Deception

Meta made a quiet policy update last year allowing advertisers on Facebook and Instagram to say the 2020 election was rigged. The company has made one thing clear: you can’t use their ad systems to question the legitimacy of the American election system — unless you have a credit card, in which case they’re happy to help. It’s a change that mirrors shifts across the rest of the Silicon Valley.How Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation Spiral Out of Control on the Internet | TechModoUntil recently, Meta’s policy banned ads…

Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly dismissed warnings from senior company officials that its flagship social-media platforms were harming young users, according to unsealed allegations in a lawsuit filed by Massachusetts.According to the suit, as early as 2019, Meta’s head of responsible innovation was telling Zuckerberg that mounting evidence showed the net effect of their platforms on user well-being was negative. Around that time, multiple executives, including Instagram head Adam Mosseri, were…

The U.S. government placed two Israeli spyware companies on a blacklist this week, all but totally cutting them off from business opportunities with American firms. The move is yet another attempt by the Biden administration to clean up the ethically bankrupt spyware industry before it spins totally out of control.Sam Bankman-Fried Using a VPN, McDonald’s AI Drive Thru Fails, Buzzfeed AI Quizzes Suck | Editor PicksIntellexa and Cytrox, which have both been described as “Israeli-controlled,” are known for selling shady…

A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump held firm this week by declining a request to delay a controversial order barring government agencies from making content moderation requests to social media companies. The Justice Department is already appealing the decision, according to court filings, and said in a statement it would seek an emergency action from the Supreme Court if its appeal is rejected.Twitter Verification is a Hot MessJudge Terry A. Doughty defended his ruling Mondayagainst critiques who claimed its…

This week, the Washington Post ran a story about a viral left-wing influencer named Erica Marsh who became a poster-child for conservatives as an example of liberal insanity. Marsh’s outrageous opinions enraged millions of people, sparking endless mockery, vitriol and debate. The most controversial thing about Marsh, however, is that she doesn’t seem to exist. Marsh’s obviously doctored photos, cartoonish tweets and lack of any other online presence raised suspicions that she was a fabrication of conservative or even…

The Biden administration is appealing a bombshell ruling from a federal judge barring government agencies from contacting social media companies to make takedown requests or recommend other content moderation. State Department officials had already halted routine meetings with Facebook in response to the July 5th ruling. Experts fear the lack of communication between the federal government and social media companies could delay responses to online disinformation campaigns ahead of upcoming elections.Twitter Verification…

Illustration: Marko Aliaksandr (Shutterstock)How Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation Spiral Out of Control on the Internet | TechModoFake news is a complex problem and can span text, images and video.For written articles in particular, there are several ways of generating fake news. A fake news article could be produced by selectively editing facts, including people’s names, dates or statistics. An article could also be completely fabricated with made-up events or people.Fake news articles can also be machine-generated…

Tired of search engine optimization run amok? After allowing users to flag some articles as clickbait, the Artifact news app now says it wants users to mark clickbait headlines they come across so it can rewrite the title text using AI. Hell, if enough users also report the same headline, Artifact will then display that AI-generated headline to all users at once.How Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation Spiral Out of Control on the Internet | TechModoOn Friday, the AI-driven article recommendation app said it would let…

Meta lashed out at its home state on Wednesday, threatening to shut off access to news links on Facebook and Instagram in California if the legislature passed a bill forcing it to pay news publishers for their journalism.Meta's Apparent Firing GoofThe proposed bill, dubbed the California Journalism Preservation Act, would force social networks like Facebook and Instagram or search engines like Google to pay news publishers a “journalism usage fee” when users access articles and when they sell advertising against news…

China’s top internet media regulator ramped up its latest social media crackdown over the weekend, deleting 1.4 million posts and deactivating around 67,000 accounts. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) claims the sweeping actions were taken to combat a rise in misinformation and other harmful content, though human rights groups and experts have long criticized the country’s social media takedowns as overly broad acts of political censorship.How Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation Spiral Out of Control on the…