Deepfake political scam ads surge on Meta platforms, watchdog says. The Tech Transparency Project identified 63 scam advertisers that collectively spent $49 million on Facebook and Instagram, often targeting seniors with scams promoting fake stimulus checks and healthcare payments u.afp.com/SWtg

Episode 1: Trafficking through the Metaverse: The Antiquities Trade in the Internet Age with Katie Paul @anthropaulicy.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/peop...

“It's basically turning ideology into influencer culture,” said @anthropaulicy.bsky.social of @ttp-updates.bsky.social. “Instagram is the best platform for that. It’s one of the platforms that influencers have broadly flocked to because they can monetize it easily."

GWU is investigating this student for her grad speech— "I cannot celebrate my own graduation without a heavy heart knowing how many students in Palestine have been forced to stop their studies, expelled from their homes, and killed for simply remaining in the country of their ancestors." Excerpt:

"Crypto has not just facilitated fraud, money-laundering and other flavours of financial crime on a gargantuan scale. The industry has also developed a grubby relationship with the executive branch of America’s government that outstrips that of Wall Street or any other industry."

Sources: Facebook and Instagram face scam ad surge from Asia and Meta is reluctant to add hurdles for ad buyers; Meta says it's tackling an "epidemic of scams" (Wall Street Journal) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

X’s ongoing dealings with U.S.-sanctioned terrorists are all the more striking given that Musk chastised Treasury lacking “basic controls” to track payments and ensure they don’t end up going to terrorist orgs. Musk said such controls are “in place in any company.” www.c-span.org/clip/white-h...

NEW: TTP found premium blue checkmark accounts for multiple terrorists and others under OFAC-enforced sanctions. Some of these accounts even had an “ID verified” badge, requested tips, and offered subscriptions. 🧵 www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/u.s...

During the defence’s opening statement, Meta displayed a chart showing that the “per cent of time spent viewing content posted by ‘friends’ has declined over the past two years, from 22 per cent to 17 per cent on Facebook and from 11 per cent to 7 per cent on Instagram”.

🔥 Powerful talk by Katie Paul on the key role of Facebook as facilitator in antiquities, human remains, drug etc. trafficking and war crimes. I especially agree on policies "just window dressing for PR" @peoplingthepast.bsky.social @atharproject.bsky.social @anthropaulicy.bsky.social

"The newest and most powerful technologies — so-called reasoning systems from companies like OpenAI, Google and the Chinese start-up DeepSeek — are generating more errors, not fewer. As their math skills have notably improved, their handle on facts has gotten shakier. It is not entirely clear why."

The #PeoplingPodcast is BACK! Today, to kick off Season 4, we are joined by Katie Paul to discuss the role of Facebook in the illicit antiquities trade, and how the company has been complicit in the sale and destruction of cultural heritage. Listen here: peoplingthepast.com/2025/04/29/p...

If you loved the episode, make sure to follow Katie @anthropaulicy.bsky.social and the @atharproject.bsky.social!

Bam. As expected, Apple has immediately changed its App Store rules to exclude the US so that only the rest of the world has to pay its ransom after US district Court sanctioned the company and referred it to the US Attorney for criminal contempt investigation. developer.apple.com/app-store/re...

Here's a great new pod with @anthropaulicy.bsky.social talking about her work tracking the online trade in looted antiquities with Amr al Azm @atharproject.bsky.social peoplingthepast.com/2025/04/29/p...

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"Even if Wikipedia’s content was biased (it isn’t), even if every editor was actively trying to push an anti-Israel narrative (they aren’t), that would still be protected by the First Amendment." www.techdirt.com/2025/04/28/g...

In today's election, many Canadian voters feel stuck between Trump-lite Conservatives and a Liberal Party complicit in the destruction of Gaza, writes Canadian journalist Ginella Massa. Read the full article: zeteo.com/p/gaza-genoc...

this is precisely how twitter would have been in germany in the 1940s

Abolish ICE and arrest its agents. It is irredeemable.

Stephen Fry's argument against God and His morals.

"Inside Meta... staffers across multiple departments have raised concerns that the company’s rush to popularize these bots may have crossed ethical lines, including by quietly endowing AI personas with the capacity for fantasy sex, according to people who worked on them." - @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social

We have another unhinged email to Michigan Law students from FASORP, the anti-racism-against-white-men org that threatened to doxx minority students last month. This one sarcastically urges law review applicants to pretend to be gay or trans to boost their odds. One-joke theory remains undefeated.

BUT THERE'S MORE: After declaring that both the wife and husband are not in Tren de Aragua and must be released, Judge Briones SPONTANEOUSLY (without being asked) issued an injunction blocking the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport anyone in the Western District of Texas without 21 days notice!

Weirdly I don’t think the evidence suggests Elon Musk prioritizes the value of nuclear families.

DHS tells its story of the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, arguing that they didn’t need a warrant because Khalil told them he was going to walk away from them—which they assert amounted to exigent circumstances. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Satellite and fiber broadband are not equal, and any policy that treats them as such will widen the very divide policymakers should be trying to bridge, writes Christopher Ali. www.techpolicy.press/when-you-wis...

Maybe unpopular opinion, but every academic writer should learn storytelling techniques. How we communicate our research is very important. And some of the best papers I've read tell a story (with data, theory and empirics, but a story nonetheless). NOT A TALE, A STORY (just in case).

"Tech and crypto companies also played a prominent role in Trump’s inauguration, contributing tens of millions of dollars to the committee after years of regulatory challenges during the Biden administration and Trump’s first term." www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

ppl keep mistaking Jurassic Park for a survival film against dinosaurs when it's actually a survival film against startup culture

Somewhere out there, a Judge Xinis clerk just updated the draft order finding probable cause to hold the government in contempt.

Abuses of the tax code was one of the items in the original impeachment case against Nixon. Using the tax code to selectively target enemies - and decimate civil society - is the next step in the authoritarian agenda.

Your friendly reminder that it is literally a federal felony punishable by up to five years in prison for the President, Vice President, or any employee of the White House to directly or indirectly ask the IRS to open an investigation into any specific taxpayer.

ICE officers are now reportedly required to meet arrest quotas each day, from a few hundred to between 1,200 and 1,500 nationwide. Jonathan Blitzer reports on the mystery of the agency’s unidentifiable arrests.

"...Torabi’s posts have been seen hundreds of millions more times in the last 30 days than news giants like MSNBC and CNN. Ranked by views, or 'total impressions,' he is the only nonconservative voice in the top 10..."

FEMA has wiped their website of a bunch of courses- one of which is: IS-368.a—Including People With Disabilities in Disaster Operations If it wasn't clear yet- these people aren't just ideological, they are barbaric.

Dystopia is the AARP advising older Americans about how to live in a police state www.aarp.org/travel/trave...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is terminating a bunch of research funding. Much of this is in line with the goal of making sure nothing gets in the way of systemic racism and sexism, but they also explicitly target research on "misinformation/disinformation." www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...

I am old enough to remember when a movie character said "PAPERS PLEASE" it was a universally understood signifier of an evil regime

Federal grants are direct investments in work that is deemed useful for the public interest. Advancements in science, medicine, the humanities all take work. That work has costs. The government for decades deemed it strategic to advance the public good by underwriting such expenses.

Mayor Adams is wearing his “in god we trust” American flag shirt once again. But this time it’s written in Italian. He says it’s Spanish to honor the victims of a nightclub roof collapse in the Dominican republic last week.

Days after a delegation of House Republicans were in that slave labor camp for a photo op.

These are the birthright citizenship cases, which present honestly the single best argument for nationwide injunctions I can think of; that it would be absolutely insane to have a system where a person’s US citizenship could change when traveling from one state to another.

In case you're curious why some random guy (me) has been filing self-represented amicus briefs in the Abrego Garcia case:

“Many people looking to rent accounts are people that would not be able to pass a background check or a criminal check to get an account to drive Uber,” said @anthropaulicy.bsky.social of the non-profit watchdog @ttp-updates.bsky.social | www.kqed.org/news/1203606... via @kqednews.kqed.org

This is profoundly, the most disturbing story I've ever read. Elon Musk believes his children are a legion and he needs to make as many babies as possible before the apocalypse. He has a breeding fetish mixed with a messianic doomsday cult obsession. archive.ph/H7U2a

“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. For the government to retreat from [our] partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals, but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.” See you in court.

He almost put enough gold stuff in the White House to make it look like the Kremlin. Not quite, but he’ll get there.

"The push is more extensive than administration officials have made public, staffers across multiple federal agencies said, mostly speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the policies publicly." wapo.st/44u84kr