Instagram’s Teen Accounts aren’t really for teens
Jason Citron, CEO of Discord; Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap; Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok; Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X; and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta are sworn in as they testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, announced Tuesday that it would begin rolling out measures that restrict what kind of content young people can access, who they can talk to, and how much time they spend on special media. The new measures will begin with an Instagram rollout that began September 17 in the US, but will eventually…
The perfect escape from our online world
Miscellaneous second hand vinyl LPs of rock and pop music from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s in record shop, London, UK. | Alex Segre/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Earlier this year, Justin Murphy, the founder of the media and education company Other Life, wanted to offer a premium product to his newsletter subscribers. But for months, he’d been grappling with a problem familiar to anyone who writes online: an attention deficit. “Words on the internet are undervalued,” he said. “There are too many of them, and it’s too easy to generate them.” Aware that many people who subscribe to his online newsletter don’t actually get around to reading it,…
Why Nvidia triggered a stock market freakout
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during the Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at SAP Center on March 18, 2024 in San Jose, California. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Nvidia, the world’s leading AI chip manufacturer, sparked a global stock market downturn Wednesday, with indexes falling in Asia, Europe, and the United States. After Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the US Justice Department issued Nvidia a subpoena as part of an antitrust investigation, investors sold $279 billion worth of shares — amounting to 9.5 percent of the company’s stock. On Wednesday, a spokesperson denied that the company had received the subpoena, but said Nvidia is “happy to answer any questions regulators may have…
That Chase “money glitch” hack was just fraud
Chase called the TikTok trend “fraud, plain and simple.” Who doesn’t want free money? In the world of video games, it’s possible with a simple cheat code — type “motherlode” in The Sims, watch a flood of money roll in, redecorate your whole mansion. For a brief, wild moment, a viral TikTok trend suggested that such a shortcut could exist in real life, too. The money “hack” worked like this: Over the weekend, news of a “glitch” spread on TikTok claiming that Chase bank was allowing people to withdraw funds from a deposited check right away. People took advantage by writing themselves massive checks, depositing them, and then withdrawing stacks…
California’s governor has the chance to make AI history
California Gov.Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference with the California Highway Patrol announcing new efforts to boost public safety in the East Bay, in Oakland, California, July 11, 2024. | Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images<br> Advocates say it is a modest law setting “clear, predictable, common-sense safety standards” for artificial intelligence. Opponents say it is a dangerous and arrogant step that will “stifle innovation.” In any event, SB 1047 — California state Sen. Scott Wiener’s proposal to regulate advanced AI models offered by companies doing business in the state — has now passed the California State Assembly by a margin of 48 to 16. Back in May,…
Why Telegram’s CEO was detained in France
Pavel Durov, CEO and co-founder of Telegram, speaks onstage during day one of TechCrunch Disrupt on September 21, 2015, in San Francisco, California. | Steve Jennings/Getty Images for Tech Crunch Pavel Durov, the CEO and founder of messaging app Telegram, was charged in France on Wednesday with a number of crimes, including complicity in drug trafficking and facilitating the spread of child sexual abuse material on the platform he created. Durov was previously arrested in Paris on Saturday, and details about that arrest had been limited until Wednesday. Now, however, it is clear that the charges against Durov are part of a larger French investigation. The Washington Post has reported…
Mark Zuckerberg’s letter about Facebook censorship is not what it seems
Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan that he regretted Facebook’s reaction when the Biden administration pressured it to remove Covid-19 misinformation. | Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images This week Mark Zuckerberg sent Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) a letter outlining how the Biden administration pressured his company to “censor” free speech on Facebook — specifically misinformation about Covid-19. The letter also made reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop and Zuckerberg’s lack of plans to spend money on the election. This sounds bad. But none of this information is new. It’s interesting that Zuckerberg decided to dive into the free speech snake pit this week. It’s also not surprising…
Mark Zuckerberg’s letter about Facebook censorship is not what it seems
Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan that he regretted Facebook’s reaction when the Biden administration pressured it to remove Covid-19 misinformation. | Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images This week Mark Zuckerberg sent Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) a letter outlining how the Biden administration pressured his company to “censor” free speech on Facebook — specifically misinformation about Covid-19. The letter also made reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop and Zuckerberg’s lack of plans to spend money on the election. This sounds bad. But none of this information is new. It’s interesting that Zuckerberg decided to dive into the free speech snake pit this week. It’s also not surprising…
How would we even know if AI went rogue?
Congress needs to understand artificial intelligence capabilities better in order to mitigate future risks. As the frontier of artificial intelligence advances at a breakneck pace, the US government is struggling to keep up. Working on AI policy in Washington, DC, I can tell you that before we can decide how to govern frontier AI systems, we first need to see them clearly. Right now, we’re navigating in a fog. My role as an AI policy fellow at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) involves developing bipartisan ideas for improving the government’s ability to analyze current and future systems. In this work, I interact with experts across government, academia, civil society,…
Why Musk and Trump are on the same side
Donald Trump and Elon Musk spoke for nearly two hours in an audio livestream hosted on X. | Michael Ciaglo/Marc Piasecki via Getty Images Last night, former President Donald Trump returned to X, the social media site once known as Twitter in as bombastic a form as possible: a livestream with the site’s now-owner Elon Musk. The interview on Spaces, X’s platform for live audio conversations, covered everything from illegal immigration to union busting. At one point, Trump and Musk underscored the need for an American leader who would inspire fear in other countries. Over the course of two hours, the richest man in the world and the former president…