Should the government regulate social media sites, as a means to prevent fake news and misinformation?

Israel Was The Main Reason For Tik Tok Ban

Both the Economist and the WSJ state explicitly that the main reason the TikTok ban picked up so much bipartisan steam in DC since Oct. 7 was because of how much Israel criticism was allowed to air and circulate on the platform (see below).WSJ:‘It was slow going until Oct. 7. The attack that day in Israel by Hamas and the ensuing conflict in Gaza became a turning point in the push against TikTok, Helberg said. People who historically hadn’t taken a position on TikTok became concerned with how Israel was portrayed in the videos and what they saw as an increase in antisemitic content posted to the app. Anthony Goldbloom, a San Francisco-based data scientist and tech executive, started analyzing data TikTok published in its dashboard for ad buyers showing the number of times users watched videos with certain hashtags. He found far more views for videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags than those with pro-Israel hashtags. While the ratio fluctuated, he found that at times it ran 69 to 1 in favor of videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags.’

Steven Mnuchin Says He Is Putting Together a Group to Buy TikTok

Steven Mnuchin is putting together a consortium to try to buy TikTok, the Former Treasury Secretary said.“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”Mnuchin’s comments come two days after the House voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill that would ban the popular app from operating in the U.S. or force its Chinese owner ByteDance to sell.

Thai Politician Sentences to 6 years for social media post

Rukchanok "Ice" Srinork, 28, had pleaded not guilty to posting tweets critical of the monarchy.She has since been released on bail worth $14,000 (£11,180) pending an appeal, on the condition that she must not repeat the offence.Ice's Move Forward party, which won this year's election, had urged reform of the lese-majeste laws.But the unelected senate used this as the main reason for blocking the party's attempt to form a government.On Wednesday, Ice was found guilty of insulting the monarch by a Bangkok court for two posts made before she joined Move Forward - in the first, she criticised the country's handling of the pandemic, and the second was a repost of a tweet that was said to be critical of the monarchy.Ice will lose her seat if she eventually goes to jail.Hers was perhaps the most dramatic of many shock victories by the young Move Forward candidates in the May general election - she won her seat in Bang Bon, a constituency near Bangkok which had been the fiefdom of one of Thailand's most powerful political clans for decades, after a no-frills campaign largely on a bicycle.

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