Hashtag Trending: Facebook bans pages associated with far-right groups; UK and Canada summon Zuckerberg; Bitcoin turns 10

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Trending on Reddit, Facebook has decided to ban individual accounts and pages, as well as any pages associated with the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys. This comes after members of the Proud Boys were involved in an act of violence in New York City earlier this month resulting in assaulting anti-fascist protestors outside a Republican Club. The group was founded by Gavin McInnes, one of the founding members of Vice Media. The group champions causes relating to white nationalism and other far-right causes.

Also trending on Reddit, in an unprecedented international joint movement, two parliamentary committees in Canada and the U.K. are jointly calling on Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before them. Both committees are investigating the impact of online disinformation on democratic processes. The committees are also looking at Facebook’s digital policies and information governance policies. The committees want Zuckerberg to speak on Cambridge Analytica specifically. Final reports coming out of the committees will be released in December.

Finally trending on LinkedIn, a very happy happy birthday to Bitcoin, which turned 10 years old yesterday. In the middle of one of the biggest financial crisis, the company officially launched on Oct. 31, 2008, with the purpose of serving as a payments system, a new kind of banking service, though that never really happened. In early 2009, it became the world’s first cryptocurrency and went on to be loved and hated by investors for being a disruptor in the financial industry.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Shruti Shekar
Shruti Shekar
Shruti Shekar is a video producer and reporter for IT World Canada. She was formerly a political reporter at The Hill Times and was based in Ottawa. Her beats included political culture, lobbying, telecom and technology, and the diplomatic community. She was also was the editor of The Lobby Monitor, and a reporter at The Wire Report; two trade publications that are part of The Hill Times. She received a MA in journalism from Western University and a double BA honours in communication studies and human rights from Carleton University. She was born in India, grew up mostly in Singapore and currently resides in Canada.

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