Saturday, October 28, 2023
Friday, October 27, 2023
The Consequences of Elon Musk’s Ownership of X
The Consequences of Elon Musk’s Ownership of X
When Elon Musk bought Twitter a year ago, he said he wanted to create what he called a “common digital town square.”
“That said,” he wrote, “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape.”
A year later, according to study after study, Mr. Musk’s platform has become exactly that.
“Now rebranded as X, the site has experienced a surge in racist, antisemitic and other hateful speech. Under Mr. Musk’s watch, millions of people have been exposed to misinformation about climate change. Foreign governments and operatives — from Russia to China to Hamas — have spread divisive propaganda with little or no interference.
Mr. Musk and his team have repeatedly asserted that such concerns are overblown, sometimes pushing back aggressively against people who voice them. Yet dozens of studies from multiple organizations have shown otherwise, demonstrating on issue after issue a similar trend: an increase in harmful content on X during Mr. Musk’s tenure.
The war between Israel and Hamas — the sort of major news event that once made Twitter an essential source of information and debate — has drowned all social media platforms in false and misleading information, but for Mr. Musk’s platform in particular the war has been seen as a watershed. The conflict has captured in full how much the platform has descended into the kind of site that Mr. Musk had promised advertisers he wanted to avoid on the day he officially took over.
“With disinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict flourishing so dramatically on X, it feels that it crossed a line for a lot of people where they can see — beyond just the branding change — that the old Twitter is truly gone,” Tim Chambers of Dewey Square Group, a public affairs company that tracks social media, said in an interview. “And the new X is a shadow of that former self.”
Reports on X’s role during the Israel-Hamas war
“An epicenter for content praising the attacks.”
The growing sense of chaos on the platform has already hurt Mr. Musk’s investment. While it remains one of the most popular social media services, people visited the website nearly 5.9 billion times in September, down 14 percent from the same month last year, according to the data analysis firm Similarweb.
Advertisers have also fled, leading to a sizable slump in sales. Mr. Musk noted this summer that ad revenue had fallen 50 percent. He blamed the Anti-Defamation League, one of several advocacy groups that have cataloged the rise of hateful speech on X, for “trying to kill this platform.”
Most of the problems, however, stem from changes that Mr. Musk instituted – some intentionally, some not. Studies about the state of X have been conducted over the past year by researchers and analysts at universities, think tanks and advocacy organizations concerned with the spread of hate speech and other harmful content.
Research conducted in part by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue concluded that anti-Semitic tweets in English more than doubled after Mr. Musk’s takeover. A report from the European Commission found that engagement with pro-Kremlin accounts grew 36 percent on the platform in the first half of this year after Mr. Musk lifted mitigation measures.
Mr. Musk disbanded an advisory council focused on trust and safety issues and laid off scores of employees who addressed them. For a monthly fee, he offered users a blue checkmark, a label that once conveyed that Twitter had verified the identity of the user behind an account. He then used algorithms to promote accounts of uncertain provenance in users’ feeds. He removed labels that identified government and state media accounts for countries like Russia and China that censor independent media.
“The entire year’s worth of changes to X were fully stress tested during the global news breaking last week,” Mr. Chambers said, referring to the conflict in Israel. “And in the eyes of many, myself included, it failed utterly.”
The company did not respond to a request for comment beyond a stock response it regularly uses to press inquiries: “Busy now, please check back later.”
X trails only Facebook’s 16.3 billion monthly visits and Instagram’s 6.4 billion visits, according to Similarweb. TikTok, which is rising in popularity among certain demographic groups, has roughly two billion visits each month. Despite voluble threats by disgruntled users to move to alternative platforms – Mastadon, BlueSky or Meta’s new rival to Mr. Musk’s, Threads – none of them have yet reached the critical mass to replicate the public exposure that X offers.
Keeping X at the center of public debate is exactly Mr. Musk’s goal, which he describes at times with a messianic zeal. The day after Hamas attacked Israel, Mr. Musk urged his followers to follow “the war in real time.”
He then cited two accounts that are notorious for spreading disinformation, including a false post in the spring that an explosion had occurred outside the Pentagon. Faced with a flurry of criticism, Mr. Musk deleted the post and later sounded chastened.
He urged his followers on X to “stay as close to the truth as possible, even for stuff you don’t like. This platform aspires to maximize signal/noise of the human collective.”
Reports linking Mr. Musk’s acquisition to hateful content
“A sustained rise in hateful speech.”
Mr. Musk, the prominent, outspoken executive behind Tesla and Space X, had been an avid Twitter user for years before taking it over, promoting his ventures and himself, at times with crude, offensive comments. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he sharply criticized lockdowns and other measures to slow the virus’s spread and began to warn of a “woke” culture that silenced dissent.
Among his first acts as the site’s owner was to reverse the bans on thousands of accounts, including those of users who had promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and spread disinformation about Covid and the 2020 presidential election.
The impact was instantaneous. Researchers at Tufts, Rutgers and Montclair State universities documented spikes in the use of racial and ethnic slurs soon after Mr. Musk’s acquisition. One research institute found that a campaign on 4chan, a notorious bulletin board, encouraged the use of a particular slur within hours of his arrival, in what seemed to be a coordinated test of the new owner’s tolerance for offensive speech..
The prevalence of such offensive language has, according to numerous studies, continued unabated. “The Musk acquisition saw a sustained rise in hateful speech on the platform,” an article in The Misinformation Review, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Harvard Kennedy School, said in August.
Even worse, the article argued, Mr. Musk’s changes appear to be boosting the engagements of the most contentious users.
A month into Mr. Musk’s ownership, the platform stopped enforcing its policy against Covid-19 misinformation. The liberal watchdog group Media Matterslater identified 250 accounts with high engagement on Covid-related tweets. Nine of the top 10 accounts were known anti-vaccine proponents, several of whom promoted unproven and potentially harmful treatments and attacked top public health officials.
Mr. Musk’s first summer as X’s boss also coincided with a rash of climate-related disasters around the world, including deadly heat waves, rampaging wildfires, torrential rains and intense flooding. Last month, a scorecardevaluating social media companies on their defenses against climate-related falsehoods awarded X a single point out of a possible 21 (Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was given eight points).
How the discussion over climate change changed under Mr. Musk
“Climate denial and hate speech have spiked.”
The platform was “lacking clear policies that address climate misinformation, having no substantive public transparency mechanisms, and offering no evidence of effective policy enforcement,” said the accompanying report from Climate Action Against Disinformation, an international coalition of more than 50 environmental advocacy groups.
This year, hundreds of researchers pushed back against a decision by X to end free access to software that would allow them collect and analyze data about the site.
Perhaps the most impactful change under Mr. Musk has been the evolution of his subscription plans. The blue checkmark that once conveyed veracity and denoted verified accounts, often those of government agencies, companies and prominent users, was now available to any account for $8 a month.
Reports on X bolstering foreign disinformation
“An increase of nearly 70% in Islamic State accounts.”
In April, Mr. Musk began removing the blue badges from verified accounts. New ones impersonating public officials, government agencies and celebrities proliferated, causing confusion about which were real. The platform went on to reward those who paid for their blue labels by amplifying their posts over those without the badge.
Reset, a nonprofit research organization, discovered that dozens of anonymous accounts linked to the Kremlin received the checkmark, pushing Russian narratives on the war in Ukraine. This spring, the platform also removed the labels that identified official state media of countries like Russia, China and Iran. In the 90 days after the change, engagement with posts from the English-language accounts of those outlets soared 70 percent, NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, reported in September.
Mr. Musk has now run afoul of the European Union’s newly enacted Digital Services Act, a law that requires social media platforms to restrict misinformation and other violative content within the union’s 27 nations.
A report commissioned by the union’s executive body warned in August that Mr. Musk’s dismantling of guardrails on the platform had resulted in a 36 percent increase in engagement with Kremlin-linked accounts from January through May, mostly pushing Russia’s justifications for its illegal invasion of Ukraine last year.
After war erupted between Israel and Hamas, Thierry Breton, a European Commissioner who oversees the law’s implementation, warned Mr. Musk in a letter that was posted on X, saying the company needed to address “violent and terrorist content that appears to circulate on your platform.”
Reset, the research organization, reported recently that it had documented 166 posts that its researchers considered antisemitic. Many appeared to violate laws in several European countries, including calls for violence against Jews and denying the historical facts of the Holocaust. They accumulated at least 23 million views and 480,000 engagements.
Mr. Musk sounded incredulous, even as the company scrambled to delete accounts linked to Hamas and other terrorist groups. He responded two days later to an account identified by the Anti-Defamation League as one of the most prominent purveyors of disinformation. The account, which had been removed from Twitter but was restored last December after Mr. Musk took over, had claimed that the European Union was trying to police the truth.
“They still haven’t provided any examples of disinformation,” Mr. Musk replied.“
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
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Wednesday, October 18, 2023
What are passkeys and how do they work? Google’s new login explained - The Washington Post
Google just changed how you log in to your account
"‘Passkeys’ are the default now — and that’s a good thing
Google is changing how you log into your account, but don’t worry — it’ll make your life easier.
This month, Google said it’s making “passkeys” the default log-in option for Google accounts. That means that instead of typing in a password, you’ll log into your Google account and Google apps with the same PIN, face ID or thumbprint you used to unlock your device.
In the ever-intensifying fight against digital criminals, passwords are a liability for people and organizations, cybersecurity experts say. Hackers frequently steal passwords in targeted attacks or sweeping data leaks, then break into online accounts to steal money or data. Consumers, meanwhile, struggle to make and remember strong passwords for what could be hundreds of online accounts.
The FIDO Alliance — an industry group that includes Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta — built passkeys in an effort to make online sign-ins simpler and safer, and the technology is showing up in more places. Google introduced passkey support in May, iOS 16 users can save passkeys to their Apple accounts, and the Meta-owned messaging app WhatsApp said Monday that it will support passkey log-ins for Android users. These decisions may signal a broader changeover on the horizon.
A passkey is an alphanumeric string that’s completely unique to you. It proves you are who you say you are, so apps and websites can let you into your account without providing a traditional password.
Passkeys rely on a type of cryptography called public key, where an algorithm comes together like puzzle pieces to unlock your account. When you log in, the app or website shares a “public key” algorithm with your device, which your device decodes using its unique “private key.”
To enable the passkey, all you have to do is unlock your device the normal way — with a PIN, face ID or fingerprint — when prompted. Then the app or site knows it’s you and lets you in.
In many cases, passkeys get saved to your cloud account such as Google or Apple iCloud. That means you can use the passkey from multiple devices tied to that account.
Google and other passkey supporters still accept passwords, so no worries if something goes sideways.
Help Desk tech reporter Tatum Hunter shares what you need to know about the passkey, a password alternative now supported by Google, ebay, Uber and others. (Video: Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)
How do I set up passkeys?
Google should prompt you to set up your passkey at sign-in. Otherwise, open any Google app, click on your profile icon in the top-right corner and go to “Manage your Google Account.” From there, go to “Security” in the left-hand menu, scroll to “How you sign in to Google” and turn on passkeys.
Apps and websites that support passkeys should prompt you to set one up when you create a new account. This will involve unlocking your device to authenticate yourself. If you already have an account for that website or app, go to your account settings and look for options like privacy, security or passwords. You should see a way to enable passkeys.
Depending on what device you’re using, you can save passkeys to your iCloud keychain, Google Password Manager or Windows Hello — or a password manager app or browser extension.
Passkeys eliminate a few of the biggest risks and headaches that come with passwords.
First, no more remembering passwords. People and businesses spend a lot of time and money each year dealing with forgotten passwords, so passkeys save everyone some grief.
Passkeys also protect people and businesses against leaked credentials. When hackers compromise a company’s servers, they often use stolen username-password combinations to try to break into other sites, too. Since so many people get tired of remembering passwords and use the same ones for every account, those hackers are often successful. Passkeys drastically reduce this potential, since they are stored on the user’s device or personal cloud rather than a company’s servers.
Finally, no more hunting for that six-digit code in your text messages when you’re trying to log in. That additional safety check is called two-factor authentication, and it has helped make passwords safer. But passkeys make extra authentication unnecessary because they confirm the user’s identity from the jump.
Passkeys aren’t a great fit for environments where lots of people are sharing the same devices, like university libraries, said Steve Won, chief product officer at password manager company 1Password. If you share a device and don’t set up separate user profiles, other users may be able to unlock the passkey to access your Google account and Google apps. (To fix this, just set up separate user profiles that remain locked with a PIN, password or biometrics.)
Since passkeys are often tied to your devices, you may need to set up new passkeys if you lose your phone or laptop. Your accounts should be safe from interlopers, however, as long as they don’t know the PIN to unlock your device.
Which websites and apps support passkeys?
Building the technology to support passkeys takes time and money, so companies have been relatively slow to get on board, said Igor Kuznetsov, a researcher at cybersecurity company Kaspersky. We are still years away from a password-free life.
But the list of players that allow passkeys is steadily growing. In addition to Google, big names such as Uber, TikTok, Amazon, Microsoft, PayPal and Nintendo let you sign in with passkeys.
The more large companies support passkeys, the more pressure smaller ones will feel to switch over, Kuznetsov said. Eventually, you may have far fewer passwords to remember and type in, saving you time and brain space. (Until then, make sure you’re using long, distinct, complicated passwords and storing them in a password manager.)"
Monday, October 16, 2023
Sunday, October 15, 2023
Book Review: ‘Making It So,’ by Patrick Stewart - The New York Times
How Patrick Stewart Made the Jump to Warp Speed
"In his fond memoir “Making It So,” the actor traces the path from the working class to the Shakespearean stage to “Star Trek” superstardom.
By Ben Brantley
Ben Brantley is a former chief theater critic of The Times.
When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.
MAKING IT SO: A Memoir, by Patrick Stewart
A ruddy blush of modesty colors “Making It So,” Patrick Stewart’s engaging self-portrait of life on the British stage and the starship U.S.S. Enterprise. Humility is not, of course, the trait that first comes to mind with big-name actors, for whom a strapping ego would seem to be a job requirement.
And with his booming voice and clenched-fist persona, Stewart has usually registered as a take-charge, cross-me-at-your-peril kind of guy. He became internationally famous portraying the autocratic space captain Jean-Luc Picard on the long-running sci-fi series “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” a man given to terse dictums like the one from which this book takes its title: “Make it so.”
A veteran of some 60 productions with Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company, Stewart has also brought the chill of brute will to some of the canon’s most commanding heroes, on Broadway and in the West End. Yet what gave these interpretations their distinctive force was Stewart’s gift for conveying the doubt within the bluster. The dichotomies always read with acute clarity, whether he’s the magisterial Prospero in “The Tempest” (we see him thinking simultaneously, “I revel in my power! Power has corrupted me!”); the ambitious Macbeth (“I must be king! My thoughts really scare me!”); or Cleopatra’s Antony (“I love her! She’s ruining my life!”).
Those grace notes of insecurity would seem to come naturally to Stewart, now 83, whose autobiography is suffused with an air of dumbfounded surprise at his own successes. This is partly because serious celebrity came late to him. He was well into his 40s when he began playing Picard and pushing 60 when he took on the other role for which he is best known, the mutant Professor X in the “X-Men” series of films. His major above-the-title theater performances came only after his late-blooming fame onscreen.
But Stewart also belongs to a breed that has become increasingly rare in his home country: the working-class youth who stumbles almost by chance into theater, then pays his dues for decades. Stewart grew up in northern England in the town of Mirfield (population 9,000). His father was an army sergeant who unhappily became “an itinerant laborer,” his mother, a textile mill worker. With his older brother, they shared a claustrophobically small house with no bathroom.
Stewart’s father had been a charismatic leader in the military. (A fellow soldier said of him, “When he walked onto the parade ground, the birds in the trees stopped singing.”) He never adjusted to civilian life and would beat his wife when he drank. Stewart writes that only through “decades of analysis” would he begin to grasp “the impact of the violence, fear, shame and guilt I experienced as a child,” and that elements of his father’s irrational rage would creep into his later portrayals of Shakespeare’s tyrants.
As a boy, Stewart says, his “outrageous dream was to be a long-distance lorry driver.” Yet there were those who saw something special in a lad who always looked older than his years. He was nonplused when a church secretary asked him, “Are you aware that you have an aura?” An English teacher, Cecil Dormand, one of the book’s dedicatees, introduced him to Shakespeare and urged his pupil to participate in local theater programs. The boy discovered that being onstage was the place that he felt safest.
It helped that Stewart grew up in an age when theater was considered a part of everyday cultural life, even in tiny Mirfield, which had “at least seven active drama societies,” and that the country supported a wide and fecund network of repertory companies. When Stewart was completing his school years at 15, he was asked by Dormand if he had thought of becoming an actor. “That job is not for people like me,” Stewart responded.
But Dormand pointed out that young men with economic backgrounds like Stewart’s, such as Albert Finney and Richard Harris, were generating a new excitement in the British theater. After brief stints as a local newspaper reporter and a furniture salesman, Stewart was accepted at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School.
And so began an apprenticeship in repertory that led him to a place at the Stratford-based Royal Shakespeare Company in his mid-20s. The big, juicy roles were elusive, however, and Stewart lingers over the rejections like someone massaging a toothache with his tongue. He recalls more than once leaving the theater after performing a small role in “Hamlet,” starring a much-acclaimed David Warner, and being asked, “Are you anybody?”
By the current metrics of fame, it took Stewart two more decades to become “anybody,” when he was unexpectedly tapped for the role of Picard.
Trekkies should know that this pivotal moment occurs about 300 pages into “Making It So.” Stewart is generous with insiderly details about his experience on “Star Trek” (like his insisting on more comfortable spacesuits). But the book starts to feel more like a standard showbiz biography from this point — so many credits, so many life changes, so little time — as growing fame takes its toll on the personal life of Stewart, who would marry three times.
As a lover of theater lore, I was happiest learning about Stewart’s stage-centered life, even when he wasn’t center stage. He offers fascinating glimpses into the unorthodox working methods of great classic actors like John Wood and Ian Holm (who had a breakdown while performing “The Iceman Cometh”) and the directors Peter Brook, Trevor Nunn and Peter Hall.
I would love to have read more about Stewart’s enduring personal and professional relationship with Ian McKellen, with whom he appeared memorably in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” paired in rotation on Broadway with Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” in 2013. It was McKellen who thrillingly advised Stewart, when he was playing Macbeth, that the key to the character can be found in the conjunction “and” in the soliloquy that begins, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. …”
Still, I’m not about to begrudge Stewart his blissed-out descriptions of the confidence-stoking benefits of the feast of popular success after years of famine. When it was decided that his signature television character would be resurrected for a new series, “Star Trek: Picard,” Stewart announced its arrival at a 2018 Trekkie convention in Las Vegas.
He recalls basking in the crowd’s thunderous response with a refreshing lack of ambivalence: “No more sheepishness, no more embarrassment — I like being liked.”
MAKING IT SO: A Memoir | By Patrick Stewart | Illustrated | 480 pp. | Gallery Books | $35"