[ad_1] Facebook just took down one of the larger targets in its crackdown on QAnon conspiracy theories. The social network told Reuters that it had removed Official Q/Qanon, a group with almost 200,000 members, after multiple posts reportedly violated policies against harassment, hate, and potentially harmful misinformation. The shutdown took effect August 4th, Facebook said, […]
Category: conspiracy theories
TikTok blocks QAnon hashtags amid larger crackdown
[ad_1] The company isn’t removing the videos using the hashtags, however. Followers will still see the affected clips in their feeds, and they could theoretically appear in the For You feed of suggested videos. We’ve asked TikTok if it can comment further on its decision. The approach isn’t as strict as with rivals that completely […]
Twitter clumsily fact-checks ‘5G corona’ tweets
[ad_1] Twitter told Engadget that its labels are an “iterative process” and that it was focusing on tweets mentioning 5G and COVID-19 for now. The company also acknowledged that it might make mistakes, and that it would refine its process over time. You can read the official statement below. The fact checks could get irksome […]
Facebook’s latest propaganda sweep takes down QAnon-linked pages
[ad_1] The removals mark the first time Facebook has publicly announced an action against QAnon, a far-right conspiracy group that originated on 4Chan and has been banned on other platforms like Reddit. Facebook didn’t specify exactly who was behind the effort, only that the “investigation found links to individuals associated with QAnon.” Facebook’s Head of […]
Twitter targets conspiracy theories linking 5G and coronavirus
[ad_1] Conspiracy theories about 5G technology have become particularly problematic during the coronavirus pandemic. There have been 50 fires “targeting cell towers and other equipment,” in the Uk during the past month, according to the Associated Press. The conspiracy theories have been linked to anti-vaccine groups and Russian state media. Twitter’s latest update is an […]
UK carriers would appreciate you not setting cell towers on fire
[ad_1] The arson attacks against 5G masts in the UK have become serious enough that carriers are joining together to put a stop to the incidents. EE, O2, Three and Vodafone have issued a joint statement both urging people not to set fire to cellular masts, threaten engineers or spread conspiracy theories falsely linking 5G […]
YouTube will remove videos falsely linking COVID-19 to 5G
[ad_1] Instead, YouTube said it was suppressing “borderline content” that could mislead people in “harmful ways,” such as conspiracy theories surrounding 5G and the virus by themselves. This includes both reduced recommendations for videos, pulling them from search results and stripping them of ad revenue. The moves come not long after a Guardian report that […]
YouTube’s tweaks to recommend fewer conspiracy videos seem to be working
[ad_1] The team trained its computers by having them analyze hundreds of conspiracy and non-conspiracy videos, helping them “learn” how to differentiate between the two. Once they were trained, the computers analyzed eight million recommended videos over the course of one year. Unfortunately, they were unable to classify the videos by actually watching them — […]
Facebook and Google are fighting coronavirus misinformation
[ad_1] Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers are reviewing content related to the virus, now deemed a public health emergency by the World Health Organization. When the fact-checkers rate something as false, Facebook will limit its spread and send a notification to people who have shared or are attempting to share that content. Facebook is also removing content […]
Trump’s ‘Social Media Summit’ was a celebration of conspiracy theorists
[ad_1] “A big subject today at the White House Social Media Summit will be the tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies,” Trump tweeted. “We will not let them get away with it much longer.” While Trump didn’t mention Facebook and Twitter by name, it’s not hard to figure out who he […]