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Russia issues ‘metaverse’ warning
6 Feb, 2022 09:35
Authorities expressed concern about drug dealing
and VR’s influence on the physical world
Regulators in Russia are looking into the possibility of new restrictions on virtual reality (VR), saying they are worried that it could enable illegal activity, while acknowledging that the “metaverse” also offers new possibilities for human interaction.
The Scientific Technical Center of Roskomnadzor, the federal agency responsible for monitoring mass media, released a report on Wednesday, assessing what it sees as the potential risks and possibilities of VR spaces where people are able to interact across national borders.
The term “metaverse,” which comes out of science fiction, refers to 3D virtual worlds focused on human social connection, and it has increasingly been the focus of tech companies, including the US company Facebook, which recently rebranded as Meta.
According to the report, the metaverse could lend itself to illegal transactions conducted in cryptocurrency, including trade between people of different nationalities that could violate border regulations. The authors claim that virtual spaces would be ripe for drug dealing or trafficking of other banned substances.
The report also cites concerns about the consequences that virtual interaction has for human behavior. The authors write, “The transformation of perception on account of being located in the metaverse will have a meaningful cultural effect on society and will change social behavior, including reducing the importance of moral and ethical norms due to the use of a virtual avatar.” They warn that this could particularly affect children, “the most vulnerable group in the new metaverse.”
As I say frequently, it's children who pay the price for adults' madness. Also, paedophiles are the first demographic, IMHO, to master any new social media platform and are there waiting for our children to arrive. For example, a beta tester for Meta was online for less than a minute before her avatar was gang-raped. Think about that! These are beta testers who immediately raped another beta tester.
The frightening thing about Meta is that paedos and rapists and people who like to encourage children to suicide will be much more willing to express their evil natures through an avatar. Social media has already messed up a generation of children and this will raise that destruction level to a whole nuther degree.
Pornographers will take over a good portion of this platform, because they can and because there is money to be made.
Is there any way to stop this madness?
In addition to assessing the potential risks of virtual reality, the report also provides an overview of its possibilities, including the growth of new marketplaces, such as an increased demand for video games and online forms of entertainment. The authors also claim that increased online life has made new forms of political activity possible, and they refer to Greta Thunberg, the activist who raised awareness for the dangers of climate change using her online profile.
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Mark Zuckerberg could face jail time under new law,
minister warns
UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said Big Tech bosses could ‘absolutely’
be held responsible for failing to remove harmful online content
under UK's new Online Safety Bill. © AFP / Josh Edelson
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Big Tech executives risk ending up in jail if their social media platforms do not block content deemed harmful under upcoming online safety laws, UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has warned.
Speaking to Times Radio on Saturday, Dorries said Zuckerberg, who heads Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and other tech bosses could “absolutely” be put behind bars if they did not comply with the government’s draft Online Safety Bill. She expressed hope that the legislation would be a “notice to the online platforms to say here it is, we’re letting you know what it is now, so start doing what you need to do.”
Under the bill’s proposed ‘duty of care’ regime, communications regulator Ofcom’s powers could jail tech executives for up to two years for failing to remove illegal content, The Telegraph reported. The government had announced on Friday that several new criminal offenses had been added to the bill, including revenge porn, hate crime, fraud, the sale of illegal drugs or weapons, the promotion or facilitation of suicide, people-smuggling, and sexual exploitation.
The government claimed that naming these offenses would enable Ofcom to take enforcement action against non-compliant firms more quickly. But Dorries said these platforms “don’t need to wait for the bill” since they “have the powers to [take action] now.”
What [tech firms] need to do now is to remove those harmful algorithms on [their] platforms. Stop directing people to suicide chat rooms, stop allowing [pile-on] hate, stop allowing people-trafficking, stop allowing threats of hate, violence and rape, and remove it all now.
However, critics like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) have dismissed her claims as “rhetoric.”
Andy Burrows, NSPCC head of child safety online policy, told The Independent that “tech bosses wouldn’t be personally liable for the harmful effects of their algorithms or failing to prevent grooming, and could only be prosecuted for failing to supply information to the regulator.”
Meanwhile, the Labour Party called for tougher sanctions against senior tech executives, with shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell stating that Ofcom would face a “David and Goliath situation” when “taking on some of the biggest tech firms in the world” and needed “access to the full range of tools in its belt, including making top bosses criminally liable for persistently failing to tackle online harms.”
Meta or other tech giants have not commented on Dorries’ claims as yet.
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German state-owned broadcaster drops staffers
after antisemitism probe
Five Deutsche Welle personnel were fired, though the investigation found
no “structural” issue with antisemitism
Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public broadcaster, announced this week that five staff members had been let go after a probe which looked into antisemitic comments made on and off the job, and also examined its recruiting processes, as well as the diversity of guest speakers.
Besides the five staffers, four of whom worked at the Arabic desk, some freelancers for the outlet have also been terminated, and the investigation is ongoing.
So far, it has not uncovered evidence of a systematic problem at the public broadcaster, which receives hundreds of millions in federal funds every year.
Individual instances of antisemitism include one journalist referring to Israel as a “cancer,” according to Bild newspaper, and a recruiter comparing Jewish people to “ants,” and even Holocaust denial, according to the investigative report from Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) that helped kick off the internal investigation.
The probe began in December and was conducted by independent investigators. Only publicly available information like social media posts was analyzed for it.
The company also announced that it would be providing staff members and business partners with “detailed guidelines” on what defines antisemitism, and there will be “additional hires” for the Israel correspondence office.
Also posted on my other blog under "Perverted Lives of the Rich and Famous"
Another One Gone At CNN: Gollust Announces Her Resignation
From Network
Carmine Sabia
February 16, 2022
OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Not to mention commentary which reflects the editor's opinion.
It has been around two weeks since former CNN head Jeff Zucker resigned from his position at the network, citing an inappropriate relationship with a co-worker, and now that co-worker has resigned.
Allison Gollust, the former lieutenant to Zucker, resigned after an investigation “into issues associated with” Chris Cuomo, a former CNN anchor, and his brother Andrew, the former governor of New York, a memo sent to staffers by WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said, CNN reported.
“Based on interviews of more than 40 individuals and a review of over 100,000 texts and emails, the investigation found violations of Company policies, including CNN’s News Standards and Practices, by Jeff Zucker, Allison Gollust, and Chris Cuomo,” he said to staffers.
“We have the highest standards of journalistic integrity at CNN, and those rules must apply to everyone equally,” he said. “Given the information provided to me in the investigation, I strongly believe we have taken the right actions and the right decisions have been made.”
So, is this an admission that with Cuomo, Zucker and Gollust the highest standards of journalistic integrity were not met?
Gollust issued a statement announcing her departure from the company on Tuesday.
“WarnerMedia’s statement tonight is an attempt to retaliate against me and change the media narrative in the wake of their disastrous handling of the last two weeks,” she said. “It is deeply disappointing that after spending the past nine years defending and upholding CNN’s highest standards of journalistic integrity, I would be treated this way as I leave. But I do so with my head held high, knowing that I gave my heart and soul to working with the finest journalists in the world.”
There's that phrase again. Apparently, Gollust has over-estimated her standards.
Reports have indicated that Chris Cuomo is getting set for a major lawsuit against the network.
After his former boss Jeff Zucker exited the network, sources say that Cuomo wants a settlement of around $60 million, The New York Post reported.
Multiple sources tell Page Six that Cuomo — who was fired in December for helping his brother, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fend off sexual harassment allegations — is ready to dig his heels in by claiming that Zucker not only knew about his dealings with the governor but that the network boss had his own inappropriate dealings with Andrew.
And he is prepared to demand not the $18 million left on his contract, but as much as $60 million.
“He wants Megyn Kelly money,” sources said to The Post.
“Chris insists he never did anything for his brother Andrew that Zucker didn’t know about,” a source said.
“His camp believes Zucker wasn’t fired for an inappropriate relationship with Allison Gollust. Everybody knew about that and nobody cared.
“What he believes happened is WarnerMedia found something in their investigation into Chris, perhaps internal memos or documents which revealed more about Zucker’s involvement with Andrew Cuomo. Gollust was just a convenient excuse,” they said.
That's been my theory ever since Zucker stepped down.
“Chris intends to fight for every dollar on his contract, and loss of income from the 15 to 20 years left in his career, had Zucker not orchestrated a ‘f–k-job’ on him. He could ask for as much as $80 million but CNN isn’t going to pay that. But there’s an argument he could ask for as much as $60 million,” the source said.
Another source said that “Chris is telling people in the Hamptons he was wrongly fired, humiliated, his career has been ruined, and he wants Megyn Kelly money.”
For reference, Kelly got $69 million from NBC after she was fired in 2019 when she defended blackface on her show.
Sources have said that Zucker “coached Andrew Cuomo [on] what to say in his press conferences, particularly how to hit back at President Donald Trump. He advised him when, and where, and what to say. He chastised Andrew if he appeared on other networks.
“When this all finally comes out, it will put an end to the big cry fest going on at CNN over Zucker’s ousting,” they said.
WarnerMedia chief executive Jason Kilar met with CNN staff in DC on Monday the idea of a severance package for Cuomo was talked about and staff did not appear to be on board.
Jake Tapper, the host of the CNN show “The Lead” referred to Cuomo as a “terrorist” who wants to attack the network.
“How do we get past this perception that this is the bad guy winning?” New York Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum reported.
You can't! They're all bad guys.
“Did you think about what message it sends to the journalists in the company and also to the larger public that someone can be found to break with those journalistic standards and then get paid handsomely for it?” CNN host Don Lemon said, the Wall Street Journal reported.
It's a sad commentary considering how journalistic standards have fallen so far in recent decades.
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This is how Deep State works...
Journalist claims he was ‘canceled’ for investigating Fauci
The fired journalist had earlier revealed that the White House chief medical advisor
was being paid more than President Biden himself
A longtime Forbes contributor said on Monday that he was sacked from the magazine for his coverage of the financial dealings of Dr. Anthony Fauci, including a report on the White House chief medical advisor’s whopping $350,000 retirement package.
Adam Andrzejewski had been working with Forbes for the last eight years, coming up with more than 200 columns for the outlet.
But it’s the four pieces on Fauci last year that got him in trouble, the investigative journalist insisted in his appearance on Fox News.
“Clearly Forbes editors didn’t want our oversight of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s finances” and that’s the reason his column was “canceled,” Andrzejewski, who is also the CEO and founder of the website OpenTheBooks.com, told host Tucker Carlson.
According to the journalist, six top executives at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently sent him and a Forbes’ top content officer an email with complaints over his coverage.
“It was couched as a corrections email, but the corrections – there [were] basically no substantial corrections – and they quibbled about small things in my column,” he said.
In spite of all this, the letter became “the excuse that Forbes used to cancel the column.”
Within 24 hours after that email, he was contacted by his editor at Forbes, who told him that he was “barred from publishing on Anthony Fauci any longer,” Andrzejewski said.
The journalist reminded the audience that his pieces on the White House chief medical advisor, who became one of the most often-mentioned names in US media during the Covid-19 pandemic, were “tip of the spear” and garnered millions of views for Forbes.
Among other things, he revealed that Fauci was the highest-paid government employee in 2019. Fauci makes $456,000 annually, according to the journalist, which is more than US President Joe Biden, whose salary stands at $400,000 per year. Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady – who, incidentally, works as chief bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health – and Fauci himself made 1.7 million in 2020.
“So if you take their salaries, tack on the taxpayer-paid cost of federal benefits at 30 percent, the two Faucis, their household income, paid for by taxpayers every year is $900,000,” Andrzejewski said, estimating the net worth of the Fauci family at $10.4 million.
When contacted by the New York Post, Forbes spokesman Bill Hankes confirmed that Andrzejewski was no longer working with them. “Forbes regularly removes contributors who don’t meet our high editorial standards,” he explained, while pointing out the journalist’s previous columns of Fauci were still available on the magazine’s website.
There's that phrase again - high editorial standards. In spite of that, the columns are still available on Forbes' website. Go figure!
The paper also featured Andrzejewski, who insisted that “today, if you are an independent voice, outside of the organs of state authority, you are in jeopardy. I am an example of this. My column at Forbes became an example of that.”
