United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22794211

Summary

Under Elon Musk, X (formerly Twitter) has become a hub for white supremacist content due to reduced moderation.

A Texas Observer investigation identified four neo-Nazi account operators, tied to Texas, New Hampshire, and Virginia, whose content has amassed 500,000 followers and millions of views.

Despite sharing antisemitic and pro-Nazi rhetoric, some accounts received responses from Musk and benefited from ad revenue and verification.

Public figures, including politicians, follow these accounts. Employers and the Navy are investigating the individuals, raising questions about accountability and platform policies.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today proposed a rule to regulate data brokers that sell sensitive personal and financial information, including Social Security numbers, phone numbers, and financial data such as income. These sales generate more than $250 billion a year. Under the proposed rule, companies would need separate, explicit authorization from consumers to share credit reports, rather than a blanket agreement that is buried in fine print.

deleted as was already posted, I just released you can URL search on lemmy so I will check that before posting links now

I think it still remains to be seen if DOGE will have any teeth or if it’s the dog house for Ramaswamy & Musk.

I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.

The American branch of the global Betar Zionist movement is using facial recognition technology with artificial intelligence to identify foreign students who have attended pro-Palestine protests in hopes that President-elect Donald Trump will deport them when he comes into office.

“Eleven years is a very specific and not rounded amount of time,” Stewart noted. “I didn’t know pardons could cover crimes you may have committed. I’m surprised Biden didn’t include the phrase ‘on Earth 1 or any of the Earths in the multiverse.’”

Republicans have, unsurprisingly, pounced on the move. “Obviously, Republicans are going to criticize, but Biden did make this line of attack particularly available, seeing as how he spent so long saying that he wouldn’t do it because of how much he respects the system,” said Stewart. A man wearing a suit and tie stands in front of a city backdrop and speaks

Still, “hypocrisy isn’t illegal,” he argued. “Nor is it particularly unusual in politics. It’s not like he’s ever going to run again, so why not take care of your kid, even if you said weren’t gonna. I respect it, I don’t have a problem with it.

“The problem is the rest of the Democrats made Biden’s pledge to not pardon Hunter the foundation of their defense of America, this grand experiment,” he said before several clips of Democratic lawmakers using Biden’s promise as a moral example.

“The Democrats made this case an example of why Americans should believe in our system,” Stewart continued. “And it’s hard – Democrats have the tougher road of defending our institutions and systems as being flawed but still valuable. Republicans just run on blowing this shit up. But at every turn, Democrats keep getting caught creating a purity test for a system that they can’t seem to pass themselves.”

Miliaku Nwabueze, a senior program manager at Code for Science & Society, had been concerned for some time about the role of technology in state violence. Then, on 7 October of last year, Hamas entered Israel, killing and kidnapping about 1,400 people. Less than a week later, as Israel ordered 1.1 million Palestinians out of northern Gaza in the onset of its deadly retaliation, Nwabueze decided to write a message to her colleagues on the US-based non-profit organization’s Slack channel.

“Hey y’all … I have been watching multiple genocides around the world,” she began, naming Palestine as well as Sudan, the Congo and Artsakh. “All of these have heavy linkages to the tech industry.” The 30-year-old went on to assert that CS&S – whose stated mission is to “advance the power of data to improve the social and economic lives of all people” – should say, at the minimum, “we support demands for a ceasefire” in Gaza.

“Can this be a topic of discussion at our next All-Hands meeting?” she asked. Six members of the organization’s core staff of 12 agreed, using the “100 [percent]” emoji.

Nwabueze did not anticipate that her one-paragraph Slack message would set in motion a series of escalating events that would tear the organization apart, with nearly all core staff members resigning and two being fired – including, in September of this year, Nwabueze herself.

The central issue: the organization’s board and executive director opposed a statement that staff wrote about Israel’s continuing assault on Gaza and tech’s role there and elsewhere, citing concerns such as “fiduciary responsibility”. The events propelled by the statement mirror others happening across US society since October of last year, in areas such as academia, media and big tech, where criticism of Israel from the rank-and-file comes under fire from leadership.

The events at CS&S are an example, according to Paul Biggar, of the label “progressive except for Palestine”. Biggar was dismissed from the board of CircleCI, a company he founded, after writing a blogpost in December about Israel’s bombardment of Gaza titled “I can’t sleep”. He went on to found Tech for Palestine, a coalition of tech professionals volunteering to help projects “in support of a free Palestine”.

"The People Always Pay" Exposes Harms of LNG Tax Breaks to Frontline Communities

A new report details the extent to which the export industry for liquefied methane gas, known as LNG, benefits from billions of dollars in tax breaks, also called tax abatements, in Louisiana and Texas, with local communities suffering as a result. As the incoming Trump administration threatens to lift pollution safeguards and offer giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, this report brings much-needed scrutiny to the true harm LNG export projects cause by depriving communities of valuable tax revenue for critical infrastructure and services such as bridges, hospitals, schools, and climate resiliency.

A Delaware judge ruled on Monday that the Tesla chief, Elon Musk, still is not entitled to receive a $56bn compensation package despite shareholders of the electric vehicle company voting to reinstate it.

The ruling by the judge, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the court of chancery, follows her January decision that called the pay package excessive and rescinded it, surprising investors, and cast uncertainty over Musk’s future at the world’s most valuable carmaker.

Tesla has said in court filings that the judge should recognize a subsequent June vote by its shareholders in favor of the pay package for Musk, the company’s driving force who is responsible for many of its advances, and reinstate his compensation. Tesla and its shareholders argued that Musk had reached the milestones originally stipulated when the pay package was drawn up.

McCormick also ordered Tesla to pay the attorneys who brought the case $345m, well short of the billions they initially requested.