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Elon Musk Teases Release of the ‘Fauci Files,’ Following His Previous Scathing Criticism of the Medical Expert
Elon Musk teased on Sunday the release of the “Fauci Files,” which follows on from his criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who stepped down as the White House chief medical advisor at the end of 2022.
“Hope you’re having a great day 1 2023!,” the Twitter CEO tweeted. “One thing’s for sure, it won’t be boring.” In response to Musk’s comment, a user tweeted: “Waiting …… for #FauciFiles.” The billionaire responded: “Later this week.”
Musk targeted Fauci in early December when he tweeted: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”
The Twitter CEO and some freelance journalists are annoyed that the Twitter Files haven’t received more support from the press.
Congressman Warns TikTok Is ‘Digital Fentanyl’ for These Two Reasons
Congressman Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, said that TikTok is “digital fentanyl” and praised his colleagues in the Senate for passing the ban of the Chinese social media platform on government devices.
Gallagher spoke with NBC‘s Meet the Press on Sunday and said, “I think the comparison is apt for at least two reasons. One, it’s highly addictive and destructive, and we’re seeing troubling data about the corrosive impact of constant social media use particularly on young men and women here in America.”
“It’s also digital fentanyl in the sense that as you allude to, it ultimately goes back to the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok is owned by ByteDance. ByteDance is effectively controlled by the CCP. So, we have to ask whether we want the CCP to control what is on the cusp of becoming the most powerful media company in America,” the congressman said.
TikTok has been top of mind for both Democrats and Republicans recently, with lawmakers banning the social media app from government devices. President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law a ban on using the app on federal government devices, which was passed by Congress as part of the omnibus spending bill.
Google Will Pay $9.5 Million to Settle Washington, DC, AG’s Location-Tracking Lawsuit
Google has agreed to pay $9.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Washington, DC, Attorney General Karl Racine, who accused the company earlier this year of “deceiving users and invading their privacy.” Google has also agreed to change some of its practices, primarily concerning how it informs users about collecting, storing and using their location data.
The $9.5 million payment is a paltry one for Google. Last quarter, it took parent company Alphabet under 20 minutes to make that much in revenue. The changes that the company will make to its practices as part of the settlement may have a bigger impact.
Folks who currently have certain location settings on will receive notifications telling them how they can disable each setting, delete the associated data and limit how long Google can keep that information. Users who set up a new Google account will be informed which location-related account settings are on by default and offered the chance to opt-out.
Google will need to maintain a webpage that details its location data practices and policies. This will include ways for users to access their location settings and details about how each setting impacts Google’s collection, retention or use of location data. Moreover, Google will be prevented from sharing a person’s precise location data with a third-party advertiser without the user’s explicit consent. The company will need to delete location data “that came from a device or from an IP address in web and app activity within 30 days” of obtaining the information.
House Republicans to Start Committee on ‘Weaponization of the Federal Government’: Report
House Republicans plan to launch a subcommittee to expose collusion between federal agencies and private companies when they take power on Tuesday.
Currently named the “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” GOP lawmakers will use their new House majority to examine how the intelligence community and federal law enforcement influenced corporate America to censor narratives and track citizens, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The planned creation of the subcommittee occurs after Twitter CEO Elon Musk released a series of “Twitter Files” he said detailed coordinated efforts between federal agents and former executives of the social media company, which he acquired at the end of last year.
The FBI paid Twitter more than $3.4 million for its “legal process response,” apparently referencing the time executives spent coordinating with the agency on discussing stories that agents wanted them to suppress.
COVID Tracker: AstraZeneca Workers Who Were Fired for Refusing Vaccine File Lawsuit
AstraZeneca faces an age-discrimination lawsuit from seven employees, all older than 40, who were fired for refusing to be vaccinated.
Seven former AstraZeneca employees who were fired for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 have filed a lawsuit in Delaware against the company claiming age discrimination. All of the plaintiffs are over age 40 and had filed for religious exemptions to the company’s vaccination policy.
Citing a 2021 presentation by the company that said its average age of 48, the complaint alleged that AZ “devised a strategy to eliminate older employees.”
Boston COVID Vaccine Mandate Heading to Supreme Judicial Court This Week
Boston Herald via MSN.com reported:
An echo of the headlines of a year ago, the battle between the city and its public-safety unions over coronavirus vaccine mandates will come before the state’s highest court this week.
The Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral arguments Friday in the suit filed last January by unions representing all of Boston’s firefighters and some of its police officers.
This is round three in the courts between plaintiffs International Association of Fire Fighters Local 718, Boston Police Superior Officers Federation, Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society and defendants Mayor Michelle Wu and her administration.
China Threatens Response to COVID Testing Requirements for Passengers
Chinese officials have called out other countries for their COVID-19 testing requirements for travelers coming from China, threatening to impose countermeasures in response.
Speaking at a daily briefing on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called the virus testing requirements imposed by other countries “excessive” and “unacceptable” and said they “lack scientific basis.”
Several countries including the U.S., Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, India and Japan have announced strict COVID measures toward passengers coming from China amid growing concerns about the lack of data on daily infections in the country and the spread of new variants.
China, which has downgraded COVID-19 from a Class A infectious disease to Class B and shifted away from its strict COVID measures as well, last month announced it will lift the mandatory COVID-19 quarantine requirement for travelers entering the country.
Frequent Social Media Checks May Affect Young Brains
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Social media‘s impact on young people is a hot topic, with most kids and teens wanting to do whatever their friends are doing and parents worrying about setting limits. A new study examines whether frequent checking of social media sites (Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat) is associated with changes in functional brain development in these early adolescents, about age 12.
Using brain scans called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that habitually refreshing and checking social media may be associated with changes in brain sensitivity to social rewards and punishments — those online likes and engagement from others.
For the three-year study, study author Eva Telzer, who is an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, and her team recruited 169 sixth- and seventh-graders from three public middle schools in rural North Carolina. Participants were racially diverse and included both boys and girls. The participants reported how often they checked the three social media platforms, varying from less than once a day to more than 20 times. The researchers used this information to make a scale.
More research would be required to know for sure that social media changes adolescent brains, he said. For example, researchers might see what happens if they take away kids’ phones for six months to prevent frequent social media checks.
The Year Ahead in Privacy and Your Data
In 2023, a few changes will make it a little harder for third parties to spy on you across the web. As a result, the companies that still have access to consumer information are going to get a lot more greedy with it.
First of all, Google is finally rolling out its Privacy Sandbox project. That will eventually kill third-party cookies once and for all, and Google will replace them with tools that use your own device to monitor your online activity. Advertisers will have to go through Google if they want to harness that information.
The government is working to limit the spread of your information, too. Regulating big tech is one of America’s only bipartisan issues. More states are passing privacy laws, and federal privacy rules may be on the horizon.
But don’t think that means companies will stop spying on you. They’re just going to be more competitive about it, and they’ll be sharing less of your information with each other. If your main concern is personal data falling into the wrong hands, that’s a good thing. But this new era in privacy is going to cement power in the hands of a limited number of big businesses.
Why Washington Wants to Kill TikTok
South China Morning Post reported:
Elon Musk and his big mouth have been terrible for his once-worshipful investors. But thanks to the owner and chief executive of Twitter, the company has released a treasure trove of confidential files detailing routine interference, censorship and influence operations by an alphabet soup of U.S. security, military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the CIA, which incidentally, isn’t supposed to operate domestically.
Those clandestine and under-the-table operations essentially aim to monitor, control and censor social media platforms to filter information and influence public opinion. They are, in other words, precisely the accusations that U.S. politicians and senior security and intelligence officials have leveled against TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
It has always looked ridiculous that the world’s most powerful government is going after a media platform used mainly by young Americans to record amusing encounters and funny shenanigans. It is now identified by both leading U.S. political parties as a direct threat to national security.
The problem with TikTok is that it is a Chinese-owned company even though many of its executives in the United States are Americans. As TikTok has become as big and popular as Instagram and Twitter, it has been negotiating with U.S. officials since the Donald Trump presidency to satisfy their security demands. Ironically, this means the U.S. government has to do everything by the book. While officials can be sure that U.S. media companies will be discreet, the same is not true of TikTok, especially when it comes to interference and influence operations.
