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‘Monetising Hate’: Misinformation Surges on Twitter After Elon Musk’s $44 Billion Takeover
When the iconic US diaper company Huggies was swamped with false pedophilia allegations last month, the conspiracy was traced to a once-banned influencer reinstated to Twitter by Elon Musk.
The Tesla tycoon bitterly denies that misinformation has surged since his turbulent $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,62,100 crore) acquisition of the messaging platform, but experts say content moderation has been gutted after mass layoffs, while a paid verification system has served to boost conspiracy theorists.
Adding to the turmoil, the self-proclaimed free speech absolutist has restored what one researcher estimates are over 67,000 accounts that were once suspended for a myriad of violations, including the incitement of violence, harassment, and misinformation.
Among those reinstated is Vincent Kennedy, a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy movement who was banned from Twitter after January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
Kennedy, according to the advocacy group Media Matters, launched a conspiracy theory in late March that left the Huggies diaper brand fighting off extraordinary pedophilia accusations.
He posted a picture of a Disney-themed diaper featuring Simba, a character from “The Lion King,” and circled triangles and spiral swirls that were part of the design.
This was to illustrate a widely debunked conspiracy theory that the shapes are recognized by the FBI as coded signals used by pedophiles. “Once you truly awake you ain’t going back to sleep,” Kennedy wrote in the tweet that garnered millions of views.
The conspiracy theory spread like wildfire to other platforms like TikTok. Huggies, which is owned by Kleenex-owner Kimberly-Clark, then faced an avalanche of hate messages and calls for a boycott.
Huggies sought to douse the flames, writing in direct response to Kennedy’s tweet that its designs were nothing more than “fun and playful” and that it takes “the safety and well-being of children seriously.”
But conspiracy theorists jumped on the response to further amplify the false claim.
– ‘Real-world harm’ –
“Anecdotally, there’s no doubt that the flood of toxic content from repeat offenders Elon has re-platformed is driving real-world harm,” Jesse Lehrich, cofounder of the advocacy group Accountable Tech, told AFP.
“When you reinstate the architects of the Jan. 6 insurrection as democracy teeters on the brink, when you give a massive platform to notorious neo-Nazis amidst a surge in anti-Semitism when you re-platform influential purveyors of medical disinformation in the middle of a pandemic, there are going to be real-world consequences.”
Travis Brown, a software developer based in Berlin, has compiled an online list of more than 67,000 restored Twitter accounts since Musk’s takeover in late October. Brown told AFP that the list was incomplete and the actual number of restored accounts could be higher.
In a recent BBC interview, Musk pushed back at allegations that misinformation and hateful content were seeing a resurgence since his takeover.
He accused the interviewer of lying. “You said you see more hateful content, but you can’t even name a single one,” Musk said.
Experts AFP spoke to named dozens of examples –- including posts by anti-vaccine propagandists, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists.
After his account was restored, election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell called on his followers to “meltdown electronic voting machines” and use them as prison bars.
Anti-LGBTQ+ narratives –- including the false claim that the community “grooms” children –- have spiked on the platform, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
One key driver of the “grooming” narrative, the group said, is conspiracy theorist James Lindsay, whose account was recently restored after previously being banned permanently.
– ‘Hateful rhetoric’ –
“The reinstatements increase hateful rhetoric across the platform, creating a culture of tolerance on Twitter — tolerance to misogyny, racism, anti-LGBTQ tendencies,” Nora Benavidez, from the nonpartisan group Free Press, told AFP.
Imran Ahmed, chief executive at CCDH, said “Twitter is monetizing hate at an unprecedented rate.” Just five Twitter accounts peddling the “grooming” narrative generate up to $6.4 million (roughly Rs. 52 Crores) in annual advertising revenue, according to CCDH’s research.
But experts say the strategy is counterproductive as that can hardly offset lost advertising revenue.
The chaotic shake-up under Musk has scared off several major advertisers. Twitter’s ad income will drop by 28 percent this year, according to analysts at Insider Intelligence, who said “advertisers don’t trust Musk.”
As an alternative, Musk has sought to boost income from a verification checkmark, now available for $8 (roughly Rs. 650) in a program called Twitter Blue. But dozens of “misinformation super-spreaders” have purchased the blue tick and are inundating the platform with falsehoods, according to the watchdog NewsGuard.
“Musk reinstated accounts to make money and to adopt what he believes, misguidedly, is some ‘equal free speech’ mindset — ignoring that the (policy) makes Twitter a platform which rewards violent language with visibility,” Benavidez said.
“This chills speech and engagement rather than furthers it.”
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YouTube will roll out a slew of artificial-intelligence-powered features for creators, the latest effort from parent company Alphabet to incorporate generative AI — technology that can create and synthesize text, images, music and other media given simple prompts — into its most important products and services.
Among the new products YouTube announced Thursday is a tool called Dream Screen that uses generative AI to add video or image backgrounds to short-form videos, which the company calls Shorts. It also announced new AI-enabled production tools to help with editing both short- and long-form videos on its platform.
“We’re unveiling a suite of products and features that will enable people to push the bounds of creative expression,” Toni Reid, YouTube’s vice president for community products, said in a blog post timed to the announcement Thursday. The Google-owned video platform first announced that it was developing the tools in March.
Google has been under pressure to show results and practical applications for its generative AI products. Some critics have been wary the company, which has long been seen as a leader in artificial intelligence, was falling behind upstarts like OpenAI or rival Microsoft, and that the products Google was rolling out weren’t yet ready for public consumption. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a new Bing chatbot from Microsoft — which has invested $13 billion (nearly Rs. 1,08,100 crore) in OpenAI since 2019 — have been wildly popular and gained mainstream favour.
Over the past few months, Google launched its own ChatGPT competitor, Bard, and released a steady flow of updates to the product. It’s also incorporated experimental generative AI features into its most important services, including its flagship search engine, in what the company calls its experimental “search generative experience.” The product generates detailed summaries based on information it’s ingested from the internet and other digital sources in response to search queries.
The announcement of the new features also comes as YouTube is locked in fierce competition with ByteDance‘s TikTok and Meta Platforms‘s Instagram Reels to gain more share of the vertical, short-form video market. YouTube said it now sees more than 70 billion daily views on Shorts, and the new generative AI tools appear to be aimed at attracting even more users and creators and gaining a competitive edge over its rivals.
The company also announced YouTube Create, a mobile app aimed at helping the platform’s creators make video production work easier. The app includes AI-enabled features like editing and trimming, automatic captioning, voiceover capabilities and access to a library of filters and royalty-free music. The app is currently in beta on Android in “select markets,” the company said, and will be free of charge.
Beyond creation, YouTube said it would also provide creators with more tools to get AI-powered insights, help with automatic dubbing of videos and assist with finding music and soundtracks for videos.
© 2023 Bloomberg LP
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WhatsApp has begun rolling out support for a new feature that will allow you to log in to your account using the biometric authentication mechanism on your smartphone. The messaging service will soon allow you to create a passkey — a kind of login credential that eliminates the need to use or remember a password — on your device and use it to securely log in to apps and services using the facial recognition or fingerprint scanner on your device.
Feature tracker WABetaInfo spotted the new passkey feature on WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.20.4 on Tuesday, that is rolling out to beta users. However, not all users who have updated to the latest beta release will have access to the feature, which is reportedly rolling out to a “limited number of beta testers”. Gadgets 360 was unable to access the feature on two different Android smartphones that are both enrolled in the beta program.
The new Passkeys feature on WhatsApp
Photo Credit: WABetaInfo
The new passkey feature is described as a “simple way to sign in safely” to WhatsApp in a screenshot shared by the feature tracker. This suggests that it could be used to help sign in to other devices via secure authentication on your primary device.
Authenticating using passkeys isn’t a novel concept and the technology is slowly gaining traction online— Google already allows you to log in to a new device by using fingerprint-based biometric authentication for passkeys in place of a password. These passkeys are securely stored on your device and used when biometric authentication is provided.
The screenshot posted by WABetaInfo also states that WhatsApp will store the passkey in the device’s password manager — for most users, that would be the device’s default password store that is handled by Google with autofill support. The feature is also expected to make its way to iOS, where it is likely to be stored in the iOS Keychain.
It is currently unclear whether WhatsApp will also support storing passkeys in third-party apps like Bitwarden, 1Password, or Dashlane. We can expect to learn more about how the feature works when it is rolled out to more users in the beta program and the feature is expected to arrive on all smartphones on the stable channel in the future.
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Britain urged Meta not to roll out end-to-end encryption on Instagram and Facebook Messenger without safety measures to protect children from sexual abuse after the Online Safety Bill was passed by parliament.
Meta, which already encrypts messages on WhatsApp, plans to implement end-to-end encryption across Messenger and Instagram direct messages, saying the technology re-enforced safety and security.
Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she supported strong encryption for online users but it could not come at the expense of children’s safety.
“Meta has failed to provide assurances that they will keep their platforms safe from sickening abusers,” she said. “They must develop appropriate safeguards to sit alongside their plans for end-to-end encryption.”
A Meta spokesperson said: “The overwhelming majority of Brits already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters and criminals.
“We don’t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security.”
It said it would update on Wednesday on the measures it was taking, such as restricting people over 19 from messaging teens who do not follow them and using technology to identify and take action against malicious behaviour.
“As we roll out end-to-end encryption, we expect to continue providing more reports to law enforcement than our peers due to our industry leading work on keeping people safe,” the spokesperson said.
Social media platforms will face tougher requirements to protect children from accessing harmful content when the Online Safety Bill passed by Parliament on Tuesday becomes law.
End-to-end encryption is a bone of contention between companies and the government in the new law.
Messaging platforms led by WhatsApp oppose a provision that they say could force them to break end-to-end encryption.
The government, however, has said the bill does not ban the technology, but instead, it requires companies to take action to stop child abuse and as a last resort develop technology to scan encrypted messages.
Tech companies have said scanning messages and end-to-end encryption are fundamentally incompatible.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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