SF News Sunday Links: US Cyber Command Ordered to Remove Russia From Cyber Threat List Russia has been de-prioritized at the US Cyber Command; the new park along Great Highway is opening up on April 12 — help name it; and some background info on the guy who wears the light-up dinosaur costume in Dolores Park.
Business & Tech Russia Fines Google $20 Decillion For Blocking Channels on YouTube A Russian court has ordered Google/Alphabet to pay two undecillion rubles in fines — that's a two followed by 36 zeroes — in an obviously symbolic ruling expressing the government's wrath over YouTube continuing to block pro-Russian channels.
Business & Tech Why Did Musk's 'Free-Speech Absolutist' X Platform Take Down New Account From Alexei Navalny's Widow? It is hard to say where we are in the evolution/devolution of Xitter under the leadership of Elon Musk. But in the absence of a robust human team dealing with content moderation, odd contradictions in policy are bound to occur.
SF News SFO-Bound Flight From India Forced to Land In Russia After Engine Trouble An Air India flight with an unknown number of Americans onboard had to make an emergency landing in Russia on Tuesday, and this could very easily become an international crisis.
SF Politics Local Democratic Socialists Chapter Getting Roasted for Screening Pro-Putin Documentary With ’Pizza and Beer!’ The SF Democratic Socialists of America chapter is getting ratioed pretty hard on Twitter over an upcoming screening of a documentary that’s been described as a “dictator suckup” to Vladimir Putin.
Business & Tech Facebook Takes Down Influence Campaigns Originating In Russia and China Regarding Ukraine War Meta/Facebook says that it has discovered and removed "the largest and most complex Russian-origin operation" to influence social media users since the war in Ukraine began, as well as a separate, smaller, more inept campaign out of China.
Business & Tech Russian Dissident Alexei Navalny Says Google and Meta Are Enabling Putin's War Machine By Banning Ads Imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny gave an address to an international democracy summit suggesting that tech platforms like Google and Facebook have given a "gift" to Putin by shutting down all advertising.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Tsar Nicoulai Caviar Getting Anti-Russian Blowback, Despite No Connection to Russia Apparently the name alone is creating harassment issues for the East Bay caviar company with an outpost at the SF Ferry Building, which has to keep reminding people that they are not a Russian company or affiliated with Russia in any way.
SF News Small Businesses in SF’s Little Russia Getting Hassled for Being Russian-Owned The Russian invasion of Ukraine is creating headaches for small businesses owned by Russian-Americans, even if the owners are from Ukraine or Georgia.
SF News Monday Morning Headlines: Netflix Shuts Down Service In Russia A dead body was found near the Harrison Street off-ramp from the Bay Bridge on Sunday, a 61-year-old woman was killed in a hit-and-run on International Blvd. in Oakland, and Netflix and TikTok are shutting down in Russia.
Business & Tech Apple Says It Has 'Paused' Product Sales In Russia, But Resellers Are Still At It Apple has "paused" the sale of its products in Russia in protest of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and Apple Pay has been disabled or "limited" in the country as well.
SF News Bay Area Ukrainians Are Signing Up to Head Home and Defend Their Country After President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put out a call for Ukrainian-Americans to come home and fight — complete with a handy QR code to register — around 1,400 Bay Area Ukrainians are trying to do just that.
SF News Sean Penn Is In Ukraine Covering the Russian Invasion With VICE Sometime Bay Area resident Sean Penn is reportedly in Ukraine helping to film a documentary about the Russian invasion for VICE Studios.
SF News Facebook, Twitter, And Google Testimony Leaves Senators Visibly Dissatisfied To put it in the simplest terms: Senators are unhappy with what they've been hearing from Facebook, Twitter, and Google executives, who are currently being questioned about how their platforms were exploited by
SF News Twitter Apparently Pitched Russian Media Outlet RT On Spending Millions In Ads Last Year Twitter’s multi-million dollar US election pitch to RT revealed in FULL https://t.co/flh9GLg4f0 pic.twitter.com/ZKOntGvTat— RT (@RT_com) October 27, 2017 Pushing back against Twitter, which announced this
SF News Twitter Details 'Industry-Leading' Changes To Increase Transparency In Political Advertising On Its Platform In response to several US Senators announcing potential legislation to regulate advertising on Twitter, the tech company revealed that they have a new plan to greatly increase transparency for all advertisements on their
SF News Senators Aim To Regulate Political Ads On Social Media With 'Honest Ads Act' A group of United States senators is looking to lead the charge on creating legislation that would ensure full transparency when it comes to buying political ad space on the internet. Senators Amy
SF News Yahoo Hack From 2013 Actually Impacted All 3 Billion Accounts Highlighting just how complicated it's apparently been, even internally, to sort out the major breach of Yahoo from 2013 that was only first revealed to the public 10 months ago, Yahoo's new parent
SF News Senator 'Deeply Disappointed' In Twitter's Efforts Regarding Russian Influences On 2016 Election Twitter recently suspended two dozen accounts and investigated many more for their links to Russian interests which may have influenced the 2016 presidential election. Unfortunately, as the Associated Press reports, that wasn't enough
SF News Mueller Forces Facebook To Cough Up More Details On Russian Meddling President Donald Trump will be none too pleased that the “single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history” just got greater. In the wake of last week’s revelation that Facebook
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink At Least Three SF Bars Will Be Showing Comey's Testimony At 7 AM Thursday Former FBI Director James Comey has already handed over his prepared remarks for Thursday morning's hearing with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which subsequently made them public BuzzFeed has pulled out the 18 main
SF News Newly Appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller Spent Much Of His Career In San Francisco Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been appointed as the special counsel to investigate any Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Election and any possible ties to the Trump campaign. This is a
SF News Gay, HIV-Positive Asylum Seeker From Russia Living In Bay Area Detained By ICE In Florida The stakes are very high for 30-year-old Russian national Denis Davydov, who traveled to the US legally in 2014 and overstayed his visa, requesting asylum as an HIV-positive gay man who faces persecution
SF News A Dozen Russian Diplomats In SF Are Part Of Obama's Ouster; Reporters Shooed Away At Local Consulate San Francisco has one of four Russian consulates in the US, but only ours can claim to have intelligence operatives included on a list of 35 that President Obama ordered out of the
Arts & Entertainment Jennifer Siebel Newsom Stands Up For Russian Gays, Looks Smashing During Friday's SF Opera gala, hordes fancy-smelling types sporting their finest threads showed up at City Hall to kick off the opera company's newest season. Jennifer Siebel Newsom, documentary filmmaker/wife of Lieutenant
