lavahot @lavahot@qoto.org

TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance spied on Forbes journalists, including me. Read the shocking story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/12/22/tiktok-tracks-forbes-journalists-bytedance

The bit about a lawyer being stopped from entering a music hall in the US because its facial recognition system picked up that she's part of a law company that's suing them is even crazier than I thought.

The law company isn't suing the music hall - it's suing a restaurant, in another state, which is owned by the hall's parent company MSG Entertainment. MSG gone ahead and harvested photos of all the lawyers in the firm and fed it to an image recognition system to ban them from every MSG Entertainment owned location.

People always tell me that if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to fear. She's got nothing to hide and they still went after her.

If this doesn't start making people worried about facial recognition then there's serious trouble coming.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/facial-recognition-flags-girl-scout-mom-as-security-risk-at-rockettes-show/

Friends new and old!

My first Mastodon post.

For the past 5 months, I've worked on a two-part investigation with Floodlight's Miranda Green & Mario Ariza.

The details are pretty bananas. And they get at the grim truth of what flourishes as local news coverage withers.

Part 1:
How power company cash secretly flowed to a half-dozen news sites in Alabama and Florida that assailed their critics

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/19/1143753129/power-companies-florida-alabama-media-investigation-consulting-firm

Power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics https://www.npr.org/2022/12/19/1143753129/power-companies-florida-alabama-media-investigation-consulting-firm

Especially dangerous because of the greater trust people have in local news - see my Upshot column https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/upshot/fake-local-news.html

Final results

About that alleged stalker incident in L.A. that Musk blamed on the ElonJet account: It took place a day after Musk's jet landed and 26 miles away: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/18/details-of-musk-stalking-incident/

Here’s what really happened in the stalking incident Musk cited to ban @elonjet. Read @drewharwell and my latest story https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/18/details-of-musk-stalking-incident/ #twittermigration #twitterexodus #twitter #tech #technology

It’s time
#Festivus
Let the ‘Airing of Grievances’ begin

Taylor Lorenz suspended from twitter after seeking a comment on a story from Musk. Susan Li of Fox also still suspended for covering the story and Linette Lopez for simply covering Tesla - nothing to do with Musk’s location.

Actually, the social media platform is John Mastodon's Monster

Out of control speculation led to the Great Crash of 1929.

Wall Street deregulation led to the financial crisis of 2008.

Crypto delusion led to the crypto crash in 2022.

The worst is yet to come — just look at FTX.

All Ponzi schemes topple eventually. Crypto is no different.