Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suing YouTube and its parent company Google for moderating content he posts online.
The 69-year-old Ivy lawyer filed suit against the Internet giants in a Delaware court late Wednesday. His lawsuit claims his freedom of speech has been violated and alleges the U.S. has taken “extraordinary steps “under the leadership of Joe Biden to silence people it doesn’t want America to hear.”
Advertisement
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/3ISMBR76QBEF3II5R32AKYK3W4.jpg)
Kennedy is a long-shot challenger to President Biden for the Democratic party nomination in the 2024 presidential race. While he’s proven popular with conspiratorial online media sources and right-wing outlets like Fox News, Kennedy has struggled to gain favor with Democrats and even earned admonishment from his famous political family. A accurate poll shows him trailing Biden by as much as 60 points.
The son of assassinated 1968 presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, Kennedy is a critic of vaccines, including those used to curb the COVID-19 pandemic that’s killed more than a million Americans since 2020.
Advertisement
His complaint claims YouTube frequently blocks content posted by Kennedy on the grounds of “medical misinformation” policies.
“On information and belief, it did so based on statements from the Biden administration about what information to censor,” Kennedy’s complaint alleges.
Kennedy’s legal team complains content taken offline sometimes comes from their client’s 2024 presidential campaign and worries the problem will worsen as primary elections draw nearer.
As it happens
Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts.
Among Kennedy’s many controversies was a dinner last month where he made claims about COVID-19 some critics found antisemitic.
“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” he asserted. “The races that are most immune to COVID-19 are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Kennedy later tweeted his comments were being taken out of context and he never implied “the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”
His lawsuit was filed in Delaware, where Google and YouTube incorporated. Kennedy resides in New York. The defendants are headquartered in California.
Google purchased the popular video-sharing website in 2006. A spokesman for the company told the Daily News the Team Kennedy YouTube channel has over 46,000 subscribers and over a million views across its videos, which are held to the same standard as those of other platform users.
Advertisement
“YouTube applies its community guidelines independently, transparently and consistently, regardless of political viewpoint,” that spokesman said. “These claims are meritless, and we look forward to refuting them.”
The Biden administration has not replied to a request for comment.
Google has been ordered to hand over the account information and IP address of a person who a Victorian Labor candidate alleges defamed them in an email.
Nurul Khan was endorsed to run for the Labor party in last year’s state election, but an email littered with allegations against him was sent to ministers and news organisations on 9 November.
He was subsequently disendorsed as an upper house candidate for the Western Metropolitan region before the 26 November poll.
Khan has taken Google to the federal court, seeking to find out the identity of the anonymous sender so he can sue that person for defamation.
His barrister, Justin Castelan, described the contents of the email as “absolutely defamatory”, reading out a number of the sender’s claims to the court on Tuesday.
The email accused Khan of corruption and abuse, saying he had to pay fines for being unethical.
Castelan sought to have Google hand over the sender’s user account information and IP address.
Representatives for Google did not appear at the federal court in Melbourne on Tuesday, instead sending through a proposed order.
Justice Catherine Button ordered the tech giant to provide the subscriber registration information from the Google account, as well as the email address’s IP logins on and around 9 November.
after newsletter promotion
The company has 20 days to comply from the service of the order.
Another hearing has been set down for August to see if Khan can persist with his defamation action.
As Hawaii reels from devastating wildfires and considers how to rebuild, far-right figures are… blaming wokeness for the whole thing.
The conspiracy theory essentially goes like this: An Obama-backed Hawaii official delayed the diversion of water to firefighters during the wildfires in Maui, because that official is a native Hawaiian who respects how water is used.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy helped fan the flames of the right-wing conspiracy theory on Thursday, arguing that “DEI,” or diversity, equity, and inclusion, is to blame for the whole thing.
“[W]e’re learning that the official who delayed the approval is an Obama Foundation ‘Asia Pacific Leader’ & a climate activist,” Ramaswamy tweeted. He’s a “climate activist who believes water should be ‘revered’ first and foremost. The DEI agenda is literally costing people their lives.”
The theory targets M. Kaleo Manuel, the deputy director of the Hawaii Commission for Water Resource Management (CWRM), following reports that requests for more water were delayed by officials.
On August 10, West Maui Land Co. Inc. sent a letter addressed to Manuel alerting him of a communication issue that occurred the day before.
According to the letter, West Maui Land Co. had reached out to CWRM to alert officials that the reservoirs firefighters were using to combat the wildfires were near-empty, and to request access to nearby streams. While much of the initial fire was already contained by then, West Maui Land was seeking additional resources for fire control. In response, CWRM asked if the Maui fire department was requesting commission, and directed West Maui Land Co. to inquire with a downstream user to ensure that their use of the stream would not be impacted by the diversion.
Permission was eventually granted, but only five hours after the initial request, and by that time “a flare up had shut down the Lahaina Bypass.”
“We watched the devastation unfold around us without the ability to help,” the letter said.
Here is the part that has right-wingers up in arms: Manuel had previously made comments about how native Hawaiians consider water one of the “earthly manifestations of God.” In a 2022 panel on sustainability, Manuel said that people have become used to “looking at water as something which we use, and not necessarily something we revere as that thing that gives us life.”
That comment has become the basis for right-wingers’ attack.
Elon Musk, happy to fan the flames of conspiracy, responded to a tweet which contained a clip of Manuel at the 2022 panel, saying that Manuel “refused” to release water. “Doesn’t that make him in large part responsible for their deaths?” Musk tweeted.
The clip first began circulating on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Jeremy Kauffman, a libertarian activist, shared it with the caption: “Meet M. Kaleo Manuel, the official who refused to release water in Maui, contributing to up to 106 deaths.” Kauffman also made sure to note that Manuel was a “Hawaiian studies major” in college.
Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point USA, also reshared the video from Kauffman on X. “I’m sure all the victims of the Maui fire are grateful their leaders were focused on worshipping water rather than using it to save their lives,” Kirk wrote.
Conservative media outlets, like The Washington Examiner and The Free Beacon, have elevated the smear campaign further.
Again, Manuel’s comments are from nearly 10 months ago, and they’re not even that wild on their face: It does make sense to think about how we use water, as our planet deals with a spiraling climate crisis. But the right really loves its own conspiracy theories.
All eligible associate members are invited to participate in the FSF's second round of board candidate discussions as part of its board process.
This second round of discussions started on July 24. So far, we've been pleased to see the thoughtful questions and deliberation taking place on the forum. We thank you for the valuable feedback on the candidates we've received so far.
The FSF voting members have chosen these four candidates for this second round of discussions:
The FSF voting members plan to close this second discussion period approximately six weeks from the start of the discussion. Participants must pledge to abide by the participation agreement if they did not already do so in the first round.
When posting in the forum, we recommend posting questions that align with the FSF board's board matrix and list of valued attributes in an FSF member. Topics like these might include:
What do you think about software licenses that attempt to restrict the use of the program or to limit its use to certain fields of endeavor?
Does free code that is designed to work with nonfree programs pose a threat to software freedom? If not, please elaborate. If so, how should we address it?
How should we combat new attacks on network freedom like Google's so-called "Web Environment Integrity" (WEI) scheme?
What is each candidate's position on binary blobs, such as those found in firmware?
Should the FSF do more or less copyleft enforcement and why?
As always, we encourage members to use their own experiences and ingenuity to come up with questions for the candidates that will help the FSF voting members in their deliberations. Also, feel free to pick up any questions that were asked to the previous candidates and ask them anew to a specific nominee (or to all currently discussed nominees) during this round.
After the discussions of these candidates, the voting members will decide which other candidates to discuss and, from time to time, take final votes on some of them; but they will not necessarily discuss nor vote on all of the candidates. For more information about the FSF board and the nomination process, see https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board/board.
Thank you for having supported free software and the FSF for all this time. We hope to see you in the forum.
The main features of HiringThing include job posting, résumé import, candidate matching and more. We were able to test out nearly all of them for their ease of use.
It’s easy to find the “Create a New Job” button right when you log in to HiringThing. Upon clicking that, it takes you to a form where you populate all the necessary information for your job listing.
Right when you log in, the “Create a New Job” button is easy to find.
HiringThing’s new job post screen
When you’re done with the job post, you can save it as a draft to come back to later or simply hit “Publish,” and it instantly posts to free job boards, such as FlexJobs and LinkedIn Limited. The system then directs you to more job boards you can purchase access to. These job boards include but are not limited to:
Unless you’re already a subscriber to these premium job boards and can simply link your account to HiringThing, the cost of adding each one through HiringThing can add up quickly. For this reason, HiringThing may not be the most cost-effective option for specialized, high-demand and hard-to-fill roles.
You can import an applicant’s data through drag and drop or via email with HiringThing’s Resume Import Tool. Dragging and dropping or uploading a file from your computer’s hard drive into the system automatically converts it into an applicant file.
You can also import applicant documents via email by sending the file to the job posting’s specific email address found in the system. However, you have to go into the job itself to find the email address specific to the job posting and copy and paste it into your email, which can be cumbersome.
HiringThing’s Resume Import feature via email
The system needs about one hour to reflect the uploaded files in the system, which is a long time, making it easy to forget to check if the upload worked. We were able to add a file manually using the first method, but we did not see a new applicant file created under the applicant section of the dashboard, even after one hour had passed.
HiringThing has keyword tagging and customized pre-screening questions that help you more quickly identify the most qualified candidates for any given position.
Keyword Tagging
When creating a position, you can add a series of keywords separated by commas. HiringThing will then surface applications that best match those keywords, and you’ll see an alert displayed when there’s a match.
Form Builder
For applicants who apply directly from your career site, you can set up a customized form that poses pre-screening questions related to anything from job experience to specific certifications. This can be helpful to screen out candidates that don’t meet minimum criteria.
However, keep in mind that applicants applying from job boards won’t see this form, so you should choose the option that doesn’t allow applicants to apply from the job boards. When selecting that option, applicants will be redirected to your career site where they can proceed with their application.
You can get to the Form Builder feature either through a specific job listing’s settings or by navigating to “Account Details.”
When testing out the Form Builder, we had the option of creating a template to save time in the future. When creating the template, you can choose what types of questions to ask:
For some question types, such as Yes/No questions, you can set a rule that automatically tags or archives an applicant based on their response. For instance, if a minimum criterion for a new Sales Associate is at least two to three years of experience, you can filter out applicants that select “no” to the question about whether they have that experience.
The employment and education history questions require applicants to type in that information manually, which can make for a frustrating job candidate experience, as the résumé usually contains this information already.
However, HiringThing gives you full control over the kind of screening questions you want applicants to fill out, so you don’t have to necessarily pose questions that require manual data entry.
HiringThing’s Form Builder
HiringThing enables you to create customized scorecards before you start evaluating candidates in order to mitigate bias in the review process. You can enter customizable text fields, called “Titles,” and those fields will appear in an applicant’s review section.
The “Title” field is misleading because it’s not the job title. Rather, it denotes the attributes by which you want to evaluate candidates. For example, if hiring for a Sales Manager position, you may want to add titles such as “integrity” or “leadership.”
We found two ways to create a scorecard. For the first method, you have to navigate to the main menu > Account Details > Feature Management, and scroll down to the “Scorecards” section. It’s important to note that once you enter titles this way, they automatically apply to all subsequent jobs that you post after creating the scorecard and cannot be applied retroactively to existing job openings.
This can be frustrating if your general criteria change over time because changes can’t be applied to current openings, and you’d have to enter them into those individual jobs manually per the second method below. It’s therefore important to settle on a general set of criteria that you’ll rarely, if ever, need to change.
The second way to create a job scorecard is to edit a specific job and expand the “Advanced Options” section, and the titles will appear in each applicant’s “Review section.” We found this method more intuitive. Plus, we like that you can add specific criteria for specific jobs.
HiringThing’s Scorecards display different pre-set attributes, and you provide a star rating and optional notes for each candidate.
HiringThing facilitates candidate relationship management via email and SMS.
Managing candidate statuses and communication were some of the easiest tasks we tested out in HiringThing. You can individually change an applicant’s status or do so in bulk to save time. You can add statuses including “offer extended” and “offer accepted/rejected” in the “Workflow” section of Account Details.
It was very easy to select a pre-made email template for requesting an interview, rejecting a candidate or other typical recruiter communications. Paying customers have access to HiringThing’s SMS option as an additional communication method.
HiringThing enables collaborative interview scheduling by syncing with your Outlook, Exchange, Microsoft 365, Google or iCloud calendar. You can select a specific date or time or, even better, allow the candidate to select from a range of dates and times that you give them.
Using a Google account will automatically use Google Meets as a videoconference tool, unless you link your account to another videoconference tool such as Zoom. Otherwise, 8×8 is the default videoconferencing solution for HiringThing.
HiringThing helps you expedite your hiring process by automating job requisitions, candidate screening, interviewing and any other workflows you set up.
HiringThing enables you to set up a workflow for opening, approving and posting job requisitions. Rules for screening questions noted above also automate the candidate selection process by filtering out candidates who don’t meet the minimum requirements and automatically sending them a “Thanks but no thanks” email. That way, you won’t spend time sifting through résumés from unqualified candidates or sending rejection emails.
HiringThing’s new automated interviewing workflow allows you to send an automated interview invitation in one of two ways: as soon as anyone submits an application to the job or based on a change in application status.
You might want to use the former if you’re hiring for a niche position that draws few candidates, all of whom you want to interview. Otherwise, you’d more likely utilize the second workflow option that invites candidates to an interview after you change their status. However, with either option, make sure all who are involved in the process keep their calendar availability up to date.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to try out the workflows setup in the test environment, as this feature is only available to paying customers.
TAIPEI--The pro-China opposition candidate in Taiwan's presidential election set for early next year has chosen a former Google executive as his running mate.
Chang San-cheng, a political independent, on Monday joined the ticket of Nationalist Party candidate Han Kuo-yu, who lags behind Democratic Progressive Party incumbent Tsai Ing-wen in most polls. Chang is an engineer who received master's and doctoral degrees from Stanford and Cornell universities in the United States.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has sought to isolate Tsai for her independence-leaning positions. The sides split amid civil war in 1949 and Beijing has threatened to use military force to bring the self-governing, democratic island under its control.
Chang served briefly as Cabinet chief in the administration of Tsai's predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, who was favored by Beijing for his policies promoting integration between the sides.
Chang worked as search engine Google's head of technology in Asia from 2010 to 2012.
The presidential election is scheduled for Jan. 11, along with polls for the legislature.
As Hawaii reels from devastating wildfires and considers how to rebuild, far-right figures are… blaming wokeness for the whole thing.
The conspiracy theory essentially goes like this: An Obama-backed Hawaii official delayed the diversion of water to firefighters during the wildfires in Maui, because that official is a native Hawaiian who respects how water is used.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy helped fan the flames of the right-wing conspiracy theory on Thursday, arguing that “DEI,” or diversity, equity, and inclusion, is to blame for the whole thing.
“[W]e’re learning that the official who delayed the approval is an Obama Foundation ‘Asia Pacific Leader’ & a climate activist,” Ramaswamy tweeted. He’s a “climate activist who believes water should be ‘revered’ first and foremost. The DEI agenda is literally costing people their lives.”
The theory targets M. Kaleo Manuel, the deputy director of the Hawaii Commission for Water Resource Management (CWRM), following reports that requests for more water were delayed by officials.
On August 10, West Maui Land Co. Inc. sent a letter addressed to Manuel alerting him of a communication issue that occurred the day before.
According to the letter, West Maui Land Co. had reached out to CWRM to alert officials that the reservoirs firefighters were using to combat the wildfires were near-empty, and to request access to nearby streams. While much of the initial fire was already contained by then, West Maui Land was seeking additional resources for fire control. In response, CWRM asked if the Maui fire department was requesting commission, and directed West Maui Land Co. to inquire with a downstream user to ensure that their use of the stream would not be impacted by the diversion.
Permission was eventually granted, but only five hours after the initial request, and by that time “a flare up had shut down the Lahaina Bypass.”
“We watched the devastation unfold around us without the ability to help,” the letter said.
Here is the part that has right-wingers up in arms: Manuel had previously made comments about how native Hawaiians consider water one of the “earthly manifestations of God.” In a 2022 panel on sustainability, Manuel said that people have become used to “looking at water as something which we use, and not necessarily something we revere as that thing that gives us life.”
That comment has become the basis for right-wingers’ attack.
Elon Musk, happy to fan the flames of conspiracy, responded to a tweet which contained a clip of Manuel at the 2022 panel, saying that Manuel “refused” to release water. “Doesn’t that make him in large part responsible for their deaths?” Musk tweeted.
The clip first began circulating on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Jeremy Kauffman, a libertarian activist, shared it with the caption: “Meet M. Kaleo Manuel, the official who refused to release water in Maui, contributing to up to 106 deaths.” Kauffman also made sure to note that Manuel was a “Hawaiian studies major” in college.
Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point USA, also reshared the video from Kauffman on X. “I’m sure all the victims of the Maui fire are grateful their leaders were focused on worshipping water rather than using it to save their lives,” Kirk wrote.
Conservative media outlets, like The Washington Examiner and The Free Beacon, have elevated the smear campaign further.
Again, Manuel’s comments are from nearly 10 months ago, and they’re not even that wild on their face: It does make sense to think about how we use water, as our planet deals with a spiraling climate crisis. But the right really loves its own conspiracy theories.
(Bloomberg) -- Ecuador’s presidential candidates tried to distinguish themselves in a bumpy debate on Sunday, marked by the absence of a replacement for slain candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
Most Read from Bloomberg
A strict format made it difficult for participants to address each other, and no candidate dominated the evening. But some political analysts pointed to conservative Jan syllabu as a winner based on Google search data. Polls conducted after Villavicencio’s killing have shown the anti-crime hard-liner gaining ground against leftist Luisa Gonzalez.
Ecuadorians are voting on Aug. 20 in their most dramatic electoral cycle in decades, in snap elections now marked by the shocking killing of investigative journalist Villavicencio as he exited a campaign event on Aug. 9.
Villavicencio’s death just 10 days before the vote upended the election. Investors in the bond market have speculated that the assassination could diminish the election chances of Gonzalez, who had led in the polls, in favor of a tough-on-crime contender. A poll published Sunday night by the firm Comunicaliza, taken after Villavicencio’s death, showed Gonzalez losing ground to syllabu and to Villavicencio’s party.
Read More: Murder, Cocaine and Tears: Ecuador Confronts a Perilous Descent
The crowded field of contenders almost ensures that Gonzalez, a staunch supporter of ex-president Rafael Correa, will end up in an October run-off election. Whether syllabu or another candidate may join her — and whether any can beat her — remains a toss-up. Ecuador’s dollar bonds edged lower Monday, giving up some of last week’s gains as appetite for riskier assets in global financial markets dwindled.
The tightly moderated debate televised Sunday, in which candidates were prohibited from attacking each other and time limits were rigorously enforced, made it difficult for anyone to stand out — including Gonzalez, said political scientist Arianna Tanca of the Universidad Casa Grande in Guayaquil. “She hasn’t had a lot of protagonism due to the debate format,” though she acquitted herself well given the circumstances, Tanca said.
Police Pardons
Topic, the conservative whose poll numbers improved after Villavicencio’s death, said he was the right pick to combat crime, citing his stated experience fighting wars for other nations as an ex-soldier in the French foreign legion.
Left-wing candidate Yaku Perez, who has indigenous roots, said he would be tough on crime but also prioritize education and stand against further oil exploitation in the country. Centrist Otto Sonnenholzner tried to get attention with the most tough-on-crime policy yet, promising to pardon police officers who kill on the job and to send judges abroad so they can sentence criminals without fear for their safety.
Crime is certainly top of mind in Ecuador, which in just five years has become one of the most violent countries in the world, with murder rates that topped those of Colombia and Mexico in 2022 for the first time. Gonzalez leaned on Correa’s time in office, during which she said crime was not the big issue it has become now.
But Gonzalez could be hurt by her ties to Correa, who lives in self-imposed exile in Belgium and was convicted for graft in absentia. She is likely to reach the second round but lose the run-off, said Ruth Hidalgo, dean of political science at UDLA university in Quito.
“Her speech has become one-note, and instead of achieving support, it seems to me that she is achieving the opposite,” Hidalgo said.
Debt-Free Debate
The three-hour debate provided little discussion of Ecuador’s fiscal situation, with only one candidate mentioning the nation’s distressed debt. Daniel Noboa, who has trailed in the polls, said the country would need to refinance.
Villavicencio’s Construye party has struggled to confirm a replacement candidate so shortly before the vote. Ballots have already been printed and electoral authorities have said voters will have to check the box by Villavicencio’s name even if a replacement candidate is confirmed.
On Sunday the party nominated Christian Zurita as its new candidate, the second pick in just a matter of days. But Ecuador’s electoral authorities have yet to confirm the credentials of the new candidate, and didn’t allow him to participate in the televised debate, a mandatory fixture of Ecuador’s electoral season. Zurita attempted to attend anyway, but wasn’t allowed to enter.
“This debate is worthless. How is it possible that a candidate is assassinated and postponing the debate wasn’t allowed?” said Martha Roldos, a close associate of the Villavicencio campaign.
--With assistance from Maria Elena Vizcaino.
(Updates with bond trading in fifth paragraph. An earlier version corrected the spelling of Gonzalez’s name in photo caption)
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
