YouTube will ask you to rethink posting that comment if AI thinks it’s offensive – CNET
In other words, humans will be subservient to robots. Hmmmm….
Category Archives: Social media
Social media titans to act as the arbiter of truth
What could possibly go wrong?
The social network said it’ll add more warnings and restrictions on misleading tweets from US political figures and other popular accounts.
Source: Twitter to further limit misleading tweets ahead of the US election – CNET
I am so old, I remember when Mark Zuckerberg waved his hand and said how artificial intelligence would magically solve the problems of social media. Oh well.
Twitter is garbage: “All your data is belong to us”, to paraphrase
Twitter’s oversight over the 1,500 workers who reset accounts, review user breaches and respond to potential content violations for the service’s 186 million daily users have been a source of recurring concern, the employees said. The breadth of personal data most of those workers could access is relatively limited — including such things as Internet Protocol addresses, email addresses and phone numbers — but it’s a starting point to snoop on or even hack an account, they said.
The controls were so porous that at one point in 2017 and 2018 some contractors made a kind of game out of creating bogus help-desk inquiries that allowed them to peek into celebrity accounts, including Beyonce’s, to track the stars’ personal data including their approximate locations gleaned from their devices’ IP addresses, two of the former employees said.
Source: Twitter Hack: Broad Access to User Accounts, Security Woes – Bloomberg
CBS flags its own marketing material on Youtube as a copyright violation – heh!
When Youtube originally announced they would auto-detect music copyright violations, I noted that they could not tell the difference between a licensed use and an unlicensed use. CBS just managed to issue a take down notice on its own stars – hilarious – and shut down a much watched live stream run put on by CBS marketing.
A bot can’t tell when playback is approved or infringing if nobody tells it.
Source: CBS’s overzealous copyright bots hit Star Trek virtual Comic-Con panel | Ars Technica
One of my videos was flagged on Youtube for a music copyright violation that illustrate that Youtube’s much vaunted AI is a joke.
I put together an edited video of a U.S. Civil War era historical camp and battle re-enactment. I added a recording of Taps, performed by a US Army trumpet player, and posted on an official US Army web page, with unambiguous wording that the recording was in the public domain and could be used for any purpose.
And then two different recording companies, Sony being one of them, flagged my video has copyright infringement!
First, how could both of them claim copyright simultaneously? That right there illustrated their fraudulent claims.
Second, the music was written by a Civil War private and a General during the Civil War and before the enactment of copyright laws. The music itself is not copyrighted.
Third, the music was performed by the US Army and released in a public recording which they said was not copyrighted.
I had to file a complaint to Youtube and my video was eventually released.
It sure illustrated the absurdity of automated copyright strike systems.
Twitter’s lack of security comes into focus
The extraordinary hacking spree that hit Twitter on Wednesday, leading it to briefly muzzle some of its most widely followed accounts, is drawing questions about the platform’s security and resilience in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.
Twitter said late Wednesday hackers obtained control of employee credentials to hijack accounts including those of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama, reality television star Kim Kardashian, and tech billionaire and Tesla founder Elon Musk.
….
Wednesday’s hack was the worst to date. Several users with two-factor authentication — a security procedure that helps prevent break-in attempts — said they were powerless to stop it.
“If the hackers do have access to the backend of Twitter, or direct database access, there is nothing potentially stopping them from pilfering data in addition to using this tweet-scam as a distraction,” said Michael Borohovski, director of software engineering at security company Synopsys.
In 2010, Twitter reached a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission after it was found the company had lied about efforts to protect users’ information during an extended hack the year before.
Under the terms of the settlement, Twitter was barred for 20 years from misleading users about how it protects the security and confidentiality of private information.
Source: Twitter hack alarms experts already concerned about platform’s security – National | Globalnews.ca
Twitter Hack Shuts Down National Weather Service Accounts
This bad:
A Twitter hack shut down key National Weather Service accounts during severe weather Wednesday night.
Yes: Is Twitter shadow banning accounts?
Today, the entire Twitter network was taken over by hackers who then took over perhaps thousands of accounts and used them in a mostly ineffective digital currency scam.
As a result, we are learning a bit more about Twitter’s internals – and that prior claims they do not shadow ban people may be false.
A social media “shadow ban” allows the user to think their content is being visible to others – when the service is actually hiding their content. Their posts are visible only to the poster – so the poster is unaware that they are being censored.
Twitter previously said they do not shadow ban people. However, hackers have sent screen captures of the Twitter administrative tool they took over today – and it appears to show the ability to shadow ban users.
This image has now been shared widely.
The tool appears to have an option to block tweets – or an account – from appearing on search results – see “Search Blacklist” and to block the item from appearing in a trending list. The company also said it was eliminating racist language such as “Blacklist” from internal functions – obviously, they have not done so.
“Bounced” reportedly moves one’s tweets to the bottom of your follower’s news feeds – so your tweets will not be seen.
Is the screen shot genuine? We can’t know but there are reports that accounts which retweeted this image earlier today, were terminated by Twitter (and that appears to be true). Later, many people reported they had shared the above image and their tweet magically disappeared.
This looks horrible for Twitter. This hacked admin tool also reportedly gave hackers access to all private “Direct Messages” sent through Twitter.
Continue reading Yes: Is Twitter shadow banning accounts?Many Twitter accounts hacked as part of massive crypto currency fraud
Update: There appears to have been a massive hack on Twitter involving many hundreds of accounts, if not more. According to BNO News, this hack impacted accounts of corporations, politicians, celebrities and more as part of a digital currency scam.
As I no longer use Twitter very much, this sort of security breach might cause me to delete my Twitter account.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter account, which is his preferred method of public communication, got hacked today as part of a massive crypto scam. For years now, Musk’s popular Twitter account with more than 30 million followers has been a target of cryptocurrency scammers trying to make money off his followers by creating accounts that […]
Source: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter account gets hacked as part of massive crypto scam – Electrek
Airbnb rental hosts are setting up their own booking sites
Short-term rental hosts are launching their own direct-booking websites in an effort to diversify their business after years of mounting frustrations with companies like Airbnb
Source: Airbnb hosts are building their own direct booking websites in revolt
This happens as more and more become disenchanted with “big business” hassles.
Continue reading Airbnb rental hosts are setting up their own booking sitesDo HEPA Vacuum bags contain fiberglass?
A UK doctor posted a Youtube video claiming that HEPA vacuum filter bags contain fiberglass. That claim has since been disputed by many.
Further, the UK doctor, Simon Freilich, has backed off his claims.
After some pushback from YouTube viewers saying the bags they’d checked didn’t have dangerous glass fibers in them, Freilich posted that he couldn’t research “every possible type” and that there “are clearly various types of filters and materials out on the market.”
https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/04/is-it-safe-to-make-a-diy-mask-out-of-a-vacuum-bag-debate-erupts.html
Vacuum bag makers say they have never used fiberglass materials.
Many have to say “not suitable for any other uses” (or similar) due to liability concerns. If someone uses a product in a way that the manufacturer has not tested, the manufacturer does not wish to be accused of liability for any harm that may occur.
Freilich said he got his info from an unnamed random Youtube video – because, you know, social media is a highly reliable source of information.
Freilich has updated his own social media with this:
The unfortunate reality, having looked through the research, is that home made masks are only marginally better than no masks at all, and the effects are difficult to isolate as usually a range of measures are simultaneously enacted. Hence the best protection is to stay away from other people, as far as possible. Obviously, this is difficult for many but that’s literally the best method.
He acknowledged that he has no expertise in mask design or materials.
What happened: a social media post used the “appeal to authority” method of argument and then went viral and got picked up by the news media.
We tend to treat “facts” promoted by authorities, “experts”, celebrities and politicians as truth. As Bertrand Russell said (I’m paraphrasing): facts are true (or false) regardless of who says they are true or false. But most people fall for the “appeal to authority” argument which is why it is one of the top most used forms of persuasion. Russell viewed such arguments as the worst form of argument possible and insisted on facts and logic as the only valid forms of argument.
Once Doctor Freilich posted his video, his “assertion” became a “fact”. Once established as “fact” it is very difficult to undo the public perception of that topic. In this way, untrue “facts” become “true facts”, even though they are not true.