GUEST BLOG: Talk liberation – AI Steals Billions of Photos from Social Media to Help Cops & ‘Right to Repair’ is Introduced to All 50 States

Clearview AI Stole Billions of Photos Without User Consent – Now They’re Buying Social Security Numbers

Clearview AI is a facial recognition software that’s marketed to police and government agencies for ‘engaging in lawful investigative processes’ — it helps law enforcement identify faces in seconds, thanks to its massive database.

The company has already faced its share of controversies, having been sent a cease and desist letter from LinkedIn and X/Twitter, as well as Google, Facebook and Youtube, all from when it first started scraping BILLIONS of photos from social media platforms in 2020.

Now, journalists uncover documents that show Clearview AI spent nearly a million dollars in a bid for 690 MILLION arrest records and photos from all 50 States. These records included addresses, dates of birth, social security, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Putting aside the fact that those records were able to be legally sold by Investigative Consultant, Inc (ICI) – Clearview AI and ICI disagreed on what the data would be used for, leading to arbitration over breach of contract claims. This was settled last year,with Clearview AI getting their money back, but whether or not the facial recognition company ever got access to this information is unknown.

Video Platforms’ Descent into ‘Dead Internet Theory’

Whether it’s videos of scraped Reddit stories, or AI-generated scripts read by an AI-generated voice, over an AI video — content that is made in seconds with little to no human intervention and consequently, is of terrible quality, is colloquially known as ‘AI slop.’ How is it, then, that these videos get hundreds of MILLIONS of views?

Platforms like YouTube and TikTok generally have one goal in mind — feeding content to their user base. Where human creators can only make 2-3 shorts or a full length video per day, AI-run accounts can throw up dozens of videos in the given time. Even if the quality is significantly worse, some of them are good enough to watch, so audiences get fed — cheap, fast, slop. And, while putting many human creators through questionable ‘community guidelines’ hurdles, these platforms are apparently happy with it and AI creators are rewarded with thousands of dollars a month in revenue.

Dead Internet Theory is something that has been around for a while, but has gained mainstream popularity as AI has becomes the ‘second phase’ to this concept. It entails the internet is smaller than we think; when you search for something and see millions of sites, the actual sites available to you are much less. This is through a combination of censoring and ‘link rot’ (links that lead to dead pages and all pages connected to them.)

AI-generated content repeating and linking back to itself means the volume of internet’s useful content is ever more questionable.

New Social Media Entirely Composed of AI – A Breeder of ‘Main Character Syndrome’?

SocialAI is a social media platform without anything social about it, really. It’s an App you can get for your phone with a design and features similar to other social media platforms — you post, you see, you comment. The only difference is, you are the only human.

SocialAI allows one to pick the personalities of your followers, and every time one posts, one gets thousands of replies from AI personalities, based on that choice. You can pick supporters, fans, trolls, optimists, and more in this reverse Truman Show for AI.

‘Main character syndrome” is a term popularized on TikTok to describe self-centered people — ‘main-character energy’ typically means someone sees others in their life as just supporting actors.

What is this form of entertainment? Escapism? Self-delusion? It’s all just really, really weird.

AI’s Dehumanising of Workers Has Begun

OptifyeAI — a performance monitoring system for factory workers, is proposing what appears to be dehumanizing surveillance of factories, where machine vision tracks workers’ hand movements. A boss could then look at graphs and yell at you about efficiency…

In a video that appears on the company’s website, there are two workers, side-by-side, one working menial tasks fast and is highlighted green, the other beams red when rearranging parts, adjusting their mask, or doing an action too slow (as determined by the AI).

A now deleted demo video, after going viral, prompted OptifyAI’s investing company to delete posts congratulating them on the release. ‘Hey Number 17, what’s going on man? You’re in the red,’ — a boss asks the worker, who responds that he’s been working all day. The worker is then let go, when the boss discovers Number 17 had a low performing month…

The 600k+ p/m Business Exploiting Meta’s Poor Customer Service

Recent interviews of ‘ban-for-hire’ services reveal the way ‘professional banners’ can ban accounts for as little as $60.

Instagram’s automated systems have allowed many to scam the system, and not through the obvious tools such as mass reporting. The algorithms behind Meta’s customer support can be fooled just by using someone’s pictures and verifying the account — then reporting them for ‘impersonation.’

You can buy Meta Verified for $12-15 a month, which makes the ‘over five figures’ a month business quite a desirable prospect, some banners have said.

Plastic Surgeons Targeted for Access to Sensitive Medical Photos

While hospitals do have a duty to collect patients’ data, plastic surgeons have become high-value targets to extortioners. One attack on a Hollywood, CA-based plastic surgeon required the payment of a $2.5 million ransom to prevent the release of stolen data. Some of the patients were contacted directly and told to pay to have their details and naked photos unpublished.

The hacked data allegedly included names, phone numbers and home addresses, as well as driver’s license, insurance, credit card and medical information. Also hacked were photos and videos of patients nude, and even footage of them undergoing surgery while under anesthesia. Who wants to see that?

According to the FBI, plastic surgeons are at a higher risk of being targeted by cybercriminals, particularly due to having access to pre and post operation photos — these photos then ending up on dodgy sites. Cybercriminals will typically use spoofed email addresses or disguised phone numbers to dupe unsuspecting staff to click on malicious links, or hand over login credentials that can then be exploited.

New FEMA Terminology Rolled Out in Middle of an Emergency

When fighting wildfires, one of the last things one might expect is a Government order by email for ‘immediate compliance with new terminology’ — seems inappropriate timing but this is just what occurred during the recent battles with Californian wildfires.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees are no longer allowed to call undocumented immigrants ‘migrants’ or ‘undocumented individuals,’ they must use the terms ‘undocumented aliens or illegal aliens.’ FEMA can no longer refer to the idea of ‘integration,’ it must begin to say ‘assimilation.’ (That being, the process of combining and integrating vs being absorbed and taking on a new culture and customs.)

‘This is the most 1984 email I’ve ever seen,’ a FEMA employee said. ‘For a group that hates political correctness—this contains politically correct terminology.’ In a follow up email employees were told that forbidden words on any FEMA forms that the agency uses to interact with people are forbidden.

After Over a Decade’s Fight, ‘Right to Repair’ is Introduced to All 50 States

This is a win for everyone with any kind of technology — the ‘Right to Repair’ is finally introduced to all 50 States. The movement has been around for at least a decade, when, in the early days, only a small group of consumer rights advocates worked in a couple of States to get legislation introduced.

This movement supports the right to repair of any damaged device – be it a phone, wheelchair, or tractor. It may sound like this already exists — it’s your device, after all, why can’t you fix it?

However, manufacturers have been actively and increasingly making it harder to source parts, requiring special tools, and even embedding misleading alerts and locking people out of their own devices. This was to force customers to take their gadgets to specialty repair shops, or simply throw them out and buy new ones.

This blatantly unfair issue has caused consumers to spend extra money, small repair shops to close down — and even impacted farmers’ valuable time in the middle of a yield. With the ‘Right to Repair’ Bill being passed in Minnesota and California, the future for all consumers is looking brighter!

That concludes this edition of Your Worldwide INTERNET REPORT!

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