Tag: moral panics

AI is ushering in a new era of Satanism, exorcists warn religious leaders: ‘A great power’

Is it the Tech-corcist?

With religious rifts widening around the globe, an enterprising Christian leader has potentially devised a way to unite the faiths against a common foe.

A Mexican priest named Father Luis Ramirez Almanza is inviting rabbis, imams and evangelical preachers to join a special exorcism training course that, among other evils, specializes in battling the scourge of AI-fueled Satanism, the Times Of London reported.

“Artificial intelligence is a great power — a force for both good and evil — and can therefore be used for devil worshipping,” he warned at a press conference announcing his “Course on the Ministry of Exorcism and Prayer of Deliverance.”

Held at the Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum, a Vatican-affiliated university, this niche training draws over 170 participants interested in performing exorcisms.

While participants aren’t granted the authority to conduct a demon-ectomy — that license can only be bestowed by a diocesan bishop, per Catholic Canon Law — the university promises on its website to “deepen their knowledge of the ministry of exorcism and deliverance prayer in a serious and interdisciplinary way.”

This year, there will be a special emphasis on AI’s use among Lucifer enthusiasts. 

Father Fortunato Di Noto, a Sicilian priest who fights child sexual abuse and is speaking at a session in May, claims that some satanic groups are already experimenting with the tech.

“We believe these groups are using AI to generate images of children involved in satanic rites,” Di Noto told The Times Of London.

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Scientists warn against crappy age verification: ‘if implemented without careful consideration… the new regulation might cause more harm than good’

As age verification becomes more commonplace across the web, there are some trying to oppose its rollout on security and privacy grounds. An open letter signed by over 400 researchers and scientists arguing the many reasons why age verification (and most especially the current age assurance technology) isn’t all it’s cracked up to be is now available to read in full.

Here’s a precis on the whole thing: Governments across the world are adopting legislation to ensure usage or compliance with age assurance methods, in the name of keeping kids off the bad parts of the web. That sounds like a good idea until you look into the details. Those details suggest these are often haphazardly applied and with little regard for privacy and data protection.

The open letter outlines a few key arguments:

How easily age verification can be bypassed. This being evident by Discord’s age verification, provided by K-id, which could be bypassed by using Sam’s face in Death Stranding. As the open letter points out, it’s possible to lie about one’s age, trick a system, or buy age-verified credentials online. VPNs are also widely available and prove an easy way to bypass any and all age assurance methods, even if access to said VPNs is age-restricted.

How unreliable age estimation can be. All while potentially necessitating large-scale and invasive data collection or widespread use of government IDs at every online interaction for any semblance of effectiveness. As the letter notes, “We conclude that age assessment presents an inherent disproportionate risk of serious privacy violations and discrimination, without guarantees of effectiveness.”

How it necessitates a global trust infrastructure. This being one of the main goals of the EU’s digital identity wallet, though only pan-EU, being used as a common foundation for all member states to meet one another for age assurance. Though as the letter suggests, “even if such a trust infrastructure would exist, checks can be circumvented by acquiring valid certificates or using VPNs, as long as age assurance regulations are not universally enforced by all affected services.”

How it can push users to lesser-known, potentially dangerous websites. By enforcing age assurance, and with the larger, more responsible websites complying, there is a chance of pushing users to lesser-known, potentially dangerous or scam websites. Following the rollout of the UK’s Online Safety Act, one of the first investigations it launched was into porn websites that did not immediately comply with the new rules for age verification checks. Other websites chose to turn off services to the UK altogether.

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Xbox UK Age Verification Launch Locks Out Thousands of Players

Xbox’s mandatory age verification rollout in the UK was a disaster almost immediately, locking thousands of players out of games, voice chat, and apps like Discord with no clear path back in.

The failures started overnight. Players report being ejected mid-session to complete age verification checks that then took hours, stalled indefinitely, or simply refused to work regardless of what identification they submitted.

Government ID, mobile numbers, and live video age estimation; the system rejected them all for many users. Others made it through verification only to find their accounts still restricted with no explanation and no recourse beyond contacting Xbox support.

Microsoft’s support page now carries a notice confirming it is “aware of the issue and working to fix it.” That’s the extent of the official guidance.

The verification requirement exists to comply with the UK’s new censorship law, the Online Safety Act, legislation mandating that platforms facilitating online communication verify user ages. The actual system XBox built to deliver that compliance forcibly disconnected players from games in progress, stripped away chat functionality with anyone outside their friends list, and blocked access to third-party services.

Users who have held Xbox accounts for over 18 years found themselves flagged for verification anyway. The system doesn’t consider account age, history, or any contextual signal that might indicate an adult user. Everyone gets treated as potentially underage until they hand over documentation.

“The amount of times I’ve tried to do any method of the verification tonight is stupid,” wrote one user. “Can’t change privacy settings on my Xbox to allow me to see mods on games too. Can’t chat on Discord. Utterly broken.”

“Been trying to verify my ID for the past few hours,” added another. “It finally worked but I can’t access anything still. No Discord access at all.”

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The Atlantic Busted Fabricating Dead Kid Measles Story

Last Thursday, The Atlantic published a heart-wrenching story about an 11-month-old child who died of measles. Written in the second person from the perspective of a mother whose two unvaccinated children fell ill with the disease, the story is rich with personal detail;

“You plant her on the couch with a blanket and put Bluey on the TV while she drifts in and out of sleep…” 

“While the kids are napping, you tap a list of your daughter’s symptoms into Google and find a slew of diseases that more or less match up…”

“Her cough wracks her whole body, rounding her delicate bird shoulders. She does not sleep well. And as you lift up her pajama top to check her rash one morning, you see that her breathing is labored, shadows pooling between her ribs when she sucks in air.” 

Turns out, NONE OF THAT HAPPENED. The Atlantic‘s Elizabeth Bruenig simply made it up, leading to mass confusion.

As Laura Hazard Owen of NiemanLab – who initially busted Bruenig – writes:

When I initially read Bruenig’s story, I was stunned: An Atlantic staff writer’s unvaccinated child had died of measles in the 2020s, and now she was writing about it? At the end of Bruenig’s piece, though, there’s an editor’s note: “This story is based on extensive reporting and interviews with physicians, including those who have cared directly for patients with measles.” That was the point when I sent a gift link to my mom group: “as far as I can tell this piece is fiction. What do we think about this choice? I am very conflicted!!!” My conflict stemmed from my concern that, though the piece was heavily researched, it was not a true story. I wondered if the key people whose minds might be changed by it — people who don’t vaccinate their kids — would brush it off as fiction, or fake.

Following the publication, two journalists reached out to Owen to let her know that they were similarly confused, as there “was not an editor’s note/disclaimer on the piece at all.” 

What’s more, The Atlantic’s own spokesperson told one of the journalists: “This is based on a mother’s real account,” – after which the outlet added a disclaimer. 

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40 State Attorneys General Want To Tie Online Access to ID

A bloc of 40 state and territorial attorneys general is urging Congress to adopt the Senate’s version of the controversial Kids Online Safety Act, positioning it as the stronger regulatory instrument and rejecting the House companion as insufficient.

The Act would kill online anonymity and tie online activity and speech to a real-world identity.

Acting through the National Association of Attorneys General, the coalition sent a letter to congressional leadership endorsing S. 1748 and opposing H.R. 6484.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Their request centers on structural differences between the bills. The Senate proposal would create a federally enforceable “Duty of Care” requiring covered platforms to mitigate defined harms to minors.

Enforcement authority would rest with the Federal Trade Commission, which could investigate and sue companies that fail to prevent minors from encountering content deemed to cause “harm to minors.”

That framework would require regulators to evaluate internal content moderation systems, recommendation algorithms, and safety controls.

S. 1748 also directs the Secretary of Commerce, the FTC, and the Federal Communications Commission to study “the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.”

This language moves beyond platform-level age gates and toward infrastructure embedded directly into hardware or operating systems.

Age verification at that layer would not function without some form of credentialing. Device-level verification would likely depend on digital identity checks tied to government-issued identification, third-party age verification vendors, or persistent account authentication systems.

That means users could be required to submit identifying information before accessing broad categories of lawful online speech. Anonymous browsing depends on the ability to access content without linking identity credentials to activity.

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“Kids Off Social Media Act” Opens the Door to Digital ID by Default

Congress is once again stepping into the role of digital caretaker, this time through the Kids Off Social Media Act, with a proposal from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna that seeks to impose federal rules on how young people interact with the world.

The house companion bill (to go along with the senate bill) attempts to set national limits on who can hold social media accounts, how platforms may structure their systems, and what kinds of data they are allowed to use when dealing with children and teenagers.

Framed as a response to growing parental concern, the legislation reflects a broader push to regulate online spaces through age-based access and design mandates rather than direct content rules.

The proposal promises restraint while quietly expanding Washington’s reach into the architecture of online speech. Backers of the bill will insist it targets corporate behavior rather than expression itself. The bill’s mechanics tell a more complicated story.

The bill is the result of a brief but telling legislative evolution. Early versions circulated in 2024 were framed as extensions of existing child privacy rules rather than participation bans. Those drafts focused on limiting data collection, restricting targeted advertising to minors, and discouraging algorithmic amplification, while avoiding hard access restrictions or explicit age enforcement mandates.

That posture shifted as the bill gained bipartisan backing. By late 2024, lawmakers increasingly treated social media as an inherently unsafe environment for children rather than a service in need of reform. When the bill was reintroduced in January 2025, it reflected that change. The new version imposed a categorical ban on accounts for users under 13, restricted recommendation systems for users under 17, and strengthened enforcement through the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general, with Senate sponsorship led by Ted Cruz and Brian Schatz.

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EU Law Could Extend Scanning of Private Messages Until 2027

The European Parliament is considering another extension of Chat Control 1.0, the “temporary” exemption that allows communications providers to scan private messages (under the premise of preventing child abuse) despite the protections of the EU’s ePrivacy Directive.

A draft report presented by rapporteur Birgit Sippel (S&D) would prolong the derogation until April 3, 2027.

At first glance, the proposal appears to roll back some of the most controversial elements of Chat Control. Text message scanning and automated analysis of previously unknown images would be explicitly excluded. Supporters have framed this as a narrowing of scope.

However, the core mechanism of Chat Control remains untouched.

The draft continues to permit mass hash scanning of private communications for so-called “known” material.

According to former MEP and digital rights activist Patrick Breyer, approximately 99 percent of all reports generated under Chat Control 1.0 originate from hash-based detection.

Almost all of those reports come from a single company, Meta, which already limits its scanning to known material only. Under the new proposal, Meta’s practices would remain fully authorized.

As a result, the draft would not meaningfully reduce the volume, scope, or nature of surveillance. The machinery keeps running, with a few of its most visibly controversial attachments removed.

Hash scanning is often portrayed as precise and reliable. The evidence points in the opposite direction.

First, the technology is incapable of understanding context or intent. Hash databases are largely built using US legal definitions of illegality, which do not map cleanly onto the criminal law of EU Member States.

The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) reports that close to half of all chat control reports are criminally irrelevant.

Each false positive still requires assessment, documentation, and follow-up. Investigators are forced to triage noise rather than pursue complex cases involving production, coercion, and organized abuse.

The strategic weakness is compounded by a simple reality. Offenders adapt. As more services adopt end-to-end encryption, abusers migrate accordingly. Since 2022, the number of chat-based reports sent to police has fallen by roughly 50 percent, not because abuse has declined, but because scanning has become easier to evade.

“Both children and adults deserve a paradigm shift in online child protection, not token measures,” Breyer said in a statement to Reclaim The Net.

“Whether looking for ‘known’ or ‘unknown’ content, the principle remains: the post office cannot simply open and scan every letter at random. Searching only for known images fails to stop ongoing abuse or rescue victims.”

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Oklahoma Governor Wants Voters To Revisit Medical Marijuana Legalization Law And ‘Shut It Down’

The Republican governor of Oklahoma says he wants voters to revisit the state’s medical marijuana law and “shut it down,” arguing that “liberal activists” conned the state and “opened up Pandora’s box’ with legalization.

During his State of the State address on Monday, Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) said his “top priority has always been keeping Oklahoma safe,” and one of the “greatest threats to public safety is the out-of-control marijuana industry.”

“When Oklahomans voted to legalize medical marijuana in 2018, we were sold a bill of goods,” he said. “Out of state liberal activists preyed on the compassionate nature of Oklahomans. Then, it opened up Pandora’s box.”

The governor complained that the state has “more dispensaries than we do pharmacies,” adding that marijuana retailers “hide an industry that enables cartel activity, human trafficking, and foreign influence in our state.”

While regulators and law enforcement have “done incredible work to hold back the tide of illegal activity,” Stitt said, the industry is “plagued by foreign criminal interests and bad actors, making it nearly impossible to rein in.”

“We can’t put a band-aid on a broken bone,” he said. “Knowing what we know, it’s time to let Oklahomans bring safety and sanity back to their neighborhoods. Send the marijuana issue back to the vote of the people and shut it down.”

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Alabama Lawmakers Pass Bill To Increase Penalties For Smoking Marijuana In A Car Where A Child Is Present

The Alabama House of Representatives Thursday passed a bill that prohibits smoking or vaping marijuana in a car with children.

HB 72, sponsored by Rep. Patrick Sellers, D-Pleasant Grove, would make it a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail,  for those who smoke marijuana in a car with a child under 19.

The bill passed 77-2 after an unusual debate largely limited to the 29 Democrats in the 105-member chamber over potential unintended consequences. Most Democrats abstained from the vote. Four voted in favor; Reps. Mary Moore, D-Birmingham and TaShina Morris, D-Montgomery, voted against the bill.

“It’s about protecting the children, protecting every single child in the state of Alabama,” Sellers said after the meeting. “And that’s the motivation behind making sure that every child has the 100 percent ability to learn in the best environment that they can and keep them safe.”

Under the bill, individuals who are found to have smoked marijuana in the car with a child would be required to go through an educational program conducted by the Department of Public Health and would be reported by law enforcement to local county human resources departments.

Several Democrats who spoke on the measure cited the toll that harsh drug laws had taken on minority communities.

“It goes back to the heart of criminalization of marijuana in certain communities,” Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham, said after the meeting. “And those are communities that are communities typical of people of color.”

Givan also said House Democrats had wanted to work with Sellers on the bill.

“The Democratic Party, on several attempts, said that this is a bill that we might need to sit down and curate,” she said. “I’m not sure why the sponsor of the bill did not do that.”

Morris raised concerns about the bill’s definition of a child during debate.

“So we’re making a parent responsible for an 18-year-old who has a marijuana smell on them,” she said. “We know at the ages of 16 and 17, especially with the influence of walking outside and going different places, that they are smoking, maybe without the parent even knowing.”

Rep. Rolanda Hollis, D-Birmingham, said during debate that parents don’t know everything that their child does.

“As a parent you may not know, and here I don’t know if the counselor or the principal can call you in to say ‘Hey this is what we smelled on your kid’s jacket, how are we gonna handle this?’ But instead you got me going to a class for something I don’t even know about,” she said.

When asked after the meeting about Morris’ concerns about the bill’s language regarding age, Sellers said parents should “stop making excuses” for their children.

“You know whether or not your child is smoking marijuana. If someone lives in your house, you know they’re smoking marijuana because you can smell it. It’s a distinct smell,” he said.

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Congress Revives Kids Off Social Media Act, a “Child Safety” Bill Poised to Expand Online Digital ID Checks

Congress is once again positioning itself as the protector of children online, reviving the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA) in a new round of hearings on technology and youth.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

Introduced by Senators Ted Cruz and Brian Schatz, the bill surfaced again during a Senate Commerce Committee session examining the effects of screen time and social media on mental health.

Cruz warned that a “phone-based childhood” has left many kids “lost in the virtual world,” pointing to studies linking heavy screen use to anxiety, depression, and social isolation.

KOSMA’s key provisions would ban social media accounts for anyone under 13 and restrict recommendation algorithms for teens aged 13 to 17.

Pushers of the plan say it would “empower parents” and “hold Big Tech accountable,” but in reality, it shifts control away from families and toward corporate compliance systems.

The bill’s structure leaves companies legally responsible for determining users’ ages, even though it does not directly require age verification.

The legal wording is crucial. KOSMA compels platforms to delete accounts if they have “actual knowledge” or what can be “fairly implied” as knowledge that a user is under 13.

That open-ended standard puts enormous pressure on companies to avoid errors.

The most predictable outcome is a move toward mandatory age verification systems, where users must confirm their age or identity to access social platforms. In effect, KOSMA would link access to everyday online life to a form of digital ID.

That system would not only affect children. It would reach everyone. To prove compliance, companies could require users to submit documents such as driver’s licenses, facial scans, or other biometric data.

The infrastructure needed to verify ages at scale looks almost identical to the infrastructure needed for national digital identity systems. Once built, those systems rarely stay limited to a single use. A measure framed as protecting kids could easily become the foundation for a broader identity-based internet.

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