Quote:The U.S. House of Representatives has subpoenaed several top Biden administration officials, including the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over the administration’s coordination with Big Tech to censor users.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent the subpoenas on April 28 to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, and James Rubin, an official at the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC).
All three have responded inadequately to requests to provide documents, including communications between their respective entities and social media platforms, Jordan said in letters accompanying the subpoenas. CISA and GEC have not responded at all to the requests, while the CDC has not provided any of the requested documents, he said.
“Freedom of speech is one of the most important rights we have in this country,” Jordan told the Washington Examiner. “The collusion between our federal government and Big Tech undermines First Amendment principles and should be investigated.”
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A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, CISA’s parent agency, said that the department “does not censor speech and does not request that content be taken down by social media companies.”
“Instead of working with the Department, as numerous committees have done this Congress, the House Judiciary Committee has unnecessarily escalated to a subpoena,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email, adding that the agency “will continue cooperating appropriately with Congressional oversight requests, all while faithfully working to protect our nation from terrorism and targeted violence, secure our borders, respond to natural disasters, defend against cyberattacks, and more.”
Quote:A Virginia district court on April 28 rejected Google’s request to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about the company’s advertising business.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, accuses Google of monopolizing key digital advertising technologies, known as the “ad tech stack,” in violation of antitrust laws. These technologies are crucial for website publishers to sell ads and for advertisers to reach potential customers.
Eric Mahr, Google’s lawyer, argued that the government’s claim of Google being a monopoly was not justified as the company’s ad business does not meet the 70 percent market share benchmark. He also cited other social media platforms such as Facebook and Tiktok as viable options for advertisers.
In court documents, Google drew a comparison to an unsuccessful antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, a concert promoter that was accused of holding a monopoly on outdoor amphitheaters. The lawsuit was dismissed because the plaintiffs did not consider alternative options such as indoor concert halls and arenas.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema highlighted that the key issue in the case will be how to define the market in which Google is accused of having a monopoly. However, she deemed the government’s claims plausible enough to continue with the case, even though the government’s burden of proof will increase during the trial.
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This marks Google’s second loss in the Alexandria federal court. Earlier, Google had tried to consolidate the case with a related lawsuit in New York, which had been ongoing for years. However, Brinkema rejected Google’s request and ordered the case to be heard in the Alexandria courthouse.
Nine states, including Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia, joined eight others as plaintiffs in the antitrust lawsuit against Google earlier this month.
Many times we have heard these monopolistic giants say that limiting their share of the market deters investment and technological innovation.
How easily they forget how they have been firing employees like never before.
Were are those impressive investments?
What about all those professionals that were working on innovative projects that still got kicked out in the past 12 months?
Quote:Yaccarino is a highly respected advertising executive who stepped down from NBCUniversal "effectively immediately" on Friday as rumors swirled that she would replace the mercurial tycoon as Twitter CEO.
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Musk on Thursday teased Yaccarino's hiring saying in a tweet that he had hired a woman to replace him as boss of Twitter and its newly named X Corporation parent, but without revealing the name.
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Yaccarino's departure from the company that owns NBC, Universal and Telemundo -- where she has been since 2011 -- came a few weeks after she interviewed Musk at a marketing conference in Miami.
Asked by Yaccarino at the time how it's been going since the acquisition, Musk replied: "It's going well... It's entertaining... It's a trainwreck sometimes."
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In a tweet, Musk said he would remain in charge of design and technology at Twitter, with Yaccarino focusing primarily on business operations and turning Twitter into an "everything app" called X.
Musk's history with the letter X goes back to 1999 when he helped created X.com, an online bank that was bought and later morphed into PayPal.
Quote:NBC News reports that 29-year-old YouTuber Trevor Jacob has confessed to purposely causing the crash of his own airplane in a calculated attempt to boost viewership on his channel and secure a lucrative sponsorship agreement. Jacob’s admission came as part of a plea agreement filed in federal court in Los Angeles, where he pleaded guilty to the charge of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation. This offense carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
The video at the center of the controversy, titled “I Crashed My Airplane,” was uploaded by Jacob on December 23, 2021, and has attracted significant attention, accumulating nearly 3.1 million views at the latest count. The footage captures Jacob, described as an experienced pilot and skydiver, taking off from Lompoc City Airport in a Taylorcraft BL-65 approximately one month prior to its release.
Approximately one minute into the video, while flying over the picturesque landscape of Los Padres National Forest, a camera mounted on the aircraft captures a purported malfunction of the propeller. The footage shows Jacob hastily exiting the plane and deploying a parachute mere moments before the aircraft crashes into the mountains below.
Initially, Jacob vehemently denied any deliberate crash, stating to the New York Times shortly after the incident, “I’ll happily say I did not purposely crash my plane for views on YouTube.” However, the plea agreement reveals an alternative motive behind the crash.
As per the agreement, Jacob had planned to exploit the video for a sponsorship deal with an undisclosed wallet company. The video aimed to feature Jacob parachuting from the plane, followed by its dramatic descent and crash, subtly promoting the wallet brand.
...In an email exchange with an FAA investigator approximately one month after the crash, Jacob intentionally misled authorities by claiming ignorance regarding the wreckage’s whereabouts. In reality, he had enlisted the services of a helicopter company based in Paso Robles, which removed the wreckage from the mountains and transported it to a trailer.
Not only did he crash the plane, he destroyed a portion of a protected area AND lied to the FAA, a federal agency, in the process WHILE removing the evidence from the crash site. He truly deserves to spend some good time in jail for all the absurd things he has done!
Quote:A newly revised spy law enables China to arbitrarily acquire intellectual properties (IPs) to take over the United States, according to cyber security expert Casey Fleming.
On April 26, the Chinese communist regime passed the new version of its anti-espionage law, which will take effect on July 1.
The revision has expanded the definition of espionage, making it broader and vaguer, which increased the range of information and resources that Beijing considers relevant to national security.
For example, the scope of the subject of stealing secrets is expanded to “other documents, data, materials, and items related to national security and interests.”
The newly revised anti-espionage law also classifies selling out to espionage organizations and their agents as espionage, as well as “conducting cyberattacks against state organs, secret-related units, or key information infrastructure.”
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“Companies doing business in China are ordered by Chinese communist law to share all of their data and all of their IP with the Chinese Communist Party. And they’re ordered to work with a sister company in China, which is completely controlled by the CCP, and they are again ordered to turn over all data and intellectual property,” Fleming, CEO of intelligence and security strategy firm BlackOps Partners, recently told the “China in Focus” program on The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD.
“Now think about that. You want us to turn over all of our research, and the Research and Development (R&D), all of our dollars that would cost us to develop that R&D, and to turn it over to our competitor who we know is going to use it against us economically, to produce our products at a much lower price to our customers, but even more so using our data against us in their weaponization of this data to weaken and take over the free world,” he added.
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“The biggest issue is they want to destroy the U.S. economy. They want to move our money, our economy into the Chinese Communist regime to support it. And that happens every time they steal intellectual property, [conduct] semiconductor theft,” he said.
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CBS News cited Bill Evanina, a former top counterintelligence official, who said that the Chinese-built commercial aircraft Comac C919 is “proof” of the Chinese regime’s espionage.
“And now every one of these C919, which is pretty much an exact copy, will take $100 million out of the U.S. economy and the French and EU economy because it’s also competitive with the Airbus 320 and 321. And that will power the CCP,” he said.
If you were ever planning to use CBDC's in Florida, you better think it twice...
Quote:After a flurry of bill-signing throughout the week, Florida Gov. Ron Desantis signed into law two more measures on May 12—one banning central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the state, and the other protecting the privacy of gun buyers.
Allowing centralized digital currency would give too much power to the federal government, DeSantis said at a press conference in Fort Myers. And credit card companies shouldn’t be able to flag transactions of gun retailers and purchasers, he said, before signing the two bills.
The Biden administration is considering the implementation of CBDC, which is much like cryptocurrency, but controlled by the Federal Reserve. Use of it would quickly lead to a “Big Brother” situation, with the government tracking Americans’ purchases, DeSantis warned.
It was a reference to a fictional tyrant and symbol in the dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” by George Orwell. In the story, “Big Brother is watching you” is a slogan used as a warning to keep inhabitants submissive to the complete control of the totalitarian state described in the 1949 work.
Use of CBDC could lead to the federal government withholding funds, in an effort to fulfill social agendas, DeSantis said. For example, the government may control how much gasoline a person was allowed to buy, or whether someone could purchase a gun.
It could tie the use of money to “social credit scores,” like those used in China, he said. Social credit scores can be used to rank citizens, meting out punishment for unauthorized behavior, and rewarding actions considered good or acceptable.
With the signing of Senate Bill 7054 into law, CBDC was banned in Florida, because the state’s uniform commercial code does not accept it within its definition of money, DeSantis said.
The bill also forbids using CBDCs issued by foreign government reserves and central banks, including China’s digital yuan.
If you think
this is an exaggeration, remember what happened in Canada during the time the truckers were protesting near Ottawa while Trudeau was hiding somewhere else.
Quote:U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using an artificial intelligence (AI) data collection tool to collect information from social media activity that can in some cases be linked to individuals’ social security or driver’s license numbers, according to a CBP document describing the software tool. The document was obtained by Vice magazine’s tech site Motherboard via a Freedom of Information Act request, and described in a May 17 report.
The CBP document describes the open-source AI tool, dubbed Babel X, which was developed by Babel Street, a U.S. company focused on intelligence gathering. Babel Street’s top leadership and board of advisors include tech industry experts, veteran military leadership, and former intelligence officers.
CBP is a federal agency under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CBP submitted the document, termed a Privacy Threshold Analysis (PTA), to DHS to “continue to pilot the use of Babel Street’s Babel X platform.”
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The PTA describes Babel X as a multilingual tool that gathers publicly available information, including social media activity. Designed for use by the intelligence community and law enforcement, the sophisticated tool allows CBP to screen travelers, including U.S. citizens, refugees, and people seeking asylum.
Babel X is “geo-enabled,” analyzes texts, and can monitor web activity on the public, “dark,” and “deep” webs. The dark web is a portion of the internet that is not indexed by search engines and functions on a different software infrastructure. It is often used for organized criminal activity.
The Babel X platform can search for keywords or phrases on more than 52 social media websites, in millions of web addresses, and in 200 languages, allowing users to enter English terms and return foreign language results.
CBP says it uses the tool to detect information that is “derogatory” or could show a threat to national security or CBP personnel.
Babel already sounded weird but the tool's capabilities make it look as a precursor of SkyNet's total control of the internet traffic.
Quote:In a May 18 letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Twitter said that Microsoft “may have been in violation” of multiple provisions of the Twitter Developer Agreement for an “extended period of time.” Such violations include “excessive or abusive” use of Twitter APIs, using it for “unauthorized uses and purposes” like sharing data with government agencies, and utilizing the APIs for “expressly prohibited use cases.”
“For years, Microsoft has used Twitter’s standard developer APIs free of charge in order to benefit from Twitter’s data and services in key Microsoft products that generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for Microsoft annually.”
But in April, Microsoft stopped using these APIs after Twitter began charging for the access. Microsoft refused to pay “even a discounted rate for continued access to Twitter’s APIs and content,” the letter said.
Until then, Microsoft is said to have operated eight separate Twitter API apps that provided data and functionality to at least five Microsoft products and services—Xbox One, Ads, Bing Pages, Power Platform, and Azure.
Twitter’s letter comes as companies with large swathes of data attempt to stop AI systems from free or cheap access to such data. As big tech firms race to build AI models, data ownership is increasingly becoming a conflict point.
Vodafone would cut another 11,000 jobs
Quote:The UK’s largest broadband and mobile provider will cut up to 55,000 jobs—more than 40 percent of its workforce—by the end of the decade amid plans to shift to artificial intelligence (AI) and automated services.
Telecoms giant BT Group has around 130,000 employees but said it plans to reduce that number to between 75,000 and 95,000 by 2030, which means between 40,000 and 55,000 roles could be cut.
The company has been working through a transformation plan to build a national fibre network and roll out high-speed 5G mobile services.
Chief executive Philip Jansen said that BT will rely on a much smaller workforce and significantly reduced cost base after completing the fibre roll-out, digitising the way it works, adopting AI, and simplifying its structure.
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On Tuesday BT’s rival Vodafone announced plans to cut 11,000 jobs worldwide over a three-year period—the biggest job cuts in the history of the company, which employs around 100,000 people in Europe and Africa.
Quote:Additions to the Online Safety Bill will make it a crime to encourage someone to cause serious self-harm, regardless of whether or not victims go on to injure themselves.
The offence will add to existing laws which make it illegal to encourage or assist someone to take their own life.
Ministers previously announced the promotion of self-harm would be criminalised but on Thursday confirmed the maximum penalty for the offence upon conviction would be imprisonment for five years.
Police or prosecutors will only have to prove communication was intended to encourage or assist serious self-harm amounting to grievous bodily harm—this could include serious injuries such as broken bones or permanent scarring.
General encouragement of self-harm, starving, and not taking prescribed medication will be covered by the law, the MoJ said.
The offence will apply even where the perpetrator does not know the person they are targeting.
Quote:Fidelity holds a stake in Twitter after backing Musk’s takeover.
Bloomberg reports that Twitter is now only worth a third of the $44 billion that tech tycoon Elon Musk paid for the social media giant according to Fidelity Investments. “Twitter’s value has seen a significant decline since Musk’s takeover,” a Fidelity spokesperson said. “Our recent evaluation of our equity stake in the company reflects this downturn.”
Elon Musk, who paid $44 billion for Twitter, including $33.5 billion in equity, has openly acknowledged that he overpaid for the service. “Twitter is worth less than half what I paid for it,” Musk confessed in a recent statement.
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Under Musk’s management, the company has a $13 billion debt load. As Musk revealed in March, his erratic decision-making and difficulties with content moderation have caused a 50 percent decline in advertising revenue. Selling Twitter Blue subscriptions in an effort to make up for lost income has so far not been successful. Less than one percent of Twitter’s monthly users had signed up as of the end of March.
In April, Musk openly admitted that legal pressure was the driving force behind his purchase of the social media firm. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the most recent markdown subtracts about $850 million from Musk’s $187 billion fortune. Musk’s wealth has increased by more than $48 billion this year, largely as a result of a 63 percent increase in the share price of Tesla.
Quote:The software works by embedding information about a picture’s origin from the moment the picture is captured.
The Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), which was launched by Adobe in collaboration with Twitter and the New York Times last year announced a partnership with Nikon and Leica to bring image marking technology to the Nikon Z9 and Leica M11 cameras.
The technology, at least according to CAI, will increase trust in photographers’ digital work by securing provenance information at the point of capture, including location, time, and how the image was taken.
Provenance is the facts of a piece of digital content like origin. CAI, launched in 2019, aims to restore trust in images people see online by embedding provenance information from the time an image is first captured.
The CAI also joined forces with Project Origin, a similar effort started by Microsoft and the BBC, also focused on tracing the history of digital images, to create the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).
C2PA describes itself as “an open technical standard providing publishers, creators, and consumers the ability to trace the origin of different types of media,” with the goal of “address[ing] the prevalence of misleading information online through the development of technical standards for certifying the source and history (or provenance) of media content.”
Promoted by the media, deep state, and left-wing NGOs, “misinformation” in the Trump years became synonymous with censoring conservative voices on social media platforms.
Quote:Foad Dabiri, whose LinkedIn profile says he is Twitter’s engineering lead for growth, announced his resignation but did not mention what prompted the move. He later noted that his decision and timing were “independent of any recent events.”
In his resignation statement, Dabiri reflected on his time at Twitter, which he divided into two distinct eras: pre- and post-acquisition by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk last year.
“After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday,” Dabiri wrote in a heartfelt message offering gratitude to colleagues.
Both eras, he said, “came with their fair share of challenges, but they also shared a grand mission and a team of extraordinary individuals,” he said.
During the “Twitter 2.0” phase under Musk’s leadership, the company underwent significant changes aimed at achieving profitability, resulting in a substantial reduction in the workforce within the initial months.
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In response to a request for comment, Dabiri directed The Epoch Times to a new post: “And since some have asked, my decision and the timing of it are independent of any recent events,” the post reads.
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Hosted on Twitter Spaces by Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks, the event encountered intermittent sound issues during its initial moments.
With over 500,000 Twitter users joining the event, it was eventually paused and then restarted, causing a delay of nearly half an hour before DeSantis could deliver his announcement.
Quote:Meta Platforms Inc., owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, slashed jobs across its business and operations units on Wednesday as part of a plan announced last fall to eliminate 10,000 jobs in the course of a broader restructuring program.
Dozens of Meta employees from enterprise engineering, marketing, corporate communications, site security, program management, and content strategy took to LinkedIn to announce that they had been laid off.
According to the LinkedIn posts, the social media giant also cut staff working on its privacy and integrity teams.
This is the third round of layoffs at Meta since last November, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a blog post that he would let go of more than 11,000 employees—some 13 percent of Meta personnel—after overestimating the e-commerce growth trend in the wake of some 18 years of seemingly unstoppable expansion.
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According to Zuckerberg, some 4,000 people were let go in April. These layoffs primarily hit tech teams—mostly staff from content design and user-experience research, while programmers were retained.
This month’s layoffs should be the last round of redundancies at Meta, following Zuckerberg’s pledge to restructure business teams “substantially” and return to a “more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles.”
The company’s shares gained ground slightly this week in a broadly weaker market.
Quote:A teenage TikTok prankster was arrested and charged with breaching a court order two days after he was given the order for entering a private home without permission.
Bacari-Bronze O’Garro, 18, known on social media platforms as Mizzy, appeared at Thames Magistrates’ Court on Saturday morning, three days after he had appeared at the same court.
O’Garro pleaded not guilty to three counts of breaching a Criminal Behaviour Order. He was remanded into custody until the next hearing, which is scheduled for Tuesday.
During Saturday’s hearing, Rose Edwin, prosecuting, said O’Garro had posted two videos on social media without the consent of the people featured and one video of him visiting Westfield Centre in Stratford—activities he had been banned from doing.
The teenager from Hackney gained notoriety recently after videos of him pranking people went viral on TikTok.
In one of the videos taken on May 15 for a TikTok trend of walking into random houses, he entered a private home, where a family with children live.
Appearing in court on Wednesday, O’Garro admitted to one count of breaching a community protection notice (CPN) issued on May 11, 2022.
He really wants the
judge to send him straight to jail for several years if deemed necessary.