Pirate activist group Anna's Archive says it scraped 86M music files and 256M rows of track metadata from Spotify, and releases them in ~300TB of torrent files
The breach allegedly includes 86 million audio files.
Meta sues Joy Timeline, which makes nudify app CrushAI, in Hong Kong to prevent it from advertising on Meta apps; in January, 90% of its traffic came from Meta
I mean goddamn! If you're not even vetting the current ad buys, how the fuck do you think AI-generated ads are going to somehow be less of a clusterfuck? Alexios Mantzarlis / @man...
Sources: Anthropic's funding round is oversubscribed and expected to raise $2B+, with Lightspeed set to invest ~$1B; Menlo, MGX, and others are in talks to join
Bloomberg :
The UK ICO criticizes Google as “irresponsible” after the company announced plans to let advertisers employ fingerprinting techniques from February 16, 2025
ICO says allowing advertisers to track digital ‘fingerprints’ will undermine consumers' control over information
In a letter to Senator Scott Wiener, OpenAI says California's AI safety bill would hurt innovation and that AI safety regulation should be on the federal level
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg :
FlightAware: Reeling from CrowdStrike-related outages, Delta has canceled 5,000+ flights since Friday, including 1,159 flights on Monday and 400+ on Tuesday
Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) CEO Ed Bastian on Monday said it will take the U.S. carrier another couple of days before its operations recover …
Reeling from CrowdStrike-related outages, Delta has canceled 5,000+ flights, including 1,384 on Sunday and 700+ for Monday so far, according to FlightAware
Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) struggled to restore normal operations on Sunday after last week's crippling global cyber outage …
Screenshots of Google's AI Overview giving bizarre answers go viral, including telling users to add “1/8 cup of non-toxic glue” to make cheese stick to a pizza
- Google's AI Overviews feature suggested a user put glue on pizza so the cheese would stay put.
YouTube's CEO says that OpenAI training Sora with YouTube videos would violate YouTube's ToS, and Google adheres to YouTube's creator contracts to train Gemini
depending on how it trains its Sora video tool Matthias Bastian / The Decoder : YouTube CEO's warning to OpenAI over Sora training data could backfire spectacularly Cecily Mauran /...
Scammers are using sample videos of influencers with modest social media presence to create AI deepfake ads that often push offensive products and ideas
Artificial intelligence is spurring a new type of identity theft — with ordinary people finding their faces and words twisted to push often offensive products and ideas X: @robleat...
Filings: in December 2023, Reddit canceled CEO Steve Huffman's pay incentives tied to hitting a $25B valuation, signaling reduced hopes for a blockbuster IPO
Social media company cancels Steve Huffman's performance awards based on hitting $25bn market value
Small-business owners and activists who rely on TikTok say the US House measure forcing a sale or ban would damage their livelihoods and harm their communities
Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post :
In a letter, 41 state AGs call on Meta to address the “dramatic increase” in Facebook and Instagram account takeovers and say hackers buy ads on its services
Messaging app Signal finally rolls out usernames in beta, letting users conceal their phone numbers; Signal still requires inputting a phone number to register
We tested the end-to-end encrypted messenger's new feature aimed at addressing critics' most persistent complaint. Here's how it works.
Walmart agrees to acquire TV maker Vizio for $2.3B, or $11.50/share, to boost its ad business via Vizio's SmartCast OS, which lets users stream content with ads
- Walmart is buying TV maker Vizio for $2.3 billion in cash. — The move is a bid to boost the big-box retailer's high-margin ad business.
Wyze says ~13,000 customers could briefly see others' camera feeds, after a similar issue in 2023; Wyze blames glitches in rebooting systems after an AWS outage
https://www.theverge.com/... The security issue is being blamed on “a third-party caching library,” but the company acknowledges that it let customers down @cassidy@mastodon.blaed...
An excerpt from Kara Swisher's upcoming book, Burn Book: covering digital media in the '90s, Facebook and Google becoming information gatekeepers, and more
Kara Swisher / New York Magazine :
Ahead of a US Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg calls for requiring Apple and Google to verify ages via app stores; Linda Yaccarino and Evan Spiegel support KOSA
Heads of Meta and X are among five social media chief executives to face Congress grilling — The chief executives of five …
Pornhub blocks access in two more states, Montana and North Carolina, in protest of the states' age verification laws that went into effect on January 1
The funny thing is, while the NC law is clumsily implemented and of course puts a ridiculous barrier of entry up, the immediate impacts of it might be . . . good? — Compliance wi...
The NYT sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging they used millions of its articles to train AI, the first major US media outlet to sue
community responds Gaurav Girotra / Tech in Asia : NYT files copyright suit against OpenAI, Microsoft Jacob Oliver / CryptoSlate : New York Times sues Microsoft, OpenAI for alleged...