Tag: big tech

France considers requiring Musk’s X to verify users’ age

The French government is considering designating X as a porn platform — a move that will likely have the platform implementing strict age verification requirements.

Such a designation could effectively ban children from accessing the social media app unless it curtailed adult content. Paris has recently upped its efforts to protect kids online by requiring age verification by porn platforms.

“X has indicated since 2024 that it accepts the distribution of pornographic content. It must therefore be treated as such,” Digital Minister Clara Chappaz’s office told POLITICO.

Her team has been tasked with “examining the designation of X in the decree concerning pornographic sites that must verify the age of their users.”

The confirmation follows an appearance by Chappaz on French TV show “Quotidien” on Thursday evening, where she said X will soon receive “the same pretty papers as YouPorn” instructing X to ban adult content or implement age screening.

Porn platforms serving content in France are required to implement age verification measures with a final deadline of June 7, although some are protesting.

Failure to comply could see sites fined, delisted from search engines or blocked completely.

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America’s Dirtiest Sec of State and Dem Candidate For MI Governor Pulls A “Kamala” and DESTROYS Her Political Career With One Stupid “X” Post About LA Rioters

On any given day, America’s dirtiest secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson (MI-D), is potentially the most unpopular elected official on “X.”  It doesn’t matter which woke, or anti-Republican message she’s sharing on “X,” Michigan’s crooked secretary of state is consistently called out for her dishonestly and her ridiculous, anti-American views.

Yesterday, while defending the violent rioters in Los Angeles, CA, Michigan’s Democrat SOS Jocelyn Benson potentially ended her political career with a ridiculous post on “X” where she claimed she was praying for the safety of the rioters. Kamala Harris likely helped to end her political career in June 2020, when she foolishly asked her supporters on “X” to “chip in” to help bail out criminals who were destroying the city of Minneapolis over the drug overdose-caused death of George Floyd.

Thanks to Kamala’s promotion of the bail fund, George Howard, an alleged domestic abuser, was released from jail on a $1,500 bond that was paid by the organization Kamala was touting. Two weeks later, Howard was involved in a road rage incident where he was arrested and charged with the murder of a 38-year-old man. He would have still been in jail had it not been for Kamala Harris trying to publicly flaunt her support for the BLM rioters by asking people to bail them out of jail. This serious issue repeatedly surfaced during Kamala’s failed 2024 presidential campaign.

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The PayPal Mafia

Some may have heard of the tech geniuses who compose “The PayPal Mafia.” The mainstream media glamorizes them as “tech visionaries,” a band of rebellious geniuses who disrupted finance and went on to build empires. Yet, beneath the surface of the so-called PayPal Mafia is not innovation for the public good, but the construction of a new form of oligarchy—one more dangerous than the robber barons of the 19th century. Why? Because this new class of elites doesn’t merely build companies. These men influence monetary systems, shape global narratives, and fund policy engineering through unelected channels.

PayPal emerged in the late 1990s during the dot-com bubble, which I had warned would crash by 2000. PayPal became a clever workaround to bypass the traditional banking system, cloaked under the premise of convenience. This so-called “mafia” includes Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, David Sacks, Scott Banister, Roelof Botha, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, Premal Shah, Yu Pan, and Yishan Wong, among others who had roots in PayPal. Each went on to build their own tech empire spanning across biotech, social media, space, venture capitalism, and surveillance.

Fortune Magazine ran an article about these men in 2007, and even asked them to dress up as traditional mafia gangsters. These men are the new tech elite who wield immense power and influence. Elon Musk’s deep ties to Donald Trump shone a new light on how deeply the so-called PayPal Mafia has become embedded in politics and geopolitical affairs.

I reported how Peter Thiel provided J.D. Vance a platform to enter politics. Thiel introduced Vance to Silicon Valley and welcomed him into the scene of the tech elite. Theil’s Palantir was recently awarded a massive contract to create the first US federal centralized government database that will house every piece of data on every American citizen. Again, this is happening under the premise of convenience.

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Musk Deletes X Post Accusing Trump of Epstein Ties, Deletes Another Calling for Impeachment

The internet lit up this week after Elon Musk ignited a firestorm by going after President Donald Trump—and then quickly backed down.

What started as a disagreement over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB)—a sweeping tax and trade reform plan aimed at supercharging American manufacturing, reducing the deficit, and cutting off the globalist money faucet—turned into something far darker.

The feud escalated when Musk, in a now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), accused Trump of being involved in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Musk wrote on X, “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”

He continued, “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”

Musk even shared a decades-old video of President Trump speaking briefly with Epstein at a Mar-a-Lago party in 1992—footage that has circulated for years and proves absolutely nothing.

Musk calmed down Thursday night after going off on Trump in several nasty posts on X. Responding to a poster with (at the time) 184 followers who pleaded with Musk to “cool off” in response to Musk posting as part of his fight with Trump he would decommission the Dragon space capsule relied on by NASA to shuttle astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, Musk said, “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”

A few minutes later Musk responded positively to a plea for peace by Bill Ackman who posted, “I support @realDonaldTrump and @elonmusk and they should make peace for the benefit of our great country. We are much stronger together than apart.”

Just as suddenly as the posts appeared, they vanished. By early Saturday morning, Musk’s tweet had been deleted.

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BlueSky Is Just Another Weapon in Big Tech’s War Against Truth

Remember when Jack Dorsey left Twitter, claimed he had “seen the light,” and launched Blue Sky to “decentralize social media”? Yeah, turns out that was just another bait-and-switch by Big Tech’s elite. The same Silicon Valley players who censored the truth about COVID, vaccines, election fraud, and even the gospel, are now peddling “decentralization” like a cheap used car.

But here’s the reality: Blue Sky is a centralized con disguised as a digital rebellion.

On The Andres Segovia Show, @theandressegovia laid it bare: “This is the place I’ve received the most threats on any platform.” That includes X, Gab, even Instagram. But on Blue Sky? Threats. Not criticism. Not trolling. Threats. And the accounts issuing them? Still up. That tells you everything you need to know about how this platform operates.

Now enter @YossiShow—he tested the app, documented 37 screenshots, filed 9 reports on pornographic content, and was met with radio silence. “Ghosted my April 15th and 17th emails,” he said. Zero accountability. Zero action. But the most important quote? “Blue Sky’s a free speech fraud. Vague rules, ignored threats, rampant porn. They dodge accountability… Transparency is key, they’re allergic.”

Let’s cut to the chase. This isn’t about broken code or lazy developers. This is about control. Blue Sky doesn’t want to be a free speech platform. They want to appear to be one—just enough to bait the disillusioned and funnel us back into the surveillance state. They’re pulling from the same playbook we’ve seen over and over again: promise liberty, deliver tyranny.

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No Mark Zuckerberg, AI ‘Friends’ are not Good for Mental Health

Think you could use a few more friends? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says AI will do the trick. In a recent interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, the Silicon Valley titan said the average American has fewer than three friends but a desire to have “something like fifteen.”

Zuckerberg thinks computer code will fill the gap: “The average person wants more connectivity, connection than they have,” he observed. “As the personalization loop kicks in, and the AI just starts to get to know you better, I think that will be just really compelling.” 

It’s interesting advice from a guy who heads up two of the largest platforms on the planet for bringing people together.

It’s also an admission from Zuckerberg that chatting with real people isn’t cutting it anymore.

His solution? More technology, not less. Meta has made billions of dollars monetizing our attention. Why not monetize our loneliness, too?  

Turns out it’s a bad time to tell us to make AI friends when we’re already struggling to navigate our digital lives. In 2023, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned of an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.

“One in two adults in America is living with measurable levels of loneliness,” Murthy reported, “but the numbers are even higher among young people.” He pointed to social media and online interactions as a driving factor. 

And we’re not just lonely. Rates of depression and anxiety are on the rise, too, again particularly in our youth.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data published last month, the prevalence of depression in people age 12 and older has nearly doubled in a decade, jumping from 8.2% between 2013 and 2014 to 13.1% between 2021 and 2023.

Of course, Zuckerberg knew his products were negatively impacting young people years ago.

In 2021, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook, which owns Instagram, had internal evidence showing Instagram use is linked with poorer mental health, particularly among young women.

Facebook buried its findings and failed to address the problem.

Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to understand that the struggle is real for millions of Americans who are finding it anything but easy to manage their well-being around constant online stimulation: “People are smart. They know what’s valuable in their lives,” Zuckerberg told Patel. “I think people have a good sense of what they want.”

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CBC Brags About Shutting Down Popular Political Clips YouTube Channel

A rising Canadian YouTube channel that had been pulling major traction has suddenly been banned following an aggressive report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which labeled the channel a “content farm” and reached out to YouTube directly. Not long after, the channel was gone.

“It’s just one example of what experts refer to as the ‘content’ or “engagement” farming phenomenon, in which individuals or organizations tailor their content to tap into the algorithm of the platform and boost their popularity,” the CBC explained in an article, as if this isn’t something that most YouTubers do.

Real Talk Politiks, the creator behind the now-deleted account, took to X on Sunday to reveal what happened, pointing the finger at government-aligned media and tech collusion.

“CBC, Canada’s state-funded media just got YouTube to terminate my channel — not for breaking rules, but for having the wrong political views,” the post read.

Despite operating without strikes, policy violations, or deceptive content flags, the channel was wiped.

What sparked the removal, according to CBC’s own report, was an AI-generated video of Ronald Reagan that allegedly lacked a clear label; something that might typically warrant a correction or warning, not a digital purge.

The CBC leaned into the narrative, bragging about its work in getting the channel shut down, and published a YouTube video titled “How we shut down one of Canada’s biggest news ‘content farms’.”

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ADL Regional Director Calls for Government-Regulated Online Censorship

The Anti-Defamation League’s David Goldenberg is demanding a broad overhaul of how speech is governed on the internet, calling for both government intervention and intensified corporate censorship. In a recent appearance, Goldenberg, who heads the ADL’s Midwest operations, expressed frustration over what he sees as declining efforts by tech firms to suppress online content he deems hateful.

Citing Meta’s rollback of its fact-checking team in the United States, he argued that platforms must be forced to take action. “You have a platform like Meta that just gutted its entire fact-checking department…And so what we need to do is we need to apply pressure in a real significant way on tech platforms that they have a responsibility, that they have an absolute responsibility to check and remove hateful speech that is inciteful.”

Goldenberg advocated not just for voluntary moderation, but for legislative and regulatory measures, both at the federal and state level, that would compel platforms to act as speech enforcers. He pointed to efforts in states like California as examples of where local governments are already testing such models.

His concern centers around what he perceives as an ecosystem of radicalization made easily accessible by today’s digital infrastructure. He warned that extremist ideologies no longer require obscure forums or dark web communities to spread. “It used to be you had to fight going into the deep dark web… Now… it’s easier and easier to be exposed in the mainstream,” he said.

Framing the online environment as a catalyst for violence, Goldenberg argued that free access to controversial viewpoints must be curtailed. He called for social media companies to take a stronger stance by excluding users whose views fall outside accepted boundaries, adding that regulation should enforce this responsibility.

He zeroed in on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a critical piece of legislation that shields platforms from legal liability over user-posted content. “Congress needs to amend Section 230, which provides immunity to tech platforms right now for what happens,” Goldenberg said. He dismissed comparisons between modern platforms and telecommunications companies, referencing past remarks by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg about how phone providers were not liable for threats made over calls. Goldenberg’s view was blunt: “These tech platforms are not guaranteed under the Constitution. They’re just not.”

From his perspective, private companies should be free to “kick people off, to de-platform,” and if they fail to do so voluntarily, they must be pressured or regulated into compliance. He described accountability as a mechanism for shaping behavior, stating, “Accountability is a tool that can be incredibly effective in changing behavior.”

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“Completely Insane”: Wired Posts DIY Video For Mangione’s Ghost Gun

YouTube’s content rules apparently don’t apply to corporate media darlings. 

Case in point: Wired (Publisher: Condé Nast) recently published a video walking viewers through the exact process of building a copycat version of the untraceable 9mm “ghost gun” allegedly used in the UnitedHealth CEO shooting by Lugi Mangione. 

“So, armed with a shopping list and a credit card, we ordered everything we needed. A 3D printer, plastic filaments, and household products like epoxy were all just a few clicks away on sites like Lowe’s or Amazon. And the more specialized components were available on sites that sell gun parts, just not the guns themselves,” Wired’s Andy Greenberg explained to viewers in the video. 

Greenberg continued, “A few days later, every ingredient I needed to make Mangione’s gun arrived in the mail for the grand total of $1,144.67 plus shipping. And that includes the price of the 3D printer. This is like Christmas Day. This looks like a slide, very much like an obvious gun part. Kind of crazy that you can just order this.” 

The video then spent five minutes showing viewers the printing and assembly processes. He outsourced the assembly of the pistol to YouTube Print Shoot Repeat. 

Meanwhile, YouTube explicitly prohibits content that provides instructions on manufacturing firearms, including ghost guns. 

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Meta Is Accused of Flouting Privacy Rules With AI Training Data

Meta’s attempt to restart AI training using Europeans’ public social media activity has drawn renewed resistance, as the privacy rights organization noyb threatens fresh legal action. The group has formally challenged Meta’s latest move to mine user data, asserting the tech giant is sidestepping EU privacy obligations and advancing without regulatory clearance.

Following a halt in June 2024 prompted by regulatory concerns, Meta announced in April it would resume training its language models. This time, it intends to use public posts and user interactions, including with Meta AI, from adults across the European Union and European Economic Area.

The initial pause came after mounting pressure from the Irish Data Protection Commission and a wave of complaints submitted to authorities in various member states. According to Meta, a December opinion from the European Data Protection Board signaled that its approach satisfied legal standards.

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