not anyone else. I took it down when I saw people were misinterpreting things.”
It’s not clear if the proposed acquisition will only cover TikTok’s U.S. business, and, if so, how it will be split from the rest of TikTok’s social media platform, which is popular worldwide.
Facebook-owned Instagram released its new service, Reels, in the United States and dozens of other countries Wednesday, adding a tab to the existing app that will let users make and watch short-form videos.
A 17-year-old hacked the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin, authorities said Friday.
The four chief executives—Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai—took the witness stand to fiercely defend their businesses Wednesday.
A regulator will this month publish draft rules forcing the two U.S. tech giants to share revenue generated from news with the original publishers. Should others follow, it would chip away at two of the most wildly successful business models of the 21st century.
On Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg met with a group of civil rights leaders, including the organizers of a growing advertising boycott over hate speech on Facebook.
Several companies say they will halt social media ads after a campaign led by civil rights organizations called for an ad boycott of Facebook, saying it doesn’t do enough to stop racist and violent content.
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order challenging the lawsuit protections that have served as a bedrock for unfettered speech on the internet.
