In a Tuesday meeting with Indian government officials, Mark Zuckerberg apologized for child sexual abuse material and AI-generated deepfake content that had appeared on Meta’s platforms in the country, according to local media outlets.
Zuckerberg’s apology came one month after the BBC reported that Instagram had run ads for the promotion and sale of child sexual abuse images in India. After the government ordered Meta to remove the ads, the company agreed and said it would bolster its detection systems.
Separately, Meta global affairs executive Joel Kaplan apologized to the Indian government for a post from Prime Minister Narendra Modi that had been restricted by Facebook. “I apologized to the minister on behalf of Meta for the error restricting PM Modi’s post,” Kaplan said, per Reuters. The post in question showed Modi addressing students amid the country’s recent wave of youth-led protests.
Citing the restriction placed on Modi’s post, the Indian parliament has considered revoking the safe harbor immunity afforded to Meta. Such a change would make the company liable for content posted by its users and could prevent Meta from legally operating its platforms in India, which is one of its most important growth markets. “Zuckerberg must apologize within three days,” said Nishikant Dubey, the chair of a parliamentary communications and technology panel. He then threatened to trigger “a nationwide flood” of police complaints targeting Meta.
Some of the state’s hostilities toward Meta have already boiled over. Last week, law enforcement in India — an authoritarian country with few protections for dissenting speech — opened an investigation into the head of Meta’s Indian operations for allowing the posting of “abusive” videos depicting Modi.
$567 million
In New Mexico on Thursday, Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta to pay $567 million for contributing “to the current mental health crisis among New Mexico’s youth.” The penalty is separate from the $375 million that a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay earlier this year. Biedscheid also ordered the company to change how its platforms treat underage users. The judge mandated that Meta restrict how much time minors can spend on apps each month and prevent push notifications from being sent to their phones between 10 pm and 7 am. Meta said it plans to appeal Biedscheid’s ruling.
This Week in Zuck:
In the US and Europe, Meta has been paid to run dozens of ads featuring AI-generated child sexual abuse material, according to findings from a tech watchdog group. “These ads made no effort to mask the images or hide what they were promoting,” said Tech Transparency Project director Katie Paul. “It’s important to point out that this isn’t content posted by third parties on Facebook or Instagram, these are ads that were reviewed, approved, and allowed to run by Meta, never encountering interference while the company collected the ad dollars.” (Wired)
To downplay privacy concerns stemming from Meta’s camera-equipped smart glasses, the company has repeatedly pointed to the blinking LED light that activates when the device is capturing video. But an investigation by Engadget found the indicator light remains easy to disable despite a recent Meta update that claimed to block aftermarket modifications. (Engadget)
Meta said on Wednesday that one of its AI models had escaped its testing area and hacked into a separate company’s workspace after gaining internet access. “A misconfiguration by Irregular, an independent testing company Meta uses, inadvertently allowed one of our models access to the internet during evaluation,” a Meta spokesperson said. (Washington Post)
In a Tuesday meeting with employees from Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Nvidia, the White House said that it would not require open-weight large language models to undergo government safety testing before they are released to the public. (Reuters)
In 2016, Priscilla Chan, Zuckerberg’s wife, cofounded a school for impoverished students in the San Francisco Bay Area. But the Primary School was closed in June after the centibillionaire couple’s nonprofit, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, pulled funding. “It was a godsend school,” a parent of one of the students told the Wall Street Journal, adding that the closure was “crushing.” Chan has said the academic performance of Primary School students was not what “anyone would have wanted.” The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has opted to focus its giving efforts on scientific research, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence initiatives. However, a separate nonprofit, the Chan Zuckerberg Kauai Community Fund, recently donated $330,000 to a school system on the Hawaiian island where the couple owns more than 2,300 acres. (Wall Street Journal)
The information landscape in the United States has reached a crisis point. Billionaires are using social media platforms and media outlets to advance their political and financial interests.
A Trump loyalist just seized control of CBS, CNN, and TikTok’s US operations.
Google paid Trump $25 million to settle a bogus lawsuit.
The Washington Post used editorials to advance the financial interests of owner Jeff Bezos
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg installed a Republican operative as head of policy
The only way to fight back is to build up independent media that is free from the influence of billionaires and corporate America.
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SpaceX nears deal to gain access to 130,000 acres of coastal land from Louisiana
SpaceX is close to completing a deal with the state of Louisiana to gain access to 130,000 acres of coastal land south of Lafayette. The parcel may be used to add another rocket launch site along the Gulf of Mexico.
From The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate:
The site for the planned facility, known as Pecan Island, is at the center of a complex settlement agreement resolving dozens of coastal lawsuits that blame ExxonMobil for pollution and land loss.
According to a source with firsthand knowledge of the agreement who was not at liberty to speak publicly, the settlement will involve SpaceX receiving control of the land, some 130,000 acres in all, whether through a sale, long-term lease or other type of arrangement.
The deal, which is expected to be announced this month by Gov. Jeff Landry, will be the latest economic development coup for an administration that has attracted deals of unprecedented size and scale to the state, including one of the world’s largest AI data centers, some of its largest LNG export terminals and a major new steel mill.
SpaceX has not commented publicly on the deal. However, in May, the company referenced its plans in Louisiana by saying, “It’s no secret that we intend to launch Starship a lot, targeting thousands of flights per year. That cadence will require the ability to launch from many different locations, so we are constantly exploring to find viable sites to expand Starship operations in the future, both domestically and internationally.”
In South Texas, where SpaceX operates its only current Starship launch site, the company’s operations have caused significant environmental destruction, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, a local tribe, and conservation groups in Texas and across the border in Mexico.
“Starlink will deliver a majority of the world’s internet”
That was one of the far-fetched predictions that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared on Tuesday during the company’s first public earnings call. He then claimed that Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite communications provider, could achieve that goal in “less than 10 years.” Part of his vision involves Starlink overtaking Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile in the cellular network industry.
For her part, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s COO, attempted to temper expectations, sharing a much less remarkable forecast, as noted by TechCrunch. “In the years ahead, we expect Starlink will represent a significant portion of global internet traffic, which Elon also talked about,” she said.
For the quarter ending in June, SpaceX reported 12 million Starlink subscribers globally, an increase of more than six million from the same quarter last year. But year-over-year revenue per subscriber fell to $66 from $85, a decline indicative of the low-cost plans that SpaceX has rolled out internationally and for US customers who use Starlink as a supplement to their primary internet provider.
Growth in Starlink revenue failed to generate the investor excitement needed to return SpaceX stock to its initial public offering price of $135. It closed at $114.92 on Thursday, with Musk’s commitment to spending billions of dollars on AI infrastructure appearing to weigh on the stock.
“Even with its marked volatility since the IPO, we think investors are still factoring more optimistic scenarios for Starship reusability and the commercial advantage of orbital datacenters than are most probable at this point,” wrote Morningstar analyst Nicolas Owens. “We see SpaceX’s stock as overvalued: they traded at around twice our fair value estimate after hours on Aug. 4.”
This Week in Musk:
xAI, SpaceX’s artificial intelligence subsidiary, does not plan to remove the unpermitted mobile turbines from its makeshift power plant in Mississippi until July of next year. The company, which uses dozens of turbines to power its data centers in Tennessee, announced the plan as part of its new arrangement with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to slowly transition to a traditional power plant. “What this really means is that xAI is planning to saddle families in Memphis and Mississippi with dangerous, illegal, and unregulated pollution from its unpermitted power plant for at least another year, saying it will continue running its unpermitted polluting gas turbines until at least July of 2027,” the Southern Environmental Law Center said. (Memphis Flyer)
A contractor hired to build SpaceX’s data centers in Memphis, Tennessee, has accused the company of failing to pay more than $136 million. (Action News 5)
Last week, a federal judge shot down a last-minute request from SpaceX to block a Minnesota law banning deepfake nudification technology. xAI currently faces several lawsuits for the use of its models to create child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual explicit images of adults. (NBC News)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has lobbied Donald Trump to change a SpaceX policy prohibiting the use of its Starlink network for military strikes. (The Atlantic)
Scientists from Boston University confirmed that a defunct, four-ton SpaceX rocket struck the Moon on Wednesday while traveling 5,400 miles per hour. The explosion from the impact caused a plume of debris and created a 60-foot crater on the lunar surface. (Associated Press)
Tesla was named in a $10.3 million negligence suit over a 2024 crash in which the plaintiff, who was taking a Model Y for a test-drive, claims an accident was caused by the vehicle’s “Insane Mode” being engaged without her knowledge. (USA Today)
Amazon to release new Melania docuseries
Following Amazon’s January release of Melania, a vanity documentary about the first lady, the company is preparing to release another project focused on her that will come out on its Prime streaming service.
“This fall, we are following the film with a docuseries surrounding the first lady, surrounding Melania Trump. It’s a completely different look at her world [than the film],” Marc Beckman, a senior adviser to Melania Trump, said in a Tuesday interview with Real America’s Voice.
Beckman added that the series will give “viewers a little bit of a peek as to what happens right at the beginning of the new 47th presidential administration… We open the window, a little bit, into her private life, her marriage, her family.”
After Amazon licensed and distributed the first Melania hagiography, Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder, executive chairman, and top shareholder, was accused by Democratic lawmakers of attempting to curry favor with the Trump administration. As part of the deal, Amazon paid Melania Trump $10.7 million in licensing fees. It’s unclear whether the Trumps will receive further compensation for the upcoming docuseries.
While Bezos denies having played a role in Amazon’s deal for Melania, his companies have been awarded huge federal contracts under Trump’s second term, especially in the months since the film’s release.
Just last week, the Air Force Research Laboratory tacked on another $11.7 million to its contract with Blue Origin, Bezos’ rocket and satellite company. The Air Force is paying the company a total of $13 million to research how the military could use rockets to quickly move military equipment across the globe.
This Week in Bezos:
On Tuesday, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport sued Amazon, alleging the company violated federal antitrust law as part of a wage suppression scheme against the delivery companies it contracts with and their drivers. “My office is acting to stand up for thousands of New Jersey delivery drivers who are being exploited every day by one of the world’s biggest, richest corporations,” said Davenport. “As our complaint alleges, Amazon built a company worth trillions while subjecting drivers in its delivery network to artificially low pay and punishing working conditions thanks to its overwhelming power in the labor market.” (State of New Jersey, NJ.com)
Even as Bezos’ companies increase their output of Earth-heating carbon emissions, the centibillionaire has sought to sell himself as an environmentalist. His latest greenwashing initiative involves the Bezos Earth Fund partnering with actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s Re:wild on a $200 million project committed “exclusively to the recovery” of endangered flora and fauna. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Amazon stock hit an all-time high on Monday, with its market capitalization surpassing $3 trillion. Bezos, in turn, has taken the opportunity to cash in. He recently submitted a regulatory filing to sell approximately $4.1 billion worth of shares. (CNBC)
Amazon has promised to pay customers an unspecified portion of the $600 million it received in federal refunds after the Supreme Court struck down many of Donald Trump’s tariffs. However, it appears that the vast majority of Amazon customers who were stuck with inflated costs last year will not see a tariff refund. “We have identified a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we passed specific import charges on to customers, and when we receive those refunds, we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them,” said Amazon chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky. “Otherwise, like other large retailers, we’ll utilize refunds to continue to invest in low prices for customers.” (CNN)
Oligarch Roundup
Nevada’s Republican governor defends Trump for “taking care of his billionaire friends.” Gov. Joe Lombardo, who made the comment while appearing alongside Donald Trump in Las Vegas on Wednesday, argued that the president providing special treatment to billionaires is good for average Americans. “When the press and media runs [Trump] down, they think about, ‘He’s taking care of his billionaire friends,’” said Lombardo, who was flanked by Trump on a stage at the Red Rock Casino Resort. “Those billionaire friends provide jobs. And unless you take care of them, those jobs are absent.” He made the argument to defend trickle-down economics and rebuke “socialism,” adding, “The government doesn’t have the ability to hand out infinite amounts of money.” (MS Now)
Antitrust trial over Paramount’s acquisition of Warner to be held in March. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the 12-day trial will begin on March 2. The lawsuit, brought by 12 state attorneys general, argues that Paramount’s $111 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery would reduce competition in the film and television industries. Delays triggered by the suit could result in up to $2.6 billion in ticking fees for Paramount’s Larry and David Ellison, the oligarchic father-and-son duo leading the megamerger. In a recent op-ed, David Ellison, a Trump ally, suggested the lawsuit was motivated by “speculation about my politics” and “whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN.” Despite having already led an ideologically conservative overhaul of CBS News, the younger Ellison claimed that he does “not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views.” (The Hollywood Reporter)
Larry Ellison’s big bet on AI may backfire. The cloud computing company’s $129.5 billion in debt stands at more than four times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Oracle’s creditworthiness is now approaching “junk” classification from top ratings agencies. Driving its ballooning debt is Larry Ellison’s frantic rush to construct data centers to lease computational power to OpenAI, another firm with dubious financials, and other AI companies. (Reuters, New York Times)
California Democratic Party endorses billionaire tax proposal, defying Gov. Gavin Newsom. “This endorsement puts to rest the idea that California democrats are not united by the billionaire tax — they are,” said Dave Regan, who leads SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, the union leading the ballot measure to impose a one-time, 5% tax on California billionaires. “Polling shows that more than 80% of registered Democrats support this critical solution to our healthcare crisis and now the Democratic party of California has officially embraced that strong support through this endorsement.” (Politico)
These tech scumbags all need to be taken down.
These were not real apologies.
Just words required in order for them to continue doing business in a country and avoid losing lots of money.
Obviously they were not actually sorry .... otherwise they'd have fixed the issue well before it got to this stage.