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Reacting to rising online extremism triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the elections, a group of House Democrats want President Biden to launch a multiagency digital democracy task force to develop a federal strategy to increase resilience to online threats and create stronger protection for the democratic process.
In a Dec. 10 letter to the president-elect, members of the Congressional Task Force on Digital Citizenship asked him to adopt a “whole of government system to build citizen resilience to disinformation and misinformation.”
They see the need for “media literacy programs with commitments to truth-seeking" to counter social media platforms that traffic in “false, misleading or emotionally manipulative” content to boost engagement and corporate profits.
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The US needs to partner with allies to help set global mechanisms on platform transparency, share information on the evolving digital ecosystems and develop protocols for citizen resilience to online information, according to the letter.
The Congressmen warn that the COVID-19 vaccine will not cure the online infodemic and conspiracy will continue to be exploited.
“We encourage you to work with researchers, scholars and civil society to understand the impact of disinformation and misinformation on American society and we stand ready to assist you in putting forward these new initiatives," said Jennifer Wexton (VA), David Cicilline (RI), Donald Beyer (VA), Zoe Lofgren (CA), Bill Foster (IL), Bill Keating (MA) Yvette Clark (NY), Jamie Raskin (MD), Elissa Slotkin (MI).
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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