Media

How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its…

China’s efforts to subdue the turkic-speaking Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region will be familiar to Techdirt readers. International awareness is increasing, too, not least thanks to the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics that the US and other countries have announced. That presents an interesting challenge to the Chinese authorities: how to counter the growing evidence of pervasive

Climate

During COP26, Facebook served ads with climate falsehoods, skepticism

Nov 18 (Reuters) – Facebook advertisers promoted false and misleading claims about climate change on the platform in recent weeks, just as the COP26 conference was getting under way. Days after Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, touted the company’s efforts to combat climate misinformation in a blog as the Glasgow summit began, conservative media

Media

Fake news sites pushing Republicans’ critical race theory scare

Local sites in Virginia published tens of thousands of conservative-skewed articles, many of them misleading or wrong, in the past 11 months Rightwing operatives in the US are using a huge network of fake local news sites to target crucial state elections, with the sites publishing tens of thousands of conservative-skewed articles on politically charged

Democracy

Aided by his app, the great liar could yet…

In the life story of Donald Trump, to his mind an epic saga of unrivalled achievement, these are the wilderness years. After the US electoral college confirmed his 2020 defeat, an outcome he still mendaciously disputes, Trump plunged into despair. He sulked, he raged, he conspired. Yet the 6 January coup plot was an egregious step too