Alexandra S. Levine
@Ali_Lev
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Tech reporter @Forbes ; past @Politico @NYTimes . Got a tip? Signal/WhatsApp: 310-526-1242 | Email: ALevine @forbes .com
Los Angeles, CA
Joined February 2011
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Last Seen Profiles
Pinned Tweet
NEW:
A top suicide hotline is collecting data from people's darkest moments and sharing it with a for-profit company that is using the data to build and sell customer service software.
Our
@POLITICO
report on Crisis Text Line:
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JP Morgan is suing the young founder of Frank, a buzzy fintech startup it acquired for $175M.
Frank allegedly lied about its scale and success by creating an enormous list of 4 million fake users to entice JP to buy it.
from me and
@_IainMartin
:
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1K
New: TikTok and ByteDance employees have had easy access to the contact lists of major public figures from the Bidens and political candidates to Charli D'Amelio.
This does not bode well for personal privacy, or for national security ahead of an election:
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638
Here's what happened on Twitter after 2020 candidate
@AndrewYang
told his
#YangGang
to follow POLITICO campaign reporter,
@ZachMontellaro
(his followers are an active bunch!)
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NEW: TikTok has stored the most sensitive financial information of its biggest stars — including those in the TikTok Creator Fund — on servers in China.
CEO Shou Chew recently told Congress “American data has always been stored in Virginia and Singapore.”
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Horrifying: One of the most downloaded games in the App Store challenges players to kill a journalist with a sniper rifle
...that's in clear violation of App Store guidelines on violence in mobile games
Neither Apple nor Google would comment
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Biden statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day:
"The facts are not up for question."
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NEW:
@Forbes
obtained internal ByteDance documents showing *hundreds* of lists of "sensitive words" that it tracks across its social media apps.
We've published them in full to illustrate the range of topics that ByteDance is monitoring or suppressing:
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In his cameo at POLITICO yesterday,
@AndrewYang
said that despite his relentless criticism of big tech, the 3 top employers of donors to his campaign are:
1) US Army
2) Google
3) Amazon
“The technology industry, I’m happy to say, is lining up behind me.”
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Cloudflare — one of the service providers that enables 8chan to operate — said they're cutting ties with the fringe site tonight:
We just sent notice we are terminating service for 8chan. There comes a time when enough is enough. But this isn't the end. We need to have a broader conversation about addressing the root causes of hate online.
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The FTC is investigating TikTok, "focusing heavily on allegations that the company misled its users by stating falsely that individuals in China do not have access to U.S. user data."
Scoop from
@politico
:
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90
214
Some personal tea: 2 years and 500 Morning Techs later, I’m passing on the newsletter torch!
I'm thrilled to be moving into a new role as
@POLITICO
’s privacy and data protection reporter, covering the fights between Silicon Valley and Washington over companies’ handling of data.
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🚨Some personal news🚨
After 3+ years at
@nytimes
, I’m thrilled to be heading to DC to cover technology for
@POLITICO
!
I’ll be taking over
@MorningTech
for
@POLITICOPro
soon, so reach out with tips and ideas, or just to say hi.
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Facebook's botched rollout of its ban on new political ads is costing Biden a half-million dollars in projected donations and shaking the campaign's ad strategy days out from the election:
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Today on the homepage: The Facebook Papers
@POLITICO
was among the news orgs that got access to documents from the Facebook whistleblower.
Reporters and editors from our Tech team and across the newsroom have spent weeks poring over them. What we found:
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A Facebook software engineer is resigning over Zuckerberg's recent handling of Trump's posts:
"I cannot keep excusing Facebook’s behavior... I’m scared for my country and I’m done trying to justify this."
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TikTok's CEO said under oath last year that Americans’ data has always been stored outside China.
But after our
@Forbes
investigation found that the financial info and SSNs of TikTok's biggest stars *had* been stored there, the company confirmed as much:
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Congress sounded alarms about Frank well before JP bought it, calling on FTC to investigate.
"This tool does not make it any easier for students to get relief funds and appears instead to be a way for Frank to mine and exploit students’ data for profit."
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Pete Buttigieg is leaning on live-tweeting — from his campaign staffers and from the reporters who surround them — to boost him in Iowa and set him apart from other candidates wary of engaging with the media
via
@ec_schneider
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This is the first (and won't be the last) time I've seen my reporting ripped off by AI.
This story on TikTok took months and many interviews to report.
The "AI reading assistant" by Aili summarized each section in bullets and, without credit, used custom art made by
@Forbes
:
Did you know a U.S. ban on TikTok would affect far more than just the 150M users? 🤔 It could disrupt livelihoods built on the app, from creators to small biz owners! 😮
#Read4U
#TikTokBan
What do you think about this? 🗳️ (5 mins read)
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New from
@Forbes
-
Research out today from
@StanfordIO
found that Stable Diffusion — one of the most popular text-to-image generative AI tools on the market from the $1B startup
@StabilityAI
— was trained on a trove of illegal child sexual abuse material:
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New: TikTok has said under oath that Americans’ data has always been stored outside China.
Now it’s telling the U.S. government there are big exceptions for creators—who it says it treats differently than "typical users."
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My mom captured this special moment — my Grandma can’t remember my name, but when we read together and I show her the byline on something I’ve written, suddenly, she knows it’s me. ❤️
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New: The top Republican on the Senate Intel Committee has formally asked the Justice Department to investigate the truthfulness of statements that the TikTok CEO made to Congress.
The letter was sent in light of recent reporting by Forbes:
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Internal ByteDance docs show the company is tracking convos about the following on its apps:
✅ Chinese power
✅ Taiwan + Hong Kong
✅ Uyghurs + Xinjiang
✅ Tibet
✅ Geopolitics + US/China relations
✅ Science + Medicine
✅ Competitors
✅ Western culture
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@AndrewYang
.
@AndrewYang
I write
@MorningTech
for POLITICO, where we've been highlighting the many tech issues you've raised on the campaign trail (including in today's edition!)
Hope you and the
#YangGang
will follow along — you can sign up here:
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The new frontier of deepfakes: videos of real news anchors and outlets "reporting" fake stories.
Manipulated content is already undermining authoritative reporting from journos on the ground in Israel + Gaza. This also doesn't bode well for the election:
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Senators
@MarshaBlackburn
and
@ossoff
introduced legislation to place more onus on social media platforms when it comes to reporting illegal content of minors.
The bill would revamp NCMEC's CyberTipline that companies use to flag CSAM to law enforcement:
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NEW: India banned TikTok. But TikTok and ByteDance employees in US and China can still access years of Indians' data.
"I don’t think they're aware of how much of their data is exposed to China right now, even with the ban in place," one employee told me:
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Thousands of US and EU TikTok creators, and small businesses, have given the company sensitive financial info—like SSNs and tax IDs—so they can get paid.
We obtained internal docs showing that info has been stored in China + accessible by employees there:
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New: The Senate passed a bill to overhaul the national tipline that social media cos use to flag online child exploitation and sexual abuse material to law enforcement.
@Forbes
' exclusive on that bill, from
@MarshaBlackburn
and
@Ossoff
, earlier this year:
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Happening in plain sight on TikTok Live:
Adults are offering money and sending gifts to young girls in exchange for performing sexually suggestive acts.
"That is sexual exploitation. But that's exactly what TikTok is doing here.”
More in
@Forbes
:
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New: Bipartisan Senate leaders are pressing TikTok’s CEO to explain testimony about US user data that runs counter to findings in recent reporting by Forbes.
They cite seemingly contradictory statements made under oath by TT's CEO + head of public policy:
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NCMEC has launched a platform, funded by Meta, to help kids and teens have naked or sexual photos and videos of themselves removed from social media.
@MissingKids
is rolling out the new tool with Facebook, Instagram, Yubo, OnlyFans and Pornhub:
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The same week JP Morgan filed its suit against Frank's founder, she filed a suit against JP Morgan—claiming JP had forced her out to deny her millions in compensation that she was owed.
Statement from her lawyer Alex Spiro, who also reps...Elon Musk:
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NEW: TikTok content moderators at the third-party company Teleperformance were shocked to be shown graphic videos and images of children involved in sexual acts during training.
Now, one former moderator has taken concerns about that material to the FBI:
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Private accounts on TikTok have become portals to some of the most dangerous and disturbing content on the internet.
Many contain child sexual abuse material hidden in plain sight—posted using a setting that makes it visible only to the person logged in:
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Biden will tap privacy expert
@alvarombedoya
to be FTC commissioner.
Bedoya is founding director of Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology:
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Frank founder Charlie Javice's lofty goals to build the startup into “an Amazon for higher education” won support from billionaire Marc Rowan and prominent venture backers including Aleph, Chegg, Reach Capital, Gingerbread Capital and SWAT Equity Partners:
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NEW: For years, competitive business information from top U.S. advertisers was widely available to TikTok and ByteDance staff most anywhere, including in China.
Inside TikTok's chaotic ads division and employees' concerns over how it's handled client data:
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TikTok is currently hiring for a Global Head of Child Safety, per LinkedIn:
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Facebook whistleblower calls for regulation:
"Facebook can change, but it's clearly not going to do so on its own," she said. "I'm asking you, our elected representatives, to act."
Can/will Congress act when it has been so slow to move on the rest of its tech agenda?
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Forbes’ staff journalists are what make Forbes Forbes. It’s been that way for over a century!
I’m walking out through Tuesday with
@forbesunion
to demand basic protections and better working conditions for our newsroom — related to pay, diversity and editorial integrity.
✊🏼✊🏼
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New: Most big tech companies flag millions—often tens of millions—of tips on child sexual abuse material to law enforcement each year to help keep kids safe.
Apple, the outlier, last year flagged 234. (Before that: 160.)
@iblametom
and I investigated why:
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Kathleen Connelly has inflammatory thoughts about the Israel-Gaza war.
For weeks she’d been blasting out anti-Israel diatribes on Facebook—and as an apparent Penn employee w/ degrees from Penn, Georgetown + Fordham, they held weight.
But she isn't real:
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Thrilled to receive a Front Page Award for my
@NYTMetro
feature on the dry cleaners who wash the oldest maps of New York City — and honored to be included among so many
@nytimes
women who inspire me daily!
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3
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NEW: TikTok rejected ads raising awareness about the hostages abducted on Oct 7. by Hamas in the crucial early weeks of the war—even as a top, beloved employee has family among the kidnapped.
Our look at how, many months later, the company changed course:
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The leader of the House committee holding today's hearing with the TikTok CEO supports a ban on the app.
Something to consider on a ban:
India banned TikTok three years ago BUT still has access to *years* of sensitive data on Indian users:
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A beautiful newborn named Elizabeth has become one of the first babies born in the U.S. to a Ukrainian refugee.
The incredible story of how she came into the world last weekend, 5,000 miles from home:
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From Code in LA, where no one can stop talking about TikTok:
“There’s been two major themes so far: The first is Tik, the second is Tok,"
@profgalloway
joked last night while interviewing Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.
#codecon
#code2022
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Students who’ve used AI to help write their school applications are now hiring people en masse to un-ChatGPT their essays and make them sound human.
Admissions committees can’t keep up. But these words are likely to tip them off to those who’ve used AI:
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"Even if TikTok was not a subsidiary of a Chinese company, this would be pretty alarming IT security malpractice," former White House and CIA national security lawyer
@denvercunning
told Forbes.
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TikTok has been touting plans to cordon off American user data from China in Project Texas, and European user data, in Project Clover.
Storing the most sensitive financial info of EU creators on servers in China could be problematic under GDPR:
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9
49
Some of the most dangerous deepfakes we're starting to see are fake news segments using the logos of real outlets, and the voices/faces of top anchors.
Must-watch by
@RileyHallaway
@Forbes
, ft.
@UCBerkeley
's Hany Farid,
@1stForAll
's
@kevinmgoldberg
and me:
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I'll be doing enterprise, investigations and newsy features on the way technology is shaping our society and the biggest issues we're grappling with.
And yes! That includes policy -- like the privacy/data debates I've been covering.
DM me your tips or send to alevine
@forbes
.com
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New: A top TikTok lawyer has warned employees that the media is part of a disinformation war being waged against the company, according to a confidential memo obtained by Forbes.
One expert whose work is cited called the language “exceptionally dangerous.”
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Fearing execution videos from the terrorist group Hamas, schools around the world are urging families to delete TikTok, Instagram and other top social media apps.
A conversation parents in the US, Canada, UK, Israel and beyond are having with their kids:
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New: Former longtime employees of The Knot accused the wedding giant of defrauding investors and advertisers to land a $1 billion sale in 2018.
Years later, with a possible IPO looming,
@richardjnieva
and I found some troubling practices remain:
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28
43
ICYMI:
Earlier today, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had called on Crisis Text Line and Loris to end their data-sharing relationship “immediately”
Earlier today, I sent a letter to Crisis Text Line and Loris requesting that they cease their practice of sharing—and monetizing—the data they obtain from confidential text messages of people reaching out for mental health counseling and crisis interventions.
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Digital health companies are funneling sensitive data that patients have shared with them to Facebook to help target ads, a new study finds:
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J.P. Morgan has been quietly working with TikTok parent ByteDance on payments technology that is helping the Chinese giant expand into more than two dozen markets and reach millions more users:
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It's here 🚨
After a 9-month hold-up, Senate Commerce will next week hold its first sweeping consumer privacy hearing this Congress:
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"Cheese pizza"
"Camping"
"Corn"
"Unalive"
Social media users are increasingly using codewords, emojis and deliberate typos—so-called “algospeak”—to avoid detection by apps’ moderation AI when posting content that is sensitive or might break their rules:
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New: Capitol Hill is being bombarded with calls from TikTokers who’ve opened the app to a message urging them to call Congress to stop it from banning TikTok.
@CongressmanRaja
called the blitz “a massive propaganda campaign.”
Developing story in
@Forbes
:
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28
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Last night, as a letter from Osama Bin Laden began going viral on TikTok, the hashtag
#lettertoamerica
had 2 million views.
Now, it has nearly 14 million views.
TikTok has denied the videos praising 9/11 are trending.
Developing story w/
@ebakerwhite
:
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Congresswoman
@RepDLesko
just asked TikTok's CEO about our latest
@Forbes
investigation into TikTok+ ByteDance.
ICYMI: Nearly anyone at the companies—including in China—can still mine sensitive data on India's users, 3 years after the app was banned there:
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A real pitch in my inbox from a real person in the year 2024
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New: The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children got 36 million reports of suspected CSAM in 2023.
A small but growing volume of that child sex abuse material was made with generative AI.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Stability are now reporting to NCMEC:
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New: Doctors and nurses' photos are being stolen to peddle unproven pills and powders on TikTok—and in the Wild West of loosely regulated supplements, many brands are profiting.
“How are people getting paid off of my face?” one nurse said.
w/
@_IainMartin
:
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You may not have expected Trump's former lawyer to go viral on TikTok but here we are.
We asked Michael Cohen what he's doing on Gen Z's favorite app:
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A Ukrainian refugee who wound up in New Jersey almost 9 months pregnant — with no home, health insurance, doctor or plan for delivery — had the baby.
Elizabeth is one of the first babies born in the U.S. to a refugee of the war.
Their incredible story:
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11
34
NEW- FCC Commissioner calls on the FTC to investigate Crisis Text Line
Cites data/consent issues raised in
@Politico
reporting:
I’ve asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the data privacy and business practices of Crisis Text Line (CTL).
While I’m glad CTL ended their data monetization scheme after my January letter, their ongoing practices + their decision to cut off discussions concern me.
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So what if USA didn't quality for the 2018 World Cup? Here's where you can watch in New York City — a handy guide to help you find your inner expat
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NEWS🚨:
House and Senate Commerce Committees have reached bipartisan agreement on a national privacy law that's been years in the making.
Discussion draft from
@SenatorCantwell
(D) and
@CathyMcMorris
(R) gives consumers the ability to sue when their privacy rights are violated.
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NEW on JP Morgan/Frank-
JP Morgan brought on 15 Frank employees when it bought Charlie Javice's startup for $175M in 2021.
Now, roughly half the team is gone.
Javice, who's being sued by the bank, must respond to its federal fraud complaint by Wednesday:
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Before Omegle shut down, it had for years drawn lawsuits over alleged child grooming on the app—which paired kids with predators and had the tagline "Talk To Strangers."
Last year, it reported more CSAM to NCMEC than TikTok, Snap + Discord. w/
@iblametom
:
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Honeymoon-bound… where my greatest concern for the next couple weeks will be what shape of pasta to eat at my next meal.
Ciaooo Twitter!
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A TikTok spox said "we remain confident in the accuracy of Shou's testimony."
Neither TikTok nor ByteDance answered Qs about whether sensitive financial info of US citizens is or has been stored in China, and whether there's been unauthorized access to it:
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NEW on Frank/JP Morgan:
Frank founder Charlie Javice was arrested last night in New Jersey.
Javice faces fraud charges from the SEC and Justice Department, where a criminal investigation is underway through the Southern District of New York:
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When you show up to a ~very important and serious~ interview and a love note from Dad falls outta your notebook for all to see 🙃
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We obtained extensive docs on an internal TikTok tool that has allowed employees to easily search and analyze the connections of any account.
Experts and sources say this could facilitate efforts to sow dissent, spread disinfo, spy on or blackmail users:
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Stable Diffusion is *not* the only model trained on this dataset containing CSAM, called LAION-5B; Midjourney also uses it, and likely others in the space.
Stanford focused on Stable Diffusion because it’s open source and discloses its training data:
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YouTube has unveiled a new way for creators to monetize Shorts—arguably Google's biggest swing yet at TikTok. From today's event in LA:
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Scoop: The U.S. government is awarding facial recognition startup Clearview AI a lucrative patent for its "search engine for faces"
My exclusive interview with Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That:
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Family members of Israeli hostages are being threatened and harassed through text, WhatsApp and Facebook messages from unknown senders — some of whom claim to be Hamas.
"There's no version of events where this isn't malicious."
From me and
@iblametom
:
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I found "Heil Hitler" signs for sale in Krakow's Jewish quarter. Here's what happened — and then, what I learned — when I tried to take a photo
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NEW on the Frank founder being sued by JP Morgan-
@_IainMartin
and I dug through records and filings and spoke to more than a dozen people who've interacted with Charlie Javice professionally or personally.
Few seem surprised she ended up in this mess:
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What does it mean to "never forget" when nearly half of Americans don't know what Auschwitz was?
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NEW-
Days after a Politico report on Crisis Text Line's data-sharing with its for-profit spinoff, the nonprofit says it will stop sharing data with that company, Loris AI:
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Retweet if (like me) you’re not a baby but want to wear one of these anyways
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His AI swiped right. Then it told him to propose. Now they're getting married.
AI is transforming dating—which has some bemoaning the sad dystopian state of romantic relationships, and others embracing the moment as transformative for love.
From
@Forbes
:
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