"Scariest Thing You'll Read All Day": Report Sounds Alarm Over Brain-Reading Technology and Neurocapitalism

Common Dreams

A Vox report that swiftly sparked alarm across the internet Friday outlined how, "in the era of neurocapitalism, your brain needs new rights," following recent revelations that Facebook and Elon Musk's Neuralink are developing technologies to read people's minds.

As Vox's Sigal Samuel reported:

Mark Zuckerberg's company is funding research on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that can pick up thoughts directly from your neurons and translate them into words. The researchers say they've already built an algorithm that can decode words from brain activity in real time.

And Musk's company has created flexible "threads" that can be implanted into a brain and could one day allow you to control your smartphone or computer with just your thoughts. Musk wants to start testing in humans by the end of next year.

Considering those and other companies' advances and ambitions, Samuel warned that "your brain, the final privacy frontier, may not be private much longer" and laid out how existing laws are not equipped to handle how these emerging technologies could "interfere with rights that are so basic that we may not even think of them as rights, like our ability to determine where our selves end and machines begin."

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How American Corporations Are Policing Online Speech Worldwide

Gizmodo

The architects of Silicon Valley’s big social media platforms never imagined they’d someday be the global speech police. And yet, as their market share and global user bases have increased over the years, that’s exactly what they’ve become. Today, the number of people who tweet is nearly the population of the United States. About a quarter of the internet’s total users watch YouTube videos, and nearly one-third of the entire world uses Facebook. Regardless of the intent of their founders, none of these platforms were ever merely a means of connecting people; from their early days, they fulfilled greater needs. They are the newspaper, the marketplace, the television. They are the billboard, the community newsletter, and the town square.

And yet, they are corporations, with their own speech rights and ability to set the rules as they like—rules that more often than not reflect the beliefs, however misguided, of their founders. Mark Zuckerberg has long professed beliefs that representing oneself through more than one identity indicates a lack of integrity, and that conversations held under one’s real name are more civil—despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. As such, Facebook users are forced to use their “authentic identity”—a name found on some form of written ID—regardless of whether it puts them in danger, or at risk of exposing a piece of themselves that could put them in harm’s way. It prevents youth from exploring their sexuality freely for fear of being outed; people with chronic illnesses from engaging with support groups out of concern that insurance companies or employers might learn of their plight; and activists living under repressive regimes from organizing online.

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Facebook shareholder revolt gets bloody: Powerless investors vote overwhelmingly to oust Mark Zuckerberg as chairman

businessinsider.com 

 

The Facebook shareholder revolt just got bloody.

 

In a filing on Monday, Facebook revealed how investors voted on a raft of proposals at its annual shareholder meeting last week — and the results underline the unrest among outside investors.

According to an analysis of the results by Open Mic — an organization that works with activist shareholders to improve corporate governance at America's biggest companies — independent shareholders overwhelmingly backed two proposals to weaken Mark Zuckerberg's power.

Some 68% of ordinary investors, those who are not part of management or the board, want to oust Zuckerberg as chairman and bring in an independent figure to chair Facebook's board. This was a significant increase on the 51% who voted in favor of an almost identical proposal last year.

Shareholders are furious at the way Zuckerberg has handled a series of Facebook scandals, including election interference on the social network in 2016 and the giant Cambridge Analytica data breach last year. They think the company would benefit from an independent chairman holding Zuckerberg and his top team accountable. 

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No to Christchurch Call: Put aside your hate of Trump for a day – he may have just saved free speech

RT

Even adversaries of the US president should admit that he is the only one who has stood up to the disturbing anti-free speech proposal concocted by illiberal globalist world leaders and compliant tech companies. 

 

Ironically, by becoming the sole leader of a major Western power to reject the ‘Christchurch Call’ – the cross-border plan to restrict “terrorist and extremist” content online – Donald Trump has consolidated support for the document, sparing it deserved scrutiny.

After all, who doesn’t want to stop violence being spread through social media, particularly in the wake of the double mosque shooting in New Zealand in March? Well – judging by the commentary in mainstream media outlets – only that exceptionalist US president, and that band of white supremacists on whom he is relying to win in 2020.

But I would urge those of all political persuasions to study the text of the document, presented by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron in Paris this week, and endorsed by every major US online giant – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter.

Are these really the powers you want to give away to officials and Silicon Valley execs? Or should we at least ask some clarifying questions first?

Orwell’s bingo

 

Here are some notable and representative excerpts:

We, the governments commit to counter the drivers of terrorism and violent extremism by strengthening the resilience and inclusiveness of our societies to enable them to resist terrorist and violent extremist ideologies, including through education, building media literacy to help counter distorted terrorist and violent extremist narratives, and the fight against inequality.

This is the first bullet point, and we are already onto loaded political terminology rife with assumptions. Why must societies become more “inclusive” – a byword for multiculturalism – to stop terrorism? Why is the “fight against inequality” – a predominantly leftist agenda – a pre-condition for preventing it? Osama bin Laden wasn’t a pauper, and neither was gym trainer Brenton Tarrant for that matter.

More important are the treacherously vague definitions that almost invite abuse. Who decides what is a “distorted narrative”? How do you “build media literacy” – is it, as always, by using NewsGuard to tell people not to click on RT.com instead of the New York Times? What is even “violent extremist ideology”? Support for mass murder in mosques is. But what about those who want mosques shut down because they believe Islam is a scourge on Western society? Or those who ride out in militias to protect the US-Mexican border from illegal migrants? Are they advocating a “violent extremist ideology”? How about Black Lives Matter – they often engage in violence, and demand radical social change? Antifa? The Venezuelan opposition, who plan to overthrow their elected president and want the army to defect? 

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Facebook's 'Please Regulate Us' Tour Heads To France

Mike Masnick
Techdirt

On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg went to France, just in time for the French government to release a vague and broad proposal to regulate social media networks. Similar to Zuckerberg's pleas to Congress to ramp up its regulation of the company (and because he knows that any pushback on regulations will likely be slammed by the world of Facebook-haters), Zuckerberg tried to embrace the plans.

"It's going to be hard for us, there are going to be things in there we disagree with, that's natural," Zuckerberg said. "But in order for people to trust the internet overall and over time, there needs to be the right regulation put in place."

He also said that he was "encouraged and optimistic about the regulatory framework that will be put in place." 

What is that regulatory framework? Well, it's pretty vague. It also has PowerPoint artwork that looks like it was designed decades ago by someone who has no business being anywhere near PowerPoint:

To its credit, the plan does recognize that "freedom of expression" is a key value that needs to be protected, as well as freedom for innovation, but then also says those need to be balanced with a protection from harm. The key issue, as we've seen in other such plans is that it creates what people are referring to as a "duty of care" for social media -- requiring the company to "protect" users and allows regulators to somehow step in if they feel the company isn't succeeding (as if that won't be abused).

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Mark Zuckerberg turned American classrooms into nonconsensual laboratories for his pet educational theories, and now they're rebelling

Boing Boing 

Summit Learning is a nonprofit, high-tech "customized learning" group funded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's family charity; under the program, students are equipped with high-surveillance Chromebooks and work on their own "at their own pace" and call on teachers to act as "mentors" when they get stuck.

It's a high-tech version of student-led education, where a high teacher-to-pupil ratio allows students to pursue self-directed education based on their own proclivities and interests, and mentor one another. But in the Zuck version, students work alone in front of screens, in social isolation, taking automated quizzes to assess their progress.

Many students and parents find this incredibly invasive and frustrating. Students with special needs -- exactly the group that you'd expect to benefit most from "customized learning" -- find the systems especially troublesome, and for students with screen-triggered epilepsy, the systems are pure torture.

The result is rebellion, with parents withdrawing students from school altogether, or demanding that alternative accommodations be made for them; students in Brooklyn have staged mass walkouts to protest the systems; other districts have canceled the program in the face of student protests, and one University of Pennsylvania study found that 70% of students opposed the program. 

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3 Reasons Why Facebook's Zuckerberg Wants More Government Regulation

Ryan McMaken
Activist Post

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants more government regulation of social media. In a March 30 op-ed for  the Washington Post, Zuckerberg trots out the innocent-sounding pablum we’ve come to expect from him:

I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms.

But what sort of regulation will this be? Specifically, Zuckerberg concludes “we need new regulation in four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.”
He wants more countries to adopt versions of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

 

Needless to say, anyone hearing such words from Zuckerberg should immediately assume this newfound support for regulation is calculated to help Facebook financially. After all, this is a man who lied repeatedly to his customers (and Congress) about who can access users’ personal data, and how it will be used. He’s a man who once referred to Facebook users as “Dumb F-cks.” 

Facebook lied to customers (not be confused with the users) about the success of Facebook’s video platform. The idea that Zuckerberg now voluntarily wants to sacrifice some of his own power and money for humanitarian purposes is, at best, highly doubtful. (Although politicians like Mark Warner seem to take it at face value.)

Fortunately for Zuckerberg, thanks to the economic realities of government regulation, he can both support government regulation and enrich himself personally.

Those who are familiar with the effects of government regulation will not be surprised to hear a billionaire CEO throw his support behind it. Large firms with dominant market share have long made pace with government regulation because it often helps these firms create and solidify monopoly power for themselves.

Specifically, there are three ways that regulation will help Facebook.

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Facebook Negotiating Multibillion-Dollar US Fine As UK Labels "Digital Gangsters"

Comment: You know where this is leading of course...Much as I loathe Facebook and everything it stands for coming down hard via self-regulation of social media giants is just the beginning and is unlikely to stop there. The ultimate goals will be independent media outlets, some of which have already been shut down across the internet.


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Zero Hedge

Facebook and its executives were labeled "digital gangsters" and should immediately be subject to statutory regulation, according to an 18-month investigation ordered by the UK parliament. 

The UK assessment comes as word that the Silicon Valley tech giant is negotiating a multibillion-dollar settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission, the largest handed out to a tech company in agency history. 

The UK report from the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, found that Facebook purposefully obstructed its inquiry, according to The Guardian, while the social media giant failed to tackle Russian attempts to manipulate elections. [Which is a ridiculous fantasy since was never interested in manipulating any elections so we can't blame Facebook for that one]

"Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised ‘dark adverts’ from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day," warned Damian Collins, chairman of the committee. 

Per The Guardian, the report: 

• Accuses Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, of contempt for parliament in refusing three separate demands for him to give evidence, instead sending junior employees unable to answer the committee’s questions.
  
• Warns British electoral law is unfit for purpose and vulnerable to interference by hostile foreign actors, including agents of the Russian government attempting to discredit democracy.
  
• Calls on the British government to establish an independent investigation into “foreign influence, disinformation, funding, voter manipulation and the sharing of data” in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election.
  

"We need new independent regulation with a tough powers and sanctions regime to curb the worst excesses of surveillance capitalism and the forces trying to use technology to subvert our democracy," said Labour party deputy leader Tom Watson, adding that "Labour agrees with the committee’s ultimate conclusion – the era of self-regulation for tech companies must end immediately."

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Zuckerberg wants your nude photos for “safe keeping”

InfoWars.com 

Facebook is asking users to send nude pictures of themselves to “prevent” them from being shared publicly on the company’s various platforms. 

“We’re now partnering with safety organizations on a way for people to securely submit photos they fear will be shared without their consent, so we can block them from being uploaded to Facebook, Instagram and Messenger,” Facebook said in a statement. “This pilot program, starting in Australia, Canada, the UK and US, expands on existing tools for people to report this content to us if it’s already been shared.”

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ffbsafety%2Fposts%2F1666174480087050&width=500

In the UK, Facebook users will call the “Revenge Porn Hotline” which will allow them to submit nude photos of themselves that Facebook will then flag as “not for distribution.”

In other words, Facebook wants to see your nude pics to “block” them from being spread on-line.

That’s right, Facebook, whose CEO once famously called his users “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their secrets, now expects you to submit your nudes for “safe keeping.”

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Early Facebook Investor And Zuckerberg Mentor: "I Feel My Baby Has Turned Out To Be Something Horrible"

Zero Hedge

Even if Facebook's stellar Q1 earnings report hadn't helped erase some of the losses that Facebook shares incurred in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sanderberg would still believe that the company's troubles are largely behind them and that the company had essentially repaired the damage done to its reputation.

That was the assessment delivered by early Facebook investor and one-time Zuckerberg mentor Roger McNamee, who warned during an appearance at an event organized by Quartz in Washington DC last week that the company's leaders are deeply complacent and still haven't accepted the fact that Facebook has badly mislead its users about how the company profits off their data.

Despite Zuckerberg's warning, embedded in his opening statement to Congress earlier this month, that the company planned to make changes that could "significantly impact" profitability, McNamee believes it's likely Facebook is "going to get away" with the bad things that it has done, which is "particularly dangerous" considering the 2018 midterm elections are only months away. McNamee said he's deeply disappointed in how Zuckerberg and Sandberg have responded to the crisis by refusing to accept responsibility.

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Zuckerberg Admits He’s Developing Artificial Intelligence to Censor Content

The Anti Media 

 

This week we were treated to a veritable carnival attraction as Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world, testified before Senate committees about privacy issues related to Facebook’s handling of user data. Besides highlighting the fact that most United States senators — and most people, for that matter — do not understand Facebook’s business model or the user agreement they’ve already consented to while using Facebook, the spectacle made one fact abundantly clear: Zuckerberg intends to use artificial intelligence to manage the censorship of hate speech on his platform.

 

Over the two days of testimony, the plan for using algorithmic AI for potential censorship practices was discussed multiple times under the auspices of containing hate speech, fake news, election interference, discriminatory ads, and terrorist messaging. In fact, AI was mentioned at least 30 times. Zuckerberg claimed Facebook is five to ten years away from a robust AI platform. All four of the other Big 5 tech conglomerates — Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft — are also developing AI, many for the shared purposes of content control. 

 

For obvious reasons, this should worry civil liberty activists and anyone concerned about the erosion of first amendment rights online. The encroaching specter of a corporate-government propaganda alliance is not a conspiracy theory. Barely over a month ago, Facebook, Google, and Twitter testified before Congress to announce the launch of a ‘counterspeech’ campaign in which positive and moderate posts will be targeted at people consuming and producing extremist or radical content. 

 

Like the other major social networks, Facebook has already been assailed by accusations of censorship against conservative and alternative news sources. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) outlined some other examples of the company’s “overzealous censorship” in just the last year: 

 

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Facebook and JPMorgan Chase: Case Studies in Exploitive Monetization

Wall St. On Parade

Last week the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, gave a harsh critique on how Facebook is making its money. Cook told an MSNBC Town Hall: “The truth is we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer, if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that.” 

Cook has good reason to believe that Facebook has “monetized” its customers. After a whistleblower from the data mining company, Cambridge Analytica, exposed that Facebook had allowed the private information on 50 million Facebook users to be exploited for micro-targeting on behalf of the Trump presidential campaign, the company has come under withering criticism.

Yesterday, in a press conference, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, conceded to reporters that the privacy breach by Cambridge Analytica could have affected as many as 87 million Facebook users. The company also announced that most of its billions of users may have had their profiles scraped, writing: 

“Until today, people could enter another person’s phone number or email address into Facebook search to help find them. This has been especially useful for finding your friends in languages which take more effort to type out a full name, or where many people have the same name. In Bangladesh, for example, this feature makes up 7% of all searches. However, malicious actors have also abused these features to scrape public profile information by submitting phone numbers or email addresses they already have through search and account recovery. Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way. So we have now disabled this feature. We’re also making changes to account recovery to reduce the risk of scraping as well.”

Facebook is now under an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission as well as an investigation by the British Parliament. (Exploitation of Facebook user profiles by Cambridge Analytica was also used to meddle in the Brexit voter referendum, which took the U.K. out of the European Union.)

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The Guardian pushes for a Facebook break-up

Alex Christoforou
The Duran

Is it time to break up Facebook?

Now that Facebook has been outed for selling user data to help Trump target voters (Obama did the same exact thing and the media seemed to have no problem with it), the liberal left media is now turning on the liberal left social network.

The Trump effect is tearing apart the largest social network.
The Guardian is hot and bothered by Facebook's indirect "collusion" with the Trump campaign, as the UK based newspaper is calling for the FTC to break apart Zuckerberg's spy apparatus, in much the same way Microsoft was "ordered" to split apart in 2000...

Since news broke that a data analysis firm with ties to the Trump campaign harvested personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users, much of the speculation has focused on whether the Federal Trade Commission will fine the corporation for violating a 2011 deal to protect user privacy.

But the pressing nature of America's Facebook problem, especially the way the corporation's actions have endangered basic democratic institutions, means the FTC should go much further.

Rather than simply carve away some of Facebook's huge profits, the FTC should immediately move to restructure the corporation to ensure this now essential medium of communication really serves the political and economic interests of American citizens in the 21st century.

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WhatsApp co-founder calls on users to #DeleteFacebook

RT

As Facebook roils from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the private data of 50 million users was leaked, the #DeleteFacebook movement is gathering momentum. Even WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton has given his support. 

The campaign calls on social-media users to unsubscribe from not only Facebook, but also Instagram and WhatsApp, which are owned by the same company. Facebook shares have fallen by over nine percent in the last two days alone, shaving roughly $50 billion off the company's valuation.

The social-media giant bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, but Acton had already invested $50 million into WhatsApp competitor Signal in February before joining the reactionary movement to boycott Facebook. He tweeted on Tuesday: "It's time. #DeleteFacebook."

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The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

The Atlantic 

 

A sprawling new manifesto by Zuckerberg, published to Facebook on Thursday, should set off new alarm bells for journalists, and heighten news organizations’ sense of urgency about how they—and their industry—can survive in a Facebook-dominated world. 

 

Facebook’s existing threat to journalism is well established. It is, at its core, about the flow of the advertising dollars that news organizations once counted on. In this way, Facebook’s role is a continuation of what began in 1995, when Craigslist was founded. Its founder, Craig Newmark, didn’t actively aim to decimate newspapers, but Craigslist still eviscerated a crucial revenue stream for print when people stopped buying newspaper classifieds ads. 

 

Craigslist was the first signal (and became the prototypical example) of a massive unbundling of news services online that would diminish the power and reach of the news, culturally, and make it more difficult to produce a profitable news product. 

 

Zuckerberg’s memo outlines a plan for the next phase of this unbundling, and it represents an expansion of Facebook’s existing threat to the news industry.

 

Facebook already has the money. The company is absolutely dominating in the realm of digital advertising. It notched $8.8 billion in revenue last quarter—more than $7 billion of which came from mobile-ad sales. One analyst told The New York Times last year that 85 percent of all online advertising revenue is funneled to either Facebook or Google—leaving a paltry 15 percent for news organizations to fight over.

 

 

 Now, Zuckerberg is making it clear that he wants Facebook to take over many of the actual functions—not just ad dollars—that traditional news organizations once had.

 

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Mark Zuckerberg funds research firm in bid to develop mind-reading brain implants

Jasper Hamill
The Sun

Billionaire pays for research into 'neural recording', a creepy-sounding technique which could change the lives of people suffering serious illnesses

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is funding the development of technology with the potential to read humans' minds.

The billionaire has just pledged to hand over £40 million to researchers working to combat deadly diseases.

This cash will be distributed by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, an organisation which aims to "enable doctors to cure, prevent or manage all diseases during our children's lifetime".

Some of the projects are likely to ring alarm bells among paranoid people who fear technological progress will come at the expense of human freedom.

One of the researchers who will receive funding is Dr. Rikky Muller, CEO and founder of a firm called Cortera.

She is working to develop "clinically viable and minimally invasive neural interfaces" designed to be used by people suffering severe disabilities.  

[...]

One project funded by Zuck's research group involve the "monitoring and manipulation of neural circuits".

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Mark Zuckerberg's phony generosity

Ted Rall
The Smirking Chimp

CEO Mark Zuckerberg promises to give 99% of his Facebook shares to charity -- eventually.

Exact phrasing: the stock, currently worth $45 billion, will be donated "during [he and his wife's] lives." He's 31 and she's 30, so actuarial tables being what they are, by approximately the year 2065.

If Facebook or the Internet or the earth still exist.

Whoop de doo.

I would be far more impressed if Facebook would put some money into the American economy. How? By hiring more workers -- a lot more workers. Facebook's market cap is $300 billion -- almost 10 times more than GM. GM has 216,000 employees. I'm not sure Facebook could find work for 2 million workers -- but 12,000 is pathetic. They might start by hiring a few thousand 24-7 customer service reps so they could respond quickly when some antisocial pig posts your nude photo.

The part of the "ain't Zuck nice" philanthropist suck-uppery that really has me annoyed is the "charity" bit.

Disclosure: I'm on record as being not at all into charity. If something is important enough to require funding -- helping hurricane victims, sending doctors to war zones, poetry -- it ought to be paid for by society as a whole, out of our taxes. We shouldn't allow billionaires to aggregate enough wealth to billionaires in the first place. Partly, this is because it's unfair. No one can work hard enough to earn one billion dollars. Also because it gives too much control to individuals at the expense of the 99.99% of everyone else.

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Why Facebook Will Employ Drones to Deliver the Internet to the World

Comment: Mr. Benvolence himself is doing it all for altruistic reasons of course...Military-intelligence isn't remotely involved...(scuse the pun).

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Susan Posel

Mark Zuckerberg has a grand scheme that includes bringing internet access to under-developed nations via drone delivery.

According to an anonymous source, Facebook is in negotiations with Titan Aerospace (TA), a corporation that manufactures solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles that are capable of tapping into terrestrial databases and services networks.

TA develops the atmospheric satellite that is a drone that can travel at 64 miles per hour and remain in the sky for half a decade at 65,000 feet.

No refueling or landing is required.

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