Lawmakers Press Google, Meta, Others on Addressing Deepfake Pornography

Google

A bipartisan group of 26 U.S. lawmakers have sent letters to seven major tech companies requesting updates on how the platforms plan to counter the growing prevalence of pornographic “deepfakes” on social media.

The number of artificially generated, sexually explicit impersonations of nonconsenting individuals increased by 550% from 2019 to 2023, with deepfake pornography now making up 98% of all deepfake videos online, the lawmakers cited in each of the seven letters addressed to Google, Apple, X, ByteDance, Snapchat, Microsoft and Meta.

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Center for Countering Digital Hate: Ending ‘Disinformation’ While Taking Aim at Musk, Conservatives

On Nov. 4, one day prior to the 2024 presidential election, a headline on the increasingly left-leaning news aggregating site The Drudge Report screamed: “Misleading claims have been viewed more than 2 billion times on X.”

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‘Take the Red Pill:’ Musk’s Support for Trump Follows Wave of Government Probes into His Companies

As Elon Musk ramps up his $1 million-a-day support for Donald Trump, what appears to be a record of progressive harassment of his many companies may explain how the world’s richest man went all-in for Republicans.

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Maduro Accuses Elon Musk of Spending $1 Billion to Orchestrate Anti-Communist Coup in Venezuela

Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro accused American businessman Elon Musk of investing at least $1 billion to attempt a coup in the South American country.

“Elon Musk invested in the coup d’état, the fascist outbreak, the violence against the electoral process in Venezuela for no less than 1 billion dollars,” Maduro said during his weekly program ‘Con Maduro+’.

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Elon Musk’s X Reinstated in Brazil After Ban

Elon Musk’s X was reinstated Tuesday in Brazil after more than a month-long ban, which a judge issued after the platform refused to block certain accounts the country argued were disseminating false information.

The platform, which has been suspended in Brazil since late August, was reinstated after complying with orders to remove certain accounts, paying fines and appointing a new legal representative in the country, The New York Times reported.

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Commentary: Foreign Censorship Threatens American Free Speech

Facebook User

On the eve of a highly-anticipated live X “Spaces” conversation between Elon Musk and former president Donald Trump, the powerful European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton warned in August that authorities would be “monitoring” the conversation for “content that may incite violence, hate, and racism.” 

While reminding Musk that the EU was already investigating X for alleged failures “to combat disinformation,” Breton said he and his colleagues “will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox … to protect EU citizens from serious harm.”

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Judge Declines to Dismiss Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against Leftist Group Media Matters

Elon Musk

A federal judge declined Thursday to dismiss a defamation lawsuit against Media Matters by Elon Musk’s X.

District Court Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in an order that Musk’s X had “properly pled its claim,” rejecting Media Matter’s effort to have the case tossed. The platform filed its lawsuit in November, alleging that the left-wing watchdog group “knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts” beside content made by white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

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Venezuelan Dictator Suspends X After Sparring with Elon Musk

Nicolas Maduro

Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro temporarily banned X from the country on Thursday after accusing the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, of using it to stoke opposition against him.

Maduro declared himself the victor in the country’s July 28 elections, despite credible concerns that the race was rigged against his political opposition. Musk has been publicly critical of Maduro’s refusal to step down from power, and Maduro has now suspended X from Venezuela in retaliation.

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Advertising Coalition Accused of Censoring Conservatives Disbands amid Lawsuits

The influential advertising coalition known as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) announced their dissolution on Thursday after facing multiple lawsuits from social media companies accusing the group of censoring conservatives, Business Insider reported.

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Elon Musk to File Lawsuit, Calls for Prosecution of Perpetrators Behind Ad Throttling

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk announced Thursday morning he would file a lawsuit against the “perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket.”

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Commentary: America’s Intelligence Community is Broken

CIA Logo

In the current discourse surrounding the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), a prevailing narrative has emerged, as highlighted in a recent Politico article, that mistakenly warns of a future Trump administration’s destruction of the IC as we know it. This perspective is biased and misguided. The real crisis in the Intelligence Community is not what Trump will do if reelected but how to resolve the total erosion of public trust in the IC due to the actions of the D.C. intelligence establishment over the past several decades.

The intelligence officials quoted by Politico, in decrying politicization, ironically contribute to it, exacerbating the broader loss of faith in our institutions. The Intelligence Community, a cornerstone of our national security, must operate insulated from politics — a necessity for its credibility and effectiveness in safeguarding national interests.

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Commentary: Big Tech Needs First Amendment to Censor You

Smart Phone Filled with Apps

Big Tech is back at the Supreme Court.

Appealing from a big loss they suffered at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, social media platforms are challenging Texas’ social media law that prohibits those companies from engaging in viewpoint discrimination when curating their platforms.

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Director of Internet Free Speech Nonprofit Says EU is Angling to Make X Purchase ‘Middleware’

Elon Musk X EU

Mike Benz, the director of a nonprofit that advocates for free speech, is sounding the alarm on the European Union’s investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, for what it claims are breakages of the multinational conglomerate’s hate speech laws. 

Benz, an attorney and the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), says that the EU’s plan is to force X into implementing a mandatory “disinformation compliance” service like NewsGuard. Such products have been termed “middleware.” 

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European Union to Investigate Elon Musk and X over Possible Violations of Social Media Laws

Musk EU

On Monday, the European Union (EU) formally announced that it would be launching an investigation into X, the platform formally known as Twitter, over alleged violations of laws meant to crack down on free speech.

According to ABC News, the investigation will be the first one of its kind under new regulations passed by the 27-nation European bloc. In a post on X, European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement that “Today we open formal infringement proceedings against @X” under the Digital Services Act.

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Judge Recuses Himself from X Suit Against Media Matters

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman on Tuesday announced that he would recuse himself from a lawsuit against Media Matters for America (MMFA) filed by social media company X.

Pittman did not state a reason for his recusal, The Hill reported. Elon Musk’s X sued the watchdog group over an article in published that featured images of ads for the platform’s major advertisers next to antisemitic and pro-Nazi content.

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Texas AG Launches Fraud Investigation into Media Matters

On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-Texas) announced that the state would be launching a fraud probe into the far-left publication Media Matters.

As reported by the Daily Caller, the probe comes after Media Matters released a report on Thursday accusing the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, of putting anti-Semitic content next to advertisements. Although subsequent studies have proven this to be mostly false, multiple major corporations, including Apple, Disney, and IBM, have announced their plans to boycott advertising on the site.

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Commentary: Elon Musk Is Going ‘Thermonuclear’

Elon Musk is going “thermonuclear.”

No, this has nothing to do with SpaceX or any of his other wild technology projects – but it’s how Musk described the lawsuit he was filing against Media Matters for America this week. The lawsuit is in response to a Media Matters report last week that X, the Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter, was placing ads for major brands such as Apple and IBM next to “pro-Nazi content.” After some prodding from Media Matters, within a day of their report, a slew of major corporations, such as IBM, Disney, Comcast, Sony, NBC, and Warner Brothers, announced they were pulling ads from X.

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Musk’s X Seeks Job Applicants to Stop Disinformation, Promote ‘Credible’ Election Stories

Elon Musk purchased Twitter vowing to make it friendlier to free speech, and repeatedly aired its dirty laundry through the release of the Twitter Files that chronicled past censorship efforts. But months later with the 2024 election on the horizon, the company now known as X is in the market for applicants for some disinformation-fighting jobs.

And that has some free-speech advocates alarmed.

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Musk: Fight Against Zuckerberg Will Be Live-Streamed on X with Proceeds Going to Veterans

Elon Musk says that his fight with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be live-streamed on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter that Musk owns.

“Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on 𝕏. All proceeds will go to charity for veterans,” Musk wrote on X early Sunday morning.

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