Sources tell us the platform tweaked its code to help right-wing publishers and throttle sites like Mother Jones. Near the close of the first year of the Trump presidency, executives at Facebook were briefed on some major changes to its News Feed—the code that determines which of the zillions of posts on the platform any one of us is shown when we look at Facebook. The story the company has publicly told is that it was working to “bring people closer together” by showing us more posts from friends and family, and to prioritize “trusted” and “informative” sources of news. The changes would also reduce how much news most people see, and therefore decrease revenue for many publishers. What wasn’t publicly known until now is that Facebook actually ran experiments to see how the changes would affect publishers—and when it found that some of them would have a dramatic impact on the reach of right-wing “junk sites,” as a former employee with knowledge of the conversations puts it, the engineers were sent back to lessen those impacts. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, they came back in January 2018 with a second iteration that dialed up the harm to progressive-leaning news organizations instead. In fact, we have now learned that executives were even shown a slide presentation that highlighted the impact of the second iteration on about a dozen specific publishers—and Mother Jones was singled out as one that would suffer, while the conservative site the Daily Wire was identified as one that would benefit. These changes were pushed by Republican operatives working in Facebook’s Washington office under Vice President of Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan (who later made headlines for demonstratively supporting his friend Brett Kavanaugh during confirmation hearings). Asked for comment, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone would only say, “We did not make changes with the intent of impacting individual publishers. We only made updates after they were reviewed by many different teams across many disciplines to ensure the rationale was clear and consistent and could be explained to all publishers.”

via mother jones: Facebook Manipulated the News You See to Appease Republicans, Insiders Say

Die Videoplattform Tiktok verschärft ihr Vorgehen gegen rassistische Inhalte und Stereotype gegen religiöse Minderheiten. Der Online-Dienst erklärte am Mittwoch, während bereits Videos mit Hassrede und Ideologien des Hasses wie Neonazismus und Rassismus gelöscht würden, werde dies nun auch auf „verwandte Ideologien“ ausgeweitet. Als Beispiele nannte Tiktok den „weißen Nationalismus“, die Theorie von einem „Genozid an Weißen“, die Identitäre Bewegung und Theorien von einer Überlegenheit von Männern gegenüber Frauen. Tiktok kündigte zudem an, „Falschinformationen und verletzende Stereotype über Juden, Muslime und andere Gruppen“ löschen zu wollen. Das umfasse unter anderem Falschinformationen über bekannte jüdische Persönlichkeiten oder Familien, die genutzt würden, um Antisemitismus zu verbreiten. Das Leugnen des Holocaust ist auf Tiktok bereits verboten. Gelöscht werden sollen fortan auch Inhalte, die gegen Lesben, Schwule, Bisexuelle sowie trans- und intersexuelle Menschen gerichtet sind. Dazu gehört auch Werbung für sogenannte Konversionstherapien. Online-Plattformen wie Twitter, Facebook und Tiktok stehen unter großem Druck, gegen Hassrede im Netz vorzugehen.

via nürnberger blatt: Tiktok verschärft Vorgehen gegen rassistische und antisemitische Inhalte

siehe auch: TikTok Bans Conversion Therapy and White Supremacist Content. The platform announced an update to how it will enforce its community guidelines against anti-LGBTQ+ and other hateful content. In a Tuesday blog post, TikTok has announced a plan to remove hateful posts on the video-based social media platform. The company will start cracking down even more on anti-LGBTQ+ content, white supremacist and Nazi content, and videos that spread falsehoods about Jewish people, Muslims, and other minority groups. “As part of our efforts to prevent hateful ideologies from taking root, we will stem the spread of coded language and symbols that can normalise hateful speech and behaviour,” the blog post read. When it comes to anti-LGBTQ+ content, that now includes videos that promote harmful and discredited practices like conversion therapy, where LGBTQ+ people are encouraged to “pray away the gay” or undergo electroshock therapy to “turn” them straight and cisgender.