Facebook and Instagram encourage users to wear chinstraps

Facebook wants to contribute to the massive use of chinstraps to stop the spread of Covid-19. To do this, the company has announced that it will add messages in the Facebook and Instagram feed to encourage people to use them.

As he explained, an alert will appear at the top of the News Feeds on Facebook that will direct users to the Covid-19 Information Center. In addition, there will be links to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more information. Instagram will include a similar message with the same links.

The company explains that this measure is a response to the increase in cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. On Wednesday, that country set a record for a single day, with 50,000 new cases, and many states are beginning to reconsider their reopening plans. As of Thursday, the United States has more than 2.7 million Covid-19 cases, and more than 128,000 deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that they be used masks in public spaces to protect others from possible infection. Masks reduce the transmission of respiratory droplets that can spread the virus.

Facebook is struggling to contain the rumors and the erroneous information about the coronavirus on their platforms. The company has added new features to try to stop the avalanche of fake news, including an alert to inform people that they may have interacted with a post that had false information.

The Twitter joke in favor of the chinstrap

Twitter has also encouraged its users to use the mask through a tweet that winks at one of the most popular features on the social network. Twitter said they will launch the coveted “edit tweet” button the day everyone wears a mask.

You can have an edit button when everyone wears a mask
– Twitter (@Twitter) July 2, 2020

However, despite repeated demands from a long time ago, at the moment users are unlikely to get a tweet edit button. The co-founder of Twitter, Jack dorsey, said earlier this year that the company “would probably never” feature the feature, as it can cause users to disclose erroneous information without realizing it.

Twitter users have reacted to the provocation with jokes and memes, although there have also been users who have asked them to stay out of the debate and have questioned whether the masks are effective.

Facebook against fake news about coronavirus

New service in Facebook intended to curb fake news: According to the company announced, the platform began to show notifications that warn us if we share articles about the coronavirus that are more than three months old.

With this function, Facebook wants to contribute to give more context to the stories shared on this social network and stop the flow of erroneous information that is proliferating during the pandemic.

In a blog post, the vice president of Facebook, John HegemanHe explained that the intention with this new measure is to direct people to “authorized” information about the COVID-19 outbreak through its center in the pandemic.

Facebook tries to show a new notification that will appear when we share posts with links that mention the Covid-19. This notification screen “provides information about the source of the link and directs people to the Covid-19 Information Center to obtain authorized health information,” added Hegeman. “By providing more context, our goal is to make it easier for people to identify content that is timely, reliable, and most valuable to them,” he said.

The vice president of Facebook has also explained that a notification will be added to warn users who are trying share old stories that these may have lost relevance.

“To ensure people have the context they need to make informed decisions about what to share on Facebook, the notification screen will appear when people click the share button on articles older than 90 days, but will allow them to continue sharing if they consider that it is still relevant, “he said.

According to Hegeman, an investigation by Facebook has shown that “the date of an article is an important context that it helps people decide what to read, trust, and share “and that some news organizations have complained that sharing old stories that are supposed to be current news” can lead to misinterpretations of the state of current events. ”

The move is one of a series of actions taken by Facebook and other platforms, which have been under pressure for stop the flow of false information and stop influencing certain campaigns.

Fight between Facebook and Trump

“Defend freedom of expression from one of the greatest dangers the United States has ever faced.” This is the justification of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, has given to sign in late May an executive order that limits the special protection against legal actions enjoyed by social networks in the United States. Legislation that opens the door to countless multi-million dollar lawsuits across the country.

The president has been especially tough on the dialectic of this measure, ensuring that “a handful of social media monopolies control a large part of public and private communications.”

In addition, it has indicated that these companies “have unfiltered power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, and alter any form of communication between private citizens and large audiences ”

With the sights set on large multinationals such as Google, Facebook or TwitterThus, the American president seeks to destroy the legal shield that protects these large companies from multimillion-dollar lawsuits.

The executive order aims to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. A law that gives de facto immunity to web pages that select and moderate content created by third parties, as happens on the main social networks.

Legislation that has allowed the Internet to be configured as we know it today and that has shielded large companies such as Facebook, Twitter or Google against possible legal actions and gives them freedom to configure and moderate their platforms as they wish.

In particular, the White House tenant accused Twitter of taking “editorial decisions“and to be” politically active “in the choice of messages that he decides to submit to verification.

“They have the uncontrolled power to censor, edit, hide or modify any form of communication between individuals and large public hearings“He said, referring to the Silicon Valley giants.” We cannot let this continue, it is very, very unfair, “he insisted.

Trump said the decree calls for new regulations so that social networks dedicated to “censorship” cannot “retain their legal protection” that closed the door to legal proceedings against large companies. Now that door has been opened.

The spark that ignited Trump’s anger against Twitter

In a major move in an election year in the United States, Twitter He had placed this Tuesday for the first time in a Trump tweet the warning that the user of the social network checks information provided by the most powerful man in the world.

The president responded immediately, with other messages on Twitter, saying that the social network is “interfering in the electoral campaign” of the North American country, which will culminate in the November elections.

The personal account of the head of the White House, which has more than 80 million followers, is a fundamental weapon for its owner, especially in the electoral campaign, because from that platform it has a direct connection with its voters, criticizes its rivals, raises issues and debates, and also retweets praise from its supporters.

Twitter has been criticized for several years for be kind to the accounts of world leaders who lie or issue biased information. The American President is known for his propensity to provide manipulated, conspiratorial, or misleading information to his advantage.

An investigation by The Washington Post newspaper revealed that in his first three years in office, Trump told lies and released questionable data 16,000 times. Twitter’s decision escalated tensions between Washington and Silicon Valley in an election year and was made in response to two recent tweets by Trump.

Trump’s messages said that the votes cast by mail are fraudulent, which is false. The tag Twitter put on those messages was: “Look up the facts about voting by mail,” a diplomatic way of saying that information needs to be corroborated.

There is NO WAY (ZERO!) That Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone …..
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020

…. living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020

The Twitter spokeswoman, Katie RosboroughHe said the presidential tweets “contain potentially biased information about the voting process and have been tagged to provide additional content about voting by mail.”

Another controversy between Twitter and Trump

The company was being pressured since this early Tuesday, by another series of tweets. Trump had rolled out a conspiracy theory about the death of an employee of television presenter Joe Scarborough, also a former congressman, who died in his office of an aneurysm and at the time there were suspicions about the legislator, which were ruled out. The widower asked Twitter to delete those messages, something that did not happen. But the tags appeared in tweets later.

This month the head of the White House had launched harsh attacks on Twitter, Facebook and other Internet giants.

Following the Twitter decision, the White House chief responded virulently. “Twitter is completely oppressing freedom of expression and I, as president, am not going to allow that to happen, “he tweeted.

.@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post ….
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020

…. Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020

Since Twitter was founded 14 years ago, the company has allowed world leaders to write those kinds of lies or biased information, and its managers have let users decide what was true or not on their own. Facebook, by contrast, launched a data checking program a few years ago.

But Twitter, with 330 million users worldwide, changed its position in times of the coronavirus pandemic. In March, the company amended its terms of service and established that it would remove any posts from anyone, including world leaders, whose comments were “against the guidance of authoritative sources on global public health information.”

This was applied, for example, when he deleted tweets from the Brazilian president. Jair Bolsonaro or Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who promoted the breakdown of social distance. Meanwhile, there is speculation about how much Twitter would lose if Trump stopped using this social network.

Earlier this month, Twitter reported that it also would expand the labels to other areas, such as conspiracies related to health and other situations where there is a risk of harm. The warnings that put Trump on Tuesday extend to a new dimension, which may be key in an election year.

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