It’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between real news and The Onion. When I read the headline I was unsure for a moment 🤔😅

You can write laws about what people can and can’t do with them, but you can’t bake them into the tool and expect the tool now to be safe or useful for any particular purpose.

Yes, and that’s why the decision making and responsibility (and accountability) must always rest with the human being imo, especially when we deal with guns. And in health care. And in social policy. And all the other crucial issues.

Michigan’s Secretary of State has launched an investigation into Musk’s pro-Trump PAC and how he is funding efforts to redirect voters in swing states away from official voter registration sites, while leaving them with the false impression that they have registered to vote, and collects a host of private information, as per CNBC.

Noteworthy that it is not entirely clear whether state law currently prohibits such misdirection and voter suppression.

Here is the link to CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/04/elon-musk-pac-investigated-michigan.html

Very satisfied to say that I’ve never been there.

Elon Musk and other tech executives are funding a social media ad blitz to support the presidential campaign of Donald Trump

If a voter in Michigan performs a search on Google, a somewhat shocking ad might pop up.

The ad shows a young man lying in bed late at night when someone else texts him, “Hey you need to vote,” and then sends the man a video of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The man can hear the gunshots and people screaming in the background.

As Trump is rushed off stage with blood pouring down his face, the man watching the video types in response, “This is out of control. How do I start?”

The ad then displays a website for a group called America PAC.

The website says it will help the viewer register to vote. But once a user clicks “Register to Vote,” the experience he or she will have can be very different, depending on where they live.

If a user lives in a state that is not considered competitive in the presidential election, like California or Wyoming for example, they’ll be prompted to enter their email addresses and ZIP code and then directed quickly to a voter registration page for their state, or back to the original sign-up section.

But for users who enter a ZIP code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.

If they agree to submit all that, the system still does not steer them to a voter registration page. Instead, it shows them a “thank you” page.

So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.

[…]

True. I’d have just one edit to whole story:

“The fact is, that if you make a good climate story, people will want to read it.”

These are simulations. Simulations don’t predict the future, they help to create and evaluate options, and thus support decision making under conditions of uncertainty. It is usually good if you create worst and best case scenarios, no matter how probable or improbable some issues and details may seem.

Spoiler: Your and SaltySalamander’s comment say nothing about the current lawsuit against TikTok which is the topic here.

See my.other comment in this thread and here

China’s Belt and Road creates an attractive system for -and is likely aimed at- autocratic regimes, especially since it does not impose conditions of loosening state controls on the corporate sector and reducing clientelism. There is evidence that between 2014 and 2019, almost 80% of total Chinese infrastructure investing worldwide went to autocracies (or to countries with ‘semi-competitive’ elections). Beijing has no interest in democratic reforms in its partner countries, and this might be one major reason why the CCP supports Maduro.

@sleen@lemmy.zip

And if they wanted to help then they would’ve outlined other orgs like Facebook - but that’s an American org.

Last year, 40 or so U.S. states filed a lawsuit against Meta over children’s protection, and that is by far not the only one, just fyi.

Interview with Liz Cheney in April 2023 - (video, 3 min)

Question. “Do you believe if Donald Trump were elected next year, that he would try to stay in office beyond a second term? That he would never leave office?”

Liz Cheney: “There’s no question… Absolutely. He’s already done it once.”

That’s right :-)

‘Trump loses his hostage’: Biden applauded for securing release of Gershkovich and Whelan — (archived)

The Biden administration has secured the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from Russian prisons as part of a prisoner swap, which wipes away one of Donald Trump’s baffling campaign promises.

Trump had raised eyebrows by suggesting multiple times that he had a deal in place with Vladimir Putin to release the journalist from detention if he’s re-elected, saying the Russian president “will do that for me, and I don’t believe he’ll do it for anyone else,” but president Joe Biden beat him to the punch and got the pair released.

Yeah, and then imagine you are 20 years old and read on social media that your father says you are ‘dead’.

He didn’t say that in an interview but in the House Oversight Commitee. He was defending the measure, don’t see what’s wrong here.

Twice as good for half the respect: Kamala Harris’ battle for the White House

Harris’ rise this week has been met with enormous enthusiasm. The hype reflects a keen desire to support a fresh face in the fight against Trump. But the joy and hope have also been fuelled by the savvy way Harris and her team have worked against and within the specific constraints placed on an African American woman and South Asian American who aims to become US president.

That this has surprised so many people shows once again that Harris (and her team) have had to be, in the old adage that parents of colour teach their children, “twice as good” to be accorded “half the respect”.

@neutronst4r, there is a lot wrong with the IMF, but the sad truth is that China’s Belt and Road is much worse. It’s loans come at much worse conditions than those granted by the IMF/World Bank system.

‘Kamala-mania’ also catching on in Europe among U.S. voters living overseas

The US government’s Federal Voting Assistance Program estimates there are 2.8 million Americans living overseas who are eligible to vote in federal elections. In 2016, according to the program’s calculations, only 6.9% of them did so.

Democrats hope they’re now seeing some of that untapped potential activated. DA [Democrats Abroad] said registrations to vote outside the US via the Federal Post Card Application have quintupled in the first three days of this week, rising to more than 3,000, compared with the same period last week. This process registers voters of either party, but DA said the number of its new members also tripled from Monday to Wednesday.

And similar to what Democratic fundraisers have seen in the US, Porter said money from Americans — foreign citizens are not allowed to donate to US election campaigns — is also pouring into DA. “We do get donations regularly, but this is off the charts,” she said.

That’s a good question non of the articles I found on the web is answering. But Ms. Wexton spoke to the Time magazine also using the device, and the magazine says:

During the interview at her dining room table in Leesburg, Virginia, the congresswoman typed out her thoughts, used a stylus to move the text around, hit play and then the AI program put that text into Wexton’s voice. It’s a lengthy process, so the AP provided Wexton with a few questions ahead of the interview to give the congresswoman time to type her answers.

Source: A Neurological Disorder Stole Her Voice. Jennifer Wexton Took It Back With AI on the House Floor

[Edit typo.]

Yeah, but it could get better, according to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell: “Trump is going to have to get used to hearing Harris’ prosecutor record”

Here is a video (17 min): https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=5JbXbqe5t_w