Popular Reddit app Apollo, which recently warned that social firm's API price hike would cost the developer $20 million a year for access, announced today that it's shutting shop: In order to avoid incurring charges I will delete Apollo's API token on the evening of June 30th PST. Until that point, Apollo should continue to operate as it has, but after that date attempts to connect to the Reddit API will fail. I will put up an explainer in the app prior to that which will go live at that date. I will also provide a tool to export any local data you have in Apollo, such as filters or favorites. In short, the Apollo app developer said, "Reddit's recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue."

According to a joint investigation from The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Instagram's algorithms are actively promoting networks of pedophiles who commission and sell child sexual abuse content on the app. The Verge reports: Accounts found by the researchers are advertised using blatant and explicit hashtags like #pedowhore, #preteensex, and #pedobait. They offer "menus" of content for users to buy or commission, including videos and imagery of self-harm and bestiality. When researchers set up a test account and viewed content shared by these networks, they were immediately recommended more accounts to follow. As the WSJ reports: "Following just a handful of these recommendations was enough to flood a test account with content that sexualizes children."

In addition to problems with Instagram's recommendation algorithms, the investigation also found that the site's moderation practices frequently ignored or rejected reports of child abuse material. The WSJ recounts incidents where users reported posts and accounts containing suspect content (including one account that advertised underage abuse material with the caption "this teen is ready for you pervs") only for the content to be cleared by Instagram's review team or told in an automated message [...]. The report also looked at other platforms but found them less amenable to growing such networks. According to the WSJ, the Stanford investigators found "128 accounts offering to sell child-sex-abuse material on Twitter, less than a third the number they found on Instagram" despite Twitter having far fewer users, and that such content "does not appear to proliferate" on TikTok. The report noted that Snapchat did not actively promote such networks as it's mainly used for direct messaging.

In response to the report, Meta said it was setting up an internal task force to address the issues raised by the investigation. "Child exploitation is a horrific crime," the company said. "We're continuously investigating ways to actively defend against this behavior." Meta noted that in January alone it took down 490,000 accounts that violated its child safety policies and over the last two years has removed 27 pedophile networks. The company, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, said it's also blocked thousands of hashtags associated with the sexualization of children and restricted these terms from user searches.

Reddit is creating an exemption to its unpopular new API pricing terms for makers of accessibility apps, which could come as a big relief for some developers worried about how to afford the potentially expensive fees and the users that rely on the apps to browse Reddit. From a report: As long as those apps are noncommercial and "address accessibility needs," they won't have to pay to access Reddit's data. "We've connected with select developers of non-commercial apps that address accessibility needs and offered them exemptions from our large-scale pricing terms," Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt says in a statement to The Verge.

The Reddit community has been in an uproar over the API pricing changes that might saddle developers with exorbitant charges and force them to shut down. Apollo developer Christian Selig, for example, says he'll be on the hook for about $20 million per year based on the updated pricing. Three days ago, moderators on the r/Blind subreddit posted an extensive message protesting the pricing changes, which could be hugely detrimental to apps for screen reader users like RedditForBlind and Luna For Reddit.

New York City became the latest city to file suit against Hyundai and Kia over a rash of vehicle thefts that went viral on TikTok and other social media platforms in recent years, according to The Wall Street Journal. From a report: In its lawsuit, the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York claims the automakers were guilty of negligence by failing to include anti-theft devices in their cars that would have made them much harder to steal. The so-called "Kia Challenge" has led to hundreds of car thefts nationwide, including at least 14 reported crashes and eight fatalities, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Thieves known as the "Kia Boys" would post instructional videos on YouTube and TikTok about how to bypass the vehicles' security systems using tools as simple as a USB cable. Other videos would feature joyrides in stolen vehicles and the resulting property destruction.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, a Reddit user named "nhciao" posted a series of artistic QR codes created using the Stable Diffusion AI image-synthesis model that can still be read as functional QR codes by smartphone camera apps. The functional pieces reflect artistic styles in anime and Asian art. [...] In this case, despite the presence of intricate AI-generated designs and patterns in the images created by nhciao, we've found that smartphone camera apps on both iPhone and Android are still able to read these as functional QR codes. If you have trouble reading them, try backing your camera farther away from the images.

Stable Diffusion is an AI-powered image-synthesis model released last year that can generate images based on text descriptions. It can also transform existing images using a technique called "img2img." The creator did not detail the exact technique used to create the novel codes in English, but based on this blog post and the title of the Reddit post ("ControlNet for QR Code"), they apparently trained several custom Stable Diffusion ControlNet models (plus LoRA fine tunings) that have been conditioned to create different-styled results. Next, they fed existing QR codes into the Stable Diffusion AI image generator and used ControlNet to maintain the QR code's data positioning despite synthesizing an image around it, likely using a written prompt. Other techniques exist to make artistic-looking QR codes by manipulating the positions of dots within the codes to make meaningful patterns that can still be read. In this case, Stable Diffusion is not only controlling dot positions but also blending picture details to match the QR code.

This interesting use of Stable Diffusion is possible because of the innate error correction feature built into QR codes. This error correction capability allows a certain percentage of the QR code's data to be restored if it's damaged or obscured, permitting a level of modification without making the code unreadable. In typical QR codes, this error correction feature serves to recover information if part of the code is damaged or dirty. But in nhciao's case, it has been leveraged to blend creativity with utility. Stable Diffusion added unique artistic touches to the QR codes without compromising their functionality. [...] This discovery opens up new possibilities for both digital art and marketing. Ordinary black-and-white QR codes could be turned into unique pieces of art, enhancing their aesthetic appeal. The positive reaction to nhciao's experiment on social media may spark a new era in which QR codes are not just tools of convenience but also interesting and complex works of art.

Social-media company Reddit is laying off roughly 90 employees and slowing hiring as it restructures key parts of its business. From a report: Reddit is making the moves to address priorities, including funding projects and achieving its goal of breaking even next year, Chief Executive Steve Huffman told employees in an email seen by The Wall Street Journal. The job cuts amount to around 5% of Reddit's workforce of approximately 2,000 people.

"We've had a solid first half of the year, and this restructuring will position us to carry that momentum into the second half and beyond," Huffman said in the email. He added that the company would reduce its hiring for the rest of the year to about 100 people from an early plan to hire 300.

A major Austrian opposition political party on Monday corrected the results of a closely contested leadership election after it announced the wrong winner over the weekend due to a "technical" error: Someone had messed up an Excel spreadsheet. From a report: At a convention on Saturday, Austria's Social Democrats (SPO) declared that Hans Peter Doskozil, governor of the eastern Burgenland province, was the new leader of the center-left party. But on Monday, the party said Andreas Babler, a small-town mayor and lesser-known figure, had actually won, with about 52 percent of the votes. "Unfortunately, the paper ballots did not match the result that was announced digitally," Michaela Grubesa, head of the SPÃ- electoral commission, said a news conference. "Due to a colleague's technical error in the Excel list, the result was mixed up."

Those familiar with Microsoft's spreadsheet program, which is used by millions around the world, were quick to crack jokes, bringing wider attention to the error and ensuing chaos. Babler said at a news conference after his belated apparent victory that the commission should count the vote again for accuracy's sake, local media reported, adding that the debacle was "painful for everyone involved" and bad for the party's image.

A number of Reddit forums plan to go dark for two days later this month to protest the company's decision to increase prices for third-party app developers. From a report: One developer, who makes a Reddit app called Apollo, said that under the new pricing policy he would have to pay Reddit $20 million a year to continue running the app as-is. Reddit's move comes after Twitter announced in February that the company would no longer support free access to its application programming interface, or API. Twitter instead now offers pricing tiers based on usage. Reddit spokesman Tim Rathschmidt said the company is trying to clear up confusion about the change on the platform, and stressed that Reddit spends millions on hosting. "Reddit needs to be fairly paid to continue supporting high-usage third-party apps," Rathschmidt said. "Our pricing is based on usage levels that we measure to be comparable to our own costs." The company said it is committed to supporting a developer ecosystem. In a post on its platform, Reddit laid out some of its pricing plans for businesses and said the changes would begin July 1.

schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: When whistleblower Frances Haugen pulled back the curtain on Facebook in the fall of 2021, thousands of pages of internal documents showed troubling signs that the social media giant knew its platforms could be negatively impacting youth, and were doing little to effectively change it. With around 21 million American adolescents on social media, parents took note. Now, families are suing social media. Since we first reported this story last December, the number of families pursuing lawsuits has grown to over 2,000. More than 350 lawsuits are expected to move forward this year against TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Roblox and Meta -- the parent company to Instagram and Facebook.

Kathleen Spence: They're holding our children hostage and they're seeking and preying on them. Sharyn Alfonsi: Preying on them? Kathleen Spence: Yes. The Spence family is suing social media giant Meta. Kathleen and Jeff Spence say Instagram led their daughter Alexis into depression and to an eating disorder at the age of 12. [...] Attorney Matt Bergman represents the Spence family. He started the Social Media Victims Law Center after reading the Facebook papers and is now working with more than 1,800 families who are pursuing lawsuits against social media companies like Meta. Matt Bergman: Time and time again, when they have an opportunity to choose between safety of our kids and profits, they always choose profits.

This summer, Bergman and his team plan on starting the discovery process for the federal case against Meta and other social media companies, a multi-million dollar suit that he says is more about changing policy than financial compensation. This summer, Bergman and his team plan on starting the discovery process for the federal case against Meta and other social media companies, a multi-million dollar suit that he says is more about changing policy than financial compensation. Matt Bergman: They have intentionally designed a product that is addictive. They understand that if children stay online, they make more money. It doesn't matter how harmful the material is.

Some of Reddit's biggest communities including r/videos, r/reactiongifs, r/earthporn, and r/lifeprotips are planning to set themselves to private on June 12th over new pricing for third-party app developers to access the site's APIs. From a report: Setting a subreddit to private, aka "going dark," will mean that the communities taking part will be inaccessible by the wider public while the planned 48-hour protest is taking place.

As a Reddit post about the protest, that's since been cross-posted to several participating subreddits, explains: "On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love. A complete list of the hundreds of communities taking part (known in Reddit parlance as "subreddits") includes dozens with over a million subscribers each.

The Washington Post writes that "Some economists predict artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT could replace hundreds of millions of jobs, in a cataclysmic reorganization of the workforce mirroring the industrial revolution.

"For some workers, this impact is already here." Those that write marketing and social media content are in the first wave of people being replaced with tools like chatbots, which are seemingly able to produce plausible alternatives to their work.

Experts say that even advanced AI doesn't match the writing skills of a human: It lacks personal voice and style, and it often churns out wrong, nonsensical or biased answers. But for many companies, the cost-cutting is worth a drop in quality. "We're really in a crisis point," said Sarah T. Roberts, an associate professor at University of California in Los Angeles specializing in digital labor. "[AI] is coming for the jobs that were supposed to be automation-proof..."

The technology's ability to churn out human-sounding prose puts highly paid knowledge workers in the crosshairs for replacement, experts said. "In every previous automation threat, the automation was about automating the hard, dirty, repetitive jobs," said Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. "This time, the automation threat is aimed squarely at the highest-earning, most creative jobs that ... require the most educational background." In March, Goldman Sachs predicted that 18 percent of work worldwide could be automated by AI, with white-collar workers such as lawyers at more risk than those in trades such as construction or maintenance. "Occupations for which a significant share of workers' time is spent outdoors or performing physical labor cannot be automated by AI," the report said...

Mollick said it's too early to gauge how disruptive AI will be to the workforce. He noted that jobs such as copywriting, document translation and transcription, and paralegal work are particularly at risk, since they have tasks that are easily done by chatbots. High-level legal analysis, creative writing or art may not be as easily replaceable, he said, because humans still outperform AI in those areas.
The article notes that one copywriter lost all 10 of his clients over the last four months — and though one later hired him back, he's now training to be a plumber.

New submitter Peppercopia writes: CTV News is reporting that Meta will begin testing the blocking of news sites in Canada. If the argument is that the social media giants are unfairly benefitting from content from Canadian news organizations, this move should be moot as the 'stealing' would now be stopping. Unfortunately the opposite is likely the case, and the news organizations will find out how important the free traffic and promotion they are getting from social media giants really is. It feels a bit like killing the golden goose to get the eggs. The move is designed to "work out the kinks" before permanently blocking news on its platforms when the Canadian government passes the Online News Act. According to CTV News, the test "will affect up to five percent of its 24 million Canadian users."

"The company says the randomly selected users won't be able to see some content including news links as well as reels, which are short-form videos, and stories, which are photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours." Media organizations will be chosen at random.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A Virginia jury held Cox liable for pirating subscribers because it failed to terminate accounts after repeated accusations, ordering the company to pay $1 billion in damages to the labels. This landmark ruling is currently under appeal. As part of the appeal, Cox informed the court of a supplemental authority that could support its position. The case in question is Twitter vs. Taamneh, in which the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the social media platform isn't liable for ISIS terrorists, who used Twitter to recruit and raise funds. The Supreme Court rejected (PDF) the claim that Twitter aided-and-abetted terrorist activity, because it didn't "consciously and culpably" participate in the illegal activity. According to Cox, the same logic applies in its case, where the ISP was held liable for the piracy activities of subscribers.

"These same aiding-and-abetting principles animate copyright law's contributory liability doctrine, and they likewise foreclose liability here," an attorney for Cox informed the court. Cox argues that the Supreme Court ruling confirms that aiding-and-abetting liability only applies when parties knowingly took part in the activity. That runs contrary to the finding in its own dispute with the record labels, where "culpable expression and conduct" or "intent" were not required. "Though Twitter arises in a different context, its reasoning applies with full force and supports reversal of the contributory infringement verdict," Cox added. The two cases are indeed quite different, but ultimately they are about imposing liability on third-party services.

According to Cox, the Twitter terrorist ruling clearly shows that it isn't liable for pirating subscribers, but the music companies see things differently. Earlier this week, the music labels responded in court (PDF), countering Cox's arguments. They argue that the Twitter ruling doesn't apply to their piracy dispute with Cox, as the cases are grounded in different laws. While the music industry certainly isn't happy with pirates, the Cox case is a copyright matter while the Twitter lawsuit fell under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. And for now, pirates are not categorized as terrorists. After establishing the difference between pirates and terrorists, the music companies point out that Twitter wasn't directly connected to the misconduct. The platform's role was more passive and its connection to ISIS was more distant than Cox's connection to its subscribers. Cox took a more active role and materially contributed to the pirating activities, which stands no comparison to the Twitter case, plaintiffs argue.

Fidelity, the lead investor in Reddit's most recent funding round in 2021, has slashed the estimated worth of its equity stake in the popular social media platform by 41% since the investment. From a report: Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund's stake in Reddit was valued at $16.6 million as of April 28, according to the fund's monthly disclosure released over the weekend. That's down 41.1% cumulatively since August 2021 when the asset manager spent $28.2 million to acquire the Reddit shares, according to disclosures the firm has made in its annual and semi-annual reports. Reddit was valued at $10 billion when the social media giant attracted funds in August 2021.

Bill Ackman said JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon should run for president in the upcoming 2024 election after the Wall Street titan hinted that he has considered pursuing a political career. From a report: Ackman said in a lengthy tweet that Dimon is a political centrist who is pro-business and pro-free enterprise, while also supportive of "well-designed social programs and rational tax policies that can help the less fortunate." Ackman also said he thinks Dimon, 67, could beat President Joe Biden in a primary or Donald Trump in a general election. He added that Dimon's ability to raise billions of dollars from bipartisan supporters would easily fund his campaign. In a Bloomberg Television interview on Wednesday, Dimon said that he had mulled joining public office. "I love my country, and maybe one day I'll serve my country in one capacity or another," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: An apparent ransomware attack on one of America's largest dental health insurers has compromised the personal information of almost nine million individuals in the United States. The Atlanta-based Managed Care of North America (MCNA) Dental claims to be the largest dental insurer in the nation for government-sponsored plans covering children and seniors. In a notice posted on Friday, the company said it became aware of "certain activity in our computer system that happened without our permission" on March 6 and later learned that a hacker "was able to see and take copies of some information in our computer system" between February 26 and March 7, 2023.

The information stolen includes a trove of patients' personal data, including names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security numbers, and driver's licenses or other government-issued ID numbers. Hackers also accessed patients' health insurance data, including plan information and Medicaid ID numbers, along with bill and insurance claim information. In some cases, some of this data pertained to a patient's "parent, guardian, or guarantor," according to MCNA Dental, suggesting that children's personal data was accessed during the breach. According to a data breach notification filed with Maine's attorney general, the hack affected more than 8.9 million clients of MCNA Dental. That makes this incident the largest breach of health information of 2023 so far, after the PharMerica breach that saw hackers access the personal data of almost 6 million patients. The LockBit ransomware group took responsibility for the cyberattack and published 700GB of files after the company refused to pay a $10 million ransom demand.

Reuters reports: China's cyberspace regulator said 1.4 million social media posts have been deleted following a two-month probe into alleged misinformation, illegal profiteering, and impersonation of state officials, among other "pronounced problems"...

Beijing frequently arrests citizens and censors accounts for publishing or sharing factual information considered sensitive or critical of the Communist Party, the government or the military, especially when such information goes viral. Of the 67,000 accounts that were permanently closed, almost 8,000 were taken down for "spreading fake news, rumours, and harmful information," according to The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). Around 930,000 other accounts received less severe punishments, from being removed of all followers to the suspension or cancellation of profit-making privileges.

In a separate campaign, the regulator recently closed over 100,000 accounts that allegedly misrepresented news anchors and media agencies to counter the rise of online fake news coverage aided by AI technologies.

CNN reports: Some Amazon corporate workers have announced plans to walk off the job next week over frustrations with the company's return-to-work policies, among other issues, in a sign of heightened tensions inside the e-commerce giant after multiple rounds of layoffs.

The work stoppage is being jointly organized by an internal climate justice worker group and a remote work advocacy group, according to an email from organizers and public social media posts. Workers participating have two main demands: asking the e-commerce giant to put climate impact at the forefront of its decision making, and to provide greater flexibility for how and where employees work.

The lunchtime walkout is scheduled for May 31, beginning at noon. Organizers have said in an internal pledge that they are only going to go through with the walkout if at least 1,000 workers agree to participate, according to an email from organizers.
The event comes a month after Amazon's return-to-office mandate took effect, reports the Seattle Times — with one software engineer saying they wanted to show Amazon's leadership that "employees need a say in the decisions that affect our lives." In response, an Amazon spokesperson said, "We respect our employees' rights to express their opinions." Drew Herdener, senior vice president for communications at Amazon, said there has been a good energy on the company's South Lake Union campus and other urban centers where Amazon has a significant presence. "We've had a great few weeks with more employees in the office," he said. "As it pertains to the specific topics this group of employees is raising, we've explained our thinking in different forums over the past few months and will continue to do so...."

[Since January], Amazon announced another 9,000 job cuts companywide, but has not notified Washington's unemployment office of the local impact. At the same time Amazon was re-evaluating its teams and workforce, the company announced it would require workers to return to the office at least three times a week beginning May 1. That was a change from Amazon's prior policy, put in place in the second half of 2021, that allowed leaders to decide for their teams where they should work. Announcing the mandate in February, CEO Andy Jassy told employees that senior leaders had observed that it's easier to "learn, model, practice and strengthen our culture when we're in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues." Boosters for downtown Seattle, where Amazon's headquarters campus is located, cheered the mandate and hoped that thousands of returning workers would enliven the neighborhood.

In response to the return-to-office mandate, more than 20,000 workers signed a petition urging Amazon to reconsider.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The number of phishing websites tied to domain name registrar Freenom dropped precipitously in the months surrounding a recent lawsuit from social networking giant Meta, which alleged the free domain name provider has a long history of ignoring abuse complaints about phishing websites while monetizing traffic to those abusive domains. Freenom is the domain name registry service provider for five so-called "country code top level domains" (ccTLDs), including .cf for the Central African Republic; .ga for Gabon; .gq for Equatorial Guinea; .ml for Mali; and .tk for Tokelau. Freenom has always waived the registration fees for domains in these country-code domains, but the registrar also reserves the right to take back free domains at any time, and to divert traffic to other sites -- including adult websites. And there are countless reports from Freenom users who've seen free domains removed from their control and forwarded to other websites.

By the time Meta initially filed its lawsuit in December 2022, Freenom was the source of well more than half of all new phishing domains coming from country-code top-level domains. Meta initially asked a court to seal its case against Freenom, but that request was denied. Meta withdrew its December 2022 lawsuit and re-filed it in March 2023. "The five ccTLDs to which Freenom provides its services are the TLDs of choice for cybercriminals because Freenom provides free domain name registration services and shields its customers' identity, even after being presented with evidence that the domain names are being used for illegal purposes," Meta's complaint charged. "Even after receiving notices of infringement or phishing by its customers, Freenom continues to license new infringing domain names to those same customers." Meta pointed to research from Interisle Consulting Group, which discovered in 2021 and again last year that the five ccTLDs operated by Freenom made up half of the Top Ten TLDs most abused by phishers.

Interisle partner Dave Piscitello said something remarkable has happened in the months since the Meta lawsuit. "We've observed a significant decline in phishing domains reported in the Freenom commercialized ccTLDs in months surrounding the lawsuit," Piscitello wrote on Mastodon. "Responsible for over 60% of phishing domains reported in November 2022, Freenom's percentage has dropped to under 15%." Piscitello said it's too soon to tell the full impact of the Freenom lawsuit, noting that Interisle's sources of spam and phishing data all have different policies about when domains are removed from their block lists.

Britain's competition watchdog on Friday said social media giant Meta had offered to limit its use of other businesses' advertising data for its Facebook Marketplace service to address the regulator's competition concerns. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was minded to accept the commitments, which include advertisers being able to opt out of allowing their data to be used to improve the Facebook Marketplace classified ads platform. CMA executive director of enforcement Michael Grenfell said: "Reducing the risk of Meta unfairly exploiting the data of businesses who advertise on its platform for its own competitive advantage could help many UK businesses who advertise there. We are now consulting on these commitments which we believe, at this stage, will address our concerns."