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Dutch parents sue TikTok for 1.4 billion euros for not protecting the privacy and safety of children and for its content. The SOMI group represents 64,000 parents in Netherlands and the EU. Young people under 16 can easily create a profile without permission of their parents, and risky games plus content endanger children's lives, is how the app is seen in Europe.

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Republican Speaker Johnson is setting Saturday April 20, 2024 votes in the US Congress for Ukraine-Israel aid in a weekend vote, as Israel and Ukraine face growing threats. Basically the bill Democrats passed in the Senate gets split up into 3 parts for that $95 billion in aid bill to be voted on individually for each part separately for Ukraine, for Israel, for Taiwan. A fourth bill would be for Ukraine aid as a loan, and a measure leading to national ban on TikTok.

"We're not the world's policeman, but we are going to do the right thing. And I think Congress is going to take an important stand."

"We have improved the process and policy. Every member of Congress gets to vote his conscience."

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President Trump says TikTok app would be banned in the U.S. after September 15. He said he had talked to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and told him Microsoft could buy the apps U.S. operations but if it does so a substantial portion of the price must go to the U.S. Treasury because of the approval of the deal the U.S. is giving after the review. He told Nadella "Look it can't be controlled for security reasons by China- too big,too invasive. Here's the deal, I don't mind whether its Microsoft or somebody else, a big company, a secure company, a very American company buy it."

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Emma Tucker Editor of The Times will take over as Editor of The Wall Street Journal from Matt Murray. Emma Tucker started at The Financial Times before moving on to the Times of London as deputy editor, and Editor of the Sunday Times.

Ms. Tucker led The Times of London from 2020 leading to digital subscriptions increasing from 320,000 to 450,000 by Sept 2022. Matt Murray joined the Dow Jones at its Pittsburgh bureau in 1994, before serving as executive editor and deputy editor in chief. He started the audio podcasts, and a series on Facebook's negative effects on young women and TikTok's algorithm can introduce adult content to minors. He took the digital subscriptions from 1.59 million to 3.16 million as Editor of WSJ. Murray's strategy was for the WSJ to remain focused on its core strengths in business, finance and economics even as it pursued general interest readers by simplifying the reading.

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First disrupt the young people's attention and create effects on mental health of long hours spent on social media such as Tik Tok. This results in a loss of literacy on basic knowledge of civics and American history to lower and lower levels. Then let these young people decide who should run the country and its government for the next 4-8 years. The founders never intended this and never anticipated this threat. Congressmen Republican Gallagher of Wisconsin and Democrat Krisnamoorthi of Illinois introduced a bipartisan bill to ban TikTok in the US considering that it was foreign adversary application when its literacy effects are even more a concern. Byte Dance has appealed the law that goes into effect Jan 19, 2025. The appeal is now before a 3 person panel of the Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals of Sri Srinivasan, Neomi Rao, and Douglas Ginsburg. Does Byte Dance have recourse to the First Amendment rights in the US Constitution when the US sees Byte Dance as a foreign adversary controlled internet social media service, is the question before the Appeals Court and next before the US Supreme Court. The US government has shown the judges confidential classified data that shows why it thinks there is foreign adversary influence of some sort.  It is interesting to note that national literacy standards and the ability of average American young people to know enough about American history and civics that is in a dire state today and a key vulnerability for US democracy. This is gravely harmed by social media influence. Only negative effects on mental health of children and young girls has been put forward. Too many hours spent on social media is a negative influence which is why China and now Australia and UK have put restrictions on is use. US has none. India has banned Tik Tok for security reasons. In all situations there are negatives here yet it is an appalling thing that literacy is not the biggest one put forward when it should be for this Nation. ...

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The large majority of vaccine disinformation has been traced to just 12 persons, according to a report cited by the White House. This report is from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. They have a combined following of 59 million on social media with Facebook being the largest. Of 812,000 Facebook posts looked at by CCDH 65% came from these 12 persons.

On Facebook alone 73% of all anti-vaccine content comes from these 12 persons. These 12 include a religious zealot, a wellness blogger, some physicians who have taken on pseudoscience, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Only 3 have been removed from one platform of the 12 persons. US president Biden is critical of the role of social media in this pandemic.

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In 2017 Facebook noticed a drop in user engagement- fewer comments, fewer posts, and less sharing. To address this Facebook made a change in its algorithm, which is a bunch of mathematical equations which determine what you see in the newsfeed. The result says this WSJ Facebook Investigation was to make Facebook an angrier place, a place where divisive comments were being posted, and sensational or exaggerated comments were being shared. This increased the level of divisiveness in the US during the early period of the Trump administration. As America looks back on this time- the issues related to migration across its southern border that are still alive today and on which there is now a consensus across Democrats and Republicans on returning migrants. The issues related to the urban-rural divide that many presidents preceding Trump and Biden had chosen to ignore, and which the Tech community showed little interest in. The divide also across educational lines with college educated splitting away from people lacking college education just as costs of college had soared. All these issues were out in the open and instead of having an educated debate these algorithms never intended for solving social problems actually made them worse.  It is now in the interest of both Republicans and Democrats to take a hard look at what went wrong and restore the civility and dialogue that marked American experience across all ages and income groups, and remove the overstated influence of such algorithm based apps. The WSJ Facebook Investigation is a way to restore the traditional media's true place in the national dialogue and push back against the insidious and dangerous influence of algorithm based news feeds such as this one.  Outrage Algortihms may be good for a few people and a few in tech  business in California and in capital markets in New York, yet they are bad for America and the American people as a whole, bad for the vast landscape of America and the vast majority of the American people. Mindless infatuation with pictures of young adults leads to a mindless and dangerous result in mental health, bad effects on women, illusions about what is right living, and increasing divisiveness in America.  ...

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This WSJ Investigation shows Facebook is aware of the acute flaws in its product, that the product is riddled with flaws that only Facebook fully understands. Yet it says the company has not acted in a way that correct these flaws. Some of the flaws of how this app affects teenage girls was a subject of one part of this report. In other parts it looked at how the Facebook app in social media use could increase the level of division in society, and affect the achievement of public interest goals, as users make use of the app and apps like Facebook such as Twitter to increase discord. This is becoming an issue as public interest goals are now seen as critical for recovery. Vaccination for coronavirus in US and Europe, national infrastructure development in India and developing nations, effects of social media on women's health, are critical areas in which social media may have failed to deliver constructive results, and actually gone the other way to make things worse for all. This may also be why leaders of large nations including Mr. Biden, and leaders in India and Europe, have lost patience with social media. ...