Tag: social media

Meta’s Israel Policy Chief Tried to Suppress Pro-Palestinian Instagram Posts

A former senior Israeli government official now working as Meta’s Israel policy chief personally pushed for the censorship of Instagram accounts belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine — a group that has played a leading role in organizing campus protests against Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

Internal policy discussions reviewed by The Intercept show Jordana Cutler, Meta’s Israel & the Jewish Diaspora policy chief, used the company’s content escalation channels to flag for review at least four SJP posts, as well as other content expressing stances contrary to Israel’s foreign policy. When flagging SJP posts, Cutler repeatedly invoked Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy, which bars users from freely discussing a secret list of thousands of blacklisted entities. The Dangerous Organizations policy restricts “glorification” of those on the blacklist, but is supposed to allow for “social and political discourse” and “commentary.” 

It’s unclear if Cutler’s attempts to use Meta’s internal censorship system were successful; the company declined to say what ultimately happened to posts that Cutler flagged. It’s not Cutler’s decision whether flagged content is ultimately censored; another team is responsible for moderation decisions. But experts who spoke to The Intercept expressed alarm over a senior employee tasked with representing the interests of any government advocating for restricting user content that runs contrary to those interests.

“It screams bias,” said Marwa Fatafta a policy adviser with the digital rights organization Access Now, which consults with Meta on content moderation issues. “It doesn’t really require that much intelligence to conclude what this person is up to.”

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WHO Chief Doubles Down on Free Speech Crackdown

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus used the UN agency’s Summit 2024 to launch into yet another tirade against online “misinformation/disinformation.”

The WHO’s contribution against that threat, Tedros said, was countering it by “working” with a number of companies and other partners.

In his speech, the WHO chief repeated the many-times heard accusations against social media as “turbo-charging” the spread of misinformation which then added to people’s skepticism toward vaccines and some other medical treatments.

Tedros added to this the “stigma, discrimination, and even violence” toward health workers, but also “marginalized groups,” allegedly all a result of said disinformation.

This one has also been heard many times from various politicians and affiliated media: that disinformation was “almost as deadly” as the virus (we’re talking coronavirus, not smallpox here).

But still, Tedros states that disinformation regarding the pandemic, lockdowns, masks, etc. – or what he considers to be misinformation, was indeed “deadly.”

Now that the problem has been presented in such a dramatic way, the “solution,” however drastic, should be an easier pill to swallow. And the solution is, basically, Big Tech and government(s) censoring free speech.

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The International Censorship Regime Goes on the Offensive Ahead of 2024 U.S. Election

Online censorship, which tends to rank among my three main beats, is a subject I haven’t touched on in a while but has predictably become more relevant as we draw closer to November 5th. The focus of late has naturally been on an election year brimming with many whimsical happenings, from Trump narrowly avoiding the mass trauma of having his brains blown out in front of thousands of onlookers in Butler Pa., to the anointing of Kamala Harris as the democrat party’s heir apparent, to the escalations in both the Middle East and the ongoing U.S./Russia proxy war in Ukraine.

Despite the obvious importance of these issues, I truly believe the most pressing concern facing the Western world is the multifaceted attack on free expression, particularly in the digital realm.

We’ve all probably heard the idiom that “Freedom of Speech is the First Amendment because it’s the most important”. I never fully appreciated this sentiment, but in the past eight years—after being de-platformed and demonetized on several occasions—I’ve learned the hard way how truly accurate that statement is.

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EU’s Věra Jourová Labels Elon Musk a “Promoter of Evil” for Permitting “Hate Speech” on X

Věra Jourová is not a psychologist but she decided to play one during an interview, by “diagnosing” X owner Elon Musk as a person unable to “recognize” good and evil.

But then, he apparently can, after all – because Jourová in the same breath accused him of being “a promoter of evil.”

Jourová is an EU bureaucrat on her way out, after serving as Vice President of the Commission for Values and Transparency for the past five years.

“Good riddance. If she wants to see evil, I suggest she use a mirror,” Musk shot back in a post on X, adding that Jourová is the “epitome of banal, bureaucratic evil.”

Jourová is known for pushing anti-free speech legislation such as enabling mass surveillance of private messages (which she claims is “privacy-preserving” and “not breaking encryption”), combating “disinformation and hate speech,” and even going after whoever the EU decides is a conspiracy theorist by using law enforcement.

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The Pentagon Wants to Use AI to Create Deepfake Internet Users

The United States’ secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake, according to a procurement document reviewed by The Intercept.

The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country’s most elite, clandestine military efforts. “Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content,” the entry reads.

The document specifies that JSOC wants the ability to create online user profiles that “appear to be a unique individual that is recognizable as human but does not exist in the real world,” with each featuring “multiple expressions” and “Government Identification quality photos.”

In addition to still images of faked people, the document notes that “the solution should include facial & background imagery, facial & background video, and audio layers,” and JSOC hopes to be able to generate “selfie video” from these fabricated humans. These videos will feature more than fake people: Each deepfake selfie will come with a matching faked background, “to create a virtual environment undetectable by social media algorithms.”

The Pentagon has already been caught using phony social media users to further its interests in recent years. In 2022, Meta and Twitter removed a propaganda network using faked accounts operated by U.S. Central Command, including some with profile pictures generated with methods similar to those outlined by JSOC. A 2024 Reuters investigation revealed a Special Operations Command campaign using fake social media users aimed at undermining foreign confidence in China’s Covid vaccine.

Last year, Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, expressed interest in using video “deepfakes,” a general term for synthesized audiovisual data meant to be indistinguishable from a genuine recording, for “influence operations, digital deception, communication disruption, and disinformation campaigns.” Such imagery is generated using a variety of machine learning techniques, generally using software that has been “trained” to recognize and recreate human features by analyzing a massive database of faces and bodies. This year’s SOCOM wish list specifies an interest in software similar to StyleGAN, a tool released by Nvidia in 2019 that powered the globally popular website “This Person Does Not Exist.” Within a year of StyleGAN’s launch, Facebook said it had taken down a network of accounts that used the technology to create false profile pictures. Since then, academic and private sector researchers have been engaged in a race between new ways to create undetectable deepfakes, and new ways to detect them. Many government services now require so-called liveness detection to thwart deepfaked identity photos, asking human applicants to upload a selfie video to demonstrate they are a real person — an obstacle that SOCOM may be interested in thwarting.

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Dad Posts TikTok Video Bragging About His 10-Year-Old ‘Trans’ Son Going on a Date

A proud dad posted a TikTok video bragging about his 10-year-old ‘trans’ son going on a date in a mini-skirt, and suffice to say the reaction on X wasn’t very enthusiastic.

“(This is) my daughter Edie and today is a big day because she’s going on her first date,” states the dad.

The child then twirls in a mini-skirt and explains how he has bought his date some gifts, including four Stranger Things Funko Pop toys.

“I also got him this iPad so he can face time me, I’ll also be keeping this if the date isn’t going well,” says the kid.

The video then shows the child leaving the house to go on the ‘date’.

This is wrong in so many ways, it’s difficult to process them all.

First of all, why is a 10-year-old child going on any kind of romantic date at all?

Second, why the is father publicly boasting about transing his own son at such a young age?

Respondents on X didn’t exactly express as much enthusiasm about the ‘date’ as the father seemed to exhibit.

“The fetishes of the father being enacted through the son,” claimed one.

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California Democrats Block SpaceX Launches, Citing Elon Musk’s Support For Donald Trump

California officials are actively blocking Elon Musk’s SpaceX from launching rockets in the state because of his support for Donald Trump.

According to The Los Angeles Times, members of the California Coastal Commission, a state agency controlled by Governor Gavin Newsom, made no secret of the fact that their decision was based on Musk’s support for Trump and the Republican Party’s platform.

The report stated:

SpaceX’s plans to launch more rockets from the California coast were rejected by a state commission this week, with some officials citing Elon Musk’s political posts on X and raising concerns about the billionaire’s labor record at his companies.

The plan to increase the number of rocket blasts into space up to 50 a year was rejected by the California Coastal Commission on Thursday despite assurances from Space Force and Air Force officials that they would increase efforts to monitor the effects that rocket launches have on nearby wildlife.

The military also vowed to mitigate the reach of sonic booms that often span across 100 miles of coastline, an issue that has caused controversy. Members of the California Coastal Commission commended Space Force and Air Force representatives for reaching an agreement, but some cited their concerns about Musk, the owner of SpaceX, before rejecting the plan.

Among the issues raised were Musk’s decision to insert himself in the presidential race, his spreading of conspiracy theories, the labor record of his companies and derogatory comments he has made about the transgender community.

“We’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race,” commission Chair Caryl Hart said.

The commission’s decision is also likely a retaliation for Musk’s decision to pull most of the company’s operations out of California.

Back in July, Musk said that the passage of a California law preventing from making rules requiring parental notification if a child identifies as transgender was the “final straw,” and he would be moving the company out of the state.

“This is the final straw,” Musk wrote at the time. “Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.”

“I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children,” he later followed up.

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Expanding censorship European Style –– arrests, dire warning ‘Face the Consequences’

It’s not just happening in the U.S. Europe is also seeing shocking battles over censorship of speech.

In August, the government of the United Kingdom issued an ominous “Think before you post” statement, saying social media posts that some consider hateful are harmful could get you arrested. 

“Remind those close to you to share responsibly or face the consequences,” the government warned. 

A new documentary titled “We Will Not Be Silenced” tells the true story of censorship of a UK-based podcast titled “London Real.” Brian Rose hosts the podcast and he tells me what happened when a widely-viewed episode was deleted and banned by YouTube. 

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Democrat Congresswomen Tell Social Media Platforms to “Quickly and Decisively” Censor Hurricane “Misinformation”

Despite recent pushback for politicians encouraging social media platforms to increase censorship online, in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, a cadre of Democratic House representatives from the affected regions have appealed to major social media platforms to intensify their efforts to censor alleged “misinformation” related to the storms.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

“We write to your platforms with an urgent request on behalf of states affected by the devastation of Hurricane Helene and those currently being impacted by Hurricane Milton,” the letter states. “In the aftermath of Helene, we have witnessed a troubling surge in misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and scams that are hindering recovery efforts and exploiting vulnerable individuals and families.”

The representatives say are concerned about the proliferation of false claims and blame these reportedly false claims for the hindering of recovery efforts. The congresswomen also say that social media posts are undermining public confidence in institutions.

The call for a crackdown on misinformation was articulated in a letter addressed to seven major social media entities, including Meta, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, Snap, and Instagram. Authored by Representatives Deborah Ross (D-N.C.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), and Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.), the letter alleges that misinformation is having a dire impact.

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Opt Out: How to Protect Your Baby’s Photos on the Internet + More

The Guardian reported:

You’ve got the cutest baby ever, and you want the world to know it. But you’re also worried about what might happen to your baby’s picture once you release it into the nebulous world of the internet.

Should you post it?

“Everyone has had parents share embarrassing baby photos with friends. It’s a cringe-inducing rite of passage, but it’s different when that cringe is felt around the world and can never be deleted,” said Albert Fox Cahn, director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

I’ve described my own concerns about my newborn’s privacy in the past. Tech companies are not transparent about what they do with our data and our pictures.

They might use the photos to train their latest AI models. That’s enough for me to try to err on the safe side of the do-I-post-pictures-of-my-child spectrum. I only share pictures of him via text or with his face turned away. Other parents might be more concerned with, for example, online predators.

I reached out to a few experts to help you figure out what the best move might be for you, depending on what you’re most concerned about. They all said that the most powerful protection is, of course, abstinence. Just don’t post or digitally store your kids’ pictures, and you’re golden. Is that realistic on a day-to-day basis?

The experts agreed: no. We all have to reach a happy medium.

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