TechLife

After Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges Friday stemming from his self-defense killing of two rioters and the injury of a third in August of 2020, a crowdfunding platform explained its decision to ban him raising money for his legal defense.  "GoFundMe’s Terms of Service prohibit raising money for the legal defense of an alleged violent crime," GoFundMe, a popular online crowdfunding tool, said. 

Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin announced his transition steering committee and advisors on Wednesday. The group includes Republican legislators, Republican Party of Virginia officials, and the three previous Republican governors of Virginia. Former Democratic Governor Doug Wilder is also on the list; he aimed several attacks at opponent former Governor Terry McAuliffe during the campaign without ever endorsing Youngkin. The list also includes Sentara Chief of Staff Aubrey Layne, who was a cabinet official to both Governor Ralph Northam and McAuliffe.

Despite former President Donald J. Trump's Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announcing plans to become a rival of newly-launched social media site GETTR, the CEO of the latter firm welcomed Trump into the social media space. “Congratulations to President Trump for re-entering the social media fray! Now Facebook and Twitter will lose even more market share. President Trump has always been a great deal-maker, but we just couldn’t come to terms on a deal," Miller said in a Wednesday statement. "And get ready for the new platform features GETTR has on the way: live-streaming, GVision short videos and our GETTR Pay payments system capabilities. Exciting new additions that will provide our global customer base an even better user experience. Let the downloads begin!”

Facebook's seemingly-unending stream of bad publicity continued this week, when it was fined nearly $70 million by the United Kingdom for what is being described as a deliberate lack of compliance into an anti-trust investigation.  The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been investigating Facebook's acquisition of Giphy for nearly a year, and ordered the company to produce information "required information related to an initial enforcement order (IEO) placed on it by the watchdog, despite repeated requests for it to do so," according to TechCrunch. 

After former President Donald J. Trump attempted to ban TikTok, a popular video streaming social network, the Chinese-owned company has overtaken Google-owned YouTube in popularity in the United States. "App users in the UK and US are spending more time on TikTok than on YouTube, a new report suggests," BBC reported. "Data from app monitoring firm App Annie indicates that average time per user spent on the apps is higher for TikTok, indicating high levels of engagement."

The mother of a U.S. Marine who died during the ISIS-affiliated attack on Kabul's airport has been suspended from Facebook and its subsidiary, Instagram.  "Shana Chappell, mother of Marine Kareem Nikoui who was killed in Kabul, had her FB and Instagram accounts suspended for posts she made about her son and her feelings about the President and Vice President," Lynn Afendoulis, former Michigan State Representative, said on Facebook. "This is horrifying. Her son GAVE HIS LIFE FOR OUR COUNTRY. She can say what she wants. Her FB account is back up. For now. God be with her."

Just a day after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted that the Biden administration is colluding with Facebook to censor "misinformation," Psaki advocated for even more online censorship. During a Friday press briefing, she advised social media companies to "create robust enforcement strategies that bridge their properties and provide transparency about rules."

CloutHub, a major social networking alternative to Big Tech giants like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, announced its full autonomy from Silicon Valley. Along with new features, CloutHub founder and CEO Jeff Brain said the company now hosts its product on its own servers, making it completely independent from Big Tech. Many social media companies rely on Big Tech for hosting services. Amazon is one of the largest hosting services in the world, and has caused trouble for alternative social media sites that used its servers. 

Tennessee will be the 37th state to join a massive anti-trust lawsuit against tech giant Google. Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III announced Wednesday that Tennessee will band together with the other states in the lawsuit in an attempt to combat what they see as anti-competitive trade practices. 

The founder of CloutHub, a free speech social media network, has responded to former President Donald J. Trump's class action lawsuit against several Silicon Valley titans, which the forty-fifth president announced Wednesday.  “I am pleased that President Trump is fighting back against Big Tech corporations after enduring months of blatant injustices," Jeff Brain said in press release. "His lawsuit is based on the infringement of his fundamental free speech rights that powerful companies such as Facebook and Twitter imposed based on their own political bias; a bias that has no place with such important keepers of our national public square online."