Category: Politics

Vladmir Putin is extricating Russia from the world-wide-web


Tonight, if you live in Russia, it’s time to party like it’s not yet 1989. Soviet KGB agent  President Vladmir Putin is on the brink of unveiling a wall. Some might call it the most beautiful wall the world’s ever seen. It’ll be huge. It’ll cover every square-centimeter of Russian border and, unlike the ridiculous fence we’re building here in the US, his will actually be effective: it keeps ideas out. Reuters today reported that Putin will execute a plan to “replace” Wikipedia with a state-run online encyclopedia. Per the report, the government will spend about $30 million (US) on the…

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US Senator: ‘Amazon Ring’s policies are an open door for privacy and civil liberty violations’


US Senator Edward Markey yesterday revealed the results of a months-long investigation into Amazon‘s Ring camera-doorbells and the company’s relationship with law enforcement. The Senator’s press team dubbed the findings “alarming” and called the company’s policies “an open door for privacy and civil liberty violations.” The press release, which you can read in full here, describes several key findings indicating that Amazon executives took little or no action to prevent or discourage misuse of camera footage by law enforcement, even going so far as to urge officers to “to take steps that will increase rates of video sharing” and approaching…

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Facebook let anti-vaxxers run rampant with misinformation ads, because money


Earlier this year Facebook said it would crack down on ads from groups peddling misinformation about vaccines. The announcement was heralded by medical professionals and pundits as a capstone in their efforts to fight the pro-disease movement. However, in the time since the announcement, Facebook‘s done the exact opposite. A recent study from researchers at the University of Maryland, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins shows that Facebook blocked pro-vaccination ads on the basis that they were too political, while simultaneously allowing hundreds of advertisements from anti-vaccination groups to display for millions of users. Many of these ads were targeted…

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Where to watch the Trump impeachment hearings


The impeachment inquiry hearings of US President Donald Trump start soon, and for the first time in the history of such things these hearings will be available to stream online. Here’s where and how you can watch the event streamed live. Given this is an event of extreme public interest, it’ll be streamed by multiple sources. C-SPAN has a special landing page just for the impeachment, where it’ll stream the event live. PBS Newshour will also have a livestream from its YouTube channel: If you don’t want to go to any of those sites, the House Intelligence YouTube channel will…

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