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‘Like Big Tobacco selling ‘child-friendly’ cigarettes’: Facebook’s ‘Instagram for kids’ idea faces backlash from advocacy groups

Petitions calling on Facebook to abandon its plan to create an Instagram-like platform designed for children have garnered widespread support as the company faces backlash over the proposal.

More than 180,000 people signed three declarations penned by a coalition of advocacy and grassroots organizations, including Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, SumOfUs and the Juggernaut Project.

In March, Buzzfeed obtained internal documents showing that Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, wants to allow kids to “safely use” its popular photo- and video-focused social media platform.

The groups have collectively called on Facebook to shelve its version of Instagram for kids under 13, arguing that excessive use of social media is harmful to adolescents. The campaign says that many of the negative effects of social media, including issues related to self-image, would have devastating consequences for young people. The groups have noted that children under 13 are banned from having an Instagram account not run by a parent or guardian.

Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood said in a press release on Tuesday that the coalition of groups will submit the petitions, which were launched in early April, to Facebook ahead of the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting tomorrow.

Emma Ruby-Sachs, the executive director of SumOfUs, a non-profit that aims to hold corporations accountable on social and environmental issues, said Facebook’s plan for an ‘Instagram for kids’ is like “Big Tobacco selling ‘child-friendly’ cigarettes.” The initiative is “a cynical ploy to hook in users as early as possible that serves nobody’s interests except [Facebook CEO] Mark Zuckerberg’s,” she argued.

Josh Golin, the executive director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, employed similarly incendiary language when discussing Facebook’s intentions. Concerned parents and activists won’t allow young children to be used as “pawns” in Instagram’s “war with TikTok for market share,” he vowed.

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High School Track Star: Running Against Trans Athletes Is ‘Devastating,’ ‘Tells Me That I’m Not Good Enough’

Former high school track athlete Chelsea Mitchell said that competing against trans athletes was “devastating” to her confidence and opportunities, and she pledged to continue her legal battle to ban biological males from girls’ sports.

Mitchell, the “fastest girl in Connecticut,” wrote an op-ed in USA Today on Sunday explaining why she and three other athletes sued the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) last year over the state’s decision to allow trans athletes to compete based on gender identity instead of biology.

Mitchell competed against biologically male athletes for most of her high school career and said that continuous losses to those trans athletes was demoralizing to her and other girls in the sport.

“I’ve lost four women’s state championship titles, two all-New England awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to male runners. I was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two male runners. With every loss, it gets harder and harder to try again,” she wrote.

“That’s a devastating experience. It tells me that I’m not good enough; that my body isn’t good enough; and that no matter how hard I work, I am unlikely to succeed, because I’m a woman,” she added.

Mitchell and fellow female high school athletes Alanna Smith, Selina Soule, Ashley Nicoletti sued CIAC in February 2020 for allowing two biological males, transgender students Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, to compete in girls track and field competitions. A federal district judge dismissed the lawsuit in April, ruling that the question was moot since Yearwood and Miller had graduated and were no longer competing in high school sports.

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Media Pretending They Never Tried to Censor Those Writing About the Wuhan Lab-Leak Theory

The possibility of a leak from a virus lab in Wuhan being responsible for the coronavirus pandemic was a mainstream theory on the virus’s origins when it was first advanced. The media was quoting their sources in U.S. intelligence that were looking into that angle. But after the tainted WHO origins team finished their “investigation” and announced that not only was there no sign the disease leaked from a Wuhan lab but that the team would no longer continue to investigate the lab-leak theory, the media began a campaign to silence those who wanted to write or talk about it.

Then, this past week, two stories appeared that changed the momentum of reporting on the lab-leak theory. A group of 18 prominent scientists said it was too early to dismiss the lab-leak theory and that the WHO investigation had been tainted by Chinese government interference. The scientists called for another independent investigation.

This past weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence believes that several workers at the Wuhan lab became ill in the fall of 2019, leading to hospitalizations.

Suddenly, it’s all the rage in the mainstream media to talk about the possibility of a lab -eak that caused the pandemic. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has succumbed and now says he’s “not sure” the coronavirus occurred naturally.

But many prominent scientists have been calling for another investigation — including the lab-leak hypothesis — since the WHO team got back from China in March. And U.S. intelligence agencies have claimed all along that the lab-leak theory could not be dismissed.

They will never admit it, but the media and the left turned a reasonable hypothesis into a conspiracy theory almost overnight. In truth, there were some on the right advancing hysterical theories of a “bio-weapon,” but few serious writers ever posited the notion that the coronavirus was a deliberate attack.

But turning the theory into a “conspiracy theory” and all the baggage that term brings to the discussion was done because it was a useful political club to discredit Donald Trump and his supporters. Admittedly, the lab-leak theory is based on a lot of circumstantial evidence. But so is the animal-to-human theory of transmission. The key to understanding the media’s hysterical pushback against the lab-leak theory is in the burning desire to see Donald Trump — and his supporters — dismissed as kooks and crazies.

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Donald Trump Breaks Silence on Upcoming Pentagon UFO Report

The Pentagon revealed the existence of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force in 2020; the programme is tasked with gathering all info the military has on UFO sightings which cannot be rationally explained.

Former US President Donald Trump said that he is a “believer in what you see” when he was asked about the existence of UFO amid the upcoming Pentagon report on the phenomena during Dan Bongino’s new radio show.

“I’m a believer in what you see, but there are a lot of people out there who are into that. I get that so much: ‘is it true, sir?’” Trump told the host.

His comments come as the Pentagon is scheduled to release a report on UFO to Congress in June. The report is compiled by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.

“I’m not such a believer, but some people are, so I don’t want to hurt their dreams or their fears,” the former President said. “It could be fears more than dreams.”

The upcoming Pentagon report is part of a provision in the $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and appropriations bill that then-President Donald Trump signed last year. The stipulation called for a “detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence” from the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, and the FBI.

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Biden and Fauci Host A Youtuber Who Disparaged ‘White People’

Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci continue to struggle with public relations amid worldwide reports of vaccine recipients developing injuries and illnesses, and increasing scrutiny on the fact that Fauci funded a bat coronavirus project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak.

Biden and Fauci convened a string of Zoom calls with Youtube personalities to propagandize for the Coronavirus vaccine, in response to flagging enthusiasm for the vaccine among the young people. One of these personalities, Jackie Aina, who is routinely praised for diversifying the beauty expert genre, has made disparaging remarks about “white people.”

Aina said “why do white people HATE saying excuse me?! Lmfaooooo it’s so funny I’ll look someone dead in the face and wait for them to say it, and they just stand there nervously looking like they’re going to shite their parents even if they bump into ME!”

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The Kalam Cosmological Argument – Part 2: Philosophical

“He’s Too Busy Telling You A Lot Of Nonsense”: Rand Paul Calls Out Dr. Fauci

Tucker Carlson Tonight ​5/24/21

Ivermectin science for COVID (from Livestream #80)

DeSantis Signs Law Allowing People to Sue ‘Big Tech’ for ‘Deplatforming’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, on Monday signed a bill that allows “any person to sue Big Tech companies for up to $100,000 in damages” for “deplatforming.”

“This session, we took action to ensure that ‘We the People’ — real Floridians across the Sunshine State — are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites,” DeSantis said in a statement. “Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela. If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”

He tweeted on Monday: “Florida’s Big Tech Bill gives every Floridian the power to fight back against deplatforming and allows any person to sue Big Tech companies for up to $100,000 in damages. Today, we level the playing field between celebrity and citizen on social media.”

The governor’s office said that under the law, “All Floridians treated unfairly by Big Tech platforms will have the right to sue companies that violate this law — and win monetary damages. This reform safeguards the rights of every Floridian by requiring social media companies to be transparent about their content moderation practices and give users proper notice of changes to those policies, which prevents Big Tech bureaucrats from ‘moving the goalposts’ to silence viewpoints they don’t like.”

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