Meta is now allowing 2020 election denialism in political ads

New York CNN — Meta will allow political ads on its platforms to question the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, part of a rollback in election-related content moderation among major social media platforms over the past year ahead of the 2024 US presidential contest.

The policy means that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will be able to directly profit from political ads that boost false claims about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. While the company will allow political advertisements to claim that past elections, including the 2020 presidential race, were rigged, it will prohibit those that “call into question the legitimacy of an upcoming or ongoing election.”

The change is part of a year-old policy update but has not been widely reported. The Wall Street Journal reported Meta’s ads policy change earlier Wednesday.

Meta says the policy allowing 2020 election denialism in political ads was part of an August 2022 announcement about its approach to last year’s midterm elections, when the company said it would prohibit ads targeting users in the United States, Brazil, Israel and Italy that discourage people from voting, call into question the legitimacy of an upcoming or ongoing election or prematurely claim an election victory. The same month, Meta told The Washington Post that it would not remove posts from political candidates or regular users that claim voter fraud or that the 2020 election was rigged. |Read more https://www.cnn.com/business/tech/meta-political-ads-2020-election-lies/index.html| cnn.com/business/tech/meta-pol…

#cdnpoli #meta #advertising #profit #SocialMedia #presidential #rigged #facebook #instagram #election

Manning panel gives 90 recommendations on Alberta’s COVID-19 pandemic response

Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, who chaired the panel, says a senior science officer could create a roster of experts from medicine, social sciences, psychology and law to advise on decisions and their potential effects.

The report has more than 90 recommendations on how the province can better prepare rules, regulations and its organizational structure.

“The hope is to improve the capacity of the province to respond to any future public emergency — not just health emergencies — but any provincewide emergency,” Manning said.

He said Albertans were negatively affected by the pandemic — their health, of course, but also the economy suffered, unemployment rose, children saw learning and socialization losses. Health workers and teachers were put under enormous strain, he said.

The core recommendation is that all provincewide emergencies are to be directed by cabinet and implemented through the Alberta Emergency Management Agency.

Lorian Hardcastle, an associate professor in the faculty of law at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, noticed two big themes from the report.

“It recommends that authority for public health decision-making shift from the chief medical officer of health and scientists and into the hands of government. It would be a centralization of power in the hands of government,” she said.

Steve’s Note:So the lunatic who promoted Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) on her radio show, has the final word on our health. |Read more https://globalnews.ca/news/10093285/preston-manning-panel-alberta-covid/| globalnews.ca/news/10093285/pr…

#abpoli #covid #report #PrestonManning #pandemic #authority #healthcare #PublicHealth

Debunking the Alberta Government’s Plan to Secede from the Canada Pension Plan

A new report was released today by the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) in partnership with Alberta workers and retirees.

This report fills a major gap in information that has been missing from the conversation about the UCP government’s proposal to take Albertans out of the Canada Pension Plan.

The report, prepared by the AFL in cooperation with highly-regarded pension expert Murray Gold, is titled “Big Risks, No Rewards: Debunking the Alberta government’s plan to secede from the Canada Pension Plan.”

The comprehensive report corrects the misleading claims being made by the Alberta government in their multi-million-dollar ad campaign being funded by Albertans’ tax dollars. It also fills in the missing details about the risks associated with the Alberta pension plan being proposed.

For example, the report demonstrates that Albertans are not “over-contributing” to CPP, as the government claims. In fact, all Canadian workers contribute in the same ways to the CPP and receive benefits based on exactly the same formula, no matter where in Canada they work, live, or choose to retire.

The report also demonstrates that there’s no realistic possibility that Alberta would be able to walk away with 53 percent of the CPP fund or that a stand-alone Alberta plan would be able to deliver higher benefits as the government claims.

You can check out the report by clicking here. https://afl.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Big-Risks-No-Rewards-pension-report-15NOV23.pdf | afl.org/wp-content/uploads/202…

#abpoli #pension #APP #CPP #AFL #politics #pdf #report #benefits #workers

166 countries were ranked on their level of preparedness https://www.statista.com/chart/29789/map-of-countries-preparation-for-frontier-technologies/ to start using frontier technologies with the five following indicators: ICT, Skills, Industry, Research and Development and Finance. The following map uses the summed rank of each indicator to give a final score. For example, where the U.S. ranked in 2nd place for R&D, 11th for ICT, 18th for skills, 16th for industry and 2nd for finance, the sum was 49.

At the bottom of the list comes Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and South Sudan. These five countries each ranked near the bottom across all five categories.

As the following chart shows, there’s a clear divide between high income countries and lower income countries. Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa are the least ready to harness frontier technologies, which means they are most at risk of missing out on current technological opportunities.