An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Civitai, an online marketplace for sharing AI models that enables the creation of nonconsensual sexual images of real people, has introduced a new feature that allows users to post "bounties." These bounties allow users to ask the Civitai community to create AI models that generate images of specific styles, compositions, or specific real people, and reward the best AI model that does so with a virtual currency users can buy with real money. As is common on the site, many of the bounties posted to Civitai since the feature was launched are focused on recreating the likeness of celebrities and social media influencers, almost exclusively women. But 404 Media has seen at least one bounty for a private person who has no significant public online presence.

"I am very afraid of what this can become, for years I have been facing problems with the misuse of my image and this has certainly never crossed my mind," Michele Alves, an Instagram influencer who has a bounty on Civitai, told 404 Media. "I don't know what measures I could take, since the internet seems like a place out of control. The only thing I think about is how it could affect me mentally because this is beyond hurtful." The news shows how increasingly easy to use text-to-image AI tools, the ability to easily create AI models of specific people, and a platform that monetizes the production of nonconsensual sexual images is making it possible to generate nonconsensual images of anyone, not just celebrities.

The bounty of a real person that 404 Media saw on Civitai did not include a name, and included a handful of images that were taken from her social media accounts. 404 Media was able to find this person's online accounts and confirm they were not a celebrity or social media influencer, but just a regular person with personal social media accounts with few followers. The person who posted the bounty claimed that the woman he wanted an AI model of was his wife, though her Facebook account said she was single. Other Civitai users also weren't buying that explanation. Despite suspicions from these users, someone did complete the bounty and created an AI model of the woman that now any Civiai user can download. Several non-sexual AI generated images of her have been posted to the site.

The Nepal government has decided to impose a ban on TikTok. From a report on the local newspaper Kathmandu Post: A Cabinet meeting on Monday took the decision to ban the Chinese-owned app, citing its negative effects on social harmony. However, when the decision will be brought into force is yet to be ascertained. Although freedom of expression is a basic right, a large section of society has criticised TikTok for encouraging a tendency of hate speech, the government said. In the past four years, 1,647 cases of cyber crime have been reported on the video sharing app.

The Cyber Bureau of the Nepal Police, Ministry of Home Affairs, and representatives of TikTok discussed the issue earlier last week. Monday's decision is expected to be enforced following the completion of technical preparations. The latest decision has come within days after the government introduced the 'Directives on the Operation of Social Networking 2023.' As per the new rule, social media platforms operating in Nepal required to set up their offices in the country.

Google is suing scammers who are trying to use the hype around generative AI to trick people into downloading malware, the company has announced. From a report: In a lawsuit filed today in California, the company says individuals believed to be based in Vietnam are setting up social media pages and running ads encouraging users to "download" its generative AI service Bard. The download actually delivers malware to the victims, which steals social media credentials for the scammers to use. "Defendants are three individuals whose identities are unknown who claim to provide, among other things, 'the latest version' of Google Bard for download," the lawsuit reads.

"Defendants are not affiliated with Google in any way, though they pretend to be. They have used Google trademarks, including Google, Google AI, and Bard to lure unsuspecting victims into downloading malware onto their computers." The lawsuit notes that scammers have specifically used promoted Facebook posts in an attempt to distribute malware. Similar to crypto scams, the lawsuit highlights how interest in an emerging technology can be weaponized against people who may not fully understanding how it operates.

Images and information from social media (and other online sources) are being used by AI to create "create convincing and personalized scam calls, texts and emails," writes the Palm Beach Post, citing a warning from Florida's consumer watchdog agency. In an older version of the scam, a caller would greet "Grandma" or "Grandpa" before saying, "It's me — I know I sound funny because I have a cold," and then make an urgent plea for money to get out of a scrap... Using audio and video clips found online, the con artist can clone the voice of a family member to make the call more compelling...

Listen for clues to a con like incorrect or mispronounced names or unfamiliar terms of endearment. The pressure to act quickly and to keep the call a secret are all timeless hallmarks of a scam, the agency notes. Detailed instructions on how to deliver funds in a form that is hard to recover — wired funds, a gift card or pay app — are also indications of a ripoff in the making.
The consumer watchdog agency suggests this precaution. "Encourage family members to set their social media pages to private."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.

This week the Verge's podcast Decoder interviewed former U.S. president Barack Obama for a discussion on "AI, free speech, and the future of the internet."

Obama warns that future copyright questions are just part of a larger issue. "If AI turns out to be as pervasive and as powerful as it's proponents expect — and I have to say the more I look into it, I think it is going to be that disruptive — we are going to have to think about not just intellectual property; we are going to have to think about jobs and the economy differently."

Specific issues may include the length of the work week and the fact that health insurance coverage is currently tied to employment — but it goes far beyond that: The broader question is going to be what happens when 10% of existing jobs now definitively can be done by some large language model or other variant of AI? And are we going to have to reexamine how we educate our kids and what jobs are going to be available...?

The truth of the matter is that during my presidency, there was I think a little bit of naivete, where people would say, you know, "The answer to lifting people out of poverty and making sure they have high enough wages is we're going to retrain them and we're going to educate them, and they should all become coders, because that's the future." Well, if AI's coding better than all but the very best coders? If ChatGPT can generate a research memo better than the third-, fourth-year associate — maybe not the partner, who's got a particular expertise or judgment? — now what are you telling young people coming up?
While Obama believes in the transformative potential of AI, "we have to be maybe a little more intentional about how our democracies interact with what is primarily being generated out of the private sector. What rules of the road are we setting up, and how can we make sure that we maximize the good and maybe minimize some of the bad?"

AI's impact will be a global problem, Obama believes, which may require "cross-border frameworks and standards and norms". (He expressed a hope that governments can educate the public on the idea that AI is "a tool, not a buddy".) During the 44-minute interview Obama predicted AI will ultimately force a "much more robust" public conversation about rules needed for social media — and that at least some of that pressure could come from how consumers interact with companies. (Obama also argues there will still be a market for products that don't just show you what you want to see.)

"One of Obama's worries is that the government needs insight and expertise to properly regulate AI," writes the Verge's editor-in-chief in an article about the interview, "and you'll hear him make a pitch for why people with that expertise should take a tour of duty in the government to make sure we get these things right." You'll hear me get excited about a case called Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC, a 1969 Supreme Court decision that said the government could impose something called the Fairness Doctrine on radio and television broadcasters because the public owns the airwaves and can thus impose requirements on how they're used. There's no similar framework for cable TV or the internet, which don't use public airwaves, and that makes them much harder, if not impossible, to regulate. Obama says he disagrees with the idea that social networks are something called "common carriers" that have to distribute all information equally.
Obama also applauded last month's newly-issued Executive Order from the White House, a hundred-page document which Obama calls important as "the beginning of building out a framework." We don't know all the problems that are going to arise out of this. We don't know all the promising potential of AI, but we're starting to put together the foundations for what we hope will be a smart framework for dealing with it... In talking to the companies themselves, they will acknowledge that their safety protocols and their testing regimens may not be where they need to be yet. I think it's entirely appropriate for us to plant a flag and say, "All right, frontier companies, you need to disclose what your safety protocols are to make sure that we don't have rogue programs going off and hacking into our financial system," for example. Tell us what tests you're using. Make sure that we have some independent verification that right now this stuff is working.

But that framework can't be a fixed framework. These models are developing so quickly that oversight and any regulatory framework is going to have to be flexible, and it's going to have to be nimble.

An anonymous reader shared this report from security research Brian Krebs: In the summer of 2022, KrebsOnSecurity documented the plight of several readers who had their accounts at big-three consumer credit reporting bureau Experian hijacked after identity thieves simply re-registered the accounts using a different email address. Sixteen months later, Experian clearly has not addressed this gaping lack of security. I know that because my account at Experian was recently hacked, and the only way I could recover access was by recreating the account...

The homepage said I needed to provide a Social Security number and mobile phone number, and that I'd soon receive a link that I should click to verify myself. The site claims that the phone number you provide will be used to help validate your identity. But it appears you could supply any phone number in the United States at this stage in the process, and Experian's website would not balk.
One user said they recreated their account this week — even though the phone number they'd input was a random number. "The only difference: it asked me FIVE questions about my personal history (last time it only asked three) before proclaiming, 'Welcome back, Pete!,' and granting full access," @PeteMayo wrote. "I feel silly saving my password for Experian; may as well just make a new account every time."

And Krebs points out that "Regardless, users can simply skip this step by selecting the option to 'Continue another way.'" Experian then asks for your full name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, email address and chosen password. After that, they require you to successfully answer between three to five multiple-choice security questions whose answers are very often based on public records. When I recreated my account this week, only two of the five questions pertained to my real information, and both of those questions concerned street addresses we've previously lived at — information that is just a Google search away...

Experian will send a message to the old email address tied to the account, saying certain aspects of the user profile have changed. But this message isn't a request seeking verification: It's just a notification from Experian that the account's user data has changed, and the original user is offered zero recourse here other than to a click a link to log in at Experian.com. And of course, a user who receives one of these notices will find that the credentials to their Experian account no longer work. Nor do their PIN or account recovery question, because those have been changed also. Your only option at this point is recreate your account at Experian and steal it back from the ID thieves!
Experian's security measures "are constantly evolving," insisted Experian spokesperson Scott Anderson — though Krebs remains unsatisfied. Anderson said all consumers have the option to activate a multi-factor authentication method that's requested each time they log in to their account. But what good is multi-factor authentication if someone can simply recreate your account with a new phone number and email address?

With 1.4 billion people, India is the second most-populous country in the world.

But a new article in the Washington Post alleges that India has "set a global standard for online censorship." For years, a committee of executives from U.S. technology companies and Indian officials convened every two weeks in a government office to negotiate what could — and could not — be said on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. At the "69A meetings," as the secretive gatherings were informally called, officials from India's information, technology, security and intelligence agencies presented social media posts they wanted removed, citing threats to India's sovereignty and national security, executives and officials who were present recalled. The tech representatives sometimes pushed back in the name of free speech...

But two years ago, these interactions took a fateful turn. Where officials had once asked for a handful of tweets to be removed at each meeting, they now insisted that entire accounts be taken down, and numbers were running in the hundreds. Executives who refused the government's demands could now be jailed, their companies expelled from the Indian market. New regulations had been adopted that year to hold tech employees in India criminally liable for failing to comply with takedown requests, a provision that executives referred to as a "hostage provision." After authorities dispatched anti-terrorism police to Twitter's New Delhi office, Twitter whisked its top India executive out of the country, fearing his arrest, former company employees recounted.

Indian officials say they have accomplished something long overdue: strengthening national laws to bring disobedient foreign companies to heel... Digital and human rights advocates warn that India has perfected the use of regulations to stifle online dissent and already inspired governments in countries as varied as Nigeria and Myanmar to craft similar legal frameworks, at times with near-identical language. India's success in taming internet companies has set off "regulatory contagion" across the world, according to Prateek Waghre, a policy director at India's Internet Freedom Foundation...

Despite the huge size of China's market, companies like Twitter and Facebook were forced to steer clear of the country because Beijing's rules would have required them to spy on users. That left India as the largest potential growth market. Silicon Valley companies were already committed to doing business in India before the government began to tighten its regulations, and today say they have little choice but to obey if they want to remain there.
The Post spoke to Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the deputy technology minister in the BJP government who oversees many of the new regulations, who argued "The shift was really simple: We've defined the laws, defined the rules, and we have said there is zero tolerance to any noncompliance with the Indian law...

"You don't like the law? Don't operate in India," Chandrasekhar added. "There is very little wiggle room."

Wednesday five of the U.S. Republican candidates for president gathered for their third debate in Miami — where they again urged the banning of TikTok in America:

Moderator: Last week congressman Mike Gallagher, who is chairman of the House bipartisan select committee on the Chinese Community party, published a long essay on TikTok... [H]e called the app "predatory... controlled by America's preeminent adversary," used to push propaganda and divide America. It's "spyware," he said — a means of surveillance.

Governor Christie, do you agree with chairman Gallgaher, and if so would you ban or force the sale of TikTok.

Chris Christie: I agree 100% with chairman Gallagher, and let me say this. TikTok is not only spyware. it is polluting the minds of American young people, all throughout this country. And they're doing it intentionally... This is China trying to further divide the United States of America...

In my first week as president, we would ban TikTok. They want to go ahead and sell it, let 'em go ahead and sell it. But I'll tell you another reason we would do it. Facebook's not in China. X is not in China. They're not permitting a free flow of information to the Chinese people from our social media companies. Yet we just open the door and let them do what they're doing. TikTok should be banned because they are poisoning American minds, and I would do it Week One... [Applause from audience.]

Ron DeSantis: [DeSantis began by saying he would also ban TikTok.] I think that China's the top threat we face. They've been very effective at infiltrating different parts of our society... And as the dad of a 6-, 5-, and a 3-year-old, I'm concerned about the data that they're getting from our young people, and what they're doing to pollute the minds of our young people... Their role in our culture? If we ignore that, we're not going to be able to win the fight...

Vivek Ramaswamy: In the last debate [Nikki Haley] made fun of me for joining TikTok? Well her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time, so you might want to take care of your family first... [Audience boos]

Nikki Haley: Leave my daughter out of your voice.

Vivek Ramaswamy: The next generation of Americans are using it, and that's actually the point... Here's the truth. The easy answer is actually to say that we're just going to ban one app. We gotta go further. We have to ban any U.S. company actually transferring U.S. data to the Chinese. Here's a story most people don't know. Airbnb hands over U.S. user data to the CCP. Now that's a U.S.-owned company... Even U.S. companies in Silicon Valley are regularly doing it...

Tim Scott: What we should do is ban TikTok, period... If you cannot ban TikTok, you should eliminate the Chinese presence on the app. Period.
In the previous debate Nikki Haley made her own position clear. "We can't have TikTok in our kids' lives. We need to ban it."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: One of the nation's largest private radiology companies agreed to pay a $450,000 fine after a 2021 ransomware attack led to the exposure of sensitive information from nearly 200,000 patients. In an agreement announced on Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James said US Radiology failed to remediate a vulnerability announced by security company SonicWall in January 2021. US Radiology used the company's firewall to protect its network and provide managed services for many of its partner companies, including the Windsong Radiology Group, which has six facilities across Western New York.

The vulnerability highlighted by the attorney general -- CVE-2021-20016 -- was used by ransomware gangs in several attacks. US Radiology was unable to install the firmware patch for the zero-day because its SonicWall hardware was at an end-of-life stage and was no longer supported. The company planned to replace the hardware in July 2021, but the project was delayed "due to competing priorities and resource restraints." The vulnerability was never addressed, and the company was attacked by an unnamed ransomware gang on December 8, 2021.

An investigation determined that the hacker was able to gain access to files that included the names, dates of birth, patient IDs, dates of service, provider names, types of radiology exams, diagnoses and/or health insurance ID numbers of 198,260 patients. The data exposed during the incident also included driver's license numbers, passport numbers, and Social Security numbers for 82,478 New Yorkers. [...] In addition to the $450,000 penalty, the company will have to upgrade its IT network, hire someone to manage its data security program, encrypt all sensitive patient information and develop a penetration testing program. The company will have to delete patient data "when there is no reasonable business purpose to retain it" and submit compliance reports to the state for two years. "When patients visit a medical facility, they deserve confidence in knowing that their personal information will not be compromised when they are receiving care," said Attorney General James. "US Radiology failed to protect New Yorkers' data and was vulnerable to attack because of outdated equipment. In the face of increasing cyberattacks and more sophisticated scams to steal private data, I urge all companies to make necessary upgrades and security fixes to their computer hardware and systems."

An anonymous reader shares a report: A young man sits in a car, pointing a cellphone camera out of the window, seemingly trying to remain undetected. As he breathes heavily in anticipation, he peers at a T-Mobile store across the road from where he is parked.

Suddenly, there is some commotion inside. An accomplice grabs something off a table where a T-Mobile employee is sitting. The accomplice, dressed in a mask and black baseball cap, then bursts out of the store and clumsily sprints towards the car. The man in the vehicle starts laughing, then giggling uncontrollably like a child. The pair got what they came for: a T-Mobile employee's tablet, the sort workers use everyday when dealing with customer support issues or setting up a new phone.

To the people in the car, what this tablet is capable of is much more valuable than iPad hardware itself. The tablet lets them essentially become T-Mobile. It can grant them the ability to take over target phone numbers, and redirect any text messages or calls for the victim to the hacker's own device, as part of a hack called a SIM swap. From there, they can easily break into email, cryptocurrency, and social media accounts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The government of Maine has confirmed over a million state residents had personal information stolen in a data breach earlier this year by a Russia-linked ransomware gang. In a statement published Thursday, the Maine government said hackers exploited a vulnerability in its MOVEit file-transfer system, which stored sensitive data on state residents. The hackers used the vulnerability to access and download files belonging to certain state agencies between May 28 and May 29, the statement read. The Maine government said it was disclosing the incident and notifying affected residents as its assessment of the impacted files "was recently completed."

Maine said that the stolen information may include a person's name, date of birth, Social Security number, driver's license and other state or taxpayer identification numbers. Some individuals had medical and health insurance information taken. The statement said the state holds information about residents "for various reasons, such as residency, employment, or interaction with a state agency," and that the data it holds varies by person. According to the state's breakdown of which agencies are affected, more than half of the stolen data relates to Maine's Department of Health and Human Services, with up to about a third of the data affecting the Maine's Department of Education. The remaining data affects various other agencies, including Maine's Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Maine's Department of Corrections, though the government notes that the breakdown of information is subject to change. More than 1.3 million people live in the state of Maine, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Tumblr may be nearing its end after its management sent memos to staff with the Lord Tennyson quote about having "loved and lost." Ars Technica reports: Internet statesman and Waxy.org proprietor Andy Baio posted what is "apparently an internal Automattic memo making the rounds on Tumblr" to Threads. The memo, written to employees at WordPress.com parent company Automattic, which bought Tumblr from Verizon's media arm in 2019, is titled or subtitled "You win or you learn." The posted memo states that a majority of the 139 employees working on product and marketing at Tumblr (in a team apparently named "Bumblr") will "switch to other divisions." Those working in "Happiness" (Automattic's customer support and service division) and "T&S" (trust and safety) would remain.

"We are at the point where after 600+ person-years of effort put into Tumblr since the acquisition in 2019, we have not gotten the expected results from our effort, which was to have revenue and usage above its previous peaks," the posted memo reads. After quotes and anecdotes about love, loss, mountain climbing, and learning on the journey, the memo notes that nobody will be let go and that team members can make a ranked list of their top three preferred assignments elsewhere inside Automattic.

Omegle, a popular online chat service that allowed individuals to connect and chat with strangers, has shut down after 15 years citing growing misuse of the platform, including in committing "unspeakably heinous crimes." From a report: The site, founded in 2009 by a then 18-year-old programmer and high school student Leif K-Brooks, was bootstrapped throughout its existence. Though it waned in popularity over the years, it still pulled about 50 million visitors last month, according to analytics firm SimilarWeb.

Mark Tyson reports via Tom's Hardware: A commercial smartphone or Linux computer can be used to crack RSA-2048 encryption, according to a prominent research scientist. Dr Ed Gerck is preparing a research paper with the details but couldn't hold off from bragging about his incredible quantum computing achievement (if true) on his LinkedIn profile. Let us be clear: the claims seem spurious, but it should be recognized that the world isn't ready for an off-the-shelf system that can crack RSA-2048, as major firms, organizations, and governments haven't yet transitioned to encryption tech that is secured for the post-quantum era.

In his social media post, Gerck states that a humble device like a smartphone can crack the strongest RSA encryption keys in use today due to a mathematical technique that "has been hidden for about 2,500 years -- since Pythagoras." He went on to make clear that no cryogenics or special materials were used in the RSA-2048 key-cracking feat. BankInfoSecurity reached out to Gerck in search of some more detailed information about his claimed RSA-2048 breakthrough and in the hope of some evidence that what is claimed is possible and practical. Gerck shared an abstract of his upcoming paper. This appears to show that instead of using Shor's algorithm to crack the keys, a system based on quantum mechanics was used, and it can run on a smartphone or PC.

In some ways, it is good that the claimed breakthrough doesn't claim to use Shor's algorithm. Alan Woodward, a professor of computer science at the University of Surrey, told BankInfoSecurity that no quantum computer in existence has enough gates to implement Shor's algorithm and break RSA-2048. So at least this part of Gerck's explanation checks out. However, the abstract of Gerck's paper looks like it is "all theory proving various conjectures - and those proofs are definitely in question," according to Woodward. The BankInfoSecurity report on Gerck's "QC Algorithms: Faster Calculation of Prime Numbers" paper quotes other skeptics, most of whom are waiting for more information and proofs before they organize a standing ovation for Gerck.

Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat writes: : A recent social media post by an Aussie received a deluge of replies and comments. His comment? "I'm so f***ing tired of 'tech' being used to solve an 'issue' but only making everything worse and more inconvenient for everybody," they wrote.

His comment was in response to going to a restaurant and having only a QR code to order from — literally a menu at the table with only the QR code on it. The app required to order from it "proceeded to charge a 6.5% venue surcharge, a 2% payment processing fee, and then had the audacity to ask for a tip (10%, 15%, 25%) as the cherry on top".
From Australia's News.com.au: Hundreds of others enthusiastically agreed and many added they also didn't like being asked to enter their personal details. "You're waiting your own table and paying an extra fee for the privilege. It's f***ed," one person responded. "It's also a big stinking FU to anyone old or not tech savvy. All just to hoover up your data," another added.

Some, however, shared they preferred using QR codes to order their food — they removed the need to move to order more and limited engagement with staff. "I actually like the QR ordering because I don't like people, but the surcharges and tipping can f*** off," one said. "I love the QR codes — don't need to leave the table to order another beer," someone else wrote...

Jonathan Holmes-Ross, owner of board game restaurant, The Lost Dice in Adelaide told news.com.au that the use of QR code ordering had let his eatery "reduce costs by around 25%... We no longer have to take orders, work out bills and manually take payments," he said. "This gives our wait staff more time to look after our customers, and the kitchen has excellent order information as the accuracy of the orders is great. We now have very few mistakes saving us time and waste. We can also mark items that have run out instantly on the app by using stock levels, again avoiding the disappointment of (the) customer."

The Washington Post looks at the "millions of independent creators reshaping how people get their news, especially the youngest viewers." News consumption hit a tipping point around the globe during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, with more people turning to social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Instagram than to websites maintained by traditional news outlets, according to the latest Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. One in 5 adults under 24 use TikTok as a source for news, the report said, up five percentage points from last year. According to Britain's Office of Communications, young adults in the United Kingdom now spend more time watching TikTok than broadcast television. This shift has been driven in part by a desire for "more accessible, informal, and entertaining news formats, often delivered by influencers rather than journalists," the Reuters Institute report says, adding that consumers are looking for news that "feels more relevant...."

While a few national publications such as the New York Times and The Washington Post have seen their digital audiences grow, allowing them to reach hundreds of thousands more readers than they did a decade ago, the economics of journalism have shifted. Well-known news outlets have seen a decline in the amount of traffic flowing to them from social media sites, and some of the money that advertisers previously might have spent with them is now flowing to creators. Even some outlets that began life on the internet have struggled, with BuzzFeed News shuttering in April, Vice entering into bankruptcy and Gawker shutting down for a second time in February. The trend is likely to continue. "There are no reasonable grounds for expecting that those born in the 2000s will suddenly come to prefer old-fashioned websites, let alone broadcast and print, simply because they grow older," Reuters Institute Director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen said in the report, which is based on an online survey of roughly 94,000 adults in 46 national markets, including the United States...

While many online news creators are, like Al-Khatahtbeh, trained journalists collecting new information, others are aggregators and partisan commentators sometimes masquerading as journalists. The transformation has made the public sphere much more "chaotic and contradictory," said Jay Rosen, an associate professor of journalism at New York University and author of the PressThink blog, adding that it has never been easier to be both informed and misinformed about world events. "The internet makes possible much more content, and reaching all kinds of people," Rosen said. "But it also makes disinformation spread."
The article notes that "some content creators don't follow the same ethical guidelines that are guideposts in more traditional newsrooms, especially creators who seek to build audiences based on outrage."

The article also points out that "The ramifications for society are still coming into focus."

Ivan Mehta reports via TechCrunch: Instagram head Adam Mosseri said today that a Threads API is in the works. This will give developers a chance to create different apps and experiences around Threads. Mosseri was responding to journalist Casey Newton, who was conversing with a user about a TweetDeck-like experience for Threads. The Instagram head expressed apprehension about publishers posting a bunch of content and in turn, overshadowing creator content.

"We're working on it. My concern is that it'll mean a lot more publisher content and not much more creator content, but it still seems like something we need to get done," Mosseri said in a post. Later, an engineer working on Threads said that the team would start with endpoints for publishing content for the API. [...]

While Mosseri is concerned about publishers pushing an overwhelming amount of content through API integration, creators also need different tools to post various types of content. It also makes it easier for developers to design features suited for a specific platform if there is the option for an API integration.

LinkedIn, the business-focused social network owned by Microsoft, on Wednesday said it now has more than 1 billion members and is adding more AI features for paying users. From a report: Crossing the billion-users mark puts LinkedIn -- where members maintain a resume-like profile of their education, work experience and professional skills -- in the top-tier of social media networks that include rivals such as Meta Platforms. About 80% of recent members are signing up from outside of the United States, the company has said.

LinkedIn has a free tier of membership but also offers subscriptions. Members of its $39.99-a-month tier will get new AI features that can tell a user, who may be plowing through dozens of job postings, whether they're a good candidate based on the information in their profile. The system can also recommend profile changes to make the user more competitive for a job.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But when it comes to tackling a tricky task, researchers have found that getting angry can also be a powerful motivator. The experiments suggest people who are angry perform better on a set of challenging tasks than those who are emotionally neutral. "These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success," said Dr Heather Lench, the first author of the study.

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (PDF), details how researchers at Texas A&M University conducted experiments involving more than 1,000 people, and analyzed survey data from more than 1,400 people, to explore the possible impact of anger on people in various circumstances. In one experiment, students were shown images previously found to elicit anger, desire, amusement, sadness or no particular emotion at all. Participants were subsequently asked to solve a series of anagrams. The results reveal that for a challenging set of anagrams, those who were angry did better than those in the other possible emotional states -- although no difference was seen for easy anagrams.

The researchers say one explanation could be down to a link between anger and greater persistence, with the team finding those who were angry spent more time on the difficult set of anagrams. In another experiment, participants who were angry did better at dodging flags in a skiing video game than those who were neutral or sad, and were on a par with those who felt amusement or desire. "This pattern could indicate that general physical arousal had a benefit for game scores, as this would be greater in anger, amused, and desire conditions compared to the sad and neutral conditions," the researchers write. However, no such differences in performance was found when it came to an easier video game.

China's popular social media platforms are requiring "self-media" accounts with over 500,000 followers to disclose real-name information, prompting concerns over increased doxxing and privacy among some users. Reuters reports: China's most popular social media platforms on Tuesday announced that "self-media" accounts with more than 500,000 followers will be asked to display real-name information, a controversial measure that has prompted concerns over doxxing and privacy among some users. "Self-media" includes news and information not necessarily approved by the government, a genre of online content regulators have cracked down on in recent years to "purify" China's cyberspace. [...]

Rumors of the new policy had prompted lively debate among users. Some, like former state media editor Hu Xijin, have defended the measure as necessary in order to force influential accounts to use more responsible speech. Others, however, have expressed concerns that the measure would make doxxing easier and platforms would further remove online users' anonymity in the future.

The new measures will remove the anonymity of thousands of influencers on social media platforms that are used daily by hundreds of millions of Chinese. Several of the platforms said that accounts with over 1 million followers would be affected first and those that do not comply would face restrictions in their online traffic and income as a consequence.