Quote:Twitter “just freelanced” its baseless decision to censor The Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden laptop scoop in the run up to the 2020 election — with top-level workers at the social media giant agreeing that controversial decision was “f–ked,” damning insider communications released by CEO Elon Musk Friday reveal.
The chaos and confusion behind closed doors at Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the October 2020 Hunter Biden expose show that a small group of top-level execs decided to label the Post’s story as “hacked material” without any evidence — behind the back of then-CEO and founder Jack Dorsey.
Musk tweeted a link to the account of independent journalist Matt Taibbi shortly after 6 p.m., who shed light on Twitter’s shady censorship decision by posting what appeared to be redacted emails between Twitter employees.
...
According to Taibbi, Twitter’s former head of legal, policy, and trust Vijaya Gadde played a “key role” in the censorship decision.
...
Several Twitter sources reportedly told Taibbi that they remember hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement in the summer of 2022 about foreign hacking, but no evidence has been found about government involvement specifically centered on The Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Seriously, I wouldn't hire a lawyer that breaks the law at her convenience.
Quote:Outspoken conservative actor James Woods — a target of Twitter censorship at the Democratic National Committee’s behest ahead of the 2020 election — is threatening to lead a class action lawsuit against the social media giant and the DNC over the damage done to his career and reputation.
“How would you like to fund a class action suit for those who were suppressed?” Woods asked Elon Musk Saturday, in a tweet thanking the billionaire — Twitter’s new owner — for exposing politically motivated suppression of Republicans on the site. “I’ll be happy to be lead plaintiff.”
A Woods tweet from 2020 featuring a photo of a half-naked, apparently drug-smoking Hunter Biden — taken from the scandalous laptop that The Post exposed — was targeted for removal by Democratic Party operatives, according to a Friday document dump of internal messages among Twitter insiders.
...
“I will be getting a lawyer. I will be suing the Democratic National Committee no matter what,” Woods told Tucker Carlson of Fox News late Friday.
He claims that Twitter destroyed his career when they censored his tweets. Honestly, neither Hollywood nor Old Twitter have been very friendly with conservatives in the last couple of years. I mean, they had plenty of excuses to attack him over and over again.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:The legislation was introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in March 2021 and would effectively remove some existing antitrust laws; making it easier for small news publishers to collectively negotiate with tech giants such as Facebook for a larger share of digital advertising profits.
JCPA has received backing from dozens of democratic and Republican lawmakers but not everyone agrees with the bill.
Andy Stone, Meta’s head of policy communications, wrote on Twitter on Monday that the legislation is “ill-considered”, and noted that Congress is reportedly considering passing the bill as part of its annual defense bill in December.
Stone said that if lawmakers were to pass the bill, Meta “will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions.”
He added that the bill fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put content on the platform because “it benefits their bottom line – not the other way around.”
Additionally, Stone said the bill would set a “terrible precedent for all American businesses” because it would create a “cartel-like entity which requires one private company to subsidize other private entities.”
This is not the first time that Meta has issued such a threat; last year a similar Australian law, which went into effect in March, saw Facebook briefly block all news on its feeds in the country. The tech giant later reversed its decision after holding talks with the Australian government.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:“In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,” wrote Musk on Twitter. Musk did not offer any more details on Baker’s exit or what role he played at the firm.
Musk, the new owner of Twitter, was responding to an article penned by Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University law professor and political commentator, who noted that Baker was a former FBI general counsel. Baker has not issued a public comment about his apparent departure from the social media firm.
It came days after Musk provided internal Twitter information to journalist Matt Taibbi, who had published details about the social media platform’s decision to essentially censor the New York Post’s report about Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020.
Quote:Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan issued an emergency cybersecurity directive on Tuesday, prohibiting the use of Russian and Chinese-influenced products and platforms like TikTok in the executive branch of the state.
In a press release, the governor’s office said platforms like TikTok present risks to the state, possibly being involved in cyber-espionage, surveillance of government entities, and inappropriate collection of sensitive personal information.
...
The directive is not just focused on TikTok, but also applies to ZTE Corp, Huawei Technologies, Tencent Holdings, Alibaba products, and Kaspersky.
Agencies under the executive arm of Maryland’s government were ordered to remove the products from state networks, put measures in place to prevent the products from being reinstalled, and implement restrictions on the network that prevent use or access to the prohibited services.
...
The move comes more than a week after South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem enacted similar measures, prohibiting the use of TikTok by state agencies, and a day after South Carolina's Gov. Henry McMaster also banned the app on state devices and networks.
Noem said accessing TikTok would be a criminal offense because the app poses a threat to the state and the personal data of its residents.
Quote:Apple is being sued by a pair of women who say the company's AirTag tracking devices made it easier for former partners and other stalkers to track victims down.
The proposed class-action suit filed Monday in San Francisco federal court, Hughes et al v. Apple Inc., contends the tech giant has been unable to protect users from unwanted trafficking through AirTag since launching what it called the "stalker proof" device in April 2021.
Lauren Hughes said her boyfriend had tracked her down after placing an AirTag in her car's wheel well. The other plaintiff said her estranged husband tracked her after putting an AirTag in their child's backpack.
While the $29 AirTags are supposed to be used for people to find lost items, law enforcement has said some people use them for criminal or malicious purposes.
The women said AirTags had been linked to murders from Ohio and Indiana earlier in the year and are seeking unspecified damages for U.S. owners of iOS or Android-based accessories who were tracked by AirTag or are "at risk" of being stalked due to the company's alleged negligence.
Quote:More than a dozen journalists and staff at the Salvadoran news outlet El Faro filed suit against the embattled Israeli spyware firm NSO Group on Wednesday, alleging that the company violated U.S. state and federal laws by enabling the illegal surveillance of their phones.
At least 22 staffers at the news outlet were targeted by an unknown party using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware between June 2020 and November 2021, according to the complaint filed in U.S. federal court. If successfully implanted on targeted devices, the malware allowed the attacker to access contact lists, calendar entries, text and instant messages, notes, emails, search histories and GPS locations, the complaint alleges.
The suit — the first of its kind brought by journalists against NSO Group — asks a federal judge to rule that the Israeli firm violated state and federal hacking laws and to require the company to “identify, return, and then delete all information it obtained through these attacks; to prohibit NSO Group from deploying Pegasus again against the plaintiffs; and to require NSO Group to identify the client that ordered the surveillance,” according to a statement from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the group representing the journalists.
The Pegasus attacks occurred as the reporters were reporting on “abuses by the Salvadoran government,” the complaint alleges, and while the reporters were communicating with confidential sources, “including U.S. Embassy officials.”
...
A joint investigation by the Toronto-based Citizen Lab and digital civil rights group Access Now published in January 2022 alleged that journalists at El Faro and other outlets, along with two independent journalists, were targeted with Pegasus while investigating Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and the Salvadoran government. The investigation tied the attacks to a “Pegasus customer operating almost exclusively in El Salvador since at least November 2019” dubbed “TOROGOZ.”
Quote:The Federal Communications Commission took its most aggressive step yet to expunge Chinese tech from U.S. telecom networks with its decision late last week to ban the sale of equipment from companies Congress and the Biden administration deem a national security threat.
But gear from the targeted Chinese tech giants Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua is so deeply embedded within the American telecom and networking landscape, it’ll take years and billions of dollars to effectively eliminate any risk that these companies pose.
While the FCC order is latest in a series of moves that Washington has made to reduce China’s influence, experts say it remains underfunded and offers no clear plan to help telecoms replace existing Chinese parts or find more affordable alternatives.
Friday’s order bans the authorization of selling new equipment from the targeted companies, but equipment already on the market can continue to be sold, blunting the immediate impact of the order.
...
It’s difficult to determine exactly how much technology from Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua exists inside domestic networks. Just considering Huawei and ZTE, which both make an array of networking components, the FCC estimates there are at least 24,000 pieces of equipment from those companies spread across more than 8,000 locations in the U.S. wireless network.
Because of the prevalence of Chinese equipment inside U.S. telecoms, national security officials and China hawks have long warned that Beijing could force Chinese companies to give its security services access to American networks.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday ordered all state agencies in the state to ban video sharing app TikTok on all government-issued devices, joining several Republican-led states in doing the same.
The governor’s office said the “aggressive action” against TikTok comes amid a growing threat of “the Chinese Communist Party gaining access to critical U.S. information and infrastructure.”
...
“TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices—including when, where, and how they conduct Internet activity—and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government,” Abbott stated in a letter to state agencies.
“While TikTok has claimed that it stores U.S. data within the U.S., the company admitted in a letter to Congress that China-based employees can have access to U.S. data. It has also been reported that ByteDance planned to use TikTok location information to surveil individual American citizens.
“Further, under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, all businesses are required to assist China in intelligence work including data sharing, and TikTok’s algorithm has already censored topics politically sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party, including the Tiananmen Square protests.”
TikTok is owned by private Chinese company Bytedance, which is based in Beijing, although it is not registered in China. Abbott’s office noted that TikTok “is owned by a Chinese company that employs Chinese Communist Party members.”
The office also noted that TikTok “has a subsidiary partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party.”
...
The governor also stipulated that each state agency will have until Feb. 15, 2023, to implement its own policy over the use of TikTok on personal devices.
The list of states against TikTok now includes Texas, Maryland, South Dakota and South Carolina.
Quote:The state of Indiana is suing social media giant TikTok, accusing it of falsely claiming the company’s product was safe for children and illicitly sending U.S.-based users’ data to communist China.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita announced two separate lawsuits against the Chinese-owned TikTok on Dec. 7, both related to what he described as “false claims” made by the company about its app, also called TikTok.
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“With this pair of lawsuits, we hope to force TikTok to stop its false, deceptive, and misleading practices, which violate Indiana law.”
The first lawsuit alleges that TikTok lured children onto the platform by misrepresenting the amount of sexual content, profanity, and drug references made as “infrequent” when in fact the app is rife with what he described as “extreme examples of such material.”
The lawsuit further alleges that an essential part of TikTok’s business model is presenting the application as safe and appropriate for children ages 13 to 17.
The second lawsuit asserts that TikTok controls massive amounts of highly-sensitive data and personal information about Indiana consumers and deceived those consumers to believe that this information was protected from the Chinee Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:A North Korean hacking group took advantage of the Oct. 29 Itaewon crowd-crush tragedy, which killed more than 150 people, to trick South Korean targets into downloading malicious files, researchers with Google’s Threat Analysis Group revealed Wednesday.
The discovery of the campaign appears to be just the latest attempt by a notorious North Korean hacking group known as APT37, which has targeted North Korean defectors, policymakers, journalists and human rights activists and others in South Korea for the past decade.
Researchers discovered the campaign after multiple South Korean submissions of a Microsoft Office document titled “221031 Seoul Yongsan Itaewon accident response situation (06:00)” to VirusTotal on Oct. 31.
The hackers appear to have designed the malicious document to install malware on victims’ devices and relied on a recently discovered Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability, CVE-2022-41128, that allows for remote code execution.
Researchers notified Microsoft about the zero-day within a few hours of its discovery Oct. 31 and patches were issued on Nov. 8.
If you need that patch, go get it, guys! Just don't buy some pirate patch, OK?
Quote:Apple will introduce end-to-end encryption for iCloud backups, resolving longstanding criticism over the absence of the safeguard for a key way users store data. The “Advanced Data Protection” mode will be available for all iCloud data including backups, photos and notes, the company announced Wednesday.
Apple already offers end-to-end encryption for iMessage and other iCloud data such as health data. The expanded protections, expected to be rolled out in early 2023, will help users safeguard all iCloud data from unwanted access such as data breaches.
...
To enable encrypted back-ups, users will have to opt-in, meaning that some unencrypted back-up data may still be available to law enforcement requests.
The expanded features have been hailed by privacy groups as welcome but long overdue.
What comes next in the article is what worries me sick, up to some point.
Quote:The FBI criticized the move, saying in a statement that the bureau wants to see technology companies embrace “responsibly managed encryption — encryption that providers can decrypt when served with a legal order and provide that information to law enforcement.” The spread of increasingly sophisticated encryption will hamper investigations, and “the FBI and law enforcement partners need ‘lawful access by design’ to keep pace with adversary tradecraft,” the bureau said.
Technologists and civil society groups maintain that building so-called “lawful access” tools into encryption systems fatally undermines them, exposing them to attack and putting user data at risk.
Quote:Twitter Inc. will relaunch a revamped version of its subscription service Twitter Blue on Monday at a higher price for Apple users, the company said in a tweet on Saturday.
The company said users could subscribe to the revamped service that will allow subscribers to edit tweets, upload 1080p videos, and get a blue checkmark post account verification, for $8 per month through the web but for $11 per month through Apple iOS.
Twitter did not explain why Apple users were being charged more than others on the web but there have been media reports that the company was looking for ways to offset fees charged in the App Store.
Twitter had initially launched Twitter Blue early in November before pausing it as fake accounts mushroomed. It was then scheduled to launch again on Nov. 29 but was pushed back.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Tennessee is taking steps to ban video-sharing app TikTok from government devices alongside a wave of states banning the app due to growing concerns over cybersecurity.
In a statement to WKRN, Gov. Bill Lee’s office said the state “has also taken additional steps to block the access of TikTok” on any personal or state-owned device that connects to the state network.
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) praised the governor’s work to ban access to the app on government networks in the state.
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Tennessee joins other Republican-led states, including Alabama, Utah, Texas, South Dakota, and Maryland, in taking steps to prohibit access to the app on government devices and networks. Nebraska banned TikTok from government devices in August 2020.
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Wisconsin’s Republican congressional delegation called on Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, to ban the app (pdf), while New York state senators introduced legislation on Dec. 9 to prohibit use of the app on state-issued electronic devices. The New York legislation, if passed and signed into law by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, would take effect immediately.
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“We’re disappointed that so many states are jumping on the bandwagon to enact policies based on unfounded, politically charged falsehoods about TikTok,” a spokesperson for TikTok said in an email. “It is unfortunate that the many state agencies, offices, and universities on TikTok in those states will no longer be able to use it to build communities and connect with constituents.”
Quote:An Iranian hacking group previously thought to mainly focus on compromising academics, journalists and human rights workers now appears to have included U.S. politicians, critical infrastructure and medical researchers to its target list, according to the cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.
The group known as TA453 has quietly added “outlier” attacks to its portfolio over the past two years, seemingly working more closely with Iranian state actors to carry out their bidding.
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“We believe that this activity reflects the group’s flexible mandate and possible ad hoc support to hostile operations by Iranian state actors, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” said Sherrod DeGrippo, VP of threat research and detection at Proofpoint.
The group has been quite busy over the past couple of years, she noted. “In 2022 alone, our researchers have observed this group using a social engineering technique we’ve dubbed Multi-Persona Impersonation, and now we’re sharing our observations on anomalous campaigns in which TA453 has deviated from its standard phishing techniques and target victimology.”
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The “outlier” attacks that Proofpoint has attributed to TA453 include campaigns to target medical researchers, travel agencies, an aerospace engineer, and a realtor involved in the sale of multiple homes near the headquarters of U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla.
Proofpoint also tied malware exclusively used by TA453 to target an unnamed “close affiliate” of former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who was the subject of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps death plot beginning in October 2021
Quote:A whopping 96% of the apps used in U.S. K-12 schools share children’s personal information with third parties — including advertisers — often without the knowledge or consent of users or schools.
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Researchers looked at 13 schools in every state, leading to a total of 663 schools representing nearly half a million students. They found that most schools had more than 150 approved technologies for classrooms, a dizzying number for parents and school administrators to monitor. One school had as many as 1,411.
The report follows previous research from the group, formerly known as the Me2B Alliance, finding hundreds of advertisers collected valuable student data from a website specializing in school sports data.
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Nearly a quarter of the apps recommended or required by schools included ads and 13% included retargeting ads, which allow digital advertisers to pinpoint visitors based on previous website visits... Several states including California ban using student data for this kind of targeting.
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One factor driving the data collection is that many of the technologies approved by schools for student use were not designed specifically for educational purposes — and in many cases not designed with children in mind. Such apps included The New York Times app, Duolingo and Amazon shopping.
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Nearly 70% of all apps were observed sending data to Google and 70% included Google software developer kits, an internal software component. Some of this is driven in part by Google’s dominance as a hardware and software supplier for K-12 schools thanks to the ubiquity of Google Classroom.
I get the idea behind using DuoLingo but Amazon shopping!? Are you kidding me?
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” was first introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in April 2021 and will essentially follow up on steps already taken by the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and The Transportation Security Administration to ban the video application from being used on federal government devices.
Specifically, the bill (pdf) requires the Office of Management and Budget to develop standards for executive agencies that require TikTok and any successor application by its owner to be pulled from any device issued by the U.S. or a government corporation.
The bill does include exceptions for law enforcement activities, national security interests, and security researchers in some circumstances.
Although it passed the Senate unanimously on Wednesday, Hawley’s bill will still need to be passed by the House and signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Quote:In its ongoing probe into Twitter’s censorship practices, America First Legal has obtained a fourth set of documents (pdf) exposing a secret Twitter portal, which U.S. government officials used to censor dissenting COVID-19 views in violation of the First Amendment. It’s a revelation Elon Musk described as “extremely concerning.”
The documents reveal that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was collaborating with UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and Mafindo to mitigate “disinformation.” Mafindo is a Facebook third-party fact-checking partner based in Indonesia that is funded by Google, known to have censored searches for keywords like Coronavirus, and COVID-19 as well as blocking information regarding adverse reactions and deaths caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Facebook started its third-party fact-checking program in 2016, working with fact-checkers from around the world who are certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter to rate and review the accuracy of the content on their platform... However, among their advisory board, U.S.-based representatives appear to be from liberal-leaning outlets such as the Washington Post and PolitiFact, which is owned by Poynter.
On March 10, 2021 email from a US Public Policy employee at Facebook to several CDC employees spoke of the social media giant’s “weekly sync with CDC” and how the CDC was “to invite other agencies as needed.”
A March 24, 2021 email from the same Facebook employees to CDC employees said “this is my regular FB meeting and they would like to discuss 2 misinformation topics” and “misinformation that was removed.”
On May 10, 2021, a Twitter employee recommended to a CDC official to enroll in Twitter’s Partner Support Portal, which he described as “the best way to get a spreadsheet like this reviewed.”
On May 11, 2021, the CDC official enrolled her personal Twitter account into Twitter’s Partner Support Portal, which allowed “a special, expedited reporting flow in the Twitter Help Center.”
Posts that Facebook would delete—which the CDC or any other public health authority deemed as “false and likely to contribute to imminent violence of physical harm”—included:
Claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the common flu or cold.
Claims that COVID-19 cannot be transmitted in certain climates, weather conditions, or locations.
Claims that for the average person, something can guarantee prevention from getting COVID-19 or can guarantee recovery from COVID-19 before such a cure or prevention has been approved.
Claims that COVID-19 tests cause cancer.
Claims about the availability or existence of COVID-19 vaccines.
Claims about the safety or serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines.
Claims about the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
Claims about how the COVID-19 vaccine was developed or its ingredients.
Claims involving conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines or vaccine programs.
Editor's Notes
Concerning cancer issues I will leave a news article and an official source here as references.
At room temperature, ethylene oxide is a flammable colorless gas with a sweet odor. It is used primarily to produce other chemicals, including antifreeze. In smaller amounts, ethylene oxide is used as a pesticide and a sterilizing agent. The ability of ethylene oxide to damage DNA makes it an effective sterilizing agent but also accounts for its cancer-causing activity.
...
Despite these precautions, workers and people who live near industrial facilities that produce or use ethylene oxide may be exposed to ethylene oxide through uncontrolled industrial emissions. The general population may also be exposed through tobacco smoke and the use of products that have been sterilized with ethylene oxide, such as medical products, cosmetics, and beekeeping equipment.
Which cancers are associated with exposure to ethylene oxide?
Lymphoma and leukemia are the cancers most frequently reported to be associated with occupational exposure to ethylene oxide. Stomach and breast cancers may also be associated with ethylene oxide exposure.
So we've got 2 postures that somehow contradict themselves. Ethylene oxide CAN be found in nasal swabs so there's SOME chance that the substance could react negatively if stuck deep in your nose. We hope it doesn't because it's a regulated substance, but keep in mind that some tests could have been produced in places like China where we can't fully verify its compliance to international regulations.
This means that there were some motives for a group of people to distrust those swabs, especially because some doctors or nurses or technicians could be so brute as to hit the thin membrane that separates the nasal passage from the brain itself.
Are they right or wrong? I guess only time will tell.
Questioning the efficacy of ANY medication or treatment is a valid practice that depending on the pharmaceutical company's reaction might let it get improved or made more secure than previous versions or not. Sometimes they simply include important notes like contraindications for people's safety. Usually, people claim that they were ignored by Big Pharma or their government. An open discussion could have prevent anybody from falsely judging anybody of lying or harming other parties' reputation.
In regards of the ingredients, I can only say that nobody has been able to prove stuff like that vaxxes include graphene or nanobots or weird micro-surveillance chips and similar stuff. Thus, some or all of those theories might only be good for novels where facts don't matter as much as in newspaper articles.
Quote:Twitter has suspended multiple accounts that tracked the movements of private planes—including those belonging to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos—and announced changes to its doxxing policy, prohibiting sharing of real-time location information or linking to external sources that share such data, citing a “risk of physical harm.”
Twitter Safety said in a series of posts on Dec. 15 that the social media platform had updated its Private Information policy that bans sharing someone else’s live location “in most cases.”
...
Users will still be able to share their own live location on Twitter, and content that shares live location information pertaining to public events or engagements, such as concerts, will also be allowed.
“Tweets that share someone else’s historical (not same-day) location information are also not prohibited by this policy,” Twitter Safety said.
In line with the new policy, Twitter has suspended the jet tracking accounts of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk.
...
Sweeney told Protocol earlier this year that Musk had offered him $5,000 to shut down the jet-tracking account over security concerns. The teenager said he made a counteroffer of $50,000 or an internship opportunity with him but Musk did not take him up on the offer.
...
Sweeney’s personal Twitter account has also been suspended.
The teenager said on Mastodon that Musk “gave me no warning” before permanently suspending his account.
Well, I do think the teenager always knew why he got suspended right away, still, he's playing the victim's role here before the eyes of the media.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:The European Union on Friday warned Twitter owner CEO Elon Musk after the platform suspended several journalists for violating his new policy around doxxing.
Vera Jourova, a European Commission vice president, wrote on Twitter that the alleged “arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying,” adding that an EU regulatory act “requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights.”
“This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct. @elonmusk should be aware of that,” Jourova wrote. “There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”
Jourova did not elaborate on what sanctions either Musk or Twitter will face. Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which she cited, companies can be fined 6 percent of their global annual revenues for breaches.
Around the same time, France’s industry minister, Roland Lescure, wrote Friday that he would stop using his account. “Following the suspension of journalists’ accounts by @elonmusk, I am suspending all activity on @Twitter until further notice,” he wrote.
...
Journalists who were banned include New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac, Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell, former Vox reporter Aaron Rupar, CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan, and Mashable’s Matt Binder. Former ESPN and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was also banned.
...
It does not appear that those five accounts were permanently banned. Hours after the accounts were suspended, Musk posted a poll asking whether those accounts should be reinstated.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:“A two day suspension of maybe 7 accounts for doxxing got an actual Wikipedia page!? Wikipedia is controlled by the MSM [mainstream media] journalists,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Dec. 17. “Can’t trust that site anymore.”
In a separate tweet on the same subject on Saturday, Musk wrote, “Wikipedia is overly controlled by mainstream media,” while tagging Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.
Musk suspended the accounts of several journalists on Dec. 15 for allegedly doxxing his location in real-time, saying their actions put his safety and that of his family at risk. However on Dec. 17, after an online poll where the majority favored the accounts be restored immediately, the new Twitter chief reinstated them, saying that “the people have spoken.”
The Wikipedia article’s heading has since been changed. Originally, it was titled “Thursday Night Massacre (Twitter),” but now it reads “December 15, 2022 Twitter suspensions.”
At the time of writing, the phrase “Thursday Night Massacre” appears in bold in the lead paragraph of the article.
Quote:Elon Musk launched a poll on Sunday asking: “Should I step down as head of Twitter?
He added, “I will abide by the results of this poll.”
...
The poll comes amid criticism that Musk is facing over his decision to suspend the accounts of several journalists over a controversy on publishing public data about the billionaire’s plane.
The journalists impacted included individuals from The New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post. Their accounts were reinstated after the backlash and another poll by Musk.
...
“Twitter has a responsibility to respect human rights: @elonmusk should commit to making decision based on publicly-available policies that respect rights, including free speech. Nothing less,” Volker Turk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, wrote.
Donie O’Sullivan, a CNN reporter who had been among the journalists who were suspended and then reinstated, said he still could not tweet because the platform was demanding his removal of one of his posts. He said he would appeal.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Epic Games, developer of the popular online video game Fortnite, has agreed to pay $520 million in penalties and refunds to settle allegations surrounding alleged violations of children’s privacy and the use of design tricks to dupe millions of players into making unintentional purchases.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the fines, the largest the FTC has ever imposed for a rule that it enforces, in separate releases on Dec. 19.
According to U.S. federal regulators Epic Games, North Carolina-headquartered Epic Games, founded by video game programmer Tim Sweeney and Canadian entrepreneur Mark Rein, violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA Rule), and the Federal Trade Commission Act.
Specifically, authorities argued that the game developer collected personal data from children under the age of 13, including their names, email addresses, and other identifiers used to keep track of players’ progress, as well as their purchase history, settings, and friends lists, without first obtaining parents’ verifiable consent or informing them that they were doing so.
Prosecutors also claimed that parents who requested their children’s personal information be deleted were made to “jump through unreasonable hoops” in order to have the information taken down and that Epic Games sometimes did not follow through with the requests.
Prosecutors further allege that Epic Games’ default settings were unfair under Section 5 of the FTC Act, as they publicly broadcast child and teen Fortnite players’ display names, and put children and teens in contact with adult Fortnite players via its real-time voice and text chat function.
The developer’s default settings, used in matching children and teens with strangers to play Fortnite together, also harmed children, according to prosecutors, and led to children and teenagers being bullied, threatened, harassed, and exposed to “dangerous and psychologically traumatizing issues such as suicide” while on Fortnite.
Quote:Musk took to Twitter on Dec. 19 to remark on several posts related to the massive flow of people entering the United States without authorization, including on a Harvard poll showing Americans vastly underestimating the scale of illegal immigration.
The poll, a monthly collaboration between the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard (CAPS) and the Harris Poll and HarrisX, showed that the median U.S. voter appears ill informed about the crisis, underestimating the number of illegal border crossings by a factor of 10.
While 64 percent of respondents correctly told the Harvard CAPS / Harris pollsters that the number of illegal border crossings had risen under President Joe Biden’s administration, the median voter incorrectly estimated the figure at between 250,000–500,000 per year.
The actual figure is far higher, with over 2.75 million people having come into the United States illegally over a 12 month period ending Sept. 30, 2022. That’s over 1 million more than in the prior year.
The poll also showed that, when respondents were presented with the true numbers, 67 percent said they want the Biden administration to issue new, stricter policies to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants into the country.
The data was shared by the @EndWokeness account on Twitter, prompting Musk to reply, “Why is this never in the news?”
In another instance, Musk commented on a clip filmed by Texas state Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican, and shared on Twitter by Fox News reporter Bill Melguin, which showed a Border Patrol processing center severely overcrowded.
Quote:TikTok records every keystroke, click, swipe, and text communication—including information written but not sent by the user—when users enter other websites through the app.
That level of surveillance not only goes beyond user expectations, but in some states, it is a violation of wiretapping laws, a class action lawsuit filed last week in Pennsylvania alleges.
The case claims TikTok violates the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, which bans the interception and recording of private communications without prior consent of all parties to the conversation.
For example, to record a phone conversation, both parties must agree to the recording.
...
In November, Kowalski visited a makeup company link through the TikTok app and shared personal information on that website to purchase a product from that company. She never agreed to share that information with TikTok, court papers say.
“When a purchase is made via TikTok’s in-app browser, [TikTok] automatically intercepts all the details of the purchase entered by the user, including the name of the purchaser, their address, telephone number, credit card or bank information, usernames, passwords, dates of birth, and other personal information,” says the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
“After intercepting and capturing the website communications, [TikTok] uses those website communications to recreate the Pennsylvania citizen’s entire visit to the website. [TikTok] creates and saves video replay of the user’s behavior on the website for analysis. This is the electronic equivalent of ‘looking over the shoulder’ of each visitor to the websites for the entire duration of their website interaction.”
The information, taken without the user’s consent, is used to send more targeted advertising to the user, court papers allege.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
News of the Cyber World
Seriously, I wouldn't hire a lawyer that breaks the law at her convenience.
Honestly, neither Hollywood nor Old Twitter have been very friendly with conservatives in the last couple of years. I mean, they had plenty of excuses to attack him over and over again.
![[Image: SP1-Scripter.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Scripter.png)
![[Image: SP1-Writer.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Writer.png)
![[Image: SP1-Poet.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Poet.png)
![[Image: SP1-PixelArtist.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-PixelArtist.png)
![[Image: SP1-Reporter.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/GmxWbHyL/SP1-Reporter.png)
patch, go get it, guys! 
sick, up to some point.
Are you kidding me?
I guess only time will tell.