| | | |  | | Welcome to the Mozilla News Beat, a glance at the best and worst internet news of the week. We hope you enjoy it! |
 | Downward Dog. It's a sad yet wondrous day when a dog can do better yoga than we can. With its yoga mat out and legs kicking high, this tiny furball is ready for some relaxing stretches. | via Reddit |  | DOTUS. When Americans voted for Joe Biden to be the 46th President of the United States, they may not have realized they also voted for the return of pets to the Oval Office. Coming this January are 12-year-old Champ and (the White House's first shelter dog) 2-year-old Major. | via NY Times |  | Ad Block. When Google and Facebook first banned political ads on their platforms, it was meant for a limited time only. Now, even after the U.S. election, both companies say they will continue banning political ads; Facebook will for at least another month and Google offered no specific expiration date. | via Engadget |  | Watching The Watchmen. Stricter rules are coming to cyber surveillance tech, thanks to the EU. The new rules will require companies to get a government license to create tech with military applications as well as require greater transparency around tools that can be used to surveil. | via MIT Technology Review |  | Parler App. As popular social networks continue to flag toxic rhetoric, people are flocking to Parler, a Twitter clone that touts it allows "non-biased free speech." The app was downloaded over 600,000 times in a single day after the Presidential election results were announced. | via Fast Company |  | Encryption Lies. Remember when Zoom said your video calls were end-to-end encrypted? Yeah, that was a lie. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, what Zoom called end-to-end encryption as far back as 2017 never actually was. Now the service says its adding proper encryption into their apps. (Fun fact: Mozilla called for this back in June.) | via Ars Technica |  | Vaccine Misinfo. The news of a potential COVID vaccine from Pfizer immediately led to misinformation across social media, offering a glimpse of the misinfo hellscape to come when a proper vaccine does arrive. | via Vox |  | Test Tracking. These aren't your grandfather's standardized tests. The pandemic has turned everything remote, which means schools are resorting to surveillance software to make sure students don't cheat during tests. The software is able to track eye movement, head movement, mouse clicks, scrolling rates and more. | via Vice |  | Misleader In Chief. Since Saturday, social media has been flooded with false claims of voter fraud. The Guardian notes that despite Facebook's warning labels, the posts with the most engagement on this topic belong to the U.S. President. | via The Guardian |  | Cause, Effect. Recode reports that after Trump claimed, without proof, that Democrats stole the U.S. election, groups like "Stop the Steal" were created to protest the results. Amassing 350,000 users in one day, the group contained false theories and posts that are violent in nature. While Facebook disbanded the group, new ones have replaced it. | via Vox |
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