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U.S. Court Split in Challenge to COVID Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers + More
U.S. Court Split in Challenge to COVID Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers
A U.S. appeals court panel seemed divided on Wednesday over whether a civilian Navy employee can challenge President Joe Biden‘s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers in court or must first go through an administrative process.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit heard arguments in a bid by the worker, Jason Payne, to revive his lawsuit claiming the requirement to receive the vaccine or face termination violates federal employees’ constitutional rights.
A federal judge in Washington, DC, ruled in May that because Payne’s claims related to workplace conditions, he was required to go through an administrative complaint process for federal civil servants before taking the case to court.
Circuit Judge Justin Walker, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, seemed more sympathetic to Payne’s lawyer, Gene Hamilton’s arguments. Walker repeatedly pressed Daniel Winik of the U.S. Department of Justice, who is defending the vaccine mandate, on whether federal workers have any ability to challenge policies that violate their rights before they take effect.
White House Insists It’s Not Using Facebook Censorship Portal Despite Jen Psaki’s ‘Flagging’ Admission
The White House doesn’t use a secretive Facebook portal to request the removal of alleged “misinformation,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday when asked about a bombshell report laying out how government officials get tech firms to squelch online speech — despite her predecessor Jen Psaki saying last year the White House was “flagging” Facebook posts it didn’t like.
When pressed by The Post, Jean-Pierre said firmly that “no,” the White House does not use the recently exposed portal to request the removal of Facebook or Instagram posts.
The Intercept on Monday revealed the existence of the portal — facebook.com/xtakedowns — through which users with a government or law enforcement email address can submit content for deletion.
The revelation prompted outrage from civil libertarians who said the mechanism violated the spirit — if not the letter — of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
Soccer Fans, You’re Being Watched
This fall, more than 15,000 cameras will monitor soccer fans across eight stadiums and on the streets of Doha during the 2022 World Cup, an event expected to attract more than 1 million football fans from around the globe. Qatar’s World Cup organizers are not alone in deploying biometric technology to monitor soccer fan activity. In recent years, soccer clubs and stadiums across Europe have been introducing these security and surveillance technologies.
In Denmark, Brøndby Stadium has been using facial recognition for ticketing verification since 2019. In the Netherlands, NEC Nijmegen has used biometric technology to grant access to Goffert Stadium. France’s FC Metz briefly experimented with a facial recognition device to identify fans banned from Saint-Symphorien Stadium. And the U.K.’s Manchester City reportedly hired Texas-based firm Blink Identity in 2019 to deploy facial recognition systems at Etihad Stadium.
So how accurate are these systems? Over the years, there have been cases where things have gone wrong. In 2017, facial scanning technology mistakenly identified more than 2,000 people as possible criminals at the 2017 Champions League final in Cardiff, U.K. The system was scrapped following a court decision, only to be redeployed earlier this year.
Slowly but steadily, ubiquitous biometric technology systems have come to represent a new normal for stadium infrastructure in which “health securitization” is incorporated into systems for public safety and marketing.
Some Universities Require Bivalent COVID Booster — Harvard and Yale Are Among the Few Schools That Make Latest Booster Mandatory
As the U.S. braces for the possibility of a winter surge in COVID-19 cases, some colleges and universities are requiring their students to receive the new bivalent booster shot.
Among those schools are Harvard University, Tufts University, and Wellesley College in Massachusetts; Yale University in Connecticut; and Fordham University in New York City.
Notably, there have been reports of pushback regarding bivalent booster requirements at colleges and universities, according to Inside Higher Ed. It also appears that few other institutions have enacted such a requirement.
These Cruise Lines Just Dropped Their COVID Testing Rules
Several major cruise lines have dropped COVID-19-related testing protocols ahead of the holiday season, returning to what it was like before the pandemic swept the world.
Starting this month, cruise lines including Disney Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean and Virgin Voyages have simplified or removed COVID-19-related pre-boarding rules entirely, joining a growing trend in the cruise industry. It comes weeks after Norwegian Cruise Line became one of the first cruise lines to eliminate pandemic-related rules entirely, including for testing, vaccines, and masks.
This month, Disney will drop the requirement for travelers to get tested for COVID-19, regardless of their vaccination status, according to the company. Currently, the cruise line requires all unvaccinated guests to get tested one to two days before they sail. The new rule will go into effect starting Nov. 14.
China Officials Admit Fault for Boy’s Death as Anger at Lockdown Mounts
Chinese health officials released a statement on Thursday apologizing for the death of a 3-year-old boy whose father wasn’t able to get him to a hospital during a COVID-19 lockdown.
The boy’s father wrote in a social media post on Wednesday that he had been unable to leave his housing compound in Lanzhou because of the country’s strict coronavirus restrictions, according to the Agence France-Presse. He claimed that it took over an hour to break out of his housing compound and get his son, who had carbon monoxide poisoning, to a hospital via taxi.
“We sincerely accept criticism and supervision from the media and netizens, and are determined to rectify [mistakes],” the officials said, reportedly admitting that it took 90 minutes for an ambulance to be sent after the boy’s father called first responders.
The outlet reported that the incident sparked a backlash against China’s COVID policies online with the statement “three years of the COVID pandemic have been his entire life,” spreading widely on the Chinese social media site Weibo.
Chinese COVID Testing Firms Report Big Profits as Virus Fight Intensifies
Several of China’s largest medical testing companies have posted big increases in profit for the first three quarters of the year, as the country’s strict zero-COVID policy boosts spending in a minority of sectors while depressing the broader economy.
Over the past two weeks, at least six such companies have reported a soaring jump in earnings. Shanghai Labway (301060.SZ) reported a 241% year-on-year increase in net profit between January and September to 604 million yuan ($82.70 million) while Guangdong Hybribio (300639.SZ) recorded a 130% increase over that same period to 1.49 billion yuan, according to stock exchange statements.
TikTok Makes Clear European Data Can Be Accessed by China-Based Employees
TikTok updated its privacy policies for European users on Tuesday, adding explicit disclosures that personal data from the app may be viewed by employees in China.
The update aligns with what TikTok executives have said publicly. But the addition reflects the intense scrutiny TikTok has faced over its international data flows.
The announcement, which TikTok said was aimed at providing greater transparency, applies to users in the European Economic Area, the U.K. and Switzerland — not the United States, though TikTok said it does store European users’ data in the U.S. and in Singapore.
U.S. policymakers have grown increasingly vocal about concerns the Chinese government could pressure TikTok or its parent company, ByteDance, to hand over users’ personal data under the country’s national security laws.
Meta Is the S&P 500’s Worst Performer of 2022 as Losses Near 75%
Shares of Facebook parent Meta overtook the dubious honor as the biggest loser on the S&P 500 this week as the Silicon Valley giant bleeds money to fund its CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision and underscores big tech’s 2022 downfall.
Meta stock has faltered all year but crashed 25% last Thursday after reporting concerning quarterly earnings and is down a further 11% this week to a seven-year low of below $90. The social media titan is down 73.7% year-to-date and nearly 80% from its 2021 high of $384.
Musk Agrees to Restore Twitter Content-Moderation Tools This Week
Twitter Inc.’s new owner Elon Musk promised civil rights leaders he will restore content moderation tools that had been blocked for some staff by the end of the week, according to three leaders who met with Musk on Monday.
Musk made the commitment during a Zoom meeting with the heads of some of the country’s leading racial justice organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.
The civil rights groups had raised concerns about Musk’s plans to relax speech protections on the platform and restore the accounts of users who had been removed. Last week, Twitter dramatically limited the number of people with access to the dashboard of tools that allow Twitter’s Trust and Safety team uses to enforce policy actions, Bloomberg reported.
TikTok Glorifies Weight Loss Among Teens, Young Adults: Study
Health and dieting trends on TikTok glorify weight loss and may contribute to disordered eating behaviors and body dissatisfaction, particularly in adolescent and young users, according to a University of Vermont study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS One.
Why it matters: It is the first study to assess content related to nutrition and body image at scale on the social app for short video.
What they’re saying: “Each day, millions of teens and young adults are being fed content on TikTok that paints a very unrealistic and inaccurate picture of food, nutrition and health,” Lizzy Pope, the senior researcher of the study and an associate professor at the University of Vermont, said in a statement.
“Getting stuck in weight loss TikTok can be a really tough environment, especially for the main users of the platform, which are young people,” she added.
‘Unleash All This Creativity’: Google AI’s Breathtaking Potential
Google‘s research arm on Wednesday showed off a whiz-bang assortment of artificial intelligence (AI) projects it’s incubating, aimed at everything from mitigating climate change to helping novelists craft prose.
Why it matters: AI has breathtaking potential to improve and enrich our lives — and comes with hugely worrisome risks of misuse, intrusion and malfeasance, if not developed and deployed responsibly.
Driving the news: The dozen-or-so AI projects that Google Research unfurled at a Manhattan media event are in various stages of development, with goals ranging from societal improvement (such as better health diagnoses) to pure creativity and fun (text-to-image generation that can help you build a 3D image of a skirt-clad monster made of marzipan).
The big picture: Fears about AI’s dark side — from privacy violations and the spread of misinformation to losing control of consumer data — recently prompted the White House to issue a preliminary “AI Bill of Rights,” encouraging technologists to build safeguards into their products.
DC Council Votes to Delay Students’ Coronavirus Vaccine Requirement + More
DC Council Votes to Delay Students’ Coronavirus Vaccine Requirement
The DC Council voted Tuesday to delay its coronavirus vaccine mandate for students age 12 and older until next school year, despite reservations from some members.
In the meantime, lawmakers will review the requirement, which was passed in December. Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large) indicated last month she would put forth emergency and temporary legislation to delay the plan, saying much has changed about the way health officials understand the virus since she introduced the legislation last year.
The mandate was set to take effect at the beginning of this school year. But to give more time for schools to prepare and students to get vaccinated, city officials extended the deadline for compliance to Jan. 3. Students who remained unvaccinated by then faced being barred from school. About 14,700 students in the required age group had not been vaccinated for the coronavirus as of Sept. 27.
The science around the coronavirus has also evolved, Henderson said. Recent guidance from DC Health, as well as other health agencies, has raised questions about whether policies surrounding the coronavirus should mirror guidance around the flu — meaning schools should strongly encourage, not require, students to get shots, Henderson said in October.
Officials Across United States Spread Misinformation on COVID Vaccines
Officials across the United States are continuing to spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, The Epoch Times has found. The claims include unsupported or misleading statements about vaccine effectiveness and safety.
The vast majority of officials responsible for the misinformation were unable or unwilling to provide evidence backing their claims.
The Louisiana Department of Health is among those exaggerating vaccine effectiveness. The agency claims in a promotional message that the vaccines “are 100% effective at preventing serious hospitalizations and deaths.”
South Dakota’s health department, meanwhile, says that “Nearly everyone in the United States who is getting severely ill, needing hospitalization and dying from COVID-19 is unvaccinated.” That’s not true and hasn’t been for months.
The Feds ‘Disinformation’ Fight Is Censorship, Pure and Simple
So it turns out the Department of Homeland Security gave up on creating its “Disinformation Governance Board” after the huge public outcry in April — but kept on quietly with its self-imposed “Ministry of Truth” mission. Heads must roll.
Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the feds are still cracking down on the unhindered exchange of ideas and information and seeking to strangle free speech in the name of combating “disinformation,” meaning opinions progressives dislike or information that embarrasses them.
How? One ugly method is via a still-operative portal that lets government and law-enforcement workers directly request content takedowns on Facebook and Instagram.
Plus cozy industry-government relationships such as regular meetings with the top brass of tech firms like Twitter’s just-axed chief censor Vijaya Gadde. (This gives the lie to Twitter’s claim that “We do not coordinate with other entities when making content moderation decisions.” Elon, you’ve got a lot of cleanup to do.)
You Really Don’t Want the Government to Be Your Content Moderator
“All governments lie,” the leftist journalist I.F. Stone once said. Stone wasn’t trying to be provocative, merely pointing out that there’s a pretty basic reason we have a free press in the United States: typically, the government is not a reliable narrator. Governments aren’t inherent liars; they just don’t always have a good reason to tell the public the truth. Sometimes they feel the need to deceive and cover-up.
That’s what makes a new report from The Intercept, “Truth Cops,” so distressing. The outlet reveals a concerted effort on the part of the federal government to increasingly collaborate with private tech platforms and other major corporations to police the kinds of content and information that Americans consume.
In particular, the Department of Homeland Security has increasingly pivoted from its “War on Terror” mission to an internally focused agenda that sees online speech as a target to be monitored, assessed and, in some cases, combatted and quashed.
Working together with other elements of the U.S. intelligence community, DHS has spawned a variety of programs involving “burgeoning social media monitoring authorities” on a constant mission to “expand the scope of the agency’s tools to foil disinformation,” according to The Intercept.
Iowa Must Permit School Districts to Require Masks in Some Cases, Federal Court Rules
Iowa school districts must consider medically sensitive students’ requests to require mask-wearing of those around them, notwithstanding a state law that banned school mask mandates, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The decision by Judge Robert Pratt comes in a suit filed by several families challenging Iowa’s pandemic-era law, which Gov. Kim Reynolds signed in May 2021, banning school districts and local governments from mandating mask-wearing.
The plaintiffs are parents of children with chronic health conditions or disabilities rendering them particularly at risk for complications from the coronavirus. They sued, arguing that the state was violating federal disability rights law by denying reasonable accommodations for their children.
The decision, released when COVID-19 cases have been far fewer than they had been for years, rekindles the bitter battles over mask requirements, which colored recent years. The debates over mask requirements led to contentious school board meetings, slid into local elections and resulted in the state law banning mask mandates.
Father Blames China’s COVID Policy for Son’s Death That Sparked Online Anger
The father of a 3-year-old boy who died on Tuesday from carbon monoxide poisoning in northwest China said strict COVID-19 policies “indirectly killed” his son by causing delays in obtaining treatment, in a case that has sparked social media outrage.
The boy’s death is the latest incident to trigger blowback over China’s strict zero-COVID policy, with one critical hashtag racking up 380 million reads on Wednesday on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.
At around midday on Tuesday, after Tuo Shilei’s wife slipped and fell after being affected by gas fumes while cooking, Tuo noticed that his son, Wenxuan, was also unwell. Tuo said he tried desperately to call for an ambulance or police, but could not get through.
After about 30 minutes Wenxuan’s condition worsened, and Tuo said he performed CPR, which helped briefly. He rushed with his son to the entrance of their community compound, under strict lockdown, but the staff at the gate would not let him past, telling him to call neighborhood authorities or an ambulance.
China Imposes Fresh Lockdown Around Major Apple iPhone Plant
China ordered an industrial park that houses an iPhone factory belonging to Foxconn (2317.TW) to enter a seven-day lockdown on Wednesday, in a move set to intensify pressure on the Apple supplier as it scrambles to quell worker discontent at the base.
The Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone in central China said it would impose “silent management” measures with immediate effect, including barring all residents from going out and only allowing approved vehicles on roads within that area.
The curbs will last until Nov. 9, it said. The lockdown marks a re-tightening of measures in Zhengzhou, which unexpectedly lifted a quasi-lockdown on its nearly 13 million residents the day before. The city reported 358 locally transmitted cases for Tuesday, up from 95 the day before.
FCC Commissioner Says Government Should Ban TikTok
The Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) should take action to ban TikTok, Brendan Carr, one of five commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, told Axios in an interview.
Why it matters: It’s the strongest language Carr has used to date to urge action on TikTok. With more than 200 million downloads in the U.S. alone, the popular app is becoming a form of critical information infrastructure — making the app’s ownership by a Chinese parent company a target of growing national security concern.
Washington’s Inaction on TikTok Is Beijing’s Gain
Recent reporting exposing the nefarious nature of TikTok’s data harvesting operation — which is almost certainly funneling Americans’ personal data right back to Beijing — has missed the point on what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is really up to. They’re creating a predictive model for how to defeat the West … and we’re helping them do it.
In the last few months, we have learned that at least 300 employees at TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, previously worked for Chinese-controlled media — and some still do. Leaked audio from internal meetings showed that U.S. user data had been repeatedly accessed from CCP-controlled mainland China. And scarier still, a Chinese-based team planned to use TikTok to monitor the personal locations of certain American citizens.
TikTok is designed to allow users to consume and share culturally relevant videos and memes from their phones. The difference between TikTok and other popular apps like Instagram and Facebook, however, is that TikTok is owned by a Chinese internet conglomerate called ByteDance, a company with a cozy relationship with the Chinese state government.
It’s no secret that any business operating in China, Chinese-owned or otherwise, is required to acquiesce to Chinese surveillance and technology stealing, which makes the trove of data that TikTok is collecting a ripe, low-hanging target for the Chinese government.
CZ, the CEO of Binance, Has Bet Big on Musk’s Twitter Buyout With a $500 Million Investment, Saying He Is ‘Extremely Supportive’ of the Freedom of Speech
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of Binance, said the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume has invested $500 million in Elon Musk‘s acquisition of Twitter, which was worth $44 billion. His investment was driven by a love of free speech.
“Number one, we want to be extremely supportive of free speech. As a business, we are helping to increase the freedom of money, and free speech comes before freedom of money, so we need to help maintain free speech,” Zhao said. He made the comments at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon on Tuesday.
Zhao also cited other “very strong reasons” why he invested in the social media platform — such as Twitter being the “global town square” where people from crypto enthusiasts to politicians can voice their opinions.
Banned Twitter Accounts Will Not Be Reinstated Until After U.S. Midterms
Banned Twitter accounts including Donald Trump’s will not be reinstated until after the U.S. midterm elections at least, the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, has said.
Musk said anyone barred from the social media platform for violating content rules would not be allowed back on until a process for doing so has been put in place, which would “take at least a few more weeks.”
Twitter’s new owner added that the recently announced Twitter content moderation council, which will adjudicate on reinstatements and content decisions, will include members of the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.
Musk Neuters Twitter ‘Ministry of Truth’ Ahead of Midterms + More
Musk Neuters Twitter ‘Ministry of Truth’ Ahead of Midterms
Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation may recall the episode where extra-dimensional dickhead “Q” is stripped of his powers for spreading chaos throughout the universe.
Well, Elon Musk just did that to Twitter‘s content moderation thought police with just weeks to go before midterms — cutting the number of employees who can access censorship tools from hundreds to around 15 people last week, and reducing their ability to influence discussion on the platform.
According to Bloomberg, Musk and his “war cabinet” have frozen some employee access to internal tools used for content moderation and the enforcement of other policies, neutering staff’s abilities to “alter or penalize accounts that break rules around misleading information, offensive posts and hate speech.”
They also won’t be able to banish highly credentialed doctors and researchers posting divergent COVID-19 narratives.
Feds Keep Facebook Censorship Portal Despite DHS Disinformation Board Demise
Government and law enforcement officials are able to request censorship of Facebook and Instagram posts using a special portal — despite the Biden administration’s failed attempt to establish a Disinformation Governance Board, according to a new report.
The previously unknown portal allows officials with .gov or law enforcement email addresses to request censorship in the name of fighting “disinformation,” The Intercept reported. Facebook reportedly created the portal for the Department of Homeland Security and other entities to squelch content.
The link remains live despite the public furor over the proposed board to police domestic political speech, which was scrapped earlier this year due to backlash and questions about its legality.
The social media giant did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment on the portal.
Not a Chance: Atlantic Writer Begs for ‘Pandemic Amnesty,’ Forgiveness for COVID Tyranny
Are you ready to forgive and forget the COVID nuts who wanted to lock down the whole country, mentally stunted an entire generation of students, practically killed small businesses and accused you of premeditated murder because you wouldn’t do things like wear a mask while raking leaves by yourself? Probably not, but a writer for The Atlantic is requesting that the entire nation just move on from that insanity anyway.
Emily Oster, a professor at Brown University, published a story titled “Let’s Declare A Pandemic Amnesty.” Oster wrote: “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.”
Of course, as one Twitter user pointed out, the only reason Americans were kept in the “dark” was that the medical establishment, legacy media and the Left worked hand-in-hand to demonize anybody who offered different viewpoints about COVID, its origins or appropriate policies to handle the pandemic.
Those who lost their minds over COVID had no interest in seeing the light. Instead, their desire for power and a providential solution to the virus handed down from government bureaucrats blotted out any rational thinking.
Supreme Court Allows TSA to Issue Mask Mandates
On Monday the Supreme Court left in place a ruling that allows the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to issue mask mandates on planes, trains and other forms of transport, as it had for more than a year during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Supreme Court denied a California attorney’s request to overturn a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in the DC Circuit from December, which found no merit in his claim and affirmed that the TSA does have the authority to maintain security and safety within the transportation system, including imposing the masking requirement.
The TSA stopped enforcing the mask mandate in April, hours after a federal judge struck down the federal mask mandate for public transportation, which had been due to expire weeks later.
Global Elites: ‘No Money, No Problems’
Today’s totalitarians don’t want you to have anything. They are globalist elites, and they’re frank about their aims. Back in 2016, perhaps their most prized club, the World Economic Forum (WEF), largely known for its flashy annual meeting in the Alpine resort town of Davos, offered eight predictions for the world in 2030. The number one prediction, at the time, was literally: “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.”
The rapper Notorious B.I.G. famously observed, “Mo money, mo problems.” Global elites, however, desire that you subscribe to an utterly different dictum: “No money, no problems.” Indeed, this isn’t merely their “prediction” — it’s their explicit plan. And don’t be fooled. They won’t be satiated by seizing all your material property. They want to own you.
To do this, they will infiltrate, corrupt and control every component of our humanity. This is the near-term future global elites seek, and one they’re within striking distance of achieving given their extraordinary influence over the major institutions of high society. They were just awaiting the right moment to pounce.
Enter the COVID-19 pandemic. Since, according to the Left, no good crisis should go to waste, the WEF openly asserted in 2020 that “the COVID-19 crisis” was an inimitable moment that needed to be exploited to “improve the state of the world.”
COVID Rules in NYC Change: What to Know as Vaccine Mandate Ends
New York City’s strictest-in-the-nation COVID vaccine mandate covering the private sector is officially over as of Tuesday, following last week’s health board vote to drop the nearly year-old program amid ongoing pandemic progress.
The decision to end the order implemented by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in the waning days of his administration was unanimous, as was health leaders’ vote to rescind COVID mandates for high-risk extracurricular activities.
Private employers now have the option to keep the mandate, though it is no longer required by city health ordinance. The COVID mandate for the city’s hundreds of thousands of public workers, though, remains in effect.
Shanghai Disney Shuts Over COVID, Visitors Unable to Leave
Shanghai’s Disney Resort abruptly suspended operations on Monday to comply with COVID-19 prevention measures, with all visitors at the time of the announcement directed to stay in the park until they return a negative test for the virus.
The Shanghai government said on its official WeChat account the park was barring people from entering or exiting and that all visitors inside the site would need to await the results of their tests before they could leave.
Anyone who had visited the park since Oct. 27 would need to test for COVID-19 three times in three days, it said.
Italy Delays EU-Required Justice Reform, Scraps Vaccine Mandate for Medics
Italy’s new government on Monday delayed the application of a justice reform required to obtain European post-pandemic funds and scrapped a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health workers. Both moves mark discontinuity from the previous administration of Mario Draghi, who imposed tough COVID curbs and pushed through the contested justice reform aimed at speeding up Italy’s slow judicial proceedings.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s cabinet ruled that doctors and nurses would no longer have to be vaccinated against the disease and said those suspended from work until Dec. 31 because they had refused the shot would be immediately reinstated.
“The previous governments took a host of measures that had no scientific evidence,” said Meloni, who was sworn in this month at the head of a right-wing coalition.
Success of Meta’s Metaverse Plan Could Mean a Whole New Set of Privacy Concerns
Lately, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been offering a rosy picture of the future success of his company’s big bet on transforming human communication through immersive virtual worlds known as the metaverse.
In response to dismal financial results last quarter, Zuckerberg told investors that the company’s new $1,500 virtual reality-powered headset, Quest Pro, would help employees get their work done better than they ever could through ordinary computers.
What Zuckerberg didn’t say was that policy watchers and industry representatives are already grappling with thorny ethical and regulatory issues that would arise if services such as Quest Pro do take off in popularity.
Among the trickiest questions facing Meta and other companies is what they do with the intimate information they collect about users and their interactions in these immersive virtual spaces. The Quest Pro improved upon earlier iterations of VR headsets by tracking the wearer’s eyeballs and facial muscles to help them express emotion through a virtual avatar.
We Need Parents and Policy to Save Our Kids From Big Tech + More
We Need Parents and Policy to Save Our Kids from Big Tech
It is now firmly established that social media are ruining the minds and bodies of America’s children. Facebook‘s own internal studies find that among teens, especially teen girls, the company’s products lead to “increases in the rate of anxiety and depression.” Social media are designed to be addictive. Heavy use leads to sleep disorders, body dysmorphia and suicidal thoughts.
This should be enough reason for a sane society to stop, think and change course. They are kids, after all, who deserve peace of mind and time with their loved ones undisturbed by digital encroachments. But we live in a technological age, in which the imperatives of Silicon Valley are given precedence over everything, including the well-being of children. So instead of sending our kids a life raft, we are packing their bags for the Metaverse, where their minds will be beyond reach.
What can parents do to help their kids? That’s what the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), where I am executive director, and the Wheatley Institute asked with Teens and Tech: What Difference Does Family Structure Make, based on an original survey, fielded by Ipsos, of 1,600 U.S. teens ages 11 to 18.
The report’s findings glimpse the limits of what even the most proactive parents can do. Of high school-age teens in the sample whose parents forbid them to use tech, 76% still use it in secret. Strong families are a buffer against the worst harms of Big Tech, but they are surrounded. Big Tech invests untold sums of money, employing world-class psychologists and behaviorists, to capture the will of our children. The dopamine hits it routinely delivers, the sheer ubiquity of it and the way it has become the center of kids’ social lives, mean even the most heroic parents will need help.
How a Missed Period Reported by the Gym Teacher Could Spell Trouble for Girls
As a physician, a public health professional and a parent of a teenage girl, I’ve been following news about a Florida school district’s decision to digitize kids’ school athletic records with interest — and with concern. What should be a simple decision about medical best practice has been turned into a Gordian knot of not just health, but also policy, politics, technology and bodily autonomy.
For kids of all genders to safely participate in competitive sports, a consortium of medical organizations has agreed on a standardized pre-sports physical screening and exam. The exact rules and regulations differ between states, but the overarching goal of a pre-sports physical is to allow physicians (or other appropriate clinicians) to identify and then mitigate potential harms from youth sports participation.
There is a big difference between a physician or other trained healthcare professional asking these questions in private, as part of a clinical assessment, and the physician sharing all the details with third parties.
That some states may share the full physical and screening exam — including information about youth athletes’ menstrual cycles — with school districts, state officials and third-party digital record-keeping companies is, to me, deeply worrisome. The strictures of the post-Dobbs world, the reality of today’s tech world and the suggestive examples of other instances where these intersections have left women and girls vulnerable could put parents and doctors in an untenable position.
Biden Administration Looking to Block Some Depositions, but Not Fauci’s
President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking to block the deposition of several key officials, but Dr. Anthony Fauci is not one of them. A judge recently ordered Fauci, Biden’s top medical adviser, and other high-level officials to testify in a case alleging collusion between Big Tech companies and the government to censor users.
In a motion for a partial stay on Oct. 27, U.S. lawyers said that plaintiffs should not be able to depose Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee; Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, a Biden appointee; and Rob Flaherty, a deputy assistant to the president.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty authorized eight depositions in his Oct. 21 order, including depositions of Fauci, Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary; FBI special agent Elvis Chan, Murthy, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official Carol Crawford and State Department official Daniel Kimmage.
He also ordered the depositions of Flaherty or former White House COVID-19 adviser Andrew Slavitt and of Easterly or Lauren Protentis, another official in the cybersecurity agency.
Lockdown Babies May Be Slower to Communicate but Faster to Crawl, Study Says
Early in the pandemic, when much of the world was in lockdown, many parents and other caregivers expressed fears about how a historic period of prolonged isolation could affect their children.
Now, a study out of Ireland has shed some light on this question. Its results suggest that babies born during Ireland’s first COVID-19 lockdown were likely to be slower to develop some social communication skills than their pre-pandemic peers. They were less likely to be able to wave goodbye, point at things and know one “definite and meaningful word” by the time they turn 1. On the other hand, they were more likely to be able to crawl.
Experts say children’s early years of life are their most formative — their brains soak up every interaction and experience, positive and negative, to build the neural connections that will serve them for the rest of their lives.
For the cohort of “lockdown babies,” the “first year of life was very different to the pre-pandemic babies,” Susan Byrne, a pediatric neurologist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and lead author of the study, told The Washington Post.
While the pandemic is not over, and experts say it could be years before they have a fuller picture of its effects on children, parents around the world have already begun to report noticing differences in their lockdown babies.
The Last of the COVID Vaccine Mandates
Once touted by federal and state officials as essential to ending the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine mandates are fading away.
Backing off: New York City health officials voted last week to end the first-in-the-nation private-sector mandate former Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered 10 months ago, as well as the city’s requirement that students in “high-risk” extracurricular activities, such as sports, band, chorus, orchestra and dance, be vaccinated.
New York state Judge Ralph J. Porzio also ruled last week that the city must rehire a group of sanitation workers it fired in February for refusing the shots and give them back pay. “There is nothing in the record to support the rationality of keeping a vaccination mandate for public employees, while vacating the mandate for private-sector employees or creating a carveout for certain professions, like athletes, artists and performers,” Porzio explained.
Changed tune: The Biden administration once pushed vaccination hard, attempting unsuccessfully to require private-sector workers to get the jab or be tested regularly for the disease. But the administration isn’t encouraging schools to align their vaccine requirements with new CDC guidance recommending the shots be treated as routine.
Mass. State Workers Rehired After COVID Vaccine Mandate Firings Not Being Offered Back Pay
The nearly 50 former Massachusetts state workers who lost their jobs last year to Gov. Charlie Baker’s COVID-19 mandate should not expect guaranteed back pay if they accept the commonwealth’s recent offers of reinstated employment.
The limited pool of former Executive Department employees — out of about 1,000 individuals who were fired or voluntarily resigned over Baker’s requirement — face an Oct. 31 deadline to decide whether they want to reclaim their old positions, according to letters obtained by MassLive this week. That includes a janitor and driver’s license examiner previously employed by MassDOT, but the Baker administration confirmed several other state agencies are seeking to recruit former workers, too.
New information obtained by MassLive indicates that unvaccinated employees will be welcomed back with few perks. But, the commonwealth is now more willing to handle certain religious and medical exemption requests that previously led to a wave of departures, Baker told reporters Tuesday.
The state government, at least for now, does not intend to offer compensation to workers spanning the time of their departures to their reinstated employment, MassLive has learned.
Tim Robbins: Society Just Wants ‘Art to Die’ Amid COVID Vaccine Requirements
The vast majority of the entertainment industry was quick to embrace COVID-19 safety protocols, seeing masks and vaccine mandates as a way back to work during a pandemic that would have otherwise shut productions down. But not everyone sees those rules as universally positive.
In a new Substack interview with Matt Taibbi, Tim Robbins expressed his concerns that too much pandemic-related caution could ultimately make the arts less accessible. The “Shawshank Redemption” star explained that the Actors Gang Theatre, a Los Angeles theatre company where he serves as artistic director, made the decision to postpone its reopening in 2021 because he did not want to enforce a vaccine mandate for audience members.
“I had a problem with this idea of having a litmus test at the door for entry,” Robinson said of the vaccine mandates in California. “I understood the health concerns, but I also understand that theater is a forum and it has to be open to everybody. If you start specifying reasons why people can’t be in a theater, I don’t think it’s a theater anymore. Not in the tradition of what it has always been historically, which is a forum where stories are told and disparate elements come together and figure it out.”
Ultimately, Robbins is concerned that preventative public health measures taken during the pandemic went too far and could ultimately be a dangerous trend for the arts. “I almost feel like there are forces within our society that just want art to die,” he said.
Fordham University’s Upcoming Vaccine Mandate Has Some Staffers Pursuing Legal Action Against Requirement
Fordham University is set to enforce this coming week one of the strictest vaccine mandates in the country for all staff, students and visitors. The mandate has some up in arms and now they’re pursuing legal action.
“We live in a free society and in a free society you have a choice about what you put into your body,” says Nicholas Tampio, professor of political science at Fordham University. Tampio is just one of the hundreds who are against the school’s latest vaccine mandate.
The new mandate says all students, staff and visitors must have a full round of COVID-19 shots, including the new bivalent booster by this Tuesday, Nov. 1. If they do not comply, they will lose access to campus. Just two weeks ago, dozens of people protested the decision and now they’ve taken legal action.
The Mermigis Law Group sent a letter to University President Tania Tetlow on behalf of 1,600 people. They’re calling on the school to change the policy, saying Fordham University is just one of 20 schools across the country with a mandate like this one.
On Saturday morning, Fordham University told News 12 that the requirement will stay.
Workers Are Fleeing From Foxconn, China’s Biggest iPhone Factory, by Climbing Over Fences and Walking Down Highways on Foot Amid COVID Fears, Photos and Videos Show
Workers at the world’s largest iPhone factory in China are fleeing the facility in droves, amid fears of severe COVID-19 restrictions following an outbreak, according to reports.
The facility, located in Zhengzhou city in the central Chinese province of Henan, employs over 200,000 workers. They make the majority of the world’s iPhones. The facilities were hit by a COVID-19 outbreak, which triggered strict pandemic containment curbs under China’s COVID-zero policy and worsened living conditions, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing five workers.
A risk of food shortages became a source of unrest, as only those working on production lines were provided with meal boxes, Bloomberg said on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Workers infected with COVID-19, or those who feared leaving their dormitories, were just provided with basic supplies such as bread and instant noodles, the media outlet reported.
Dramatic photos and videos of Foxconn workers escaping the Zhengzhou compound have made their way online. One video appears to show the workers carrying bags of their belongings while making their way out on foot.
What TikTok Does to Your Mental Health: ‘It’s Embarrassing We Know so Little’
In the few years since its launch, TikTok has already altered the face of the social media landscape, attracting more than 1 billion users and leading competitors to replicate some of its most unique features.
The impact of that explosive growth and the ‘TikTok-ification’ of the internet at large on social media users remains little understood, experts warn, exacerbating concerns about the impact of social media on our habits and mental health.
“It’s embarrassing that we know so little about TikTok and its effects,” said Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. “Research often lags behind industry, and this is an example of an instance where that could become a big problem.”
The lack of understanding of how TikTok affects its users is particularly concerning given the app’s massive popularity among young people, experts say. Increasingly called “the TikTok generation,” Gen Z prefers the platform to other social media, with nearly six in 10 teenagers counting themselves as daily users. The majority of U.S. teens have accounts on TikTok, with 67% saying they have ever used the app and 16% saying they use it “almost constantly.”
Facebook Probably Has Your Phone Number, Even if You Never Shared It. Now It Has a Secret Tool to Let You Delete It.
Facebook‘s parent firm Meta has quietly rolled out a new service that lets people check whether the firm holds their contact information, such as their phone number or email address, and delete and block it.
The tool has been available since May 2022, Insider understands, although Meta does not seem to have said anything publicly about it.
A tipster pointed us to the tool, which is well-hidden and apparently only available via a link that is embedded 780 words into a fairly obscure page in Facebook’s help section for non-users. The linked text gives no indication that it’s sending you to a privacy tool, and simply reads: “Click here if you have a question about the rights you may have.”
For many years, the firm asked users signing up for any of its apps to share their phone contacts, with the stated goal of helping them find friends. A side effect is that Meta, whose combined apps boast almost 3 billion daily users, has amassed an unknown but likely vast amount of personal contact information for people who have never signed up for an account, nor opted to share their information.