Policy – Page 18

ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results

AI, chatbot, chatgpt, Google, google search, Online Privacy, openai, Policy, search engines, search results / 9u50fv / August 2, 2025

Faced with mounting backlash, OpenAI removed a controversial ChatGPT feature that caused some users to unintentionally allow their private—and highly personal—chats to appear in search results.

Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search results and likely only represented a sample of chats “visible to millions.” While the indexing did not include identifying information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal details—like highly specific descriptions of interpersonal relationships with friends and family members—perhaps making it possible to identify them, Fast Company found.

OpenAI’s chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, explained on X that all users whose chats were exposed opted in to indexing their chats by clicking a box after choosing to share a chat.

Fast Company noted that users often share chats on WhatsApp or select the option to save a link to visit the chat later. But as Fast Company explained, users may have been misled into sharing chats due to how the text was formatted:

“When users clicked ‘Share,’ they were presented with an option to tick a box labeled ‘Make this chat discoverable.’ Beneath that, in smaller, lighter text, was a caveat explaining that the chat could then appear in search engine results.”

At first, OpenAI defended the labeling as “sufficiently clear,” Fast Company reported Thursday. But Stuckey confirmed that “ultimately,” the AI company decided that the feature “introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn’t intend to.” According to Fast Company, that included chats about their drug use, sex lives, mental health, and traumatic experiences.

Carissa Veliz, an AI ethicist at the University of Oxford, told Fast Company she was “shocked” that Google was logging “these extremely sensitive conversations.”

OpenAI promises to remove Google search results

Stuckey called the feature a “short-lived experiment” that OpenAI launched “to help people discover useful conversations.” He confirmed that the decision to remove the feature also included an effort to “remove indexed content from the relevant search engine” through Friday morning.

ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results Read More »

Backpage survivors will receive $200M to cover medical, health bills

backpage, cityxguide, human trafficking, Policy, sex trafficking / Kelly Newman / August 1, 2025

Survivors, or their representatives, must submit claims by February 2, 2026. To receive compensation, claims must include at least one document showing they “suffered monetary and/or behavioral health losses,” the claims form specified.

Documents can include emails, texts, screenshots, or advertisements. Claims may be further strengthened by sharing receipts from doctors’ visits, as well as medical or psychological exam results, summaries, or plans.

Medical expenses survivors can document can include any expenses paid out of pocket, including dental expenses, tattoo removals, or even future medical costs referenced in doctor’s referrals, an FAQ noted. Similarly, counseling or therapy costs can be covered, as well as treatment for substance use, alternative behavioral treatments, and future behavioral health plans recommended by a professional.

The FAQ also clarified that lost wages can be claimed, including any documentation of working overtime. Survivors only need to show approximate dates and times of abuse, since the DOJ said that it “appreciates that you may not remember exact number of hours you were trafficked during the relevant timeframe.” However, no future economic losses can be claimed, the FAQ said, and survivors will not be compensated for pain and suffering, despite the DOJ understanding that “your experience was painful and traumatic.”

Consulting the DOJ’s FAQ can help survivors assess the remission process. It noted that any “information regarding aliases, email addresses used, phone numbers, and trafficker names” can “be used to verify your eligibility.” Survivors are also asked to share any prior compensation already received from Backpage or through other lawsuits. To get answers to any additional questions, they can call the administrator in charge of dispensing claims, Epiq Global, at 1-888-859-9206 toll-free or at 1-971-316-5053 for international calls, the DOJ noted.

If you are in immediate danger or need resources because of a trafficking situation, please call 911 or the National Human Trafficking Hotline, toll-free at 1-888-373-7888.

Backpage survivors will receive $200M to cover medical, health bills Read More »

Trump suspends trade loophole for cheap online retailers globally

Amazon, de minimis, Donald Trump, e-commerce, Policy, shein, tariffs, temu, trump tariffs, us-china trade war / Mike M. / July 31, 2025

But even Amazon may struggle to shift its supply chain as the de minimis exemption is eliminated for all countries. In February, the e-commerce giant “projected lower-than-expected sales and operating income for its first quarter,” which it partly attributed to “unpredictability in the economy.” A DataWeave study concluded at the end of June that “US prices for China-made goods on Amazon” were rising “faster than inflation,” Reuters reported, likely due to “cost shocks” currently “rippling through the retail supply chain.” Other non-Chinese firms likely impacted by this week’s order include eBay, Etsy, TikTok Shop, and Walmart.

Amazon did not respond to Ars’ request to comment but told Reuters last month that “it has not seen the average prices of products change up or down appreciably outside of typical fluctuations.”

Trump plans to permanently close loophole in 2027

Trump has called the de minimis exemption a “big scam,” claiming that it’s a “catastrophic loophole” used to “evade tariffs and funnel deadly synthetic opioids as well as other unsafe or below-market products that harm American workers and businesses into the United States.”

To address what Trump has deemed “national emergencies” hurting American trade and public health, he has urgently moved to suspend the loophole now and plans to permanently end it worldwide by July 1, 2027.

American travelers will still be able to “bring back up to $200 in personal items” and receive “bona fide gifts valued at $100 or less” duty-free, but a fixed tariff rate of between $80 to $200 per item will be applied to many direct-to-consumer shipments until Trump finishes negotiating trade deals with the rest of America’s key trade partners. As each deal is theoretically closed, any shipments will be taxed according to tariff rates of their country of origin. (Those negotiations are supposed to conclude by tomorrow, but so far, Trump has only struck deals with the European Union, Japan, and South Korea.)

Trump suspends trade loophole for cheap online retailers globally Read More »

China claims Nvidia built backdoor into H20 chip designed for Chinese market

china, NVIDIA, Policy, syndication, Tech / Shannon Garcia / July 31, 2025

The CAC did not specify which experts had found a back door in Nvidia’s products or whether any tests in China had uncovered the same results. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lawmakers in Washington have expressed concern about chip smuggling and introduced a bill that would require chipmakers such as Nvidia to embed location tracking into export-controlled hardware.

Beijing has issued informal guidance to major Chinese tech groups to increase purchases of domestic AI chips in order to reduce reliance on Nvidia and support the evolution of a rival domestic chip ecosystem.

Chinese tech giant Huawei and smaller groups including Biren and Cambricon have benefited from the push to localize chip supply chains.

Nvidia said it would take nine months from restarting manufacturing to shipping the H20 to clients. Industry insiders said there was considerable uncertainty among Chinese customers over whether they would be able to take delivery of any orders if the US reversed its decision to allow its sale.

The Trump administration has faced heavy criticism, including from security experts and former officials, who argue that the H20 sales would accelerate Chinese AI development and threaten US national security.

“There are strong factions on both sides of the Pacific that don’t like the idea of renewing H20 sales,” said Triolo. “In the US, the opposition is clear, but also in China voices are saying that it will slow transition to the alternative ecosystem.”

China claims Nvidia built backdoor into H20 chip designed for Chinese market Read More »

Substack’s “Nazi problem” won’t go away after push notification apology

antisemitism, Counter-terrorism, Neo-nazis, online extremism, Policy, Substack / Kelly Newman / July 31, 2025

Substack may be legitimizing neo-Nazis as “thought leaders,” researcher warns.

After Substack shocked an unknown number of users by sending a push notification on Monday to check out a Nazi blog featuring a swastika icon, the company quickly apologized for the “error,” tech columnist Taylor Lorenz reported.

“We discovered an error that caused some people to receive push notifications they should never have received,” Substack’s statement said. “In some cases, these notifications were extremely offensive or disturbing. This was a serious error, and we apologize for the distress it caused. We have taken the relevant system offline, diagnosed the issue, and are making changes to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Substack has long faced backlash for allowing users to share their “extreme views” on the platform, previously claiming that “censorship (including through demonetizing publications)” doesn’t make “the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse,” Lorenz noted. But critics who have slammed Substack’s rationale revived their concerns this week, with some accusing Substack of promoting extreme content through features like their push alerts and “rising” lists, which flag popular newsletters and currently also include Nazi blogs.

Joshua Fisher-Birch, a terrorism analyst at a nonprofit non-government organization called the Counter Extremism Project, has been closely monitoring Substack’s increasingly significant role in helping far-right movements spread propaganda online for years. He’s calling for more transparency and changes on the platform following the latest scandal.

In January, Fisher-Birch warned that neo-Nazi groups saw Donald Trump’s election “as a mix of positives and negatives but overall as an opportunity to enlarge their movement.” Since then, he’s documented at least one Telegram channel—which currently has over 12,500 subscribers and is affiliated with the white supremacist Active Club movement—launch an effort to expand their audience by creating accounts on Substack, TikTok, and X.

Of those accounts created in February, only the Substack account is still online, which Fisher-Birch suggested likely sends a message to Nazi groups that their Substack content is “less likely to be removed than other platforms.” At least one Terrorgram-adjacent white supremacist account that Fisher-Birch found in March 2024 confirmed that Substack was viewed as a back-up to Telegram because it was that much more reliable to post content there.

But perhaps even more appealing than Substack’s lack of content moderation, Fisher-Birch noted that these groups see Substack as “a legitimizing tool for sharing content” specifically because the Substack brand—which is widely used by independent journalists, top influencers, cherished content creators, and niche experts—can help them “convey the image of a thought leader.”

“Groups that want to recruit members or build a neo-fascist counter-culture see Substack as a way to get their message out,” Fisher-Birch told Ars.

That’s why Substack users deserve more than an apology for the push notification in light of the expanding white nationalist movements on its platform, Fisher-Birch said.

“Substack should explain how this was allowed to happen and what they will do to prevent it in the future,” Fisher-Birch said.

Ars asked Substack to provide more information on the number of users who got the push notification and on its general practices promoting “extreme” content through push alerts—attempting to find out if there was an intended audience for the “error” push notification. But Substack did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Backlash over Substack’s defense of Nazi content

Back in 2023, Substack faced backlash from over 200 users after The Atlantic‘s Jonathan Katz exposed 16 newsletters featuring Nazi imagery in a piece confronting Substack’s “Nazi problem.” At the time, Lorenz noted that Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie confirmed that the ethos of the platform was that “we don’t like Nazis either” and “we wish no-one held those views,” but since censorship (or even demonetization) won’t stop people from holding those views, Substack thought it would be a worse option to ban the content and hide those extreme views while movements grew in the shadows.

However, Fisher-Birch told Ars that Substack’s tolerance of Nazi content has essentially turned the platform into a “bullhorn” for right-wing extremists at a time when the FBI has warned that online hate speech is growing and increasingly fueling real-world hate crimes, the prevention of which is viewed at the highest-level national threat priority.

Fisher-Birch recommended that Substack take the opportunity of its latest scandal to revisit its content guidelines “and forbid content that promotes hatred or discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or medical condition.”

“If Substack changed its content guidelines and prohibited individuals and groups that promote white supremacism and neo-Nazism from using its platform, the extreme right would move to other online spaces,” Fisher-Birch said. “These right wing extremists would not be able to use the bullhorn of Substack. These ideas would still exist, and the people promoting them would still be around, but they wouldn’t be able to use Substack’s platform to do it.”

Fisher-Birch’s Counter Extremism Project has found that the best way for platforms to counter growing online Nazi movements is to provide “clear terms of service or community guidelines that prohibit individuals or groups that promote hatred or discrimination” and take “action when content is reported.” Platforms should also stay mindful of “changing trends in the online extremist landscape,” Fisher-Birch said.

Instead, Fisher-Birch noted, Substack appears to have failed to follow its own “limited community guidelines” and never removed a white supremacist blog promoting killing one’s enemies and violence against Jewish people, which CEP reported to the platform back in March 2024.

With Substack likely to remain tolerant of such content, CEP will continue monitoring how extremist groups use Substack to expand their movements, Fisher-Birch confirmed.

Favorite alternative platforms for Substack ex-pats

This week, some Substack users renewed calls to boycott the platform after the push notification. One popular writer who long ago abandoned Substack, A.R. Moxon, joined Fisher-Birch in pushing back on Substack’s defense of hosting Nazi content.

“This was ultimately my biggest problem with Substack: their notion that the answer to Nazi ideas is to amplify them so you can defeat them with better ideas presupposes that Nazi ideas have not yet been defeated on the merits, and that Nazis will ever recognize such a defeat,” Moxon posted on Bluesky.

Moxon has switched to Ghost for his independent blog, The Reframe, an open source Substack alternative that woos users by migrating accounts for users and ditching Substack’s fees, which take a 10 percent cut of each Substacker’s transactions. That means users can easily switch platforms and make more money on Ghost, if they can attract as broad an audience as they got on Substack.

However, some users feel that Substack’s design, which can help more users discover their content, is the key reason they can’t switch, and Ghost acknowledges this.

“Getting traffic to an independent website can be challenging, of course,” Ghost’s website said. “But the rewards are that you physically own the content and you’re benefitting your own brand and business.”

But Gillian Brockell, a former Washington Post staff writer, attested on Bluesky that her subscriber rate is up since switching to Ghost. Perhaps that’s because the hype that Substack heightens engagement isn’t real for everyone, but Brockell raised another theory: “Maybe because I’m less ashamed to share it? Maybe because more and more people refuse to subscribe to Substack? I dunno, but I’m happier.”

Another former Substack user, comics writer Grek Pak, posted on Bluesky that Buttondown served his newsletter needs. That platform charges lower fees than Substack and counters claims that Substack’s “network effects” work by pointing to “evidence” that Substack “readers tend to be less engaged and pay you less.”

Fisher-Birch suggested that Substack’s biggest rivals—which include Ghost and Buttondown, as well as Patreon, Medium, BeeHiiv, and even old-school platforms like Tumblr—could benefit if the backlash over the push notification forces more popular content creators to ditch Substack.

“Many people do not want to use a platform that does not remove content promoting neo-Nazism, and several creators have moved to other platforms,” Fisher-Birch said.

Imani Gandy, a journalist and lawyer behind a popular online account called “Angry Black Lady,” suggested on Bluesky that “Substack is not sustainable from a business perspective—and that’s before you get to the fact that they are now pushing Nazi content onto people’s phones. You either move now or move in shame later. Those are the two options really.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Substack’s “Nazi problem” won’t go away after push notification apology Read More »

VPN use soars in UK after age-verification laws go into effect

age verification, online safety act, open Internet, Policy, syndication, UK, VPN / Beth Washington / July 30, 2025

Also on Friday, the Windscribe VPN service posted a screenshot on X claiming to show a spike in new subscribers. The makers of the AdGuard VPN claimed that they have seen a 2.5X increase in install rates from the UK since Friday.

Nord Security, the company behind the NordVPN app, says it has seen a “1,000 percent increase in purchases” of subscriptions from the UK since the day before the new laws went into effect. “Such spikes in demand for VPNs are not unusual,” Laura Tyrylyte, Nord Security’s head of public relations, tells WIRED. She adds in a statement that “whenever a government announces an increase in surveillance, Internet restrictions, or other types of constraints, people turn to privacy tools.”

People living under repressive governments that impose extensive Internet censorship—like China, Russia, and Iran—have long relied on circumvention tools like VPNs and other technologies to maintain anonymity and access blocked content. But as countries that have long claimed to champion the open Internet and access to information, like the United States, begin considering or adopting age verification laws meant to protect children, the boundaries for protecting digital rights online quickly become extremely murky.

“There will be a large number of people who are using circumvention tech for a range of reasons” to get around age verification laws, the ACLU’s Kahn Gillmor says. “So then as a government you’re in a situation where either you’re obliging the websites to do this on everyone globally, that way legal jurisdiction isn’t what matters, or you’re encouraging people to use workarounds—which then ultimately puts you in the position of being opposed to censorship-circumvention tools.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

VPN use soars in UK after age-verification laws go into effect Read More »

AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state’s human residents

AI, ai data center, AI development tools, AI infrastructure, AI policy, Biz & IT, Cheyenne, Chris Lehane, Crusoe, datacenters, Energy, machine learning, Mark Gordon, Meta, microsoft, natural gas, openai, oracle, Patrick Collins, Policy, renewable energy, Tallgrass, wyoming / 9u50fv / July 30, 2025

Wyoming’s data center boom

Cheyenne is no stranger to data centers, having attracted facilities from Microsoft and Meta since 2012 due to its cool climate and energy access. However, the new project pushes the state into uncharted territory. While Wyoming is the nation’s third-biggest net energy supplier, producing 12 times more total energy than it consumes (dominated by fossil fuels), its electricity supply is finite.

While Tallgrass and Crusoe have announced the partnership, they haven’t revealed who will ultimately use all this computing power—leading to speculation about potential tenants.

A potential connection to OpenAI’s Stargate AI infrastructure project, announced in January, remains a subject of speculation. When asked by The Associated Press if the Cheyenne project was part of this effort, Crusoe spokesperson Andrew Schmitt was noncommittal. “We are not at a stage that we are ready to announce our tenant there,” Schmitt said. “I can’t confirm or deny that it’s going to be one of the Stargate.”

OpenAI recently activated the first phase of a Crusoe-built data center complex in Abilene, Texas, in partnership with Oracle. Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, told The Associated Press last week that the Texas facility generates “roughly and depending how you count, about a gigawatt of energy” and represents “the largest data center—we think of it as a campus—in the world.”

OpenAI has committed to developing an additional 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity through an agreement with Oracle. “We’re now in a position where we have, in a really concrete way, identified over five gigawatts of energy that we’re going to be able to build around,” Lehane told the AP. The company has not disclosed locations for these expansions, and Wyoming was not among the 16 states where OpenAI said it was searching for data center sites earlier this year.

AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state’s human residents Read More »

Trump claims Europe won’t make Big Tech pay ISPs; EU says it still might

network usage fees, Policy, Trump / Kelly Newman / July 30, 2025

We asked the White House and European Commission for more details today and will update this article with any new information.

If the White House fact sheet’s reference to network usage fees has at least some truth to it, it may refer only to a tentative agreement between Trump and von der Leyen. The overall trade deal, which includes a 15 percent cap on tariffs for most EU exports into the US, is not final, as the European Commission pointed out in its announcement.

“The political agreement of 27 July 2025 is not legally binding,” a European Commission announcement said. “Beyond taking the immediate actions committed, the EU and the US will further negotiate, in line with their relevant internal procedures, to fully implement the political agreement.”

Big Tech hopeful that usage fees are dead

The European Union government sought public input on network fees in 2023, drawing opposition from US tech companies and the Biden administration. While European ISPs pushed for new fees from online companies that accounted for over 5 percent of average peak traffic, the Biden administration said the plan “could reinforce the dominant market position of the largest operators… give operators a new bottleneck over customers, raise costs for end users,” and undermine net neutrality.

As tech industry analyst Dean Bubley wrote today, the White House statement on network usage fees is vague, and “the devil is in the detail here.” One thing to watch out for, he said, is whether Europe prohibits back-door methods of charging network usage fees, such as having the government regulate disputes over IP interconnection.

Bubley speculated that the EC might have “received a boatload of negative feedback” about network usage fees in a recent public consultation on the Digital Networks Act and that the trade deal provides “a nice, Trump-shaped excuse to boot out the whole idea, which in any case had huge internal flaws and contradictions—and specifically worked against the EU’s own objectives in having a robust AI industry, which I’d wager is seen in Brussels as much more important.”

Trump claims Europe won’t make Big Tech pay ISPs; EU says it still might Read More »

EPA plans to ignore science, stop regulating greenhouse gases

clean air act, CO2, EPA, greenhouse gases, Policy, Science, syndication / Beth Washington / July 30, 2025

It derives from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that named greenhouse gases as “air pollutants,” giving the EPA the mandate to regulate them under the Clean Air Act.

Critics of the rule say that the Clean Air Act was fashioned to manage localized emissions, not those responsible for global climate change.

A rollback would automatically weaken the greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and heavy-duty vehicles. Manufacturers such as Daimler and Volvo Cars have previously opposed the EPA’s efforts to tighten emission standards, while organized labour groups such as the American Trucking Association said they “put the trucking industry on a path to economic ruin.”

However, Katherine García, director of Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All Campaign, said that the ruling would be “disastrous for curbing toxic truck pollution, especially in frontline communities disproportionately burdened by diesel exhaust.”

Energy experts said the move could also stall progress on developing clean energy sources such as nuclear power.

“Bipartisan support for nuclear largely rests on the fact that it doesn’t have carbon emissions,” said Ken Irvin, a partner in Sidley Austin’s global energy and infrastructure practice. “If carbon stops being considered to endanger human welfare, that might take away momentum from nuclear.”

The proposed rule from the EPA will go through a public comment period and inter-agency review. It is likely to face legal challenges from environmental activists.

EPA plans to ignore science, stop regulating greenhouse gases Read More »

Trump caving on Nvidia H20 export curbs may disrupt his bigger trade war

AI, AI chips, Donald Trump, frontier ai, h20 chips, Howard Lutnick, Jensen Huang, NVIDIA, Policy, semiconductors, tariffs, trump tariffs, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / July 29, 2025

But experts seem to fear that Trump isn’t paying enough attention to how exports of US technology could threaten to not only supercharge China’s military and AI capabilities but also drain supplies that US firms need to keep the US at the forefront of AI innovation.

“More chips for China means fewer chips for the US,” experts said, noting that “China’s biggest tech firms, including Tencent, ByteDance, and Alibaba,” have spent $16 billion on bulk-ordered H20 chips over the past year.

Meanwhile, “projected data center demand from the US power market would require 90 percent of global chip supply through 2030, an unlikely scenario even without China joining the rush to buy advanced AI chips,” experts said. If Trump doesn’t intervene, one of America’s biggest AI rivals could even end up driving up costs of AI chips for US firms, they warned.

“We urge you to reverse course,” the letter concluded. “This is not a question of trade. It is a question of national security.”

Trump says he never heard of Nvidia before

Perhaps the bigger problem for Trump, national security experts suggest, would be if China or other trade partners perceive the US resolve to wield export controls as a foreign policy tool to be “weakened” by Trump reversing course on H20 controls.

They suggested that Trump caving on H20 controls could even “embolden China to seek additional access concessions” at a time when some analysts suggest that China may already have an upper hand in trade negotiations.

The US and China are largely expected to extend a 90-day truce following recent talks in Stockholm, Reuters reported. Anonymous sources told the South China Morning Post that the US may have already agreed to not impose any new tariffs or otherwise ratchet up the trade war during that truce, but that remains unconfirmed, as Trump continues to warn that chip tariffs are coming soon.

Trump has recently claimed that he thinks he may be close to cementing a deal with China, but it appears likely that talks will continue well into the fall. A meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping probably won’t be scheduled until late October or early November, Reuters reported.

Trump caving on Nvidia H20 export curbs may disrupt his bigger trade war Read More »

How the Trump FCC justified requiring a “bias monitor” at CBS

brendan carr, Paramount Skydance, Policy, Trump CBS / Mike M. / July 29, 2025

Paramount/Skydance merger

Trump FCC claims there’s precedent for CBS ombudsman, but it’s a weak one.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to Brendan Carr, his intended pick for Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, as he attends a SpaceX Starship rocket launch on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Credit: Getty Images | Brandon Bell

The Federal Communications Commission’s approval of CBS owner Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance came with a condition to install an ombudsman, which FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has described as a “bias monitor.” It appears that the bias monitor will make sure the news company’s reporting meets standards demanded by President Donald Trump.

“One of the things they’re going to have to do is put an ombudsman in place for two years, so basically a bias monitor that will report directly to the president [of Paramount],” Carr told Newsmax on Thursday, right after the FCC announced its approval of the merger.

The Carr FCC claims there is precedent for such a bias monitor. But the precedent cited in last week’s merger approval points to a very different case involving NBC and GE, one in which an ombudsman was used to protect NBC’s editorial independence from interference by its new owner.

By contrast, it looks like Paramount is hiring a monitor to make sure that CBS reporting doesn’t anger President Trump. Paramount obtained the FCC’s merger approval only after reaching a $16 million settlement with Trump, who sued the company because he didn’t like how CBS edited a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Trump claimed last week that Paramount is providing another $20 million worth of “advertising, PSAs, or similar programming,” and called the deal “another in a long line of VICTORIES over the Fake News Media.”

NBC/GE precedent was “viewpoint-neutral”

The FCC merger approval says that “to promote transparency and increased accountability, Skydance will have in place, for a period of at least two years, an ombudsman who reports to the President of New Paramount, and who will receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS.”

The Carr FCC apparently couldn’t find a precedent that would closely match the ombudsman condition being imposed on Paramount. The above sentence has a footnote citing the FCC’s January 2011 approval of Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal, saying the Obama-era order found “such a mechanism effective in preventing editorial bias in the operation of the NBC broadcast network.”

But in 2011, the FCC said the purpose of the ombudsman was to ensure that NBC’s reporting would not be altered to fit the business interests of its owner. The FCC said at the time:

The Applicants state that, since GE’s acquisition of NBC in 1986, GE has ensured that the content of NBC’s news and public affairs programming is not influenced by the non-media interests of GE. Under this policy, which was noted with favor when the Commission approved GE’s acquisition of NBC, NBC and its O&O [owned and operated] stations have been free to report about GE without interference or influence. In addition, GE appointed an ombudsman to further ensure that the policy of independence of NBCU’s news operations would be maintained. Although the Applicants contend there is no legal requirement that they do so, they offer to maintain this policy and to retain the ombudsman position in the post-transaction entity to ensure the continued journalistic integrity and independence of NBCU’s news operations.

The NBC/GE condition “was a viewpoint-neutral economic measure. It did not matter if the content had a pro or con position on any political or regulatory issue, but only whether it might have been broadcast to promote GE’s pecuniary interests,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a longtime attorney and advocate who specializes in media and telecommunications policy. Schwartzman told Ars today that the NBC/GE condition cited by the Carr FCC is “very different from the viewpoint-based nature of the CBS condition.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the commission’s only Democrat, said the agency is “imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law.”

FCC: Trump lawsuit totally unrelated

The FCC’s merger approval order said that “the now-settled lawsuit filed by President Donald J. Trump against Paramount and CBS News” is “unrelated to our review of the Transaction.” But on Newsmax, Carr credited Trump with forcing changes at CBS and other media outlets.

“For years, people cowed down to the executives behind these companies based in Hollywood and New York, and they just accepted that these national broadcasters could dictate how people think about topics, that they could set the narrative for the country—and President Trump fundamentally rejected it,” Carr said. “He smashed the facade that these are gatekeepers that can determine what people think. Everything we’re seeing right now flows from that decision by President Trump, and he’s winning. PBS has been defunded. NPR has been defunded. CBS is committing to restoring fact-based journalism… President Trump stood up to these legacy media gatekeepers and now their business models are falling apart.”

Carr went on Fox News to discuss the CBS cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show, saying that “all of this is downstream of President Trump’s decision to stand up, and he stood up for the American people because the American people do not trust these legacy gatekeepers anymore.” Carr also wrote in a post on X, “The partisan left’s ritualist wailing and gnashing of teeth over Colbert is quite revealing. They’re acting like they’re losing a loyal DNC spokesperson that was entitled to an exemption from the laws of economics.”

Warren: “Bribery is illegal no matter who is president”

In a July 22 letter to Carr, Skydance said it “will ensure that CBS’s reporting is fair, unbiased, and fact-based.” With the installation of an ombudsman who will report to the company president, “New Paramount’s executive leadership will carefully consider any such complaints in overseeing CBS’s news programming,” the letter said, also making reference to the previous case of an ombudsman at NBC. Skydance sent another letter about its elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, complying with Carr’s demand to end such programs.

As Carr described it to Newsmax, the merging companies “made commitments to address bias and restore fact-based reporting. I think that’s so important. Look, the American public simply do not trust these legacy media broadcasters, so if they stick with that commitment, you know we’re sort of trust-but-verify mode, that’ll be a big win.”

The FCC’s merger-approval order favorably cites comments from the Center for American Rights (CAR), a conservative group that filed a news distortion complaint against CBS over the Harris interview. The group “filed a supplemental brief, in which it discusses a report by Media Research Center (MRC) concerning negative media coverage of the Trump administration,” the FCC said. “CAR asserts that the MRC report confirms that the news media generally, and CBS News in particular, is relentlessly slanted and biased. It concludes that Commission action is necessary to condition the Transaction on an end to this blatant bias.”

Although the FCC insists that the Trump lawsuit wasn’t relevant to its merger review, Carr previously made it clear that the news distortion complaint would be a factor in determining whether the merger would be approved. The FCC investigation into the Harris interview doesn’t seem to have turned up much. CBS was accused of distorting the news by airing two different answers given by Harris to the same question, but the unedited transcript and camera feeds showed that the two clips simply contained two different sentences from the same answer.

Congressional Democrats said they will investigate the circumstances of the merger, including allegations that Skydance and Paramount bribed Trump to get it approved. “Bribery is illegal no matter who is president,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said. “It sure looks like Skydance and Paramount paid $36 million to Donald Trump for this merger, and he’s even bragged about this crooked-looking deal… this merger must be investigated for any criminal behavior. It’s an open question whether the Trump administration’s approval of this merger was the result of a bribe.”

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

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Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says

adult content, adult sites, AI, ai porn, AI training, AI training data, Ai video generator, BItTorrent, copyright infringement, LLaMA, Meta, online piracy, Policy, porn, seeding, torrenting / Kelly Newman / July 28, 2025

Evidence may prove Meta seeded more content

Seeking evidence to back its own copyright infringement claims, Strike 3 Holdings searched “its archive of recorded infringement captured by its VXN Scan and Cross Reference tools” and found 47 “IP addresses identified as owned by Facebook infringing its copyright protected Works.”

The data allegedly demonstrates a “continued unauthorized distribution” over “several years.” And Meta allegedly did not stop its seeding after Strike 3 Holdings confronted the tech giant with this evidence—despite the IP data supposedly being verified through an industry-leading provider called Maxmind.

Strike 3 Holdings shared a screenshot of MaxMind’s findings. Credit: via Strike 3 Holdings’ complaint

Meta also allegedly attempted to “conceal its BitTorrent activities” through “six Virtual Private Clouds” that formed a “stealth network” of “hidden IP addresses,” the lawsuit alleged, which seemingly implicated a “major third-party data center provider” as a partner in Meta’s piracy.

An analysis of these IP addresses allegedly found “data patterns that matched infringement patterns seen on Meta’s corporate IP Addresses” and included “evidence of other activity on the BitTorrent network including ebooks, movies, television shows, music, and software.” The seemingly non-human patterns documented on both sets of IP addresses suggest the data was for AI training and not for personal use, Strike 3 Holdings alleged.

Perhaps most shockingly, considering that a Meta employee joked “torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right,” Strike 3 Holdings further alleged that it found “at least one residential IP address of a Meta employee” infringing its copyrighted works. That suggests Meta may have directed an employee to torrent pirated data outside the office to obscure the data trail.

The adult site operator did not identify the employee or the major data center discussed in its complaint, noting in a subsequent filing that it recognized the risks to Meta’s business and its employees’ privacy of sharing sensitive information.

In total, the company alleged that evidence shows “well over 100,000 unauthorized distribution transactions” linked to Meta’s corporate IPs. Strike 3 Holdings is hoping the evidence will lead a jury to find Meta liable for direct copyright infringement or charge Meta with secondary and vicarious copyright infringement if the jury finds that Meta successfully distanced itself by using the third-party data center or an employee’s home IP address.

“Meta has the right and ability to supervise and/or control its own corporate IP addresses, as well as the IP addresses hosted in off-infra data centers, and the acts of its employees and agents infringing Plaintiffs’ Works through their residential IPs by using Meta’s AI script to obtain content through BitTorrent,” the complaint said.

Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says Read More »