Tag: internet

Lawmakers and Tech CEOs Push Online Age and ID Verification Proposals During Hearing on Child Safety

As we reported previously, US lawmakers are intent on pushing online ID, age verification, and causing an end to online anonymity – despite constitutional concerns.

And during a hearing today, tech CEOs supported proposals that would greatly expand the requirements for online ID verification and erode the ability to use the internet without connecting your online activity to your identity.

The proposals are being pushed in the name of protecting children online but would impact anyone who doesn’t want to tie all of their online speech and activity to their real ID – over surveillance or censorship concerns.

In response to criticism from lawmakers, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed for far-reaching online age verification standards that would impose age verification at the app store level — a proposal that would mean the vast majority of mobile app usage could be tied to a person’s official identity.

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To protect kids, California might require chronological feeds on social media

Social media companies design their feeds to be as gripping as possible, with complicated algorithms shuffling posts and ads into a never-ending stream of entertainment.

A new California law would require companies to shut off those algorithms by default for users under 18, and implement other mandated tweaks that lawmakers say would reduce the negative mental health effects of social media on children.

The bill, dubbed the Protecting Kids from Social Media Addiction Act by its author, state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), was announced at a news conference with California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Monday, alongside another proposed law that would tighten privacy protections for minors.

“Social media companies have the ability to protect our kids,” Skinner said. “They could act; they have not.”

One of the act’s key provisions is making a chronological feed the default setting on platforms, which would show users posts from the people they follow in the order that they were uploaded, rather than arranging the content to maximize engagement.

This change would show young users “the things that they want to see, as opposed to the addictive algorithmic feed that is presently being fed to our children,” Bonta said.

The act would also require the default settings on social media apps to mute notifications between midnight and 6 a.m., cap use at one hour daily, and remove the visibility of “like” counts. Parents — and in practice, most likely, the children using these apps — would have the ability to change these default settings.

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Feds use Wayback Machine to identify alleged Jan. 6 rioter who led calls to arrest state officials for COVID-19 rules

Jason Howland, the founder of an organization known for its protest of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, has been arrested and charged with five counts including obstructing proceedings inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Court records reviewed Thursday by Law&Crime confirm Howland was arrested in Michigan on Jan. 23 and charged with obstruction of an official proceeding, entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

Howland, the founder of the group “American Patriot Council,” is accused of storming the Capitol and in an FBI affidavit accompanying the charges, the agent notes that Howland was readily identified in a Jan. 17, 2021, post on social media site X, then Twitter, from a sedition hunter group known as Michigan Tea.

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Bill banning minors under 16 from using social media passes Florida House

A bill that would ban minors under the age of 16 from using social media passed the Florida House 106-13 on Wednesday.

“We must act to protect Florida’s children from these addictive features, the mental health disorders caused by excessive use, and the risk of exposure to predatory activities,” said Rep. Tyler Sirois (R-Brevard), who sponsored the bill.

House Bill 1 would require social media platforms to terminate social media accounts of minors under the age of 16.

The bill requires that social media companies have an independent, private, third-party age verification service, that the personal data collected on minors under the age of 16 be permanently deleted, and data collected by the third party authentication must also be deleted

Parents are also empowered under the measure to bring a cause of action against social media platforms that fail to terminate a minor’s unlawful account.

Democrats argue the bill goes too far. Some Democratic members suggested less restrictive measures such as allowing parents to opt in or opt out of allowing their children to use social media.

During debate on Wednesday, several representatives spoke against the bill, with some calling it government overreach.

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Parents, Not Government, Should Control How Kids Use Social Media

It’s been 21 years since the feds “protected” us from endless telemarketer phone calls by creating a Do Not Call list. I now receive perhaps a dozen calls a day from numbers my phone identifies as “Potential Spam.”

Spammers “outwitted the government and wrecked” this system, The Washington Post reported, leaving Americans more susceptible than ever to car warranty pitches. Fortunately, my phone’s call-block system works fairly well.

Excuse my cynicism, but federal and state governments have an unimpressive record of protecting the public, especially on consumer-related issues. That hasn’t stopped them from trying. The process always is the same: Politicians spotlight a legitimate concern. They pass laws. They hold press conferences. The problem gets worse. Consumers (and manufacturers) come up with their own ways to handle it.

The latest consumer panic involves social media—specifically the ability of children to access inappropriate websites and apps. Liberal and conservative state governments are in a frenzy to pass these “protect the children” internet laws. Progressive California passed Assembly Bill 2273, which imposes an “Age Appropriate Design Code” that adopts provisions similar to those implemented by the European Union.

The legislation claims to empower parents, but it mainly empowers our state government to determine what information is acceptable for children. Specifically, the law requires tech companies to complete a “Data Protection Impact Assessment…for any online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children.” It also empowers the state attorney general to file lawsuits against companies that don’t conform to these nebulous standards.

Supporters pointed to serious mental health concerns related to cyberbullying and the like, but it mainly forces tech companies to serve as censors, gives government officials broad powers to determine appropriate speech, and hobbles U.S.-based companies while doing nothing about offshore sites that surely will proliferate. By the way, the Do Not Call List helped assure that legitimate (but still annoying) telemarketing companies would be supplanted by overseas scammers.

The California law passed by overwhelming margins because of, well, “the children.” Now conservative states are getting in on the action. Utah’s GOP Gov. Spencer Cox last year signed two such laws that require “parental consent for a minor to join a social-media platform” and prohibit “minors from using social media from the hours of 10:30 pm to 6:30 am,” per an NPR report. They also require parental access to their kids’ accounts and let the state sue companies for age-inappropriate ads.

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Feds Will Try Backpage Co-Founder Michael Lacey for a Third Time

Third time’s a charm? Let’s hope not. More than five and a half years after journalist and Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey was arrested, federal prosecutors have indicated that they will try him for a third time on the same charges.

It’s a frightening reminder of how far authorities will go to get their way—and to warn tech companies and publishers against platforming speech the government doesn’t like.

When you zoom out a bit, it’s clear Lacey’s case could have implications for anyone who posts or consumes content online.

Doesn’t the Constitution bar being tried twice on the same criminal charges? Generally, yes—in cases involving an acquittal or conviction, that is. But Lacey’s two previous trials resulted in mistrials, meaning the government can take another shot if it likes. And in a motion filed yesterday, prosecutors announced that indeed they would like a do over, again.

The first trial, back in 2021, was declared a mistrial after prosecutors and their witnesses couldn’t stop suggesting that Lacey and his co-defendants were charged with child sex trafficking. They were not, and efforts to suggest as much could have seriously prejudiced a jury.

In actuality, Lacey, his longtime (and now deceased) publishing partner James Larkin, and several other former Backpage staffers and executives were charged with violating the federal Travel Act by facilitating prostitution. They were also accused of conspiracy to facilitate prostitution and money laundering in service of this.

The second trial, held last fall, saw a jury totally acquit two of the defendants while two others—Scott Spear and John “Jed” Brunst—were acquitted on multiple charges and found guilty on multiple charges.

Lacey’s outcome was also mixed but with far fewer guilty or not guilty verdicts. He was ultimately found guilty on just one count and not guilty on just one count; the jury was hung on the remaining 84 counts. So, federal judge Diane Humetewa declared a mistrial with respect to these 84 counts, allowing (but not requiring) the government to try again.

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EU President Calls For Globalist Control Over All Information

President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen addressed elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos Tuesday, calling for overarching globalist control over the flow of all information in the digital age.

“The top concern for the next two years is not conflict, or climate, it is disinformation and misinformation,” von der Leyen proclaimed, adding “The boundary between online and offline is getting thinner and thinner, and this is even more important in the era of generative AI.”

Addressing the elite as “Excellencies,” and personally naming “dear” Klaus Schwabb in her introduction, von der Leyen further called for the development of “a new global framework for AI risks,” and a vow to “drive global collaboration” to prevent the spread of ‘misinformation’ (information they don’t want you to know about).

She continued, “Many of the solutions lie not only in countries working together but, crucially, on businesses and governments, businesses and democracies working together,” adding that “While governments hold many of the levers to deal with the great challenges of our time, business have [sic] the innovation, the technology, the talents to deliver the solutions we need to fight threats like climate change or industrial-scale disinformation.”

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Recommended reading…

Get it HERE.

“EVERYTHING WE HAVE BEEN TOLD ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC NATURE OF THE INTERNET IS A MARKETING PLOY.
As the Cambridge Analytica scandal has shown, private corporations consider it their right to use our data (and by extension, us) which ever way they see fit. Tempted by their appealing organisational and diagnostic tools, we have allowed private internet corporations access to the most intimate corners of our lives.
But the internet was developed, from the outset, as a weapon.
Looking at the hidden origins of many internet corporations and platforms, Levine shows that this is a function, not a bug of the online experience. 
Conceived as a surveillance tool by ARPA to control insurgents in the Vietnam War, the internet is now essential to our lives. This book investigates the troubling and unavoidable truth of its history and the unfathomable power of the corporations who now more or less own it.
Without this book, your picture of contemporary society will be missing an essential piece of the puzzle.”

Amazon Fires Up Its Space Lasers 

A shoot-out featuring thousands of lasers is about to break out in low earth orbit. Luckily, no one will get hurt—the lasers’ targets are the protagonists’ own communications satellites.

Amazon has just announced that two of its prototype internet satellites equipped with infrared lasers transferred data at 100 gigabits per second over a distance of nearly 1000 kilometers. The company says all of its upcoming 3236 Project Kuiper satellites will include such interlinks, forming a high-speed mesh network to route data around the world.

SpaceX’s rival Starlink system, which already boasts over 1.5 million customers including the Ukrainian military, has been experimenting with optical interlinks for about a year. It recently claimed to have more than 8,000 space lasers on its newest generation of satellites, which began launching earlier this year.

Now the race is on to build the first complete optical inter-satellite link (OISL) constellation, at a price that’s competitive with terrestrial 5G and fiber networks.

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Deepfake Society: 74% of Americans Can’t Tell What’s Real or Fake Online Anymore

Americans believe only 37 percent of the content they see on social media is “real,” or free of edits, filters, and Photoshop. Between AI and “deepfake” videos — a survey of 2,000 adults split evenly by generation reveals that almost three-quarters (74%) can’t even tell what’s real or fake anymore.

Americans are wary of both targeted ads (14%) and influencer content (18%), but a little more than half (52%) find themselves equally likely to question the legitimacy of either one. This goes beyond social media and what’s happening online. The survey finds that while 41 percent have more difficulty determining if an item they’re looking to purchase online is “real” or “a dupe,” another 36 percent find shopping in person to be just as challenging.

While the average respondent will spend about 15 minutes determining if an item is “real,” meaning a genuine model or a knockoff, millennials take it a step further and will spend upwards of 20 minutes trying to decide.

Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of De Beers Group, results reveal that Americans already own a plethora of both real and fake products.

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