Politics

“One big difference between now and the last financial crisis is the cash balances of the tech majors are in the hundreds of billions, all effectively onshore, due to the Trump tax changes,” said John Gnuse, a tech M&A adviser at Lazard, referring to president Donald Trump’s move to lower the rate on repatriated offshore profits. … [Read more...] about Big Tech goes on pandemic M&A spree despite political backlash

In brief: Facebook's latest effort to fight misinformation will involve checking the identities of Page managers as well as individual accounts with a high reach to see if they're part of a shady campaign. Whether or not that will restore some sanity on the platform, only time will tell, but with the 2020 United States presidential election fast-approaching, it should at least reduce the chances of false claims spreading like wildfire. This week President Trump signed an executive order meant to limit the legal protections that have prevented social media platforms from being held liable for user-generated content. The move came right after Twitter started labeling some of his tweets with a fact-check warning -- an action he described as interference in the upcoming elections. … [Read more...] about Facebook doesn’t want to be an “arbiter of truth,” but will verify the identities of people behind popular Pages

Not only do these large tech companies have their entire business models riding on whether they have legal protections from the third-party content they host on their platforms, but they also seem generally united philosophically on the matter. And that bodes well for smaller companies and non-social platforms, which are in many cases not in a position to fight the government legally and also still see the benefits of Section 230. And as users, we all generally come out better off when companies can host and moderate content as they see fit — and in turn we can freely choose which platforms we use. … [Read more...] about Thankfully for everyone, Trump’s misguided attack on social networks faces many roadblocks

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg took pains to distance his company from Twitter and its fight with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, as the White House moved to scrap a law protecting social media companies. Republican Trump, who accuses social media firms of bias against conservatives, without evidence, stepped up his attacks on Twitter after the company put a fact-checking label on two of his tweets about mail-in ballots on Tuesday for the first time. "We have a different policy I think than Twitter on this," Zuckerberg told Fox News, Trump's preferred broadcaster. Both sites take down content that violates their terms of service, but Facebook's approach, he said, has "distinguished us from some of the other tech companies in terms of being stronger on free expression and giving people a voice." While Facebook does apply labels to misleading posts, it exempts from review posts by politicians, a decision that some lawmakers and presumptive Democratic presidential … [Read more...] about Mark Zuckerberg distances Facebook from Twitter in Trump fight

The grand location of Kaer Morhen should appear prominently in The Witcher season 2 as well. This is the ancestral home and stronghold of the witchers, and Geralt is required to take Ciri to the fortress for protection and training. Here, he takes closer guardianship of Ciri, becoming a father figure. With the appearance of a mysterious, powerful wizard - also pursuing Ciri – some more war, prophecies, dark magic and, of course, monster hunting, in mind, season 2 begins to sound promising.  … [Read more...] about The Witcher season 2: release date, cast, Vesemir and what we know