…it’s like this…there were going to be more of the riot efforts…& there were lots of places getting chattered about online…from city centers to offices of lawyers & firms that work with asylum seekers
Police are staging their biggest mobilisation to counter disorder since the 2011 riots with over 100 gatherings led by the far right expected to take place on Wednesday.
The number was higher than previously thought, with rallies expected to take place across most of the country, police said. 41 of the 43 local police force areas in England and Wales are bracing for potential violence.
A police source said there was a credible threat that many of the gatherings could turn violent. While they accepted that not all planned events would take place, they are braced for the worst evening of trouble since rioting started last week.
…I even heard from a friend who works for one of those organisations & they’d made a decision to let anyone who wanted to work from home but advised anyone who their HR department files under BAME to do so…& indeed one of their colleagues ended up running away from some (don’tusethec-word@elliecoo doesn’tlikeit)…miscreant…wearing a balaclava as they left work on tuesday…but…ex-lawyers in power ain’t nothing, it turns out…I mean…jan 6th was 2021…first guy sent down was convicted the following march & sentenced just shy of aug 2022…slightly harsh…some others were probably sentenced by then but he was described as the first to go on trial…& in blighty…they put three away in about a week
Men who attacked police and set van on fire in riots jailed [BBC]
…&…well…in context
About 6,000 riot-trained officers will be on duty across the country, some deployed at planned far-right rallies, others ready to provide reinforcements to colleagues.
About 2,000 reserve riot officers will be placed around the country to provide reinforcements as quickly as possible.
Some accommodations for asylum seekers where there is a credible threat will be guarded. On Sunday in Rotherham there was an attempt to set fire to a hotel housing more than 200 asylum seekers, who were inside at the time, with 700 people outside.
In total 428 arrests have been made so far across 26 force areas, after disorder and riots started last Tuesday, with that number expected to increase. 120 people have been charged, including for online incitement. It is understood detectives are investigating “senior organisers and known influencers”.
The source said: “Whether the criminality is online, whether it is on the streets, we are going after those involved, whether they are throwing bricks, or whether they are sending tweets that are inciting these issues. There is quite a hard line on that.”
“On the higher-influence keyboard warriors, who are inciting serious violence, there will be action taken against them. Arrests might not happen immediately, but those cases are being built, and the intelligence is being built around them.”
The source said: “We are also trawling TikTok and video platforms for evidential purposes as well.”
Police rejected a claim from far-right supporters of two-tier policing: “Crime is crime, regardless of colour or creed. We’re not here to police political views. We are here to keep safe, and arrest criminals, and that is what we’ll do.”
The director of public prosecutions on Tuesday said prosecutors may consider offences under terrorism laws. The police source said it was likely that counter-terrorism police had joined the investigation into some of the most serious violence.
On the question of who and what was driving the violence, the police source said: “It is a really nuanced picture. There is a level of coordination, there is a level of planning. It is not particularly sophisticated.
“There is planning at a local level … But a lot of what we are seeing is just locals reacting to what they are seeing on social media, what they are seeing outside on their streets and just joining in.
“Quite a lot of forces have reported it is not necessarily rightwing or leftwing, sometimes. A lot of it is low-level criminals who they already know about, joining in the trouble, using it as an excuse to commit violence, and looting.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/07/uk-police-prepare-for-far-right-rallies-with-biggest-mobilisation-since-2011-riots
…so that’s interesting in a couple of ways…to me, anyway
But Musk is digging his heels in. On Tuesday, he labeled Starmer #TwoTierKier in an apparent reference to a debunked claim spread by conspiracy theorists and populist politicians such as Nigel Farage that “two-tier policing” means right-wing protests are dealt with more forcefully than those organized by the left. He also likened Britain to the Soviet Union for attempting to restrict offensive speech on social media.
[…]
Later on Tuesday, a 28-year-old man in Leeds, northern England, became the first person to be charged with using “threatening words or behavior intending to stir up racial hatred” online, according to the UK Crown Prosecution Service. The charges related to “alleged Facebook posts,” Nick Price, the director of legal services at the CPS, said in a statement.
[…]
The riots broke out last week after far-right groups claimed on social media that the person charged with carrying out a horrific stabbing attack that left three children dead was a Muslim asylum seeker. The online disinformation campaign stoked outrage directed at immigrants.
[…]
According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank, by mid-afternoon on July 30, the day after the attack, a false name circulated online for the alleged asylum seeker had received more than 30,000 mentions on X alone from more than 18,000 unique accounts.“The false name attributed to the attacker was circulated organically but also recommended to users by platform algorithms,” the ISD said in a statement.
“Platforms therefore amplified misinformation to users who may not otherwise have been exposed, even after the police had confirmed the name was false.”
According to the UK government, bots, which it said could be linked to state-backed actors, may well have amplified the spread of false information.
[…]
“The problem has always been enforcement,” Isabelle Frances-Wright, a technology expert at the ISD, told CNN. “Particularly in times of crisis and conflict, when there is a huge groundswell of content, at which point their already fragile content moderation systems seem to fall apart.”It does not help matters that Musk himself has promoted incendiary content on X, a platform that European regulators last month accused of misleading and deceiving users. If he can do it, why not others?
For example, shortly after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing outbreak of the war in Gaza, the self-declared “free speech absolutist” publicly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory popular among White supremacists. Musk later apologized for what he called his “dumbest” ever social media post.
[…]
On his watch, X has also relaxed its content moderation policies and reinstated several previously blocked accounts. That includes far-right figureheads like Tommy Robinson, who has published a stream of posts stoking the UK protests while criticizing violent attacks.In 2018, before Musk bought Twitter, as X used to be known, Robinson was banned from the platform for violating its rules governing hateful “conduct.”
[…]
“Social media has put rocket boosters under… not just the misinformation but the encouragement of violence,” UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said Monday.“That is a total disgrace and we cannot carry on like this,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live in an interview, adding that the police will be pursing “online criminality” as well as “offline criminality.”
During a cabinet meeting Tuesday, Starmer said those involved in the riots — in person and online — “will feel the full force of the law and be subject to swift justice,” according to a readout seen by CNN.
At the same meeting, Peter Kyle, the minister for science and technology, said that in conversations with social media companies he had made clear their responsibility to help “stop the spread of hateful disinformation and incitement.” At a briefing following the meeting, Starmer dodged questions from reporters about Musk’s comments.
[…]
It is unclear that the UK government has the tools to hold social media platforms accountable for their role in the riots.The UK’s Online Safety Act, adopted last year, creates new duties for social media platforms, including an obligation to take down illegal content when it appears.
It also makes it a criminal offense to post false information online “intended to cause non-trivial harm.”
But the legislation is not yet in effect because the regulator in charge of upholding it, Ofcom, is still consulting on codes of practice and guidance.
In a statement Monday, Ofcom said tackling illegal content online is a “major priority.” The watchdog expects the first set of duties under the new Act, regarding illegal content, to go into effect “from around the end of this year.” Once the law is in place, Ofcom will be able to fine companies up to 10% of their global revenue.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/06/tech/elon-musk-civil-war-uk-riots/index.html
…but…there’s reasons to be optimistic
…could be the talk was only ever meant to freak folks out & maybe it was a feint & they’ll be back at it come the weekend…but…also…could be they bottled it & their numbers compared to the thousands prepared to turn out & call a yob a yob…well…there were some nice pictures out of brighton for one…massive crowd…little day-glo yellow dotted line of police in a defensive cordon somewhere in the heart of it…within which huddled a half dozen or so would-be ubermensch
…I mean
…that CNN effort quotes this guy, for example
Ahmed Hussain, 31, said he had come out to support the counter-protesters because “when you don’t, the fascists feel emboldened.”
“In London you would never see them rioting on the scale that they have outside London,” Hussain told CNN. “They’re nowhere to be seen… it shows that when everyone comes out to support, their numbers dwindle.”
…but…if you can’t grasp the difference between turning out in defense of the idea that the way of the jackboot is for shit…& not throwing the first punch…& turning out to play out a parody of a clockwork orange because it’s offensive to you if people think being a racist makes you a dickhead…well…then you’re going to think they’re picking on you when you “ain’t done nuthin’…”
“I normally walk through this city center all the time,” said Nadeem Akhtar, 18, who has lived in Sheffield his whole life. “But now, recently, even my mum’s been saying to me, don’t be going out so much, because you never know what could happen.”
Akhtar had gathered with friends midday Wednesday in the city center to demonstrate against a planned far-right protest. Unlike last week, where protests across the country were allowed to boil over into racist violence, the Sheffield demonstration was overseen by a huge police presence separating the protesters and counter-protesters.
At least three right-wing demonstrators were arrested during altercations between the two groups. As one man was escorted away by police, he called out: “I ain’t done nothing. Double standards.”
…&…stopped clocks, I guess…the double negative is technically effective at saying the quiet part loud…which is that they have done something…even if they think nothing of the something…& there is certainly at least one alternate tier when it comes to justice & the online something
At the counter-protest in Sheffield later Wednesday evening, one of the speakers criticized Musk’s comments. “The richest man in the world is stirring the pot for a race war,” he said.
…wonder what 10% of twitter’s “global revenue” will look like to a court in about six months, for a start…but…before anyone gets that far with the far-right & its reach & grasp on the internet’s ethereal plane…there’s other fires need putting out
The Biden administration is racing to avert an explosion of violence across the Middle East, a high-stakes moment that threatens to derail a long-awaited cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip and underscores the limits of American influence over Israel, its closest ally in the region.
President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, huddled with their top advisers in the White House Situation Room on Monday to discuss an anticipated Iranian assault against Israel and an attack by an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia that injured U.S. troops, a strike to which Washington vowed to respond “in a manner and place of our choosing.”
Washington and Arab states scramble to avert an all-out Middle East war [WaPo]
…& no shortage of irons in those fires
Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed Wednesday that Ukrainian forces had crossed the border into the Kursk region of western Russia and carried out an attack, describing the operation as a large-scale “provocation.”
Putin calls cross-border attack in Kursk region a “provocation” [WaPo]
…how’s that for classically russian…anyway…while we’re talking about bond villains…funny story…but tommy edsall in the NYT took a stab at boiling it down to a nice neat binary…because…”everybody knows”
A pair of major developments in recent years — the ascendance of Donald Trump and the emergence of Black Lives Matter protests — have decisively altered the nation’s two political parties.
…bet you’re just thrilled to have this explained to you
One key measure of this phenomenon is the growing disparity between the views of Democrats and Republicans on a wide range of groups — from the police to feminists to transgender people — as documented by American National Election Studies surveys.
The surveys asked voters to use a thermometer scale running from 0 (coldest) to 50 (neutral) to 100 (warmest) to rate different groups.
…uh huh
The researchers found, for example, that from 2012 to 2020, Democratic voters’ ratings of “feminists” rose from 59.9 to 70.9 while Republican ratings of feminists fell from 47.9 to 43.8. Over the same period, Democrats’ ratings of “Christian fundamentalists” fell from 49.7 to 39.3, while Republican voters’ ratings of this cohort increased slightly, from 80.3 to 81.9.
…let’s hear it for the ladies…&…gents…some of your boys need sorting out
…where were we?
The sharpest difference emerged on partisan views of the Black Lives Matter movement. From 2016, when the survey first polled attitudes toward Black Lives Matter, to 2020, Democrats’ favorable rating rose from 66.3 to 76.9 while Republicans’ views fell from 30.2 in 2016 to 26.2 over the same time span. Put another way, the spread between Democrats and Republicans grew from 34.1 points to 50.7 points in four years.
…right
Significantly, the survey data shows that the largest ideological shifts over the past eight years have been among white Democrats.
…uh huh
From 2012 to 2020, white Democrats moved decisively to the left, shifting from 56.9 on a 0 to 100 scale to 74.3, according to American National Election Studies.
This leftward movement appeared on every measure from abortion to health care, but was largest in the case of support for aid to Black Americans, which nearly tripled, from 24.6 to 72.1.
Nonwhite Democrats also became more liberal from 2012 to 2020, but less so than their white copartisans, moving from 42.9 in 2012 to 55.8 in 2020.
[…]
While white liberals moved decisively leftward from 2012 to 2020, a counter phenomenon was taking place on the right.In a 2021 article, “Complicating the Role of White Racial Attitudes and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” Peter Enns and Ashley Jardina, political scientists at Cornell and the University of Virginia, contended that
the strong association between Trump support and whites’ views on racial issues identified in previous studies was not merely a result of Trump attracting racist whites by way of his own racist rhetoric, or as a reflection of partisan racial sorting that had already occurred; it was also a result of white Trump supporters changing their views to be more in line with Trump’s over the course of his presidential campaign.
In other words, Trump not only attracted whites with more conservative views on race; he also made his white supporters more likely to express more extreme views on issues related to immigration and on issues like the Black Lives Matter movement and police killings of African Americans.
…so maybe your eyes glaze over before you ever get to the part about
the relationship between the change in racial and immigration attitudes during the campaign and final vote choice is just as strong as the relationship between past racial and immigration attitudes and vote choice. Our findings therefore point to an overlooked consequence of politicians’ racial appeals: These appeals can not only make racial attitudes more salient, as previous work suggests, but they may also make some whites more racially antagonistic.
[…]
As a result, the link between these preferences and more fundamental racial attitudes may be only weakly formed, and public opinion on these issues may be especially susceptible to learning effects over the course of a campaign.
…one man’s wall is another’s small boat in the channel…but if they’re the same sort of man…could be they both have a bit of a glass jaw behind the big mouth
While Enns and Jardina focused on Trump’s role in increasing racial hostility among his supporters, Andrew Engelhardt, a political scientist at Stony Brook University, looked at the other side of the story, showing how Trump’s 2016 campaign sharply reduced racial resentment among Democratic voters.
[…]
In a 2019 paper, “Trumped by Race: Explanations for Race’s Influence on Whites’ Votes in 2016,” Engelhardt demonstrated a major movement to the left among white Democrats from 2012 to 2016, the year of Trump’s first presidential campaign, on measures of racial resentment.Contrary to the view that Trump’s victory resulted from his successful mobilization of white hostility to Black people, Engelhardt wrote, “the distribution of whites’ racial attitudes in 2016 differs markedly from prior years,” and “this attitude polarization increased substantially between 2012 and 2016 as white Democrats became on average much more racially sympathetic.”
In 2016, according to Engelhardt’s analysis,
The most racially resentful whites were on average about 45 percentage points more likely than the least racially resentful to support Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. This is greater in absolute magnitude than in any preceding election.
The increased correlation between vote choice and racial attitudes, Engelhardt wrote, “actually comes from those holding more positive racial attitudes rejecting Trump and supporting Clinton instead.”
…still fell to the electoral college’s bias…but…the lady did get the most votes one time already
Commentators may rightly point to changing norms surrounding expressing racist sentiments as enabling this. But the picture I present here is that white Democrats are actually the unique group in this period. They increasingly hold a perspective that acknowledges racism and discrimination as obstacles to Black success.
White nationalist rallies may gain the most attention, in part because they may play on pundits’ priors about the Trump administration’s bases of support. But this neglects the effects these events may have on the formation of more positive racial attitudes among those opposed to Trump and his administration.
Concern with prejudice’s political impacts is rightly placed, but it should not come at the expense of considering the forces at play among less prejudiced individuals.
In a separate 2021 paper, “Racial Attitudes Through a Partisan Lens,” Engelhardt argued that “racial concerns not only provide a foundation for political conflict: My results reveal that political processes can increase or decrease racial animus.”
Engelhardt tests
two explanations of the relationship between partisanship and racial attitudes. The first — the racial attitude influence hypothesis — follows the conventional wisdom that whites’ racial attitudes produce changes in partisanship. Whites’ racial attitudes in part foster concerns about who the parties support, leading them to change parties or how strongly they identify with their current one. The second — the partisanship influence hypothesis — argues that parties shape racial attitudes. Partisanship changes attitudes by affecting where people get their information from and how they process what they acquire.
…so…speaking of this kind of thing…&…the aforementioned bond villains of the piece
The recent rise in partisan hostility or affective polarization, as it’s known among political scientists, Engelhardt continued, elevates “partisanship over other lines of conflict” and “partisan biases in information seeking and processing become more likely, giving people few incentives to change their party loyalties and more cause to adopt party-consistent attitudes” not only on racial issues but even in their religious choices.” Partisanship, he wrote, “appears to be capable of shaping presumptively fundamental orientations, adding, “politics are fundamental to race. Politics shape how whites view Black Americans.”
[…]
In their 2022 paper, “The Polarization of White Racial Attitudes and Support for Racial Equality in the U.S.,” Jardina and Ollerenshaw wrote:Levels of racial resentment were not exceptionally dissimilar between white Democrats and white Republicans in the 1980s. Through the 1990s, however, a gap between the two partisan groups began to emerge, and the mean difference between white Democrats and Republicans surpassed 10 points in 2000.
The most significant changes, however, occurred between 2012 and 2020, when the gap in resentment between white Democrats and Republicans ballooned to 40 points.
…birds of a feather
GB News has said it is “closely monitoring” Elon Musk’s lawsuit against advertisers in a sign it is preparing to sue brands that suspend advertising.
The threat of legal action comes after Mr Musk revealed on Tuesday night that X, formerly known as Twitter, declared “war” on a global coalition of advertisers and brands over claims they illegally boycotted his social media platform.
Rumble, a YouTube rival that claims it is “immune to cancel culture” and is popular with conservative online users, has also filed a similar lawsuit.
…big companies should have to give little hitlers large amounts of money or it’s not fair & they’ll go crying to the most sympathetic judge they can shop for with their digital-paper billions…that’s like…natural law, see…the natural order of things
The legal action has triggered an immediate response from GB News, which has been battling a boycott by scores of brands that have refused to advertise on the channel.
A spokesman for the TV broadcaster said: “GB News notes the antitrust action commenced by media companies X and Rumble against the advertising industry. We will be closely monitoring its progress.”
[…]
GB News is at risk of a fine from regulator Ofcom after breaching a string of broadcasting rules, including impartiality and its use of politicians as presenters, such as Reform’s Nigel Farage.
…nige…with his hand out begging for cash he claims to be entitled to & thinks nobody ought to be allowed to leave him hanging…well, I never…hard to imagine such pearl clutching without some sort of swooning fit brought on by autoasphyxiation…but he struggles on…with another appearance from OFCOM all but begging for people to start breaking out the “not fit for purpose” emergency rhetorical klaxons…so…that google antitrust ruling still feels like baby steps…but stepping in the right direction is still a start…however much I might want to hit some ground running…because if nige-level intellects are taking cues from stranger elon as though he’s the lone ranger even though that cowboy hat that one time was definitely a black one…well…that concerns me
Only a handful of pro-Harris accounts, including one called “White Dudes for Harris,” appear to have been affected. But the recurring issues are raising questions about whether Musk’s platform is intentionally censoring the pages, or if the deep staff cuts he made after buying the company in 2022 have left the platform ill-equipped for the surge in political speech ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Musk’s recent posts on X — which have actively courted support for Trump and amplified a manipulated video of Harris — highlight the potential risks of having the owner of a major platform openly champion a presidential candidate. This dynamic is unprecedented, as other social media CEOs and founders have largely stayed out of the political fray.
“It’s curious,” Ross Morales Rocketto, an organizer of White Dudes for Harris, a pro-Harris group whose account was affected twice in the course of a week. “Clearly we’re political, so it just continues to feel like another iteration of Musk Twitter impacting people’s political speech when it not does not align with him.”
After Musk acquired the platform then known as Twitter in October 2022, he made sweeping layoffs and other dramatic changes to its staffing and policies. The entrepreneur fired much of Twitter’s trust and safety team, loosened the site’s rules on hate speech, reinstated a number of previously suspended accounts and lifted a ban on campaign ads.
Alexander B. Howard, an open government advocate, said X’s diminished staff might make technical glitches or moderation mistakes more likely, or cause the platform to fix them more slowly. Such issues happened even before the billionaire took over, he said, but Musk’s political advocacy has erased any trust in the platform’s neutrality and put a spotlight on which accounts get restricted.
“Neutrality has left the building,” Howard said. “We’re now in a really dangerous moment headed to a pivotal presidential election, and someone who has direct control, at a root level, to this platform is fomenting division.”
[…]
This week, Musk used his site to taunt British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over far-right violence in the United Kingdom, suggesting the perpetrators were unfairly targeted by police. The Financial Times reported that the British government had found X less responsive than other social platforms to alerts flagging posts believed to be inciting further violence or spreading disinformation about the clashes.On Tuesday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he would do a “major interview” with Musk on Monday, without providing further details. Musk appeared to confirm in a post on X that the interview would be streamed on his platform. A representative for the Harris campaign declined to comment about whether the candidate was offered a similar opportunity.
[…]
Musk has at times jumped in to help accounts experiencing technical problems on X. On Saturday, for example, the National Weather Service posted that it could no longer post automated tweets and, as a result, it could no longer “post all watches/warnings/advisories as they are issued.”Musk responded: “This should not be happening. Will investigate.”
Organizers of the pro-Harris accounts say they have not received any direct assistance from X staff or its CEO, only automated messages informing them their accounts have been restricted or reinstated.
A string of incidents raises questions about whether X is restricting accounts that oppose Musk’s political views, or just mishandling a rush of political speech. [WaPo]
…he’s…a busy ol’ busybody
Elon Musk is opening another school. Expect a very un-woke curriculum [Guardian]
…&…seriously…miss me with letting a guy who so badly misses the point of the work of iain m banks
…stick chips in your head
Neuralink has implanted second trial patient with brain chip, Elon Musk says [Guardian]
…or teach anyone much of anything other than object lessons in being a shitty human being for vast personal profit…oh…& being shady AF
A political action committee backed by billionaire Elon Musk is being investigated by the Michigan secretary of state’s office amid efforts to collect voter data.
[…]
The committee has been acquiring detailed voter information from those living in Michigan and other battleground states after people submit their personal data through a section on the PAC’s website that says “register to vote.”After clicking on the “register to vote” tab on America PAC’s website, users in states like Michigan can submit a ZIP code, address and phone number. People with a Michigan address are brought to a page that says “thank you” and asks users to “complete the form below” to help wrap up the voter registration process. As of Sunday afternoon, though, there was no other form to complete below the words “thank you.”
“Every citizen should know exactly how their personal information is being used by PACs, especially if an entity is claiming it will help people register to vote in Michigan or any other state,” a spokeswoman for the Michigan secretary of state’s office said in a statement to CNBC.
“While the America PAC is a federal political action committee, the Department is reviewing their activities to determine if there have been any violations of state law. We will refer potential violations to the Michigan Attorney General’s office as appropriate,” the spokeswoman added.
CNBC first reported on the group’s efforts and how the site does not directly register people to vote for those with an address in a swing state.
A person with direct knowledge of the PAC’s operations told CNBC that, at one point since the group registered with the Federal Election Commission in May, the links on the website were functioning properly — but admits now they’re not.
Elon Musk PAC being investigated by Michigan secretary of state for potential violations [NBC]
…just like his brother baby
Influencer gives Trump a Tesla, a Rolex … and a campaign finance violation? [Guardian]
…livestreaming the quiet part since before it was cool
Five secretaries of state plan to send a letter to Elon Musk calling on the billionaire owner of X to make changes to the social media platform’s Grok AI chatbot after it gave users misinformation about Kamala Harris appearing on the 2024 White House ballot in certain states.
Grok told users that the ballots were “locked and loaded” and that “the ballot deadline has passed for several states”.
“So, if you’re planning to run for president in any of these states, you might want to check if you’ve already missed the boat. But hey, there’s always 2028, right?” the chatbot told users.
But the ballot deadlines in the nine states listed by Grok – Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington – have not passed. And there will not be any impediment for the vice-president to run in those states for the presidency.
The secretaries of state for five of those states – Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington – are calling on Musk to update Grok with accurate information about the presidential election, according to the Washington Post.
Minnesota’s secretary of state, Steve Simon, emphasized that the misinformation had reached millions of X users.
“There is considerable reach here for this misinformation,” Simon told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It’s being repeated and it’s being shared over and over again. What else are we going to see on Grok? What else are we going to see on X that perpetuates bad information?”
When he reached out to X with concerns, Simon said he got “what I can only verbalize as the equivalent of a shoulder shrug”.
Simon told the Post that he reached out to fellow secretaries of state – who are in charge of administering the election – in the nine states mentioned by Grok. All five who agreed to sign the letter are Democrats with the exception of Pennsylvania’s Al Schmidt, a Republican who was appointed by the Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, a Harris running mate contender.
Grok was unveiled last November as a feature for X premium and premium plus subscribers, the plans for which cost $3 and $16 monthly. Musk framed Grok as an alternative, “rebellious” AI chatbot who will answer “spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems”.
…also in the frame for grok
Elon Musk’s X platform is under pressure from data regulators after it emerged that users are consenting to their posts being used to build artificial intelligence systems via a default setting on the app.
The UK and Irish data watchdogs said they have contacted X over the apparent attempt to gain user consent for data harvesting without them knowing about it.
An X user highlighted the issue on Friday, pointing to a setting on the app that activated by default and permitted the account holder’s posts to be used for training Grok, an AI chatbot built by Musk’s xAI business.
Under UK GDPR, which is based on the EU data regulation of the same name, companies are not allowed to use “pre-ticked boxes” or “any other method of default consent”.
The setting, which comes with an already ticked box, states that you “allow your posts as well as your interactions, inputs and results with Grok to be used for training and fine-tuning”. According to the X user, the setting can only be turned off on the web version of X.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/26/elon-musks-x-under-pressure-from-regulators-over-data-harvesting-for-grok-ai
…we comfortable calling this stuff SOP these days, then?
Over the last few months, Musk has been amping up his support of Donald Trump, who the billionaire has endorsed. While most tech billionaires stay mum about the election, Musk has put his weight behind a super political action committee, America Pac, which has run advertising supporting the former president. Musk said the group supports “meritocracy and individual freedom”.
In one ad, which shows footage from the failed 13 July assassination attempt on Trump, users from swing states who end up clicking on a “Register to Vote” link are taken to a page where they submit detailed information – including address, age and phone number – into a form that ultimately gives their data to the America Pac, according to CNBC.
While Musk has said that his vision for X, after he acquired it in 2022, was to turn it into a “public square”, Simon told the Post that spreading misinformation goes beyond moderating different voices in a public forum.
“This is a case where the owner of the public square [the social media company itself] is the one who introduced and spread the bad information – and then delayed correcting its own mistake after it knew that the information was false,” he said.
Secretaries of state call on Musk to fix chatbot over election misinformation [Guardian]
…personally I could be persuaded he knew the shit was false before he helped it along its way with as big a push as he could boost it by…anyway
The EDL, actors and conspiracy theorists – a guide to the British far right [Guardian]
…new “emperor”…new “clothes”
‘History repeating’: activists who opposed UK far right in 1970s urge solidarity [Guardian]
…what’s a regulator to do?
Balls, a former Labour cabinet minister and a regular presenter on the ITV breakfast programme, questioned his wife’s response to far-right riots during Monday’s edition of the programme.
Ofcom said it received 8,201 complaints relating to the programme. Some of them related to the husband-and-wife interview, while others related to an earlier interview with the leftwing Labour MP Zarah Sultana, in which Balls defended Cooper and the government.
A spokesperson for the media regulator said: “We are assessing the complaints against our broadcasting rules but are yet to decide whether or not to investigate.”
The issue of politicians hosting current affairs programmes has been highlighted in recent years, after the decision by GB News and the now defunct TalkTV to pay a number of serving Conservative politicians to host shows. Yet Ofcom had declined to ban politicians from hosting current affairs programmes – and ITV argued that Balls has not been an active politician since losing his seat in the 2015 general election, which is when he started pursuing a media career.
Cooper was taking part in a morning media round, appearing on all major broadcast outlets in turn, including on her husband’s programme.
At first she was questioned by co-host Kate Garraway before Balls stepped in to ask about the role of social media, saying “we’ve talked about this a few times in the last few days”.
Cooper responded: “Well you’re right, Ed. We have seen things appearing online that are clearly criminal. Social media has put rocket boosters under far-right extremist organisations and also some of the violence we have seen. Things that are criminal offline are also criminal online.”
ITV defended the exchange as “balanced, fair and duly impartial”. The broadcaster could argue that it did not breach any broadcasting rules because there was sufficient challenge in Balls’ questions and due impartiality was achieved thanks to alternative viewpoints presented by Garraway.
Some of the complaints relate to the cross-examination of Sultana, who demanded that the government brand the riots Islamophobic in a testy back-and-forth with Balls. She said after the broadcast: “The sneering contempt of ‘journalists’ will never stop me from calling out racism and Islamophobic hate.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/aug/07/ed-balls-itv-interview-with-wife-yvette-cooper-draws-ofcom-complaints
…love to see the venn diagram between those complaints & online accounts with less than two degrees of seperation from the white-boy-riot-posse…nothing to do with wasting time or juicing statistics like a rotten tomatoes score…what are you…a conspiracy theorist?
A new Google update will make it simpler to request the removal of fake explicit images, as public figures, teachers and ordinary people increasingly contend with targeted abuse in the form of “deepfakes,” or realistic-looking images made with AI. While fake nude images have long existed and Google already lets people request they be removed from search results, the change will help identify and remove copies of explicit images and block further explicit searches, the company said in a recent blog post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/07/delete-deepfake-nude-google-search/
…gotta be realistic about the world we’re living in, right?
…that’ll be why apparently we should be outraged that the white guy with the grey hair who isn’t MAGA has camo-print merch hats
…if the cap fits…& elon’s says dunce on the front, “kick me” on the back & screams “dangerously stupid man with irresponsible quantities of money” loud enough to ring the clear & present danger bell…can we please either incarcerate the fuckwit or just institutionalize him to pre-empt the danger he poses to himself & others?
…& if anyone happens to wonder why the last place in that list goes to madness’ (my name is) michael caine…well
Michael Caine shares perfect two-word response to race riots [Independent]
I hate to break it to Elon but he did not invent #TwoTierKeir. I heard the phrase at least a month ago, and I think the Guardian did at least one debunking think-piece about how Britain does not have a dual justice system.
…that’s just it…he thinks he’s an edgelord…but he’s not the edge…& he’s a lot less sharp than he thinks he is
…people said of kanye that if he had people around him that cared about him they’d have got him treatment for what so clearly had him spiralling…no question in my mind elon needs at least as much help…& possibly stronger meds?
Elon has never invented anything before, why would anyone expect him to start now?
News from the City of Yes! Due to overzealous over-regulation our relatively recent, pandemic-related experiment in outdoor dining is basically coming to an end.
This is from Hellgate, which is made up of Gothamist refugees who were kicked to the curb after the disastrous decision to hire…I can’t remember the woman’s name, but when they were casting around for a new head (they’re under NY Public Radio, which is now another shitshow) they claimed they wanted DEI and someone intimately familiar with New York and social-media savvy. So of course they went with a white woman who lived her whole life in San Francisco, I think was the managing editor of the Chronicle, and barely knew how to power up her own PowerBook. I think the salary is something like $700,000 a year, plus “incents.”
There’s been a big astroturfed pro-car movement in my city backed by our equivalent of the Manhattan Institute. It’s been joined by our corrupt old guard equivalent of Adams.
The latest manifestation was an anti-bike lane campaign pushed by our local Sinclair station. They managed to run a slate of candidates, Black and white, on this platform for city council and Mayor who were all kinds of ethically challenged people.
The funny thing is they all lost. Voters just didn’t care. The old guard would all stand up at a debate sponsored by the Sinclair channel and declare how terrible they were and how we needed wider roads, and the reaction was confusion and silence.
It was obviously a campaign by rich outsider for rich outsiders. People who live in city neighborhoods like traffic calming. They have much bigger priorities than worrying about bike lanes. They don’t want their kids squished going to school.
The whole obsession was a little manifestation of GOP weirdness trying to exploit a division between older and younger Democratic politicians, but the GOP was too stuck in its bubble to understand our voters don’t share their outrage.
There is an amazingly powerful pro-car lobby even here in Manhattan. They’re pissed off because the dining sheds take up parking spaces, and they’re joined by neighbors who don’t like the late-night noise and the rats who live in and under the sheds and the homeless who rehome themselves in the abandoned ones.
One of my favorite restaurants is a French bistro near me that has one. It’s not particularly pleasant but there’s not much vehicular traffic, because it’s on a small side street. Still, it’s not like being in St-Germain-de-Prés and families with small children gravitate to it because it’s anarchy and the late-in-life parents are just so grateful for their precious gifts that they won’t do any parenting. I don’t mind it and if one comes up to me and screams in my ear and/or wants a bite of something from my charcuterie platter I oblige. Whatever. To enter the real restaurant you have to go up three or four stairs (no ADA compliance for them, or most places in New York) but the shed is right at sidewalk level.
At this point I don’t really care. We had a car for years, when BH had jobs in the suburbs. It was very handy but then the war on cars commenced under Bloomberg (he had no problem with this, because presumably he had a fleet of black car services at his disposal and it’s not like he was angling into a parking spot outside the El Cielo Soda Cigarettes Cold Beer Lotto Tickets bodega.
We gave up the car because although it was a beauty and ran so smoothly you could go 75 MPH without realizing it (AS I DID MORE THAN ONCE) once BH returned to working here the garage charges were too much. $600/month and that was with the Manhattan resident discount (that’s an extra 18.75%: Screw the tourists!)
One of my favorite bits of Hollywood unreality is how there is always a parking space right in front of wherever the characters need to go.
I get why they do it. You can’t have a movie with a villain spending 15 minutes looking for a spot before going into the restaurant to shoot someone.
But the ironclad rule of any busy city street is that there is never any parking where you want to be, only spots eight blocks away.
I like it when a movie or a TV show from the 70s or the 80s has characters show up in front of a skyscraper that must have housed thousands of employees and yet all the parking spots in front are unoccupied so they just pull right in in their football-field length 1973 Oldsmobile or whatever.
VP pick Tim Walz is 60, not 23. Still. it’s good to be young at heart, I suppose, and not a cranky curmudgeonly contrarian, like I have morphed into.
https://ew.com/kamala-harris-vp-pick-tim-walz-certified-swiftie-beyhive-8690949
…for a bonus…youtube seems keen to get me to get into tik tok…so…I don’t know who the bunch are who put this on youtube…or who goes by @pissedoffbartender on tik tok…but he’s sort of endearing?
He’s not motherfucking wrong. But it falls on deaf ears (hard to listen when your head is jammed deep up your ass like most MAGAts seem to be.)
I never understood the intermingling of the Confederate flag and patriotism especially in the south. Intellectually, I sort of did but even a dumbshit like me can not grasp why some folks think they’re true Murricans but wave that fucking slavery flag.
Because they’re idiots who can’t comprehend cognitive dissonance.
I worked with an honest to God member of The Sons of Confederate Veterans and he was constantly popping off about how the South was occupied sovereign territory in one breath, and then howling “ America, love it or leave it” in the next.
I finally got sick of it and told him he needed to pick one and I didn’t care which. He stopped talking which was a solid win.
Whenever they pull a “love it or leave it” I just say “so you DO think people get to move to other countries when they disagree with their home country’s politics, feel oppressed, or in danger?”
Cue blinking.
Love it.
Ed Balls?
…was once the shadow chancellor for labour in opposition…think he did a celebrity edition of bake off or something…& is married to the current home secretary…ignoring what difference there was or wasn’t between her appearance on that show & all the others that asked her about basically the same stuff on the same day…you can try to claim a “both sides” comparison to GB news having rees-mogg interview farage or whatever
…but 8,000 complaints to OFCOM over that interview & I’d wager next to fuck all about the others where she said the same stuff…that’s a brigade effect akin to the pro 2nd amendment types that would flood kinja posts about shootings…or the sick puppies if you’re OG about the reference, I guess?
Sounds like wingnuts trying to make it into a Balls up
Fuck Musk.
…sideways
I find this utterly perplexing. From WaPo:
To whom? It was painfully obvious he wasn’t gaining ground with anyone outside of MAGA. I think it’s ridiculously partisan that journalists are stating he had this whole thing locked up. He most emphatically did not.
Trump complains about campaign as advisers try to focus on attacking Harris
…WaPo has had a swing-state poll average of some sort as a leader board on the homepage for ages & it never seems to shift off 1-tied, 1 for harris at less than 1% margin & the rest for trump up to about 5%…no mention of 5% being the old standard for a margin of error on a normal distribution of the bell-curve variety…so hard to tell apart from the bookies who had him odds-on from arguably before the off
…so it’s an appearance that got a ton of lip-service…& a fair bit of action…but even if they reckon he has more “routes” through the electoral college than biden had…they’re all thin margins from presumably maxed out & tapped out sources in base terms…with a gloss of big money greasing the machinery to keep it all on the rails they remain certain is the only way, truth & light at the end of the tunnel
…but arguably they’re calling it heads or tails when they’re dealing with a binomial probability…& from that perspective he’s the one who needs to get the camel through the eye of the needle while being the storm in the teacup
…it’s almost enough to make you think about phrases like “faith in humanity” without “losing” being right along for the ride?
It smacks of them putting their thumb on the scales in favor of Trump, and convincing Democrats that it’s over and just stay home on election day.
More disturbingly, it fuels election denialism. MAGAs will be screaming about how Trump was leading and the only way he could lose is fraud.
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but it’s bad journalism.
…there’s been a good bit of press about how the trouble in the UK is the fruit of a tree steeped in decades of tories & the far-right poisoning the well…which elements of the press & media have unquestionably done yeoman work in service of…& it might seem like preaching to the choir when you say it here…but when the president says it to the press?
Biden ‘not confident at all’ in peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses race [Guardian]
…that’s news…for some measures of journalism, anyway
…remind me why it’s rude to call someone yellow in the states?
You know why I agree with Biden on this? BECAUSE I WAS ALIVE AND CONSCIOUS IN 2021 WHEN MANGO UNCHAINED ALREADY ATTEMPTED A GODDAMN COUP.
But yeah, wow, big talk from our president, can’t believe he’d “go there”!
…I was alive & transfixed by streaming footage in which it was visibly obvious there was a small minority who showed up with a plan & a co-ordinated approach cribbed from the people they make the kit they were cosplaying for
…compared to that shit…tommy robinson or nigel’s fingerprints aren’t nearly as clearly all over the current bout of “civil unrest” as roger stone & donnie dummkopf’s were all over rhodes et al’s chat logs
…the two-tier thing earns its spot on the projection spectrum, don’t it?
I’m glad Uncle Joe is calling it out. Forewarned is forearmed. This Jan. 6 ring DC with troops stopping every vehicle and post armed soldiers every 5 feet around Congress. Give MAGAs a location to protest, and tell them that leaving that perimeter is grounds for apprehension, and getting within a hundred yards of the building means taking a bullet. Stop the bullshit before it starts.
He went there specifically because he’s not running again. If he was still going for reelection you know damned well he would say, “oh, well, I don’t know, I’m sure it will be fine.”
One of the unforeseen benefits of him stepping down is that now Harris has two attack dogs.
That reporter, Josh Dawsey, has been firmly in the Trump camp’s pocket for years. Marcy Wheeler has been pointing out huge problems with his reporting for a long time that could only come from his unquestioned recycling of GOP talking points.
One of the obvious signs is his top of the article citing of Trump being shot and using it to rally the GOP at the convention. That was the GOP message, but even before Biden dropped out polling showed Trump got no bounce. And now the GOP has all but dropped it.
Trump was leading Biden, but that was about dissatisfaction with Biden, not love for Trump. Reporters like Dawsey being clueless about this before Harris is now affecting their ability to understand the new campaign dynamics. But the editorial and exec level lacks the mental processing power to understand how they got to this place and how to fix it.
Now it’s not provable, of course, but I’m very much in the “Biden still would have won” camp. Harris isn’t drawing from a huge pool of new voters; it’s just enthusiasm and vibes. Which are important! But I suspect everyone suddenly showing in polls and at rallies and whatnot would have gone Biden’s way come November.
Also worth noting: Trump doesn’t really have much of a campaign?
He’s averaging 1-2 rallies a week right now. His advance team is hilariously bad. All of his money was going toward his legal fees until basically this month. He was told not to book outdoor venues and indoor venues are well aware he’s welched on payment to them in the past. As far as we can tell, he doesn’t have a GOTV operation in any swing state. He’ll get ads from PACs but his actual campaign has bought minimal ad time compared with Harris and the Dems.
I know only Biden can be old this year, but, um, a) are we sure he’s up to this b) was he hilariously overconfident or c) does he think the fix is already in enough where he doesn’t have to try.
…if I were to take a guess…he thought he was sure it was (c)…lotta people were saying it…lot of ’em near his ear…& everyone told him he beat up on the old guy in that debate…& his online ground game had proper thugs to match the bikers for trump who’d have their backs when the “civil war” came around for shit-coup v2.0.24…joe was an old coot who couldn’t twitter let alone tik tok so if the stacked decks came up trump in the necessary places it’d be believable & he could get on with cutting away the limbs from the tree of liberty he got his tail stuck in the crack of before trying to do the sci-fi trope thing of shooting the lock on your side of the door to make the one on the other side not work…but to the constitution
…the point when it stops being (b) is, I suspect, inseperable from the point at which he loses the will to live
…but (a)?
…you always had to squint just right to make out he ever was…what with the manifestly unfit for any or indeed all positions of power/advantage/personal profit & all…so…hard not to hope that’s a big ol’ no
I’m here to add after today’s nonsensical presser an option d) he’s an old guy who suffered a traumatic event and has absolutely no frame of reference to deal with it and that between his brain already not being fully lit, the PTSD might also be leaking out a little bit and there’s not a single person on this planet who could help him.
This is correct. We’ve gone from weird to creepy. That bizarre photo of his gang of goons in front of her plane is disturbing.
JD Vance Is on a Stalker Tour of Swing States
…probably too late to re-brand MAGA as stalker nation…& disrespectful of folks that can actually stalk a deer like they wrote that book about…let alone the movie & its one-shot emphasis…but…if the cap fits
…probably couldn’t pull off the signature headgear, though…even in camo?
No, weird is just fine. “Stalker” is too pejorative. Authoritarians are perfectly fine with being called evil or bad. It’s an ego boost. “Weird” works because it mocks them, and drives right at their fragile self-images.
…I feel like the creepy part deserves to be out loud, too…but on the whole I agree, I think
Reservoir Munchkins (apparently Just Dolphins is about as tall as I am… 5’7″).
“Why does this keep happening?” — Trump, probably.
Vance tried to have a big counter rally the same day in Philly. He got 200 people.
Liz Cheney is savage.
Mo’ money.
The Harris-Walz campaign’s first day, by the numbers
British racists are a special kind of irritating.
…preach
…betting the specials find ’em the same kind of irritating, too
Eric Clapton says “Hey!”
One sign of how the Trump campaign is misfiring now is their attempt to smear Walz over his National Guard service.
Their line of attack is so confusing I had to reread it to understand what they were even arguing. They seem to be trying to manufacture outrage that he retired after 20 years in 2005, and then a few months later his unit was called up for Iraq.
They’ve got to convince voters that 20 years wasn’t enough, and also that the deeply unpopular Iraq War was something worth sticking around for. I can see how it might have a little appeal for voters who were already on Trump’s side, but those are the last people they should be chasing now.
There are some outlets which are taking this as a serious issue when they need to be seeing this as a sign of weakness in their pipeline of leads and talking points. But the reporters and their editors lack the brainpower to think from a different perspective.
…born in…wikipedia says ’64…so…2005…over 40…uh huh
…average age of active service members
…but…he was national guard, right?
…so…he retired…to run for congress, mind…not to write a memoir that shit-talked his district out of the side of its mouth to much privileged aclaim…when going on two-thirds of his peers had done the same & nearer twice the average age for “regular” army deployments on a statistical basis
…& that’s their big stick in that fight?
Ah but you see they’re the party that loves the troops
dying for no good reason, so they have to be right, of course. Just like how W was a war hero who bravely served his country and John Kerry was a far-left communist who fought for the Viet Cong.The whole Swift Boat exercise was a high risk effort but in terms of campaign strategy at least it had a potential for a high reward. Bush desperately needed to muddy the waters on his own war service.
This is the Trump team wasting time on something that leads nowhere. At best it adds one more grievence for a base that is already overflowing with complaints.
…in case it seems like I’m making light of the damp squib from the ordained preachers of the immortal bully pulpit in the UK…the brits are wierd in their own ways…& seldom wierder than when there’s football involved…so it’s worth mentioning that the sort of public order threat these riots make a lot of people think of might be 2011…but it’s also hooliganism…which was everything the grime or drill scene is now…or mods & greasers taking bike chains to each other…& the police as a consequence got very good at a particular form of policing…when a bunch of yarn-bombing middle aged hippies get kettled in central london it upsets a lot of the same people who hate extinction rebellion for fucking up their commute…but when ranks of policemen flank your entire match-day journey from home through the transport connections & down the streets to the stadium with eyes on the pubs that pick teams…you don’t get so much indignation about liberties being taken with the civil rights about being at liberty to get in a ruck…if none of that makes sense google “old firm”, “milwall”, “manchester”, “celtic + rangers”…it’s a whole thing…so…on the one hand…the taylor swift glow up being attractive to terrorists thing is getting out of hand
…& in that one the connection to the islamist “fundamentalism” brand of terrorism isn’t a suspicious AI glitch
Plot to attack Taylor Swift show in Austria linked to Islamic State [Reuters]
Suspects in foiled attack on Taylor Swift shows were inspired by Islamic State group, officials say [AP]
…but…the met seem pretty confident they’re on their game?
Taylor Swift Still Due to Perform at London’s Wembley Stadium Amid Enhanced Security as U.K. Police Evaluates Intelligence [Variety]
…also…in case folks don’t click through & somehow haven’t seen any of it…the camo cap thing is…well, I find it funny…so…#notalldadjokeswearhats or something?
…dunno if these embed…but
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1HgnI4AHd0/
[apparently not…so I’ll try to rig up a screenshot]
…the line between “die, liberal” & “slay, queen” is thinner than the lawful neutral/chaotic good divide these days
Another “haven’t decided who I’m voting for” that’s a Trump voter hiding. There was a skeet yesterday about one woman reporters talked to as “undecided” who had voted in every Republican primary. This was public record — reporters never checked.
Just when you thought that Senator Joe Lieberman’s (“D”-Cigna and Aetna) torpedoing of a sensible American health care system was a generational setback, along comes the pet insurance. Oh no. So much bureaucracy. So much pdf-ing boomeranging around the vet, a specialist, a hospital…
BH took the hound in to the hospital and they gave him steroids and an MRI. He will live to fight another day. “OK, so he needs cancer treatment—” “I’m afraid our oncologist is on vacation for the month of August but these other locations that we’re not affiliated with should be open…” “No backup?”
Meanwhile, I have an insurance plan for Faithful Hound and there’s always something wrong with an inquiry or a claim. I’m the policyholder. The minute I call it should trigger a screen saying “Matthew Crawley calling about his dog Faithful Hound…” Oh no. You have to confirm and verify all kinds of info. Including the number I was calling from!
I was tipped over the edge when the hospital called me and said, “You are the owner of record for your dog.”
“Um, yeah, I guess, but my husband is there so he—”
“According to HIPAA rules we need to get your consent [blah blah blah].”
“It’s a fucking dog! Are you insane? Yes, I give my consent.”
…oh for fuck’s actual fucking sake
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/08/elon-musk-shares-faked-telegraph-story-rioters-falklands-camps
…it’s not rwanda…he don’t got jokes…though he is a particularly sorry one
“they’ll vote against the right to hunt when it comes down to it.”
huh? did i miss an anti hunting thing….. or is he just worried about gun control?
ive seent similar arguments come along on oppo…….they get a bit wierd if you mention anything about making it harder to own guns and maybe banning some types of them….