Tag: social media

Welcome to the age of paranoia as deepfakes and scams abound

These days, when Nicole Yelland receives a meeting request from someone she doesn’t already know, she conducts a multistep background check before deciding whether to accept. Yelland, who works in public relations for a Detroit-based nonprofit, says she’ll run the person’s information through Spokeo, a personal data aggregator that she pays a monthly subscription fee to use. If the contact claims to speak Spanish, Yelland says, she will casually test their ability to understand and translate trickier phrases. If something doesn’t quite seem right, she’ll ask the person to join a Microsoft Teams call—with their camera on.

If Yelland sounds paranoid, that’s because she is. In January, before she started her current nonprofit role, Yelland says, she got roped into an elaborate scam targeting job seekers. “Now, I do the whole verification rigamarole any time someone reaches out to me,” she tells WIRED.

Digital imposter scams aren’t new; messaging platforms, social media sites, and dating apps have long been rife with fakery. In a time when remote work and distributed teams have become commonplace, professional communications channels are no longer safe, either. The same artificial intelligence tools that tech companies promise will boost worker productivity are also making it easier for criminals and fraudsters to construct fake personas in seconds.

On LinkedIn, it can be hard to distinguish a slightly touched-up headshot of a real person from a too-polished, AI-generated facsimile. Deepfake videos are getting so good that longtime email scammers are pivoting to impersonating people on live video calls. According to the US Federal Trade Commission, reports of job and employment related scams nearly tripled from 2020 to 2024, and actual losses from those scams have increased from $90 million to $500 million.

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Influencer Suggests White South African Refugees Should Be Violently Targeted

A TikTok influencer responded to the resettlement of white South African refugees in America by suggesting they should be violently targeted, remarking that unlike Trump, the Afrikaners “don’t have Secret Service” protection.

The clip was posted by a TikTok user called Your Favorite Corporate Auntie, who has 116,000 followers on the social media platform.

The woman said she was providing a “public service announcement” to South African refugees entering America, 59 of whom were welcomed on Monday.

The TikTokker proceeded to deliver a smiley, passive aggressive rant in which she pointed out that “black people who were students during apartheid – we’re grandmas and grandpas now – and we have the ear of Gen Z.”

“I also wanna let you know that our president, he has Secret Service, and you will not,” she said.

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Virginia passes law to limit time teens spend on social media to one hour a day

Virginia teens under 16 will soon face limits on their social media usage after Governor Glenn Youngkin signed new legislation into law.

The law requires social media companies to set default time limits of one hour per day for users under 16 years old, with parents having the ability to adjust that time up or down.

“It’s a good first start, and it’s a good way for parents to be able to have better control over how much social media their kids are on,” said Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg (D – Henrico), who co-sponsored the legislation.

VanValkenburg, who teaches in Henrico County schools, has witnessed the impact of excessive social media use firsthand.

“You see how much it hinders their ability to do well in school, and you see how much it hinders their socialization with their friends,” VanValkenburg said.

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CENSORSHIP KINGDOM: Retired Constable to Sue UK Police After Arrest Over a Social Media Post Denouncing Anti-Semitism

The United Kingdom continues its decent into authoritarianism and censorship of social media content.

Now, a retired constable is getting ready to sue Kent Police after being arrested back in 2023 for posting a social media reply warning about rising anti-Semitism.

The Telegraph reported:

“Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from the force he had served for a decade after replying to a pro-Palestinian activist on X.

The 71-year-old was detained for eight hours, interrogated and ultimately issued with a caution after officers visited his home on November 2 2023.”

Last week, Kent Police sent out a statement saying that the caution was a mistake and has been deleted from Foulkes’s record.

The local law enforcement agency admitted that it was ‘not appropriate in the circumstances and should not have been issued’.

“On Sunday, Mr. Foulkes accepted an offer from the Free Speech Union (FSU) to fund a legal challenge against the force for wrongful arrest and detention.

‘The FSU and Lord [Toby] Young have generously agreed to fully fund a lawsuit against Kent Police’, he said. ‘I’m extremely grateful for such excellent support and would urge anyone concerned about the sustained attack on free speech to please join the FSU. They’re fighting hard every day for all of us’.”

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X Complies with Over 8,000 Indian Government Censorship Orders, Blocks News and User Accounts

The X Global Government Affairs team has revealed that the social company has received over 8,000 censorship orders from the Indian government, affecting access in that country to entire accounts.

We obtained a copy of the memo for you here.

Among them are executive orders to block accounts of international news organizations and prominent X users, the post said, adding that the company will comply by “withholding” those accounts only in India.

Other platforms have also received the same orders but have yet to comment on the issue.

According to the post, the decision was not an easy one to make but X views it as necessary in order for the platform to continue its presence in India.

Noncompliance with the orders could have resulted in “significant fines” and even imprisonment of local employees, X announced.

It is further explained that the Indian government’s orders do not state which individual posts were found in violation of the country’s law, opting rather to demand that entire accounts must be blocked.

“For a significant number of accounts, we did not receive any evidence or justification to block (them),” Global Affairs writes.

Even though the decision has been made to comply with the orders at this time, X made it clear the company “disagrees” and views the blocking of accounts rather than individual allegedly offending posts as not only “unnecessary” but also a form of censorship that affects both existing and future content, in that way violating users’ right to free speech.

Having complied in order to stay in the market, X is now “exploring all possible legal avenues available to the company.”

The Global Affairs post is urging affected users who are located in India, to turn to the courts in a bid to have the orders overturned – since they, unlike X, have this option. Those users are also reminded they can contact the government directly.

X lists a number of legal aid organizations that those with blocked accounts can consider contacting, and explains the decision to go public with some details about the censorship orders as “essential for transparency” – while “lack of disclosure discourages accountability and can contribute to arbitrary decision making.”

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Neo-Nazi sextortion ring that blackmails teens into making sick videos has become so prevalent every FBI office in the US has open cases

A sick neo-Nazi sextortion ring that blackmails teens into making sick videos has become so prevalent across the US that every FBI field office in the country has at least one open case on the group, according to a shocking new report.

The FBI currently has more than 250 open investigations into the group, known as “764,” among other aliases, the agency told ABC.

This cult-like network has ties to neo-Nazis and Satanism, officials said.

Its members target young teens on platforms like Discord and Roblox and intimidate them into filming themselves posing nude, torturing family pets, cutting symbols into their own bodies and other acts of “psychological torment and extreme violence,” the FBI said.

“764 is a network of nihilistic violent extremists … seeking to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include minors,” the agency said.

Bradley Cadenhead founded the group in 2020 and named it after part of his own zip code.

Since then, its reach has spread throughout the United States and beyond.

All of the agency’s 55 field offices have at least one 764-related case, FBI assistant director David Scott, who leads the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, told ABC.

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Maine Lawmaker Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Speech Ban

A Maine legislator has turned to the US Supreme Court after being effectively stripped of her ability to represent her constituents over a controversial social media post. Republican Rep. Laurel Libby, who serves District 90, submitted an emergency request to the high court this week, seeking to overturn a disciplinary action imposed by her fellow lawmakers that has barred her from voting or speaking on the House floor since February.

The dispute stems from a Facebook post Libby made criticizing the inclusion of a transgender athlete in a statewide girls’ pole vault competition.

The post included a mention of a Maine student and questioned the fairness of allowing biological males to compete in girls’ sports categories, a stance that ignited outrage among Democratic legislators. In response, the House voted to censure Libby and conditioned her return to full legislative participation on an apology she had refused to give.

Rather than comply, Libby launched a legal fight to restore her role, arguing the punishment amounted to unconstitutional retaliation. After lower courts refused to intervene, she is now asking the Supreme Court to address what she sees as a blatant violation of the First Amendment and a denial of her constituents’ right to representation.

We obtained a copy of the application for you here.

“For over 60 days my constituents have had no say in any actions taken by their government, actions that directly impact their lives,” she wrote in a post on X. “Every vote taken on the floor of the legislature is a vote my constituents cannot get back. The good people of our district have been silenced and disenfranchised.”

Libby emphasized that the case raises serious concerns about the limits of legislative authority when it comes to penalizing elected officials for their speech.

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Report: FBI Agent Elvis Chan, Key Figure in 2020 Election Censorship Scheme, Placed on Terminal Leave

FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan, one of the central figures in the federal government’s censorship of conservative voices during the 2020 presidential election, has reportedly been placed on terminal leave.

The development was first reported by independent journalist Breanna Morello.

Chan, who served as the FBI’s key liaison between the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and Big Tech companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, was instrumental in a government-led censorship campaign to silence conservative voices and suppress damaging information about Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the election.

Morello, citing sources familiar with Chan’s situation, reports that the longtime San Francisco-based agent has not accessed any of his government devices for over a month.

Chan still lists himself as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge on his LinkedIn page, which includes preferred pronouns — “he/him.”

The House Judiciary Committee filed a lawsuit against FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan last year for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena tied to the 2020 election censorship scandal.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, lays out damning allegations: that Chan, acting as the FBI’s liaison with Big Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter, played a central role in the federal government’s backdoor scheme to censor Americans online before the 2020 presidential election.

Despite being subpoenaed by Congress to testify, Chan—under orders from Biden’s Department of Justice—refused to appear. Why? Because Congress wouldn’t allow DOJ lawyers to sit in and monitor the interview. Yes, the DOJ wants to babysit its agents during congressional investigations, undermining the House’s constitutional oversight authority.

According to the complaint, Chan was a “pivotal figure” passing information from the FBI to social media companies in the months leading up to the election—information that often led to the silencing of viewpoints inconvenient to the ruling regime.

According to Morello, Chan also testified in the landmark case Missouri v. Biden—a case in which I, Jim Hoft, am a plaintiff—where he conveniently claimed to have “no internal knowledge” of the FBI’s role in pressuring tech companies to censor the explosive Hunter Biden laptop story.

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London Mayor Sadiq Khan Cites Southport Stabbing to Justify Targeting Online “Conspiracy Theories” and “Misinformation”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced an £875,000 ($1,170M) expansion of his Shared Endeavour Fund, using the tragic mass stabbing and murders in Southport to justify an intensified campaign against what he describes as “online conspiracy theories and misinformation.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced an £875,000 ($1,170M) expansion of his Shared Endeavour Fund, using the tragic mass stabbing and murders in Southport to justify an intensified campaign against what he describes as “online conspiracy theories and misinformation.”

More: Southport Tragedy Becomes Starmer’s Stage for Big Brother Britain

Despite the gravity of the Southport attacks, Khan appeared to frame the event more as a case study for the dangers of social media rather than focusing on the violence itself, saying: “The Southport disorder and chilling hate crime attacks that followed shocked our nation and showed how false information on social media spread like wildfire with devastating consequences.”

The move directs a significant portion of the new funding toward policing online speech under the guise of protecting “vulnerable young Londoners from radicalization and misinformation online.” This expansion fits within the Mayor’s broader £15.9 ($21.31M) million anti-extremism agenda, the largest of its kind initiated by a London mayor.

According to the official press release, the Southport incident highlighted “increased concern about online radicalization and the spread of misinformation,” even while admitting that overall hate crime incidents have been declining across London.

Nevertheless, the Mayor maintains that the numbers, despite dropping, are still “too high,” justifying the fresh wave of funding and monitoring efforts.

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Unity Message Backfires: Racist AOC Tweet Turns Heads

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) campaign account on X is facing significant backlash over a social media post that capitalized “Black” and “Latino” while leaving “white” in lowercase.

The post has since sparked accusations of hypocrisy and divisiveness.

The controversial post appeared on the “@TeamAOC” account, which is managed by the New York Democratic congresswoman and her staff members, drawing immediate criticism from users across the platform.

The message accompanied a video from Ocasio-Cortez’s recent “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, where she has been appearing alongside Bernie Sanders at anti-Trump rallies in traditionally conservative states across the country.

“Do not let them trick you into thinking we are enemies,” stated the post featuring footage from a Boise, Idaho event. 

“Do not let them trick you into thinking that we can be separated into rural and urban, Black and white and Latino. We are one.”

Social media users quickly pointed out the apparent contradiction between the unity message and the selective capitalization choices in the text, with many suggesting the typographical choice undermined the very message of togetherness.

One X user’s reply, which garnered more likes than the original post, questioned: “If we are one, why did you capitalize ‘Black’ and not ‘white’?” 

This sentiment was echoed by numerous commenters who saw the capitalization disparity as problematic.

Another popular response accused the campaign of deliberate racism, stating: “We see you, you f***ing racist POS. Don’t act like it was an accident that you left the word ‘White’ uncapitalized,” reflecting the intensity of reactions to what some viewed as a calculated slight.

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