Tag Archives: election

The mass shooting in Las Vegas earlier this week brought the mood on Twitter to its lowest level ever Monday. The Hedonometer, a tool that measures the happiness of millions of Twitter users based on their posts, showed an average happiness level of 5.77 after news of the massacre began spreading. The mass shooting claimed …

News search results for sites with paid subscriptions will no longer be demoted in Google search, Bloomberg reported Sunday. It’s part of a Google move to offer better search and ad solutions for news sites with paywalls. The biggest change is that Google is dropping its “first click free” program, which favored search results from news sites that offered a free …

To everyone who’s been unhappy with Facebook, its CEO is saying sorry. Mark Zuckerberg wrote an apology on Saturday, seeking forgiveness and repenting for the ways Facebook served to cause division. The Facebook post was published on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. While he didn’t specify which problems he was referring to in the post, Reuters …

Today, Facebook is delivering copies of 3,000 ads to Congress that were likely bought by Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign. But the social media company is also pushing to improve how its ad transparency works in the future. Facebook aims to hire 1,000 people to its global ad review team over the next year, along with instituting other changes …

About 10 million Facebook users saw Russian-linked ads placed on its service during the 2016 US election campaign, the social media giant said Monday. About 44 percent of the ads were seen before election, while 56 percent were seen afterward, Elliot Schrage, the company’s vice president of policy and communications, wrote in a blog post. The figures were among the …

Attempts by Russia-linked social media accounts to influence events in the US apparently weren’t limited to last year’s US election. A network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia were used this weekend to stoke the controversy over whether NFL players should stand for pregame performances of the national anthem, The New York Times reported late Wednesday. The accounts …

Social media accounts linked to the Russian government attempted to intensify racial tensions during the US elections in 2016, CNN reported late Thursday. The accounts, which used the moniker “Blacktivist,” regularly shared content intended to fuel the outrage of their audiences, including videos of police violence against African Americans. “Black people should wake up as soon as possible,” read one …

Paul Horner, a leading peddler of fake news and internet hoaxes during the 2016 election, has died at the age of 38. Horner was discovered dead in his bed on Sept. 18, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Mark Casey said in a statement Wednesday. Casey said evidence found at the scene southwest of Phoenix suggested Horner died of an accidental …

Then-President Barack Obama warned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the impact of fake news on the 2016 US presidential election nine days after the chief executive dismissed the idea as “crazy,” the Washington Post reported Sunday. The two met in private on November 19 at a world leaders forum in Lima, Peru, according to people briefed on the exchange. Obama told Zuckerberg …

There aren’t a lot of shows I regularly watch on Amazon Prime’s video service. But for some reason, I end up watching “Red Oaks” when it’s released. The show essentially focuses on a guy trying to find out who he is during the 1980s. Technically, it’s a comedy, but it has elements of seriousness. Give it a shot if you …