OUR PICKSX’s Disinformation Problem Is Getting Worse | Why the FBI Failed to Prepare for January 6 | Cost of Cleaning Nuclear-Contaminated Sites, and more
· Elon Musk’s Main Tool for Fighting Disinformation on X Is Making the Problem Worse, Insiders Claim
X is promoting Community Notes to solve its disinformation problems, but some former employees and people who currently contribute notes say it’s not fit for that purpose
· Five Reasons the FBI Failed to Prepare for January 6
Trump did his part in inciting the insurrection, but the nation’s law-enforcement institutions shouldn’t escape scrutiny for their missteps.
· How Social Media Abdicated Responsibility for the News
The Israel-Hamas war has displayed with fresh urgency the perils of relying on our feeds for updates about events unfolding in real time
· Former Brooklyn Resident Sentenced to Life in Prison for Aiding Islamic State Group as Sniper
Ruslan Maratovich Asainov served as a sniper and instructor for the Islamic militant group at the height of its power
· Cost to Clean Nuclear-Contaminated Sites Up Nearly $1 Billion, Report Says
Future cost to clean up 19 sites contaminated by nuclear waste from the Cold War era has risen by nearly $1 billion
· AI Is Becoming More Powerful—but Also More Secretive
A study release this week shows just how deep—and potentially dangerous—the secrecy is around GPT-4 and other cutting-edge AI systems
· FBI Releases 2022 Crime in the Nation Statistics
National violent crime decreased an estimated 1.7% in 2022 compared to 2021
Elon Musk’s Main Tool for Fighting Disinformation on X Is Making the Problem Worse, Insiders Claim (Victoria Elliott and David Gilbert, Wired)
Community Notes, a crowdsourced fact-checking program launched a year ago to tackle disinformation on X (formerly Twitter), has flown under the radar for much of its existence. But in the past week it has been heralded by Elon Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino as a key tool in tackling the toxic deluge of disinformation that has flooded social media, and in particular X, during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
However, a WIRED investigation found that Community Notes appears to be not functioning as designed, may be vulnerable to coordinated manipulation by outside groups, and lacks transparency about how notes are approved. Sources also claim that it is filled with in-fighting and disinformation, and there appears to be no real oversight from the company itself.
Almost immediately after Musk took control of the company in late October 2022,X systematically eradicated almost all of the teams and individuals overseeing content moderation and trust and safety at the company, putting even greater emphasis on the role of Community Notes.
Five Reasons the FBI Failed to Prepare for January 6 (Ryan J. Reilly, The Atlantic)
Nearly three years have passed since the January 6 attack. The January 6 committee was originally supposed to examine how the nation’s law-enforcement institutions had failed to plan for such an event. But Liz Cheney and the committee’s Democrats were determined to keep the public’s ire focused on the former president, and, as a result, the committee’s final report breezed past the issue. This is too bad, because the country deserves accountability. January 6 was a preventable tragedy, an onslaught that the United States government could have fended off had law enforcement sent a more rigorous warning to would-be rioters ahead of January 6, and had stronger security measures been put in place around the Capitol building.
There’s no single explanation for what former FBI Director James Comey called “a failure to see a threat that was in bright daylight.” Some of the contributing factors could have been pulled right from a dusty copy of the 9/11 Commission Report, though others are unique to the Trump presidency. I found five key themes while working on my book. (Cont.)
