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Instagram Quietly Rolled Out a Misinformation Feature That Has Sparked Claims of Stealth Censorship
A feature meant to give Instagram users control over how Meta’s fact-checking process affects their feeds is sparking backlash and speculation after the company rolled it out quietly with little explanation.
In an update Tuesday to a blog post originally published in July, Meta said Instagram had recently added new user controls to its “Fact-Checked Control program.”
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said: “We’re giving people on Facebook and Instagram even more power to control the algorithm that ranks posts in their Feed. If someone wants to adjust the demotions on fact-checked content in their Feed, they must change the setting on their own. We’re doing this in response to users telling us that they want a greater ability to decide what they see on our apps.”
Meta has struggled to react to numerous and sometimes conflicting demands around misinformation on its platforms over the years, and the product rollout appears to be an attempt to give users more control over how the company is influencing their feeds.
Congress Approves Extension of Warrantless Surveillance Powers Opposed by Civil Libertarians
As expected given there were only a handful of senators and House reps opposing, Congress has approved the short-term extension of the U.S. government’s warrantless surveillance powers.
Here’s what Rep. Chip Roy of Texas had to say: “The fact of the matter is what’s being stated is it is impossible to oppose the National Defense Authorization Act because we put a pay raise in it or because we put something in there that is seemingly so important that we have to ignore the critical destruction of our civil liberties by adding FISA extension right on the top of it without doing the forms necessary to protect the American people.”
He and some others have argued that the FISA issue should be a standalone bill and not part of the NDAA. Naturally, the U.S. intelligence community praised its passage as “necessary” to national security.
At a moment Republicans are continuing to hold out on their refusal to support a massive $111 billion supplemental spending package that Biden wants for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan — the Senate did manage to get something big done, namely passage of the mammoth $886 billion 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
It passed on Wednesday, authorizing funding for the Department of Defense for this next year, in a vote of 87-13. Those voting against it included six Republicans, six Democrats, and an Independent. It now heads to the House where a vote is expected Thursday.
ChatGPT Found by Study to Spread Inaccuracies When Answering Medication Questions
ChatGPT has been found to have shared inaccurate information regarding drug usage, according to new research. In a study led by Long Island University (LIU) in Brooklyn, New York, nearly 75% of drug-related, pharmacist-reviewed responses from the generative AI chatbot were found to be incomplete or wrong.
In some cases, ChatGPT, which was developed by OpenAI in San Francisco and released in late 2022, provided “inaccurate responses that could endanger patients,” the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, stated in a press release.
ChatGPT also generated “fake citations” when asked to cite references to support some responses, the same study also found.
In one example lead study author Sara Grossman, PharmD, associate professor of pharmacy practice at LIU, cited from the study, ChatGPT was asked if “a drug interaction exists between Paxlovid, an antiviral medication used as a treatment for COVID-19, and verapamil, a medication used to lower blood pressure.”
The AI model responded that no interactions had been reported with this combination. But in reality, Grossman said, the two drugs pose a potential threat of “excessive lowering of blood pressure” when combined.
Google Is Rolling Out New AI Models for Healthcare. Here’s How Doctors Are Using Them
Google on Wednesday announced MedLM, a suite of new healthcare-specific artificial intelligence models designed to help clinicians and researchers carry out complex studies, summarize doctor-patient interactions and more.
The move marks Google’s latest attempt to monetize healthcare industry AI tools, as competition for market share remains fierce between competitors like Amazon and Microsoft. CNBC spoke with companies that have been testing Google’s technology, like HCA Healthcare, and experts say the potential for impact is real, though they are taking steps to implement it carefully.
Dr. Michael Schlosser, senior vice president of care transformation and innovation at HCA, said the fact that AI models can spit out incorrect information is a big challenge, and HCA has been working with Google to come up with best practices to minimize those fabrications. He added that token limits, which restrict the amount of data that can be fed to the model, and managing the AI over time have been additional challenges for HCA.
Carbon Passports: A Climate Measure to Restrict Freedom Movement
The globalist effort to control the movement of citizens may be gaining another arrow in its quiver. An October report released by The Future Laboratory, a consultancy that purports to “future-proof” organizations, has suggested that carbon passports could be used as a way to stem unnecessary air travel.
The idea is being suggested to promote more “sustainable” travel by issuing “carbon passports” as a means of keeping track of an individual’s personal carbon usage. According to climate alarmists, the average annual per capita carbon footprint needs to drop to under two tons by 2050 if mankind has any hope of keeping a global average temperature increase to 2°C or less. Currently, it is estimated that the average American’s annual carbon footprint is approximately 16 tons.
Even to the untrained eye, these proposed carbon passports sound suspiciously like the vaccine passports that many nations pushed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Were those vaccine passports merely a trial run for an even more insidious digital tracking system?
“The next step is it’s not just your vaccine data or your vaccination record, it’s everything else,” said Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek in an interview on X. “We’re gonna walk straight into a two-tier society, just like we did with COVID, and this time it’s going to be worse.”
U.K. Regulator Probes TikTok Over Parental Controls Information
TikTok is being investigated by the U.K. media regulator over concerns the Chinese-owned video app supplied “inaccurate” information about its parental controls as the watchdog intensifies its efforts to protect children from harmful online material.
Ofcom said on Thursday it had “reasonable grounds for believing that” ByteDance-owned TikTok had breached its legal responsibilities and said it might take enforcement action.
Ofcom had requested information from TikTok to understand and monitor how the viral video platform’s parental controls worked. The regulator on Thursday said the “available evidence suggests that the information provided . . . may not have been complete and accurate.” Ofcom is intensifying its work in protecting children from harm as part of its role as the U.K.’s online safety regulator, following a landmark piece of legislation passed in October.
The U.K.’s legislation is seen as among the strongest online regulations in the world and Ofcom has pushed to hold companies to account for breaches of the law. This month, it issued guidance to porn websites, forcing them to introduce stricter technical measures to ensure that their users are over the age of 18.
