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TikTok Is Sued Over Deaths of Two Young Girls in Viral ‘Blackout Challenge’

Los Angeles Times reported:

Eight-year-old Lalani Erika Walton wanted to become “TikTok famous.” Instead, she wound up dead.

Hers is one of two such tragedies that prompted a linked pair of wrongful death lawsuits filed Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the social media giant. The company’s app fed both Lalani and Arriani Jaileen Arroyo, 9, videos associated with a viral trend called the blackout challenge in which participants attempt to choke themselves into unconsciousness, the cases allege; both of the young girls died after trying to join in.

It’s an indication that TikTok — the wildly popular, algorithmically curated video app that has its U.S. headquarters in Culver City — is a defective product, said the Social Media Victims Law Center, the law firm behind the suits and a self-described “legal resource for parents of children harmed by social media.”

TikTok pushed Lalani and Arriani videos of the dangerous trend, is engineered to be addictive and didn’t offer the girls or their parents adequate safety features, the Law Center said, all in the name of maximizing ad revenue.

Governor Wants to Make Vaccine Mandate Permanent for New Hires

Everett Daily Herald reported:

A year ago, amid a surge in coronavirus infections, Gov. Jay Inslee mandated thousands of state workers get vaccinated against COVID-19 — or they could lose their jobs.

Now, he wants to make proof of vaccination a permanent condition of employment.

On Friday, he directed state agencies to require all new employees to be fully up-to-date on their COVID-19 vaccination prior to starting work, including any recommended boosters.

And if you’ve got a job now, you will soon need to be fully vaxxed and boosted to keep it.

California Law Student Defying COVID Vaccine Mandate Sues School, Claiming It’s Making Him Abandon Legal Career

The Seattle Times reported:

A Santa Clara University law student defying the school’s COVID vaccination requirements filed a lawsuit this week claiming the school is blocking him from moving to a different law school for a degree.

Ryan Driggs, who does not have a lawyer for the case and is representing himself, alleged in the suit that the university, after barring him from registering for classes, is denying his transcript requests in order to keep him from “securing the economic advantages completion that his legal education would bring.”

In a March court filing from a similar lawsuit by two Santa Clara University undergraduates and a prominent anti-vaccination group, the school’s campus physician said he had reviewed 28 exemption requests, granted six on a permanent basis and two on a temporary basis, with four pending and 16 denied.

The other student plaintiff in that suit, sophomore Harlow Glenn, agreed to get her first Pfizer COVID-19 shot last year to comply with the university’s vaccine mandate, but alleged she suffered numbing in her legs, severe headaches, menstrual cycle disruptions, bloody urine, body pains and hair loss, the suit said. The university, she said, denied her requests for religious and medical exemptions from the shots.

53 Fired Austal Workers File Suit Over COVID Vaccine Mandate

FOX 10 News reported:

Using Independence Day as a symbolic backdrop, a lawyer on Monday electronically filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 53 former Austal workers challenging the company’s now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The suit, which accused Austal USA of violating the employees’ rights under the Civil Rights Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act, seeks damages for lost pay and punitive damages. Attorney Brian Dasinger suggested that $1 million for each worker would be fair.

“We’ve decided to file on July 4th because our founders fought for independence against tyranny and declared independence on this day,” he said. “Our clients are fighting against a different kind of tyranny, a tyranny against bodily autonomy.”

Dasinger said he represents seven additional former Austal employees who will be filing suit in Florida and Mississippi. In a response to a complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Austal indicated it had granted 15 medical exemptions and 25 temporary medical exemptions. The company terminated the rest, including almost 160 who submitted religious exemptions.

Army Says National Guard, Reserve Forces Must Be Vaccinated to Participate in Drills

The Hill reported:

The Army on Friday announced members of its National Guard and Reserve components must be in compliance with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate to participate in drills.

In a statement, the service said members who have refused to be vaccinated without an approved or pending exemption cannot participate in federally funded training and will not receive pay or retirement credit.

The deadline for members of the Army National Guard or Reserve to be vaccinated passed on Thursday. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated vaccinations for the military in August 2021 but allowed each service to implement its own deadlines.

Freedom Convoy Protesters Show up on Canada Day to Protest COVID Mandates, Trudeau

The Daily Wire reported:

Protesters associated with Canada’s Freedom Convoy demonstrated in Ottawa on Friday to protest COVID mandates on Canada Day.

The demonstrations in Canada’s capital city came just months after the Freedom Convoy spent three weeks camped out in the city protesting the government’s vaccine mandates and days after one of the convoy’s organizers was arrested for allegedly not following the conditions of her bail.

According to Politico, hundreds of demonstrators showed up to protest government COVID mandates and the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who previously said protesters were “trying to blockade our economy, our democracy.”

Australia to Dump COVID Vaccine Requirements and Travel Exemptions for International Arrivals

The Guardian reported:

People arriving in Australia will no longer have to declare their COVID vaccination status or obtain a travel exemption under changes to come into effect this week.

The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, announced on Sunday that the government would dump the restrictions that have been in place since the country’s borders reopened late last year, with the changes to the Biosecurity Act made following advice from the chief medical officer, Paul Kelly.

The digital pass, which was announced last September and cost an estimated $75m to develop, replaced the original passenger arrival form and required people to upload their vaccination status ahead of entering Australia. “While in time it will replace the paper-based incoming passenger card, it needs a lot more work to make it user-friendly,” she said.

Mask-wearing is still required on inbound international flights, while state and territory mask-wearing mandates also remain for domestic flights.

Roe’s Overturn Is Tech’s Privacy Apocalypse

Axios reported:

America’s new abortion reality is turning tech firms’ data practices into an active field of conflict — a fight that privacy advocates have long predicted and company leaders have long feared.

The once-abstract privacy argument among policy experts has transformed overnight into a concrete real-world problem, superheated by partisan anger, affecting vast swaths of the U.S. population, with tangible and easily understood consequences.

Google announced Friday a new program to automatically delete the location data of users who visit “particularly personal” locations like “counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics and others.”

It’s not clear how, and how reliably, Google will identify the locations that trigger automatic data deletion. The company will not delete search requests automatically — users who want to protect themselves will have to do so themselves.

European Union Passes Landmark Laws to Rein in Big Tech

Engadget reported:

Today, after months of negotiations and procedural hurdles, the European Union has passed a pair of landmark bills designed to rein in Big Tech’s power. The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are intended to promote fairer competition, improve privacy protection, as well as ban both the use of some of the more egregious forms of targeted advertising and misleading practices.

The Digital Services Act, for instance, focuses on online platforms like Facebook, Amazon and Google. They will be tasked with being more proactive both with content moderation and also to prevent the sale of illegal or unsafe goods being sold on their platforms. Users will also be able to learn how and why an algorithm recommended a certain piece of content and to challenge any moderation decision that was made algorithmically.

Finally, companies will no longer be able to use sensitive personal data for ad-targeting, sell ads to children or use dark patterns — deceptive page design that can manipulate you into saying yes to something even when you’d much rather say no, such as joining a service or preventing you from leaving the one you no longer wish to use.

Twitter Censors Post Editorial Board Member for Months

New York Post reported:

A New York Post Editorial Board member has been blocked by Twitter for months, in what he says is punishment for the paper’s decision to publish Hunter Biden’s hard drive.

“I think they are being spiteful,” said Michael Benjamin, 64. “Like this guy works at The Post and we’re not going to accommodate him no matter what he says.”

“It was a bizarre misunderstanding of a tweet supporting Ukraine that Twitter’s ‘Karen’ algorithm decided was ‘hateful.’ The suspension is unjustified and the protracted appeal is vindictive. I want the matter rectified,” Benjamin protested to the company in a March 21 email — to no avail.

Benjamin wrote about the Twitter censorship two days later, but the op-ed also went ignored.

The Big Idea: Should We Worry About Sentient AI?

The Guardian reported:

One day, perhaps very far in the future, there probably will be a sentient artificial intelligence (AI). How do I know that? Because it is demonstrably possible for mind to emerge from matter, as it did first in our ancestors’ brains. Unless you insist human consciousness resides in an immaterial soul, you ought to concede it is possible for physical stuff to give life to mind. There seems to be no fundamental barrier to a sufficiently complex artificial system making the same leap. While I am confident that LaMDA (or any other currently existing AI system) falls short at the moment, I am also nearly as confident that one day, it will happen.

Of course, if that’s far off in the future, probably beyond our lifetimes, some may question why should we think about it now. The answer is that we are currently shaping how future human generations will think about AI, and we should want them to turn out caring. There will be strong pressure from the other direction. By the time AI finally does become sentient, it will already be deeply woven into human economics.

Our descendants will depend on it for much of their comfort. Think of what you rely on Alexa or Siri to do today, but much, much more. Once AI is working as an all-purpose butler, our descendants will abhor the inconvenience of admitting it might have thoughts and feelings.