Tag: social media

Big Tech-Government Collusion: Biden-Haris Admin, Meta, Google, and Others Launch AI Partnership to Combat “Disinformation” and “Hate Speech”

The current US White House seems to be exploring every possibility that might secure another avenue for what opponents (and quite a few lawmakers) refer to as “collusion” with (Big) Tech.

A new scheme has just been announced, that revolves around the “AI” and “disinformation” buzzwords, and includes the US State Department, Meta, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI.

Looks like quite an “ensemble cast” – or “usual suspects” – right there.

It’s called, Partnership for Global Inclusivity on AI, and it was announced by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken along with a decision to bankroll programs “identifying disinformation using AI” with $3 million.

We obtained a copy of the report for you here.

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Judges in TikTok Case Seem Ready to Discount First Amendment

A US circuit court panel appears ready to uphold a federal law that would effectively ban the popular social media network TikTok because it’s owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The legal attacks on the video platform—which FAIR (8/5/20, 5/25/23, 11/13/23, 3/14/24) has written about before—are entering a new phase, in which judicial interpreters of the Constitution are acting as Cold War partisans, threatening to throw out civil liberties in favor of national security alarmism.

Earlier this year, despite widespread protest (Guardian, 3/7/24), President Joe Biden signed legislation forcing TikTok’s owner “to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States” (NBC, 4/24/24). Advocates for the ban charge that data collection—which is a function of most social media networks—poses a national security threat because of the platform’s Chinese ownership (Axios, 3/15/24).

Given that TikTok is a global platform, with 2 billion users worldwide, demands that ByteDance sell it off are in effect another name for a ban; an analogy would be Beijing allowing Facebook to operate in China only if Meta sold the platform to a non-US company.

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Facebook Built a VIP Censorship Pipeline For The White House

In case you thought 2021 was just about ever-shifting “expert advice,” think again. Thanks to America First Legal, we now know that behind the chaotic public health messaging, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Facebook were playing a little game of “whack-a-mole” with your freedom of speech.

Today, new onboarding documents were unearthed, which shows just how cozy Facebook got with the CDC. The social media giant wasn’t merely policing what it thought was “misinformation” on COVID and vaccines; it was operating as the de facto enforcement arm of the US government’s thought control initiative. The Biden-Harris Administration, while trumpeting their “fight for truth,” had essentially deputized Facebook to clean up the messy world of online discourse. And who decides what’s messy? Apparently, anyone with a .gov email address.

Let’s rewind to 2021, the peak of the pandemic drama. The public was dealing with a mutating narrative on what constituted “the truth.”

In other words, what was factual one week might be misinformation the next, depending on who you asked—or more accurately, who was in power.

At the time, the administration faced heavy criticism for overseeing a clampdown on dissent. Social media platforms, like Facebook, took on the noble mantle of censoring anything that didn’t align with the latest CDC talking points.

One day it was, “Don’t wear masks,” and the next, “You must wear two.” If you were quick enough to quote the CDC’s latest declaration, congratulations, you won a reprieve from the online guillotine. But heaven forbid you posted a month-old statement—down came the banhammer.

The First Amendment? Ah yes, that pesky little thing. It felt like an afterthought in the administration’s relentless quest to manage the pandemic, or rather, manage the narrative about the pandemic.

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Ireland drops controversial “hate speech” legislation to criminalise online speech deemed as “incitement to hatred”

On Saturday, The Irish Times reported that the Irish government will drop the incitement to hatred section of the bill, focusing instead on hate crime legislation that provides for tougher sentences when hate is proven as a motivation for an offence.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee said that the “incitement to hatred” element of the bill does “not have a consensus” and will be dealt with at a later time.  She is “adamant” that hate crime legislation would be enacted.  In the meantime, she plans to include committee stage amendments to the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 in the Seanad.

The decision comes after increased opposition from within the government, opposition parties and free speech groups, including tech billionaire Elon Musk, who vowed to fund legal challenges against the proposed legislation.

The controversy surrounding the bill highlighted concerns about the potential for vague definitions and overreach, with critics arguing that it could criminalise memes, books or videos deemed politically offensive.

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Telegram Will Now Share Users’ IP Addresses and Phone Numbers With Governments in Response to Legal Requests

Telegram, the messaging app that once positioned itself as the rebel’s answer to Big Tech surveillance, has made a sharp U-turn on the “we protect your data at all costs” highway. On Monday, the company quietly updated its privacy policy to allow for the disclosure of user information—like those precious IP addresses and phone numbers—to law enforcement, but only, of course, if they present a valid legal request.

As we all know, no one has ever stretched the definition of “valid” to fit their agenda, right?

This revelation comes hot on the heels of a little incident back in August, when Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov found himself in handcuffs, detained by French authorities. What was the crime? Well, it appears Telegram was accused of playing hardball with French law enforcement, refusing to hand over data, leading to Durov’s arrest. It seems law enforcement didn’t take kindly to that level of noncompliance, especially after making 2,460 unanswered requests for information.

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Social Media Giants Collecting Massive Amounts of Data From Kids, Teens

Child welfare advocates renewed calls for U.S. lawmakers to pass a pair of controversial bills aimed at protecting youth from Big Tech’s “dangerous and unacceptable business practices” after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a report on Sept. 19 detailing how social media and streaming companies endanger children and teens who use their platforms.

The FTC staff report — entitled “A Look Behind the Screens: Examining the Data Practices of Social Media and Video Streaming Services” — “shows how the tech industry’s monetization of personal data has created a market for commercial surveillance, especially via social media and video streaming services, with inadequate guardrails to protect consumers.”

The agency staff examined the practices of Meta platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp; YouTube; X, formerly known as Twitter; Snapchat; Reddit; Discord; Amazon, which owns the gaming site Twitch; and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok.

“The report finds that these companies engaged in mass data collection of their users and — in some cases — nonusers,” Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine said in the paper.

“It reveals that many companies failed to implement adequate safeguards against privacy risks. It sheds light on how companies used our personal data, from serving hypergranular targeted advertisements to powering algorithms that shape the content we see, often with the goal of keeping us hooked on using the service.”

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LinkedIn is training its AI using your posts and articles without your permission

LinkedIn has been using user-generated content, including posts and articles, to train its generative AI models without obtaining consent from users.

The platform updated its privacy policy and FAQ section to reflect this practice, indicating that data collection for AI training had already begun before the announcement.

Users can opt out of having their data used for AI training by toggling a setting called “Data for Generative AI Improvement” under “Data Privacy” in their settings.

LinkedIn has quietly implemented a new setting that automatically opts users into contributing their personal data, including posts, towards the training of generative AI models. This means that users’ posts are being harvested for AI training without their explicit consent.

LinkedIn’s generative AI models are used for features like writing assistants, and the scraped data will be used to train these models. The company claims to employ privacy-enhancing technologies to anonymise or redact personal data from its AI training sets.  However, considering what Larry Ellison,  co-founder of Oracle and Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer, said last week about data captured by surveillance cameras we shouldn’t take LinkedIn’s word for it.

During an investor Q&A session at the ‘Oracle Financial Analyst Meeting 2024’ event, Ellison said: “The police … body cameras … our [Oracle’s] body cameras are simply two lenses attached to a vest [and] attached to the smartphone that you’re wearing … the camera is always on, you don’t turn it on and off, you can’t turn it off to go to the bathroom – ‘Oracle, I need two minutes to take a bathroom break,” then we’ll turn it off.  The truth is, we don’t really turn it off.  What we do is, we record it so no one can see it [so] that no one can get into that recording without a court order.” (see timestamp 1:08:27 HERE.)

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TYRANNY: Biden-Harris Regime to Sanction Elon Musk in Their Baseless ‘Investigation’ Over His Lawful Purchase of X/Twitter

As Jim Hoft previously reported, Biden-Harris’s Securities and Exchange Commission has been baselessly investigating Elon Musk’s lawful purchase of X/Twitter since 2022 and is suing him. Now, the Biden-Harris regime intends to levy the full force of the ‘law’ in an effort to punish one of their most formidable enemies.

Reuters reported Friday that the SEC said they would sanction Elon Musk after he refused to appear in court for testimony regarding his acquisition of X/Twitter. To make matters worse, they are making this decision even though his testimony had already been rescheduled for early October, demonstrating the Regime was looking for an excuse to harm the world’s richest man.

From Reuters:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday it intends to seek sanctions against Elon Musk after he failed to appear for court-ordered testimony for the regulator’s probe into his $44 billion takeover of X/Twitter.

In a court filing, the SEC said the sanctions motion would seek an order to show cause for why Musk should not be held in civil contempt for waiting until just three hours before the scheduled Sept. 10 testimony to advise he would not appear.

Lawyers for Musk called sanctions “drastic” and unnecessary, saying his testimony has already been rescheduled for Oct. 3.

A spokesman for the SEC declined to comment.

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Senators Push Big Tech to Increase Content Moderation, Share More Info With Government Ahead of 2024 Election

During a US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing titled “Foreign Threats to Elections in 2024 – Roles and Responsibilities of U.S. Tech Providers,” several senators urged Big Tech executives to increase their censorship of foreign “disinformation” and share more information with the federal government.

While the senators pushing these measures insisted that such efforts would be focused on foreign adversaries who are creating inauthentic content, previous incidents, most notably the censorship of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story, have shown that measures claiming to combat foreign disinformation often result in the speech of Americans being censored.

In his opening statement, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) told the witnesses, Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) President and Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, that he hoped the hearing would result in greater information between Big Tech and government.

“Our committee’s bipartisan efforts also…resulted in a set of recommendations for government, for the private sector, and for political…campaigns,” Warner said. “Recommendations for which I hope today’s hearing will serve as a status check. These recommendations included greater information sharing between the US government and the private sector…about foreign malicious activity. Not domestic, foreign malicious activity.”

He continued by claiming that there’s already been “a pretty successful effort to share threat information about foreign influence activity with the private sector” and complained that X (which has reduced censorship on its platform since entrepreneur Elon Musk took over) didn’t send a representative to the hearing.

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Social Media Claims That Ukraine-Tied Trump Assassin Will Get ‘Epsteined’

Critics on social media speculated that Ryan Wesley Routh, the accused-attempted assassin behind the second threat to Donald Trump’s life, could face a fatal outcome in jail. Some even suggested on Monday he might end up being “Epsteined.”

The term refers to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender whose controversial death left many questions unanswered, including the roles of powerful figures who visited his estates or may have assisted in his crimes.

These comments suggested that Routh might face a similar fate, possibly being silenced about mounting questions surrounding his finances and connections to others involved in the foiled assassination attempt on Trump.

“He’s in federal custody, unfortunately. Chances of being Epsteined just went up tremendously,” wrote independent journalist Nick Sortor to his 527,000 followers on X.

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