Month: November 2019

Before Mark Zuckerberg Tried To Kill TikTok, He Wanted To Own It

Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News By the summer of 2016, Facebook was aggressively courting the world’s most populous country. Having largely saturated most of the developed world, the social network turned its attention to China, which banned Facebook in 2009, cutting it off from more than 700 million internet users.…

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T-Mobile’s CEO Is Resigning, Finally Putting An End To His Promoted Tweets

T-Mobile is in the midst of plans to merge with Sprint, and a plan for a new CEO isn’t a total shock. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Legere was in talks to become the new CEO of WeWork, a rumor he shut down today in a conference…

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The American Internet Sucks. The Alternative Is China.

Congratulations! After a grueling campaign, you have been elected president of Discursia, a small nation somewhere in the Global South. Discursia is peaceful and prosperous compared to its neighbors. But in 2028, how long can that last? Your economy is booming, but a small cadre of elites hoards its spoils.…

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Donald Trump And Joe Biden Will No Longer Be Able To Run Ads On Twitter

Twitter revealed a long-awaited political ads policy on Friday that banned paid content from candidates, political parties, and government officials, but allowed advertisers to raise awareness around certain causes including environmental issues and social equity. The policy, which will go into effect next week, will prohibit political ads that reference…

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The Witnesses At Wednesday’s Impeachment Hearing Weren’t Trying To Evade Republicans’ Questions. They Couldn’t Understand Them.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and minority counsel Steve Castor confer in the Longworth House Office Building, Nov. 13. From the very first questions that Republicans asked in the first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald…

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Australia’s Internet Freedom Is Declining, According To This New Report

A day on the internet can feel like a year, and as Very Online people we barely remember 2018. But luckily the folks at independent democracy and free expression watchdog Freedom House don’t have this problem. They mapped internet freedom in Australia over the year from June 2018 to May…

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