Technology
X still has the verified bot problem – this time they came after the TechCrunch authors
This week I used to be scrolling through X, formerly Twitter, and noticed that I had reposted a series of TechCrunch articles. Just, wait, no, I didn’t do it.
But another person did it, using my name. I clicked on the profile and saw a distinct Rebecca Bellan, using the same default and header photos as my actual profile: me on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 and Chloe on the side, respectively. The bio reads: “@Techcrunch Senior Reporter | journalist” and had the location set to New York, where I currently live. The account was created in May 2024.
Perhaps most surprising after realizing that somebody – who? Bot?! — created my account impersonating me, was the incontrovertible fact that they allegedly paid for it, as evidenced by the little blue checkmark next to my name.
When X was still Twitter, a blue checkmark informed other users that the profile had been verified as noteworthy. However, since Elon Musk’s hostile takeover, that checkmark now means a user pays a minimum of $8 a month for a premium subscription, which provides them access to longer posts, fewer ads, higher algorithmic consideration, and Grok. And while X modified tack in April and returned the verification badge to some users based on follower count, a blue checkmark can even mean someone is a fan of Musk. You don’t consider me? Just take a look at all the eager guys who reply to any of them Musk’s posts.
Either way, I’m neither a paid subscriber nor a fan.
I’m not the only one that has been targeted by impersonation accounts. Several TechCrunch journalists were also impersonated on the platform. Some accounts, including my fake one, were suspended after reporting X’s issue. But that only tells us that X is actively aware of this issue.
The problem is that these kinds of spoofing attacks are much easier to perform attributable to the degradation of the X verification system, which doesn’t actually require any identity verification. Having a pay-to-play blue check system just begs bad actors and nation states to abuse it.
X really must have learned his lesson by now. When Musk initially launched the service, then called Twitter Blue, in November 2023, the feature was quickly used to assist bad actors pose as celebrities, corporations and government officials. One account impersonated the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and published a false announcement that insulin was now free. This tweet was viewed thousands and thousands of times before it was deleted, causing the company’s shares to drop significantly in value.
Another account claimed to be basketball star LeBron James and posted that he was officially requesting a trade from the Lakers. Another pretended to be Connor McDavid and announced that the hockey player’s contract had been bought by the New York Islanders.
Accounts claiming to be TechCrunch journalists have thus far been harmless. All they did was repost content that, truthfully, any of us could repost anyway. This suggests that reasonably than particularly malicious actors, the accounts were likely created by bots.
We have been coping with the problem of user X’s verified bot for some time now. The irony is that Musk suggested that forcing users to pay for verification would actually eliminate bots from the platform, but that apparently is not the case.
In the case of individuals you might be impersonating, you possibly can report it to company X, which can end in external verification by sending photos of a government-issued ID and a selfie. I also asked colleagues, friends and followers to report the impersonation of Company X on my behalf, which could have sped up the process.
X didn’t reply to TechCrunch to comment on how lots of its users might actually be bots, why this problem persists, or what the platform is doing to handle it.
Technology
Department of Justice tells Google to sell Chrome
Welcome back to the week in review. This week, we take a look at how the Department of Justice ordered Google to sell Chrome to break its monopoly, whether OpenAI by chance deleted potential evidence in a copyright lawsuit filed by The New York Times, and the way artificial intelligence corporations are exploiting TikTok for research purposes. Let’s do it.
The U.S. Department of Justice argued that Google should get rid of its Chrome browser to help break the corporate’s illegal monopoly on online search. U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Google is an illegal monopoly for abusing its power within the search industry, and the Department of Justice’s latest filing says Google’s ownership of Android and Chrome poses a “significant challenge” to pursuing countermeasures aimed toward establishing a competitive search engine market.
Anthropic raised a further $4 billion from Amazon and agreed to make Amazon Web Services the first training site for its flagship generative artificial intelligence models. Anthropic can be working with Annapurna Labs, AWS’s chip manufacturing division, to develop future generations of Trainium accelerators, custom AWS chips for training artificial intelligence models. Amazon’s recent money injection brings the tech giant’s total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion.
OpenAI by chance deleted potential evidence in The New York Times and Daily News’ copyright lawsuit, say the publisher’s lawyers. As part of the lawsuit, OpenAI agreed to provide two virtual machines so the lawyer could seek for copyrighted content in its AI training kits. However, within the letter, lawyers for the publishers claim that OpenAI engineers deleted all publisher search data stored on one of the virtual machines.
News
Kim Kardashian meets Optimus: The fashion mogul had hands-on experience with Tesla’s bipedal humanoid robot. In videos posted to X, Kardashian encourages Optimus to make a heart out of his hand, dance like he’s at a luau and play rock, paper, scissors. Read more
Oura’s valuation exceeds $5 billion: The smart ring maker has received a $75 million investment from glucose device maker Dexcom. The investment, which constitutes Oura’s Series D financing round, raises the corporate’s valuation to over $5 billion. Read more
Let’s organize a celebration for Partiful: The customizable event planning app challenges legacy solutions like Evite, Eventbrite, and Facebook Events, is a favourite amongst Gen Z users, and was just named a top app of 2024 by Google. Read more
Talk to me in your language: Microsoft will soon allow Teams users to clone their voices so that they can talk to others in up to nine languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Read more
Hackers attack Andrew Tate: According to The Daily Dot, hackers breached a web-based course founded by an influencer and self-confessed misogynist, exposing data on nearly 800,000 users. Tate is currently under house arrest awaiting trial on sex trafficking and rape charges. Read more
What makes a bank a bank? The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ruled that each one digital services that handle significant volumes of transactions needs to be subject to bank-style supervision, which could impact Apple Pay, Cash App, Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo. Read more
A more conversational Siri: According to sources cited by Bloomberg, Apple is developing a new edition of Siri based on advanced multilingual models in an attempt to meet up with more natural-sounding competitors comparable to Google Gemini Live. Read more
Making Money With TikTok Brains: Several AI-powered research tools are taking advantage of the “PDF to Brainrot” trend, during which the text of an uploaded document is read in a monotone voice against a backdrop of “weirdly satisfying” vertical videos like Subway Surfers gameplay. Read more
Threads attacks Bluesky: As Bluesky’s user base surpasses 20 million, Instagram Threads has begun rolling out a brand new feature called custom feeds to capitalize on user demand for more personalization. Read more
ChatGPT within the classroom: OpenAI has released a free online course to help elementary and middle school teachers find out how to introduce ChatGPT into their classrooms. However, some educators are concerned about this technology and its potential for error. Read more
Do we want one other day by day word game? Normally I’m an evangelist for word games and crosswords, but I feel like we’re quickly approaching market saturation. Netflix has launched a brand new day by day word puzzle game in partnership with TED called TED Tumblewords. Read more
Analysis
Please don’t send X-ray images to the chatbot: People often turn to generative AI chatbots to ask questions on their health concerns and higher understand their health. Since October, X users have been encouraged to upload their X-rays, MRIs and PET scans to the AI-powered chatbot, Grok, to help interpret the outcomes. Medical data is a special category subject to federal protections that, usually, only you may circumvent. But simply because you may does not imply you need to. As Zack Whittaker writes, it’s price remembering that what goes on the Internet never leaves it. Read more
Technology
How the digital “you” can withstand your torturous online conference calls
Now you can appear like you are on a Zoom call in your office, even whilst you’re sipping a margarita in a hammock far, far-off. Courtesy of a several-month-old startup called Marinadethe premise is easy: upload a five-minute training video of you creating an avatar, and 24 hours later you may seemingly be able to go. Do you ought to call from your automotive? This can be your secret. Too lazy to get away from bed? No problem. At the beach club? You’re probably pushing it, although judging by the demo video, that is not the only problem that should be solved. (The service is currently available in Basic, Standard and Professional versions, with prices starting from $300 to $1,150 per yr.)
The technology, backed by Los Angeles-based Krew Capital, currently only works with macOS, Pickle says, but a Windows version is anticipated next month. As for the conferencing apps that customers can pick from, they include Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, in keeping with Pickle. However, you should have to attend to make use of them. According to the website, “due to high demand, clone generation is currently delayed.”
Technology
‘Wolves’ sequel canceled because director ‘no longer trusted’ Apple
It could also be hard to recollect, but George Clooney and Brad Pitt starred together within the movie “Wolves,” which Apple released just two months ago.
On Friday, the film’s author and director Jon Watts said Friday that the sequel is not any longer happening; IN one other interview for Deadlinehe explained that he “no longer trusts (Apple) as a creative partner.”
According to reports, the corporate limiting your film strategy. For example, “Wolfs” was imagined to have a giant theatrical release, but as an alternative it played in a limited variety of theaters for just per week before it landed on Apple TV+.
Watts, who also created the brand new Star Wars series “Skeleton Crew,” said Apple’s change “came as a complete surprise and was made without any explanation or discussion.”
“I was completely shocked and asked them not to tell me I was writing a sequel,” Watts said. “They ignored my request and announced it in their press release anyway, apparently to put a positive spin on their streaming axis.”
As a result, Watts said he “quietly refunded the money they gave me to continue” and canceled the project.
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