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Facebook has had many moments of supposed reckoning in recent years. Is this one different?

"That's not funny." - my mom, probably.

Silicon Valley is often praised for its enlightened workplaces, with tech companies offering amenities such as yoga classes, free organic food, and nap pods. But Facebook employees evidently believe these corporate perks extend to the coddling of their personal political views. At least that’s one…

Plus, the phone booth baby finds his mom.

No.

First they came for the Infowars host. Then they stopped.

Facebook and Twitter suffer blows while the rest of the tech market strengthens.

It’s the telecoms who are invading our privacy.

An old rumor finds new life.

Are we talking about the same lawmaker?

Angry nerds, everywhere.

On May 15, Facebook released its first-ever “Community Standards Enforcement Report.” Despite its numbingly bureaucratic title, the report contains startling details about the scope of the challenge facing the company as it tries to monitor violent, extremist, and false content on its platform;…

Facebook’s unofficial approach to violating the privacy of its users has always been “ask for forgiveness, not permission.” This week’s testimony by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg before a joint Judiciary and Commerce Committee in the Senate on Tuesday and the House Energy and Commerce Committee on…

Plus, Title IX... forever?

Plus, the British Virgin Islands Marlins?

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, managing editor Christine Rosen discusses Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress.

The one big thing Zuckerberg's testimony didn't address.

From hero to zero.

The Facebook founder faced five hours of questioning by senators; on Wednesday he's back to face the House.

Plus, why Trey Gowdy hated his time in Congress.

Silicon Valley has long been the Wild West of capitalism, but we may finally be reaching a point where Congress feels both entitled and justified in starting to regulate monopolistic tech giants. Exhibit A: The announcement Wednesday that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be testifying before…

What better time to cover satirical news than in the immediate wake of April Fool's day?

The other day on the Daily Standard Podcast, we mused about whether we could recognize an historic turning point at the time it was happening. Usually, we have to wait for historical perspective to distinguish world-changing moments from the usual alarms and blips of the news cycle.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Jonathan V. Last and Jim Swift discuss whether it's time to regulate Facebook, and Bill Kristol drops in to discuss the 2020 presidential elections. Will there be a third-party challenge?

“Believe me,” said—well, not really “said,” but posted—Mark Zuckerberg. Raising Chico Marx’s old question, Who are you going to trust, me or your lying eyes?

The Facebook Apology Tour. Earlier this morning I joined our managing editor Christine Rosen on the Daily Standard Podcast to discuss the Zuckerberg walk of shame. Do have a listen! Some supplementary reading: Nick Gillespie at Reason makes the same point I do about regulating FB, and over at the…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, managing editor Christine Rosen and deputy online editor Jim Swift discuss Facebook's apology tour, the coming trade war, and the Trump-Biden boxing match.

Imagine: A high-level political consultant admits he mined Facebook data to target likely voters in swing states. He says he helped “build this thing called targeted sharing” that “allowed us to use Facebook to persuade people.” Cambridge Analytica? No, that was Democratic strategist Jim Messina,…

(Updated: 8:00 a.m.) The firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was a textbook example of Donald Trump’s approach to personnel decisions: abrupt, humiliating, and executed from a safe distance. The White House maintains that Tillerson was encouraged to resign twice last week and warned that…

“Russia Only Bought Facebook Ads After Trump Won The Election,” a headline from Milo Yiannopoulos’ site Dangerous.com claimed on Monday.

Day Zero approaches in Cape Town. This Guardian feature about the water crisis in South Africa is fascinating.

The Florida Supreme Court became one of the first courts in the world to air its proceedings live on Facebook.

"The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open,” said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg eight years ago. “A lot of times, I run a thought experiment, ‘If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?’ ”

Fred Barnes always told me that the two most boring words in the English language were “entitlement reform.” Well, “net neutrality” is probably second on the list.

Ranking the best national chains. Tom Sietsema, the Washington Post's food critic, spent some time at D.C.-area chain restaurants. His rankings are as critical as they are for D.C.'s finest food purveyors. Biggest loser? Buffalo Wild Wings. Biggest winner? Cracker Barrel. Sonny Bunch's favorite,…

Over the past couple of years, a succession of American tech executives have decamped to Beijing to pander to the dictatorial leadership there. Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, has shown a penchant for flattering the ruling caste in China; he has repeatedly visited the country that his company,…

Can you hear me now? Apparently, one of president Trump's top economic advisors faked a bad connection while in a meeting with Democratic senators on tax reform to get the President to stop talking. Yikes.

Let’s say that someone—maybe Jack Donaghy, or Steve Jobs, or God—appeared in a dream and asked you to come up with the worst idea in the history of the internet. What would you tell them?

Last week’s Senate hearings on Russia-linked social media accounts inciting political animosity gave us a vivid picture of one way in which the Russian government is making trouble in America. You don’t have to believe that Russian social media “bots” and “trolls” stole the election from Hillary…

Toothpaste, a 7,000-year-old product, is rarely a leading indicator. But the world’s top purveyor of the stuff—along with laundry detergent, dish soap, diapers, and other sundries—made a decision earlier this year that could portend a big shift in the advertising industry.

Uber comes along and ends the rainy days and nights of waving fruitlessly at cabs with flashing “off duty” signs, and governments respond to pressures from threatened incumbents by making life difficult or impossible for the welfare-enhancing newcomer.

Well-known tech companies are surpassing analysts’ expectations in reporting earnings this week, the latest sign that tech companies are increasingly finding ways to take in more money as we live more of our lives online.

The three technology media giants absorbing most of the spotlight for Russian influence in 2016 election on their respective platforms are poised to testify in open hearings next week before Congress.

The president’s effort to help get tax reform passed by the end of this year is in full swing. Tuesday night Donald Trump held a bipartisan dinner at the White House with three Republican senators on the Senate Finance committee and three moderate Democrats up for reelection next year in swing…

On August 30, New America president Anne-Marie Slaughter terminated the left-leaning think tank’s relationship with scholar Barry C. Lynn and his Open Markets program. Slaughter says that Lynn was not abiding by New America’s “standards of openness and institutional collegiality.” He says he was…

On August 30, New America president Anne-Marie Slaughter terminated the left-leaning think tank’s relationship with scholar Barry C. Lynn and his Open Markets program. Slaughter says that Lynn was not abiding by New America’s “standards of openness and institutional collegiality.” He says he was…

“The trusts are hijous monsters. On the one hand they must be crushed underfoot; on the other hand not so fast.” So spake Mr. Dooley, the fictitious Irish bartender and font of wisdom created by Finley Peter Dunne in the late 19th century. Trusts were the form monopolies took at the time. Dooley…

A reader alerts TWS Fact Check to a "news" story that the Supreme Court has banned public schools from teaching about Islam. The post, which has been making the rounds on Facebook for several weeks, claims that Justice Neil Gorsuch issued the deciding opinion in an April 10 ruling to restrict…

Lost in the hysterical overreaction to the Trump Administration ordering government agencies to suspend Twitter and Facebook communications until the new administration's policies could be fully laid out is the disturbing fact that the U.S. government appears to have a social media footprint any…

It's come to this. Facebook has been so bullied over the "fake news" narrative since the election that they're actively appointing a panel of censors to police speech on Facebook:

In a leaked memo, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his Trump-loving board member and early investor Peter Thiel—in the name of intellectual diversity.

"Things taste better when you make them yourself, and they taste doubly better when you’ve hunted the animal yourself. Whether you're fishing for the salmon, or going hunting for a boar, that's a big part of it. You feel more connected to what you're doing, to what you're eating, you cook it…

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook has been experimenting with its hiring policies "to help diversify its largely white, largely male workforce." Thus, two years ago the company began to incentivize in-house recruiters by offering them 1.5 points "for a so-called 'diversity hire'—a black,…

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook has been experimenting with its hiring policies “to help diversify its largely white, largely male workforce." Thus, two years ago the company began to incentivize in-house recruiters by offering them 1.5 points "for a so-called 'diversity hire'—a black,…

For nearly two decades now, conservatives have been scoffing at Hillary Clinton's suggestion that there is a "vast right-wing conspiracy," let alone that it is responsible for the fact that her husband can't keep it in his pants. However, the statement has also always had a sinister undercurrent,…

Allegations that Facebook censors conservative news from its "trending topics" widget has drawn condemnation from the right. The response would have been just fine had it included political complaints and not a government inquiry.

The Centers for Disease Control recently announced the availability of $76 million in grants for the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) program. This program is designed to "monitor the HIV epidemic" and detect changes in HIV-risk behaviors among high-risk population groups with an eye…

Last week, there was yet another news frenzy over something that happened on social media. A Muslim Northwestern University chaplain, Tahera Ahmad, wrote on her Facebook page that she was in "tears of humiliation from discrimination" because a flight attendant refused to give her an unopened can of…

In one of his gag appearances, this one as a 2000-year old man, Mel Brooks was asked to name the greatest invention he had witnessed in his long life. “Saran wrap,” he shot back. A useful product, surely, but if environmentalists had the power they now have, unlikely to have emerged from the lab…

Normally The Scrapbook is pleased to learn of advances in technology allowing greater numbers of people access to the news. Ceteris paribus, these innovations help cultivate an informed public and, we like to hope, keep our journalistic colleagues from the economic chopping block just a little…

They are men, mostly. They are young, mostly. They are visionaries on a mission -- to systematize and make all the world’s knowledge accessible (Google); to connect all the world’s people with each other (Facebook); to change the way books are read and the sound of music is heard (Apple, Amazon);…

Governor Chris Christie has a big fan in Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The New Jersey governor posted a video on the social media website from his latest town hall event. Zuckerberg "liked" the post and even commented. Check out a screenshot below:

The Pentagon called the hacking of the Central Command's (CENTCOM) YouTube and Twitter accounts Monday "cyber vandalism" in a letter to service members and their families to allay concerns about the incident. General Lloyd Austin said that the FBI is investigating the "alleged breach" of the two…

The Sony hackers made a big mistake by logging into Facebook, according to a report in the New York Times. The mistake, according to the report, revealed the hackers were working for North Korea.

NBC news reports that:

Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times reports that Facebook has disclosed that it:

The practice of “sharing” is now so widespread and ingrained in our daily lives that it bids fair to become the distinguishing feature of our age, much as the use of stone tools once defined an earlier period of progressive enlightenment. As with other important developments in our cultural and…

For those of us who believe in the market system, there is something unsettling about the thought of the billionaire bosses of Google, Apple, Adobe, Intel, two Disney subsidiaries, and Intuit sitting around a table and agreeing not to compete for staff. Facebook declined an invitation to join the…

There is much to lament about the rise of social media and the damage it has done to ordinary human activities and interactions.  And now we learn that it is leeching away the loyalty of American college students for their football teams.  Attendance in the student section is down in, of all…

Social media resembles the halls of high school in many ways.  Not least, according to a recent study (and what would we do without studies?), in the transitory effects on your mood. As Geoffrey Mohan writes in the Los Angeles Times:

Along with the usual tools employed by dictators, tyrants, and strongmen – torture, mass murder, slaughter of civilians by poison gas, etc. – Syria's Bashar al-Assad has gone digital and modern as Nabih Bulos of the Los Angeles Times reports:

This week we have entry #5,740,412 in the ledger documenting "Why Not Every Market-Based Outcome Is Optimal." And that’s the Yahoo purchase of Tumblr.

The country has been crying out for another big-money lobbying effort and now, as Jennifer Martinez writes in the Hill, "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is helping launch a new lobbying organization with a group of prominent Washington political consultants and tech executives."

With Americans being held hostage in Algeria, the U.S. embassy in that country is posting Facebook photos of ... "Rubik’s Cubes Portrait of Martin Luther King Jr." Here's a screen grab:

The Pakistani Taliban is now recruiting new hires on Facebook. "The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan have created a Facebook page to recruit persons to write for a planned quarterly magazine and to work on tasks like video editing and translation," the Times of India reports.

Facebook makes a big purchase.

Early in my career I worked for the ad agency that invented the modern-day Super Bowl commercial. This year, my partners produced the Sling Baby ad for Doritos, which was one of the Sunday’s most popular spots, according to USA Today’s AdMeter.

Washington Times: Tony Blankley, 1948-2012

Great minds and all that: "Did the left blow its cover on the war on the Kochs?"

The New York Times has an interesting article today about the use of social media like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter by museums to foster online communities built around common interest in art:

James O'Keefe has a new NPR video out and SPOILER ALERT: It's also really embarassing.

Look at the outer shell--the parachute pants, the piano-key tie, the fake tuxedo T-shirt--and you might mistake me for a slave to fashion. Do not be deceived. Early adoption isn't my thing. I much prefer late adoption, that moment when the trend-worshipping sheeple who have early-adopted drive the…