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Snapchat’s Disappearing Message Function Helped Teenagers Obtain Fentanyl With Deadly Consequences, Lawsuit Argues + More
Snapchat’s Disappearing Message Function Helped Teenagers Obtain Fentanyl With Deadly Consequences, Lawsuit Argues
Snapchat’s disappearing message feature helped enable the sale of fentanyl to teenagers who went on to die of overdoses, a lawsuit claimed.
According to a filing in a Los Angeles court seen by Insider, parents of teens who died from Fentanyl overdoses are pursuing Snap for strict product liability over what they claim is a design defect in the social media app Snapchat.
The lawsuit stated that Snapchat is marketed to minors and that the erasing messages function encourages drug dealers to use the social media app.
One of the parents’ lawyers, Laura Marquez-Garrett of the Social Media Victims Law Center, previously led a lawsuit against Meta alleging Instagram caused eating disorders among children.
Judge Rules Fauci Be Deposed in Lawsuit Alleging White House Worked With Big Tech to Censor Speech
A federal judge has ordered Dr. Anthony Fauci and other Biden officials to be deposed as part of a lawsuit against the Biden administration, alleging that the government colluded with social media companies to censor free speech related to the coronavirus and other controversial topics.
According to a court order from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty concluded that Fauci’s high-profile public comments have made him a key figure in the lawsuit from the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri who allege that “collusion” between the Biden administration and social media companies to censor coronavirus-related speech that could be damaging to the White House.
In addition to Fauci, several other current or former White House officials will be required to testify, including former White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
Test Scores Show Historic COVID Setbacks for Kids Across U.S.
The COVID-19 pandemic spared no state or region as it caused historic learning setbacks for America’s children, erasing decades of academic progress and widening racial disparities, according to results of a national test that provide the sharpest look yet at the scale of the crisis.
Across the country, math scores saw their largest decreases ever. Reading scores dropped to 1992 levels. Nearly four in 10 eighth graders failed to grasp basic math concepts. Not a single state saw a notable improvement in their average test scores, with some simply treading water at best.
Those are the findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress — known as the “nation’s report card” — which tested hundreds of thousands of fourth and eighth graders across the country this year. It was the first time the test had been given since 2019, and it’s seen as the first nationally representative study of the pandemic’s impact on learning.
It’s no surprise that children are behind. The pandemic upended every facet of life and left millions learning from home for months or more. The results released Monday reveal the depth of those setbacks and the size of the challenge facing schools as they help students catch up.
Inslee’s $1K COVID Booster Bonus Largely Unpopular, New WA Poll Shows
Gov. Jay Inslee’s plan to offer $1,000 to state workers who get their Omicron-specific COVID-19 booster was met with widespread skepticism among Washingtonians, with 57% unsupportive of a financial incentive in general, a new statewide poll shows.
Results from the WA Poll, conducted among 875 Washington adults earlier this month, showed widespread uncertainty about the plan, which was announced in early September. Over 1 in 5 people instead supported a booster mandate.
Overall, about 27% of respondents approved of the booster incentive, while about 22% thought the state should require the booster without an incentive and 35% disapproved of a bonus and requirement.
Your COVID Vaccine Records Might Eventually Be Destroyed Because of Texas Law
Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported:
The COVID-19 vaccination records of at least 9.6 million Texans will be destroyed five years after the statewide public health disaster ends unless state officials manage to contact all vaccine recipients and ask whether they want the records preserved.
The unusual situation is a result of state law. In most states, when a patient receives a vaccine, that information is shared with the state’s vaccine registry unless a patient opts out. But in Texas the situation is flipped: Vaccine information is automatically not stored in the state’s vaccine registry, unless the person receiving the vaccine signs paperwork to consent to share that information.
In a public health emergency, like COVID-19, that requirement is waived: All vaccines and treatments given during an emergency must be reported to the Texas government, regardless of whether the patient has signed a consent agreement. But five years after the disaster is declared over, all of that information must be destroyed, unless the patients agree to preserve it, according to Texas statute.
Youngkin, Gilbert Oppose Adding COVID Vaccines to State List
Virginia Republican elected leaders said this week they will oppose any legislative effort to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the state’s list of required immunizations.
The announcement from GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin and House Speaker Todd Gilbert came after the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of U.S. vaccine experts, said that COVID-19 shots should be added to lists of recommended vaccinations for kids and adults.
Virginia, for example, does not require the annual flu vaccine to attend school — even though it appears on the CDC’s schedule.
“Under state law, the only way to create a mandate would either be through rule-making by the Board of Health, which would not happen until 2024 or through an action of the General Assembly, which will not happen while I am Speaker,” Gilbert said in a statement Friday.
Spain Drops All Remaining COVID Travel Restrictions, Including for U.K. Citizens
Spain has lifted all its remaining COVID restrictions. It was the only European country that still had restrictions in place for non-EU travelers.
From October 21, 2022, both EU and non-EU citizens no longer had to show proof of vaccination, recovery or a negative COVID test. Tourists are also no longer required to complete a health control form prior to travel.
Last month, the popular destination dropped all entry rules for anyone arriving from the EU or Schengen area. But U.K., U.S. and other tourists were still subject to restrictions. It was thought these would last until at least mid-November, but they have been lifted earlier than expected.
How Google’s Former CEO Eric Schmidt Helped Write AI Laws in Washington Without Publicly Disclosing Investments in AI Startups
About four years ago, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was appointed to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
It was a powerful perch. Congress tasked the new group with a broad mandate: to advise the U.S. government on how to advance the development of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and other technologies to enhance the national security of the United States.
Five months after his appointment, Schmidt made a little-noticed private investment in an initial seed round of financing for a start-up company called Beacon, which uses AI in the company’s supply chain products for shippers who manage freight logistics, according to CNBC’s review of investment data in database Crunchbase.
Schmidt’s investment was just the first of a handful of direct investments he would make in AI start-up companies during his tenure as chairman of the AI commission. “It’s absolutely a conflict of interest,” said Walter Shaub, a senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight, and the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
How Tiktok’s Algorithm Made It a Success: ‘It Pushes the Boundaries’
It is, quite literally, the trillion-dollar question: how did TikTok go from a niche social network for lip-syncing teens to the most popular app in the western world, threatening to knock Facebook off its perch entirely, in just a few short years?
The most powerful tool TikTok has to grab users and keep them hooked is the company’s feted “For You Page”, the FYP, and the algorithm that populates it.
The FYP is the default screen new users see when opening the app. Even if you don’t follow a single other account, you’ll find it immediately populated with a never-ending stream of short clips culled from what’s popular across the service. That decision already gave the company a leg-up compared to the competition: a Facebook or Twitter account with no friends or followers is a lonely, barren place, but TikTok is engaging from day one.
It’s what happens next that is the company’s secret sauce, though. As you scroll through the FYP, the makeup of videos you’re presented with slowly begins to change, until, the app’s regular users say, it becomes almost uncannily good at predicting what videos from around the site are going to pique your interest.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Says There Will Be No Children’s COVID Vaccine Mandate + More
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Says There Will Be No Children’s COVID Vaccine Mandate
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis drew a line in the sand Thursday, telling reporters he is against mandatory COVID-19 vaccine shots for children.
On Wednesday, a panel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted to add the vaccine to the recommended Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program. It would not make the shots mandatory.
“As long as I’m kicking and screaming, there will be no COVID shot mandates for your kids,” DeSantis said during a speech to announce an executive order to provide property tax relief for residents impacted by Hurricane Ian. “That is your decision to make as a parent.”
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo tweeted about the CDC panel a day before the vote, saying nothing would change in Florida, whatever the result.
If You Live in One of These Cities, There’s Probably a Security Camera Pointed at Your Face Right Now
Despite claiming the title of the world’s bastion of freedom, the U.S. doesn’t always feel so free. It’s no secret that government and corporate surveillance in this country have gotten a little out of hand in recent years — and, according to some studies, Americans consistently rank as some of the world’s most surveilled people.
One study published last year showed that America actually ranks #2 in surveillance globally — and another from several years back found that several U.S. cities ranked as some of the most spied upon in the world. Thankfully, China is still beating us overall — for the time being. But that’s not really saying much since China is an authoritarian technocracy with little regard for the civil liberties that Americans are ostensibly owed.
It doesn’t make Comparitech’s list, but the Big Apple is clearly another one of the most surveilled American cities, because duh. Before a few weeks ago, New York was already held together by an army of cops, a broad network of municipal security cameras (at least 15,000, according to reports) and a weirdly unaccountable private surveillance fund.
Now, in an effort to curb spiking crime rates, the city has decided to turn its subway system into a giant surveillance apparatus: in September, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration announced it would be installing security cameras in every single train car in the city. She said of the cameras, “You think Big Brother is watching you on the subway? You’re absolutely right. That is our intent.”
TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned to Use TikTok to Monitor the Physical Location of Specific American Citizens
A China-based team at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens, according to materials reviewed by Forbes.
The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company, the materials show.
It is unclear from the materials whether data about these Americans were actually collected; however, the plan was for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data from U.S. users’ devices.
The material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance’s Internal Audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any other purposes. Forbes is not disclosing the nature and purpose of the planned surveillance referenced in the materials in order to protect sources. TikTok and ByteDance did not answer questions about whether Internal Audit has specifically targeted any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists.
Health System Discloses Breach Tied to Online Data Tracker
Personal health information of up to 3 million patients in Illinois and Wisconsin may have been exposed to outside companies through tracking technology used on a large hospital system’s electronic health records website.
Advocate Aurora Health, which operates 27 hospitals, said in a statement that the breach may have exposed information including patients’ medical providers, the type of appointments or medical procedures, dates and locations of scheduled appointments and IP addresses. The system said its investigation found no social security number, financial information or credit and debit card numbers were involved.
The system blamed the breach on its use of pixels — computer code that collects information on how a user interacts with a website — including products developed by Google and Facebook’s parent company Meta that make the collected data accessible to those companies.
The healthcare industry’s use of pixels has come under wide criticism from privacy advocates who warn that the technology’s use violates federal patient privacy law.
Washington State University Dropping COVID Vaccine Requirement for Most Employees
Washington State University announced it will soon eliminate a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for most employees, contractors, and volunteers. WSU said the change was “due in part to the success of previous COVID-19 vaccination efforts.”
Despite the announcement for staff, COVID-19 vaccines will still be required for students.
Washington State University made news in October 2021 when the school fired head football coach Nick Rolovich. Rolovich applied for a religious exemption to the state mandate that all state employees must get vaccinated for COVID-19.
The exemption request was denied and WSU said that they could not make appropriate accommodations for Rolovich if he was unvaccinated. Rolovich has since filed a tort suit against the state, seeking $25 million in damages for wrongful termination.
Governor Bill Lee Says Tennessee Families Won’t Be Impacted by CDC Vote
Republican Governor of Tennessee Bill Lee weighed in on the COVID vaccine mandate debate on Thursday after an advisory group recommended the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) add the shot to the vaccine schedule.
On Thursday, every member of the panel voted to have the vaccine included in the vaccine schedule, and the CDC now has the final say in whether the shot is added. States and local governments are in charge of making decisions and regulations regarding what vaccines kids need to get in order to attend school.
Governor Lee tweeted about his approach to vaccine mandates, stating, “I’ve always said mandates are the wrong approach, & TN has led in pushing back on federal COVID vaccine requirements.”
U.S. Might Bail Musk out by Blocking Twitter Deal Over National Security
After the richest man in the world, Elon Musk decided he would move forward with his plan to buy Twitter for what experts say is nearly four times its current worth, even Twitter doubted that Musk actually meant to see the deal through. Now, as Musk remains under federal investigation for his merger conduct, The Washington Post reports that if Musk does take over Twitter, he plans to gut Twitter’s staff by 75%.
And Bloomberg reports that the Biden administration is considering launching national security reviews into Musk’s Twitter and Starlink satellite Internet deals. Those reviews could end up blocking the Twitter deal after all, which many commenters think is exactly what Musk wants.
None of this seems good for Twitter. Yesterday in pre-market trading, Twitter shares fell by as much as 16%.
Chinese Censors Remove Reports of Teen’s Death in COVID Quarantine Facility
Hong Kong Free Press reported:
Chinese censors on Friday scrubbed reports that a teenager had died in a quarantine facility after the case sparked anger and prompted citizens to question the country’s zero-COVID policy.
China is the last major country committed to a zero-tolerance COVID strategy, responding to dozens of outbreaks with lockdowns and sending entire neighborhoods out to makeshift quarantine facilities.
But the public has chafed against virus restrictions, sometimes responding to fresh lockdowns with protests, while scuffles have broken out between citizens and officials.
Posts circulated on Chinese social media this week saying a 14-year-old girl had died in the central city of Ruzhou after falling ill in a quarantine facility and being denied prompt medical care.
‘Poster Girl’ Explores the Surveillance State’s Allure
Veronica Roth is the author of the bestselling Divergent novels, which were adapted into a series of popular films. Her new novel Poster Girl tells the story of Sonya Kantor, a young woman raised in an authoritarian society in near-future Seattle.
“I wanted her to be not a typical hero figure, but to be someone who’s complicit in the authoritarian regime that fell, and struggling with how she understands that, and how she’s been manipulated by this system,” Roth says in Episode 528 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
Poster Girl imagines the ultimate surveillance state, where every action is recorded and judged by ubiquitous ocular implants. Roth says it was all too easy for her to imagine how Sonya might enjoy being constantly monitored and rewarded for her good behavior.
Roth says the United States is closer to becoming a surveillance state than we’d like to think, and that researching all the ways in which our devices are tracking us has made her increasingly paranoid.
Conspiracy Theories Spread Quickly on TikTok. Health Officials Need to Be as Fast
Misinformation spreads so quickly that public health officials should be monitoring social media platforms in real-time to debunk bogus claims as fast as possible, a new study suggested.
Over the course of one day, May 20, the study identified 153 English-language videos with monkeypox conspiracy theories on the social platform TikTok. The videos had been posted a median of 30 hours before, and in total, they’d already received 1,485,911 views according to the study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Tuesday.
TikTok has more than 1 billion users monthly, the study says, and public health officials need to identify and disprove deception on social platforms before it spreads.
Texas Sues Google Over Use of Facial Images + More
Texas Sues Google Over Use of Facial Images
The Wall Street Journal reported:
The Texas attorney general sued Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Thursday, alleging the search giant violated state laws by collecting biometric data on face and voice features without seeking the full consent of users.
Texas alleged Google’s data-collection practices stretched back to 2015 and affected millions of the state’s residents, according to a complaint filed in state district court in Midland County, Texas.
“Google’s indiscriminate collection of the personal information of Texans, including very sensitive information like biometric identifiers, will not be tolerated,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said. “I will continue to fight Big Tech to ensure the privacy and security of all Texans.”
The case follows a similar suit Texas brought against Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. in February. Meta, which discontinued its use of facial-recognition technology last year, said the claims were without merit.
‘Voice Biomarker’ Tech Analyzes Your Voice for Signs of Depression
Software that analyzes snippets of your speech to identify mental health problems is rapidly making its way into call centers, medical clinics and telehealth platforms. The idea is to detect illnesses that might otherwise go untreated.
Why it matters: Proponents of “voice biomarker” technology say the underlying artificial intelligence is good enough to recognize depression, anxiety and a host of other maladies.
But its growing ubiquity raises privacy concerns similar to those brought about by facial recognition.
Driving the news: Hospitals and insurance companies are installing voice biomarker software for inbound and outbound calls, so that — with patients’ explicit permission — they can identify in real-time if someone they’re chatting with may be anxious or depressed, and refer them for help.
Lockdowns: The Penal Pandemic Solution
COVID-19 represents the first time in the history of pandemics that we confined healthy populations. While the ancients did not understand the mechanisms of infectious disease — they knew nothing of viruses and bacteria — they nevertheless figured out many ways to mitigate the spread of contagion during epidemics. These time-tested measures ranged from quarantining symptomatic patients to enlisting those with natural immunity, who had recovered from the illness, to care for the sick.
From the lepers in the Old Testament to the plague of Justinian in Ancient Rome to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, lockdowns were never part of conventional public health measures. The concept of lockdowns arose in part from a public health apparatus that had become militarized over the previous two decades. We now routinely hear of “countermeasures”; but doctors and nurses never use that word, which is a term of spy craft and soldiering.
In 1968, while an estimated one to four million people died in the H3N2 influenza pandemic, businesses and schools stayed open and large events were never canceled. Until 2020 we had not previously locked down entire populations, because that strategy does not work. In 2020 we had zero empirical evidence that lockdowns would save lives, only flawed mathematical models whose predictions were not just slightly off, but wildly exaggerated by orders of magnitude.
When Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, leading the president’s coronavirus task force, decided in February 2020 that lockdowns were the way to go, The New York Times was tasked with explaining this approach to Americans.
Disney to Charge Unvaccinated Customers Extra at Tokyo Theme Park
Even though the general narrative around the COVID “threat” has fallen apart and the majority of western nations have mostly abandoned their attempts to institute mandates and restrictions, in many parts of Asia the fear-mongering continues. Disney appears to be taking full advantage of the lingering hype in Japan and is using it to impose its own politically motivated mandates.
Tokyo Disney theme park will now be offering 20% cheaper rates for customers with proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test taken within 3 days of admission. Unvaccinated customers get the old rates.
The move is a remnant of policy initiatives designed by government and corporate partnerships in 2020 — a collusion of big government and big business as a means to encourage or force the public to comply with vaccination demands (or any other demands). The carrot-and-stick approach is outlined in documents published by globalists at the Imperial College of London at the very beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
Nike Lifts COVID Vaccine Requirement
Nike lifted its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for most employees in the U.S. and Canada on Wednesday, citing public health guidance that finds the disease can spread even among vaccinated people.
“At this stage in the pandemic, the CDC and other public health authorities have acknowledged that community spread is possible even when people are fully vaccinated,” Joe Marsico, Nike’s chief security officer, wrote in an email to employees Wednesday.
Nike will continue giving people time off for vaccinations and boosters and offers sick leave to employees with COVID-19. The vaccine requirement remains in place at Nike workplaces in New York City, which has a citywide vaccine mandate in place until Nov. 1.
Coast Guard Cadet Kicked out for Refusing Vaccine Mandate Speaks out
For failing to comply with the military’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, the Coast Guard Academy in August disenrolled seven cadets. Sophia Galdamez, a 22-year-old who had been in the academy for three years, was one of those cadets. She described her experience to The Epoch Times.
After finding out the vaccines used aborted fetal stem cell lines in their testing and development, as well as having concern about the drug’s potential side effects, Galdamez decided against getting vaccinated. This was before the Coast Guard’s adoption of the vaccine mandate in August 2021.
Although the mandate was not in effect over the summer of 2021, Galdamez noted that the “rules at the academy began to change.” Because she was unvaccinated, the cadet was required to always wear a mask, even while participating in physical fitness tests, which included push-ups, sit-ups and a 1.5-mile run.
Because Galdamez sought religious accommodation, she said, she began to be treated differently for opposing the vaccine.
Australia’s COVID Lockdown Rules Found to Have Lacked Fairness and Compassion
Australia’s COVID-19 response failed the nation’s most vulnerable people and in many cases amounted to overreach, according to a new report.
But the Victorian and Queensland premiers pushed back at the report’s findings, which Daniel Andrews dismissed as “academic views.”
The report, Fault lines: an independent review into Australia’s response to COVID-19, led by former public servant Peter Shergold and released on Thursday, found some lockdowns and border closures were not necessary and schools should have remained open.
Under Xi Jinping, Zero-COVID Is Accelerating China’s Surveillance State
As a new, deadly virus overtook the central city of Wuhan and spread throughout China in early 2020, the country’s ruling Communist Party and its leader Xi Jinping were faced with a crisis on a scale not seen in decades.
In Wuhan, there was chaos. The city shut itself off from the outside world, while hospitals were overrun with the sick and dying — but it was too late to stop the virus’ advance. Huge swaths of China, too, locked down, grinding the country to a halt. Online, public outrage over apparent delays in the official release of information — and the silencing of whistleblowers — lit up social media faster than the censors could repress it.
In the months following that initial outbreak, Xi oversaw the assembly of a toolbox of brute-force lockdowns, enforced quarantines and digital tracking. All that was used to bring the virus to heel and largely keep it outside China’s shuttered borders — an approach that initially appeared to earn broad public support as China lived largely virus-free and the pandemic raged overseas.
But, now, as Xi steps into an expected new era of his rule, that system — known today as the “dynamic zero-COVID” policy — is facing both social and economic pushback.
FTC Eyes a Crackdown on Influencers and Advertisers Who Target Kids
The Federal Trade Commission held an event Wednesday focused on the problem of “stealth” advertising in content geared towards children, where it’s difficult to differentiate between marketing and regular content. In the opening hours of the day-long event, the commission provided a glimpse into its thinking on the issue and indicated that new regulatory efforts may be on the horizon.
“When kids interact with digital media, they’re exposed to an array of marketing practices that blur the line between advertising and entertainment. That’s an especially serious issue when we’re talking about young people,” FTC chairperson Lina Khan said at the event.
“Developing brains are more susceptible to deceptive or harmful practices, and the immediate, and long-term effects can be significant.”
Khan said the FTC is exploring an update to the rules for implementing the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The commission is already in the process of updating its rules about commercial surveillance more broadly.
U.K. Watchdog Gives First Report Into How Video-Sharing Sites Are Tackling Online Harms
The U.K.’s media watchdog, Ofcom, has published a debut report on its first year regulating a selection of video-sharing platforms (VSPs) — including TikTok, Snapchat, Twitch, Vimeo and OnlyFans — following the introduction of content-handling rules aimed at protecting minors and others from viewing harmful user-generated video content online.
It’s a taster of a broader (and more controversial) online content regulation that’s been years in the making — aka the Online Safety Bill — which remains in limbo after the new U.K. prime minister, and her freshly appointed minister heading up digital issues, paused the draft legislation last month saying they wanted to tweak the approach in response to freedom of expression concerns.
What I Learned From Diving Headfirst Into the Metaverse
Until a couple of months ago, I would have described myself as a Luddite when it came to the metaverse. But working on the Decoded show for CNN International I had the opportunity to dive headfirst into these virtual worlds and meet some of the key players in this space.
At its most basic definition, the metaverse is the internet gone three-dimensional. The word itself it much older than you might think; it was first created in 1992 by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson, who, with alarming foresight, wrote about a dystopian future where people escaped into a virtual world, accessed with goggles.
As one of the founders of Second Life, Philip Rosesdale’s biggest concern is how future metaverse platforms make money. “It has to be a business model that doesn’t include surveillance, targeting and advertisement,” he says.
It’s a shared concern for many, and a rational one given the biggest social media company in the world is staking its future on the metaverse; it’s even changed its name to Meta.
Twitter Is Fine With Pfizer Propaganda + More
Twitter Is Fine With Pfizer Propaganda, but Comic Books About the U.S. Border Crisis Are Not Allowed
Only a couple of weeks ago, corporate Pharma giant Pfizer partnered with Marvel and widely promoted a new one-shot comic book featuring classic Avengers heroes leaping into action as children watch from the sidelines in a hospital.
The children learn that in order to become like the Avengers they don’t need to fight villains, all they need to do is get their new COVID mRNA vaccines. The propaganda campaign was all over Twitter‘s social media platform and the ethics of the source was never questioned.
The book has been immediately dated due to Pfizer’s recent admission under oath at the EU Parliament that their COVID vaccines were never tested in the prevention of viral transmission, upending months of claims that getting the vax meant saving grandma and grandpa from exposure to the disease. The claim that the vaccines were “proven” to prevent transmission was also used as the basis for COVID passport schemes in nations across the west, trampling the personal rights of millions.
Pfizer essentially gets to say and do what they want on Twitter, and Marvel has the same luxury. Neither company has anything to fear in terms of their voices being censored due to the political leanings they might exhibit, the issues they address or the fallacies they might spread. Some groups are protected because they have the “correct” politics.
In Columbus, Surgeon General Calls Youth Mental Health the Nation’s ‘Defining Challenge’
The Columbus Dispatch reported:
As the COVID-19 pandemic winds down, one of the nation’s top doctors is warning Ohioans to prepare for a crisis exacerbated by years of social distancing and shuttered schools — youth mental health.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy visited Columbus on Tuesday to meet with leaders and hear from young people at local colleges and hospitals about mental health. In an interview with The Dispatch, he called youth mental health “the defining challenge of our country.”
“How do we answer the question: Are we taking care of our kids?” said Murthy, a doctor and vice admiral who was the first surgeon general of Indian descent when he first served as U.S. Surgeon General under President Obama. “… Right now, our kids are telling us very clearly that they are struggling and it’s up to us to collectively respond.”
Health System Ransomware Attack Highlights Patients’ Vulnerability
A crippling ransomware attack on the second-largest U.S. nonprofit health system is showing how much patients can be left in the dark when critical healthcare infrastructure goes down.
Why it matters: The attack earlier this month on CommonSpirit Health, which has 142 hospitals in 21 states, left IT locked, delayed surgeries and caused widespread disruptions in patient care.
It also left millions of patients waiting at least two weeks to learn if their personal information was compromised, experts say.
This latest attack comes as the Biden administration examines how to beef up minimum cybersecurity standards within critical infrastructure like healthcare, the Washington Post reports.
Half of Americans Believe Social Media Companies Are Biased in Applying Rules on Censorship, Fact-Checking: Poll
Half of Americans think social media companies are biased when it comes to fact-checking and censoring posts, new research shows.
Polling by YouGov conducted from Oct. 12–14 among 1,000 U.S. adult citizens asked respondents, “Do you think social media companies are fair in applying the rules for fact-checking and censorship or do you think they are biased?”
An overwhelming 50% of Americans responded “yes,” while 29% said they are unsure. Another 21% said they believe social media companies are fair when it comes to applying such rules.
The poll also sought to find under what circumstances Americans think social media companies should step in and suspend a user’s account. It found that the majority of respondents agreed that companies should do so when the accounts post content that falls into a category of violent content (77%), content that promotes racial division (75%), anti-Semitic content (74%), hate speech (73%) and disinformation (65%).
Reports of Teenager Dying in COVID Quarantine Cause Outcry in China
Reports that a 16-year-old girl has died in a COVID quarantine center after pleas from her family for medical help were ignored have caused anger in China, where ongoing tight pandemic controls have started to take their toll on a weary population.
Videos of the girl have spread across Chinese social media in the last 24 hours. The distressing footage, which The Guardian has not been able to independently verify, shows the teenager ill, struggling to breathe and convulsing in a bunk bed at what is purported to be a quarantine center in Ruzhou, Henan province.
In the video, a woman who claims she is the girl’s aunt says her niece died after exhibiting a fever, experiencing convulsions and vomiting. She said the family had been asking for medical help but none came for days and calls to official phone lines went unanswered.
Last week, in a rare protest in Beijing, incendiary slogans against Xi Jinping, including references to anger at strict COVID policies, were hung from a central overpass. The same slogans have begun to appear in other locations.
Shanghai Island to Host 3,250-Bed COVID Quarantine Facility
Shanghai plans to build a 3,250-bed COVID-19 quarantine facility on a small island close to its city center as China stands by its stringent zero-COVID controls, rather than relaxing curbs as many other countries have done.
The city awarded a 1.38 billion yuan ($191 million) contract to build the center on Fuxing Island, located in the Huangpu River, to state-owned builder China Communications Construction Corp (601800.SS), according to a government document.
The document said the site, which will take in positive cases and their close contacts, would be 140,000 square meters large and have 3,009 rooms. It did not give a timeline for the project’s completion.
Chinese Artist Speaks out Against Zero-COVID Policy by Wearing 27 Hazmat Suits in Times Square
On Sunday morning, a puffy, Michelin Man-like figure trudged through Times Square in New York, panting from the exertion of trying to move while wearing 27 hazmat suits. Inside the white cocoon was Zhisheng Wu, a Chinese artist who staged the street performance to criticize China’s unrelenting zero-COVID policy.
“Protective suits have become a visual symbol in the collective experience and collective memory of every Chinese person,” said Wu, a 28-year-old graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
With the suits’ hoods wrapped tightly around his head, exposing only his nose and part of his eyes, Wu said he had been transformed into a “monster” with dulled senses. Originally he had planned to wear 100 of them but discovered 27 was the most he could fit into. As he staggered on, the artist stooped lower and lower until he had to resort to crawling. Eventually, he collapsed onto the ground and was helped by his assistant to break free from the suits, his face flushed and drenched in sweat.
In China, COVID workers dressed head-to-toe in hazmat suits are still omnipresent almost three years after the virus emerged. Dubbed “dabai,” or “big whites,” they toil at COVID testing sites and quarantine camps, guard airports and train stations and spray clouds of disinfectant in the streets and residential communities.
IDtech Is the New Fintech
Fintech is one of the greatest technology revolutions in recent years — over 20% of “unicorns” (startups that have reached over $1 billion valuations) are considered fintech companies. Because of this trend, any company can be a financial services company, giving consumers and businesses more ways to manage their finances than ever before.
A similar revolution is emerging in the field of digital identity. The convenience, optionality and accessibility that fintech brought to money is happening to the archaic, paper-based world of personal identity. Identity today is where financial services were 15 years ago — and, therefore, represents one of the largest opportunities of this generation.
The COVID-19 pandemic struck a reservoir of pent-up distrust from consistent data breaches and misuses like Cambridge Analytica and Equifax, and virtually overnight, entire industries were unable to conduct business in person. It was the shock the identity industry needed to create the first category of identity-specific products to solve an urgent problem.
The products were commonly called “vaccine passports,” but the simple function was to enable consumers to prove they were vaccinated or recently tested so they can return to travel, work, dating and so forth. We saw products emerge from every continent (except Antarctica), for various use cases, targeting this problem.
TikTok to Ban Children From Live Streaming
TikTok is raising its minimum age for live streaming from 16 to 18 starting next month. A BBC News investigation found hundreds of accounts going live from Syrian refugee camps, with children begging for donations. Some were receiving up to $1,000 (£900) an hour — but when they withdrew the cash, TikTok had taken up to 70%.
It is unclear how TikTok will enforce these age restrictions, however.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Google, which owns YouTube, have a minimum live streaming age of 13 and already allow users to age-restrict content they upload.
TikTok is the world’s fastest-growing social media app and has been downloaded more than 3.9 billion times. It has made more than $6.2 billion in gross revenue from in-app spending since its launch in 2017, according to analytics company Sensor Tower.