Author: Lucas Nolan

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former CEO of Silicon Valley darling Theranos, is reportedly considering claiming to have a “mental disease” as part of her legal defense in her criminal fraud trial. Bloomberg reports that former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is considering claiming to have a “mental disease” as part of her legal defense in her criminal fraud trial. On Wednesday, the judge presiding over the case ruled that government prosecutors can examine Holmes, the ruling was in response to Holme’s plans to introduce evidence of “mental disease to defect” or other mental condition “bearing on the issue of guilt” according to a court filing. It’s expected that Holmes may be attempting to introduce evidence to challenge the requirement that prosecutors prove her intent to commit and illegal act. Homes intends to use testimony from Mindy Mechanic, a clinical psychologist at California State University at Fullerton, according to the court filing. Mechanic is an expert in the psychosocial consequences of trauma with a focus on violence against women. Mechanic regularly provides expert testimony in cases involving “interpersonal violence” according to her faculty profile. Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade who now teaches at the University of Michigan law schools, thinks it will be

Tech giant Google has promised to block certain autocomplete search suggestions ahead of the November election in an effort to fight “misinformation.” One search suggestion given as an example of election “misinformation” is “You can vote yourself into socialism” given as a search suggestion when “You can vote” is typed in. Bloomberg reports that tech giant Google has announced plans to prevent misinformation spreading ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November by blocking certain autocomplete search suggestions. The autocomplete program regularly recommends full queries to users once they begin typing words, but Google now says it will remove predictions that could be seen as claims for or against candidates or political parties. Google also plans to pull claims from the autocomplete program about participation in the election including statements about voting methods, requirements, the status of voting locations, and election security. If a user types for example “you can vote” into Google’s search engine, autocomplete may suggest a query that includes misleading information according to the company. Bloomberg claims that typing the phrase into Google recently yielded the suggestion “You can vote yourself into socialism,” as the top query. According to Google, this search autocomplete is considered election misinformation. David Graff,

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified over the course of two days this week before the FTC as part of an antitrust investigation into the social media giant. Politico reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified over the course of two days this week before the FTC as part of its antitrust investigation into Facebook’s business practices. Zuckerberg delivered his testimony remotely due to coronavirus pandemic restrictions. Zuckerberg’s testimony comes shortly after a landmark hearing before Congress in which Zuckerberg testified alongside the CEO’s of Amazon, Apple, and Google, all of which defended their companies from claims of antitrust and monopolistic behavior. The FTC declined to comment on Zuckerberg’s testimony, a Facebook spokesperson provided a statement which reads: “We are committed to cooperating with the US Federal Trade Commission’s inquiry and answering the questions the Agency may have.” Facebook is currently facing several antitrust investigations outside of the FTC’s. A coalition of state attorneys general, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, opened an investigation into Facebook in September. Facebook, alongside another number of tech firms, has been investigated by the House Judiciary Committee since last July. The FTC fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 as a result of a years-long investigation

A recent report from NBC outlines what a huge number of emails from tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google could mean for possible antitrust cases against the companies.

Twitter censored a video clip of President Trump’s recent interview on Fox & Friends alleging that the clip spread misinformation about the Wuhan coronavirus — yet has consistently failed to stop misinformation spread by Chinese government officials on the platform.

As tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are investigated by Congress over antitrust allegations, troves of internal company emails reveal how these companies rose to the top and provide compelling evidence that they violated antitrust laws. Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu believes that the Masters of the Universe have built a business model on buying the competition, and destroying those that will not sell. In a recent article for the New York Times, Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu outlines some of the key pieces of information gained from internal emails from Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon as the companies face a rigorous antitrust investigation by Congress. The documents details how the companies, Facebook and Amazon in particular, may have violated antitrust laws while becoming market leaders in their fields. The Times article notes internal emails from Facebook which appear to show that Facebook had a common tactic to “control” smaller companies that posed a threat to the social media giant. Wu writes: Exhibit A is Facebook, whose documents are the most damning. Emails from Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive, strongly suggest that since about 2008 he has had a method for controlling what in a 2012 email he called “nascent” companies that posed

Project Veritas went undercover in 2018 to discover the internal bias of social media platform Twitter and the tactics that the company uses to suppress speech on its platform, many of which use the same internal tools used in this week major hack of some of the most prominent accounts on the entire platform. Twitter recently revealed that the accounts of 130 people on its platform were targeted in a recent hack that saw multiple high-profile accounts hijacked in order to promote a Bitcoin scam which reportedly generated over $100,000 for hackers. The accounts hijacked include Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, Former President Barack Obama, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and the official accounts of ridesharing service Uber and tech giant Apple. Twitter has long been one of the most political social media platforms online, initially branding itself as the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party,” and encouraging political debate. Since its founding, many have alleged that the site shows bias against conservative voices on its platform. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later called the free speech slogan a “joke.” In 2018, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas published an investigation of Twitter that confirmed a number of reports published by Breitbart

Twitter has confirmed that the private information of Twitter users was accessed during the hack earlier this week. The information included email addresses and phone numbers, and in some cases, the intruders were able to download an archive of activity include direct messages and other sensitive content. Social media website Twitter recently revealed that the accounts of 130 people on its platform were targeted in a recent hack that saw multiple high-profile accounts hijacked in order to promote a Bitcoin scam which reportedly generated over $100,000 for hackers. The accounts hijacked include Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, Former President Barack Obama, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and the official accounts of ridesharing service Uber and tech giant Apple. Now, the company has confirmed what many security experts suspected, the private information and direct messages (DM’s) of the hacked accounts was accessed by the hackers. In a blog post, Twitter confirmed that it is conducting a forensic review of all the accounts accessed to confirm all of the actions taken by hackers but that at least eight usernames had private information downloaded by hackers. The blog post states: For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved,