A bill forcing the China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok, or face an outright ban, passed the United States House of Representatives on Wednesday in a vote of 352 to 62. The bill will now head to the Senate, where it is expected to face tough opposition before it can reach President Biden, who indicated he […]
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Snap! The House Passes TikTok ‘Ban’ …What Next?
A bill forcing the China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok, or face an outright ban, passed the United States House of Representatives on Wednesday in a vote of 352 to 62. The bill will now head to the Senate, where it is expected to face tough opposition before it can reach President Biden, who indicated he […]
Read MoreThe Simple Reason Trump Is Suddenly Defending TikTok
Still, there’s little reason to believe that either politics or policy are behind Trump’s shift on TikTok. Instead, Trump was doing what he did again and again throughout his presidency: listening to a rich friend and then changing his policy advice based on their advice. In this case, the friend was Jeff Yass, a billionaire […]
Read MoreMissing Black Woman Found by Police… But That’s Not How the Story Ends
In another tragic case of a Black woman gone missing, there was a glimpse of hope after Birmingham police located her after just 24 hours of her vanishing. However, hope was lost when they found her with a fatal gunshot wound. Astronaut Leland Melvin Remembers The Spanking That Introduced Him To Physics | My Family […]
Read MoreMeta ramps up efforts to combat disinformation ahead of crucial EU elections
With the European Parliament elections just months away, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta is rolling out new initiatives aimed at curbing the spread of misinformation and manipulation on its platforms. In a blog post on Sunday, Marco Pancini, Meta’s head of EU affairs, outlined a detailed plan that includes setting up an EU-specific Election […]
Read MoreThe Red States Fighting the Good Fight Against Big Tech
Moreover, the common carriage approach isn’t a recipe for more hate speech: This problem is a function of these platforms’ basic business model—surveillance advertising. In the 1990s, people could express white supremacist views on bulletin boards, but their posts wouldn’t be amplified and disseminated widely the way they often are today. But today’s social media […]
Read MoreMyth or Truth? Answer To Whether Your Phone is Listening to All Your Business
Have you ever talked about a product, and then suddenly got an ad for it on your phone? We’ve all been there, and then skeptically looked over our shoulders for the advertiser lurking in the shadow. But there’s no one there, so we all simply conclude that our phone must be listening to our conversations. […]
Read MoreMeta Board Says No Fake Videos, but the Current Fake Biden One Is Fine
“As [the National Archives and Records Administration] attempted to carry out its statutory responsibilities from 2021 into 2022, highly classified documents sat in a ballroom, bathroom, office space, and a basement storage room at a social club traversed by thousands of members, employees, and guests. NARA rightly involved other government agencies that had equities and […]
Read MoreMeta Board Says Fake Videos Are Bad, but That Fake Biden One Is Okay
“As [the National Archives and Records Administration] attempted to carry out its statutory responsibilities from 2021 into 2022, highly classified documents sat in a ballroom, bathroom, office space, and a basement storage room at a social club traversed by thousands of members, employees, and guests. NARA rightly involved other government agencies that had equities and […]
Read MoreMeta Board Says Fake Videos Are Bad, but That Fake Biden One Is OK
“As [the National Archives and Records Administration] attempted to carry out its statutory responsibilities from 2021 into 2022, highly classified documents sat in a ballroom, bathroom, office space, and a basement storage room at a social club traversed by thousands of members, employees, and guests. NARA rightly involved other government agencies that had equities and […]
Read MoreDo Friend-Finding Platforms Actually Work?
I get to the restaurant a couple of minutes after seven. It’s tucked into the corner of Bloomsbury’s Brunswick Centre – at first I walk right past it and end up doing a loop of the shopping arcade. But I didn’t want to be bang on time anyway. I couldn’t risk being the first one […]
Read MoreZuckerberg Boasts He Will Be AI God King Because We Already Gave Him All Our Data
image: Bloomberg / Contributor via Getty Images The last several months have been good to Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, as the company revealed on Thursday that its profits tripled year-over-year to $14 billion due to cost-cutting and a rebound in ads. Meta plans on investing heavily in its virtual reality and AI products, and on the latter point, Zuckerberg […]
Read MoreHubris Is Not Killing the Media. Tech Giants Are.
The Messenger was a particularly spectacular failure, but it also highlights how desperate the media industry has become to find a viable business strategy, especially at scale. Various pivots—notably to video via Facebook and YouTube, and audio via podcasting—led to brief windfalls. Both have dried up in recent years, thanks to tech companies’ dominance in advertising, […]
Read MoreThe Messenger Didn’t Stand a Chance
The Messenger was a particularly spectacular failure, but it also highlights how desperate the media industry has become to find a viable business strategy, especially at scale. Various pivots—notably to video via Facebook and YouTube, and audio via podcasting—led to brief windfalls. Both have dried up in recent years, thanks to tech companies’ dominance in advertising, […]
Read MoreWhy Isn’t The Ouster of Harvard’s First Black President Going Viral Among Black Folks? Maybe Because Claudine Gay Doesn’t Feel Like She’s One of Us.
There’s one unassailable truism when it comes to Black social media: We will leverage X, TikTok, Facebook and the like to ride for those of us we love or whom we feel were genuinely wronged – just look at how we got the entire planet on our page in an unprecedented response to George Floyd’s […]
Read MorePew Survey: Teens Love YouTube, Tolerate Facebook, Skip Reddit
For teenagers, Facebook isn’t cool anymore. That’s probably the least surprising insight from a recent Pew Research Center survey that analyzed social media habits in American teens. Some of the other results, however, provide a little more food for thought. Snapchat, for example, isn’t nearly as popular as YouTube. TikTok has actually lost traction since […]
Read MoreWatch Jada Pinkett Smith’s Acceptance Speech For The Root 100
Bonafide superstar and “Worthy” author Jada Pinkett Smith made this year’s Root 100 list for her contributions to the culture. Smith began her illustrious career as an actress on television shows like “A Different World” and films including “Set It Off” and the “Matrix” series. Vivica A. Fox Talks The Interrogation Room, Iconic Roles, & […]
Read MoreGoogle Agrees To Pay Canadian News Outlets $100M Annually in Rare Win for Media Industry
Google has backed off its threat to block Canadian news from its site in protest of a new law meant to aid struggling media organizations, agreeing to a deal on Wednesday to pay $100 million to Canadian news operations each year for the right to share their links on its platform. The agreement is the […]
Read MoreLawsuit filed by 33 US states alleges Meta knew Facebook and Instagram’s ‘addictive features harmed young people’s physical and mental health’
Meta is being sued by the attorneys general of 33 separate US states over allegations that it intentionally created and launched features on its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms that “purposefully addict children and teens.” “Kids and teenagers are suffering from record levels of poor mental health and social media companies like Meta are […]
Read MoreThe Root’s Ultimate 2023 Holiday Gift Guide
Photo: Space You know how much we love dope, Black-owned products on this side, and this luxury home fragrance doesn’t disappoint. Developed under the premise that “home care is a form of self-care,” Space is the brainchild of Ronn Richardson, former Head of Creative for SheaMoisture, and med-tech sales executive Daniel Scott. In other news, […]
Read MoreMeta’s new AI milestone: Emu Video and Emu Edit set to revolutionize text-to-video generation and image editing
Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, unveiled major strides in artificial intelligence (AI) content creation and editing tools today, announcing two major advancements: Emu Edit for image editing […]
Read MoreMeta Is About to Royally Screw Up The Next Election
“My general experience when I was in the government is that the military is incredibly law-abiding and really stands for the rule of law,” said Weissmann. “As much as you think of it as a military organization with a hierarchy, they are also trained that they do not violate the Constitution. And when there’s an […]
Read MoreA.I. Could Make Healthcare Even More Racist, New Study Finds
Artificial Intelligence is theoretically supposed to make our healthcare system better, i.e., more efficient and better integrated. But, a new study from the Stanford School of Medicine raises significant concerns about A.I.’s use in medicine. Hair Waves Are Easy to Achieve With This Black Hack Off English Last weeek, Stanford researchers warned in their new […]
Read MoreAI pioneers Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio clash in an intense online debate over AI safety and governance
VentureBeat presents: AI Unleashed – An exclusive executive event for enterprise data leaders. Network and learn with industry peers. Learn More In a fiery debate that erupted over the weekend, two of the most influential figures in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning, Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio, fiercely discussed the potential risks and safety […]
Read MoreMeta’s Deranged AI-Generated Stickers Include Waluigi with a Gun, Child Soldiers, Naked People
Meta has started slowly rolling out its new AI-generated stickers for Messenger, and the results so far are totally unhinged. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, announced that it would be introducing AI tools to Messenger last week, starting with a limited rollout in the US. On Tuesday night, examples of the kinds […]
Read MoreA Snoop Dogg AI named ‘The Dungeon Master’ joins Meta’s new fleet of bots, which you can ‘invoke’ in your group chats at-will
Meta’s announced a new fleet of AI chatbots at a Connect developer conference in California yesterday, ones with “some more personality”—and the selection of faces they’ve used sure is something. In the presentation, Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about Meta’s development of AIs that are “a bit more fun”, gesturing to a […]
Read MoreMemes and Misinformation Are Threatening the Clean Energy Transition
But even without direct financial influence from polluting industries, anti-wind misinformation is transforming local politics in towns and counties across Iowa. In Fremont County and Page County, activists brought lawsuits this year against their county boards to fight wind ordinances. In Tama County, organizers of an anti-wind group gathered more than a thousand signatures to […]
Read MoreHow Iowa Wind Energy Got Sucked Into an Online Meme War
But even without direct financial influence from polluting industries, anti-wind misinformation is transforming local politics in towns and counties across Iowa. In Fremont County and Page County, activists brought lawsuits this year against their county boards to fight wind ordinances. In Tama County, organizers of an anti-wind group gathered more than a thousand signatures to […]
Read MoreMeta announces ‘universe of AI’ for Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp
VentureBeat presents: AI Unleashed – An exclusive executive event for enterprise data leaders. Network and learn with industry peers. Learn More At a keynote speech at the annual Meta Connect conference today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is launching massive AI updates across the company’s applications and devices, including Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, building “state-of-the-art […]
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