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Unvaccinated Novak Djokovic Officially out of U.S. Open

Forbes reported:

Tennis star Novak Djokovic’s refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine continues to stand in the way of his pursuit of the all-time Grand Slam record, as he said in a tweet Thursday he won’t be able to enter the U.S. for next week’s U.S. Open.

Djokovic’s exclusion from the event was long expected, as U.S. rules require foreign nationals entering the U.S. to be vaccinated against COVID, though a loosening of restrictions for unvaccinated Americans announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month inspired a brief moment of hope for Djokovic’s U.S. Open prospects.

TikTok Is Like Crack Cocaine, According to a Wall Street Research Firm. A Top Market Analyst Explains How the Chinese App Has Displaced Giants Across Big Tech.

Insider reported:

TikTok’s dominance is getting noticed on Wall Street. With over 1 billion users logging on to the app per month, every major U.S. social media brand is trying to replicate the success of the Chinese video platform.

It’s proven so popular that Bernstein analysts published a note this week arguing that TikTok exhibits some of the same attributes as a drug, specifically likening the app to crack cocaine.

“The algorithm pushed the most viral content directly to the user delivering endorphin hit after hit with each swipe,” the authors wrote.

Though shares of TikTok parent ByteDance are not public, its meteoric rise is in stark comparison to the sagging fortunes of its competitors. Shares of Meta have dropped more than 50% so far this year, and Snap has seen a 76% decline.

DHS Officially Shuts Down Disinformation Board After Longtime Pause

The Daily Wire reported:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is shutting down the Disinformation Governance Board more than three months after announcing a pause on the Board’s work. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the announcement in a statement on Wednesday.

The Department welcomes the recommendations of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which has concluded that countering disinformation that threatens the homeland, and providing the public with accurate information in response, is critical to fulfilling the Department’s missions,” the DHS said in the statement.

​​The Board’s work was paused in May after Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares sent a letter co-signed by 20 GOP attorneys general to Mayorkas threatening legal action against the “un-American” Disinformation Governance Board.

Many Americans expressed concerns over the government’s increased role to censor stories in coordination with Big Tech in an attack on free speech.

Group Urges Los Angeles to End Indoor Masking for Kids Playing Sports at City Facilities

The Epoch Times reported:

The grassroots organization LA Uprising launched a campaign this week asking Los Angeles city officials to end an ongoing indoor mask mandate for youth sports at city facilities.

Group organizer Ross Novie, a father of two Los Angeles public school students, said he started the effort after visiting Mar Vista Recreation Center last weekend and found children masked up while playing basketball.

The city’s Department of Recreation and Parks continues to mandate indoor masking and proof of COVID-19 vaccinations for its parks, sports facilities and recreation centers after the requirement was dropped by public schools, entertainment venues and workplaces.

“Now we’re just stuck with tens of thousands of kids playing sports inside with masks, even though at [the city’s K–12 schools], they’re not,” Novie said. “It makes no sense. I feel like people are just asleep at the wheel, and as usual, no one cares about the kids.”

Chinese City ‘Stretched to the Limit’ as Millions Wait in Line for COVID Tests in Extreme Heat

CNN World reported:

The Chinese metropolis of Chongqing has rolled out mass COVID testing in its central area amid a record heat wave, leaving millions of residents standing under the sun for hours as they struggle with extreme temperatures and power shortages.

Stringent zero-COVID measures enacted by the southwestern mega-city to contain an emerging outbreak are the latest hardship for residents already reeling from a crippling heat wave, a severe drought and blazing wildfires.

Whistleblowing Is Broken

The Atlantic reported:

When the hacker turned corporate-cybersecurity specialist Peiter Zatko went to work for Twitter in 2020, he thought he could help the company improve its practices after some embarrassing breaches. But either he couldn’t help Twitter, or Twitter didn’t want his aid — less than two years later the company fired him.

Last month he issued a massive complaint against it to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, alleging widespread malfeasance and fraud at the social network.

Tech companies are so big and so powerful and do so many bad things without consequence, it’s understandable that people may feel they have no option other than blowing the whistle on these companies, the way a civil servant might on a government. But it’s an imperfect system for meting out justice.

The problem lies less with Zatko and his specific accusations — many of which look pretty bad for Twitter — and more with the erosion of the whistleblower as a concept in contemporary life.

Senator Slams Amazon’s ‘Ring Nation’ as Surveillance-State TV

The Hollywood Reporter reported:

Amazon’s synergistic plan for a lighthearted show based on footage culled from Ring, its controversial digital doorbell, is being denounced as surveillance-state TV in the tech press, activist circles and Congress. Amazon subsidiary MGM Television produces Ring Nation, slated to launch Sept. 26, which hopes to capitalize on both the long genre history of Candid Camera-style reality programming as well as today’s social media swirl.

The show’s premise was criticized in the tech press — including Popular Science, The Verge, Ars Technica, Input and PC Magazine — as “dystopian.”

U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the Commerce Committee, who’s investigated Ring’s privacy policies and civil rights protections, as well as pushed Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos for more clarity on its data security practices, tells The Hollywood Reporter:

“The Ring platform has too often made over-policing and over-surveillance a real and pressing problem for America’s neighborhoods and attempts to normalize these problems are no laughing matter. Amazon must focus instead on making strong safety and accountability commitments to Ring users and ensure that neighbors aren’t robbed of their privacy and civil liberties.”

Amazon Bought Whole Foods Five Years Ago for $13.7 Billion. Here’s What’s Changed at the High-End Grocer

CNBC reported:

Five years ago, Amazon closed its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods, by far the biggest acquisition ever for the e-commerce and cloud computing giant. Since then, Amazon has made a lot of changes to the specialty grocer, from lowering prices to embedding checkout technology in its 500-plus U.S. stores.

For shoppers, the most visible change to stores is the technology inside the doors. Customers can now enroll their palm print with Amazon One to pay without a card or phone. A device scans your palm, triggering a charge to your Amazon account. It’s available at more than 20 Whole Foods locations, with 65 more stores in California coming onboard soon.

Privacy advocates are speaking up.

Amazon is also selling the palm-scanning tech to other retailers and event venues. But in March, one customer — Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre — backed out of a deal after activist groups and musicians like Rage Against the Machine voiced concerns that Amazon would share palm prints with government agencies.

Amazon to Shut Down Its Telehealth Offering

The Washington Post reported:

Amazon will shutter Amazon Care, the virtual and in-home health service it initially created for its employees, by the end of this year — a surprising move given the company’s recent investment in the healthcare space.

People who work at Amazon Care learned the news in a meeting on Wednesday, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements.

Workers were told the service was shutting down because those customers did not see the value in the service, one of the people said. Dozens of employees will lose their jobs, with some departing as soon as October, according to the people.

Facebook and Twitter Remove Accounts Pushing ‘Pro-Western Narratives’

The Hill reported:

Facebook and Twitter took down two overlapping sets of accounts over the past two months for promoting “pro-Western narratives” in the Middle East and Central Asia, according to a report released Wednesday.

The social media analytics firm Graphika reported that Twitter and Meta, the company that owns Facebook, took down the accounts over a “series of covert campaigns” over a period of five years.

A joint investigation revealed that an interconnected web of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and five other social media platforms used “deceptive” strategies to back Western narratives in the regions.

The accounts promoted the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing those of countries such as Russia, China and Iran. They more recently criticized Russia for the deaths of civilians in Ukraine and the actions that Russian soldiers have taken as the war has continued.