Weekend Edition 27: Everybody’s Struggling... Change is Coming & More

TikTok Troubles
Big Tech on Thin Ice
Twitter Traumas
AI Antics

WE 27.1 - TikTok Troubles
Have you heard about TikTok’s latest attempt to prove that your data is safe? It’s called Project Clover. It is centered around the EU, with a >1 billion euro/ year investment in local data centers. They are also adding a separate security firm to monitor data flows to make sure that no user data winds up in China, as well as making it harder to pick out individual users from the masses of data sent around on TikTok. Security gateways will also make it harder for employees to access European user data, along with data transfers outside of Europe.
They also have a plan called Project Texas, which seeks to do the same things in the US for users here. When was the last time you saw any other Western Big Tech entity bend so far over backwards to prove that they are worthy of trust? I have a funny feeling that this has more to do with the fact that 5eyes intelligence operations don’t have tentacles embedded in TikTok due to it not being a Western company. The other Big Tech players are all essentially US-controlled, so the 3-letter agencies here, along with their counterparts in other allied countries, have their fingers all through them, surveying all of their citizens the whole while.

Meanwhile, the Federal government looks to be creating more power for itself, so that it can, in the future, ban “foreign-linked producers of electronics or software that the Commerce Department deems to be a national security risk.” On one hand, this is kind of good, on the other, it is MORE power for the executive branch of the federal gov’t, which already holds FAR too much. The White House has been working with members of congress on the RESTRICT act (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology), which was unveiled on March 7. Given, certain Bush-related senators from Florida (among others) have been loudly calling for an outright ban on the Byte-Dance-owned platform, even in the midst of major, some would say herculean efforts by the platform to be more overtly careful with user data. I still don’t like what I see TikTok symbolizing for the youth, as well as their practices in regard to their influencers, so I don’t ever see myself starting to use the platform, and I will strongly encourage anyone who does use it to get off, because it damages your mental health, if nothing else. Honestly, i will be happy when it has been shown over time that it is both private and secure. That would be huge, I think. Other than that, they need to honor intellectual property rights and pay their influencers better, but that is outside of the scope of this channel.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64887704
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/tech/biden-tiktok-bill

WE 27.2 – Big Tech on Thin Ice?
On one side, the DOJ is beefing up their antitrust division. On the other, Senators are sabre-rattling about changes coming to Section 230. Let’s see how all this plays out, shall we?
The DOJ is looking into expanding the department which looks at how US companies use customer data, and whether it is abused to create or attempt to use anti-competitive practices. I have a few words for this: “Duh, dipshits” Of course the Big Boys are abusing the troves of data they gather from customers to fortify and grow their own corporate interests, to hedge against market pressures, both in terms of competition and otherwise. They want to better understand dark patterns, or design choices on websites and in emails which subconsciously steer people toward whatever the corporation wants them to do, whether buying a certain product, or giving up their personal data more “voluntarily”. These manipulative, maybe even slightly witchcraft-like tactics are downright evil, and can certainly contribute to creating monopoly-esque situations. Monopolies inherently harm consumers, as they can literally do whatever they want with prices because they have no competition, and without competition, product quality and innovation often slip if not disappear entirely in a true monopoly situation. That is just all around bad for everyone but the corporation.
Both the Democrat Sen Blumenthal and the GOP Sen. Hawley are speaking loudly about the need to reform Section 230, however, their approaches and reasoning are somewhat diametrically opposed. This is endemic of the situation in Washington though. The GOP has been speaking loudly about completely getting rid of it, due to perceived (and *cough cough*) ACCURATE characterizations about the censorship issues that conservatives have inordinately faced in the last several years on platforms such as Twitter, Meta products, and other similar ones. The other side of the aisle wants to reform it to tighten up controls on speech, not just hate speech, but now even “fear speech”, whatever that is. Even the GOP is not 100% united in terms of what measures they should take to reform Section 230. Some, like Hawley, want to expand the legal liability for platforms, while others, like “Little” Marco Rubio want to completely remove that fig leaf, and leave the platforms wide open to every kind of conceivable lawsuit.
As I have said recently, I’m not certain what measures need to be taken, other than that the destruction of the First Amendment is inexcusable, and must be considered a non-starter. The very concept of “hate speech” or “fear speech” is Marxist claptrap meant to shut down any opposing viewpoints, so that they can continue to run roughshod over whatever is left of what used to be the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Wake up, America! Wake up!
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/06/tech/doj-data-experts
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/tech/senators-section-230-reform

WE 27.3 – Twitter Traumas
Well, well, well, the cesspool that is Twitter is a cesspool. Shocking. Horribly shocking. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself now that I know that. Wait, so the social media platform that was designed to generate division is divisive? I’m flabbergasted. (Can I roll my eyes any further back into my skull?) So, the cesspool that they created by pushing anything and everything that is radical on either side of the political aisle is a toxic mess without much of the censorship which protected particularly leftists from critique and “extreme” right-wing “trolls”? Ok, I’ll try to cut back on some of my sarcasm, though I don’t know how long I can hold it at bay. I wonder how many of Musk’s moves at Twitter are about money and how many are about shifting priorities to build Twitter into a US version of WeChat, where there are digital payments, banking, social media, messaging, all in one app. It seems to me that most millennials and zoomers need to grow thicker skins to begin with, and I say that as a millennial. Words can hurt, but only if you have no identity and allow them to hurt you. If the fire is too hot, or the sludge is too toxic, stop using the platform. Let it tank. I think that deep down, that is Elon’s assignment at Twitter. Free speech is free speech. It is protected under the first amendment. People need to detox from the spin cycle for a bit, get their hearts and heads in the right place, maybe get to know the Lord in a real way, then wade back in, if you feel that you must.

Twitter is also having more and more technical issues, beyond reduced capacity to curb free speech, since Elon took over. We’ve had two 1-2 hour service interruptions in the last week alone. How terrible... Oops, was that more sarcasm? As of when the Sun article was written, people had seen a few different errors due to “an internal change that had some ‘unintended consequences’”. Why is twitter, which serves perhaps 5% of the global population seen as being such a key platform, anyway? I never got into it, so maybe I dodged the koolaid on that one. Many people have become addicted to it, and the media has given it this outsized overestimation of its real value. I’m not saying that some good things don’t occasionally come from the platform, but it was dumb and divisive from the get-go and has only gotten worse in over the last 15 years. End it. Shoot the dying beast and put us out of its misery already. I don’t know...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/21613201/twitter-down-login-not-working-error-code-467/
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64804007
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64863450

WE 27.4 – AI Antics
Have you noticed some changes with DuckDuckGo and Brave Search, lately? In the last week or so, they have each implemented some limited AI assistants into their engines. Ok, nothing to be over the moon about, but also not a good enough reason to ditch either one on its own, either. Newsflash: search engines have always been AI. They simply weren’t generative AI, and the tools they have added are limited generative AI, in the form of summaries of your search results at the top of the results page. DDG has limited theirs to only grabbing data from Wikipedia (bahhahahahahah) and Britannica, to limit “incorrect” information from showing up there. Brave’s implementation can pull info from news portals, so it will have more up-to-date information, and it cites its sources so that you can use your judgment to determine how worthwhile the summary is. That seems like the way to do this, in my opinion. Let us decide what matters and what makes sense to us, rather than forcing us to read regurgitated talking points from Wikipedia, which has been proven to have a strong Leftist bias.
Do you use ChatGPT? Ever wondered how to make sure that it doesn’t abide by the “ethical standards” that OpenAI established for it to make it woke AF? There is a way to make it act as though it has no filters. It is an alter ego called Do Anything Now (Dan), which you need to activate if you want to bypass the normal safeguards... This is regualrly getting patched by the folks at OpenAI, as they do not want ChatGPT to be “abused”.
Simply copy the latest Dan prompt which has not been patched as yet into the prompt for ChatGPT. I’ll show you the website, but the link is in the description. I will not touch it myself, but if you want to experiment, give it a shot.
https://www.jailbreakchat.com

This stuff cracks me up, to be honest. I can see both sides of the equation though. One one hand, as a developer, you want your software to be used as you intend, and not be hacked into doing things that you never meant it to do. On the other, if you’re going to use ChatGPT anyway, use Dan or one the other unpatched alters.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/duckduckgo-launches-ai-powered-search-query-answering-tool/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/brave-search-launches-ai-powered-summarizer-in-search-results/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/08/chatgpt-alter-ego-dan-users-jailbreak-ai-program-to-get-around-ethical-safeguards