COVID-19 Relief for Musicians; Fake News on Twitter No More

President Donald Trump, like everyone else, can take a side on the decisions made by companies in his country, public policies or even the decisions of other governments to impose taxes on American companies. But when criticism turns to him, Trump seems to contradict what he stands for. 

This week, for the first time, Twitter included the tag "verify data" to two tweets by Donald Trump in which he wrote that voting by mail in the US would be "fraudulent" and would result in a "rigged election." The notification, which shows a blue exclamation mark underneath the tweets, urges readers to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” and directs them to a page with fact-checked information. This is the first time Twitter applies a fact-check tag to a tweet by Trump as part of its new "misleading information" policy to combat the "fake news" about COVID-19.

There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020

In response, Trump threatened, via Twitter, to regulate or close social media companies. "Republicans feel that social media platforms totally silence conservative voices. We will either vigorously regulate them or close them before we can allow that to happen,” he wrote on his Twitter account. It seems that Trump's speech has changed a lot since 2018 when the president began a trade dispute against the EU after France created a digital tax on US tech companies.

Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020

More news below: 

• This week, Spotify acquired the rights to 'Joe Rogan Experience,' which has 190 million downloads per month, for more than US$100 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company has invested more than US$600 million, primarily in content publishers, to become a giant in the podcast industry. 

• Spotify also joined the initiative Música México COVID-19 (MMC-19), spearheaded by AMPROFON, to help the musicians community in Mexico. Through the Spotify’s COVID-19 Music Relief program, the Swedish streaming platform will make an initial donation to the project and then match each dollar that is donated.

• albo, a Mexican fintech company, wants to contribute to the development of financial inclusion in the country by “empathizing with them (clients), understanding their needs and generating the necessary confidence so they can start choosing these types of alternatives instead of traditional banking,” its Co-founder and Director General said in an interview with Mexico Business News.

• Designer Anifa Mvuemba showed her followers a preview of what the ‘new normal’ runway would look like while presenting her latest Hanifa brand collection using 3D models through Instagram Live.

• An analysis by NewsGuard's new Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center revealed that as the COVID-19 pandemic grows, information and disinformation spread even faster across the globe.