"Major tax filing services such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have been quietly transmitting sensitive financial information to Facebook when Americans file their taxes online, The Markup has learned.  The data, sent through a widely used code called the Meta Pixel, includes not only information like names and email addresses but often even more detailed information, including data on users’ income, filing status, refund amounts, and dependents’ college scholarship amounts."

"Facebook's parent company Meta has been ordered by a Washington State court to pay $25 million in fines after it found that the social media platform violated Washington’s political disclosure law 822 separate times between 2019 and 2021."

“More than 50 officials in President Joe Biden’s administration across a dozen agencies have been involved with efforts to pressure Big Tech companies to crack down on alleged misinformation, according to documents released on Aug. 31.”

“Mark Zuckerberg has publicly said Facebook Inc. allows its more than three billion users to speak on equal footing with the elites of politics, culture, and journalism, and that its standards of behavior apply to everyone, no matter their status or fame.  In private, the company has built a system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules, according to company documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.”

We think this is a pretty interesting wrinkle. Seems like Facebook is unable to hide behind Section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act. “The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday in a Houston case that Facebook is not a “lawless no-man’s-land” and can be held liable for the conduct of pimps who use its technology to recruit and prey on children.”

“Judicial Watch announced today that it received 624 pages of records from the office of the Secretary of State of Iowa, revealing how state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter and Facebook) to censor posts about the 2020 election.”

“Facebook Inc did not notify the more than 530 million users whose details were obtained through the misuse of a feature before 2019 and recently made public in a database, and does not currently have plans to do so, a company spokesman said on Wednesday.”

“Facebook on Wednesday blocked people in Australia from posting news stories on its website, a drastic escalation in the battle over whether tech giants should pay publishers when their stories show up in search results or on social media.”

“The demand by Australia’s conservative coalition government that Google and Facebook pay for content is drawing results, with the tech giants revealing Monday they are close to deals with major news providers.”

“Facebook's independent Oversight Board has ruled against the social media giant's decision to remove an October 2020 post touting hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) - the antimalarial which Democrats and their media surrogates were cautiously optimistic about until former President Trump promoted it.”