Science, Technology, and Social Media

Ohio Republican Senator Joe Uecker has agreed to pay $20,000 to settle a lawsuit after a citizen accused him of illegally blocking him on Facebook. As part of the agreement, Uecker will not admit guilt. Uecker also denies that he violated the citizen’s free speech rights. As per the agreement, Uecker cannot block the citizen, Anthony Fambry, from his Facebook ...

Google, Amazon and Facebook plowed a record amount of money into Washington, D.C., a year before congressional Democrats announced a wide-ranging antitrust investigation into the Silicon Valley giants. They dumped a combined $48 million into lobbying in 2018, up 13% from 2017, government disclosures from January show. House Democrats announced a planned probe of Google and Facebook’s business practices Monday, ...

By Chris Woolston, Knowable Magazine When Sylvia Groth steps through the doors of the Vanderbilt Eye Institute in Nashville, Tennessee, she knows she has a tough day ahead. Before she goes home, she’ll very likely have at least one hard talk with a person whose sight has been ravaged by glaucoma. “When I make a diagnosis of advanced glaucoma, I ...

Facebook apparently helped provide crucial pieces of information to The Daily Beast about the identification of the man behind the manipulated video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Internet privacy expert rips Facebook for helping The Daily Beast identify the profile behind the doctored video. Facebook helped The Daily Beast with the story after the company received scorn from reporters for ...

Conservatives are wrestling with how to process the sudden bipartisan push to conduct antitrust probes against Google and other big tech firms. Conservatives like Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri are in full support of such investigations, while others are worried dinging big tech could clobber the economy. Some legal experts believe the bipartisan support for such probes could speed up ...

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri asked Apple CEO Tim Cook Tuesday to implement his “Do Not Track” option as the big tech giant faces scrutiny over how much data it obtains through its application store. Hawley, a Republican, sent a letter to Cook imploring him to do a better job of protecting customer’s private data. The letter comes a few ...

Amazon made a highly lucrative job offer to a former employee while the man was leading a $10 billion winner-take-all cloud computing contract with the government, according to court documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Computing giant Oracle alleged in the May 31 complaint that former Department of Defense official Deap Ubhi was offered shares in Amazon and ...

George Orwell’s fictionalized world where Big Brother reigns supreme is no longer a figment of the imagination, but a prophetic vision of present-day threats. Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, explains how and why Big Tech is making Orwell’s 1984 a 21st-century reality. Transcript: The year is 1984. One company – Microsoft – dominates the computer world. It’s ...

AJ+, an arm of Al Jazeera, is a major video creator on Facebook, making viral videos emphasizing purported racism, sexism, labor exploitation and homophobia in America. AJ+ is owned by Qatar, a nation with notable human rights issues. Critics say Qatar is engaging in foreign meddling in U.S. politics similar to Russia and that it is using identity politics to ...

The Department of Justice is preparing an antitrust probe against Google’s search engine and business model, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday night, citing people familiar with the issue. It would be the first such investigation since the Federal Trade Commission conducted an investigation of Google but closed it in 2013 without taking action. The FTC and DOJ have discussed ...

Twitter temporarily suspended conservative pundit Erick Erickson Friday morning for tweeting a joke about Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Erickson, a blogger at The Resurgent, was suspended for tweeting: “Elizabeth Warren set to introduce the Wrecking American Prosperity Under Marxism, or WAMPUM Act, wherein she gives everything away for free.” He received a notification Friday that the tweet violates Twitter’s ...

Facebook’s board of directors dismissed a group of conservative shareholder’s proposal to encourage the company to add conservative voices to its board. The National Center for Public Policy Research’s conservative shareholder activist arm, Free Enterprise Project(FEP), introduced the proposal Thursday and requested the company act more proactively to diversify its board. The group attempted a similar ploy during a May ...

(Image source: Pixabay | Image author: smpratt90) Did you know that newborn babies can sleep anywhere between 16 to 17 hours a day? When your baby is first born they will spend well over half the day asleep, but why do babies need so much sleep and how can you encourage your child to develop mature sleeping patterns? Newborns and ...

Hillary Clinton, who used a private email server as secretary of state, will speak at a cyber defense summit later this year, it was announced on Thursday. FireEye, a cybersecurity company based in California, announced that Clinton will give the keynote speech at its annual summit in Washington, D.C. in October. “Cyber security is not any one defender’s responsibility, but ...

Cyberfirm FireEye published a report Tuesday showing that an Iran-based campaign sought to distribute misinformation throughout social media during the midterm elections. Facebook dinged several phony accounts connected to an Iran-backed group seeking to promote pro-Iranian messages in the U.S.  An Iran-backed campaign used Facebook and Twitter accounts to impersonate three Republican congressional candidates. An Iran-backed campaign used various social ...