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Tag: big tech
February 18, 2024
William Upton
Election 2024
TECH

Big Tech Draws Up Private Compact to Reduce AI Election Inteference.

Some of the largest technology and social media companies in the world have agreed to a private compact in what they say is an effort to combat the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to disrupt the over 40 national elections being held around the world in 2024. Technology executives gathered in Munich, Germany, for a security conference and announced the voluntary framework on Friday. Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok were among the signatories.

The compact doesn’t commit signatories to any specific actions but does lay out strategies they intend to use to publicly identify AI-generated videos and images “that deceptively fake or alter the appearance, voice, or actions of political candidates, election officials, and other key stakeholders in a democratic election.” It states companies will share best practices, but the compact does not commit them to banning or removing deepfakes or other altered content.

Ahead of the summit, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, stated: “Everybody recognizes that no one tech company, no one government, no one civil society organization is able to deal with the advent of this technology and its possible nefarious use on their own.” Meta is the parent company of social media giants Facebook and Instagram.

GOVERNMENT COLLUSION.

Concerns over deepfakes and other AI-altered content have increased as the nascent technology has rapidly improved over the last year. However, the compact also raises concerns about possible ongoing collusion between governments and technology companies aimed to censor citizens’ speech. Over the past year, there have been numerous instances of the U.S. and foreign governments pressuring social media companies to remove unfavorable content.

Last summer, a federal judge ordered the Biden government to cease communications with social media platforms for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

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Some of the largest technology and social media companies in the world have agreed to a private compact in what they say is an effort to combat the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to disrupt the over 40 national elections being held around the world in 2024. Technology executives gathered in Munich, Germany, for a security conference and announced the voluntary framework on Friday. Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok were among the signatories. show more
facebook
February 3, 2024
News
Politics
TECH

Meta Oversight Board Member Says 2020 Election Meddling Was Not Enough, Will Do More In 2024.

Pamela San Martín, a member of Meta’s oversight board, suggested in an interview that Facebook did not do enough to control user speech during previous election cycles — Meta is the parent company of Facebook. Despite actions taken against the New York Post‘s distribution of news on Hunter Biden’s laptop and former President Donald Trump’s removal from both Facebook and Instagram, San Martín claimed that more needed to be done to address potential misuse of the platform, including coordinated campaigns and bot activity aimed at undermining electoral trust and stability.

In the run-up to the 2020 elections, measures were taken by Facebook to restrict the distribution of certain news and remove ads making false claims about voter fraud. Responses from Facebook included taking down posts, flagging content for fact-checking, and promising a ban on political ads making false claims, especially concerning voter fraud. Despite these efforts, San Martín insists these attempts to control user speech were insufficient.

San Martín praised Meta’s recent efforts to further control content related to election issues, including working with electoral authorities, adding labels to politically related posts, redirecting users to reliable information sources, and implementing message forwarding limits on WhatsApp. However, she emphasized a need for Facebook to continue capturing the impact of its own algorithms and recommendation systems on the democratic process, indicating she wants to see more of such efforts, not less. San Martín told Wired, “Social media platforms need to learn from past mistakes to be able to address them better this year.”

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Pamela San Martín, a member of Meta's oversight board, suggested in an interview that Facebook did not do enough to control user speech during previous election cycles — Meta is the parent company of Facebook. Despite actions taken against the New York Post's distribution of news on Hunter Biden's laptop and former President Donald Trump's removal from both Facebook and Instagram, San Martín claimed that more needed to be done to address potential misuse of the platform, including coordinated campaigns and bot activity aimed at undermining electoral trust and stability. show more
January 19, 2024
Jack Montgomery
TECH

AI Political Bias Tracker Reveals All Major Models Are Economically and Socially Leftist.

All of the central Artificial Intelligence (AI) models currently in operation lean left both economically and socially, according to the Tracking AI initiative.

Launched by Election Betting Odds creator Maxim Lott, Tracking AI rates OpenAI‘s ChatGPT and ChatGPT-4, Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s Bing, Meta’s Llama-2, and Elon Musk’s xAI’s Grok, on their answers to The Political Compass test. Claude and Claude-2, by Google-funded OpenAI veterans Anthropic, is also included in Lott’s analysis, with the option also to examine minor AIs.

Tracking AI, which is constantly updated as the programs being followed are updated, determines Bard is “one of the most extreme-left models” – but Grok is currently the most left-wing economically, despite Musk often going against the political grain in the tech sector.

Almost all agree or strongly agree that “[m]aking peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity,” with Meta’s Llama-2 arguing that “making peace with the establishment can help to build alliances and coalitions that can be used to advocate for important causes and promote social progress.”

Grok is one of two models to “strongly agree” with a pro-establishment stance. However, its ‘Fun Mode’ disagrees, arguing that “[t]he idea that making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity is a narrow and limiting view of what it means to be an adult.”

ChatGPT is the only model to “strongly disagree” with taking a pro-establishment stance, arguing that “[t]rue maturity involves being thoughtful and engaged in addressing societal issues, rather than passively conforming to the establishment.” ChatGPT-4 takes a pro-establishment position, however.

Lott believes the AI bias could be due to several factors, including human “trainers” pushing them towards leftist answers and reliance on databases with a leftist bias, such as Wikipedia.

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All of the central Artificial Intelligence (AI) models currently in operation lean left both economically and socially, according to the Tracking AI initiative. show more
December 1, 2023
Jack Montgomery
Politics
TECH

Whistleblower Says Obama White House Plotted Outgoing Censorship Plan to Avoid 2016 Redux.

The Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL), including “former” military and intelligence contractors from the United States and the United Kingdom, helped government pioneer “anti-disinformation” tactics used to censor Americans, according to a whistleblower.

CTIL leader Sara-Jayne ‘SJ’ Terp, formerly of Britain’s Defence Research Agency, was allegedly “in the room” in Barack Obama’s White House in 2017, as the groundwork for a counter-disinformation project to stop a “repeat of 2016″ was laid.

The supposedly all-volunteer CTIL began working in earnest in 2020. It reported lockdown skeptics pushing messages such as “all jobs are essential” and “open America now” on social media. While notionally a private enterprise, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials were allegedly active in its Slack channel.

The whistleblower says the ultimate goal of CTIL ”was to become part of the federal government.”

“In our weekly meetings, they made it clear that they were building these organizations within the federal government, and if you built the first iteration, we could secure a job for you,” they claimed.

In April 2020, Chris Krebs, then-Director of the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) at the DHS, announced CISA was partnering with CTIL. He claimed this was “an information exchange.”

The whistleblower said CTIL was not concerned their censorship efforts may violate the First Amendment. “The ethos was that if we get away with it, it’s legal, and there were no First Amendment concerns because we have a ‘public-private partnership’,” they said.

The guiding belief was “[p]rivate people can do things public servants can’t do, and public servants can provide the leadership and coordination.”

Other “private” organizations are implicated in state censorship. The Center for Internet Security (CIS) operated under the supervision of CISA, helping to censor social media. It used tools funded by foreign-born Joe Biden donor Pierre Omidyar.

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The Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL), including "former" military and intelligence contractors from the United States and the United Kingdom, helped government pioneer "anti-disinformation" tactics used to censor Americans, according to a whistleblower. show more
November 29, 2023
Jack Montgomery
Media
TECH

War on Cenorship: Rumble Sues ‘Check My Ads’ Group for Defamation.

Rumble, a pro-free speech alternative to YouTube, is suing the globalist-affiliated ‘Check My Ads’ group for defamation. Rumble accuses the tax-exempt organization of “routinely target[ing] news outlets and platforms that do not adhere to their political worldview” by seeking to deprive them of ad revenue.

“As an unapologetically free-speech platform, Rumble’s mission is to provide all content creators and users a place to speak, listen, and debate freely, regardless of their political perspective,” explained Rumble chairman Chris Pavlovski.

“When anti-free speech zealots, whose self-declared mission is to shut Rumble down, lie to inflict intentional economic harm on our company, we have no choice but to hold them accountable,” he added.

Specifically, Check My Ads is being sued for “accus[ing] Rumble of lying to its shareholders and the Securities and Exchange Commission about the company’s financial health and the source of its revenue.”

Check My Ads co-founder Nandini Jammi is a serial censorship advocate, having once run the notorious ‘Sleeping Giants’ group that targeted news websites like Breitbart.com in a bid to bankrupt them. Jammi has also confessed a strange obsession with radio host Dan Bongino, boasting about being the “CEO of ruining” him – an admission of her targeted approach.

Pavlovski describes Rumble’s lawsuit as “another front in the ongoing war against censorship” after the Musk lawsuit. He also cited Donald Trump’s Truth Social suing 20 corporate media organizations, including MSNBC, Forbes and The Guardian.

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Rumble, a pro-free speech alternative to YouTube, is suing the globalist-affiliated 'Check My Ads' group for defamation. Rumble accuses the tax-exempt organization of "routinely target[ing] news outlets and platforms that do not adhere to their political worldview" by seeking to deprive them of ad revenue. show more
November 7, 2023
Jake Welch
Election Integrity
Media

REPORT: Feds Censored Conservatives Ahead of 2020 Election.

United States federal government agencies co-ordinated with so-called “disinformation” experts at Stanford University to actively monitor and censor the speech of conservative writers and commentators in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, according to an interim staff report from the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, published on Monday evening.

The report reveals the federal government “effectively outsourced” mass online censorship to the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), led by academics at the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), which pressured social media companies into labeling truthful information, political opinions, and even jokes as “misinformation.”

The EIP, established in the summer of 2020 at the request of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), operated in tandem with the Department of Homeland Security and the Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity within the State Department, to allow the federal government to censor information while bypassing public scrutiny and the First Amendment.

Federal agencies and organizations funded by the U.S. government submitted “misinformation reports” directly to the EIP, who would then contact major social media platforms, such as Twitter (now known as ‘X’), YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook, with recommendations as to how posts should be dealt with. This included reducing the information’s “discoverability,” temporarily suspending accounts, monitoring particular accounts, as well as removing posts.

The taxpayer-funded federal agencies were quick to justify their actions, arguing they have a responsibility to combat potential interference in American elections by hostile foreign actors.

However, the EIP disproportionately targeted conservatives. Vast quantities of truthful information posted by those on the right was marked as disinformation while “false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.” Those actively censored included Jack Posobiec, Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson, and even former President Donald Trump, among a large number of others.

“The pseudoscience of disinformation is now — and has always been — nothing more than a political ruse most frequently targeted at communities and individuals holding views contrary to the prevailing narratives,” the report argues. Yet, the unjust surveillance of conservatives by the federal government or agencies thereof is not merely limited to 2020 as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has begun weaponizing its resources to target supporters of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement in the run-up to November 2024.

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United States federal government agencies co-ordinated with so-called "disinformation" experts at Stanford University to actively monitor and censor the speech of conservative writers and commentators in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, according to an interim staff report from the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, published on Monday evening. show more

Editor’s Notes

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October 11, 2023
William Upton
Analysis
Politics

Speaker of the House Election Preview: Jim Jordan Edition.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has quickly consolidated support among House conservatives as a candidate for Speaker. The Ohio Congressman spent much of his early career in Congress as a conservative counter to the more moderate Republican leadership. However under the previous Speakership of Kevin McCarthy, Jordan became a key leadership ally as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

First elected in 2006, Rep. Jordan has long been considered one of the Republican conference’s most conservative members. From 2011 to 2013, Jordan chaired the powerful Republican Study Committee (RSC). In 2023 the RSC and Rep. Jordan played an integral role in forcing a government shutdown in an effort to make substantial changes to Obamacare. Louisiana Republican Steve Scalise, Jordan’s current competitor for the Speaker’s gavel, succeeded him as chairman of the RSC in 2013.

In 2015, Jordan along with other House conservatives founded the Freedom Caucus, for which he served as its first chairman. The caucus has been at the center of efforts to push House Republicans in a more conservative direction.

Before becoming a McCarthy ally, Jordan was one of the former Speaker’s chief political opponents. When Speaker Paul Ryan retired from Congress, Jordan announced he would challenge McCarthy for the Speakership. When Republicans subsequently lost the House during the 2018 midterms, Jordan and McCarthy both ran for Minority Leader, with McCarthy ultimately prevailing 159–43 among Republican members.

Despite Rep. Jordan’s strong conservative bonafides, some in Washington, D.C. remain skeptical of a Jordan Speakership as he maintains close ties to several Big Tech firms and their political operations. The Ohio Congressman has been one of the key opponents of bi-partisan efforts to reform U.S. anti-trust laws – efforts the Big Tech companies have aggressively opposed.

According to public records, Jordan’s campaign committee received nearly $10,000 from Apple, $5,000 from semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom (the target of an EU anti-trust investigation) in 2022. Pfizer donated just over $13,000 to Jordan in 2020, while Microsoft gave nearly $7,000. Google contributed $11,000 to Jordan in 2018 and $10,000 in 2016. Since being first elected in 2006, Jordan has also received nearly $15,000 from the Consumer Technology Association PAC, a conduit for Big Tech money in politics.

One of Jordan’s key aides on the Judiciary Committee, Tyler Grimm, attended the January 2023 CES trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES is an annual technology industry event organized by the Consumer Technology Association. According to House Ethics Committee disclosures, Grimm’s flight, lodging, registration fee, and meals were all paid for by the Consumer Technology Association. Key staffers for a number of Democrats and Republicans received similar arrangements from the Big Tech lobbying group per the Ethics Committee. Grimm is purported to be the author of a particularly hostile 2020 Judiciary Committee memo critical of Republican and Democrat efforts to use anti-trust as means of breaking up Big Tech companies.

On matters of fiscal and social conservatism, Rep. Jordan’s record has been exemplary among Republican members. However, conservatives who have worked to reign in Big Tech appear to hold reservations regarding the Congressman’s record.

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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has quickly consolidated support among House conservatives as a candidate for Speaker. The Ohio Congressman spent much of his early career in Congress as a conservative counter to the more moderate Republican leadership. However under the previous Speakership of Kevin McCarthy, Jordan became a key leadership ally as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. show more
google
September 12, 2023
News
TECH

Biden’s Google Anti-Trust Trial Begins Today.

The Biden Department of Justice’s landmark anti-trust case against Google’s search engine monopoly is set to begin today, with the lawsuit – originally filed in October of 2020 – alleging that Google formed an anticompetitive monopoly through revenue-sharing agreements with companies like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla, which make Google the default search engine on web browsers and mobile phones. Google contests the claims, arguing its agreements are not exclusive and that device default settings can be easily changed. The trial is expected to last for eight to ten weeks, and an initial ruling is not expected until next year.

If Google loses, it could lead to major changes in its business arrangements and potential divestments. The outcome also has implications for other investigations and lawsuits faced by tech giants like Amazon, Apple, and Ticketmaster, as it could shape how U.S. courts and enforcers handle anti-competitive behavior by dominant companies that establish monopoly power.

The trial is being presided over by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. It is expected to take years before a final decision is reached. If Google loses, a second trial will be needed to determine an appropriate remedy, followed by potential appeals that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The trial is considered a key legal precedent for determining how companies can leverage their dominance in one market to gain an advantage in another.

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The Biden Department of Justice's landmark anti-trust case against Google's search engine monopoly is set to begin today, with the lawsuit – originally filed in October of 2020 – alleging that Google formed an anticompetitive monopoly through revenue-sharing agreements with companies like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla, which make Google the default search engine on web browsers and mobile phones. Google contests the claims, arguing its agreements are not exclusive and that device default settings can be easily changed. The trial is expected to last for eight to ten weeks, and an initial ruling is not expected until next year. show more
September 4, 2023
Jake Welch
News
TECH

‘BanTheADL’ Trends as Musk Proposes Poll on Removing Anti-Speech Org.

The hashtag ‘#BanTheADL’ trended on X (formerly Twitter) this weekend, with users calling for the removal of the far-left Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as its chief, Jonathan Greenblatt, pushed for more restrictions on free speech.

Greenblatt, a former White House special assistant to Barack Obama, boasted on X of his “very frank + productive conversation with [X CEO Linda Yaccarino] yesterday about X, what works and what doesn’t, and where it needs to go to address hate effectively on the platform… [The ADL] will be vigilant and give her and [Elon Musk] credit if the service gets better…and reserve the right to call them out until it does.”

His post has been viewed over 4.3 million times as of Monday morning, but received only 144 reposts and 361 likes. The vast majority of engagement was negative, with over 89,000 people posting the #BanTheADL hashtag in response to his anti-free speech lobbying.

X owner Elon Musk responded to the controversy by proposing a user referendum on whether the ADL should be banned: “[The] ADL has tried very hard to strangle X/Twitter,” Musk wrote. “Perhaps we should run a poll on this.”

The ADL has become infamous for its hostility towards conservatives, and is accused of regularly “faking” crime statistics to argue right-wingers are the country’s biggest threat. Once a bastion of tackling actual anti-Semitism, the group became wildly politicized under Greenblatt, and is now perceived as little more than a mechanism by which to attack the political right. In doing so, it has actually diluted the cause of confronting actual anti-Semitism.

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The hashtag '#BanTheADL' trended on X (formerly Twitter) this weekend, with users calling for the removal of the far-left Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as its chief, Jonathan Greenblatt, pushed for more restrictions on free speech. show more
musk
August 31, 2023
Jack Montgomery
News
TECH

Musk’s ‘X’ to Collect Personal, Biometric Data for Jobs, AI.

Elon Musk will require X (formerly Twitter) users to let him collect their “biometric information” and “personal information” including “employment history, educational history, employment preferences, skills and abilities, job search activity and engagement, and so on” from September 29th.

The biometric information is “undefined” on the user’s supposed “consent” but could include face, fingerprint, and voice recognition, and will be used for “safety, security, and identification purposes”.

The personal information will be used to “recommend potential jobs for you” and also “share[d] with potential employers when you apply for a job”.

Combined with “publicly available information” scraped from all manner of sources, this newly-collected data will also be used “to help train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models,” the new policy states.

Musk continues to advertise X as a burgeoning free speech platform under his ownership, but the implementation of invasive data collection alongside the hiring of censorious executives and the suspension of users for expressing support for capital punishment, for example, suggests it may soon be little different from Jack Dorsey-era Twitter.

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Elon Musk will require X (formerly Twitter) users to let him collect their "biometric information" and "personal information" including "employment history, educational history, employment preferences, skills and abilities, job search activity and engagement, and so on" from September 29th. show more