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Senators Say Meta’s Zuckerberg Is Slow-Walking Child Safety Inquiries
Senators are accusing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of stonewalling hundreds of their questions after the mogul testified at a blockbuster hearing earlier this year about concerns that major tech companies are failing to adequately protect children online.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee hammered Zuckerberg and the CEOs of TikTok, Snap, Discord and X over those allegations during the nearly four-hour-long session in January. But it was Zuckerberg who appeared to get the brunt of the criticism, at one point being pressured to apologize to families in the hearing room whose children experienced harm on social media.
Now lawmakers say Zuckerberg and Meta are failing to take their follow-up questions seriously as they continue to investigate how digital platforms may exacerbate the spread of child abuse material online.
The panel on Monday released hundreds of pages of written responses from the companies to additional lawmaker inquiries — a common post-hearing practice on Capitol Hill. But lawmakers took exception to the 35-page reply from Meta, which they said had not been fully forthright.
Josh Sorbe, a Senate Judiciary spokesman, said that while the committee gave Zuckerberg “multiple extensions” to respond after the session, the chief executive “answered only a small fraction of members’ questions” six weeks after receiving them — less than 10%.
Judge Dismisses X Lawsuit Against Pro-Censorship Group
A lawsuit initiated by Elon Musk’s company, X, against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) was dismissed by U.S. Judge Charles Breyer. The suit accused the CCDH, a non-profit organization, of unlawfully accessing X’s data to carry out research, which they then used to make allegations of increased “hate speech” and “misinformation” on the social media platform.
X also claimed that the CCDH selectively used data from the platform to create a “scare campaign,” driving away advertisers and causing significant financial losses.
But the judge interpreted the lawsuit against the pro-censorship group as an attempt by X to silence the organization.
Due to California’s anti-SLAPP law that prevents lawsuits aiming to stifle free speech, a federal judge on Monday overruled the case lodged by tech tycoon Elon Musk against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a group that tracks the escalation of hate content on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, following Musk’s takeover.
Worldcoin Hit With Another Ban Order in Europe Citing Risks to Kids
Controversial crypto biometrics venture Worldcoin has been almost entirely booted out of Europe after being hit with another temporary ban — this time in Portugal. The order from the country’s data protection authority comes hard on the heels of the same type of three-month stop-processing order from Spain’s DPA earlier this month.
Portugal was one of just two European countries left where Worldcoin was still operating its proprietary eyeball-scanning orbs after Spain’s ban. This leaves Germany as the only market where it’s currently able to harvest biometrics in Europe as privacy watchdogs take urgent action to respond to local concerns.
Portugal’s data protection authority said it issued the three-month ban on Worldcoin’s local ops Tuesday after receiving complaints Worldcoin had scanned children’s eyeballs.
Other complaints cited in its press release announcing the suspension, which it notes was issued Monday, also mirror Spain’s DPA’s concerns — including insufficient information being provided to users about the processing of their sensitive biometric data; and the inability of users to delete their data or revoke consent to Worldcoin’s processing.
The controversial project is backed by Sam Altman, of OpenAI fame, who is simultaneously supercharging the boom in generative AI tools that are making it harder for people to distinguish between artificial (machine-produced) and human activity online in the first place. Next stop: Rent collection on every online human on Earth?
‘They Need to Shut It Down Now’: Concerns Raised Over Downtown Lakeland’s Facial Recognition Cameras
New security cameras are being installed in downtown Lakeland to make the area safer, but now there are concerns over a controversial feature: facial recognition technology.
Julie Townsend, the Executive Director of the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority (LDDA), told FOX 13 back in January that the 14 cameras would be installed on private property to keep a closer eye on corners and alleyways and to be a deterrent to crime.
“This technology used this way to track and identify people in real-time is really chilling in a free society,” said Nate Freed Wessler, Deputy Director of ACLU’s Speech Privacy and Technology Project.
Wessler said there has been strong legislative pushback in other cities against this software. “You can use it in limited ways to investigate crimes after the fact, but you can’t ever attach face recognition technology to a live network of video cameras. It’s a red line that Lakeland has crossed here and they need to shut it down now,” said Wessler.
S.C. Businesses Battle Proposed Ban on Vaccine Mandates
A bill that will await a debate in Columbia this week has sparked fears it could harm South Carolina’s pro-business reputation and cost the state jobs if enacted. Those are the concerns of South Carolina’s business leaders. But supporters say their goal is to protect workers.
The bill, called the “Medical Freedom Act,” has drawn sharp criticism from South Carolina leaders, including the governor, over fears it could cripple the state’s response to public-health emergencies.
Now another part of that legislation faces big opposition from a different group — South Carolina’s business community.
Bob Morgan with the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce testified that businesses worry the measure, which is advancing in the Senate, could cost jobs. The bill would prohibit private employers from requiring workers to receive novel vaccines or gene therapy — facing fines or even prison time for violations.
The director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control has told senators this bill would also prohibit hospitals and healthcare facilities from requiring their workers to get an annual flu shot — because that could be considered a novel vaccine.
What to Know About Meta’s ‘Political Content’ Limit — and How to Turn It off on Instagram
Meta has come under fire in recent days from social media users startled to discover they’ve been automatically enrolled in a relatively new setting that reduces “political content” on Instagram and Threads, with the company being accused of censorship amid an important global election year.
“This is not okay,” civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger posted on X (formerly Twitter). “Instagram is now trying to suppress political content just months before the next presidential election. Why is Meta attempting to censor the democratic process?” asked Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
In fact, Meta announced that it was rolling out the setting in a little-noticed February blog post, saying that it wanted to make its platforms “a great experience for everyone” and claiming that it would not filter content from followed accounts but rather would limit its algorithm from “proactively” surfacing political content from unfollowed accounts.
The new setting — which users can opt out of — applies to the Feed, Reels, Explore, and Suggested Users parts of Instagram and Threads. This comes as Meta has continued to reduce political content on its Facebook platform since 2021.
Good Luck Fighting Disinformation
In April 2022, Nick Sawyer sat down before a committee of the California State Assembly to argue for legislation to help limit the spread of COVID falsehoods. Sawyer, an emergency room physician, had become frustrated by what he saw as the failure of his profession to respond to doctors sharing false information about the pandemic.
He’d co-founded an advocacy group, No License for Disinformation (NLFD), and now he was testifying in favor of legislation that warned doctors of professional consequences for misleading patients about the coronavirus — prescribing ivermectin as a COVID cure, for example, or claiming that COVID vaccines would magnetize their blood.
“We’ve got to stop the disinformation pipeline,” Sawyer told the committee.
Five months later, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law. But for Sawyer and other proponents of the bill, known as AB 2098, the victory was short-lived. The legislation immediately became snarled in First Amendment challenges. Sawyer and his colleagues at NLFD — overwhelmed by harassment from COVID skeptics and frustrated by the sluggishness of medical authorities in responding to falsehoods — decided to close the organization’s doors. And a year after AB 2098 became law, Newsom quietly signed another bill repealing it.
How to Escape Facebook’s Creepy Ad Tracking
Do you ever feel like your Facebook is listening to you, or watching your every move? That whenever you search for something on another website or have a conversation with a friend, the next minute you’re seeing ads on Facebook for that same thing?
This is no coincidence. Although Facebook has denied that our phones listen to us, they do have other ways of finding out what we are talking about, listening to and searching for. In some cases, it seems like they know what we’re thinking, too.
If you’re feeling a bit creeped out by all this, we don’t blame you. The good news is that while Facebook does have many capabilities, it isn’t omnipresent. The good news is that there are ways to escape Facebook’s creepy ad tracking, so you can scroll in peace.
Based on all this information that Facebook can collect, companies can use ad tracking to target you with ads highly relevant to your browsing activity, interests, conversations on Facebook Messenger, and potentially even interactions on WhatsApp (which is also owned by Meta, Facebook’s parent company).
U.S. Sanctions Chinese Hackers Accused of Targeting Critical Infrastructure
The Biden administration sanctioned two Chinese nationals and a Wuhan-based company Monday that allegedly targeted critical infrastructure sectors in the U.S. as part of an expansive hacking effort.
The Treasury Department levied sanctions against Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, as well as the Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, which the agency accused of acting as a front for China’s top spy agency.
An arm of China’s Ministry of State Security allegedly operated in part through the Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, conducting “a wide variety of computer network exploitation and computer intrusion activities,” according to the Justice Department.
The hackers, part of the group known as APT31, targeted “some of America’s most vital critical infrastructure sectors,” as well as staff at the White House; the departments of Justice, Commerce, the Treasury and State; and members of Congress, according to the Treasury.
The Next Phase of AI Is Here — and It’s Not Looking Pretty
When the history of this decade’s generative-AI years is finally written, this past month will probably mark the moment the industry had to start thinking twice about the hype.
Since the launch of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence hype has been everywhere. AI-first companies have carried the Nasdaq. Billions of dollars have poured into startups at a clip. And luminaries such as Bill Gates have declared the technology as “revolutionary as mobile phones and the internet.”
That euphoria may be harder to justify following a series of recent developments. Startups that once raised billions of dollars have watered down ambitions. Hungry founders who talked up a big game have conceded to the powers of Big Tech. And the opportunity for everyone to make bank by simply saying “AI” seems less promising.
In other words, a new era has begun in which success is much less certain than it initially seemed.
