“I’ve done other films with violence in them, but I must say I’ve never done anything where I felt the violence was as justified as it is in this…This is justice.”
- Brandon Lee on The Crow (1994) dir. Alex Proyas
Mass State Lottery (2022) Film Facing Legal Threats to be Shut Down from Massachusetts Lottery
LowRes Wünderbred’s Mass State Lottery (2022), an X rated horror film inspired by real life cases of Boston’s drowning men, is currently facing legal threats to be shut down by the Massachusetts Lottery over its vaguely similar title and controversial contents.
The Massachusetts Lottery’s claim? The movie is intended to confuse people buying lottery tickets…
More Information Here
Watch Theatrical Trailer
interesting
… “He clearly doesn’t take his law license very seriously when he doesn’t take the time to pay the $265 dues,” said Daniel Uhlfelder, a Santa Rosa Beach attorney who lives in Gaetz’s district. “He’s not a serious lawyer. He’s not a serious congressman. He’s not a serious person. This is one small but symbolic example of that.”
Company under fire as news reports detail spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories even as staff raised concerns
Facebook faced mounting pressure on Friday after a new whistleblower accused it of knowingly hosting hate speech and illegal activity, even as leaked documents shed further light on how the company failed to heed internal concerns over election misinformation.
Allegations by the new whistleblower, who spoke to the Washington Post, were reportedly contained in a complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US agency that handles regulation to protect investors in publicly traded companies.
In the complaint, the former employee detailed how Facebook officials frequently declined to enforce safety rules for fear of angering Donald Trump and his allies or offsetting the company’s huge growth. In one alleged incident, Tucker Bounds, a Facebook communications official, dismissed concerns about the platform’s role in 2016 election manipulation.
“It will be a flash in the pan,” Bounds said, according to the affidavit, as reported by the Post. “Some legislators will get pissy. And then in a few weeks they will move on to something else. Meanwhile, we are printing money in the basement, and we are fine.”
The claims echo those of the whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who has said the company repeatedly prioritizes profit over public safety. Haugen’s recent damning testimony before the US Congress, and forthcoming testimony before the UK parliament, has prompted a major PR crisis for the social network, which is said to be readying plans for a rebrand.
The whistleblower claims came on the same day that news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and NBC, published reports based on internal documents shared by Haugen. The documents offer a deeper look into the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories on the platform, particularly related to the 2020 US presidential election.
The documents show that Facebook employees repeatedly flagged concerns before and after the election, when Donald Trump tried to falsely overturn Joe Biden’s victory. According to the New York Times, a company data scientist told coworkers a week after the election that 10% of all US views of political content were of posts that falsely claimed the vote was fraudulent. But as workers flagged these issues and urged the company to act, the company failed or struggled to address the problems, the Times reported.
The internal documents also show Facebook researchers have found the platform’s recommendation tools repeatedly pushed users to extremist groups, prompting internal warnings that some managers and executives ignored, NBC News reported. …
Trainer drop-off scheme has been quietly shelved as haulage and tax costs soared after UK left the EU
Watchdog finds dubious data gathering, illusory solicitations for consent
The US Federal Trade Commission on Thursday said many internet service providers are sharing data about their customers, in defiance of expectations, and are failing to give subscribers adequate choices about whether or how their data is shared.
The trade watchdog’s findings arrived in the form of a report [PDF] undertaken in 2019 to examine the data and privacy practices of major US broadband providers, including AT&T Mobility, Charter Communications, Google Fiber, T-Mobile US, Verizon Wireless, and Comcast’s Xfinity.
“[T]hese findings underscore deficiencies of the ‘notice-and-consent’ framework for privacy, especially in markets where users face highly limited choices among service providers,” said FTC boss Lina Khan in a statement [PDF].
“The report found that even in instances where internet service providers purported to offer customers some choice with respect to how their data was collected or used, in practice users were thwarted by design decisions that made it complicated, difficult, or near-impossible to actually escape persistent surveillance.”
The FTC study found that some ISPs combine data from their different products and services, some combine data from personal app usage and web browsing to target ads, some segment consumers into sensitive categories related to race and sexual orientation, and some share real-time location data with third-parties. …
