Tag: elon musk

Despite Backlash, X Continues Digital ID Verification with New Partner Stripe

X, a prominent social media platform, has seemingly phased out its association with the Israeli identity verification firm AU10TIX, shifting instead to American company Stripe to manage its identity verification services.

The move followed reports that AU10TIX had suffered a data leak.

This transition comes amidst concerns raised by some of X’s users regarding the safety of their personal data, particularly their photo IDs.

The call for X to disengage from AU10TIX also gained momentum after specific users highlighted the risk of intelligence sharing.

But rather than dropping the controversial digital ID system entirely, X has simply switched companies.

Starting to introduce digital IDs for social media use can severely inhibit free speech by stripping away the protective layer of anonymity and pseudonymity.

This change could deter users from expressing controversial or minority viewpoints for fear of personal or professional repercussions, particularly under oppressive regimes or in sensitive situations.

Such a policy would also heighten surveillance risks, as linking social media profiles to real-world identities makes it easier for both governmental and non-governmental actors to monitor individuals. The ability of controversial or targeted vulnerable groups to safely organize and communicate could be significantly compromised, leading to a decrease in diverse voices and activism online.

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“DMCA Does Not Apply”: Musk Says X Will Not Remove CNN Debate Streams, Footage

X owner Elon Musk has clarified that the platform will not block or remove live streams and footage of the Presidential debate on Thursday, despite apparent demands by CNN that social media companies do not allow creators to use their feed.

Podcaster Tim Pool claimed that he’d been told by CNN that he would not be legally allowed to simulcast the debate and provide his own commentary and fact checks on it.

The Post Millenial then highlighted an email they received from CNN, in which the network stated that “CNN’s debates are exclusive to CNN and may not be streamed or streamed with verbal or digital commentary on any platform or social media site by another party, other than the embeddable YouTube player via the CNN YouTube channel.”

The email also stated “Podcast Use: Similar to broadcast rules, news organizations may use audio clips (up to 3:00 minutes at a time) on their shows after the debate conclude and must credit the ‘CNN Presidential Debate’ verbally in introducing the clip.”

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Musk Declares War on Apple: Threatens to Ban Devices Over “Creepy Spyware” AI Integration

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter), has declared war on big tech Apple.

The tech mogul threatens to ban Apple devices across his companies unless Apple abandons its plans to integrate OpenAI’s woke ChatGPT technology into its operating system.

Apple announced on Monday that it would be integrating ChatGPT into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. This integration would allow users to access ChatGPT’s capabilities, including image and document understanding, without needing to switch between tools. Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, could also tap into ChatGPT’s intelligence when necessary.

“We’re excited to partner with Apple to bring ChatGPT to their users in a new way. Apple shares our commitment to safety and innovation, and this partnership aligns with OpenAI’s mission to make advanced AI accessible to everyone. Together with Apple, we’re making it easier for people to benefit from what AI can offer,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

“It’s personal, powerful, and private—and it’s integrated into the apps you rely on every day. Introducing Apple Intelligence—our next chapter in AI,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

In response to Tim Cook’s announcement, Musk stated, “Don’t want it. Either stop this creepy spyware or all Apple devices will be banned from the premises of my companies.”

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“Free Speech Prevailed” Says Elon Musk as Australia Drops Bid to Censor Internet Globally

Elon Musk’s has said “freedom of speech is worth fighting for” after Australia’s cyber safety regulator, eSafety, dropped its federal court case over X Corp’s refusal to block footage of a radicalised teenager stabbing a bishop at a Church in Sydney not just for Australians, but for users of the platform worldwide.

The case has been portrayed as a battle for control of the internet and goes to the heart of a central and as yet unresolved issue in an increasingly online world, namely, whether Government-led attempts to control the distribution within a country of what it regards as ‘harmful’ online material should be allowed to impinge on the rights of those beyond its borders to access that same material.

An initial ruling by federal judge Geoffrey Kennett last month overturned orders that videos of the bishop’s stabbing were to be hidden because they contained what Australian authorities argue is terrorist content that might influence others.

That decision still required ratification by the court, and a case management hearing had been due to take place at a later date. However, the country’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman-Grant, said on Wednesday that the watchdog has decided to drop the action following Judge Kennett’s ruling.

“I have decided to discontinue the proceedings in the federal court against X Corp in relation to the matter of extreme violent material depicting the real-life graphic stabbing of a religious leader at Wakeley in Sydney,” she said, adding: “I stand by my investigators and the decisions eSafety made.”

Grant went on to cite the prudent use of public funds as one of the reasons for dropping the case, although critics say it was also increasingly apparent that the Australian state’s argument in favour of a global ban on the material was legally indefensible.

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Elon Musk’s X Urges Supreme Court for Review After Jack Smith Obtained Trump Files

Elon Musk’s X Corp. has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider stepping in against a process that lets officials obtain information from social media companies and bars the companies from informing people whose information is handed over.

The process wrongly enables officials to “access and review potentially privileged materials without any opportunity for the user to assert privileges—including constitutional privileges,” lawyers for X said in a filing to the nation’s top court.

Unsealed documents in 2023 showed that X provided data and records from former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account to special counsel Jack Smith after Mr. Smith obtained a search warrant.

X was blocked from informing President Trump by a nondisclosure order that Mr. Smith also obtained.

The order said disclosing the warrant would result in “destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation,” and let President Trump “flee from prosecution.”

X challenged the order, arguing it violated its First Amendment rights and noting that President Trump might have reason to claim executive privilege, or presidential privilege. The company wanted to alert the former president so he could assert the privilege, but U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled against it, claiming during a hearing that the only reason X was issuing the challenge was “because the CEO wants to cozy up with the former president.”

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New X Policy Forces Earners To Verify Their Government ID With Israeli Verification Company

X, formerly Twitter, is now mandating the use of a government ID-based account verification system for users that earn revenue on the platform – either for advertising or for paid subscriptions.

To implement this system, X has partnered with Au10tix, an Israeli company known for its identity verification solutions. Users who opt to receive payouts on the platform will have to undergo a verification process with the company.

This initiative aims to curb impersonation, fraud, and improve user support, yet it also raises profound questions about privacy and free speech, as X markets itself as a free speech platform, and free speech and anonymity often go hand-in-hand. This is especially true in countries where their speech can get citizens jailed or worse.

“We’re making changes to our Creator Subscriptions and Ads Revenue Share programs to further promote authenticity and fight fraud on the platform. Starting today, all new creators must verify their ID to receive payouts. All existing creators must do so by July 1, 2024,” the update to X’s verification page now reads.

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I was banned from Elon’s ‘free speech’ X app for offending power

Following years of pressure from Israel lobbyists and British spooks, I was finally banned by Twitter/X. What does my removal say about Elon Musk, who flaunts his opposition to censorship, while promising to build an “everything app” where you could lose access to banking and messaging for violating dubious speech codes? 

On February 17, I was suspended from Twitter/X without warning. The cause was mass-reporting by Zionist activists I’d offended. My removal was justified on the basis that I violated X’s “rules against violent speech.” Having endlessly condemned violence on the platform – in particular, the Gaza genocide – I’m flummoxed. Not least because a post from one of my Zionist detractors, which openly calls for me to be “battered on a weekly basis” over my political views, remains extant today.

Despite repeated requests for clarity from X, I have no idea whether I will ever be reinstated. In February, I received from “support” stating the suspension will only be reversed after three months. But just a few sentences later, the email contradicted itself, stating in closing that the ban would last just a month. Meanwhile, whenever I log into X, my profile appears to have zero followers or follows, I cannot view or search anyone’s tweets (including my own), and my DMs are inaccessible. Have they been erased? A landing page message reads:

“Your account is permanently in read-only mode, which means you can’t post, repost, or like content. You won’t be able to create new accounts.”

In January 2024, X purged a number of prominent, predominantly left-wing users without warning or explanation. Their suspensions were lifted only after a deluge of complaints poured in to the personal account of Elon Musk, the libertarian tech maven and self-proclaimed free speech warrior who purchased Twitter with his personal fortune.

I am grateful that scores of X users have done the same following my own suspension. However, Musk has kept mum about my case. While I may not have as many followers as those abruptly defenestrated in January, my work has been widely shared on X, with some posts gaining millions of impressions. Most-viewed was my December 2023 revelation that an unadvertised and unnoticed Russian government plane was parked in Washington DC’s Dulles airport, a visit which likely represented the beginning of the Ukraine proxy war’s end.

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Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites could be eroding Earth’s magnetic field and slowly poisoning us all, ex-NASA scientist warns

An ex-NASA physicist warns cheap satellite ‘megaconstellations’ like Elon Musk‘s Starlink could disrupt Earth’s magnetosphere exposing all life to deadly cosmic rays.

Dr. Sierra Solter-Hunt’s new study draws on new estimates that Musk’s SpaceX is burning up over 2,755 lbs (1.3 tons) of wireless internet satellite debris into Earth’s atmosphere every hour — creating a metal layer of ‘conductive particulate’ in orbit.

‘I was very surprised,’ physicist Dr Solter-Hunt told DailyMail.com. ‘No one has given much research to the accumulation of metal dust from the space industry.’

There are 5,504 Starlink satellites now in orbit, as of the last estimate by astronomers this March, of which 5,442 are operational. But tens of thousands more are planned.

Particles from these satellites at the end of their lifecycle could ‘distort or trap the magnetic field’ that keeps Earth’s atmosphere from escaping, the physicist said, ‘with all of the highly-conductive metal trash that is all settling in one region.’

Although she notes it is an ‘extreme case,’ such a layer of charged metal dust could lead to ‘atmospheric stripping’ akin to the ancient fates of Mars and Mercury.

After working on NASA’s comet-catching Stardust spacecraft research team in 2012, Dr Solter-Hunt spent three years at the US Air Force Research Laboratory.

There she studied the electromagnetic behavior of plasma plumes in low-Earth orbit (LEO), the region of the upper-atmosphere where Starlink’s orbital network resides. She now consults on space weather’s impact on the aerospace industry. 

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X To Pay Legal Fees Of Doctor Targeted For Speaking Out Against COVID Lockdowns

Elon Musk’s X has announced that it will finance the defense of a doctor in Canada who has been targeted and had her life savings drained away by having to fight legal battles after speaking out against COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

In the announcement, X said it is “proud to help defend Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill against the government-supported efforts to cancel her speech.”

X notes that Dr. Gill “spoke out publicly on Twitter (now X) in opposition to the Canadian and Ontario governments’ COVID lockdown efforts and vaccination mandates, she was harassed by the legacy media, censored by prior Twitter management, and subjected to investigations and disciplinary proceedings by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario that resulted in ‘cautions’ being placed on her permanent public record.”

“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and a critical defense against totalitarianism in all forms,” the company continued, adding “We must do whatever we can to protect it, and at X we will always fight to protect your right to speak freely.”

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Elon Musk Delivers Satellite Tech To Military To Turn Earth Into A Panopticon Of Surveillance

The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is reportedly acquiring a constellation of hundreds of intelligence-gathering satellites from SpaceX, with a specific focus on tracking targets down below in support of ground operations. Though details about this project are still very limited, there are clear parallels to what the U.S. Space Force has previously said about a highly classified space-based radar surveillance program, which it first publicly disclosed around the same time SpaceX is said to have gotten its NRO contract. If this program is the one we think it is, it could bring about a revolution in both tactical and strategic space-based sensing.

Starshield, SpaceX’s government-sales-focused business unit, has been working on the new low Earth orbit (LEO) spy satellites under a $1.8 billion contract it received in 2021 from NRO, according to a report from Reuters this past weekend, citing five anonymous sources familiar with the deal. The Wall Street Journal had previously published a story about the existence of the contract in February, but did not name NRO as being involved or provide specific details about the deal’s scope of work.

At the time of writing, neither SpaceX nor its CEO Elon Musk appear to have directly responded to the Reuters article or otherwise commented on the details therein. NRO, a U.S. military organization that serves as America’s main remote sensing intelligence arm, and is so secret that its existence was not publicly acknowledged until 1992, declined to comment on the specifics of any deal with SpaceX, according to Reuters.

“We’ve changed our procurement methods to take advantage of LEO technologies,” Troy Meink, NRO’s Principal Deputy Director, did say, speaking generally, in a speech at the Satellite 2024 conference on Monday, according to SpaceNews. “Our main priority is to meet the requirements with minimum risk.

When the new constellation, or at least an initial segment thereof, might begin collecting intelligence operationally, if it hasn’t already, isn’t clear. SpaceX has been launching relevant prototype satellites since 2020, before its formal contract with NRO, and “a U.S. government database of objects in orbit shows several SpaceX missions having deployed satellites that neither the company nor the government have ever acknowledged,” per Reuters.

As for why SpaceX is the one to deliver this constellation to the Pentagon, it pioneered the capability and is really the only experienced contractor in this area at this time, although that will change in the years to come.

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