Policy

While it might be fun to interact with Character.AI’s user-created chatbots, a report from Wired shows the challenges of taking down chatbots that impersonate people without their consent, including a teen who was murdered in 2006:

Given that Character.AI can sometimes take a week to investigate and remove a persona that violates the platform’s terms, a bot can still operate for long enough to upset someone whose likeness is being used. But it might not be enough for a person to claim real “harm” from a legal perspective, experts say.

Last week, Judge Donato ruled that Google would have to open up Android to third-party app stores starting November 1st — but Google immediately filed an appeal and asked for an emergency stay.

Now, the judge will hear Google’s motion on October 18th. If he grants it, it could be years until Google makes changes, even if higher courts agree with his ruling.

If USB-C indeed becomes the standard, the UK would be following in the footsteps of the EU.

The UK’s “call for evidence” about the potential adoption started earlier this month and will run until December 2nd.

A bandwidth-hungry tracking app is apparently kicking users with slow internet into a barely functional offline mode. Maybe rural broadband access matters after all:

The Trump campaign and America Pac then have little way to know whether canvassers are actually knocking on doors or whether they are cheating – for instance, by “speed-running” routes where they literally throw campaign materials at doors as they drive past.

While campaigning for the US Senate in 2021, Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance filmed a Facebook Live using his smartphone’s selfie camera, which mirrored the image, and therefore his campaign signs.

That can be fixed, but Vance’s idea — rotating the phone — is not it. (I recommend waiting a moment to turn on the volume, unless you’re a fan of TikTok’s text-to-speech voices.)

Ride share drivers in New York are guaranteed a minimum wage — but Uber and Lyft gamed the law by locking drivers out of the app, making it impossible for them to earn more, a Bloomberg investigation found.

Bloomberg collected more than 7,000 screenshots of lockouts and estimated how much the companies could save using the lockout tactic.

In a speech in Detroit, former President Donald Trump seemed to suggest that he would “stop [self-driving cars] from operating” if he was elected in November. Not exactly the message his pal Elon Musk wants to hear on the eve of his big Tesla robotaxi event in Hollywood. Maybe Trump’s invitation was lost in the mail.

Here’s his LinkedIn update about prison!

The latest tactic in Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign feels directly inspired by TikTok’s Subway Surfers attention stimulation gimmick.

Tim Walz’s Arizona rally yesterday was broadcast on the campaign’s Twitch account in a split-screen view, with commentary and live World of Warcraft gameplay provided by streamer Preheat playing alongside it.

Rolling Stone reports that just like FEMA, meteorologists are dealing with more pushback than they’re used to — one is quoted saying “ideas that once would have been ridiculed as very fringe, outlandish viewpoints are suddenly becoming mainstream.”

CBS Morning meteorologist Katie Nickolaou also tweeted one example of what she’s seeing (below).

The band says in a new lawsuit that after their music saw a surge in popularity, it still had “not been paid a single cent by UMG” until taking action against them. The complaint gives a glimpse into what it’s like for a band seeing a revival of its music — and the alleged challenge of capitalizing on that.

Couple things here: It’s the DOJ, not Lina Khan’s FTC, that is currently pursuing a breakup of Google and in the middle of a giant Apple antitrust case, so it’s not even clear Cuban has pointed his ire at the correct target with this comment. And what a wild political re-alignment when AOC and JD Vance agree that Khan is doing a good job!

Reuters reports that Bentley Hensel, a “long-shot congressional challenger” in Virginia, made an AI chatbot of incumbent Don Beyer to stand in if Beyer doesn’t show up to a debate:

DonBot, as the AI is playfully known, is being trained on Beyer’s official websites, press releases, and data from the Federal Election Commission. The text-based AI is based on an API from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

A preprint study confirms a widely held understanding: thanks to unusually harsh US laws for hosting pirated content, reporting nonconsensual sexual imagery as copyright infringement gets results.

All the images reported as copyright violations were removed within 25 hours, and the accounts that posted them received temporary suspensions. All images reported as non-consensual nudity were not removed from the site even after three weeks, and the accounts that posted them faced no consequences nor received any notifications from X. 

The block comes just one week after Russia ordered Discord to take down nearly 1,000 posts containing “illegal” content. Russia’s communications regulator says it issued a ban on the messaging platform for violating the country’s laws, according to Reuters.

The House Oversight Committee will investigate the FCC’s decision to deny the Elon Musk-owned Starlink $885.5 million in federal subsidies through the Rural Digital Opportunity fund in 2022.

Last week, Musk claimed the satellite internet company “would probably have saved lives” in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina if the FCC didn’t “illegally” revoke Starlink’s funding.

Following a lengthy bankruptcy process, FTX says 98 percent of customers who lost assets in the collapsed crypto exchange will receive their money back within 60 days. Delaware Judge John Dorsey called the outcome a “model case for how to deal with a very complex Chapter 11 proceeding.”

Following a final ruling that says Google will have to open up the Play Store to third-party marketplaces, Google reaffirmed its plans to appeal the decision.

At the same time, Google is also asking the court to pause Epic Games’ requests to distribute rival app stores and adjust its payment system. Apple was granted a reprieve during its Epic legal battle last year.