Tag: social media

Paris public prosecutor opens judicial investigation into Elon Musk and X

Paris’ public prosecutor has opened a judicial investigation into Elon Musk’s X social media platform, a new step in a probe over alleged abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data, the prosecutor’s office said on May 7.

The latest legal development puts investigating judges in charge of the probe and follows tech billionaire Mr Musk’s failure to appear at an April 20 summons for questioning.

The public prosecutor is requesting that judges place X.AI Holdings Corp, X Corp and xAI, as well as Mr Musk and former X chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino, under formal investigation.

This would be achieved by summoning them for that purpose, or, if they failed to appear, judges could issue a warrant which would be equivalent to putting them under formal investigation, the statement said.

Reuters could not immediately reach representatives for Mr Musk or X.

Mr Kami Haeri, a lawyer for X, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The investigation, which has been expanded in past months to include suspected complicity in the distribution of child pornography and the creation of sexual deepfakes by Grok, has added to strains in relations between the US and Europe over Big Tech and free speech.

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Age Verification Psyop? Kids Bypass Government Tech With FAKE MOUSTACHES

The UK government’s much-hyped age verification system for social media has been reduced to a joke overnight – and the punchline is being delivered by schoolkids armed with makeup pencils and fake facial hair.

A damning new report from Internet Matters reveals that more than a third of UK children have already figured out how to dodge the latest “safeguards” imposed under the draconian Online Safety Act.

Methods include entering fake birthdays, borrowing logins, and – most hilariously – drawing on fake moustaches to fool facial age estimation tech. One parent admitted catching her son using an eyebrow pencil; the system promptly verified him.

This comes as ministers double down on plans to restrict or outright ban social media access for under-16s. Just days ago, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and junior minister Olivia Bailey confirmed the government will impose “some form of age or functionality restrictions” regardless of whether a full ban is enacted.

A national consultation on the policy closes later this month, with pilots already running in hundreds of homes testing bans, time limits, and digital curfews.

But the farce unfolding in real time shows exactly why these measures were always doomed to fail – or, more cynically, why they were designed to fail.

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EU Pushes Meta Toward Digital ID and Age Verification Under DSA, Threatens 6% Revenue Fine

Brussels has decided Meta isn’t monitoring its users hard enough.

The European Commission issued a preliminary finding on April 29 that Facebook and Instagram violate the Digital Services Act because the company can’t reliably stop children under 13 from creating accounts, opening Meta to fines that could reach 6 percent of its global annual turnover, a sum potentially north of $12 billion.

The official complaint is clearly a regulator demanding more identity checks, more verification, more friction at the door.

Meta’s existing approach, which mostly involves asking users to type in their birthday, lets minors lie their way onto the platform. The Commission says the tool available for reporting underage users requires up to seven clicks to access, is not pre-filled with user information, and frequently results in no follow-up action.

The Commission also pointed to evidence that around 10 to 12 per cent of children under 13 were accessing Instagram and/or Facebook, contradicting Meta’s own internal numbers.

What the Commission wants Meta to do instead carries a cost most of the coverage skipped over. Self-declared birthdays are inadequate, so something stronger has to fill the gap.

That means age estimation systems that infer how old you are from how you behave or age verification that links your account to a government-issued document. Either path turns the basic act of opening a social media account into either a behavioral surveillance event or an identity verification event. There is no third option being seriously proposed.

The implications reach well beyond the under-13 question. Once a platform knows who you are with legal certainty, the entire premise of online speech changes.

Anonymity has historically protected dissidents, whistleblowers, abuse survivors, journalists communicating with sources, and ordinary people who simply don’t want their employer reading their political opinions.

Strip that away and you lose the conditions under which a great deal of valuable speech actually happens. People self-censor when they know they are being watched and a verified internet is a watched internet by definition.

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UnitedHealthcare Learns You Can’t Fix Stupid, Fires Social Media Manager Over Trump Post

When my kids were very young, one of the first words that we banned was “stupid.” No one is stupid, I would tell them; some people just don’t think things through. Well, to borrow from that explanation, I probably didn’t think that all the way through.

While I don’t regret teaching the kids not to use “the S word,” as we used to call it, the older I’ve gotten, I’ve had to face the reality that, yes, some people who otherwise are of sound mind are just stupid. Nowhere is this more evident than on social media. The latest example is a social media manager, of all things, who used to work for UnitedHealthcare. That was until the brass at her employer saw this post of hers, where she gave her take on the most recent assassination attempt on the President of the United States.

Keep in mind, this is a person who gets paid to work as a “professional” in social media, and she’s lacking the good judgment to know you shouldn’t go online to wish harm to someone who’s now had three assassination attempts on his life, and the Secret Service and the FBI both report up to him. Now, that’s stupid. There is no other way to say it.

This dunce’s name is Alison King, and according to Fox News, she was “identified as a social media manager for UnitedHealthcare.” Apparently, she was fired for making a TikTok video where she expressed regret that the president survived this latest attempt on his life, when a shooter targeted President Donald Trump and his administration at the recent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner.

In the video, King says, “We’re cooked as a country when my first reaction to hearing the news about Trump’s (with a hand motion of a slit throat) attempt was, ‘It was probably fake’…Like, immediately I was like, ‘Oh, that wasn’t real, probably fake.’” She then added sarcastically, “And the second was ‘Aww, they missed? So happy they missed.’ Yeah, that’s sad.’”

Fox News Digital reported that a spokesperson for UnitedHealthcare responded to inquiries about King’s post, saying, “Violence is never acceptable and any comments that suggest otherwise are in no way consistent with our mission and values. The person who made comments online about Saturday night’s incident at a Washington event where President Trump and many other political leaders were gathered is no longer employed by the company.”

Keep in mind, this is a company that on Dec. 4, 2024, lost its own CEO to a successful assassination attempt. That was when Luigi Mangione allegedly pulled a gun and ambushed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson at point-blank range just outside a hotel where Thompson was to attend a business meeting.

You’d think that a social media manager who worked for that company would know that things like assassination attempts, and online chatter about them, are taken quite seriously by the government, by lawyers, by law enforcement agencies —and, oh, by the way, by your own dang employer.

Do you think she might have learned her lesson? You be the judge. 

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Censorship in Disguise? Congress Introduces Antisemitism Resolution

Two congressmen introduced a resolution this week that appears to include pressure on tech companies to censor people.

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) have co-sponsored a resolution “condemning antisemitic rhetoric from prominent online personalities.” At four pages long, it urges “social media platforms and public leaders to denounce and address” antisemitism.

The resolution blames online platforms for the recent rise in anti-Jewish bigotry. It claims antisemitic incidents have “significantly increased, including a 344 percent increase over the past 5 years, and [an] 893 percent increase over the past 10 years.” And the reason is because online platforms have served as “a major vector for the spread of such hatred.”

Piker and Owens

Two influencers are targeted in the resolution, Hasan Piker and Candace Owens, both of whom have intensely criticized the Israeli government’s military operation in Gaza. “Piker has openly applauded Hamas’ terrorism, downplayed the mass rape of civilians on October 7th, and dehumanized Orthodox Jews as ‘inbred,’” Lawler said in a statement. “Owens has trafficked in vile conspiracy theories, promoted blood libels, and platformed Holocaust deniers.”

“Hatred is hatred, period,” Gottheimer said. “We must stand up and speak out. I get that speaking up is not easy, but our constituents didn’t elect us to always take the easy path. That’s what principled leadership is all about.”

Piker denied being an antisemite. “They are once again conflating legitimate critics of Israel with actual antisemites,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, according to reports. “They would rather complain about fake antisemitism in defense of Israel than call out the real sources of Jew hatred with a full chest. I have spent my entire career combating all forms of bigotry including antisemitism and will continue to do so in spite [of] this cynical ploy to satisfy donors.”

Owens has called the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza a genocide. So has another popular podcaster, Tucker Carlson. The Israeli human-rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel agree. As do millions of people around the world. And, if polls are to be believed, most American Jews believe Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, with about four in 10 saying it’s guilty of genocide.

Israel and Gaza

Reports say 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza, most of them civilians, thousands of them children. Most of the Gaza Strip has been carpet bombed, leaving a majority of people homeless. A few months back, U.S. President Donald Trump admitted people were starving in Gaza. Understandably, people have spoken out against that.

Israel has justified its severe response as a proper way to address the October 7 massacre during which Hamas brutally killed 1,200 Israelis. While it goes widely unreported, it should not be overlooked that Israeli defense officials reportedly ignored several warnings from within its own defense apparatus of what was coming. Nevertheless, this has all inflamed tremendous criticism toward the Israeli government. In some cases, it has ginned up genuine anti-Jewish bigotry.

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Predators are reaching children through apps, social media and now, video games

Children are being sexually exploited by predators lurking on the internet, social media apps, and now gaming platforms. It’s happening in small towns and big cities across the country, including Ohio.

“The monsters that we are chasing are now coming into your home with some device,” said Kirtland Police Chief Jamey Fisher.

Kirtland Police Detective Jake Scott is on a mission to stop it.

“I will pursue these relentlessly,” said Scott.

Two years ago, Kirtland Police signed an agreement with the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force to investigate these types of crimes in their community. Case referrals began landing on Scott’s desk.

“Anywhere on the internet where there are children, there’s going to be adults who have a proclivity for sexual abuse of children trying to speak with those kids, groom those kids and foster relationships,” Scott said.

His first case involved 45-year-old Todd Oravecz, a Kirtland man who was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to several charges, including receipt, distribution and transportation of visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Agents found more than 100 child sexual abuse material images and videos on his electronic devices that included children under 12 years old.

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Eric Swalwell Sent Women ‘Videos of Him Masturbating’ and Other Perverted Messages After Joining Snapchat to Restore ‘Faith’ in ‘Democracy’: Report

Former Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell was accused by multiple women of sending sexual messages, including “videos of him masturbating,” after becoming one of the first members of Congress to join Snapchat in an effort to restore “faith” in “democracy.”

In a bombshell report on Sunday – less than a month after Swalwell resigned from Congress after being accused of rape and sexual assault by multiple women – CNN spoke to “more than a dozen” women who claimed the congressman had made them feel uncomfortable, both in person and online, over the past decade.

Several women told CNN that the congressman had sent them sexually explicit messages on Snapchat after he became “one of the first lawmakers to join Snapchat” and was heralded in the media as “the Snapchat king of Congress,” according to CNN.

“We can restore a lot of faith that people have in their democracy by opening it up a little bit more,” Swalwell told The Hill in 2016 after joining the messaging service. “Snapchat is a great way to do that.”

However, it allegedly wasn’t long before the congressman began to use his Snapchat account for purposes other than politics.

One young woman claimed Swalwell would send her Snapchat messages about her future, before asking inappropriate questions such as, “What are you wearing?”

Two other women told CNN that Swalwell sent them “sexually explicit messages and unsolicited nude photos and videos of himself” in 2021, while a third woman also claimed to have received “sexually tinged messages and videos.”

One former congressional staffer allegedly developed a consensual sexual relationship with Swalwell after he began flirting with her on Snapchat in 2021.

During the relationship, Swalwell reportedly sent “nude photos of himself and videos of him masturbating,” which showed the congressman’s “face and naked body.”

The videos, which were saved by the woman, were shown to CNN.

“His stories would be his, like, congressional content, but then he would be sending me dick pics,” she alleged, adding that Swalwell sent her another “explicit video” late last year, just weeks before he announced his 2026 California gubernatorial campaign.

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CNN Grills Michigan US Senate Cadidate Mallory McMorrow on Her Cache of Deleted Tweets and Questionable Residency Timeline

The Gateway Pundit reported on deleted tweets from Michigan State Senator and Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow.

Recently, McMorrow deleted around 6,000 posts from her social media accounts, including some that disparaged her new state, while others presented a conflicting timeline of her “official” Michigan residency.

In her 2025 autobiography, McMorrow wrote that she “relocated permanently” to Michigan in 2014.

Yet, a review of her deleted tweets shows she references voting in California, where the New Jersey native moved to before moving to Michigan, suggesting she voted in California’s Democrat primary, describing herself as a constituent of Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA).

Per CNN:

Yet a CNN KFile review of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine reveals a series of now-deleted social media posts of McMorrow describing herself as a California resident as late as July 2016.

McMorrow repeatedly referenced voting in California’s June 2016 Democratic primary and urged voters to register for it. In other now-deleted posts, McMorrow also described herself in July 2016 as a constituent of California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu and referenced voting in person in November 2014 in the Los Angeles area, where she was a resident at the time.

On Sunday, McMorrow joined CNN’s Inside Politics Sunday with Manu Raju for a segment titled “One-on-One with Democrat Under Fire for Deleted Tweets.”

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Disgusting TikTok Trend Using Sound Effect from Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Condemned by TPUSA

A disturbing TikTok trend emerged following Charlie Kirk’s assassination that is having a resurgence.

The videos use a sound effect from the moment of Kirk’s murder and is being used in ‘transition’ videos.

The trend uses a 6-second audio clip from the moment Kirk was assassinated in September 2025, capturing his last words “Counting or not counting gang violence…”), followed by the sound of the fatal gunshot, and immediate background and screams/chaos.

The trend is mostly young women doing fashion/outfit transition, or “GRWM” (Get Ready With Me) content.videos where they start in casual or “boring” clothes and, at the exact moment the gunshot sound plays, they transition to party-style, glamorous, or revealing outfits with the timing making the gunshot the “reveal” beat.

The sound, which has been used in tens of thousands of videos, went viral in the days after the assassination and has had multiple resurgences.

TPUSA shared an example of the distasteful trend and condemned it.

The organization wrote on X, “Turning Point USA condemns in the strongest terms the TikTok audio trend that uses or references the assassination of our founder, Charlie Kirk, for entertainment.”

“Charlie Kirk was the victim of a real act of political violence. Turning that into viral content is grotesque and dehumanizing. There is nothing harmless, funny, or acceptable about it. It reflects a culture that trivializes violence and reduces real human loss to a punchline.”

“This has no place on TikTok. Or anywhere. This audio needs to be removed.”

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House Bill Cuts Federal Funds for Online Censorship

A new House appropriations bill does something unusual for Washington legislation. It tells federal agencies they cannot spend money pressuring platforms, advertisers, or foreign governments to silence speech that Americans are legally allowed to make.

H.R. 8595, the national security and State Department appropriations bill, runs hundreds of pages and buried throughout are provisions that would shut off federal funding to a wide range of speech-suppression activities.

The restrictions cover direct platform pressure, ad boycott campaigns aimed at US media companies, blacklists, and cooperation with foreign censorship regimes that target American tech firms.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The headline provision is on page 252. It bars the use of any appropriated funds to “deplatform, deboost, demonetize, suppress, or otherwise penalize” online speech, social media activity, or news outlets producing content that would be lawful under US law. The language is deliberately wide and it catches the obvious things, like government agencies asking a platform to take a post down, and the less obvious ones, like funding research projects that pressure advertisers to abandon publishers.

That second category has been doing real damage for years. Brand “safety” programs, hate speech classifiers built with federal grant money, “disinformation” tracking outfits that exist primarily to attach scary labels to inconvenient reporting.

Federal money cannot flow to programs designed to impose “legal, regulatory, financial, reputational, commercial, or political costs” on American tech companies, social media platforms, online intermediaries, or digital publishers for hosting First Amendment protected speech.

There is also a prohibition on funding work that pushes foreign governments to do the censoring instead. American agencies cannot use these appropriations to support foreign laws, regulations, codes, or enforcement mechanisms that punish US platforms for carrying speech that would be lawful here.

The whole architecture of routing American speech restrictions through Brussels or London or Canberra, then importing the results back home through global compliance regimes, runs into a federal funding wall.

Blacklists are out. Censorship cooperation with supranational bodies is out. Inducing advertisers to “cut off, reduce, redirect, or otherwise interfere with advertising, sponsorship, payment, or other revenue on the basis of lawful online speech” is out.

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