The Instant Smear Campaign Against Border Patrol Shooting Victim Alex Pretti

Within minutes of the shooting, the Trump administration and right-wing influencers began disparaged the man shot by a federal immigration officer on Saturday in Minneapolis.

ICE has killed another person in Minneapolis
ICE has killed another person in Minneapolis

Federal agents in Minneapolis repeatedly punched a man, forced him to the ground, and then shot him multiple times. The man was later pronounced dead. This is just the latest incident of deadly violence involving ICE, which has grown increasingly frequent, especially on the streets of Minneapolis. It’s been less than three weeks since an […]

Chromebooks train schoolkids to be loyal customers, internal Google document suggests
Chromebooks train schoolkids to be loyal customers, internal Google document suggests

Internal documents revealed as part of a child safety lawsuit hint at Google’s plan to “onboard kids” into its ecosystem by investing in schools. In this November 2020 presentation, Google writes that getting kids into its ecosystem “leads to brand trust and loyalty over their lifetime,” as reported earlier by NBC News. The heavily-redacted documents, […]

‘Uncanny Valley’: Donald Trump’s Davos Drama, AI Midterms, and ChatGPT’s Last Resort

On this episode of Uncanny Valley, our hosts unpack the news from Davos, where Trump and major AI companies shared the stage at the World Economic Forum.

Congress doesn’t seem to know if the TikTok deal complies with its law
Congress doesn’t seem to know if the TikTok deal complies with its law

TikTok finally closed a deal meant to bring it into compliance with the law that should have banned it a year ago, and the lawmakers who passed that law still don’t seem to know what’s going on. The company announced Tuesday that its US service is now part of the separate TikTok USDS Joint Venture […]

What TikTok’s new owners mean for your feed
What TikTok’s new owners mean for your feed

TikTok is officially under new ownership in the US, and that could spell big changes for the video-sharing app. On January 22nd, ByteDance – TikTok’s Chinese parent company – and a group of investors closed a $14 billion deal to spin off the platform’s US operations, introducing a new slate of American executives. The Silver […]

The TikTok deal is done, finally
The TikTok deal is done, finally

Just over a year after it briefly disappeared from app stores, TikTok in the US is now part of a new entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. With approval from both the US and China closing on the schedule laid out in December, ByteDance’s ownership of the new joint venture is now only 19.9 percent […]

Sen. Markey questions OpenAI about ‘deceptive advertising’ in ChatGPT
Sen. Markey questions OpenAI about ‘deceptive advertising’ in ChatGPT

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is pressing OpenAI about its move to bring ads to ChatGPT, and is asking several other companies whether they have similar plans. In letters to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, and xAI, Markey writes that embedding ads into AI chatbots “raises significant concerns for consumer protection, privacy, […]

The state attorneys general are as mad as you are
The state attorneys general are as mad as you are

The sun was already beginning to set as Portlanders in weatherproof jackets and fleeces lined up around Revolution Hall. It wasn’t yet 5PM on a Wednesday but the crowd was gathering well before the town hall was scheduled to begin. Just a day earlier, news outlets reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison had been […]

AI-Powered Disinformation Swarms Are Coming for Democracy

Advances in artificial intelligence are creating a perfect storm for those seeking to spread disinformation at unprecedented speed and scale. And it’s virtually impossible to detect.