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Category: Social media

The day Grok told everyone on X about ‘white genocide’

The day Grok told everyone on X about ‘white genocide’

Ali Breland and Matteo Wong write: Yesterday, a user on X saw a viral post of Timothée Chalamet celebrating courtside at a Knicks game and had a simple question: Who was sitting next to him? The user tapped in Grok, X’s proprietary chatbot, as people often do when they want help answering questions on the platform—the software functions like ChatGPT, except it can be summoned via reply to a post. And for the most part, Grok has performed reasonably well…

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They criticized Musk on X. Then their reach collapsed

They criticized Musk on X. Then their reach collapsed

The New York Times reports: Anastasia Maria Loupis runs a popular account on X that used to receive hundreds of thousands of views each day for her far-right commentary, conspiracy theories and antisemitic statements. In late December, she criticized Elon Musk, the site’s owner, over his support for visa programs that many of President Trump’s supporters despise. Her reach plummeted on X and never recovered. When Mr. Musk purchased X in 2022, he promised to create a free speech haven…

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How Ed Martin ghostwrote online attacks against a judge — and still became a top Trump prosecutor

How Ed Martin ghostwrote online attacks against a judge — and still became a top Trump prosecutor

By Jeremy Kohler and Andy Kroll This story was originally published by ProPublica The attacks on Judge John Barberis in the fall of 2016 appeared on his personal Facebook page. They impugned his ethics, criticized a recent ruling and branded him as a “politician” with the “LOWEST rating for a judge in Illinois.” Barberis, a state court judge in an Illinois county across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, was presiding over a nasty legal battle for control over the…

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Leaks reveal massive Israeli campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Facebook and Instagram

Leaks reveal massive Israeli campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Facebook and Instagram

Waqas Ahmed, Nicholas Rodelo, Ryan Grim, and Murtaza Hussain report: A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News. The data show that Meta has complied with 94% of takedown requests issued by Israel since October 7, 2023. Israel is the biggest originator of takedown requests globally by far, and Meta has followed…

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Facebook whistleblower testifies that company undermined national security by working with China

Facebook whistleblower testifies that company undermined national security by working with China

The Independent reports: A Meta whistleblower testified before Congress Wednesday about how she witnessed the company repeatedly “undermine‬ U.S. national security.” Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook employee who released an explosive memoir last month accusing the social media giant of retaliating against her after she reported sexual misconduct, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism with another revelatory allegation: the company was engaged in “illegal and dangerous activities” with China. Wynn-Williams worked at Facebook for seven years,…

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Listening to no one else, Trump is ‘at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore,’ says White House official

Listening to no one else, Trump is ‘at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore,’ says White House official

The Washington Post reports: After deliberations [on determining tariff rates] that went late into Tuesday, Trump didn’t decide on the final plan until about 1 p.m. Wednesday — less than three hours ahead of his Rose Garden announcement. Inside and outside the White House, advisers say Trump is unbowed even as the world reels from the biggest increase in trade hostilities in a century. They say Trump is unperturbed by negative headlines or criticism from foreign leaders. He is determined…

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The gleeful cruelty of the White House X account. Welcome to the 4chan administration

The gleeful cruelty of the White House X account. Welcome to the 4chan administration

Charlie Warzel writes: On March 18, the official White House account on X posted two photographs of Virginia Basora-Gonzalez, a woman who was arrested earlier this month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The post described her as a “previously deported alien felon convicted of fentanyl trafficking,” and celebrated her capture as a win for the administration. In one photograph, Basora-Gonzalez is shown handcuffed and weeping in a public parking lot. The White House account posted about Basora-Gonzalez again yesterday—this…

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Outside America, Musk’s X is a foreign influence threat

Outside America, Musk’s X is a foreign influence threat

Tom Uren writes: We have consistently argued for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. as it could be a powerful tool for the Chinese government to interfere with American political discourse. For U.S. allies, a similar argument now applies to X. Commentators in Canada and the United Kingdom have already floated the idea of banning X. Meanwhile, in France, prosecutors have announced they’ve opened an investigation into X over alleged algorithmic bias. The investigation was launched after the prosecutor’s office received complaints about X’s interference in French democratic debate….

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Mark Zuckerberg wants ‘all the good, bad and ugly’ on display except when it’s about him

Mark Zuckerberg wants ‘all the good, bad and ugly’ on display except when it’s about him

Meta’s Joel Kaplan announced in January, “Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely. That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression.” Steven Levy writes: It was Meta itself that first told me about the new book attacking Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the allegedly bankrupt morals of their company. On March 7, a Meta PR…

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Elon Musk’s entire empire mapped by Wired magazine

Elon Musk’s entire empire mapped by Wired magazine

  There’s barely a place left on Earth outside the gravitational pull of Elon Musk’s empire. How far does Elon’s clout really stretch—and what conflicts of interest are emerging as he wields the power of the federal government? WIRED pulled the data and mapped out the key places that shape Elon’s Empire.

Ukraine: The past, present, and future of Russian disinformation

Ukraine: The past, present, and future of Russian disinformation

Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren write: On the morning of Nov. 7, 2024, the pro-Russian X account @OCanonist posted a video of men in Ukrainian military uniforms shooting and setting ablaze a mannequin wearing a Trump 2024 T-shirt and red hat. With it, @OCanonist shared the message, “It’s time to defund this degenerate country.” Over the course of the following day, the post was shared more than 26,000 times and viewed by 12.4 million users. From X, the video exploded…

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Musk operatives granted access to confidential info about X’s competitors

Musk operatives granted access to confidential info about X’s competitors

Caleb Ecarma and Judd Legum write: With Elon Musk’s social media platform X poised to launch a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment services, Musk’s associates have been granted access to confidential information about X’s competitors, an official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) told Musk Watch. Staffers at the United States Department of Government Efficiency Service, or DOGE, a White House body led by Musk, embedded themselves at the CFPB late last week. Politico reported on Saturday that Office…

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Gambling firms secretly sharing users’ data with Facebook which it uses to promote gambling

Gambling firms secretly sharing users’ data with Facebook which it uses to promote gambling

The Observer reports: Gambling companies are covertly tracking visitors to their websites and sending their data to Facebook’s parent company without consent in an apparent breach of data protection laws. The information is then being used by Facebook’s owner, Meta, to profile people as gamblers and flood them with ads for casinos and betting sites, the Observer can reveal. A hidden tracking tool embedded in dozens of UK gambling websites has been extracting visitors’ data – including details of the…

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Musk applies his Twitter destruction playbook on the U.S. government and it’s even more dangerous

Musk applies his Twitter destruction playbook on the U.S. government and it’s even more dangerous

Mike Masnick writes: Remember how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter by ripping apart its infrastructure without understanding it? Now imagine that same playbook applied to the federal government. It’s happening, and the stakes are exponentially higher. When reviewing Kate Conger and Ryan Mac’s book “Character Limit” last fall, I highlighted two devastating patterns in Musk’s management: his authoritarian impulse to (sometimes literally) demolish systems without understanding them, and his tendency to replace existing, nuanced solutions with far worse alternatives (even when…

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Elon Musk is deliberately ‘strengthening those who are weakening Europe’

Elon Musk is deliberately ‘strengthening those who are weakening Europe’

Anne Applebaum writes: Only one institution on the planet is large enough and powerful enough to write and enforce laws that could make the tech companies change their policies. Partly for that reason, the European Union may soon become one of the Trump administration’s most prominent targets. In theory, the EU’s Digital Services Act, which took full effect last year, can be used to regulate, fine, and, in extreme circumstances, ban internet companies whose practices clash with European laws. Yet…

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How youth pop culture has embraced Trump

How youth pop culture has embraced Trump

Brock Colyar writes: [T]he youngest, most online members of Trump’s party have acquired his knack for turning the culture wars into something as entertaining as reality TV. Attention is power. One honoree of the night [at the Power 30 Awards, held at Sax nightclub in Washington DC, the night before the inauguration] was DuRousseau, whose TikTok is full of sometimes transphobic rants for a target audience he describes as “Beverly Hills conservatives.” “When you look back, this was the first…

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