Vigilant News

Eternal Vigilance is the price of liberty.

Technology

WSJ Editor to Davos: “We No Longer Own the News”
Information and discourse are no longer monopolized by traditional media entities. Decentralized media is the future and the present.

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During a WEF discussion at Davos titled “Defending Truth,” Wall Street Journal EIC Emma Tucker lamented this loss of control over “the facts.”

“I think there’s a very specific challenge for the legacy brands, like the New York Times and like the Wall Street Journal,” Tucker said, adding “If you go back really not that long ago, as I say, we owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well.”

“If it said it in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, then that was a fact,” she continued, adding “Nowadays, people can go to all sorts of different sources for the news and they’re much more questioning about what we’re saying.”

Vice President Věra Jourová of the European Commission also participated in the discourse, characterizing the proliferation of “disinformation” as a “security menace” and stating,  “It was part of the Russian military doctrine that they will start information war, and we are in it now.”

“Disinformation is a very powerful tool,” Jourová continued, adding that “In the EU we are focusing on improving of the system where the people will get the facts right. We don’t speak about opinions. We are not correcting anyone’s opinions or language. This is about the facts.”

Additional commentary:

We are the news now.

Thousands of Companies Are Monitoring Every Facebook User, According to a Study

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A comprehensive investigation, conducted in partnership between Consumer Reports and The Markup, has exposed the vast extent of data surveillance that is directed at users of Facebook. Some study participants were monitored by as many as 7,000 businesses.

709 volunteers were asked to contribute archives of their Facebook user data. Consumer Reports was astounded to learn that 186,892 distinct organizations had transmitted information about these users to Facebook.

Data from each participant was, on average, disseminated by 2,230 companies; however, certain users’ data was shared by more than 7,000 companies.

This examination brought attention to a less prevalent type of monitoring referred to as server-to-server tracking, in which personal information is transmitted directly from the servers of a company to the servers of Meta. This method occurs in addition to the more obvious approach that employs Meta tracking pixels on company websites.

Emil Vazquez, a spokesperson for Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, defended the company’s data practices, stating: “We offer a number of transparency tools to help people understand the information that businesses choose to share with us, and manage how it’s used.”

Consumer Reports, on the other hand, identified problems with these tools, such as ambiguous data provider identities and advertising service providers frequently disregarding user opt-out requests.

An unexpected discovery was the widespread occurrence of LiveRamp, a data broker, which was detected in the data of 96% of the participants in the study. In addition to obscure data aggregators, the roster of organizations that provide Facebook with data comprises prominent retailers such as Home Depot, Macy’s, Walmart, as well as Experian and TransUnion’s Neustar, Amazon, Etsy, and PayPal. LiveRamp’s lack of response to a request for comment regarding this subject is noteworthy.

There were two primary collection categories from which the study obtained its data: “events” and “custom audiences.” The latter entails advertisers transferring customer profiles, which comprise mobile advertising IDs and email addresses, to Meta in order to target advertisements on Meta’s platforms. “Events” refer to tangible transactions that occur in the physical world, such as visits to websites or purchases from stores, and are enabled through the utilization of Meta’s software in applications, monitoring pixels on websites, and server-to-server tracking.

The deputy director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Caitriona Fitzgerald, conveyed apprehension regarding the scope of monitoring in an interview with The Markup: “This type of tracking which occurs entirely outside of the user’s view is just so far outside of what people expect when they use the internet.” Additionally, she stated, “they [consumers] don’t expect Meta to know what stores they walk into or what news articles they’re reading or every site they visit online.”

The Age of Deepfake News is Here
Journalists have branded plans for artificial intelligence news anchors ‘utterly terrifying’ – as an LA-based channel looks set to launch them next year

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LA-based Channel 1 is utilizing the technology to generate digital “humans” to provide global news updates. The station intends to deliver them as early as February on free ad-supported streaming television platforms, including applications like Crackle, Tubi, and Pluto.

Naturally, reporters throughout the United States are appalled by the news and have warned that it could have enormous repercussions for an already parched news industry.

Ruby Media Group CEO Kristen Ruby shared  her concerns on X

Ruby Media Group CEO Kristen Ruby shared on X: ‘If you believe in the concept of ‘fake news,’ you have seen nothing. At least your news is presented by humans. When AI news anchors replace human news anchors – the concept of fake news will have a totally different meaning.’

Alec Lazenby, a Canada’s BC Today reporter, also shared his concerns on X: ‘This is utterly utterly terrifying. While the development of an entirely AI-powered broadcast is beyond impressive, it could have huge ramifications for an already depleted news industry and accelerate the loss of high-quality reporters and anchors.’

Adam Mosam, the proprietor of Channel 1, assured DailyMail.com that his organization will not take advantage of the contentious technology.

While Mosam acknowledged the inevitability of AI-generated news being misapplied, Channel 1 strives to “get out in front of this and create a responsible use of the technology.”

The general public, however, envisions a dystopian future in which “fake news” is ubiquitous due to its generation by computer algorithms.

Some of Channel 1’s anchors are ‘digital doubles,’ avatars created from a scan of an actual person. These anchors will read the news with a digitally generated voice

In the past year, numerous online publications embarked on this endeavor, and almost all of them came to regret their choice.

Gannett, a mass media conglomerate, possesses several publications in the United States, including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, AZ Central, and Florida Today, all of which utilized LedeAI, an artificial intelligence service, to produce local high school athletics articles.

In August, Gannet terminated its AI experiment due to a multitude of article errors. Although local high school news may not elicit public concern, there is apprehension that such errors could occur on a global level.

One more publication that attempted this and failed was Sports Illustrated. The legacy publication was criticized a month ago for publishing AI-generated content, including the use of fabricated author photographs and profiles.

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Mosam claims that Channel 1 intends to inform viewers in an open manner regarding the differentiation between original and AI-generated content.

Nonetheless, the public appears unconvinced.

 

Our Take:

Dystopian inevitabilities aside, there is no reason AI should be involved in journalism outside of helping with grammar and sentence structure. Today’s journalists are already lazy, making things even easier is like choosing to not work out an atrophying muscle.

It’s not hard to see how the negatives of this far outweigh the alleged positives.

More Narrative Seeding? Ukraine’s Leading Mobile Provider Targeted by Severe Cyber Assault
This attack is the latest in a series of headlines regarding cyberwarfare

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The largest mobile network operator in Ukraine was the target of what Reuters is calling the “largest cyber attack of the war with Russia so far” on Tuesday. Millions of users were unable to access mobile and internet services, and portions of the Kyiv region were also without air raid alert systems.

In addition to over 1.1 million residential internet subscribers, Kyivstar boasts a mobile subscriber base of 24.3 million, which exceeds half of the population of Ukraine.

Its CEO, Oleksandr Komarov, stated that the attack was “partially destroyed” and was “a consequence” of the conflict with Russia; he did not specify which Russian organization he believed to be responsible.

In short, nothing is yet confirmed but the imminent threat of what the World Economic Forum refers to as a “cyber storm” remains fresh in the minds of the individuals who consume this kind of news media.

“War is also happening in cyber-space. Unfortunately, we have been hit as a result of this war,” he told a national television broadcast.

Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency informed Reuters that a cyberattack orchestrated by Russian security services was one of the possibilities under investigation.

In the Reuters article, it is stated that “Russia’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” It is unknown how much time was given for Russia to respond, only that they did not respond immediately.

“(The attack) significantly damaged (our) infrastructure, limited access, we could not counter it at the virtual level, so we shut down Kyivstar physically to limit the enemy’s access,” Komarov said.

An anonymous source that Reuters alleges is “close to Ukraine’s cyber defense” said that Russia was suspected to be the source of the attack, but no specific group had been identified.

Again, there is no solid proof that it was Russia.

This is our third story in two weeks regarding hackers or large-scale cyberattacks.

Related: Federal Agencies Report Breaches by Iranian Hackers, Numerous U.S. States Affected

Related: DOJ: Russian Hackers Employed a “Sophisticated Spear Phishing Campaign” Against Us Intelligence Officers