Timothy Karr

Timothy Karr

Timothy Karr is the senior director of strategy for Free Press Action Fund, the advocacy organization that fights for everyone’s rights to connect and communicate. Follow him on Twitter: @TimKarr.

Articles by this author

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office before signing an executive order related to regulating social media on May 28, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump's executive order could lead to attempts to punish companies such as Twitter and Google for attempting to point out factual inconsistencies in social media posts by politicians. (Photo: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images) Views
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Confused by Section 230? So Is Donald Trump
One of the most consequential—and for some confusing—pieces of internet legislation of the past 25 years has been the subject of white-hot political debates in Washington this election year. And no one seems more confused by Section 230 than Donald Trump, who in May signed an executive order to...
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence as they participate in a Fox News Virtual Town Hall with Anchor Bill Hemmer, in the Rose Garden of the White House on March 24, 2020 in Washington, DC. Cases of COVID-19 continue to rise in the United States, with New York's case count doubling every three days according to governor Andrew Cuomo. (Photo: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images) Views
Wednesday, April 01, 2020
We Must De-Trump the Airwaves to Protect Public Health Amid COVID-19 Outbreak
As COVID-19 spreads from city to city, neighborhood to neighborhood and house to house, misinformation is being spread over the public airwaves by syndicated right-wing personalities and the media conglomerates that air their programs. In many cases, radio and TV hosts like Sean Hannity, Laura...
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"After devoting nearly two decades to growth at any cost," writes Karr, the Facebook "network has become far too big NOT to fail—even when you consider the resources Facebook is now throwing at filtering and flagging objectionable content. And those failures are having dangerous ramifications in the real world." (Photo: flickr/GostGo/cc) Views
Friday, November 15, 2019
Why Facebook Filtering Will Ultimately Fail
In its content-moderation report released this week, Facebook revealed that it had removed a whopping 3.2-billion fake accounts from March through September 2019. That’s a lot of disinformation, wrote tech reporter Aditya Srivastava: “To put it in perspective, the number is [nearly] half of living...
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One hundred cardboard cutouts of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stand outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, April 10, 2018. - Advocacy group Avaaz is calling attention to what the groups says are hundreds of millions of fake accounts still spreading disinformation on Facebook. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) Views
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Can Anyone Stop Facebook from Poisoning Democracy?
Freedom (to lie) isn’t free. For the campaign to re-elect Donald Trump it costs $1.5 million a week. And that’s just last week’s tab. In exchange, Trump’s team gets to spread false and misleading political ads across Facebook’s social network. This includes a 30-second ad that makes the...
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Wednesday, September 04, 2019
A Pivot to Digital Shouldn't Spell the End of Local News
Last Saturday, the final printed edition of the Vindicator rolled off the presses in Youngstown, Ohio. After 150 years, the city’s last remaining daily closed its doors, handing its subscription list and masthead to the Tribune Chronicle , based in nearby Warren, which has begun to produce a...
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The United States should impose a similar mechanism on targeted advertising to counteract how the platforms undermine journalism and amplify content that’s polluting our civic discourse. (Photo: The Hill) Views
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Want to Save Journalism? Tax the Attention Economy
Way, way back in 2009 as Facebook was celebrating its fifth anniversary, CEO Mark Zuckerberg blogged that the company was founded “to give people the tools to engage and understand the world around them.” In the 10 years since then, Facebook’s user base has multiplied more than 10 times. But...
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In an ill-advised effort to make his point for the online masses, Pai starred in a video dressed as a Star Wars Jedi, brandishing a lightsaber against evil internet-user safeguards.(Photo: Pai video uploaded to Daily Caller) Views
Friday, February 01, 2019
On Net Neutrality and Why Ajit Pai Is No Jedi
The FCC's chairman's rationale for ending Net Neutrality in 2017 was that existing Title II rules had supposedly shackled the forces of the marketplace, “deter[ing] the massive infrastructure investment that we need.” If the rules were allowed to stand, he said, we’d “pay the price in terms of less...
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As members of the incoming House majority noted, Pai doesn’t understand how Congress actually works.(Photo: Flickr user Gage Skidmore) Views
Monday, January 07, 2019
Chairman Pai Can't Win for Losing
No amount of spin can undo that. But that hasn’t stopped Pai from trying and trying, again and again. His latest came in the form of a statement , released Wednesday, touting the expiration of a bipartisan congressional effort to restore the Net Neutrality protections. “I’m pleased that a strong...
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Without Net Neutrality, large phone and cable companies will take control of the stories we tell, deciding who gets a voice and who doesn’t. (Photo: Maria Merkulova) Views
Friday, December 14, 2018
How We're Getting Net Neutrality Back
A year ago today, the Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Ajit Pai made one of the worst, most abnormal decisions in the agency’s history. It ignored public consensus and voted to strip away the Commission’s authority to protect internet users from companies like AT&T, Comcast and...
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Monday, June 11, 2018
Net Neutrality Can Still Be Saved
A future without net neutrality is here. Well, almost. The Federal Communications Commission will take away the rights of internet users on Monday. Officially, the repeal of the 2015 net neutrality protections ― a repeal that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Trump pick, had pushed for ― will take effect...
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