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Judge Denies Justice Dept.’s Request for a Stay of Social Media Injunction
A federal judge on Monday denied the Justice Department’s request to stay an order limiting the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies over free speech concerns.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee in Louisiana, rejected the DOJ’s bid to stay an injunction while it works to appeal the decision barring talk between administration officials and social media companies. The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal last week, which will go to the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears,” Doughty, a Trump-appointed judge, wrote in his denial of the stay. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do — contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”
Doughty also said the Republican state attorneys general who brought the lawsuit are likely to prove that a variety of government agencies and government officials “coerced, significantly encouraged, and/or jointly participated” in suppressing social media posts that included anti-vaccination views and questioned the results of the 2020 elections.
Utah Governor Says He Is Getting Ready to Sue Social Media Companies for ‘Harms’ to Kids
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) said on Sunday that he’s getting ready to sue social media companies for their sites’ “harms” toward young children in his state.
In an appearance on CBS’s Face The Nation, Cox told moderator Margaret Brennan that he and other state officials are looking at all social media companies. He added that in the coming months, the state will file lawsuits against those platforms to hold them accountable for their actions.
Cox signed legislation earlier this year that restricts minors in the state from using social media platforms without parental permission.
Utah Senate Bill 152 would require social media platforms to verify that users in the state are 18 years or older in order to open an account. The bill, which is set to take effect in March 2024, also states that those residents under the age limit would need to open an account with a parent or guardian’s permission.
AI Doctors? Google Already Testing AI Chatbots Similar to Bard, ChatGPT in Hospitals
Google has been testing its medical AI chatbot, Med-PaLM 2, in hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic research hospital. According to a report by WSJ, the AI chatbot was being tested since April. Med-PaLM 2 is an AI tool designed to provide answers to medical questions. It is an updated version of PaLM 2, which was announced at Google I/O in May. The chatbot is trained on a curated set of medical expert demonstrations to improve its healthcare conversation capabilities.
The report cites an internal mail saying Google’s Med-PaLM 2 can be particularly helpful in countries with limited access to doctors. However, there are some accuracy issues with the chatbot, as highlighted in a research paper published by Google in May. Physicians found more inaccuracies and irrelevant information in the answers provided by Med-PaLM 2 compared to those provided by other doctors.
Despite the accuracy issues, Med-PaLM 2 performed well in other metrics, such as showing evidence of reasoning, providing consensus-supported answers, and demonstrating correct comprehension. The issue of inaccuracies have also plagued other popular chatbots available to the public including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s own Bard.
Furthermore, the report claims that customers testing Med-PaLM 2 will have control over their data, which will be encrypted, and Google will not have access to it.
Mark Zuckerberg Hides His Kids’ Faces on Social Media, and Tech Experts Say You Should Do the Same
On July 4th, Mark Zuckerberg posted a family photo with an eye-catching feature: emojis covering two of his daughters’ faces.
Presumably a step to protect their privacy, Zuckerberg isn’t the only one thinking about how parents’ use of social media can impact their children. Leah Plunkett — author of “Sharenthood” and an attorney whose work focuses on the privacy rights of children and families — told CNN she thinks more parents need to follow in Zuckerberg’s footsteps.
Safety risks include exposing kids to potential identity theft and facial recognition technology, CNN reports.
Plunkett also said artificial intelligence can now use pictures of someone as an infant to identify them when they’re older. Notably, Zuckerberg did not cover his infant daughter’s face.
The rise of AI isn’t the only reason to be wary — experts also say that other social media users may pose a danger.
Google Class Action Lawsuit Payments Start Arriving
Google has begun paying out compensation to Illinois residents as part of a $100 million settlement deal, resulting from claims the internet giant had been “storing biometric data” without the necessary consent, in violation of state law.
On June 2 a Cook County Circuit Court, where the case had been heard, ordered that payments must begin “on or before July 7, 2023,” with NBC Chicago reporting those entitled to compensation received $95.38 each.
The legal action stems from Illinois’ 2008 Biometric Information Privacy Act, which banned companies from collecting biometric information, such as individual finger prints and photographs, without the necessary authorization.
Court documents filed on May 31 revealed 687,484 Illinois residents had submitted valid claims for compensation, and would be entitled to around $95 each. This money was what was left of the $100 million settlement, once court fees and legal expenses had been deducted.
Europe Signs Off on a New Privacy Pact That Allows People’s Data to Keep Flowing to U.S.
The European Union signed off Monday on a new agreement over the privacy of people’s personal information that gets pinged across the Atlantic, aiming to ease European concerns about electronic spying by American intelligence agencies.
The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework has an adequate level of protection for personal data, the EU’s executive commission said. That means it’s comparable to the 27-nation’s own stringent data protection standards, so companies can use it to move information from Europe to the United States without adding extra security.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in October to implement the deal after reaching a preliminary agreement with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Washington and Brussels made an effort to resolve their yearslong battle over the safety of EU citizens’ data that tech companies store in the U.S. after two earlier data transfer agreements were thrown out.
Instagram’s Threads App Reaches 100 Million Users Within Just Five Days
Instagram’s text-based app Threads has achieved the mark of 100 million signups in just five days. The Twitter rival was launched on June 6 (or June 5 in the Americas), according to a tracker.
Mark Zuckerberg noted on the first day that the app attracted 2 million signups in two hours, 5 million signups in four hours and 10 million registered users in seven hours.
The next morning, the CEO of Meta noted that more than 30 million people had signed up to try the new app. Threads’ growth is noteworthy given that it hasn’t even launched in the EU yet because of privacy reasons.
How AI Will Turbocharge Misinformation — and What We Can Do About It
Attention-grabbing warnings of artificial intelligence‘s existential threats have eclipsed what many experts and researchers say is a much more imminent risk: A near-certain rise in misinformation.
Why it matters: The struggle to separate fact from fiction online didn’t start with the rise of generative AI — but the red-hot new technology promises to make misinformation more abundant and more compelling.
“Taken together, Generative AI has the potential to accelerate the spread of both mis- and disinformation, and exacerbate the ongoing challenge of finding information we can trust online,” University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, an expert in the field, said.
Between the lines: Misinformation can take many forms, from deepfake photos and video to text-based articles as well as memes that combine text and images.
