LOS ANGELES (AP) — Peter Yarrow, the singer-songwriter best known as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk-music trio whose impassioned harmonies transfixed millions as they lifted their voices in favor of civil rights and against war, has died. He was 86. Yarrow, who also co-wrote the group’s most enduring song, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” died Tuesday in New York, publicist Ken Sunshine said. Yarrow had bladder cancer for the past four years. During an incredible run of success spanning the 1960s, Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers released six Billboard Top 10 singles, two No. 1 albums and won five Grammys. They also brought early exposure to Bob Dylan by turning two of his songs, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” into Billboard Top 10 hits as they helped lead an American renaissance in folk music. They performed “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the 1963 March on Washington at which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. ...After months of rehearsal the three became an overnight sensation when their first album, 1962’s eponymous “Peter, Paul and Mary,” reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart. Their second, “In the Wind,” reached No. 4 and their third, “Moving,” put them back at No. 1. From their earliest albums, the trio sang out against war and injustice in songs like Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have all the Flowers Gone,” Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “When the Ship Comes In” and Yarrow’s own “Day is Done.” Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, is undergoing a major overhaul of its content moderation practices. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that the company will end its fact-checking program, plagued by severe leftist bias, and replace it with a community-driven system similar to X’s Community Notes. The changes come as a response to what Zuckerberg perceives as a “cultural tipping point” towards prioritizing speech, influenced by the recent elections. Kaplan acknowledged that Meta had developed complex systems to manage content in recent years, partly in response to societal and political pressure. However, he admitted that this approach had gone too far. “As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable. Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” he said. Under the new approach, Meta will eliminate some content policies around hot-button issues such as immigration and gender, and re-focus its automated moderation systems on “high severity violations.” The company will rely more on users to report other violations. Additionally, Facebook’s trust and safety and content moderation team will be moving from California to Texas.
Peter Yarrow, of Folk-Music Trio Peter, Paul and Mary, Dies at 86:
Mark Zuckerberg Promises Less Censorship on Facebook as He Scraps Biased Third-Party ‘Fact Checkers’:
