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Big Tech Is the Big Tobacco of Today
Cigarette and tobacco companies, with their calculated strategy of addiction by design, ensnared me and millions of others. They kept us hooked and spent a fortune opposing policies that could save lives. Today, we face a new breed of addiction peddlers. Big Tech companies that own Facebook, Instagram, Discord, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok and others are the cigarette and tobacco companies of our children’s generation. Cigarettes and tobacco have had little redeeming societal value.
Social media companies dismiss mounting evidence linking their platforms to deteriorating youth mental health and increases in suicidal ideation and suicide among our young people. They deflect responsibility with hollow promises of content moderation and public relations gimmicks like safety ratings.
All the while they fight for changes to the real solution to saving kids’ lives: Modifying their platforms and their business models. Today’s Big Tech is our kids’ Big Tobacco, and the Big Lie is that there is no proof that social media is harming our children’s mental health.
The Big Truth from parents is that social media is having a devastating impact on their kids’ mental health, and it has resulted in increases in suicidal ideation and suicide.
Supreme Court Rejects Case From Fired Worker Denied Jobless Benefits After Refusing Vaccine
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the appeal of a Minnesota woman who said she was wrongly denied unemployment benefits after being fired for refusing to be vaccinated for COVID-19 because of her religious beliefs.
The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development determined she wasn’t eligible for benefits because her reasons for refusing the vaccine were based less on religion and more on a lack of trust that the vaccine was effective.
The case shows that the vaccine debate continues to smolder after the pandemic and after the Supreme Court in 2022 halted enforcement of a Biden administration vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers but declined to hear a challenge to the administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare facilities that receive federal funding.
After refusing to get vaccinated, Tina Goede was fired in 2022 from her job as an account sales manager for the pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca. Her position had required her to meet with customers in hospitals and clinics, some of which required proof of vaccination.
Google Will Delete Billions of Browsing Records to Settle Privacy Lawsuit: Court Filing
Google will destroy users’ browsing data to settle a $5 billion privacy lawsuit about its “incognito” browsing, according to federal court filings. The 2020 class action lawsuit accused the search engine of collecting millions of users’ data without their knowledge while they used incognito mode. The suit alleged that Google was secretly amassing data from users when they thought their browsing was private.
The settlement was first announced last December, but the specific details of the settlement were revealed Monday in new court filings.
Now, Google has agreed to delete billions of data records that are older than nine months, the filing states. As part of the settlement, Google also agreed to inform users that it collects data in incognito mode and make it so third-party trackers are turned off by default when using the feature.
Previously, Google had used third-party cookies to collect users’ data even when they were on non-Google sites. Google had known for years that the marketing and branding of its incognito mode was potentially misleading, the lawsuit alleged.
AT&T Says a Data Breach Leaked Millions of Customers’ Information Online. Were You Affected?
The theft of sensitive information belonging to millions of AT&T’s current and former customers has been recently discovered online, the telecommunications giant said this weekend.
In a Saturday announcement addressing the data breach, AT&T said that a dataset found on the “dark web” contains information including some Social Security numbers and passcodes for about 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.
Whether the data “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors” is still unknown, the Dallas-based company noted — adding that it had launched an investigation into the incident. AT&T has also begun notifying customers whose personal information was compromised.
Russian Military Intelligence Unit May Be Linked to ‘Havana Syndrome,’ Insider Reports
The mysterious “Havana syndrome” ailment that has afflicted U.S. diplomats and spies across the world may be linked to energy weapons wielded by members of a Russian military intelligence sabotage unit, the Insider media group reported.
A U.S. intelligence investigation whose findings were released last year found that it was “very unlikely” a foreign adversary was responsible for the ailment, first reported by U.S. embassy officials in the Cuban capital Havana in 2016.
But Insider, a Russia-focused investigative media group based in Riga, Latvia reported that members of a Russian military intelligence (GRU) unit known as 29155 had been placed at the scene of reported health incidents involving U.S. personnel.
The year-long Insider investigation in collaboration with 60 Minutes and Germany’s Der Spiegel also reported that senior members of Unit 29155 received awards and promotions for work related to the development of “non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
Teens’ Latest Social Media Trend? Self-Diagnosing Their Mental Health Issues
Teenagers are increasingly using social media to self-diagnose their mental health issues, alarming parents and advocates who say actual care should be easier to access.
A poll by EdWeek Research Center released this week found that 55% of students use social media to self-diagnose, and 65% of teachers say they’ve seen the phenomenon in their classrooms.
And with their amateur diagnoses in hand, teenagers might not only fail to understand their actual problems, but they could pursue solutions — or even medications — that aren’t right for them.
A recent Pew Research study found 95% of teenagers have a smartphone, and around 60% use social media platforms such as TikTok.
I Tried the New Google. Its Answers Are Worse.
Have you heard about the new Google? They “supercharged” it with artificial intelligence. Somehow, that also made it dumber. With the regular old Google, I can ask, “What’s Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth?” and a reasonable answer pops up: “169.8 billion USD.”
Now let’s ask the same question with the “experimental” new version of Google search. Its AI responds: Zuckerberg’s net worth is “$46.24 per hour, or $96,169 per year. This is equivalent to $8,014 per month, $1,849 per week, and $230.6 million per day.”
Google acting dumb matters because its AI is headed to your searches sooner or later. The company has already been testing this new Google — dubbed Search Generative Experience, or SGE — with volunteers for nearly 11 months, and recently started showing AI answers in the main Google results even for people who have not opted into the test.
The new Google can do some useful things. But as you’ll see, it sometimes also makes up facts, misinterprets questions, delivers out-of-date information and just generally blathers on. Even worse, researchers are finding that AI often elevates lower-quality sites as reliable sources of information.
Normally, I wouldn’t review a product that isn’t finished. But this test of Google’s future has been going on for nearly a year, and the choices being made now will influence how billions of people get information. At stake is also a core idea behind the current AI frenzy: that the tech can replace the need to research things ourselves by just giving us answers. If a company with the money and computing power of Google can’t make it work, who can?
