Technology

Germany will impose fines of up to 50 million euros if Facebook don’t remove alternative news content from their platform.  A new law being drafted will see social media firms face hefty fines if they take longer than seven days to remove content that German authorities deem to be “illegal” – including so-called fake news. Germany’s justice minister, Heiko Mass, says that social media giants such as Facebook have not done enough to tackle content that the government deems ‘subversive’.

There are over 1.1 billion websites on the internet, but the vast majority of all traffic actually goes to a very select list of them. As Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, Google.com, for example, has an astounding 28 billion visits per month. The next closest is also a Google-owned property, Youtube.com, which brings in 20.5 billion visits.

Today’s infographic comes to us from Vodien, and it lists the 100 highest ranking websites in the U.S. by traffic, according to website analytics company Alexa.

Google has hired a 10,000 strong social justice army to flag sites from their search results that they deem “conspiracy”, “offensive”, or “fake news.” In a move to completely eradicate all traces of independent journalism and alternative media websites from the web, Google has begun the process of compiling a list of all offending sites so that they can “de-rank” them from their search results.

New data collected by astronomers suggests that the mysterious “Planet 9” may be causing our solar system to tilt by up to 6 degrees.  Last year, scientists first suggested the existence of “Planet 9,” often to referred to as the “rogue world,” which is said to be ten times the size of Earth. NASA began the search for the new planet by launching a new Internet site, titled Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, which sought the help from members of the public to assist with locating Planet Nine.

No One Wants the Internet of Things ...

No one wants the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Washington Post noted in 2014:

No one really wants a “smart” washing machine ....

 

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If you're wondering who would want to buy an Internet-enabled washing machine, you're not alone. Even Whirlpool's not so sure.