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Mark Zuckerberg, who often bends with the political winds, is getting out of the fact-checking business. And this is part of a broader effort by the Meta CEO to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump after a long and testy relationship. After a previous outcry, Zuck made a great show of declaring that Facebook would hire fact-checkers to combat misinformation on the globally popular site. That was a clear sign that Facebook was becoming more of...

Democrats held onto their narrow majorities in Virginia’s legislature as they won two of three special elections on Tuesday in the first ballot box showdowns of 2025. The closely-watched contests were seen by the political world as the first gauge of the mood of voters since President-elect Trump’s convincing victory in November, in elections that also saw Republicans win control of the U.S. Senate and hold their fragile House majority. They’re also viewed as an...

A prominent fact-checking organization used by Facebook to moderate political content reacted to news that it will revamp its fact-checking to better avoid bias with an article outlining its disappointment and disagreement with the move.  ‘Lead Stories was surprised and disappointed to first learn through media reports and a press release about the end of the Meta Third-Party Fact-Checking Partnership of which Lead Stories has been a part since 2019,’ Lead Stories editor Maarten Schenk wrote...

The White House’s outgoing cyber czar, Harry Coker, called for three key things to meet the growing threat of digital attacks: more funding, deregulation and opening up cyber jobs to those without college degrees. As adversaries like Iran, China and Russia lob near-constant attacks on the U.S. digital infrastructure, ‘we have to prioritize cybersecurity within federal budgets’ President Joe Biden’s national cyber director said at an event with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington,...