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Tech Companies Sue Arkansas Over Parental Consent Law for Social Media Access + More
Tech Companies Sue Arkansas Over Parental Consent Law for Social Media Access
After Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law that requires teens and kids to get parental consent before signing up for social media, that law is now in the crosshairs of a tech trade group called NetChoice, which filed a lawsuit against it.
According to a press release from NetChoice, the group filed the lawsuit yesterday, while the law was signed by Sanders in April and does not go into effect until September 1, 2023. NetChoice is a self-described nonprofit group of tech companies that represents the likes of TikTok, Airbnb, Google, Amazon, PayPal, and Meta.
The law — known as SB 396 or the Social Media Safety Act — would require social media platforms to verify the age of all users, and any users under the age of 18 would require parental consent before creating an account.
NetChoice argues that SB 396 is a threat to the privacy and online safety of Arkansans, especially children and teenagers since the law would require social media platforms to use a third party to run age verification checks.
Social Media Apps Will Have to Shield Children From Dangerous Stunts
Social media firms will be ordered to protect children from encountering dangerous stunts and challenges on their platforms under changes to the online safety bill. The legislation will explicitly refer to content that “encourages, promotes or provides instructions for a challenge or stunt highly likely to result in serious injury” as the type of material that under-18s should be protected from.
TikTok has been criticized for content featuring dares such as the blackout challenge, which encouraged users to choke themselves until they passed out, and a challenge that encouraged users to climb precarious milk crate stacks.
The bill will also require social media companies to proactively prevent children from seeing the highest-risk forms of content, such as material encouraging suicide and self-harm. Tech firms could be required to use age-checking measures to prevent under-18s from seeing such material.
Once the law comes into force breaches will carry a punishment of a fine of £18m or up to 10% of global turnover. In the most extreme cases, communications watchdog Ofcom will be able to block platforms.
Arizona Is Running Out of Water. Big Tech Data Centers Are Partly to Blame.
It surprised me when I heard Google was planning a massive data center in Mesa, just east of Phoenix. The deal guaranteed Google 1 million gallons of water a day to cool the facility, and up to 4 million gallons a day if it hit project milestones. (That’s a lot of water. Arizona residents each use about 146 gallons a day). I was an editor at Bloomberg at the time and we wrote about it here.
Since then, the Phoenix metro area has been dubbed “THE data center destination” by locals. Microsoft opened one in 2021 in Arizona. Meta is expanding its facility in Mesa.
These huge data centers use incredible amounts of water because the computing gear inside gets really hot when it processes all those YouTube videos, Zoom meetings, and mobile app sessions. Water is often used to cool the equipment.
Google has started disclosing data on this. In 2021, all the company’s data centers consumed 4.34 billion gallons of water. That’s so much, the company tried to put it all in context by comparing itself to that bastion of environmental stewardship: Golf courses. Google noted that 4.34 billion gallons are equivalent to the annual water footprint of 29 golf courses in the southwest U.S.
This brings us back to Arizona. The state is running out of water. A few weeks ago, the governor unveiled a plan to limit construction in areas around Phoenix after finding that the groundwater can’t support the current pace of building.
TikTok Banned in U.S.: Investors Eye Meta Platforms
The wheels of government move slowly, yet surely. Now lawmakers are taking dead aim at Chinese businesses, and their actions will have far-reaching implications for investors.
A bipartisan bill introduced last week will ban TikTok in the United States. U.S. lawmakers believe the wildly popular social media platform is an instrument of the Chinese government.
Meta Platforms has been kicked around Washington since the 2016 Presidential election when the Facebook parent company was blamed for misinformation campaigns. Meta has also steadily been losing market and mindshare to TikTok. That is likely to change, soon.
When lawmakers impede TikTok, Meta is the logical winner. With 3 billion unique members across its Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp social platforms, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has the scale and software dexterity to move quickly with new TikTok-like offerings.
Where Central Banks Have Issued Digital Currencies
Central bank digital currencies are controlled by governments like traditional currencies are and therefore represent the polar opposite of the idea of decentralized, self-sovereign bitcoins. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, several small nations and — since October 2021, Nigeria — have launched central bank digital currencies, and several more populous countries are getting ready to jump aboard a different crypto hype train.
The European Union today is proposing a legal framework for its planned launch of the digital euro. According to the Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker by Atlantic Council, concrete plans to launch a CBDC were also recorded in Canada, Brazil and the United States, among others.
Countries which are already in a CBDC pilot phase include Russia, Thailand, India, South Korea, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, according to the source. It is unclear, however, which of these programs could see a proper launch next.
Ubiquitous digital payments and tight government surveillance have led to a plethora of payment data already available to Chinese administrators. This knowledge on how people spend money will only grow with the implementation of the digital Yuan, even though the country’s central bank has said it will limit traceability and create what it calls “controllable anonymity.”
Online Hate and Harassment Continues to Rise
More than half of Americans say they have experienced hate or harassment online, according to a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League, with a dramatic rise in incidents over the last 12 months, especially among teens.
Why it matters: Experts say what happens online is causing significant real-world harm and also keeping large numbers of people from fully participating in an increasingly digital society.
Between the lines: Some platforms are safer than others. More than half of those who reported being harassed said they were targeted on Facebook. Meanwhile, the number of people reporting harassment on Twitter and Reddit was up significantly from the prior year.
What they’re saying: “Online hate and harassment isn’t just ‘hurtful speech,’” Yael Eisenstat, head of the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, said in a statement to Axios. “It pushes people out of the conversation, impinging on their own freedom of expression, causing emotional distress, reputational and economic harm.”
Texas Supreme Court Says Gov. Greg Abbott’s COVID Ban on Local Mask Rules Was Lawful
Settling a heated pandemic-era debate between Gov. Greg Abbott and leaders of the state’s major urban areas, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the governor had the legal authority to forbid local officials from requiring residents to wear masks in order to slow the spread of COVID-19.
As a contagious form of the virus raged in summer 2021 and threatened to push hospitals to the brink of their capacity limits, several local leaders put in place their own orders mandating that residents wear masks in certain public settings like businesses and schools — in defiance of Abbott’s own emergency order banning such masking rules.
City and county officials balked at Abbott using his emergency powers to block public health measures intended to respond to the emergency. But the court ruled that state law gives Abbott the authority to do just that.
Lawsuit Claims OpenAI Stole ‘Massive Amounts of Personal Data,’ Including Medical Records and Information About Children, to Train ChatGPT + More
A Lawsuit Claims OpenAI Stole ‘Massive Amounts of Personal Data,’ Including Medical Records and Information About Children, to Train ChatGPT
OpenAI stole “massive amounts of personal data” to train ChatGPT, a lawsuit alleges. The proposed class-action suit claims that Sam Altman’s company “secretly” harvested data to train its large language models so that its chatbot could replicate human language.
The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI crawled the web to amass huge amounts of data, including vast quantities taken from social media sites. OpenAI’s proprietary AI corpus of personal data, WebText2, for example, scraped huge amounts of data from Reddit posts and the websites they linked to, the lawsuit claims.
The data accessed included “private information and private conversations, medical data, information about children — essentially every piece of data exchanged on the internet it could take — without notice to the owners or users of such data, much less with anyone’s permission,” per the lawsuit.
This amounted to “the negligent and otherwise illegal theft of personal data of millions of Americans who do not even use AI tools,” the lawsuit claims.
As well as OpenAI, major backer Microsoft was named as a defendant.
Gen Zers Report Highest Negative Impact From Social Media, Nonprofits Working to Change That
It’s no secret that people 25 and under, also known as Gen Zers, spend the most time on social media, and a McKinsey Health Institute study shows that higher use of social media coincides with poorer well-being.
The McKinsey study shows 35% of young people around the world say they spend more than two hours a day scrolling on social media.
“Embarrassingly, I spend probably six hours on average on my phone,” said 20-year-old Abigail Bettow, adding that her favorite app is TikTok, then Instagram.
People across generations report more positive than negative impacts of social media, but when it comes to Gen Zers, 27% report a negative impact, which is more than any other generation. The study found most of the negativity revolves around the fear of missing out, body image and self-confidence.
Airport of the Future: A Seamless, High-Tech Urban Oasis
Airports are slated to become more seamless and efficient, a new report finds, even as they get busier and larger to meet growing demand.
What’s happening: A passenger experience “revolution” is coming over the next decade, according to a new report by the Oliver Wyman Forum, the research arm of the global consulting company by the same name.
What’s next: Many airports are quickly moving toward “touchless” technology using facial recognition, AI, automation and biometric scanners to smooth check-in and security or immigration clearances.
Yes, but: Such a seamless experience would require secure data-sharing across a global travel industry, which could be a big hurdle. “Not everybody will want this seamless, contactless experience if it means sharing their digital identity,” says the study’s lead author, Rana Nawas.
Privacy Fears Dominate Launch of Digital Euro Plan
When the European Commission unveiled draft legislation paving the way for a digital version of the euro, its jitters over how to allay privacy concerns were only too apparent.
“This is not a Big Brother project,” Finance Commissioner Mairead McGuinness told reporters on Wednesday after presenting what, if it becomes a reality, will be a virtual extension of euro banknotes and coins and which will settle payments across the eurozone in seconds.
Supporters say the digital euro goes beyond providing a public good and will ensure the currency and European Central Bank remain relevant in a digital economy, where cryptocurrencies circulate and Big Tech companies dream of printing their own money.
But critics fear it will give governments a way to snoop on buying behavior. At the extreme end, conspiracy theorists portray the digital euro as a covert plan to phase out cash and monitor people’s shopping habits.
BlackRock Joins AI Mania, Calling It a Potential ‘Mega Force’
BlackRock Inc. is betting on the AI boom as it latches onto the promise of productivity gains from artificial intelligence.
The world’s largest asset manager has just introduced a bullish call on the theme, following a blistering AI-powered rally that’s already driven the best-ever first half of a year for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index. It picked out semiconductor makers, companies with vast sets of data or high potential for automation as those most likely to benefit.
“We implement an overweight to AI as a mega force,” BlackRock’s research arm said in its midyear report published June 28. “New AI tools could analyze and unlock the value of the data gold mine some companies may be sitting on.”
Meta Releases Clues on How AI Is Used on Facebook and Instagram
As demand for greater transparency in artificial intelligence mounts, Meta released tools and information Thursday aimed at helping users understand how AI influences what they see on its apps.
The social media giant introduced nearly two dozen explainers focused on various features of its platforms, such as Instagram Stories and Facebook’s news feed. These describe how Meta selects what content to recommend to users.
The description and disclosures came in the face of looming legislation around the world that may soon impose concrete disclosure requirements on companies that use AI technology.
Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, tied the company’s new disclosures to a global debate about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence that range from the spread of misinformation to a rise in AI-enabled fraud and scams.
Pornhub Is Being Accused of Illegal Data Collection
There aren’t many websites bigger than Pornhub. Each month, more than 2 billion people visit the adult site, spending an average of almost eight minutes browsing and watching videos — an eternity in internet time. All that activity has the potential to generate huge volumes of data. Now Pornhub is facing a series of legal challenges across Europe over the information it collects.
Activists and researchers are filing a complaint today against Pornhub in Italy that claims the company is “illegally” handling the data of millions of people. The complaint — which is based on a technical analysis of the website and its privacy practices and builds upon previously unreported complaints in the country and in Cyprus, where Pornhub is legally based in Europe — alleges that the company falls foul of Europe’s strict GDPR rules, which govern how people’s data can and should be used.
Pornhub doesn’t allow people to easily opt out of being tracked by cookies; the site isn’t clear about the data it shares with third parties; and its algorithm “assigns” people sexual preferences, based on the videos they watch, says Alessandro Polidoro, a digital rights activist and the lead attorney of the litigation.
Polidoro is representing #StopDataPorn, a collective that includes researchers and civil liberties organizations involved in the action. Polidoro spoke with WIRED about the legal complaints but did not disclose the text, due to the privacy of individuals involved.
Chinese Spy Balloon Was Equipped With U.S. Tech, WSJ Says
Days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held high-level talks in China with President Xi Jinping that turned out to be a bust after President Biden, who should quite honestly be in a nursing home, called Xi a “dictator,” The Wall Street Journal published a piece, citing what it does best: anonymous sources, which detailed the Chinese spy balloon that the Biden administration allowed to float over the U.S. earlier this year was equipped with American-made equipment.
On Wednesday, WSJ revealed an analysis by U.S. defense and intelligence agencies of the debris recovered from the spy balloon shot down by a stealth fighter jet off the South Carolina coast in February was equipped with commercially available U.S. equipment, some of which could easily be purchased online.
The U.S.-made equipment was “interspersed with more specialized Chinese sensors and other equipment to collect photos, video, and other information to transmit to China,” officials told WSJ. The conclusion of the analysis disproves China’s claim the balloon was for ‘meteorological-puproses‘ and intended for intelligence gathering.
One of the officials said the Biden administration has not publicly shared its findings on the balloon and what components were used from the U.S. What’s still a mystery, and perhaps why some members of Congress are pressuring the administration to release critical information about the balloon’s capabilities, is why Biden allowed the spy balloon to fly over several sensitive U.S. military sites.
Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Claiming Amazon Sold ‘Suicide Kits’ to Teenagers + More
Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Claiming Amazon Sold ‘Suicide Kits’ to Teenagers
A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) brought by the parents of two teenagers who committed suicide by consuming sodium nitrite they bought on the online retailer’s platform.
U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle on Tuesday rejected claims by the parents of Ethan McCarthy and Kristine Jónsson that Amazon was liable for negligence and violating Washington state product liability laws.
The parents sought unspecified damages from Amazon for letting an outside vendor sell sodium nitrite at 99.6% purity, which they labeled “suicide kits,” to their children, saying it was known the chemical would likely be used for suicide.
Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer for the parents, in a statement on Wednesday, called the decision a “setback” but “hardly the end of the road” for the case. “There are no household uses for sodium nitrite and no consumer, let alone children, could reasonably know how lethal it was,” she said. “In Washington State, it is against the law to aid in suicide and that’s exactly what Amazon did.”
Apple Warns the U.K.’s Online Safety Bill Threatens Citizens’ Privacy and Security
Apple has joined WhatsApp, Signal, and other messaging companies, by raising concerns that end-to-end encryption would be threatened if the United Kingdom passes the “Online Safety Bill.” The bill moved to Parliament for review, and if passed, it would give the Office of Communications (Ofcom) the technology and authority to scan messages for concerning content.
The U.K. originally proposed the “Online Safety Bill” to criminalize content on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, that encouraged self-harm to users. However, after the initial stages of review, the bill’s parameters were broadened to focus on any and all illegal content as it relates to adult and child safety.
WhatsApp and other messaging sites accused the U.K. that the bill would effectively ban end-to-end encryption, and wrote an open letter in April, saying: “The bill provides no explicit protection for encryption.” It continues: “If implemented as written, could empower OFCOM [the Office of Communications] to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services, nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users.”
WhatsApp has previously said it will not lower its security for any government, while Signal has said it refuses to eliminate end-to-end encryption and will stop providing services in the U.K. if the bill is passed. End-to-end encryption protects users from outside parties gaining access to the contents of their messages, but the U.K. government says the “Online Safety Bill” is necessary to expose and catch criminals.
AI Is the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ — and Will See $1 Trillion in Investment, Wedbush Analyst Dan Ives Says
Some investors have called the investor excitement over artificial intelligence a passing hype, but it’s not, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
“I think this is the fourth industrial revolution playing out. This is something I call a 1995 moment, parallel with the internet. I do not believe that this is a hype cycle,” Ives said.
U.S. stocks, especially in the tech sector, have rallied this year as investors piled into companies exposed to AI, followed by the successful release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While the S&P 500 has risen about 14% so far this year, the Nasdaq 100 has seen an impressive 36% surge since the start of January.
Per CNBC, Ives said the AI industry will see a trillion dollars of incremental spending over the next decade. “That could be conservative — that wasn’t here six months ago,” he said.
A Lawsuit by TikTok Users Challenging Montana’s Ban Is Being Funded by the Social Media Company Itself
A high-profile lawsuit brought by TikTok users and creators last month challenging Montana’s statewide ban against the short-form video app is being funded by the social media giant itself, the company told CNN on Wednesday.
TikTok has been covering legal fees for the group of five TikTok creators, said Jodi Seth, a TikTok spokesperson, separately from the company’s own lawsuit to block the state’s new law targeting the app over national security concerns.
TikTok’s involvement in the creators’ suit was first reported this week by The New York Times, weeks after the initial court case was filed. The company’s role in the litigation had not been previously known.
This Top Mobile Phone Spying App Says It Has Been Hacked, With Thousands of Users at Risk
LetMeSpy, an Android application with thousands of customers that lets users spy on other smartphones, has been compromised and sensitive user data stolen, the app’s manufacturer has confirmed.
“As a result of the attack, the criminals gained access to e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and the content of messages collected on accounts,” the announcement added.
The message horde collected by the hacker seems to be quite extensive. After reviewing sample data, TechCrunch noted at least 13,000 devices have had data taken, which includes “years of victims’ call logs and text messages”, dating back to 2013.
Also, more than 13,000 location data points, for thousands of victims, were stolen, as well. This data suggests most victims live in the US, India, and Western Africa. Furthermore, the app’s master database was taken too, which holds data on some 26,000 customers who used the app for free, as well as the email addresses of those who paid for the subscription.
EU Countries, Lawmakers Reach Data Rule Deal Targeting Big Tech
EU countries and EU lawmakers on Tuesday agreed on rules that govern how Big Tech and other companies use European consumer and corporate data, with safeguards against non-EU governments gaining illegal access.
The European Commission proposed the Data Act last year to cover data generated in smart gadgets, machinery and consumer products, part of a raft of legislation aimed at curbing the power of U.S. tech giants.
EU concerns about data transfers have grown following revelations by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 of mass U.S. surveillance.
The new legislation gives both individuals and businesses more control over their data generated through smart objects, machines and devices, allowing them to copy or transfer data easily from across different services. It also gives consumers and companies a say on what can be done with the data generated by their connected products.
The COVID Vaccine Mandate in English Care Homes Led to Fewer Staff — and May Not Have Reduced Resident Deaths
Mandatory COVID vaccination as a condition of employment has been a commonly used — though controversial — policy around the world during the pandemic.
Much of the debate on vaccine mandates has rightly focused on ethical issues. For some people, considerations such as the right to refuse healthcare and objections to the use of coercion mean vaccination as a condition of employment can never be justified, irrespective of how effective the policy might be.
In our new study, we sought to estimate the effects of the 2021 COVID vaccine mandate for staff in elderly care homes in England. We found that the mandate was successful in reducing the percentage of unvaccinated workers, but this came at the cost of a reduction in net staffing in the sector. We also didn’t find any evidence that the mandate reduced COVID deaths among residents.
Biden Admin ‘Colluded’ With Big Tech, ‘Facilitated the Censorship of Americans’ + More
House Weaponization Committee: Biden Admin ‘Colluded’ With Big Tech, ‘Facilitated the Censorship of Americans’
The House Weaponization Subcommittee says the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has “facilitated the censorship of Americans directly” and through third-party intermediaries during the Biden administration.
Fox News Digital first obtained a new committee report Monday, stemming from the panel’s ongoing investigation into government-induced censorship on social media. The report focuses on CISA’s alleged work ahead of the 2020 election and the 2022 midterm elections.
The committee, led by Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, obtained non-public documents which lawmakers say reveal CISA “expanded its mission to surveil Americans’ speech on social media, colluded with Big Tech and government-funded third parties to censor by proxy, and tried to hide its plainly unconstitutional activities from the public.”
The report states that CISA engaged in “surveillance,” by expanding its mission from cybersecurity to monitor foreign “disinformation” to eventually monitor “all ‘disinformation,’ including Americans’ speech.”
It also says CISA “exploited its connections with Big Tech and government-funded non-profits to censor, by proxy, in order to circumvent the First Amendment’s prohibition against government-induced censorship.” Specifically — the report says CISA-funded entities created reporting portals that “funneled ‘misinformation’ reports from the government directly to social media platforms.”
Amazon Delays Virtual Care Service’s Unveiling After Senators Raised Privacy Concerns
Amazon is delaying the launch of a major expansion of its Amazon Clinic telemedicine service due to lawmakers’ concerns about its privacy practices that POLITICO detailed last week. According to an email from a person with direct knowledge subsequently obtained by POLITICO, Amazon will hold off on a promotional campaign for three weeks, till July 19.
Currently, Amazon Clinic is available in 33 states and leans on asynchronous care, meaning patients fill out a form to get treated for conditions like urinary tract infections, acid reflux and pink eye as well as to receive emergency contraception and birth control.
Amazon had planned to announce a 50-state launch of synchronous care — treatment provided via live video — on Tuesday. An Amazon spokesperson denied that there was any “delay as a result of an external inquiry.”
But the email says Amazon is delaying promotional activity because of POLITICO reporting on a letter from Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that raised concerns that the company is “harvesting” health data from patients. In the letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, the lawmakers pointed to recent reporting that Amazon Clinic requires patients to sign a release giving the company “complete” access to their health information.
By signing, customers authorize Amazon to share their data and acknowledge that it’s not protected by HIPAA, the federal health privacy law.
From Merck to Microsoft: These Are the Companies That BlackRock ‘Controls’ the Most of
A week after an employee of the world’s largest asset management company, BlackRock, described how the company attempts to stay out of the media spotlight while buying politicians and profiting off of war (according to undercover footage obtained by the O’Keefe Media Group), we thought it worth a look at just what companies does the 34-year-old company have the most control of.
As a reminder, in footage secretly recorded by undercover journalists in New York, a BlackRock recruiter named Serge Varlay explains how the investment company is able to “run the world.” “They [BlackRock] don’t want to be in the news. They don’t want people to talk about them. They don’t want to be anywhere on the radar,” Varlay said.
Varlay told an OMG journalist in the footage that BlackRock manages $20 trillion worldwide (it’s actually around $9 trillion).“It’s incomprehensible numbers,” he said.
As expected, BlackRock’s top equity holdings include America’s most established tech companies: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. BlackRock also has large positions in Nvidia and Broadcom, which happen to be America’s two largest semiconductor companies. Given Nvidia’s incredible YTD performance (198% as of June 19th), this position has likely grown even bigger.
Hundreds of Military Personnel Part of Lawsuit Over Mandatory COVID Vaccine Policy
More than 300 Canadian Armed Forces members are listed as plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against Canada’s defense minister and top brass over the military’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies.
Filed in federal court last week, the court action demands $1 million in damages for each of the 329 plaintiffs, plus declarations that mandating COVID shots for CAF members violated the rights of Canadian military members, plus punitive recompense.
Last April, Lt.-Gen. Allen told the House national defense committee that of the over 1,300 Canadian Forces personnel who at that time applied for vaccination exemptions, only 158 were approved.
“When mandatory vaccination became a requirement for both entry into the Canadian Forces and for service in the Canadian Forces, we set out to have our people vaccinated or committed to have every individual fill out an attestation as to their vaccination status,” she told committee members at the time.
COVID Restrictions Did More Harm Than Good
Ronald Reagan famously said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” What an apt summation of the government’s heavy-handed efforts to fight the coronavirus.
The Institute of Economic Affairs recently published a book on the effectiveness of pandemic lockdowns. The authors include a professor from Johns Hopkins and a professor emeritus from Lund University in Sweden. “The results of our meta-analysis support the conclusion that lockdowns in the spring of 2020 had a negligible effect on COVID-19 mortality,” they wrote. “This result is consistent with the view that voluntary changes in behavior, such as social distancing, did play an important role in mitigating the pandemic.”
In 2019, fewer than 71,000 people died from drug overdoses. In 2020, that number spiked up to more than 91,000. Tragically, it isn’t coming down. Last year, it increased to 109,000. There are many factors in overdose deaths, including the rise of fentanyl, but it’s foolish to think lockdowns didn’t contribute to them. Suicide and homicide rates have increased since 2019, too. This suggests it’s probable that the side effects of lockdowns will produce more American deaths than were saved by the restrictions.
There were other factors to consider. Online learning was a disaster. The Nation’s Report Card showed the pandemic and school closures wiped away 20 years of learning gains. The best students lost a little ground, but the lowest-performing students saw their scores fall four times as far. This makes them more likely to drop out of school and suffer later consequences. Those results will take decades to unfold, but they’re real.
“In the final analysis, these infringements generated negligible public health benefits while imposing a set of massive costs on society,” the authors note. They correctly call the lockdowns “a global policy failure of gigantic proportions.”
Meta Rolls Out Expansive New Parental Controls for Instagram and Messenger
Meta is launching a suite of new parental controls for both Instagram and Messenger, the company announced on Tuesday. The new tools give parents the ability to see how much time their child is spending on Messenger, as well as gain more insight into how well their teen really knows the people they’re following on Instagram (and who follows them).
On Instagram, parents can expect similar updates. That includes a new way to see how many friends their child has in common with whoever they’re following, along with whoever follows them. This could help parents monitor whether their teen is in contact with strangers. Meta says teens will also now receive a prompt when they block someone, which will suggest allowing a parent to supervise their accounts.
As concerns grow over the effect that social media sites like Facebook and Instagram have on their young users, Meta has been rolling out more robust parental controls and safety features for its family of apps. Some of those include Quiet Mode on Instagram, notifications that steer kids away from the content they continuously look at on the app, and features to keep adults out of minors’ DMs.
TikTok Gives Parents Personalized Control Over the Content Their Teens See
TikTok is bringing its content filtering tool to its Family Pairing offering, which lets parents link their accounts to their teen’s to enable content and privacy settings, the company announced on Tuesday. Content filtering allows users to filter out videos with words or hashtags they don’t want to see in their For You or Following feeds.
By bringing content filtering to Family Pairing, TikTok says it will allow parents to help reduce the likelihood of their teen “viewing content they may uniquely find jarring.” The official rollout comes as revealed that it was working on this functionality back in March.
Musk’s Twitter Faces Millions in Fines After New ‘Disinformation’ Laws Released in Australia
Elon Musk’s Twitter and other social media giants face the prospect of billions in fines after the Australian government released new laws targeting “misinformation and disinformation.”
Following a months-long process, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland released the draft legislation that will grant the country’s media regulatory body, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), greater powers to stamp out harmful content online. The federal opposition has earmarked concerns around how ACMA will determine what is “mis- or disinformation.”
“This is a complex area of policy, and government overreach must be avoided,” said David Coleman, the shadow communications minister. “The public will want to know exactly who decides whether a particular piece of content is ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation.’
“The significant penalties associated with this legislation potentially places substantial power in the hands of government officials,” he said in a statement online.
Former WHO Adviser Sounds the Alarm on Pandemic Treaty Proposals
In a seminal discussion before the Pandemic Response and Recovery All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) in the U.K., leading health experts raised serious concerns over the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proposed Pandemic Treaty and the amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR). The treaty would grant the WHO surveillance and censorship powers.
Dr. David Bell, an ex-WHO medical officer, and Professor Garrett Wallace Brown, who chairs Global Health Policy at the University of Leeds, outlined how the proposals could reshape the dynamics between the WHO and its member nations and imperil critical health initiatives.
The contentious point revolves around the unprecedented authority these proposals could vest in the WHO. According to Dr. Bell, the WHO could wield the power to demand hefty financial contributions from countries, suppress scientific discourse, and enforce travel restrictions, lockdowns, and compulsory vaccinations in response to health emergencies, which the body can declare at its discretion.