Trump's Proposed Labor Secretary Is On A Blocking Binge

Fast food CEO Andy Puzder has faced a rough few weeks since Donald Trump nominated him to become Secretary of Labor, with activist groups engaging in a blitz of criticism over his history of opposition to raising the federal minimum wage.

In response, Puzder is following a time-honored technique: One by one, he's blocking his enemies on Twitter.

The Hardees and Carl&039;s Jr. CEO has blocked the Twitter accounts of at least five labor advocacy groups. This week, he even blocked one of the country&039;s most prominent union leaders, Mary Kay Henry of the 2-million member Service Employees International Union.

“Yes, the Twitter news is true. A sentence I can&039;t believe I&039;m writing,” an SEIU spokesperson told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday evening. The union is the second-largest in the country, and has been the main backer of the Fight For $15 movement to raise wages in the fast food industry.

As a veteran fast food leader opposed to wage hikes, Puzder&039;s beef with Henry and the SEIU seems clear. But he&039;s handing out the blocks more liberally than that. The cabinet nominee has also blocked the National Employment Law Project, the Economic Policy Institute, MoveOn.org, the Fight for $15, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — all organizations that advocate on behalf of workers, especially low-wage workers and workers of color.

These groups have been critical of his nomination, tweeting at him and about him, and perhaps earning their block along the way. The Economic Policy Institute told BuzzFeed News it was blocked after this tweet:

MoveOn.org said it was blocked after this tweet:

The National Employment Law Project first noticed its block on Tuesday. The group has been engaged in “legitimate policy discussions,” said Judith Conti, its Federal Advocacy Coordinator. “We’re not name-calling. There are no ad hominem attacks. This is a man we don’t think is temperamentally or philosophically suited to be the nations’ chief advocate for working people.

“He can’t even handle a Twitter feed that has things in it that are legitimately and respectfully critical,” Conti told BuzzFeed News. “When faced with legitimate critiques, what does he do? He tries to shut it out and shut it down.”

Puzder may have learned the art of the block, but he&039;s no Donald Trump when it comes to Twitter: he has a little over 5,000 followers, and has tweeted just over 1,400 times since 2008. His last tweet, on Monday, was a minimalist seven-word response to a CNN report that said he may withdraw his nomination due to the intense criticism he is facing.

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment. Puzder&039;s confirmation hearing for his position has been rescheduled for February 2.

Quelle: <a href="Trump&039;s Proposed Labor Secretary Is On A Blocking Binge“>BuzzFeed

India Is Considering Giving Apple A 15-Year Exemption On Customs Duty "With An Open Mind"

Apple CEO Tim Cook leaves the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai on May 18, 2016.

Punit Paranjpe / AFP / Getty Images

Apple really wants to make iPhones in India, but before it does that, it would really like the Indian government to give it some major incentives, including a 15-year exemption on customs duty and the freedom to keep the back of the iPhone free of regulatory labelling.

So far, India has been reluctant to make exceptions for a single company, but it seems like the country might just give in to Apple.

India Minister for Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters on Wednesday that the country will consider Apple’s request “with an open mind.”

“We will very much like Apple to come and have a base in India,” he said.

BuzzFeed News has reached out to Apple for comment.

Making iPhones in India would help Apple lower iPhone pricing in the country, where the company is striking to gain marketshare against Android, which currently powers 97% of India’s 300 million smartphones.

And having Apple make its flagship product in the country would help the government’s “Make in India” initiative, which aims to boost India’s manufacturing industry and create jobs.

The Times of India recently reported that a team from Apple&#039;s Cupertino headquarters would arrive in India next week to present Apple&039;s case for seeking tax benefits and other perks to make iPhones in India.

Quelle: <a href="India Is Considering Giving Apple A 15-Year Exemption On Customs Duty "With An Open Mind"“>BuzzFeed

As Trump Takes Office, Birth Control Startups See Demand Spike

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, flanked by House Democrats, speaks in support of the Affordable Care Act on January 12.

Aaron P. Bernstein / Getty Images

After a blood clot made it unsafe for her to take birth control pills, Liz Van Voorhis switched to an intrauterine device a few years ago. It was free — thanks to the Affordable Care Act, which in 2012 required insurance plans to cover contraceptives at no cost to customers.

Five years later, though, president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, Tom Price, is on record for opposing that rule. The Republican-majority Congress is moving to repeal the health care law. And Trump has vowed to defund Planned Parenthood.

Van Voorhis was counting on the birth control mandate to cover a new IUD in 2017, and would have trouble single-handedly affording a device, which costs up to $1,000. But if that mandate vanishes along with the health care law Trump has sworn to repeal, she fears that she would no longer qualify for insurance coverage because she has diabetes, an expensive condition. “I shouldn’t have to make the decision between my health and if I can afford it,” the 37-year-old told BuzzFeed News.

Van Voorhis isn’t the only woman worried about affording and accessing birth control under Trump: Planned Parenthood’s president told CNN last week that the organization has seen a 900% increase in women trying to get IUDs. Those fears have also translated into a reported uptick in business for on-demand birth control startups — like the Pill Club, Nurx, and Maven — that in response are temporarily making it cheaper and easier to order contraception through their apps and websites.

These promotions aren’t entirely altruistic, of course. In the unprecedented political climate, capitalizing on concerns is also a way to gain new customers.

“Our own patients were [asking], especially after the election, ‘What’s going to happen to my coverage?’” said Nick Chang, CEO of the Pill Club, a Silicon Valley startup that writes and fills birth control prescriptions. “We have only so much we can control in terms of what Trump and [vice-president-elect Mike] Pence and Price do. But one of the ways that we can help patients right now and prepare them for anything that happens down the line is to give them protection and backup options.”

An ad for Nurx&#039;s December promotion.

Nurx

Since December, the Pill Club has been offering the Fallback Solo emergency contraceptive for free to customers with insurance; doses vary from six a year to one every three months, depending on coverage. (Emergency contraception is also covered by the birth control mandate.) The Pill Club only writes prescriptions in California, but can ship to people who already have prescriptions across 10 states.

Until the end of January, New York City-based Maven is offering customers a free telemedicine visit with a doctor or nurse to get a birth control prescription, or just reproductive health advice. Maven, which can prescribe in 47 states, ships orders to a pharmacy for the customer to pick up.

“A lot of women have been writing in, asking questions, talking about how nervous they are,” CEO Katherine Ryder said. (She added that not all patients were worried. When Maven referenced a “stressful” election in an email to clients offering mental health visit discounts, “a lot of people wrote back and said they weren’t stressed at all,” Ryder said.)

Nurx, a Y Combinator startup that raised $5.3 million last fall, gave new customers $45 toward birth control in December. It’s doing so again in January (promo code: “TinyHands”). The startup, which also covers delivery costs, ships to California, Washington state, Washington, DC, New York, Pennsylvania, and, as of last week, Virginia and Illinois.

An ad for Maven&039;s birth control promotion.

Via mavenclinic.com

“We have a lot of users who are concerned that they would lose access to birth control and certain users who were talking about stockpiling birth control,” said Hans Gangeskar, who co-founded the San Francisco startup. Nurx doesn’t encourage hoarding, and birth control pills usually expire after about 12 months, but “we always think it’s a good idea for women to have an extra pack or two, from a logistical perspective,” he said.

The birth control mandate is rooted in the Affordable Care Act, but the law doesn’t have to be repealed for the mandate to end.

The law says insurance must cover preventive health benefits for women, and leaves it up to the Department of Health and Human Services to decide what counts. In 2011, it decided that birth control counted. (The rule was later clarified to mean that of the 18 categories of birth control that are FDA-approved, most insurers have to cover at least one drug or device in each category. That means, for instance, that some health plans cover certain brands of birth control pills at no cost to consumers, but don&039;t cover others.)

The new administration could simply write a regulation that says otherwise. “That policy of requiring no co-pay for contraceptive coverage was huge and allowed many millions of women access to birth control care in a way that made it accessible and affordable,” said Amy Friedrich-Karnik, senior federal policy advisor at the Center for Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group. “That policy and that access is really threatened,” particularly for low-income women and women of color.

Still, it’s hard to predict how quickly the Affordable Care Act as a whole will actually go away, and whether or not alternative sources of birth control, like startups, could become crucial as a result. The startups also say they are optimistic about staying operational even without the health care law: “You will need the pill whether you have Obamacare or not,” Chang said in an email.

Repealing the law may be more difficult than initially portrayed by the Republicans who repeatedly campaigned on that pledge. Congress moved forward last week on setting up a repeal bill, but GOP leaders — and Trump himself — are offering mixed messages on if they’ll establish an alternative and what that might be. Some 20 million Americans received insurance coverage under the law.

Even if the birth control mandate were to go away, that doesn’t mean that all women would have to pay out of pocket for it.

Lisa Lake / Getty Images for Moveon.org

A few states — Maryland, Vermont, Illinois, and California — have in recent years passed their own laws that require insurance plans in those states to cover contraception, from pills to IUDs, at no cost to customers. These state laws will continue to provide coverage regardless of what happens to the federal law, said Susan Berke Fogel, director of reproductive health at the National Health Law Program.

However, those laws don’t apply to everyone in those states; California’s law, for example, exempts health care plans for religious employers.

In addition, certain birth control pills cost relatively little out of pocket, so some women may still be able to afford them if their coverage goes away. Nurx, for instance, says that it plans to keep selling some medications for as low as $15 a month to uninsured customers.

Still, the uncertain future unnerves many women like Van Voorhis. As for what she’ll do when it comes time to remove her IUD this year, she’s not sure.

“If anything, the choice is probably that I would consider not pursuing [an IUD] in the future and just ending my current plan of health,” she said. “And optimistically hoping that someone talks some sense into the right people, and we have the right type of advocacy to make a change.”

Quelle: <a href="As Trump Takes Office, Birth Control Startups See Demand Spike“>BuzzFeed

India's Supreme Court Wants To Know How WhatsApp Users' Privacy Will Be Protected

Dado Ruvic / Reuters

India&#039;s Supreme Court wants to know what the government, regulators, and Facebook are doing to protect the privacy of WhatsApp users, which shares data with the world&039;s largest social network.

It has given Facebook, the federal government, and India&039;s telecom regulator two weeks to respond to a petition that asks for a privacy policy to be framed for social media networks like Facebook and WhatsApp.

The petition was first filed in September 2016 in the New Delhi High Court by Karmanya Singh Sareen, a 19-year-old engineering student, after WhatsApp — which is used by over 160 million Indians — updated its privacy policy to start sharing user data with Facebook.

The Delhi High Court, in a verdict, ruled that WhatsApp should delete the data of users who deleted their accounts before September 25. WhatsApp was also forbidden from sharing any user data with Facebook that it gathered before September 25.

Sareen, however, appealed this verdict, and brought it to the Supreme Court, India&039;s highest judicial authority.

Despite the Supreme Court&039;s notice, it had some strong words for Sareen.

“You can choose to walk out of WhatsApp if you want to protect your privacy,” the Supreme Court reportedly said. “What is disturbing here is you want to continue using this private service and at the same time [you] want to protect your privacy. You can choose not to avail of [WhatsApp].”

“The Supreme Court clearly isn&039;t satisfied with the High Court&039;s September verdict,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, a Supreme Court lawyer and volunteer with the Internet Freedom Foundation, a non-profit advocacy organisation for a free and open internet in India. “It wants a clear answer from the government, the telecom regulator, and Facebook, about the steps they are taking to protect users&039; privacy.”

The problem, says Chima, has less to do with WhatsApp and everything to do with the fact that India doesn&039;t have an overarching privacy law for its citizens.

“Whatever data protection that users in India get is what companies like Facebook offer them voluntarily or what privacy laws in other countries force these companies to do,” he said.

Facebook did not respond to a request for a comment from BuzzFeed News.

Quelle: <a href="India&039;s Supreme Court Wants To Know How WhatsApp Users&039; Privacy Will Be Protected“>BuzzFeed

Facebook Is Expanding Its Program To Fight Fake News Into Germany

Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Facing pressure from lawmakers and a pending court hearing over the spread of fake news in Germany, Facebook on Sunday announced an initiative to fight fake news in that country.

The move comes exactly one month since the social network unveiled a new effort in the United States to stem the flow of misinformation on its platform. That involved a new tweak to the News Feed ranking algorithm, easier ways for users to report false content, and new ways to prevent scammers from making money from completely fake news. The biggest move was an unprecedented partnership with third-party fact-checking organizations that alerts users if a link on Facebook contains claims that are disputed by at least two fact checkers.

Facebook said the new fake news reporting feature, measures to disrupt spammers, and third-party fact checking will be rolled out to German users in the coming weeks.

Germany has quickly become a hotspot of concern regarding fake news as it prepares to hold elections later this year.

A new analysis from BuzzFeed News found that Chancellor Angela Merkel is already being targeted with false and misleading content that is performing well on Facebook.

This week, a Syrian refugee in Germany filed for an injunction against the social network because he says Facebook failed to remove content that accuses him of terrorism. A German lawmaker also recently suggested fining the social network 500,000 euro each time it does not remove fake news quickly.

“When we launched this in the US we said that we would expand the pilot into other countries over time,” a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “We’ve listened to our community and begun talks with other global partners, and the readiness of German partners allows us to begin testing in Germany.”

In the German version of its announcement, Facebook said the investigative reporting organization Correctiv is its first German fact checking partner.

The organizations participating in the Facebook fact checking program must be signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network&039;s Code of Principles. No German organization, including Correctiv, has signed on as of now. The IFCN put a hold on accepting new signatories when the initiative with Facebook was first announced in December. But that is about to change, according to Alexios Mantzarlis, the organization&#039;s director.

“[W]e will be re-opening the code to new signatories next week, following a consultation among top fact checkers about how to vet organizations claiming to be fact-checking,” he told BuzzFeed News. “So we will soon be able to add signatories to the list again.”

Quelle: <a href="Facebook Is Expanding Its Program To Fight Fake News Into Germany“>BuzzFeed

Hyperpartisan Sites And Facebook Pages Are Publishing False Stories And Conspiracy Theories About Angela Merkel

Tobias Schwarz / AFP / Getty Images

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing an onslaught of negative and misleading stories from right-wing media outlets and conspiracy theories spread by fringe websites that publish fake news, a BuzzFeed News analysis has found.

Driving the popularity of anti-Merkel content on social media are primarily hyperpartisan and far-right groups that are trying to discredit the German chancellor ahead of this year’s election. These groups, which play a major role in helping propagate negative stories with misleading headlines, are increasingly focused on Merkel’s liberal stance on the refugee crisis. The analysis showed that these stories were among the top-performing content about Merkel on social platforms last year, both in English and German languages.

Echoing what was seen during the US election, many of these sites mix legitimate partisan political content with false and conspiratorial information, especially about refugees and Islam, in order to inspire passion and increase social engagement. Large right-wing pages in the US are also increasingly sharing anti-Merkel content, helping it gain wider distribution on Facebook.

BuzzFeed News analysis also found that many of the most popular Merkel stories on Facebook in German language come from a mix of negative and right-wing news sources like Junge Freiheit — a weekly newspaper that has been endorsed by the co-founder of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) — and the business-news site Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, which has been called a drip feed of “fear and distrust” by German news magazine Spiegel.

Among the websites publishing popular fake news in German is Anonymousnews.ru, a site that frequently features both pro-Kremlin propaganda and conspiracy theories, including claims that 9/11 was carried out by the CIA. After Facebook took down the group’s page last May, it started posting mostly on VK, a major social network in Russia, where it has had a page since 2011.

“In Germany we have a crisis of trust towards established media channels,” said Lutz Helm of Hoaxmap, a website tracking fake news in the country. “A growing minority of people don&#039;t trust media stories anymore and are looking for alternative sources. This gives conspiracy theories and obscure news sites a lot of attention, and it also leads to an increase of hoaxes and conspiracy theories on social networks.”

A fake news story alleging that the chancellor took a selfie with one of the Brussels terrorists published by the German website noch.info.

NOCH

Websites responsible for publishing conspiracy theories, dubious content, and fake news produce some of the top-performing content in both English and German. Among the most shared English-language links, there are stories published by yesimright.com, shoebat.com, endingthefed.com, truthfeed.com, and yournewswire.com. Most of these websites would appear to have been registered in the past two years, and several like Ending the Fed quickly became popular by posting pro–Donald Trump and far-right content. It also published fake news stories claiming that Megyn Kelly was fired by Fox News, and that the Pope endorsed Donald Trump.

A post on Your Newswire, which falsely claims Merkel took a selfie with one of the Brussels terrorists, generated more than 32,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.

By comparison, the real story of the chancellor’s selfie with a refugee published in English by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle received fewer than 13,000 engagements. (Facebook engagement does not necessarily translate into traffic to a website, but higher engagement means the link’s headline and image was likely exposed to more people on Facebook.)

Your Newswire also helped to spread an early version the bizarre conspiracy theory known as “Pizzagate,” which ended with a man entering a pizza restaurant in Washington, DC, with a shotgun to “self-investigate” the ludicrous story that the restaurant secretly provided underage prostitutes to top Democrats.

The top-performing German-language content about Merkel includes sites like blog.halle-leaks.de, rapefugees.net, info.kopp-verlag.de, anonymousnews.ru, and noch.info.

Noch.info was one of the first sites in Germany to spread the false claim about Merkel’s selfie with a terrorist. Just last week, citing “Russian intelligence sources,” it reported that President Barack Obama was secretly meeting Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Hawaii. Kopp Verlag, in addition to publishing books about aliens and UFOs, has falsely reported that the government is putting refugees being welcomed in Germany on social benefits for life. In 2014, it posted an article that asked “Is Michelle Obama a trans?” claiming that the first lady is in reality a man called Michael.

Some of the more outlandish fake stories unearthed by BuzzFeed News, and shared by the same far-right accounts that post anti-Merkel content, are from the website Anonymousnews.ru. Alongside numerous examples of pro-Kremlin propaganda, recent headlines on the site include fabricated stories about refugees in Germany using free Wi-Fi to search for animal porn and German NATO officers arrested in Aleppo for colluding with ISIS (16,000 Facebook engagements). One misleading article published by the site about German army generals defying Merkel generated 25,000 engagement. The conspiratorial story about NATO officers arrested in Syria was also covered by the German-language version of the Kremlin propaganda channel RT.

But no other publications have been more relentless in pursuing anti-Merkel rhetoric than British tabloids like the Express, MailOnline — the most popular English-language newspaper website in the world — and, more recently, more fringe conservative news websites like Breitbart, which is already planning to launch a German version.

Top-Performing Angela Merkel Stories on Facebook in 2016

Facebook engagement is defined as Facebook shares, comments, and reactions.

Lam Thuy Vo / BuzzSumo

Across all English-language content, British right-wing tabloids the Daily Express and Daily Mail published 16 of the 50 top-performing news stories about Merkel on Facebook, according to the analysis. Content on MailOnline, which has 7.5 million followers on its Facebook page, and the Express, with a million followers, gain significant traction on Facebook because of promotion from US-based conservative, alt-right, and conspiracy news sites, and their social media accounts.

The CrowdTangle browser plugin, which analyzes a link and lists its top sharers on Facebook and Twitter, showed that US Facebook pages and groups such as Conservative Country (700,000 followers), The Deplorables (450,000 members), and Freedom Daily (1.6 million followers) shared anti-Merkel content from British tabloids. (A previous BuzzFeed News analysis of content published by Freedom Daily found that it published false or misleading content 46% of the time.)

One of the top-performing stories in the Express carried an inaccurate headline that said “MERKEL&039;S WORST NIGHTMARE: Germany calls for Referendum as ‘people want to be free of EU’” (which generated over 185,000 shares, reactions, and comments and on Facebook and over 5,000 shares on Twitter). In reality, the idea of holding a referendum on EU membership in Germany is harbored only on the fringes of the political mainstream. Polling shows that some 80% of Germans support EU membership while 70% think a UK-style Brexit referendum in Germany would be a bad idea.

Another top-performing story about Merkel in 2016 was a misleading piece titled “Angela Merkel under more pressure over refugee policy as it is revealed migrants committed 142,500 crimes in Germany during the first six months of 2016.” The Mail story, which grossly mischaracterized crime data, was cross-posted to the Express and the website of New York–based Gatestone Institute, which has been accused of fanning anti-Muslim hate. The Mail&039;s version generated more than 80,000 engagements on Facebook and was shared more than 4,000 times on Twitter.

Several of the stories featured in the Express and the Mail were very similar to ones that appeared earlier in right-wing German publications. For example, the piece “German asylum seekers refuse to work insisting ‘We are Merkel&039;s GUESTS’” published by the Express, appeared days earlier on the right-wing website Junge Freiheit. The German story generated close to 40,000 engagements on Facebook and was among the 50 best-performing pieces about Merkel in German media last year.

The same headlines also gained traction on Facebook thanks to a string of UK accounts, including several associated with Nigel Farage’s UKIP, the far-right political party Britain First (1.5 million followers), and anti-EU groups such as Get Britain Out (170,000 likes).

In the English language, the anti-EU British tabloids dominate coverage of Germany and the EU, according to Wolfgang Blau, chief digital officer for Condé Nast International and the former editor of Zeit.de.

“Since the Brexit vote last June, this global reliance on UK media for following EU affairs poses an even bigger vulnerability for the EU than it already has in the past,” Blau told BuzzFeed News. “The world gets its news about Europe from one of the EU&039;s fiercest opponents, often without even knowing so: the UK media.”

Not all the top stories about Merkel are negative. Among the most popular pieces there are articles by the New York Times and The Guardian lauding the German chancellor&039;s liberal values. However, in both cases engagement is primarily driven by the publishers&039; own Facebook pages. While one of the most popular pieces in German, an article by Süddeutsche Zeitung that suggests Merkel deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, was mostly shared on Google Plus.

Those critical of Merkel’s approach to refugees are also increasingly vocal on Twitter. After the recent attack on a Berlin Christmas market, pro-Trump Twitter accounts began pumping out anti-Merkel memes and content.

“There’s a lot of evidence that there are now targeted attempts to massively attack Merkel, including with bots,” Simon Hegelich, a political scientist at Munich’s Technical University, told Bloomberg. As BuzzFeed News reported last month, a number of pro-Trump troll accounts have shifted their attention to Merkel, filling social platforms with anti-Merkel messages and links to stories critical of her government’s refugee policy.

One of last year’s most viral stories in Germany involved a misleading claim — it was later debunked — that the public television station ZDF receives direct instructions from Merkel on what to report. Nearly all of the other viral stories were about refugees.

An analysis of the Junge Freiheit piece about the people who came to Germany seeking asylum from war-torn countries and who refused to work found that it generated additional engagement from Facebook accounts associated with the AfD, the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), and the Austrian far-right Freedom Party (FPO), as well as others linked to the anti-Muslim movement Pegida.

The influential Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that shared the story, and the total number of engagements generated as a result.

CrowdTangle

It’s often the same Twitter accounts that repeatedly share the top-performing German content. A number of these accounts retweet obsessively, suggesting they exist mostly to help spread this type of content. The AfD has said it will use automated accounts that help further amplify messages on Twitter — one analysis suggests the party is already adopting bots — in the upcoming election.

Facebook / Via Facebook: gegen-die-alternative-f

Many of the German links that generated most engagement in 2016 spread conspiratorial claims about Merkel’s mental health. A YouTube video titled “Angela Merkel is insane, Canadian TV provides the evidence” has been viewed more than a million times, and has generated more than 82,000 engagements on Facebook. The video, produced by Canadian right-wing publisher Rebel Media, shows conservative commentator Ezra Levant dissecting a video in which Merkel answers questions at a public event. Although he is highly critical of Merkel, he does not label her “insane” — the German version simply added that.

Top Merkel Content on Facebook in 2016 in German*

*Headlines have been translated from German.

Lam Thuy Vo / BuzzSumo

Quelle: <a href="Hyperpartisan Sites And Facebook Pages Are Publishing False Stories And Conspiracy Theories About Angela Merkel“>BuzzFeed