---

---

---

US economy grew 3.2 percent in early 2019, smashing expectations

---

---

---

---

62-year-old Michael Fife of Logan died after being struck shortly after being accused of a sexual assault aboard a Cache Valley Transit District bus.

According to a news release from the Logan Police Department, the incident happened around 3:00 p.m. on April 23.

A 16-year-old girl called her 17-year-old brother and told him the man had sexually assaulted her.

Minutes later, the brother met Fife as he exited the bus near 300 South 100 West in Logan.

He assaulted Fife who fell to the ground and suffered head injuries when he hit the sidewalk.

“Kind of a linebacker-type charge toward the gentleman, knocking him down,” said Chief Gary Jensen with Logan Police. “This is an absolutely horrible event.”


...


Investigators reviewed surveillance video from the CVTD bus.

It showed Fife walking past the girl, but no sexual assault took place, according to the news release.

---

---

---

---

Muslim Conductor tried to convert audience to Islam! Dutch Orchestra Walks Out on him .

When the most liberal country in Europe pulls the plug on Islam, the world is beginning to see the light.

Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands attended a concert in the capital, Amsterdam.

The Guest Conductor, who just happens to be Muslim, proceeded to give the Queen a lecture on the "beauty" of Islam.

The entire orchestra got up and walked out, refusing to be associated with someone lecturing their Queen.

The staff of the music hall escorted the conductor off-stage, and after questioning, out of the building.

Now that took courage. Good for the people of Holland.

Watch the walk out.

Bet you didn't see this on your local news.

---

---

Twitter Suspends User Who Made Viral Videos Retweeted by President Trump

Carpe Donktum, which creates popular meme videos frequently retweeted or reposted by President Trump, has been hit with a 12 hour suspension.

---

---

Twitter Bans Creepy Porn Lawyer Parody Account in War Against Comedy

Twitter’s war on comedic conservatives continues.

---

---

---

---

Colorado Students Walk Out Of School Shooting Vigil After It Turns Political

---

---

---

---

Banned from Facebook? A Polish Court May Help

A Polish group is suing Facebook for “private censorship” in a potentially landmark case.


Facebook is often criticized for not doing enough to police its platform for hate speech. But the opposite has also been a problem: Mark Zuckerberg’s company uses rather vague “community standards” as the basis for decision to remove users and posts. It doesn’t feel compelled to explain exactly how it applies them, either. Now, a Polish court may decide it should.

When Facebook banned Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Louis Farrakhan, Laura Loomer and others last week, all it said was that “the process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision.” The prominent right-wingers with huge audiences on the Facebook-owned platforms didn’t, in other words, get much in the way of explanation.

Those banned from Facebook and Instagram last week might take a look at Poland, where a local non-governmental organization is suing Facebook for removing its page. The Polish nonprofit, called the Civil Society Drug Policy Initiative and known by the Polish abbreviation SIN for short, filed suit against Facebook’s European arm in the Warsaw District Court this week. At least in Europe, the case may help set up more transparent procedures for banning content and its creators from social networks.

The group specializes in “harm reduction,” an approach to fixing drug-related social problems in part by removing the stigma from drug use and respecting users’ rights. It may be controversially soft on drug users, but the approach has been backed by the United Nations and influential private donors and is by no means illegal.

SIN says Facebook shut down its page last year without explaining what rules it had broken; the organization used the social network’s appeal procedure but the ban was upheld, again without a clear explanation – just like in the case of U.S. right-wingers who were kicked off. SIN activists suspect Facebook's human moderators, or perhaps an algorithm, erroneously decided that the page, with 16,000 subscribers, encouraged drug use.

The group is represented pro bono by a prominent Warsaw law firm and aided by another NGO, Panoptykon, which describes itself as a civil society watchdog over all kinds of regulators. SIN mostly wants the page reinstated because it says it was important as a hotline for drug users the organization is trying to help as well as an information channel. Panoptykon’s goals are broader: It’s trying to set a precedent and have the practice it describes as “private censorship” explicitly regulated.

Poland is a country with a right-wing, nationalist government, and the ruling Law and Justice Party has long grumbled about U.S.-based social networks’ banning practices. Like those in the U.S. who were banned, its members see a liberal bias in the platforms’ policies. In 2017, the country's Digital Affairs Ministry drafted a bill that would make the social networks liable for “over-removal” of content, but the bill never made it to parliament, derailed by a ministry reorganization. Panoptykon’s approach, however, is distinct from the right-wing criticism: It’s trying to stress the nonpartisan nature of the “private censorship” issue by backing the drug policy nonprofit’s case.



...

---

---

Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Says Company Should Be Broken Up

One of the social-media giant’s originators calls its power ‘unprecedented and un-American’

Chris Hughes, who helped Mark Zuckerberg create the company that eventually became Facebook Inc., is calling for the social-media giant to be broken up.

In a nearly 6,000 word opinion essay published online Thursday in the New York Times, Mr. Hughes said the Facebook chief executive has gained power that is both “unprecedented and un-American.”

...

---

---

Chris Hughes’s Call to Break Up Facebook: 5 Takeaways

...

Mark Zuckerberg is really powerful. Like, cartoonishly, Bond-villain powerful.

Mr. Hughes describes the breathtaking power that Mark Zuckerberg has amassed through a combination of market dominance and lack of regulatory oversight.

...

Facebook’s founders had no idea of the power of what they were building.

The power of social media companies to rewire how humankind communicates was obvious. But the new tools had unintended consequences and soon started to alter society in alarming ways.

...

Facebook’s concentration of power and influence is part of a trend that extends beyond Silicon Valley.

Mr. Hughes sets the power of Facebook in the context of a broader movement toward monopolistic consolidation.

...

There are no alternatives to Facebook. That’s the problem.

No major social networking company has been founded since the fall of 2011. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as many as one in four Facebook users in the United States deleted the
app from their phones, at least temporarily. But they often migrated to Instagram or WhatsApp, not realizing that both companies were also owned by Facebook.

Mr. Hughes writes that Facebook’s ubiquity was a result of Mr. Zuckerberg’s drive to grow and the government’s unwillingness to do anything to stop it. “The company’s strategy was to beat every competitor in plain view, and regulators and the government tacitly — and at times explicitly — approved.”

Now, Facebook isn’t checked by conventional market forces. “This means that every time Facebook messes up, we repeat an exhausting pattern: first outrage, then disappointment and, finally, resignation,” Mr. Hughes writes.

---

---

---