Friday, September 15, 2017

"Silicon Valley’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week — OK, month"

From the valley's hometown newspaper, the Mercury-News' SiliconBeat blog:
From Facebook’s advertising and fake-news issues to Google’s pay practices and antitrust woes, Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies are feeling the heat lately.

The left, the right and those in between are slamming the tech giants, leading to headlines such as “Conservatives, liberals unite against Silicon Valley” and “There’s Blood in the Water in Silicon Valley.”

Take the world’s largest social network.

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Facebook last week admitted that it found that fake accounts linked to Russians had spent about $100,000 buying ads on its platform before the U.S. presidential election last year. Also, a now-defunct anti-immigrant Facebook page tied to Russians organized real-life anti-immigrant rallies in Idaho.

Now, as Facebook clams up — but says it is cooperating with investigations into the Trump administration’s ties with Russia, including that being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller — some people are calling on the company to tell the public more about the Russian disinformation campaign....MUCH MORE