#and facebook had that big leak

[fattystoriez]

Preston’s 18th Birthday

Content Warning: Incest, Homophobic Slurs, Weight Gain

Preston was a normal teenage boy, except for the fact that he was adopted by a gay couple when he was born. His mother didn’t want him and he learned that some time after he was born, she died. He knew nothing about his biological father, but he never stopped looking, his dads didn’t even know who his father was. His dads were great, but Preston never stopped wondering what life would be like had he been raised by his biological father.

A couple months ago, Preston’s biological father reached out through Facebook. His profile had no pictures and seemed to be new, but he had the DNA test from when he was born to prove his relation. His name is Travis, he’s in his mid 40’s and he is a construction worker. Despite not knowing what his dad looks like, Preston started to talk with his dad more and more. His two dads suggested that he meet his father for his 18th birthday before the party, Preston thought this was a great idea and so did his dad. So they had made plans to meet, he would chat and have lunch and come back to his house for his party.

Preston’s Birthday

Preston woke up to a massive aching boner, one that was begging to be released. “Oh GOD!” He moaned loudly as he grabbed the hard on, his underwear soaked in precum. “Fuck I don’t have time to take care of this” Preston thought, “I’ll just take a shower and maybe it’ll chill out.”Preston’s cock calmed down after he took cold shower, but he could help but notice that he was still very horny. He threw on a t-shirt, a pair of briefs and some gym shorts. Preston checked his phone, it was 11:30am already, he needed to hurry or he’d be late for lunch with his dad. He went downstairs saying bye to his dads, got into his car and headed towards Travis’s place, his cock slowly leaking precum the whole way there.

Preston noticed as he was getting closer that his dad lived in a trailer park, which was fitting given he is a construction worker. He didn’t realize how nice he had it with his dads, living in a suburban home with a nice new car and electronics. Travis would barely be able to afford rent let alone all of Preston’s nice commodities. Preston knocked on the door, he heard heavy footsteps walk towards the door and it swung open to reveal Travis.

Travis was HUGE! His tight orange shirt couldn’t even cover his massive belly, and his underwear… or are they shorts??? They looked tight on his waist. His face was covered by a bushy beard, hair that the top of his head lacked. He still has some hair around the sides of his head, which only added to his grotesque appearance. “Preston!” The massive bear of a man said with a thick southern accent, he squeezed Preston in a tight hug, the contact making his cock leak some pre cum. “I’m so glad you’re finally here, I’ve been waiting to watch- I mean… see you all day!”

Travis showed Preston into the trailer, it was dingy and grimy, Travis clearly doesn’t know how to pick up after himself. Preston could tell he also didn’t smell the best, having a very distinct and vile musk that emanated from him “I’ve been excited too…” Preston noticed the massive amount of food that was over in the kitchen area. “Is that… for lunch today?” Preston was confused, there was no way two people could eat that much, even if Travis was a massive hog.

“Of course it for lunch big guy! You’re 18!” Travis said that as if Preston should know what that means, it was then that Preston felt his stomach gurgle in hunger. “But let’s start with your birthday cake, I made it special myself.” Travis walked Preston to the dining table and pulled out the most delicious cake Preston has ever seen.

“Oh you really didn’t have to do this much, there’s no way I’m eating all of this.” Preston said as he sat down, Travis cutting him a slice of cake. “Oh it chocolate, that’s actually my favorite.” Preston took a bite of the cake and it was the most delicious thing he had ever eaten in his life, it even made his cock stand back up. “Oh god… this is good!”

“I thought you might like it, made it with my own secret recipe.” Travis went behind Preston, massaging his shoulders as his son starts to pig out on the rest of the cake. “It’s a tradition for men in our family to eat like this on their 18th birthday, son.” Preston couldn’t stop himself from eating more of the cake, he couldn’t process what was going on. “When men in our family hit adulthood, we grow quickly into slobbish pigs.”

Preston was having a hard time processing the information, he couldn’t stop eating the cake long enough to worry about what was happening to him. “Oh god… daddy what’s happening to me?” Preston’s voice started to have a light souther accent that could barely be heard through the chewing.

Preston’s body started to plump up quickly, his abs from his years in track were fading away. “You can’t stop the change, son.” Travis started to feed Preston once the cake was gone, “Your faggot daddies couldn’t have prepared you for this son, they wouldn’t know what to do with a pig like you.” Preston’s head was spinning, his body getting fatter and fatter as his body gives in to his DNA.

Preston’s once smooth chest has pumped into two soft moobs that jiggled with every bite, his jawline started to fade as the fat started to accumulate. Preston was in a blissfully perverted shock as his whole life was being ruined by this pig of a man, his cock rock hard was leaking like a faucet, soaking his underwear. “Daddy… I’m getting so fat…” Preston moaned in between foods, “w-why do I sound like this daddy… w-“

“Shhhhhh” Travis shushed Preston as he shoved a greasy slice of pizza into his mouth. “You’re becoming just like your daddy, and your daddies daddy, as so on. You come from a long line of perverted hogs.” Travis gripped Preston’s cock with his other hand, “my daddy helped me out exactly like this, fattened me up real good.” Travis pumped Preston’s leaking cock as he told him how much of a pig he was going to become. “You’re gonna love it boy, you’ll be able to turn other men into fat hogs just like us. It one of our many talents, one that I can’t wait for you to use.” Preston was in a fattening bliss, listening to the hypnotic words coming out of his daddies mouth as he played with his own fattening body.

“Oh daddy… daddy I’m gonna-“ Preston released, soaking his underwear and his dad’s hand, this act of finishing sealed Preston’s already inevitable fate. “Oh god daddy, look what you’ve done to me…”

Preston’s belly was as big as his daddies, he couldn’t stop jiggling the soft flesh that had taken over his body. “I didn’t do nothin’ boy, this was your natural calling.” Travis took a doughnut, wiped Preston’s cum into it and fed it to his son.

After Preston was done chewing his specially glazed doughnut he wondered who he could make into a fat piggy himself, the he thought of his faggoty dads. “Let’s go visit my dads, daddy!”

“Of course boy, those faggots are gonna piss their pants when they see how big you’ve grown.” Travis helped Preston up and walked his half-naked fat ass to Travis’s pickup truck, the two whales could barely fit in it together. “We’ve got a party to get to, boy.”

Part 2?

[kremlin]

An earnest call for your support: Help me determine if there is a gas leak in my house.

for a long time now, I have been reading and hearing about This Guy on the news, and have been reading all the articles and stories about him:

Above: Sam, tenting his weird-ass fucked up fingers like a real Wall Street Guy might do in a movie he saw

Yep, you already know this guy, his name is Sam, I'll be referring to him as Sam, as that is his first name, and not by his initials, which is what I imagine a pod person might do in an attempt to emulate human behaviour. Whatever. You already know him and what he did, I won't waste your time. Listen. Pay attention. This is not a post about this guy or what he did. That shit is boring as fuck. This is a post about a potential gas leak in my house. We'll get to that in just a bit. Remember.

I've read all the articles and all the op-eds and everything. About Sam. Let us explore the entire spectrum of media coverage of Sam and Sam's Big Ass Problem, starting from the bottom, with the worm-food-tier jackasses: What do people like Jim Cramer and Shark Tank Guy have to say about him?

Above: CNN's "Mad Money" Jim Cramer also doing a weird hand gesture while he tells your alcoholic cable-news-addicted uncle to put his money in some dumbass shit

Above: I think this is the Shark Tank guy? I don't remember his name. Could have sworn his suit had dollar signs and not question marks (?)

I'll summarize their conclusions: "Sam is a boy genius who is super duper smart and can move objects with his massive brain due to knowing about Tech, FinDom FinTech, and computer money, specifically Money Coding. Unfortunately Sam committed massive fraud and will get his ass fucked in federal court".

Moving on from the worm-food-tier to the mediocre-tier: The totally nameless basic bitch journalists at the New York Times or Bloomberg. What do these assholes have to say?

Above: Jim Fuckface, associate financial correspondent for Bloomberg. Jim enjoys winding down on a Friday afternoon by sipping a Bud Lite Lime and wearing his baseball cap backwards, which bears the logo of his local professional sports team.

Above: Kate Fuckface, columnist at the New York Times. Kate enjoys spending her time chatting and interacting with her friends on Social Media Platforms like Facebook and Instagram, as well as purchasing items on Etsy

I'll summarize their conclusions: "Displaying the characteristic awkwardness of incredible technical and financial genius, it was clear to me during our interview that Sam's depth of knowledge truly knew no bounds. Unfortunately Sam committed massive fraud and will get his ass fucked in federal court."

Finally moving on to the people that might actually have a clue about what they're talking about. Sam Levine and Michael Lewis:

Above: Matt Levine, author of a comedy email newsletter named Money Stuff that is 95% financial information by weight and somehow still usually funny as fuck.

Above: Michael Lewis, author of a bunch of really good books you haven't read that were made into pretty decent movies you have seen: Moneyball and The Big Short.

I'll summarize their conclusions: "Sam sure is a smart kid and seems to know a whole lot about economics and this digital currency, and I mean a whole lot, and even more about business, accounting, and finance. Bright kid! Unfortunately Sam committed massive fraud and will get his ass fucked in federal court."

A pretty goddamn clear consensus across the board on both counts.

I listened to the interviews the entire spectrum of people listed above conducted with him -- the ones during which they unanimously concluded how smart he is. I listened to many hours of ad-hoc, unscripted Twitter Space calls he participated in, where he fielded questions about his fraud and his business with complete strangers. I listened to them very carefully. And here is my problem! I came to a different conclusion!

Sam is a fucking moron. I am not talking about solely his intellect, or solely his decision-making abilities, or any specific criteria. I am talking about all of them.

There are two possibilities:

(A) I am correct and, somehow, literally everyone else is incorrect, most of whom know vastly more about these topics than I do

(B) There is a fucking gas leak in my house and I have completely lost all cognitive abilities, suddenly and unwittingly, and exist in a cartoon reality inside my skull that would allow me to reach such a wildly different conclusion from the same evidence.

The likelihood of (A) being correct is very nearly 0%. I mean, come on. I am not fucking around when I tell you how troubling this is for me. I wrote earlier that this isn't a post about Sam or his bullshit. This is a post asking for your help in determining whether I have lost my god damn marbles.

I'll give Sam one thing -- he has some nominal ability to bullshit. If he's writing a Tweet, or making a short statement, he can finesse his words that, on some level, mask how much of a dimwit he is. He absolutely can't do that through about six hours of unscripted interviews. Listen to that shit. Listen.

I am going to go check all the joints in the gas lines in my house as well as the ports on my stove and heater. I'll come back and write a follow-up post on outlining exactly why I think homeboy is an idiot. While I do that, please, go listen to the interviews and tell me what you think.

[forestshadow-wolf]

GhostSoap famous gambler husbands AU

Ghost who will clear an entire casino once, usually over the course of 3-4 days or up to a week, before leaving and never returning. Never goes to the same house twice. All house masters know of him. Well practically everyone knows of him, he's a legend at the top of the ranks, and if you meet him you only meet him once. And oddly enough he never seems to be far behind nation famous gambler Soap...

Soap who will clean out table after table of a few houses for weeks before he moves on. He rotates houses every few weeks, house masters know him well, he draws in many challengers, business booms for house masters. So he ends up winning just as much as he brings in (he has a public schedule on his socials (to the public Ghost is saop's bodyguard; dresses drastically different and with a different mask when gambling, as opposed to when he's with soap))

The Ghost is just as elusive as his name suggests. He has no socials, speaks to almost nobody except head of table and house master(s), and those he does speak to gets no more that a few words of unimportant forgettable information. While it's said that The Ghost never returns its a lie, he just doesn't return until after soap has started a new cycle of visits for the season. And he never makes himself known, caught only by wispers in the crowd until it reaches the house master.

Soap on the other hand has just about every social media platform you could think of (the big ones anyway) twitter, instagram, tumblr, reddit, ect. (No facebook but there is a page dedicated to him) He's active too. Keeps his location updated to that week's casino(s). Pictures of what he did that weekend, his current hyper fixation, what show or movie he's currently obsessed with. He shares gambling tips for people just starting, but nothing to give away his secrets. The public knows that he has a husband (it's kinda hard to miss the flashy gold ring when he tries to get it in every photo of him) but don't know who it is. They do know that he has a heart of gold and enthusiastically protects his wishes to remain anonymous. Sometimes even going as far as attacking newer fans who try to reveal that information, Soap has had to remind people to be nice to eachother.

It's honestly a scam, they laugh about it at night while in bed sometimes. They think it's a miracle that nobody's caught on yet, or if they have that they haven't leaked it.

Despite having so many riches they live a modest life. Sure it's more than most, a house, food, money to have a much fun as they could possibly want, and a sizable savings. But they do donate a good portion of their winnings, try to help people in need, don't spend on overly frivolous things (excluding their gambling attire because appearances matter in that kind of setting)

John and Simon Riley-Mactavish work in a small, locally known bar, The 1-4-1, co-owned by John Price and his adopted son Kyle Garrick, sat in the middle block of a chain of casinos. It's frequented by solem casino go-ers after a long night of misfortunes or celebrating parties of extreme luck.

Simon Riley-Mactavish works as The 1-4-1's seasoned bartender making drinks, taking orders, charming the excitable patrons eager enough to miss or ignore the silver band that sits politely on his finger. When he sees someone getting harrassed he's quick to ask on a napkin if they'd like an angel shot (with lemon for take them to the back, lime if they need an escort to their car/uber, or straight if it's an emergency and needs immediate intervention). He's also a petty bitch so if it's not an emergency he'll order the harasser the most disgusting drink he can make, on the house.

John Riley-Mactavish is security of The 1-4-1, it's honest work. He's great at de-escalating situations, corrallin the too roudy. He's who is called when an angel shot is ordered. Luckily it's not too often. Usually is using his charm to finesse and guide the too handsy and drunk out of the bar and on their way home. All that being said... he has no tolerance for disrespect and hate, and it's a damned good thing price doesn't mind a little chaos or he'd have been kicked out already. He's got a watchful eye, intentional misuse of pronouns in a malicious way, racist, misogynistic, or homophobic comments is an immediate out. And he's none too gentle when he does it. Aside from the not infrequent need to remove someone he does enjoy his job, most people are respectful, he finds good conversations, gets to hand out at the bar with Simon. Price lets his go where he wants as long as he does his job well, and he does.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

#20yrsago Bhutan: World’s biggest book https://kottke.org/04/10/bhutan-book

#15yrsago Anti-vaccine fear versus science https://web.archive.org/web/20091022235649/https://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/all/1

#10yrsago Sen Lindsay Graham promises a fine future for “white men in male-only clubs” https://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/sen-lindsey-graham-white-men-joke-112338

#10yrsago Hungary cancels proposed Internet tax in the face of mass opposition https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29846285

#10yrsago David Graeber and Thomas Piketty on whether capitalism will destroy itself https://thebaffler.com/odds-and-ends/soak-the-rich

#10yrsago USPS usage declines, but sloppy postal surveillance is way, way up https://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/snail-mail-snooping-safeguards-not-followed-108056

#5yrsago How the British left should seize this moment to strip finance of its political clout https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/thatcher-had-a-battle-plan-for-her-economic-revolution-now-the-left-needs-one-too/

#5yrsago After suing NSO Group for hacking Whatsapp, Facebook kicks NSO employees off its services https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/facebook-permanently-deletes-the-accounts-of-nso-workers/

#5yrsago The right is bankrolled by self-interested one-percenters making long-term investments; the left, by one-percenters with “moral whims” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/how-did-democrats-lose-the-states-money-money-money.html

#5yrsago Leaked document reveals that Sidewalk Labs’ Toronto plans for private taxation, private roads, charter schools, corporate cops and judges, and punishment for people who choose privacy https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-sidewalk-labs-document-reveals-companys-early-plans-for-data/

#1yrago The impoverished imagination of neoliberal climate "solutions" https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/31/carbon-upsets/#big-tradeoff

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

[mariacallous]

September was a busy month for Russian influence operations—and for those tasked with disrupting them. News coverage of a series of U.S. government actions revealed Russia was using fake domains and personas, front media outlets, real media outlets acting as covert agents, and social media influencers to distort public conversation around the globe.

The spate of announcements by the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. State Department, as well as a public hearing featuring Big Tech leadership held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, underlines the extent to which Russia remains focused on interfering in U.S. political discourse and undermining confidence in U.S. elections. This is not particularly surprising on its own, as covert influence operations are as old as politics. What the unsealed indictments from the Justice Department, the report by the State Department, and the committee hearing emphasize is that bots and trolls on social media are only part of the picture—and that no single platform or government agency can successfully tackle foreign influence on its own.

As researchers of adversarial abuse of the internet, we have tracked social media influence operations for years. One of us, Renée, was tapped by the Senate Select Committee in 2017 to examine data sets detailing the activity of the Internet Research Agency—the infamous troll farm in St. Petersburg—on Facebook, Google, and Twitter, now known as X. The trolls, who masqueraded as Americans ranging from Black Lives Matter activists to Texas secessionists, had taken the United States by surprise. But that campaign, which featured fake personas slinking into the online communities of ordinary Americans, was only part of Russia’s effort to manipulate U.S. political discourse. The committee subsequently requested an analysis of the social media activities of the GRU—Russian military intelligence—which had concurrently run a decidedly different set of tactics, including hack and leak operations that shifted media coverage in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Russian operatives also reportedly hacked into U.S. voter databases and voting machine vendors but did not go so far as to change actual votes.

Social media is an attractive tool for covert propagandists, who can quickly create fake accounts, tailor content for target audiences, and insert virtual interlopers into real online communities. There is little repercussion for getting caught. However, two presidential election cycles after the Russian Internet Agency first masqueraded as Americans on social media platforms, it is important to emphasize that running inauthentic covert networks on social media has always been only one part of a broader strategy—and sometimes, it has actually been the least effective part. Adversaries also use a range of other tools, from spear phishing campaigns to cyberattacks to other media channels for propaganda. In response to these full-spectrum campaigns, vigilance and response by U.S. tech platforms are necessary. But alone, that will not be enough. Multi-stakeholder action is required.

The first set of announcements by the Justice Department on Sept. 4 featured two distinct strategies. The first announcement, a seizure of 32 internet domains used by a Russia-linked operation known in the research community as “Doppelganger,” reiterates the interconnected nature of social media influence operations, which often create fake social media accounts and external websites whose content they share. Doppelganger got its name from its modus operandi: spoofs of existing media outlets. The actors behind it, Russian companies Social Design Agency and Structura, created fake news outlets that mirror real media properties (such as a website that looked like the Washington Post) and purported offshoots of real entities (such as the nonexistent CNN California). The websites host the content and steal logos, branding, and sometimes even the names of journalists from real outlets. The operation shares fake content from these domains on social media, often using redirect links so that when unwitting users click on a link, it redirects to a spoofed website. Users might not realize they are on a fake media property, and social media companies have to expend resources to continually search for redirect links that take little effort to generate. Indeed, Meta’s 2024 Q1 Adversarial Threat Report noted that the company’s teams are engaged in daily efforts to thwart Doppelganger activities. Some other social media companies and researchers use these signals, which Meta shares publicly, as leads for their own investigations.

The domains seized by the Justice Department are just a portion of the overall number of pages that Doppelganger has run. Most are garbage sites that get little traction, and most of the accounts linking to them have few followers. These efforts nonetheless require vigilance to ensure that they don’t manage to eventually grow an audience. And so, the platforms play whack-a-mole. Meta publishes lists of domains in threat-sharing reports, though not all social media companies act in response; some, like Telegram, take an avowedly hands-off approach to dealing with state propagandists, purportedly to avoid limiting political speech. X, which used to be among the most proactive and transparent in its dealings with state trolls, has not only significantly backed off curtailing inauthentic accounts, but also removed transparency labels denoting overt Russian propaganda accounts. In turn, recent leaks from Doppelganger show the Social Design Agency claiming that X is the “the only mass platform that could currently be utilized in the U.S.” At the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on Sept. 18, Sen. Mark Warner called out several platforms (including X, TikTok, Telegram, and Discord) that “pride themselves of giving the proverbial middle finger to governments all around the world.” These differences in moderation policies and enforcement mean that propagandists can prioritize those platforms that do not have the desire or resources to disrupt their activities.

However, dealing with a committed adversary necessitates more than playing whack-a-mole with fake accounts and redirect links on social media. The Justice Department’s domain seizure was able to target the core of the operation: the fake websites themselves. This is not a question of true versus false content, but demonstrable fraud against existing media companies, and partisans across the aisle support disrupting these operations. Multi-stakeholder action can create far more impactful setbacks for Doppelganger, such as Google blocking Doppelganger domains from appearing on Google News, and government and hosting infrastructure forcing Doppelganger operatives to begin website development from scratch. Press coverage should also be careful not to exaggerate the impact of Russia’s efforts, since, as Thomas Rid recently described, the “biggest boost the Doppelganger campaigners got was from the West’s own anxious coverage of the project.”

A second set of announcements in September by the Justice Department and State Department highlighted a distinct strategy: the use of illicit finance to fund media properties and popular influencers spreading content deemed useful to Russia. An indictment unsealed by the Justice Department alleged that two employees from RT—an overt Russian state-affiliated media entity with foreign-facing outlets around the world—secretly funneled nearly $10 million into a Tennessee-based content company. The company acted as a front to recruit prominent right-wing American influencers to make videos and post them on social media. Two of the RT employees allegedly edited, posted, and “directed the posting” of hundreds of these videos.

Much of the content from the Tennessee company focused on divisive issues, like Russia’s war in Ukraine, and evergreen topics like illegal immigration and free speech. The influencers restated common right-wing opinions; the operators were not trying to make their procured talent introduce entirely new ideas, it seemed, but rather keep Russia’s preferred topics of conversation visibly present within social media discourse while nudging them just a bit further toward sensational extremes. In one example from the indictment, one of the RT employees asked an influencer to make a video speculating about whether an Islamic State-claimed massacre in Moscow might really have been perpetrated by Ukraine. The right-wing influencers themselves, who received sizeable sums of money and accrued millions of views on YouTube and other platforms, appear to have been unwitting and have not been charged with any wrongdoing.

This strategy of surreptitiously funding useful voices, which hearkens back to Soviet techniques to manipulate Western debates during the Cold War, leverages social media’s power players: authentic influencers with established audiences and a knack for engagement. Influence operations that create fake personas face two challenges: plausibility and resonance. Fake accounts pretending to be Americans periodically reveal themselves by botching slang or talking about irrelevant topics. They have a hard time growing a following. The influencers, by contrast, know what works, and they frequently get boosted by even more popular influencers aligned with their ideas. Musk, who has more than 190 million followers on X, reportedly engaged with content from the front media company at least 60 times.

Social media companies are not well suited to identify these more obscured forms of manipulation. The beneficiaries of Russian funding were real influencers, and their social media accounts do not violate platform authenticity policies. They are expressing opinions held by real Americans, even if they are Russia-aligned. Assuming the coordination of funding and topics did not take place on social media, the platforms likely lack insight into offline information that intelligence agencies or other entities collect. The violations are primarily external, as well—mainly the alleged conspiracy to commit money laundering and the alleged violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Here, too, a multi-stakeholder response is necessary: Open-source investigators, journalists, and the U.S. intelligence community can contribute by uncovering this illicit behavior, and the U.S. government can work with international partners to expose, and, where appropriate, impose sanctions and other legal remedies to deter future operations.

The degree to which these activities happen beyond social media—and beyond the awareness of the platform companies—was driven home in a Sept. 13 speech by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He highlighted other front media entities allegedly operated by RT, including some with a more global focus, such as African Stream and Berlin-based Red. According to the State Department, RT also operates online fundraising efforts for the Russian military and coordinates directly with the Russian government to interfere in elections, including the Moldovan presidential election later this month. These activities go far beyond the typical remit of overt state media, and likely explain why Meta and YouTube—neither of which had previously banned RT after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—responded to the news by banning the outlet and all of its subsidiary channels.

Our argument is not that the steps taken by social media companies to combat influence operations are unimportant or that the platforms cannot do better. When social media companies fail to combat influence operations, manipulators can grow their followings. Social media companies can and should continue to build integrity teams to tackle these abuses. But fake social media accounts are only one tool in a modern propagandist’s toolbox. Ensuring that U.S. public discourse is authentic—whether or not people like the specifics of what’s being said—is a challenge that requires many hands to fix.

[majaloveschris]

Looks like the trolling continues. Justin's Dad's open Facebook profile. Very odd that this info is being leaked in this manner. Thoughts?

I guess clout-chasing runs in that family.

It's so interesting that everybody is spilling everything about this "relationship" right and left. I guess nobody told Justin's father that this is supposed to be a secret and that it hasn't been announced yet, so he shouldn't be talking about it either.

What was even the reason behind this post? Why did he post about it now? Because if an article had come like yesterday, I would understand it, but nothing like that has happened. Nothing wedding-related had come out in the past few days, so why now? There is no way he thought it was okay to post it now because they've already announced it. There is no way he thought the announcement had already happened.

Why would he even post about Alba and her private, personal life? I get that he posts about his kids, but why is it such a big thing for him? He clearly knows and sees that nobody else is posting or talking about this (I mean family and friends), and he is like, "Okay, let's spill the tea before anybody or before any type of confirmation" happens.

Also, this post was made several hours ago but was just sent over to a couple of blogs. It seems like they'd been waiting for this to blow up and for fans to find it, and when it didn't happen, they sent it over to the top blogs.

My biggest issue with this whole thing is that if this were a real relationship, I doubt anybody, especially from their inner circle,because her best friend's father is also part of their inner circle, would be going around spilling info like this, especially when he clearly should know they are keeping it in secret and that neither of them confirmed anything. I don't think anybody would go around spilling tea if this were a real thing.

But this is obviously just my opinion and theory.

[gossipgirloff1]

so lance gossip???

lance himself is more of a reserved person however his friends are not. there have been multiple claims that lance’s friends use him for fame and attention like “oh hey i’m friends with lance!” his only close friends (which he literally said himself) are stephen and henry (who both are apart of his race team)

relationship wise it’s a bit; lance allegedly dated a lot of older women when he was around the ages of 16-19 and more notably dated sara, an italian model who is 3-5 years older than lance. towards the end of their relationship, they were on-off and had a bunch of cheating rumours (both of them allegedly cheated on each other, specifically sara and neymar). after they broke up, a jewelry store that lance gifted sara shut down and she wrote a song called “deja vu” which implies it’s about him. they still follow each other. from what i heard, she was constantly seeking his attention throughout the relationship. even when his own grandfather passed away and was “distant” from her, she took the opportunity to post shady things on insta (captions, quotes, etc).

dian schwartz is another woman he was with. she’s an israeli reality star most famous for being in israel’s big brother. everyone in israel allegedly hates her. no clue if they two actually dated because dian claims they dated while other people who are allegedly close to lance claim that he needed a wedding date (which to me was fucking weird of him to do). regardless, dian leaked pictures of her and lance after chloe’s wedding (dian follows the photographer who took them and the gossip page who posted it) and then he ghosted her after. she became really petty, screen recorded herself muting aston martin on threads, hooking up with men who look like lance in israel, etc. lance doesn’t follow her anymore but she’s a zionist psychopath who wanted to be a wag so badly. she also used lance to get to fashion week in london.

now marilou, she’s a mean girl and a zionist (literally if you search up marilou zionist on twitter/x, a thread will appear). her family is messy. her dad makes 9/11 jokes, islamophobia and her mom is VERY obsessed with lance on facebook. marilou works for a ton of zionist companies more notably ardene who is owned by a man who owns a orthodox synagogue and has a zionist rabbi who spreads his zionist propaganda?? marilou and her friends and family attend this synagogue. she also blocks and deletes comments even though it’s well known that she’s a zionist. she’s also mocked tons of fans at grand prix and made fun of one fan’s weight. she’s constantly trying to get attention and change her image but is shot down bc it’s brought up that she’s not a good person. there’s allegedly a rumour that she cheated on lance in miami but i know nothing abt that. but she’s constantly bringing her friends around grand prix, i’ve lowk never seen her and lance by themselves. it’s either his friends are around or her friends. but she’s a big scabber. thats probably why she’s dated like 3-5 guys within a year. rumour is she has another guy lined up 🤷‍♀️

Thank you for the info anon ❤️

Wow that is so many problematic people why are you hanging out with them Lance 🤦‍♀️

And thank you again for this long ask I have been needing a gossip lately 🫶🏻

[thenightling]

Leak vs. Spoiler

The following is something I posted in the Facebook Sandman group. Leak vs. Spoiler

There seems to be some in-group confusion about leaks and spoilers.

This is a discussion group that allows spoilers though spoiler warnings are encouraged.

About twenty-four hours ago there was a "leak" of an image that Neil Gaiman did not want used to promote Good Omens season 2. Amazon may have had good intentions behind the using of this image considering its use in context but it was not something Neil Gaiman wanted and when Amazon found out his stance on it the image was quickly removed.

Neil Gaiman then asked fans to please pretend they had not seen the particular image.

Question: "Is it really a leak when it was done by an official source like Amazon Prime?"

Answer: In this particular instance, yes. Because of the WGA Writers strike, Neil Gaiman was not in communication with Amazon and someone in the Amazon Prime marketing department released this particular image without his consent. When they realized it was one he did not want seen yet, they hastily removed it.

Ironically at the same time this was happening I was happily playing the new Jaskier song from The Witcher Season 3. "The Ride of The Witcher." This was also an early and official release. The big difference is everyone involved consented to the release. It wasn't accidentally released early. Every country in the world got the song at exactly midnight on June 13th.

Question: Why is this different from the spoilers that are allowed in the group?"

Answer: Though a leak can be a spoiler, not all spoilers are leaks. Spoilers discussed here are from officially released content where the creator has not asked everyone to forget they saw it.

You might dislike spoilers but this is a discussion group and we do discuss spoilers (most of which are thirty-five-years-old). Spoiler warnings are encouraged but no one will be banned for not using them.

This Good Omens 2 leak was a single image that Neil Gaiman requested we pretend we didn't see. It is considered a leak because the showrunner / head writer / co-author of the novel that the series was originally based in had no say in the matter and when they found out he was not happy the image was removed.

There is a difference.

[distilled-prose]

From Facebook "Amazing World and Beyond" 9/27/24

This Mexican mechanic saved the Ferrari 375 at the 1954 La Carrera Panamericana which was one of the most demanding endurance races in history.

Umberto Maglioli was leading the fourth stage of the race in his Ferrari 375 before his engine started to leak oil through the crankcase. He had to stop in the middle of nowhere without any technical support for his car. His chances of finishing the race were near-zero.

Maglioli was lucky enough to stop beside a small workshop called “El Milagro” where he met Mexican mechanic Renato Martinez. Renato confirmed the oil leak and was able to provide Maglioli with a temporary solution:

He grabbed a bucket and a big bar of soap while he gave Maglioli three bottles of Coke and said "While you drink your Coke I will repair your car."

Martinez started to rub the bar of soap onto the crankcase. The soap melted and created a paste that sealed the leak hole. Soap cuts through the oil film and adheres to the metal in the crankcase.

Amazed by Martinez ingenuity Maglioli pulls out a small Rolleiflex camera to capture the moment and to immortalise Renato and his "El Milagro" garage. Umberto Maglioli finished the race in the first place.

After the race, Martinez was mailed the photograph Maglioli had taken and it read "Renato, The Mexican Miracle that helped Ferrari." signed by a man named Enzo Ferrari.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

For all the talk of the “Twitter Files,” as we’ve detailed, they’ve mostly been, at best, misleading, and frequently actively wrong. One of the big reveals, we were told, was that the Files were going to expose the political machinations of how Twitter banned former President Trump. And, indeed, Bari Weiss’s “Part Five” of the Twitter Files, back in mid-December, purported to reveal the big secret reckoning. But if you haven’t heard much about it since then, it’s because… they were a complete flop when it came to anything of interest. Basically, it was exactly what some of us said the day it happened: a difficult decision with a number of competing factors going into it. One that could have gone either way, but recognizing the gravity of what happened on January 6th, and the genuine concern that Trump would continue to whip his fans into an insurrectionist frenzy, one that you can see a reasonable argument for making.

And while Musk (falsely) insisted that the big reveal was that Trump didn’t actually violate Twitter’s policies, that’s also a misreading of what happened. What we’ve learned is that Trump and other Republican leaders were actually given special treatment over the years, because they tended to violate policies way more often than Democrats. But, knowing that Republicans would flop to the ground and fake injury any time they were faced with even having to take the slightest bit of responsibility for violating policies, all the big social media platforms went above and beyond to better protect the high profile accounts of Republican rule breakers.

And while many people tried to paint the decision to finally ban Trump as some sort of “proof” that the company leadership was a bunch of left-leaning censors, the reality seemed to be quite different. Even Weiss’ big reveal was simply that there was strong and heated internal debate about what to do, with many employees (mostly not directly engaged in content moderation issues) calling for the company to ban him, while executives and trust & safety folks questioning whether or not that would be appropriate.

Right at the end of last year, though, as the House Select Committee investigated January 6th was wrapping up, some of the details of what they discovered about Twitter’s debate was leaked to Rolling Stone, and presents an even more detailed picture of how the company strongly resisted calls to ban Trump.

"In the draft summary, written by the Committee’s 'purple' or social media team, staffers were more pointed about what they saw as the failures of big social media companies.

‘The sheer scale of Republican post-election rage paralyzed decisionmakers at Twitter and Facebook, who feared political reprisals if they took strong action,’ the summary concluded."

The report shows that, again contrary to the public narrative pushed by Musk and friends, Twitter’s leadership wasn’t as deeply engaged in the various political happenings:

"And even days after the insurrection, former Twitter employees told the Committee that executives were still slow to recognize the risk Trump could pose in inciting future violence. After Trump tweeted that he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, Safety Team employees testified that they saw ‘the exact same rhetoric and the exact same language that had led up to January 6th popping underneath’ his tweets, leading to fears of another act of mass violence."

Some of the people who worked on that social media report, separately wrote an article for Tech Policy Press, talking about some of what they saw, which didn’t make it into any public report. They note that their research debunked the widely held notion that the social media companies acted with their bottom line in mind in refusing to limit disinformation, and again found that fear of angering Republicans was a key motivating factor:

"At the outset of the investigation, we believed we might find evidence that large platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube resisted taking proactive steps to limit the spread of violent and misleading content during the election out of concern for their profit margins. These large platforms ultimately derive revenue from keeping users engaged with their respective services so that they can show those users more advertisements. Analysts have argued that this business model rewards and incentivizes divisive, negative, misleading, and sometimes hateful or violent content. It would make sense, then, that platforms had reason to pull punches out of concern for their bottom line.

While it is possible this is true more generally, our investigation found little direct evidence for this motivation in the context of the 2020 election. Advocates for bold action within these companies – such as Facebook’s ‘break glass’ measures or Twitter’s policies for handling implicit incitement to violence – were more likely to meet resistance for political reasons than explicitly financial ones."

As the report’s researchers found, Twitter was extremely resistant to putting in place policies that might make Republicans mad:

"For example, after President Trump told the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by’ during the first presidential debate in 2020, implicit and explicit calls for violence spread across Twitter. Former members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team told the Select Committee that a draft policy to address such coded language was blocked by then-Vice President for Trust & Safety Del Harvey because she believed some of the more implicit phrases, like ‘locked and loaded,’ could refer to self-defense. The phrase was much discussed in internal policy debates, but it was not chosen out of thin air – it was frequently invoked following the shooting by Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha the previous summer. But the fact it appeared in only a small fraction of the hundreds of tweets used to inform the policy led staff to the conclusion that Harvey’s decision was meant to avoid a controversial crackdown on violent speech among right-wing users. Ironically, elements of this policy were later used to guide the removal of a crescendo of violent tweets during the January 6th attack when the Trust & Safety team was forced to act without leadership from their manager, whose directive to them was, according to one witness, to ‘stop the insurrection.’"

The authors noted, explicitly, that people reading the Twitter Files to say that Twitter was controlled by a bunch of coastal liberals trying to silence conservatives have it quite backwards:

"One clear conclusion from our investigation is that proponents of the recently released ‘Twitter Files,’ who claim that platform suspensions of the former President are evidence of anti-conservative bias, have it completely backward. Platforms did not hold Trump to a higher standard by removing his account after January 6th. Rather, for years they wrote rules to avoid holding him and his supporters accountable; it took an attempted coup d’état for them to change course. Evidence and testimony provided by members of Twitter’s Trust & Safety team make clear that those arguing Trump was held to an unfair double standard are willfully neglecting or overlooking the significance of January 6th in the context of his ban from major platforms. In the words of one Twitter employee who came forward to the Committee, if Trump had been ‘any other user on Twitter, he would have been permanently suspended a very long time ago.’"

None of this should be a surprise to anyone who has been reading Techdirt throughout all of this. For years, we’ve pointed out that the whining from “conservatives” that social media was biased against them was nothing more than an attempt to “work the refs” and basically lean on the decision makers to make sure the opposite was true. It was designed to make sure that the trust & safety teams at these companies were so frightened about the potential for politicians and the media to make a big deal out of any decision that it effectively gave them free rein to ignore the rules and push the boundaries, and the companies (beyond just Twitter) were too scared of the potential reaction to react.

This is especially ironic, given all the nonsense we’re hearing now about how the FBI was supposedly “censoring” people via Twitter. The truth is that it was actually Republican politicians, media, and influencers who scared Twitter away from taking actions against rule violators who were deemed to be prominent conservatives.

[temporalbystander]

I told myself I wasn't going to ever make this post. Because I had hope. Because I wanted to believe that Miraculous had decent writing and that the sentiadren theory was not the pinnacle of what they could accomplish. Then season 5 happened. The first few episodes were good, it even forced me to make my blog solely Miraculous themed because the interactions I had with everyone were so much fun. Heck youve seen the reaction posts I did both in character and as myself.

(under the cut is a bunch of writing that you can take as me explaining my reasoning or just complaining. Either way, if you're hoping for anymore Miraculous content from me? Stories or screen caps, you best unfollow. Because I'm done.)

But then the leaks came. And, like an ancient being unable to properly use Facebook, I failed to avoid them. I told myself that certain spoilers didn't matter, that I could wait until the actual episodes came out to decide whether or not the salt was justified, that with a terrible memory like mine I'd forget it in no time (just look at some of the other screw ups I've made regarding Miraculous, it's not that far fetched.) However, as the number of Miraculous tags and blogs I followed began to grow the number of consenting opinions grew as well.

There are those who hate Marinette for being obsessed or a stalker when it comes to Adrien (who Id like to point out has had several episodes where we've seen his obsessed stalkers. Now Wayhem is creepy.) Those who love her and believe that all against her should suffer (which I was briefly a part of and still must fight my Alya bias even now.) And the same goes for the rest of the characters. But I still wanted to sit back and form my own opinions as cleanly as possible.

Needless to say, I failed. The more I stepped back and looked at the episodes, the more spoilers I failed to avoid to the episode screenshots I saw despite not having seen said episode yet. It all resulted in one clear opinion in my mind. Season 5 is a letdown. Not only because it's an out of order mess with the release dates but because it seemed more and more like pandering. Sentitheory is confirmed, Adrinette becomes canon, Lila gets revealed, Chloe gets punished and we get some LGBTQ+ recognition in the form of Zoe. (And Miss Bustier if I'm hearing right but I'm not really sure about that one.)

That should have been great, I'm all for writers letting the fans know they're appreciated. I was a brony during the 100th episode. That was like ambrosia for us fans. This? Felt like bad fanfiction and I know bad fanfiction, I've written tons of it. Firstly, why Zoe? If you're going to piss off Disney and other broadcasters, which I believe is why it was never done before, then why not confirm Rose and Juleka? Or Marc and Nathaniel? Why spend an episode saying something the fandom had basically decided the moment Zoe first showed up? And apparently it's just an end of episode confirmation where Marinette says she's flattered? I mean I get it but really? I don't know whether to be proud of her for not making a big deal of it or disappointed that the show doesn't make a bigger deal of it considering just how hard a confession like that can be. But you know what? I haven't watched the episode and I'm not going too so I probably shouldn't judge it.

What I will judge the everloving shit out of is the handling of Luka and Chloe. Luka must leave Paris because he knows who LB and CN are. That makes sense, we've seen in Star train that HawkMoth can't really sense or control his akuma's once they leave Paris so they'd have to leave to hunt Luka down. However Luka found out halfway through last season and, outside Ephemeral (which is its own set of issues) is never brought up. Seriously? I'm all for the Lukagami team up (which didn't actually end in Lukagami) for getting Adrinette together but you couldn't have had him pop up in a few more episodes to have him give excuses for the heroes to get away? Maybe pop up a bit more in support of Adrien? I'd be more upset if I hadn't known about the whole Luka leaving Paris, along with the Zoe confession, since BEFORE THE SEASON STARTED. But again, seperate issues.

And then there's Chloe. Oh Chloe. Now I wouldn't call myself a Chloe Stan. Until I actually started writing out ideas I didn't like her. She's the civilian foil to Marinette who is only put up with because her Daddy's the mayor and Adrien remembers when they had fun as little kids. The terrible airing of episodes didn't help either. Had I not been taking notes on every episode and had they not marathoned them on tv leading up to the release of the movies, I would have never put the pieces of her character together. Her self doubt, her abandonment by her mother, Mr. Cuddles and sucking her thumb? That is not the actions of evil incarnate. And what does the show do? LITERALLY REPLACE HER WITH ZOE!

And I don't mean the salty fans complaining about Mary Zoe as a replacement. No, the show doubles down by having the mayor adopt Zoe and send Chloe off with the mother who refuses to get her name right that Chloe doubts actually loves her. That? Is beyond fucked up. That? Is something I'd have written back when I didn't fully understand how tribulations and pain were parts of character growth. Just a simple "nah, Chloe bad. Zoe better. Just have Zoe." Seriously do you know how long it took me to realise that you can't just get rid of the bad guy if you want to make a good story?

And then, to cap it all off. HawkMoth gets his wish. On the bright side, if you wanted to know why Bunnix didn't show up until Evolution or during Ephemeral? That's why. Apparently Marinette feeling like a complete and utter failure is necessary for the future Alix comes from to happen. In fact, had Ephemeral happened before Wishmaker? Wed basically be watching season 6 right now. How else was Luka supposed to know what the hell Ladybug was talking about? Dudes not that smart I'm sorry. Hell nobody in the show is.

Seriously, who's genius fucking idea was it to have HawkMoth win this far into the show? Need I remind all of you how the wish is meant to work? It's a reset. A complete erasure and rewrite. There should be no "keeping secrets from Adrien" drama because, as far as the entire UNIVERSE is aware Emilie Agreste never vanished and whatever happened to Gabriel always happened. Hell the only one keeping secrets in this new world should be the kwamis since they're apparently the only ones who recognise what a reset looks like meaning they've experienced it before. And apparently they're all with their holders in this new universe? Hell I may watch the last episode just to figure out what crap they pull to try and explain everything. And why we should care about anything that happened in the past 8 YEARS if the "grand plan" of Astruc was just to erase it!

..... Sorry. I got way more frustrated towards the end there than I should have. If you have read this entire thing? Thanks and I'm sorry if I've wasted your time. What started out for me as a wonderful show about magic and love and typical good vs evil has now appears to have devolved into lazy writing, character assassination, retcons and repetition. I don't want to be one of the people who blame ZAG or TA or the writers about the problems of the show. That's more anger and salt then I need in my life. I'm just saying that, if this is the direction they choose to take it, that this was always the end point? Then I'm getting off here.

[bleedingmyway-blog]

on the subject of nintendo hype, i also miss pokemon hype pre XY (which are already 11 years old, wow !), which i know is : 1- oddly specific 2- really old ? i'm talking about basically, back in 2006-2007. now, while i was pretty much a kid back then, i remember that the internet was only useful for three things for me back then : 1 cartoon/anime openings (the dragonball Z op was the first thing i ever searched for on youtube) 2 videogame help and 3 pokemon. whenever i had access to the internet, i'd look for stupid fan art of pokemon fusions, fanfics shipping a variety of the characters from the series and news on the games.

the reason why i specified before XY is because Pokemon X/Y were the first episodes of the series to be announced globally.

on tuesday 8th of january 2013, pokemon xy was announced. i remember running home from school at 12 to open my laptop (that i had left on in the morning so i wouldn't waste a single second) to see the trailer

you have to understand that before, the games were first announced in japan, released there and then eventually announced for the rest of the world (europe, usa) and released. this was a BIG event. but prior to xy, unless you could speak japanese and lived there, you were practically left in the dark about the most recent pokemon news/events. "why not watch the trailer in japanese then and quit dramatizing past events lol ? "

the reason is that back then, a trailer was the culmination of months and months of mystery and hype. you didn't get the trailer first. rumors would circulate from "insiders" and so called trust worthy leakers from japanese and american image boards that a game was in the works (and these rumors would usually start 6-9 months after the release of the most recent mainline game), then speculations about the region, thematic, features would start; i remember how each gen we had someone saying "this time, we'll be able to explore ALL regions !" or "this is going to be open-world in 3d on the TV console !".

remember : the internet was a much more decentralized entity back in the mid/late 00's. information did not drip down from a single verified source on 3-4 social media accounts ; it spread unevenly, gathering misinformation, theories and the interpretation of the relayer along the way. you're probably going to ask "well, if you didn't get it from the official twitter/facebook (this is 2008), where did you get the info from ?"

we got it the old fashioned way. i present to you, the corocoro magazine

the magazine, launched in 1977 is a children's mag that advertised a variety of manga and most importantly video games to a younger audience. and you would not believe how dependant the online pokemon community was on this magazine : any info concerning a new game, teasers, shadows for the shapes of starters would be there. mind you, google trad was not as developped as it is today : you couldn't just up and whip out your phone to translate the text from your computer screen. you had to wait for translators to do so; and boy, was it exciting. i remember how on the french pokemon bubble, it was a race between various websites to translate the info first ; either from the english translation, or directly from the source, if they could comprehend japanese.

source : japanese TV show "Pokemon Sunday" circa 2010-11

and since i mentionned shadows, here is a tradition that sadly disappeared : shadows of the new gen starters as a teaser. surely, i don't have to name or even show you the starters on the picture above for you to recognize them. instead, let us see how creative such teasers got the community :

(i'm too lazy to currently fire up the wayback machine and get some of the fan designs which i remembered to be quite interesting back then)

and so it went on: drip fed teasers, leaks and speculations about info that we take for granted now, like the very names of the new pokemon in english, of the rival and the game's evil team, new or returning mechanics, etc. the hype would go on, info would become clear as we near the japanese release, then once it does, we all sit behind our screens jealous at the lucky ones who either lived in japan or uhm, accidentally received an online package containing a rip of the game's file (jokes aside to avoid getting censored, if this was the case, the games would have safety patches that didn't allow it to be read by the current firmware of jailbroken consoles).

the lucky ones would document their adventure, some try to prepare guides in advance for the international release, others cook-up fan translations ; and at that point, theories have begun. all before we even get the game !

to be honest, i did not expect this to be this long, but as i wrote, i remembered more and more, and like an old sailor, got to recall why i was so excited for pokemon back then. i lived for the hype : play pokemon, next game gets announced, get on the hype train, write theories, debate with other fans on forums, convince people that we're not getting a 3rd gen remake on the Nintendo DS, game releases, rinse, wash and repeat.

to me, this entire topic is an interesting look at the aspect of a bigger topic; the centralization of the internet over the years and the controlled spread of information. of course, i won't get into this here or now, but i'll also add that whatever i put down does somewhat apply to not only nintendo but also games from japanese manufacturers as well : even more obscure light novels on ps4 are getting releases in various languages now. before, you needed a japanese console to play japanese games, a german game would not work on an american console, etc. i am not necessarily nostalgic for this - it was annoying, and some of us missed many games because of it. but i will admit that the absence of teasers and hype when you can just datamine or immediately get the info on twitter from a game dev is saddening. i shall leave you, dear reader, with this trailer for pokemon black and white 2 that had me excited for a month :

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk just dragged ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence programs into the Trump crosshairs by repeating his warning that current AI models are too “woke” and “politically correct.”

“A lot of the AIs that are being trained in the San Francisco Bay Area, they take on the philosophy of people around them,” Musk said at the Future Investment Initiative, a Saudi Arabia government–backed event held in Riyadh this week. “So you have a woke, nihilistic—in my opinion—philosophy that is being built into these AIs.”

Although Musk is himself a polarizing figure, he is right about AI systems harboring political biases. The issue, however, is far from one-sided, and Musk’s framing may help further his own interests due to his ties to Trump. Musk runs xAI, a competitor to OpenAI, Google, and Meta that could benefit if those companies become government targets.

“Musk clearly has a close, close relationship with the Trump campaign, and any comment that he’s making will hold a big influence,” says Matt Mittelsteadt, a research fellow at George Mason University. “At a maximum he could have some sort of seat in a potential Trump administration, and his views could actually be enacted into some sort of policy.”

Musk has previously accused both OpenAI and Google of being infected with “the woke mind virus.” When Google’s Gemini chatbot produced historically inaccurate images, including black Nazis and Vikings, in February, Musk saw it as proof of Google using AI to spread an absurdly woke outlook.

Musk is clearly no fan of government regulation, but he backed a proposed AI bill in California that would have required companies to make their AI models available for vetting.

The first Trump administration also targeted perceived bias at Big Tech companies with an executive order that sought to hold platforms such as Twitter, Google, and Facebook accountable for censoring information for political reasons. The pressure had a tangible impact, with Meta ultimately abandoning plans for a dedicated news section on Facebook.

Mittelsteadt notes that Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance, has also talked of reining in Big Tech companies and gone as far as to call Google “one of the most dangerous companies in the world.”

Mittelsteadt adds that Trump could punish companies in a variety of ways. He cites, for example, the way the Trump government canceled a major federal contract with Amazon Web Services, a decision likely influenced by the former president’s view of the Washington Post and its owner, Jeff Bezos.

It would not be hard for policymakers to point to evidence of political bias in AI models, even if it cuts both ways.

A 2023 study by researchers at the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, and Xi’an Jiaotong University found a range of political leanings in different large language models. It also showed how this bias may affect the performance of hate speech or misinformation detection systems.

Another study, conducted by researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, found bias in several open source AI models on polarizing issues such as immigration, reproductive rights, and climate change. Yejin Bang, a PhD candidate involved with the work, says that most models tend to lean liberal and US-centric, but that the same models can express a variety of liberal or conservative biases depending on the topic.

AI models capture political biases because they are trained on swaths of internet data that inevitably includes all sorts of perspectives. Most users may not be aware of any bias in the tools they use because models incorporate guardrails that restrict them from generating certain harmful or biased content. These biases can leak out subtly though, and the additional training that models receive to restrict their output can introduce further partisanship. “Developers could ensure that models are exposed to multiple perspectives on divisive topics, allowing them to respond with a balanced viewpoint,” Bang says.

The issue may become worse as AI systems become more pervasive, says Ashique KhudaBukhsh, an computer scientist at the Rochester Institute of Technology who developed a tool called the Toxicity Rabbit Hole Framework, which teases out the different societal biases of large language models. “We fear that a vicious cycle is about to start as new generations of LLMs will increasingly be trained on data contaminated by AI-generated content,” he says.

“I’m convinced that that bias within LLMs is already an issue and will most likely be an even bigger one in the future,” says Luca Rettenberger, a postdoctoral researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology who conducted an analysis of LLMs for biases related to German politics.

Rettenberger suggests that political groups may also seek to influence LLMs in order to promote their own views above those of others. “If someone is very ambitious and has malicious intentions it could be possible to manipulate LLMs into certain directions,” he says. “I see the manipulation of training data as a real danger.”

There have already been some efforts to shift the balance of bias in AI models. Last March, one programmer developed a more right-leaning chatbot in an effort to highlight the subtle biases he saw in tools like ChatGPT. Musk has himself promised to make Grok, the AI chatbot built by xAI, “maximally truth-seeking” and less biased than other AI tools, although in practice it also hedges when it comes to tricky political questions. (A staunch Trump supporter and immigration hawk, Musk’s own view of “less biased” may also translate into more right-leaning results.)

Next week’s election in the United States is hardly likely to heal the discord between Democrats and Republicans, but if Trump wins, talk of anti-woke AI could get a lot louder.

Musk offered an apocalyptic take on the issue at this week’s event, referring to an incident when Google’s Gemini said that nuclear war would be preferable to misgendering Caitlyn Jenner. “If you have an AI that’s programmed for things like that, it could conclude that the best way to ensure nobody is misgendered is to annihilate all humans, thus making the probability of a future misgendering zero,” he said.

[anamericangirl]

Even if the government interfering in Hunter’s nudes getting posted on Twitter was election interference (it wasn’t), even if those pictures were allowed on Twitter (they weren’t and the stories would have been removed anyways), and even if the story had any value (it was just leaked nudes of Hunter Biden) and nothing more, literally just penis pictures), Trump was in office when it happened. Biden had no power to prevent these stories from being posted because he wasn’t president!

And no one said Biden prevented the stories. The FBI prevented them by conspiring with big tech to censor the sharing and discussing of the story. It wasn’t just Hunter’s nudes. It’s fucking hilarious you think the FBI would contact Facebook and Twitter and warn them that nudes of Hunter Biden were “Russian disinformation.”

This is literally a confirmed story so you look like an idiot denying it.

[welcometojackass2022]

Fairy Wings (Joe Frantz x Reader Smut Drabble)

Just a cute little smut drabble where you and Frantz dress up as Tinkerbell and Captain Hook for a costume party (hosted at Bam’s place) and Frantz is absolutely smitten by you in the Tinkerbell outfit so the two of you have a quickie before the party. Idea by @chasingwinehouse aka my resident Joe Frantz consultant! The first photo I used is from Frantz’s Facebook page. The second is similar to the type of costume he’d be wearing in this fic (but with a hook and all that).

Warnings: Smut, Cursing, Sex in Costume

@asskickedbygirl tagging you as always

“What do you think, baby, hook or no hook?” You peeked your head out of the bathroom to answer Frantz’s question, careful not to show off your costume (you wanted it to be a surprise) as you laughed at the question. “You’re playing Captain Hook, Frantz, I think the hook is essential.” Frantz grinned, face going slightly red as he adjusted his Captain Hook hat and fixed his tunic shirt so it showed off his broad, muscled chest. “Very good point, sweetheart, that’s why you’re the brains of this relationship.” You giggled. “You’re sweet, baby. And you make a very sexy Captain Hook.” It was true. His long hair was down, and he wore a pirate hat, big black boots, and a white tunic shirt that showed off his chest in a slutty way. Frantz blushed, shaking his head as he picked up his hook. “Aw, shucks, I’m sure you look ten times better, baby. Now finish getting ready so I can see your costume! We don’t wanna be late for Bam’s party.” Bam was throwing a costume party at Castle Bam, and the two of you were attending.

You nodded, pulling your head back into the bathroom and closing the door as you finished changing. Frantz grabbed his prop hook piece and fit it over his non-dominant hand, waiting for you to come out of the bathroom so he could show you. After a moment, you stepped out wearing the trademark Tinkerbell costume; a short green dress with shiny fairy wings attached to the back, cute green shoes with a little white ball on each one, and the character’s iconic bun hairstyle. You looked up at Frantz, smiling bashfully as you spun around to give him the full view of the outfit. “Well, what do you think?” He didn’t respond for a moment, his eyes locked on the short hem of your Tinkerbell dress with a dark and blatantly lustful gaze. You frowned. “Frantz? What’s the matter, do you not like it? Cuz I can—”

Before you could finish, Frantz had yanked off his hook, thrown it aside, and strode across the room to push you up against the wall, smashing his lips against yours as his hands wandered down to slip under the hem of the dress. He pulled away to press his forehead against yours with a look of pure adoration. “Like it? I fucking love it. I mean holy fuck, baby, you make such a pretty fairy.” You beamed, rubbing your hand over his exposed chest as he pressed his lips against yours again, sliding his hand up your bare legs to feel the silk green panties you’d worn underneath the dress. He pulled away again with a dark look. “Nothing but panties under such a short dress? If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were trying to tempt me into giving you some attention before the party, sweetheart.” He pulled at the laces on his pirate pants, loosening them enough to reach inside as he fished his cock out; it was already hard as a rock, the tip an angry red color as a steady stream of precum leaked from the tip in a way that made your dripping pussy throb.

You moved to grab at it, but Frantz grabbed your hips and turned you around so your tummy and chest were against the wall and your back was to him, just barely pulling your dress up to expose your green panties, which were already soaked from how wet you were. He rubbed over your pussy with two fingers, smirking at how clearly desperate you were for his cock. “Your tight little pussy looks so good under this dress, sweetheart, I can’t wait to stretch you out while you look so nice and pretty for me.” You whined softly as you looked back at him, pushing your ass back to try and get him to touch you, and he laughed as he delivered a firm smack to your left asscheek, pulling your panties aside with two fingers and lining the fat head of his cock up with your pussy. “Be nice and loud for me, sweetheart, or I’ll drag this out until you’re begging me to let you cum.” He pushed the head of his cock inside of you, the tip alone being enough to stretch you out as you leaned your head against the wall with a breathy moan. Frantz pushed his cock farther in with an agonizingly slow pace that was clearly intended to make you more desperate, dragging it out for as long as he could as he slowly thrust inside you.

You whined even louder than before, tightening up around his shaft as you pushed your hips back against him in a vain attempt to get him to fuck you harder. Unfazed, he merely pushed his cock in another inch at the slowest pace he possibly could, gradually thrusting deeper until he was almost at the base of his cock; he paused for a moment, making you writhe with impatient as you waited for him to move, and then, without warning, he pulled his cock all the way out and slammed it back inside of you, pounding your tight pussy in a way that made you nearly scream in pleasure. “That’s it, sweetheart, take my cock like a good little slut. God you look so fucking pretty in this outfit, baby, we should get couples costumes more often. The sight of your ass in these green panties under this slutty little dress is enough to make me bust my load in you, never mind how cute your pussy looks when it’s stuffed with my cock.” He moved one of his hands around to wrap around the base of your neck, lightly pressing down as he pounded you from behind and pulled your head back to rest on his chest.

You stared up at him with a slutty, desperate, open-mouthed look that made him curse under his breath as he delivered another quick, harsh thrust, smacking your ass with as much force as he could as he pounded you mercilessly from behind. “Tell me how much you love it when I fuck you like this, baby. Tell me how much you need to be stuffed with my cock and I’ll make sure you cum around my cock like a good little fairy.” You moaned loudly as he tightened his grip on your throat, his tip hitting your g-spot as he quickened his pace. “I love it when you fuck me like this, Frantz, your big fat cock feels so good when it’s stuffing my tight little pussy from behind like this and when you smack my ass til it’s bright red and covered in your handprints. Please fuck me harder, baby, I need it so bad, I want you to fill me with your cum and leave me so sore that all the people at the party will notice me walking funny and know how hard you fucked me.” Frantz growled under his breath, his hand coming down on your ass again as he leaned down to bite a noticeable hickey on your neck, moving his free hand down to rub circles over your exposed clit.

The feeling of his cock stuffing you mixed with the feeling of him stimulating your clit was too much for you, and you came around his cock with a whiny moan as he delivered another harsh smack to your sore ass, eyes watering at the overstimulation as he continued to thrust inside you until he came too, shooting his hot load deep inside your pussy as he grabbed your hips and pulled you as far back on his cock as he could. He kept the back of your dress pulled up with one hand so he could watch his load fill you up, and then he pulled away, satisfied, stuffing his cock back inside his pants and gingerly grabbing your chin to make you face him. “You did so fucking good for me, sweetheart, that was amazing. And I meant what I said, you look absolutely gorgeous in that costume.” He kissed you on the lips, and you smiled, hair messy and costume all askew from being manhandled like that. You started to move, but he quickly stopped you. “Hold on, baby, let me just get a picture of this real quick.” You watched in bewilderment as he grabbed one of his many cameras, aiming the lens at you as he snapped a few pictures of you with your panties pulled down and your pussy dripping with his cum. He glanced down at the camera to view the photos, grinning. “Ah, Halloween memories!”

You burst out laughing, turning around to lean your back against the wall as he set the camera down and came over to give you another kiss. “Not exactly a memory we’ll be able to share with friends or family.” He shrugged, helping you fix your hair. “They don’t need to see that anyway, it’s just for you and me. Here, why don’t we just pull these up and skip the clean up this time!” He pulled your panties back up, leaving your pussy full of his cum, and you raised an eyebrow. “A little messy, isn’t it? And aren’t we about to be in a room with like fifty of your friends and coworkers? I didn’t think you’d be the type to wanna show off like this.” Frantz laughed, pulling the hem of your dress down and smoothing it out over your body as he gave you a kiss on the cheek and rubbed your hips. “No one there is gonna know, baby, it’s just for me. The idea of you walking around that party with my cum inside you is just too good to pass up.” You smiled. “It is, isn’t it? Alright, let’s do it. You better go grab your hook, though, or else people won’t know who you’re supposed to be.” He nodded, walking over to pick up the prop piece as he pulled it over his hand again. “You know, if you’re ever in the mood to try something new, I could always try fucking you with this—” You cut him off with a look. “No fucking chance.”

[44gamez]

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