Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, X CEO Linda Yaccarino, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Discord CEO Jason Citron testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a Wednesday hearing entitled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.”

The hearing focused on the prevalence on sexual exploitation on social media, what tech CEOs were doing to fight it and growing rage among parents over a lack of federal action.

Here are the highlights from the contentious hearing.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://thehill.com/business/4437994-tech-ceos-senate-testify-child-safety-live-updates-zuckerberg-fb-tiktok/

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The attorneys general of dozens of US states are suing Instagram and its parent company Meta over their impact on young users, accusing them of contributing to a youth mental health crisis through the addictive nature of their social media platforms.

Filed in federal court in Oakland, California, on Tuesday, the lawsuit claims Meta, which also operates Facebook, has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its platforms and knowingly induced young children and teenagers into addictive and compulsive social media use.

“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage and ultimately ensnare youth and teens,” said the complaint, filed by 33 states including California and Illinois. “Its motive is profit.”

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/24/instagram-lawsuit-meta-sued-teen-mental-health-us

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The post Canada stops advertising with Facebook and Instagram in news row first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed off on the Utah Social Media Regulation Act on Thursday as TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was grilled on Capitol Hill — with one analyst describing Chew’s evasive testimony as a “disaster” for the video-sharing app as it faces a potential US ban.

Under Utah’s laws — which go into effect next March — minors will be barred from using social media sites like TikTok, Snap and Instagram between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.

The legislation also blocks social media companies from implementing addictive features and advertising aimed at underage users, and makes it easier for families alleging their children were harmed by the platforms to sue for damages.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/utah-enacts-age-limits-curfews-for-social-media-use-in-major-crackdown/

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The post Utah sets curfew for social media use by kids in major crackdown first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Seattle Public Schools filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court. The 91-page complaint says the social media companies have created a public nuisance by targeting their products to children.

It blames them for worsening mental health and behavioral disorders including anxiety, depression, disordered eating and cyberbullying; making it more difficult to educate students; and forcing schools to take steps such as hiring additional mental health professionals, developing lesson plans about the effects of social media, and providing additional training to teachers.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://apnews.com/article/social-media-seattle-lawsuits-mental-health-965a8f373e3bfed8157571912cc3b542

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The post Seattle schools sue tech giants over social media harm first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Here we are, days after the most promoted holiday of the year, and stranded airline passengers are still trying to get home.  Not that they ever got to their intended destination in the first place. 

Canceled flights number into the thousands.  People are throwing fits from coast to coast.  Yes we know about the weather, but this is ridiculous.  What’s wrong with Southwest Airlines?

Notice that no one seems to be freaking out about global warming right now?  What about global cooling (not that there is such a thing)?  People are FREEZING to death, and places that are generally warm suffered an arctic blast.  Temperatures are so cold in the northern states, you’d be dead in minutes if unprotected.  It looks as though the global warming crowd has gone snow skiing, or maybe somewhere in the Caribbean Islands.  That’s where the pretender went.  

We still probably don’t know the extent of suffering and deaths caused by the cold snap.  Maybe these international institutions need to figure out what’s going on to stop people freezing to death.   How do batteries hold up under such conditions?  Asking questions like that will get you banned.

If you look at the claims just outside the mainstream, it appears that government agencies were heavily involved in defending the conventional wisdom. Whatever it was that day.  Anybody who dared dispute the arrogant fear-mongering, was banned.  Even highly educated well respected people, in some cases doctors were cut out of the debate.  There was to be no debate, or “misinformation.”  Anything that varied from the official line, put out by the little doctor or some European institutions, had to be banned.  The whole thing is at odds with the American ideal.  Whatever happened to the First  Amendment?  We understand that you can’t yell “fire!” in a theater, but since when were you forced to espouse some opinion or other because of “policy.”  We’ve not heard the end of it.  Chances are we never will.

As the secret arrangements continue to be aired in public (thanks for that, Mr. Musk) a picture is taking shape.  But there are other players (Facebook, Instagram) in the social media realm, and they were doing the same thing.  Fact-checkers came into vogue, and wouldn’t you know it?  They’ve made the very term suspect.  Curious that they always sided with the preachers of fear, as if there was no other opinion.

There is little doubt the lawsuits will be with us years into the future.  Many businesses ceased to exist through no fault of their own.  They might not have gone out of business, but the mandates made sure that happened, unintentionally we’re sure.  The “mandates” assumed authority that was certainly open to question.  But here came the cops.  Defiance of state authority became very expensive.  We haven’t even begun to hear about the fallout.

My Dad always said that the Beast power would emerge as the result of a worldwide economic crisis.  You might have noticed, global stocks lost $18 trillion in value recently.  Bloomberg has a chart that dates all the way back to 2001, and the plunge in current values is deeper than anything we experienced in 2008 or 2012.  Money has been so easy to come by, inflation is raging and interest rates are rising steadily in response.  

You have to brace yourself before any news exposure.  It’s not easy watching the blessings of God being squandered by those who think they’re smarter than the Creator.  The Supreme Court apparently decided that Title 42 could continue a bit longer, and maybe that will help.  But the scenes at the border will make you lose sleep.  This isn’t the first time we had leadership that blamed America for all the world’s ills.  We pray this one meets justice. 

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – December 30, 2022 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Starlink satellites are already passing over Iran where they appear as a string of lights flying in tandem.  This is good news for the embattled citizens of Iran.

Disruptions on the internet were widely reported throughout Iran. Mobile internet access has been cut in the capital city of Tehran. Extremely slow speeds on broadband connections are also reported. Netblocks, the internet watchdog, announced Wednesday that access to the popular platform Instagram is also being restricted.

Starlink has just been enabled to provide satellite internet inside Iran.

Normally the activation of Starlink requires the approval of each country. In Iran, the US has authorized SpaceX to activate the service without Iran’s permission.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://usaherald.com/elon-musk-turned-on-starlink-in-iran/

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The post Elon Musk turned on Starlink in Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The ban on President Trump and his allies by Big Tech companies following the US Capitol riot is part of an effort to silence right-wing voices by firms that have “monopoly power,” Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.) said Sunday.

“We are now living in a country where four or five companies, unelected, unaccountable, have the monopoly power to decide, we’re gonna wipe people out, we’re going to erase them, from any digital platform, whether it’s selling things and the like,” Rubio, of Miami, said on FOX’s Sunday Morning Futures.

“This is also an opportunity for [the left] to go and put pressure on social media companies to literally not just erase the president but erase everybody,” Rubio said.

His comments came two days after Twitter booted Trump — along with allies former Gen. Mike Flynn and lawyer Sidney Powell, who backed his claims that fraud led to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Facebook also permanently suspended Trump from the social media platform in what it called an effort to reduce politically fueled violence.

On Saturday, Parler — a social media service popular with the right — was booted off Amazon’s web hosting service.

But Rubio claimed social media companies are actually banning Trump and his supporters in order to get on the good side of powerful left-wing elected officials.

“It’s also very cynical,” he said. ”Facebook, Twitter, these are not moral champions here. The reason why these guys are doing it is because Democrats are about to take power, and they view this as a way to get on their good side to avoid restrictions or any sort of laws being passed that hurt them.”

Last year,  Rubio co-sponsored a bill that gives people the ability to sue tech companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter if they engage in selective censorship of political commentary.

Source: https://nypost.com/2021/01/10/sen-rubio-warns-of-big-tech-monopoly-power-following-censorship/

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