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An Alabama mayor will be able to raise qualified immunity as a defense against a lawsuit filed after she allegedly blocked a critic from her official Facebook page, the Eleventh Circuit said, concluding that it wasn’t clear at the time whether blocking violated the First Amendment.Tammi Taylor filed the lawsuit against Pam Palmer, the mayor of Adamsville, Ala., after Taylor was blocked from posting comments on the city’s Facebook page for a week in 2016. Taylor’s argued that the block violated her right to free speech. The mayor raised qualified immunity as a defense against being sued in her ... Learn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading: Learn About Bloomberg Law AI-powered legal analytics, workflow tools and premium legal & business news. Already a subscriber? Log in to keep reading or access research tools.  » Read More

Media caption, Watch: Where is Yevgeny Prigozhin? And why does it matter?Russian President Vladimir Putin met mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin after the failed Wagner group mutiny last month, the Kremlin says.Prigozhin, who heads the mercenary group, was among 35 Wagner commanders invited to the meeting in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added.He said that President Putin had given an "assessment" of the Ukraine war effort and the mutiny.The rebellion, launched on 23 June, lasted only 24 hours.Under a deal to end the mutiny, which saw Wagner troops seize a city and march on Moscow, charges against Prigozhin were dropped and he was offered a move to Belarus. There had been very public infighting between Wagner and Russia's ministry of defence over the conduct of the war. Prigozhin had repeatedly accused the ministry of failing to supply his group with ammunition.But on Monday, Mr Peskov said the Wagner chief was among the commanders who were invited to the Kremlin five days after the mutiny collapsed.  » Read More

Zachary Zeller is a car guy. Plain and simple. When he’s not running National Car Care, the business he owns, on Diamond Springs Road, he’s repairing his cars, racing them on weekends, and adding to his ever-growing personal collection of distinctive vehicles. Recently, Zeller added a 1929 Ford Model A to his collection. He had never considered acquiring a Ford Model A. It wasn’t on his list of preferred automobiles. When he came across an old Model A sedan that had been reconfigured into a makeshift pickup truck by an Edenton farmer, Zeller had to add the rusty, patina-covered vehicle to his wide-ranging stockpile of eccentric automotive treasures. “I’m a car guy so I’ll buy anything that tickles my interest,” said Zeller. “I had zero intention of ever buying a Model A in my life. I saw it online and thought – that’s cool.” Zachary Zeller bought a 1929 Ford Model A just to drive it. People have told Zeller that his old Ford looks like something straight out of the Beverly Hillbillies. Bob Ruegsegger/freelance Zeller spotted the Model A in a Facebook Marketplace listing.  » Read More

The Titan sub reached the depth of the Titanic wreck on 13 of 90 dives, per the passenger waiver. This meant OceanGate's success rate might have been as low as 14% on its deep-sea expeditions.  The Titan failed a test dive in 2021, and other trips were scrapped in the three years prior.  Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. OceanGate's Titan submersible only reached the depth of the Titanic wreck on 13 out of about 90 dives, according to the company's passenger waiver.The sub successfully completed "as few as 13" dives of 3,800 meters to the depth of the Titanic, per a waiver signed by a would-be passenger that was reviewed by Insider.It meant the company, which called the Titan "experimental" three times in the four-page liability waiver, may have only had a success rate of about 14% for its dives to Titanic depths.  » Read More

Skip to content The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill Mr. Zuckerberg, release the Facebook Files Getty Images mark zuckerberg “Sanity” has returned to the internet. That is the message of not only Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, but also a host of gleeful pundits heralding the arrival of  the “Twitter killing” text-based app Thread — the Twitter knock-off meant to destroy Elon Musk’s platform. This is not just a cage fight between the two billionaires. Many are more interested in whether Zuckerberg can choke out free speech than in whether he can beat Musk. Many critics opposed Musk’s dismantling of Twitter’s massive censorship system. Zuckerberg now promises a “sane” alternative that will place consumers under the watchful eye of Meta censors. On the first day of the rollout, millions signed up, thanks in large part to Zuckerberg linking the new platform to Instagram. The censors also got to work right away. When people tried to follow Donald Trump Jr.,  » Read More

TV cameras at a press conference. iStock photo A controversial Assembly bill that would tax links to news content on Google, Bing, Facebook and Instagram to support local newspapers and TV stations was held Friday for further study. Assembly Bill 886, known as the California Journalism Preservation Act, was made a two-year bill by its author Assemblymember Buffy Wicks and Sen. Tom Umberg, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill had been scheduled for a hearing on July 11, but that has been canceled and instead an informational hearing will be held in the fall, followed by a vote in 2024. “I’ve agreed to make AB 886 a two-year bill In order to ensure the strongest legislation possible — because getting this policy right is more important than getting it quick,” said Wicks, who represents Berkeley and the East San Francisco Bay area. “My priority is making sure this bill does exactly, and only, what it intends: to support our free press and the democracy sustained by it,   » Read More

‘Tardy’, ‘begrudging’“The ongoing drip-feed of information reflects PwC’s unwillingness to take full accountability for their transgressions. PwC’s tardy and begrudging responses to their own firm’s gross ethical and professional misconduct evidence a real unwillingness to engage in meaningful institutional reform,” Senator O’Neill said.Greens Senator Barbara Pocock referred PwC and the tax scandal to the new federal anti-corruption body. Alex EllinghausenGreens senator Barbara Pocock said that the revelations about Uber and Facebook showed that PwC was being overly technical when responding to earlier Questions on Notice from the senator committee looking into consultants working for the public sector.“In early June, PwC responded to questions on notice I put to them through the Senate consultant inquiry, and indicated only one company had received confidential government information relating to the MAAL,” Senator Pocock said in a statement.“PwC should have declared all companies involved when asked instead of relying on technicalities to avoid providing a fulsome response to the Senate. Once again, PwC are engaging in obfuscation and cover-up instead of coming clean and owning up to their actions.”Senator Pocock asked the firm to provide the names of “all of the companies that were provided confidential Australian Tax Office information relating to the by

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One Facebook group is showing the true power of social media by helping people find the missing pieces of their lives. A group named Search Squad uses old-fashioned snooping skills and connections on the social media app Facebook to help reunite family members around the world who have been separated by either adoption or other factors. The group, which is volunteer-based and who call themselves 'Search Angels', say that everything they do is free of charge. To date, the group has helped thousands of people learn more about who they are, where they came from and — perhaps most importantly — complete their forever families. “I had no idea when we made the group that it was going to be such a need out there," Bonnie Holley, the group's founder, told NBC correspondent Kaylee Hartung. For nearly 10 years, volunteers like Holley have been using their social media sleuthing skills to find lost family members, solving upwards of 100 cases a month. "We do what we do because it’s a passion and because we love people," Kathey Williams,  » Read More

As the battle between U.S. tech giants and Canada escalates, the country’s federal and Quebec provincial governments have halted advertising on Facebook and Instagram to force parent Meta to the negotiating table to implement Bill C-18. “Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible and started blocking news,” federal heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez told a press conference in Ottawa on Wednesday after Meta began blocking Canadians from viewing or sharing news on its Facebook and Instagram sites north of the border. Bill C-18, which recently became Canadian law, is designed to get U.S. digital tech giants to pay local publishers for news snippets shared or repurposed on their platforms. While Google is cooperating with the Canadian government over how to implement the new law, also known as the Online News Act, Meta has so far refused to negotiate commercial licensing deals with Canadian publishers for their local platforms.  “All we want is for these platforms to contribute their fair share, not more, not less, just what’s fair,” Rodriquez told the press conference as his government withdraws around $11 million in estimated advertising expenditures annually from Facebook and Instagram.  » Read More