Day: July 23, 2020

Facebook has agreed to pay $650 million to settle a years-long class action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition in what continues to be a less-than-great summer for the social media company.

The lawsuit is over Facebook’s photo tagging feature, which used facial recognition software to identify faces in users’ photos. The state of Illinois, however, has a law against businesses collecting biometric data — which includes facial recognition — without first obtaining consent. Illinois argued that Facebook didn’t get that consent before enabling the new feature by default to its millions of Illinois users, and sued the company …

Taco Bell is known for many things: turning Doritos into taco shells, “diablo” sauce, Gidget the spokes-chihuahua. But its greatest achievement, in my humble opinion? Being the friendliest major fast food restaurant for vegetarians and vegans.

It’s an achievement that the chain is very proud of and touts vigorously to plant-eating audiences. But a new change to the menu, which is removing several of the most vegetarian and vegan-friendly options at the Bell, has prompted concern among grassroots Taco Bell aficionados.

“Black power, Black love,” hundreds of protesters chanted on July 4 as they marched through Stone Mountain Park, demanding the removal of the Confederate monument just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. The peaceful demonstrators, some armed and wearing bulletproof vests, showed up at the multi-day protest inspired by the ongoing global movement to end police killings of Black Americans. As the country reckons with its racist history, there has been a nationwide push to take down Confederate monuments as symbols of white supremacy. Stone Mountain is no exception.

At nine stories tall, Stone Mountain is the largest Confederate monument in the …