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Meta platforms run ads promoting illicit drugs, violating own rules: Report

August 2, 2024
Meta’s platforms — Facebook, Instagram and Messenger — have been running ads for illicit drugs, including cocaine and prescription opioids like oxycodone and Percocet, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal. The tech giant has been raking in profits off the ads, which violate its own policies and U.S. law against promoting illegal drugs.

The WSJ reported in March that the social media company has been under federal investigation over the operation.

Watchdog group Tech Transparency Project (TTP) analyzed the ads and found Meta ran more than 450 of them in recent months, steering users to an online marketplace for illegal drugs. Some of the ads appeared as recently as July.

The ads encourage people to “place their orders,” alongside photos of prescription drug bottles, piles of pills and powders.

The group revisited one of their own investigations from December 2021 that found “Instagram allowed teen users as young as 13 to find potentially deadly drugs for sale in just two clicks.” According to the study, those same accounts don’t necessarily produce new content on its platforms but allow drug dealers to comment on older posts, encouraging people to visit a website called Best Drug Plug.

TTP said the site sells drugs, including opioids, ketamine, ecstasy, cocaine, heroin, LSD and fentanyl.

Some parents who have lost their children to drug overdoses Meta blame Meta for their deaths.

During a congressional hearing in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized directly to parents who said their children died as a direct result of Meta’s failure to protect children on social media platforms.

“I’m sorry for everything you all have gone through,” Zuckerberg said to the parents. “No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, a spokesperson for Meta said the company disabled many of the drug ads within 48 hours of the report going live.

The spokesperson also said Meta’s “systems are designed to proactively detect and enforce against violating content, and we reject hundreds of thousands of ads for violating our drug policies.”

“Our hearts go out to those suffering from the tragic consequences of this epidemic,” the spokesperson added. “It requires all of us to work together to stop it.”
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First-of-its-kind AI law goes into effect in EU; US companies in the crosshairs

August 1, 2024
The world’s first artificial intelligence (AI) legislation went into effect Thursday, Aug. 1, in the EU. The AI Act, as its known, will regulate how companies develop and use the technology.

The law is facing criticism that it could discourage innovation before it even happens. But the European Commission didn’t pass it overnight. In fact, the law was first proposed back in 2020.

“It’s been drafted for the past few years and ChatGPT happened in the meantime,” Aleksandra Przegalinska, a senior research associate at Harvard University, told Straight Arrow News in July 2023.

After tweaks to adjust to the ever-changing generative AI reality, the commission passed the law in May of this year.

“It’s a regulation that looks at AI from the perspective of risk, mainly,” Przegalinska explained. “It says, okay, most of the applications of artificial intelligence that we have seen so far, we could call them minimal risk; but there are others that are high risk and there is also a way of using artificial intelligence that we would rather ban; like social scoring, for instance, or surveillance systems of different kinds.”

Last year during the State of the EU address, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke about the need to quickly regulate AI.

“AI is a general technology that is accessible, powerful and adaptable for a vast range of uses — both civilian and military,” von der Leyen said in September. “And it is moving faster than even its developers anticipated. So we have a narrowing window of opportunity to guide this technology responsibly.”

The AI Act separates types of technology into four different categories:
- Prohibited AI systems will be banned as of February 2025. This could apply to AI which tries to predict whether a person might commit a crime based on their characteristics or one that scrapes the internet to bolster facial recognition systems.
- High risk AI systems have the highest regulatory burden outside of those that are outright banned. This includes AI that is used for critical infrastructure like electrical grids, systems that make employment decisions, and self-driving vehicles. Companies with AI that fall into this category will have to disclose their training datasets and prove human oversight.
- Minimal risk systems make up the largest chunk of innovation at about 85%. This is what’s known as “general-use AI.” The category includes generative AI like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. For these types of AI, creators will need to make sure their models are adhering to EU copyright rules and take proper cybersecurity precautions to protect users. It will take effect in 12 months.
- The fourth category is no risk. This is pretty self-explanatory and is for any AI use that doesn’t fall into the other three categories.
https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1818907654921535707

“We Europeans have always championed an approach that puts people and their rights at the center of everything we do,” von der Leyen said in a video posted to X. “So with our Artificial Intelligence Act, we create new guardrails not only to protect people and their interests but also to give business and innovators clear rules and certainty.”

While the rules are created to protect citizens of the EU, American tech companies will likely be most affected by it.

In recent years, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook-parent Meta have spent massive amounts of money developing AI models.

The rules will be governed by the European Commission’s AI office. A spokesperson for the commission said they will staff around 140 people.

If a company fails to comply with the new rules, it could face fines of $41 million or up to 7% of its global revenue. And the regulatory environment could force these tech giants to make a big decision.

Meta already announced it wouldn’t make its Llama AI model available in the EU. But that’s not because of the AI Act; it was already worried about the bloc’s General Data Protection regulation.

Member states have until August of 2025 to put together bodies that will handle execution of the law in their country.

Meanwhile, companies that already have a commercially available product like ChatGPT will have a 36-month grace period to come into compliance.
Meta agrees to $1.4B settlements over Texas privacy lawsuit

July 31, 2024
Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has agreed to pay a record $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over allegations it used biometric data without permission. Filed in 2022, the Texas lawsuit said Meta violated a state law that prohibits capturing or selling a resident’s biometric information, such as their face or fingerprint, without their consent.

The state accused Meta of using its facial recognition software on photos uploaded to Facebook without users’ consent to automatically tag their faces on its site.

This marks the largest settlement ever between Meta and an individual state. In 2021, Meta reached a $650 million settlement in a similar lawsuit out of Illinois.

The only other larger claim is a $5 billion settlement the company made with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019, after a probe into the company’s privacy practices.

To date, Meta has now paid more than $2 billion in settlements over biometric privacy claims. Meta shut down its face-recognition system in 2021 and deleted the faceprints of more than a billion people amid growing concerns about potential misuse of the technology by governments, police and others.

Texas filed a similar lawsuit against Google in 2022, accusing the search giant of collecting millions of biometric identifiers – including voiceprints and records of face geometry – through its many products and services. That lawsuit is still pending.
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Reply while you sleep: Instagram lets you create an AI version of yourself

July 30, 2024
Imagine: You direct message your favorite Instagram influencer and a reply comes back lightning fast. You didn’t even think they checked their DMs! But it might not be a real person behind that personalized message, even if it sounds just like them.

Soon, anyone in the U.S. will be able to create AI versions of themselves on Instagram or the web as Meta rolls out AI Studio.

The idea is that creators and business accounts will use the AI to talk directly to their followers, responding to comments or replying to messages.

It’s up to the creator to tell the AI what topics are off limits, like a financial influencer opting not to advise on investing in crypto, something that could get you in trouble with the SEC.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about the latest rollout in a chat with NVIDIA’s CEO.

“There’s kind of a fundamental issue here where there’s just not enough hours in the day, right? It’s like, if you’re a creator, you want to engage more with your community, but you’re constrained on time. And similarly, your community wants to engage with you, but it’s tough,” Zuckerberg said. “So the next best thing is allowing people to basically create these artifacts, right? It’s an agent, but you train it on your material to represent you in the way that you want.”

“It’s a very creative endeavor, almost like a piece of art or content that you’re putting out there,” he continued. “It’s to be very clear that it’s not engaging with the creators themselves, but I think it’ll be another interesting way, just like how creators put out content on these social systems, to be able to have agents that do that.”

Zuckerberg touched on some of the issues surrounding these AI versions of people, like labeling so people know they’re not actually interacting with the creator, but an AI agent.

Meta’s AI Studio also allows people to create their own AI chatbots, and is on top of Meta’s main chatbot offering, Meta AI.

“It’s all part of this bigger view that we have that there shouldn’t just be one big AI that people interact with,” he said. “We just think that the world will be better and more interesting if there’s a diversity of these different things.”

There are some apparent concerns regarding the advancement of AI. Privacy is a major one. Meta is already using people’s posts and data to develop its AI systems, though users can opt out. Creating a unique AI chatbot comes with privacy sacrifice: How much data is one willing to hand over to replicate oneself?

Another concern is human connection. Americans have gotten so lonely, the surgeon general declared loneliness an epidemic. Social media is a big part of that already.

In a study, people who reported using social media more than two hours a day had double the odds of reporting social isolation compared to those who are on social media less than 30 minutes a day.

Still, people, especially teens, use social media for that human connection. And more frequently, the other side of that connection may be artificial.

“With generative AI, I think we’re going to quickly move into the zone where not only is the majority of the content that you see today on Instagram just recommended to you from stuff that’s out there in the world that matches your interests, whether or not you follow the people, I think in the future, a lot of the stuff is going to be created with these tools, too,” Zuckerberg said.
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Senate expected to pass bill to protect kids online

July 30, 2024
The Senate is expected to pass legislation on Tuesday, July 30, that will protect children from what is considered dangerous online content. The bill, which has bipartisan support, has been championed by parents whose children died by suicide due to online bullying.

It would force websites and apps used often by kids and teens, like popular social media platforms, to take steps to protect minors online by using the safest settings possible as a default.

The House has not yet taken up its own version of the bill, but Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he would look over the Senate’s bill and try to come to a consensus.

If the bill becomes law, social media platforms would have to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations. The bill also requires platforms to limit other users from communicating with children and limit addictive features like platform rewards or autoplay for videos.

Some Big Tech companies including Microsoft, X and Snap said they support the bill. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has not publicly taken a position.
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Meta removes 63,000 accounts linked to sextortion scams

July 24, 2024
Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, said it recently removed thousands of accounts linked to sextortion scams. Those scams involve online predators posing as someone they are not to lure a person into sending sexual photos or videos of themselves, only to use them as blackmail unless the person pays them or gives them banking information.

Meta said it took down 63,000 accounts originating from Nigeria alone, including one sextortion ring of 2,500 accounts linked to a group of about 20 people. Meta also said it removed 200 Facebook pages and 5,700 Facebook groups, all from Nigeria. Those pages and groups provided tips for scammers like scripts for talking with victims and links to collections of photos that scammers could use when making fake accounts to trick people.

Nigeria became a hotspot for sextortion crimes in recent years. Meta said many of the accounts it recently shut down were linked to a group called the “Yahoo Boys,” a group of criminals in Nigeria known for financial scams.

This crackdown comes as Meta tests new technology to help steer users away from these types of scams.

The most common platforms for sextortion scams are Instagram and Snapchat, according to a recent study from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and Thorn, a nonprofit that uses technology to combat the spread of child sexual abuse material.
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Meta accused of breaking European Union’s new digital rules

July 1, 2024
European Union (EU) regulators accused Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta of violating the new Digital Markets Act. On Monday, July 1, the EU said Meta forced users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.

Meta started the “pay or consent” option for European users in November after the EU’s top court ruled Meta had to get consent to show ads to users.

The European Commission — the EU’s executive arm — said preliminary findings of its investigation show Meta’s “pay or consent” model breaches the Digital Markets Act. The commission had opened the investigation not long after the Digital Markets Act went into effect in March.

https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1807715743129043342

If EU regulators find Meta did break the rules, the company could face a fine of up to 10% of its worldwide revenue.

This makes Meta the second company to be hit with charges under the new Digital Markets Act. Last week, the EU accused Apple of failing to comply with the law. Regulators said Apple prevented app developers from pointing users to cheaper options than Apple’s app store.
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SCOTUS sides with conservative radio host Jarkesy in case fighting SEC ruling

June 27, 2024
A conservative radio host took on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and won. The Supreme Court Thursday, June 27, ruled 6-3 in favor of George Jarkesy, who was charged with securities fraud and ordered by an SEC judge to pay a civil penalty of $300,000.

Jarkesy appealed, claiming the SEC violated his Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial by deciding his case using an in-house judge, known as an administrative law judge (ALJ). These are judges in the executive branch, not the judicial branch. They are employed by the agency bringing the charges.

The argument for ALJs across government is that they’re specialized judges in that field. But remember the saying, “the house always wins.” A Wall Street Journal analysis from 2010 to 2015 showed the SEC won 90% of cases before its in-house judges and just 69% before federal court judges.

“I think it’s, honestly, a cheap default by the SEC,” said Stephen Best, an attorney at Brown Rudnick who successfully defended Mark Cuban against the SEC’s insider trading claims.

Straight Arrow News interviewed Best following the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the Jarkesy case.

“I think that it was a ghost that nobody really focused on until after the Mark Cuban insider trading case,” Best said. “And when the SEC had incredible difficulties accommodating the requirements of the U.S. District Court’s rules on discovery and trial practice, they ran back to their home at the ALJ.”

The Jarkesy case had the potential to upend the court system. There are more than twice as many ALJs as federal judges. Had the Supreme Court ruled the use of ALJs as a whole is unconstitutional, this would have flooded the courts with cases.

“The floodgates are about to open up and that’s what the Supreme Court’s worried about,” Best said at the time. “And so they’re going to be very careful in tailoring their opinion, but nonetheless, however careful they’re going to be, it’s still going to leave room for interpretation.”

At last count by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, there are more than 1,900 ALJs across federal agencies. Eighty-six percent of them deal in Social Security cases. Just five judges come from the SEC as of 2017. In Thursday’s decision, the Supreme Court was careful to keep its ruling specific to that house, and even more narrowly, to fraud cases.

“A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Rather than recognize that right, the dissent would permit Congress to concentrate the roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury in the hands of the Executive Branch. That is the very opposite of the separation of powers that the Constitution demands.”

“Beyond the majority’s legal errors, its ruling reveals a far more fundamental problem: This Court’s repeated failure to appreciate that its decisions can threaten the separation of powers,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the dissent. “Here, that threat comes from the Court’s mistaken conclusion that Congress cannot assign a certain public-rights matter for initial adjudication to the Executive because it must come only to the Judiciary.”

This likely isn’t the last time the issue of ALJs will come up. Facebook parent company Meta sued the Federal Trade Commission last year challenging its use of the in-house justice system, also claiming it violates the company’s right to a trial jury.
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Teen boys threatened with financial sextortion scams at high rate

June 25, 2024
Financial “sextortion” scams are becoming more common, and it appears teenaged boys are paying the price. Anti-child sexual abuse technology company Thorn looked at more than 15 million reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) from 2020 to 2023. The company found that sextortion, especially financial sextortion, is a growing problem.

The FBI defines sextortion as when someone is threatened or coerced into sending sexually explicit images online. Financial sextortion is when someone uses those images as blackmail in exchange for payment.

The study found reports of sextortion went up dramatically after 2022, exceeding 600 a week.

In the past, sextortion schemes frequently targeted girls. However, this new study shows teenaged boys are now the most common victims of financial sextortion. The study found that 14- to 17-year-old boys account for 90% of the financial sextortion reports to NCMEC.

According to the report, the vast majority of child sextortion cases start with “catfishing,” usually in the form of someone posing as another teenager to get teen boys to send sexually explicit images or videos of themselves. The perpetrator will often then threaten to ruin the teen’s life by sharing the pictures with their friends or family if they don’t send money.

The study also found Instagram was the most commonly used social media platform for financial sextortion. The platform was mentioned in more than 80% of threats and used more than half the time to follow through.

Instagram was also the most popular way perpetrators made initial contact with victims. However, the report also noted a trend of using end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, like WhatsApp or Telegram, to communicate with victims. Gift cards and Cash App were identified as the most common payment methods.

Meta, which owns Instagram, said financial sextortion is a “horrific crime” and it is already implementing new features to help protect users.

The company said it is currently testing a feature that would blur nudity in direct messages and developing technology to help identify accounts that may potentially be engaging in sextortion scams.

The report identified Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire as the two countries most often linked to sextortion schemes. It says incidents have been tied to crime networks that operate in these countries.
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Instagram recommends sexual videos to kids as young as 13: Report

June 20, 2024
Instagram is recommending sexual videos to kids as young as 13, according to a new Wall Street Journal study released Thursday, June 20. The Journal created new accounts and set the ages to 13 years old to see what kind of content would be recommended.

Researchers said right off the bat, the accounts were recommended “moderately racy” videos like women dancing sensually or showing off their bodies. The Journal reported it took as little as three minutes after the accounts were created to start getting sexual reels.

The study also found accounts that watched those videos and skipped over other reels started getting more explicit suggestions, including videos of women pantomiming sex acts or promising to send nude images.

In January, Instagram owner Meta said it was giving teens a more age-appropriate experience by restricting “sensitive content,” including sexually suggestive material.

For comparison, the Journal did the same test on TikTok and Snapchat. The report said neither recommended sexual videos to the accounts created as “teens.”

In fact, researchers even used those accounts to search age-inappropriate videos and follow accounts that produced them. They said the TikTok and Snapchat accounts still did not get age-inappropriate recommendations, even after that.
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First-of-its-kind AI law goes into effect in EU; US companies in the crosshairs

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Meta platforms run ads promoting illicit drugs, violating own rules: Report

First-of-its-kind AI law goes into effect in EU; US companies in the crosshairs

Meta agrees to $1.4B settlements over Texas privacy lawsuit

Reply while you sleep: Instagram lets you create an AI version of yourself

Senate expected to pass bill to protect kids online

Meta removes 63,000 accounts linked to sextortion scams

Meta accused of breaking European Union’s new digital rules

SCOTUS sides with conservative radio host Jarkesy in case fighting SEC ruling

Teen boys threatened with financial sextortion scams at high rate

Instagram recommends sexual videos to kids as young as 13: Report