Privacy
Meta Faces Trial as Four States Seek Billions Over Child Safety
Four states take Meta to court over alleged child harm; rogue ransomware affiliate scams victims; MIT study finds AI image attribution decay.
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Meta Trial Opens in Oakland as Four States Seek Billions Over Child Safety Practices
A trial over whether Meta Platforms designed Instagram and Facebook to harm children opened Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California. California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey are seeking billions of dollars in damages and changes to how Meta runs its platforms, with a jury set to decide the case. These four states were among 29 that sued the company in 2023 over child safety and privacy; the other 25 states will go to trial later. Meta also faces separate lawsuits in state courts, including one underway in Tennessee.
Rogue Ransomware Affiliate Poses as Recovery Firm to Steal Payments
A suspected ransomware affiliate is posing as a recovery service called Ransom Busters, contacting victims before attacks become public and claiming it can provide decryption keys and delete stolen data for a fee. GuidePoint Security’s Research and Intelligence Team (GRIT) disclosed this activity after responding to several recent ransomware attacks where victims received emails from Ransom Busters. The messages were suspicious because they were sent before the attacks became public, raising questions about how the senders knew about the cyberattacks.
Rogue ransomware affiliate poses as data recovery firm to steal payments →
Algorithms Amplified World Cup Racism, Says Hope Not Hate Report
Racist abuse aimed at England footballers on social media was amplified during the World Cup by algorithms designed to maximize engagement and profit, according to research by the activist group Hope Not Hate. The group analyzed more than 300,000 posts on X during the 2026 World Cup and found more than 5,500 explicitly racist posts targeting England players. Hope Not Hate argues that X’s recommender algorithm pushed toxic content into millions of feeds because posts provoking anger and outrage generate more interaction, keeping users on the platform longer and driving advertising revenue.
Algorithms amplified World Cup racism, says report →
MIT Study Finds AI-Generated Images Often Can’t Be Traced Back to Their Sources
A new study from researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) found that the more data a generative model is trained on, the less likely an AI-generated image is to be traced back to a source image, a phenomenon they call attribution decay. The study was published in Nature Communications. Zheng Dai, a former MIT CSAIL researcher and lead author, said that if removing a piece of data does not change a model’s output, then that data did not affect the output, making it unreasonable to attribute the output to that piece of data.
MIT Study Finds that AI-Generated Images Often Can’t Be Traced Back to Their Sources →
White House Cuts Data Centers, Batteries, and AR From US Critical Technology List
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy published its renewed National Security Science & Technology Strategy. Appendix A of the 24-page document rewrites the federal Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET) list for the first time since February 2024, shrinking it from 18 categories to 14. Advanced cloud services, high-performance data storage and data centers, batteries, grid integration, gas turbine engines, and augmented and virtual reality were removed. Post-quantum cryptography, integrated photonics, high entropy alloys, and hardened operating systems for consumer use were added.