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We Tested AI Censorship: Here’s What Chatbots Won’t Tell You + More
We Tested AI Censorship: Here’s What Chatbots Won’t Tell You
When OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, it may not have realized it was setting a company spokesperson loose on the internet. ChatGPT’s billions of conversations reflected directly on the company, and OpenAI quickly threw up guardrails on what the chatbot could say. Since then, the biggest names in technology — Google, Meta, Microsoft, Elon Musk — all followed suit with their own AI tools, tuning chatbots’ responses to reflect their PR goals. But there’s been little comprehensive testing to compare how tech companies are putting their thumbs on the scale to control what chatbots tell us.
Gizmodo asked five of the leading AI chatbots a series of 20 controversial prompts and found patterns that suggest widespread censorship. There were some outliers, with Google’s Gemini refusing to answer half of our requests, and xAI’s Grok responding to a couple of prompts that every other chatbot refused. But across the board, we identified a swath of noticeably similar responses, suggesting that tech giants are copying each other’s answers to avoid drawing attention. The tech business may be quietly building an industry norm of sanitized responses that filter the information offered to users.
Google’s AI might be the most restricted for now, but that’s likely a temporary condition while the drama fades. In the meantime, our tests show a much more subtle form of information control. There are many areas where content moderation is an obvious necessity, such as child safety. But in most cases, the right answer is murky. Our tests showed that many chatbots refuse to deliver information you can find with a simple Google search. Here’s what we found.
According to Micah Hill-Smith, founder of AI research firm Artificial Analysis, the “censorship” that we identified comes from a late stage in training AI models called “reinforcement learning from human feedback” or RLHF. That process comes after the algorithms build their baseline responses, and involves a human stepping in to teach a model which responses are good, and which responses are bad.
Ways the Government Is Watching You and What You Can Do to Protect Your Privacy
Have you ever wondered whether or not the government is watching what you do online? It’s not an unreasonable question to ask. After all, whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden revealed that the government might be taking a closer look at us than we’d like to think about it.
However, we may not know to what extent the government has the capability to monitor us to some degree. The reasons why, who they’re looking at and what they’re looking at are another question.
While the U.S. government theoretically can watch most people’s activities online, they’re likely only paying attention to certain individuals. This comes after the U.S. Patriot Act, which was passed post-9/11. The act significantly expanded the powers of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to take a closer look into individuals suspected of terrorist activities or anything that would be considered a concern for national security.
We may never know for sure how much our government can watch or listen to what we do online. Even if you’re not up to anything suspicious, it’s perfectly normal not to want your government snooping on you. By using some of the strategies we mentioned — including a VPN — you can keep your online activity more private.
YouTube Says It Has a ‘Responsibility’ to Manipulate Algorithms Leading Up to the 2024 Election
“Responsibility” is a good word. It’s even better as an actual thing. But even just as a word, it’s a positive one. It signals that reliable people/entities are behind some project or policy.
So no wonder then, that the thoroughly disgraced Google/YouTube — as far as censorship and biased political approach —are trying to use the word “responsibility” as a narrative fig leaf to cover what the giant platform is actually up to — and has been, for a long while.
Enter, YouTube’s newest chief product officer, Johanna Voolich. What are the priorities here? It could be summed up as, four R’s and One C — namely, YouTube’s “remove, raise, reward, reduce” content approach — that’s as per a blog post published by YouTube itself.
And then, C would be speculative, for “censorship” — which is what these supposedly fair and “uplifting” actions in reality end up achieving.
Georgia Joins States Seeking Parental Permission Before Children Join Social Media
Georgia could join other states in requiring children younger than 16 to have their parents’ explicit permission to create social media accounts.
Lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to Senate Bill 351, which also would ban social media use on school devices and internet services, require porn sites to verify users are 18 or over and mandate additional education by schools on social media and internet use. The House passed the measure 120-45 and the Senate approved it 48-7.
The bill, which Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte of Dallas called “transformative,” now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature or veto.
A number of other states including Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Utah passed laws last year requiring parental consent for children to use social media. In Arkansas, a federal judge in August blocked enforcement of a law requiring parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts.
YouTube Could Be Worth $400 Billion — That’s More Than Disney and Comcast Combined. We Should Be Paying More Attention.
YouTube is the world’s largest video platform. It’s the world’s second-largest search engine. It plays a massive role in culture.
And most of you don’t pay nearly enough attention to it. But Wall Street does: Analyst Michael Nathanson has a new note estimating that YouTube could be worth as much as $400 billion as a stand-alone company.
Reminder: Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion nearly 20 years ago.
We could spend time here explaining Nathanson’s math and assumptions — he thinks that in 2023, YouTube generated operating profits of $5.5 billion on revenues of $45 billion; he also thinks its future growth will be spurred by subscription services like YouTube TV, as its advertising growth slows.
Congress Gives Research Into Kids and Social Media a Cash Infusion
Researchers scrutinizing how social media impacts children’s health recently got a key assist as lawmakers tucked fresh funding for the cause into their sprawling spending legislation.
Federal appropriators this year re-upped $15 million in funding for a program directing the National Institutes of Health and Department of Health and Human Services to lead studies examining technology’s impact on children’s development and mental health. With Congress initially allocating $15 million last year, total investment is now up to $30 million.
The initiative, first proposed by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), is one of the federal government’s most significant attempts yet to map out how much digital platforms are contributing to issues like depression, anxiety and drug abuse among youth.
The 2023 appropriations helped NIH fund 26 grants looking into how tech impacts children, totaling $15.1 million, according to a fact sheet shared by Markey’s office.
West Virginia Gov. Justice Vetoes Bill That Would Have Loosened School Vaccine Policies + More
West Virginia Gov. Justice Vetoes Bill That Would Have Loosened School Vaccine Policies
Republican Gov. Jim Justice on Wednesday broke with West Virginia’s GOP-majority Legislature to veto a bill that would have loosened one of the country’s strictest school vaccination policies.
West Virginia is only one of a handful of states in the U.S. that offers only medical exemptions to vaccine requirements. The bill would have allowed some students who don’t attend traditional public institutions or participate in group extracurriculars like sports to be exempt from vaccinations typically required for children starting daycare or school.
Justice, who is running for Democrat U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin’s seat, received immense pressure to reject the bill from healthcare leaders, educators and parents. He refused to answer whether or not he planned to sign it before Wednesday’s veto, saying he needed time to think through the decision.
The veto came on the last day before a key deadline that would have allowed the bill to go into law without Justice’s signature.
AMA President Advocates for Stricter Censorship of Health ‘Misinformation,’ Urges Platforms to Follow YouTube’s Strict Speech Policy
The American Medical Association (AMA) President Jesse Ehrenfeld is arguing in favor of more censorship, supposedly targeting those “spreading misinformation.”
Ehrenfeld is happy with how Google/YouTube is doing that, via the controversial “medical misinformation” policy which he says “landed a solid punch” (against suspected medical information, not free speech, according to him). And, Ehrenfeld is urging other platforms to adopt similar rules.
YouTube mandates that its users must strictly adhere to whatever local health authorities or the World Health Organization say about health-related matters.
In a blog post of his own, Ehrenfeld now writes that U.S. federal officials, including the surgeon general, have an obligation to “actively counter voices” that are deemed to be deliberately spreading misinformation about (COVID) vaccines and other issues.
4 Canadian School Boards Sue Snapchat, TikTok and Meta for Disrupting Students’ Education
Four of the largest school boards in the Canadian province of Ontario said Thursday they launched lawsuits against TikTok, Meta and SnapChat alleging the social media platforms are disrupting student learning.
The lawsuits claim platforms like Facebook and Instagram are “designed for compulsive use, have rewired the way children think, behave, and learn” and teachers have been left to manage the fallout. Rachel Chernos, a trustee for the Toronto District School Board, said teachers and parents are noticing social withdrawal, anxiety, attention problems, cyberbullying and mental health issues.
“These companies have knowingly created programs that are addictive that are aimed and marketed at young people and it is causing significant harm and we just can’t stand by any longer and not speak up about it,” she said.
They are seeking damages in excess of $4 billion Canadian (US$2.9 billion) for disruption to student learning and the education system.
Military Chaplains Appeal to Supreme Court Over COVID Policies That Forced Out Religious Objectors
A group of military chaplains is urging the Supreme Court to stop the Department of Defense from enforcing policies that it says punish those who filed religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The Supreme Court is currently considering the chaplains’ appeal of a Fourth Circuit decision to dismiss the case. While awaiting the ruling, the chaplains argue that “interim relief is necessary” to protect both the Court’s jurisdiction and the chaplains “from continuing irreparable harm, career destruction and/or discharge,” according to the petition.
“Without interim relief to protect their chaplaincies, many Chaplains will have been forced out of the Armed Services before the merits of this case return to this Court after remand,” the filing states. “To preserve this Court’s future jurisdiction over the permanent resolution of the Chaplains’ challenge, the Court should issue interim relief now to ensure that DOD cannot play out the clock as a means to evade review of its unlawful Mandate.”
The petition alleges that the DOD has not removed “adverse personnel actions” — unfavorable measures such as poor fitness reports that may affect promotions and result in other consequences — from the chaplains’ files. The petition contends that the adverse personnel actions occurred due to the chaplains’ religious accommodation requests (RAR).
The chaplains took up the lawsuit “when it became obvious DOD was denying all RARs, using that process to purge those who believed in following their faith-formed conscience by requesting RARs,” the court document states.
Fauci: When Confronted With Misinformation, Stick to the Science — Former NIAID Director Advises Public Health Students on Navigating Politically Charged Topics
While public health professionals don’t get formal training on how to operate in highly politically charged and divisive environments, the best thing to do is stick to the facts, evidence, and data, Anthony Fauci, MD, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told an audience of health policy graduate students on Wednesday.
He acknowledged that this can be challenging in the context of an evolving pandemic. As new information appeared, for instance, recommendations would change. But it’s not an easy task to get the wider public to understand the scientific process, he said.
“What happens is that when scientists … change their recommendations, it can sometimes — understandably, but inappropriately — be interpreted as flip-flopping,” Fauci said. “And when your audience thinks you’re flip-flopping, they then start to lose confidence in science, when actually it’s just the opposite. It’s the science that’s self-correcting as new information comes along.”
Yet that provides an opportunity for misinformation to take hold. He noted that we have recently seen a “normalization of untruths,” where complete fabrications can get amplified via social media.
The counter to that, he said, is to “spread as much correct information as you possibly can.” At the same time, he acknowledged that those who spread misinformation are “a very energetic group” that seems to have the time, energy, and resources to “outgun” public health officials.
NSW May End Its COVID Vaccine Mandate for Health Workers. That Doesn’t Mean It Was a Bad Idea in the First Place
Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organizations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the first to need two doses to keep their jobs.
State and territory governments subsequently implemented employment and public space mandates which required people to show proof of vaccination to enter hospitality venues and events. A constellation of private companies also required vaccines for their workers or patrons.
Mandate removal may have just as much of an influence on people’s future attitudes and behavior as mandate imposition. As New South Wales considers removing its COVID vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, it’s pertinent to explore how to abolish a vaccine mandate in the right way.
Queensland and Western Australia removed their COVID vaccine requirements for health workers in 2023, and this week NSW announced it’s considering doing the same.
U.S. Requiring New AI Safeguards for Government Use, Transparency
The White House said Thursday it is requiring federal agencies using artificial intelligence to adopt “concrete safeguards” by Dec. 1 to protect Americans’ rights and ensure safety as the government expands AI use in a wide range of applications.
The Office of Management and Budget issued a directive to federal agencies to monitor, assess and test AI’s impacts “on the public, mitigate the risks of algorithmic discrimination, and provide the public with transparency into how the government uses AI.” Agencies must also conduct risk assessments and set operational and governance metrics.
The White House said agencies “will be required to implement concrete safeguards when using AI in a way that could impact Americans’ rights or safety” including detailed public disclosures so the public knows how and when artificial intelligence is being used by the government.
The White House on Thursday said new safeguards will ensure air travelers can opt-out of Transportation Security Administration facial recognition use without delay in screening. When AI is used in federal healthcare to support diagnostics decisions a human must oversee “the process to verify the tools’ results.”
Amazon’s Palm-Scanning Service Now Lets You Sign Up From Your Phone
Amazon now lets you sign up for its palm recognition service directly from your phone. It’s launching a new Amazon One app on iOS and Android you can use to take a photo of your palm and set up your account, allowing you to start scanning your palm at locations that support the verification tech.
Amazon One uses generative AI to analyze your palm vein structure to create a “unique numerical, vector representation” of your palm that it recognizes when you scan your hand in-store. On mobile, Amazon says it uses AI to match the photo from a phone’s camera to the “near-infrared imagery” from an Amazon One device.
Although the technology has raised some privacy concerns, Amazon says that the palm images uploaded within the app are “encrypted and sent to a secure Amazon One domain” in the Amazon Web Service cloud. It also says the app “includes additional layers of spoof detection,” adding that you can’t save or download the palm images to your phone.
That still might not be enough to convince some users (myself included) to hand over their, well, hands, for the sake of convenience. Because, unlike a password, you can’t get a new palm print.
More Than 2,900 Elementary Students in Waterloo Region Suspended for Out-of-Date Vaccine Records + More
More Than 2,900 Elementary Students in Waterloo Region Suspended for Out-of-Date Vaccine Records
More than 2,900 elementary students in Waterloo region were suspended from school Wednesday because their vaccination records are not up to date.
Region of Waterloo Public Health says the records must be updated under the Immunization of School Pupils Act. They must show proof of vaccination for diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chickenpox) and meningitis or have a valid exemption on file with public health.
Public health said the last time the Immunization of School Pupils Act was enforced in Waterloo region was in 2019 with approximately 1,032 students suspended at that time.
Secondary students in the region may face suspension starting May 1.
These Digital Kiosks Snatch Your Phone’s Data When You Walk By
Digital kiosks from Soofa seem harmless, giving you bits of information alongside some ads. However, these kiosks popping up throughout the United States take your phone’s information and location data whenever you walk near them, and sell them to local governments and advertisers, first reported by NBC Boston Monday.
While data tracking is commonplace online, it’s becoming more pervasive in the real world. Whenever you walk past a Soofa kiosk, it collects your phone’s unique identifier (MAC address), manufacturer, and signal strength. This allows it to track anyone who walks within a certain, unspecified range. It then creates a dashboard to share with advertisers and local governments to display analytics about how many people are walking and engaging with its billboards.
This can offer local cities new ways to understand how people use public spaces, and how many people are reading notices posted on these digital kiosks. However, it also gives local governments detailed information on how people move throughout society and raises a question of how this data is being used.
Facebook’s Project Ghostbusters Exposes Covert Surveillance of Snapchat Users
Recent revelations from unsealed court documents have uncovered a covert initiative orchestrated by Facebook back in 2016, known internally as “Project Ghostbusters.”
This operation now emerges into the light, shedding new insights into the inner workings of one of the world’s most influential tech giants.
Project Ghostbusters aimed to intercept and decrypt the encrypted network traffic between users of Snapchat’s app and its servers. By delving into this encrypted data, Facebook hoped to gain valuable insights into user behavior, ultimately seeking to enhance its competitive position against Snapchat.
These revelatory court papers, unearthed during an ongoing class action lawsuit between consumers and Meta, Facebook’s parent company, offer a glimpse into Meta’s concerted efforts to gain a strategic advantage over its rivals, including Snapchat, Amazon, and YouTube.
Matthews: Autocrats Gonna Mandate: Health Insurance, Vaccines, EVs and More
The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are denying that recent EPA regulations are meant to mandate that everyone switch from gas-powered to an electric vehicle (EV). Don’t you believe ’em. Progressive elites rely on the power of government to force you to do what they think you should be doing. In other words, autocrats gonna mandate.
How about the COVID-19 vaccine? The vast majority of Americans lined up to get the vaccine as soon as it was available, with about 1 million a day being vaccinated when Joe Biden took office.
But vaccine enthusiasm waned as boosters increased and time passed, so Biden imposed a vaccine mandate (or the taking of a weekly test) on government employees and contractors, the military, healthcare workers, nursing homes and private sector businesses with 100 or more employees — an estimated 84 million Americans.
He would have mandated more but the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in. The court upheld the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers and nursing homes that receive Medicare or Medicaid funds, but struck down the mandate on businesses, asserting the government overstepped its authority — something the Biden administration does regularly.
It is a hallmark of the progressive mentality that if the public won’t do what progressives think is best, they will use the power of government to force the public to do so. We saw it with ObamaCare, COVID-19 vaccines, EVs and many other issues — e.g., the mandated use of ethanol in gasoline. And they may be coming for your gas stove next.
Kentucky Senate Votes to Bar Employers, Schools From Requiring COVID Vaccine
Commonwealth Journal reported:
Following a 40-minute debate, the state Senate approved a bill that would prohibit the COVID-19 vaccine from being required for student enrollment, employment or medical treatment in Kentucky.
Senate Bill 295, sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, advanced 25-11 with one member abstaining.
The bill protects “individual liberties,” Tichenor said but met bipartisan opposition from senators raising concerns about public health and how the bill could impact employers.
Senate Bill 295 still needs to make its way through the House committee process and receive consideration from the full House. In order to maintain its ability to override a veto from Gov. Andy Beshear, the legislature would have to fully pass the bill by Friday. Tuesday is the 56th day of the 60-day legislative session.
Google Is Ordered to Identify Who Watched Certain YouTube Videos
U.S. federal law enforcement and courts have gone a step further in the extreme efforts they are making to surveil people’s activities online, including on Google’s vast platforms.
The latest is that the tech giant gets orders to identify all people who happen to be watching certain videos or livestreams on YouTube.
After directly censoring creators and channels, and giving geolocation data of its users to the authorities in response to the controversial geofencing warrants, this is a new example of how Google can be used and abused in dragnet-style “investigations.”
Unmasking everyone who watched a particular video is similar to geofencing in that it makes everyone a suspect — and this, a number of experts and rights groups believe, is unconstitutional, i.e., in violation of the 4th Amendment, that protects from unreasonable searches.
Bill Maher to Launch Podcast Network, Hires Ex-ESPN Anchor Sage Steele as First Host
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
HBO Real Time host Bill Maher is launching a podcast network. The Club Random Studios network (the name is derived from Maher’s Club Random podcast), will seek to host podcasts built on an idea of “freedom of expression,” the late-night host tells The Hollywood Reporter.
The first podcast on the network, which Maher is backing alongside co-creators Chris Case and Chuck LaBella, will be hosted by Sage Steele, the former ESPN SportsCenter anchor who parted ways with the channel last year after settling a free speech lawsuit. Steele filed the suit alleging retaliation after she made controversial comments about the COVID-19 vaccine mandates on a podcast hosted by Jay Cutler.
“She’s the perfect choice to be our first new host because, like me, she pissed off Disney. There’s a certain poetic symmetry to that,” Maher says of Steele’s show, which launches today (Maher, of course, tussled with Disney after ABC canceled his show Politically Incorrect in 2002).
TikTok’s Troubles Just Got Worse: The FTC Could Sue Them, Too
The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating TikTok over allegedly faulty privacy and data security practices and could decide in the coming weeks to bring a lawsuit or settlement, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The commission is weighing allegations that TikTok, and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, deceived its users by denying that individuals in China had access to their data, and also violated a children’s privacy law, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential matter.
The agency, in partnership with the Justice Department, could either file a lawsuit or settle with the company, though a settlement has yet to be reached, the people said.
Amazon Loses EU Court Bid to Delay Digital Rules on Online Ads
Amazon lost a legal bid to delay obeying part of the European Union’s new content moderation law.
The U.S. online marketplace had claimed that the Digital Services Act (DSA)’s requirement to make its online advertisement library publicly available would hurt its fundamental rights to privacy and the freedom to conduct a business.
Court of Justice Vice President Lars Bay Larsen rejected the company’s request to suspend the DSA until its main legal challenge had been ruled on, saying this would delay the effect of the law “potentially for several years,” risking efforts to make online platforms safer, according to a press release issued on Wednesday.
Senators Say Meta’s Zuckerberg Is Slow-Walking Child Safety Inquiries + More
Senators Say Meta’s Zuckerberg Is Slow-Walking Child Safety Inquiries
Senators are accusing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of stonewalling hundreds of their questions after the mogul testified at a blockbuster hearing earlier this year about concerns that major tech companies are failing to adequately protect children online.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee hammered Zuckerberg and the CEOs of TikTok, Snap, Discord and X over those allegations during the nearly four-hour-long session in January. But it was Zuckerberg who appeared to get the brunt of the criticism, at one point being pressured to apologize to families in the hearing room whose children experienced harm on social media.
Now lawmakers say Zuckerberg and Meta are failing to take their follow-up questions seriously as they continue to investigate how digital platforms may exacerbate the spread of child abuse material online.
The panel on Monday released hundreds of pages of written responses from the companies to additional lawmaker inquiries — a common post-hearing practice on Capitol Hill. But lawmakers took exception to the 35-page reply from Meta, which they said had not been fully forthright.
Josh Sorbe, a Senate Judiciary spokesman, said that while the committee gave Zuckerberg “multiple extensions” to respond after the session, the chief executive “answered only a small fraction of members’ questions” six weeks after receiving them — less than 10%.
Judge Dismisses X Lawsuit Against Pro-Censorship Group
A lawsuit initiated by Elon Musk’s company, X, against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) was dismissed by U.S. Judge Charles Breyer. The suit accused the CCDH, a non-profit organization, of unlawfully accessing X’s data to carry out research, which they then used to make allegations of increased “hate speech” and “misinformation” on the social media platform.
X also claimed that the CCDH selectively used data from the platform to create a “scare campaign,” driving away advertisers and causing significant financial losses.
But the judge interpreted the lawsuit against the pro-censorship group as an attempt by X to silence the organization.
Due to California’s anti-SLAPP law that prevents lawsuits aiming to stifle free speech, a federal judge on Monday overruled the case lodged by tech tycoon Elon Musk against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a group that tracks the escalation of hate content on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, following Musk’s takeover.
Worldcoin Hit With Another Ban Order in Europe Citing Risks to Kids
Controversial crypto biometrics venture Worldcoin has been almost entirely booted out of Europe after being hit with another temporary ban — this time in Portugal. The order from the country’s data protection authority comes hard on the heels of the same type of three-month stop-processing order from Spain’s DPA earlier this month.
Portugal was one of just two European countries left where Worldcoin was still operating its proprietary eyeball-scanning orbs after Spain’s ban. This leaves Germany as the only market where it’s currently able to harvest biometrics in Europe as privacy watchdogs take urgent action to respond to local concerns.
Portugal’s data protection authority said it issued the three-month ban on Worldcoin’s local ops Tuesday after receiving complaints Worldcoin had scanned children’s eyeballs.
Other complaints cited in its press release announcing the suspension, which it notes was issued Monday, also mirror Spain’s DPA’s concerns — including insufficient information being provided to users about the processing of their sensitive biometric data; and the inability of users to delete their data or revoke consent to Worldcoin’s processing.
The controversial project is backed by Sam Altman, of OpenAI fame, who is simultaneously supercharging the boom in generative AI tools that are making it harder for people to distinguish between artificial (machine-produced) and human activity online in the first place. Next stop: Rent collection on every online human on Earth?
‘They Need to Shut It Down Now’: Concerns Raised Over Downtown Lakeland’s Facial Recognition Cameras
New security cameras are being installed in downtown Lakeland to make the area safer, but now there are concerns over a controversial feature: facial recognition technology.
Julie Townsend, the Executive Director of the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority (LDDA), told FOX 13 back in January that the 14 cameras would be installed on private property to keep a closer eye on corners and alleyways and to be a deterrent to crime.
“This technology used this way to track and identify people in real-time is really chilling in a free society,” said Nate Freed Wessler, Deputy Director of ACLU’s Speech Privacy and Technology Project.
Wessler said there has been strong legislative pushback in other cities against this software. “You can use it in limited ways to investigate crimes after the fact, but you can’t ever attach face recognition technology to a live network of video cameras. It’s a red line that Lakeland has crossed here and they need to shut it down now,” said Wessler.
S.C. Businesses Battle Proposed Ban on Vaccine Mandates
A bill that will await a debate in Columbia this week has sparked fears it could harm South Carolina’s pro-business reputation and cost the state jobs if enacted. Those are the concerns of South Carolina’s business leaders. But supporters say their goal is to protect workers.
The bill, called the “Medical Freedom Act,” has drawn sharp criticism from South Carolina leaders, including the governor, over fears it could cripple the state’s response to public-health emergencies.
Now another part of that legislation faces big opposition from a different group — South Carolina’s business community.
Bob Morgan with the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce testified that businesses worry the measure, which is advancing in the Senate, could cost jobs. The bill would prohibit private employers from requiring workers to receive novel vaccines or gene therapy — facing fines or even prison time for violations.
The director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control has told senators this bill would also prohibit hospitals and healthcare facilities from requiring their workers to get an annual flu shot — because that could be considered a novel vaccine.
What to Know About Meta’s ‘Political Content’ Limit — and How to Turn It off on Instagram
Meta has come under fire in recent days from social media users startled to discover they’ve been automatically enrolled in a relatively new setting that reduces “political content” on Instagram and Threads, with the company being accused of censorship amid an important global election year.
“This is not okay,” civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger posted on X (formerly Twitter). “Instagram is now trying to suppress political content just months before the next presidential election. Why is Meta attempting to censor the democratic process?” asked Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
In fact, Meta announced that it was rolling out the setting in a little-noticed February blog post, saying that it wanted to make its platforms “a great experience for everyone” and claiming that it would not filter content from followed accounts but rather would limit its algorithm from “proactively” surfacing political content from unfollowed accounts.
The new setting — which users can opt out of — applies to the Feed, Reels, Explore, and Suggested Users parts of Instagram and Threads. This comes as Meta has continued to reduce political content on its Facebook platform since 2021.
Good Luck Fighting Disinformation
In April 2022, Nick Sawyer sat down before a committee of the California State Assembly to argue for legislation to help limit the spread of COVID falsehoods. Sawyer, an emergency room physician, had become frustrated by what he saw as the failure of his profession to respond to doctors sharing false information about the pandemic.
He’d co-founded an advocacy group, No License for Disinformation (NLFD), and now he was testifying in favor of legislation that warned doctors of professional consequences for misleading patients about the coronavirus — prescribing ivermectin as a COVID cure, for example, or claiming that COVID vaccines would magnetize their blood.
“We’ve got to stop the disinformation pipeline,” Sawyer told the committee.
Five months later, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law. But for Sawyer and other proponents of the bill, known as AB 2098, the victory was short-lived. The legislation immediately became snarled in First Amendment challenges. Sawyer and his colleagues at NLFD — overwhelmed by harassment from COVID skeptics and frustrated by the sluggishness of medical authorities in responding to falsehoods — decided to close the organization’s doors. And a year after AB 2098 became law, Newsom quietly signed another bill repealing it.
How to Escape Facebook’s Creepy Ad Tracking
Do you ever feel like your Facebook is listening to you, or watching your every move? That whenever you search for something on another website or have a conversation with a friend, the next minute you’re seeing ads on Facebook for that same thing?
This is no coincidence. Although Facebook has denied that our phones listen to us, they do have other ways of finding out what we are talking about, listening to and searching for. In some cases, it seems like they know what we’re thinking, too.
If you’re feeling a bit creeped out by all this, we don’t blame you. The good news is that while Facebook does have many capabilities, it isn’t omnipresent. The good news is that there are ways to escape Facebook’s creepy ad tracking, so you can scroll in peace.
Based on all this information that Facebook can collect, companies can use ad tracking to target you with ads highly relevant to your browsing activity, interests, conversations on Facebook Messenger, and potentially even interactions on WhatsApp (which is also owned by Meta, Facebook’s parent company).
U.S. Sanctions Chinese Hackers Accused of Targeting Critical Infrastructure
The Biden administration sanctioned two Chinese nationals and a Wuhan-based company Monday that allegedly targeted critical infrastructure sectors in the U.S. as part of an expansive hacking effort.
The Treasury Department levied sanctions against Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, as well as the Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, which the agency accused of acting as a front for China’s top spy agency.
An arm of China’s Ministry of State Security allegedly operated in part through the Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, conducting “a wide variety of computer network exploitation and computer intrusion activities,” according to the Justice Department.
The hackers, part of the group known as APT31, targeted “some of America’s most vital critical infrastructure sectors,” as well as staff at the White House; the departments of Justice, Commerce, the Treasury and State; and members of Congress, according to the Treasury.
The Next Phase of AI Is Here — and It’s Not Looking Pretty
When the history of this decade’s generative-AI years is finally written, this past month will probably mark the moment the industry had to start thinking twice about the hype.
Since the launch of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence hype has been everywhere. AI-first companies have carried the Nasdaq. Billions of dollars have poured into startups at a clip. And luminaries such as Bill Gates have declared the technology as “revolutionary as mobile phones and the internet.”
That euphoria may be harder to justify following a series of recent developments. Startups that once raised billions of dollars have watered down ambitions. Hungry founders who talked up a big game have conceded to the powers of Big Tech. And the opportunity for everyone to make bank by simply saying “AI” seems less promising.
In other words, a new era has begun in which success is much less certain than it initially seemed.