@swopbehindbars.bsky.social:
“xAI, which developed the Grok chatbot, sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison Monday over Minnesota’s new law that bans the use of what’s known as nudification technology
xAI argues in the lawsuit that the law is too broad and infringes on free speech”
minnesotareformer.com/briefs/elon-…
“Let me make sure I have this straight, because every time I read the sentence my brain tries to reject it like a bad organ transplant.”
“The richest man on earth is spending lawyer money to fight for the legal viability of the “deep fake nude porn” button.”
open.substack.com/pub/deanblun…
@awokemindvirus.bsky.social:
… Grok may yet be the thing that brings down Musk. Minnesota is not screwing around, a single deep fake nude profuced by Grok (or any AI model) could cost billions in fines.
@hammancheez.bsky.social:
Musk : i made this tool that lets u make csam of anyone
People : you’re fucking sick dude
Musk: no no its ok we’ll sue u if you do it tho so its ok
@saythethingtee.com:
It appears Grok killed the schoolchildren in Iran, in tandem with a US military under Pete Hegseth who DGAF.
Remember when Anthropic said ‘No’ to Hegseth’s demand that they allow the DoD to use Claude to kill autonomously, with no human oversight?
He’s a rich fucking white racist misogynistic man, of course Musk won’t go to prison, neither will Trump, Hegseth or their fancy pants thug lawyer
@weewool.bsky.social:
Because of tRump Epstein and Putin
He thinks he can do anything. -And he can . Because his heart is beating. He will stop when it stops.
@realmartyt7.bsky.social:
www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/dam… #USDemocracy #ProudBlue
Elon Musk claims to be a “free speech absolutist” but is engaged in a massive censorship operation to stop the release of “Musk”
Elon is a fascist consumed with his own weird views of the world and right wing politics. Elon is fair game
@profciara.bsky.social:
Ok I see other platforms are blocking this. I met Alex Gibney moons ago at ABCNY (the Association of the Bar for the City of New York). He’s the real deal. Here’s the trailer for Alex Gibney’s documentary about Musk.
Let’s Streisand Effect this: www.firstshowing.net/2026/must-se…
@alexb.bsky.social:
I hope people go watch the film! And I hope they see this man for who he really is – absolutely not a visionary, instead he’s everything wrong with the world today.
@westhomasanderson.bsky.social:
Chef’s- kiss imagery in the trailer when they get to the “K” in Musk’s name/movie title
@freebklyn.bsky.social:
In NYC, it releases on Thurs, 10/8, @ Angelika Film Center, and there are Q&As with Alex Gibney and Ashley St. Clair after 2 of the Friday viewings and 2 of the Saturday viewings!
(Bleecker St films, the distributor, should boycott those platforms, too)
angelikafilmcenter.com/nyc/movies/d…
@leslieclevin.bsky.social:
Bleecker Street did a great job with the trailer. It looks like no one would call this documentary balanced, but it should be fun (and horrifying) to see it.
@jules5.bsky.social:
Yes, the trailer is terrific. But I’ve got a question about balanced documentaries: Why does a documentaryand the news, notably about Israel’s genocide or powerful rich men raping kids need to be balanced? And how would this even be achieved? Same amount of airtime for positive and negative positions/ opinions? That’s absurd, in my opinion. A documentary should be honest.
@leslieclevin.bsky.social:
I completely agree that a documentary should not be balanced for the sake of “balance.”
And to be clear… I wasn’t questioning the accuracy of the filmmakers’ portrayal. I have nothing but admiration for the people who had the courage to put this documentary out into the world.
@t0grb1.bsky.social:
for someone with crippling anxiety having lunatics in charge has ruined my life
@888lin.bsky.social:
People don’t want or need data centres. These surveillance facilities undermine our rights and tie Canada closer to the predatory corrupt USA
@willoremus.com:
Meta’s platforms have repeatedly been caught running ads for deepfake “nudify” apps that let you virtually undress real people without their consent, but they won’t run an a trailer for an upcoming documentary that reflects poorly on Elon Musk. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig…
@jowiph.bsky.social:
Cool to see the leadership of basically the entire social media ecosystem close ranks around a literal mass-murdering Nazi
@terribletowelie.bsky.social:
“people think i’m smart because i was born with money… got anymore of them ketamines?”
@strictlychristo.bsky.social:
YouTube, TikTok and Meta have all refused to run paid ads for the Oct. 9 ‘Musk’ documentary, citing “political” content.
Huh, that’s weird, I don’t remember Elon Musk ever having held elected office.
www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig…
SUPPRESSION, REPRESSION, CENSORSHIP You OK in 2026 America?
Elon Musk Unmasked in Gibney Documentary: “Insane a Person This Chaotic Has So Much Power”
Corporate Media stifling Free Speech
1- www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig…
2-Here’s the trailer-Do Share www.threads.com/share/Ezkq-O…
@heyheygoodbye.bsky.social:
Sounds good to me. Musk Official Trailer – Bleecker Street. This guys is a liar, cheat & theif. He’s invented nothing! I hope they cover how he hacked 2024 election too. Pass this trailer on!
@marklemley.bsky.social:
Facebook really doesn’t want you to see the new documentary exposing Elon Musk Neither do TikTok or Google or the eX social media site.
Since they won’t accept paid advertising, let’s do some free advertising. Go see Musk in theaters October 9
@mrsbettybowers.bsky.social:
The major platforms—Facebook, YouTube, and X—are all refusing to show the trailer for the upcoming documentary that eviscerates the ridiculous pest Elon Musk. So I guess we have to do our part to make sure it is seen.
@dawna9.bsky.social:
The trailer for the documentary that a vacuous billionaire wants disappeared. Like the thousands of federal jobs his doge dudes removed. Like the citizens & immigrants removed from American streets. Please watch & repost. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
youtu.be/eY_8SyndC10
@savannahpeace.bsky.social:
Yep. A horrible human being.
@buddyshares.bsky.social:
youtube.com/watch?v=yvDo…
Musk is a FRAUD.
@heyheygoodbye.bsky.social:
Who has not invented one damn thing. Why are we still subsidizing his crap? He has enough to finance it himself. Talk ab WELFARE QUEEN! Regarding ads for the doc ab Musk, bc all those platforms are owned by right-wingers!
The Nazi billionaires, including the many that are immigrants, are fucking ugly and creepy, inside and out; Trump, Fuckerberg, Musk, and (in Canada) Lütke, are the ugliest, creepiest and most evil of the lot.
Anthropic Building a ‘Pre-Crime’ System to Surveil Anti-AI Dissenters, Investigation Shows, One legal expert said that as AI companies “become more hated, there’s more pressure on them to over-disclose knowing that some of the people they identify for law enforcement shouldn’t be targeted.” by Brad Reed, Sep 09, 2026
The American Prospect on Wednesday published an investigation revealing that top artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is building a predictive surveillance system aimed at tracking activists who are opposed to advanced AI development.And making errors 67% of the time?Or will the AI be Nazi and target all non whites and non normal people (aka, all those not “normal” male-female man-wife religious bullshit couples?)
The Prospect found that Anthropic last month issued a job posting seeking an intelligence specialist to “identify, assess, track, and investigate global threats including geopolitical instability, terrorism, crime, activism, nation-state targeting of the AI sector.”
This job will also employ a “pre-crime” approach that will involve “attempting to predict incidents before a crime occurs,” according to the Prospect.ya sure, and make errors 67% of the time, sending police to harm innocent citizens. The concept of “pre-crime” was explored in Minority Report, a dystopian science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick.
A report last week in The San Francisco Standard revealed there is already at least one example of Anthropic taking this kind of predictive approach to policing.
Specifically, Anthropic called police last year and informed them that one of its users told the company’s Claude AI chatbot that he had purchased a rifle and had CEO Dario Amodei “in his sights.”
The AI lab told police that this person “was going to kill everyone at Anthropic,” but it didn’t provide law enforcement officials with transcripts of the chats, which would have let them make their own determination about the seriousness of the threat.
The person in question was not arrested or charged with a crime, and they told the Standard that they were “just fucking around” when they talked about buying a gun.
Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, told the Standard that he had some sympathy for Anthropic because if they don’t report potential crimes to police then “they face significant liability if, in fact, a crime does occur.”
“As they become more hated,” Goldman said of the AI companies, “there’s more pressure on them to over-disclose knowing that some of the people they identify for law enforcement shouldn’t be targeted at all.”
Anthropic isn’t merely using technology to monitor potential crimes, but also to keep tabs on US citizens lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.Anthopic are douche fuckers, just like the rest of the filthy AI fuckers.
The Prospect tracked down a podcast interview with Keon Ellison, global security operations center manager at Anthropic, where he revealed how employees at the company use technology provided by risk detection firm Samdesk to monitor activists.Evil fucks, just like Mark Carney and his pimp Evan Solomon
“Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline… That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.”
This story about taking great lengths to evade protesters drew a sarcastic reaction from tech journalist and author Brian Merchant.
“You know what you’re doing is good,” Merchant wrote in a social media post, “when you have to develop an in-house, real-time surveillance system to help your executives locate the ideal service exit to avoid contact with the public.”
Why do you think Trump is pushing AI on us all, and refusing to regulate it in anyway, and refusing to allow other nations, like Canada, to regulate it?
San Francisco Orders Meta to Stop ‘Allowing’ AI Child Abuse Ads, The City Attorney’s Office has asked Meta to explain how the harmful ads repeatedly ran on Facebook and Instagram. The company claims the ads are not under the city’s jurisdiction. by Matt Burgess, Sep 9, 2026, Wired
Vile piece of shit Fuckerberger. I will never understand why humans continue supporting and putting money into this abusive shit’s pockets by using Meta products, including the most dastardly, Facebook.
Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
San Francisco’s city attorney has hit Meta with a cease-and-desist letter telling the company to stop “allowing” paid advertisements that include AI-generated child sexual abuse content and asked it to explain how the ads repeatedly ran on its platforms.
On Tuesday, WIRED reported that Meta has run more than 350 ads in recent months that transformed still images of minors—some of them confirmed as real individuals, including a member of a European royal family—into short videoclips that can depict them performing sexual acts.
When clicked, these ads would direct people to download AI image- and video-generation apps, some of which could be used to digitally undress people or create other nonconsensual intimate imagery.
The ads, which were discovered by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), included some identical ads that had been uploaded multiple times, and in total they reached more than 29,000 accounts in countries in the European Union. The ads that were shown across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads also targeted accounts in the US, Australia, and India. WIRED initially reported on a batch of 53 of the ads at the start of August, but more than 250 of the total number of ads ran on Meta’s platforms after this initial report.
“Meta has failed to address a known issue of AI-generated child sexually explicit ads, while profiting from them,” San Francisco city attorney David Chiu says in a statement to WIRED.
“These ads are deeply disturbing and cause harm to real children. Meta claims to have zero tolerance for child exploitation, yet the scale and persistence of these issues suggest current efforts are woefully inadequate. This is unacceptable, and Meta must do better.”Pfffft. In my view, Meta will never do better because it’s too greedy and much too demented, there’s too much money to be made sexually abusing kids and women via disgusting AI, and I bet Fuckerberger wants to please kid rapist Tump and his Pedo Nazis.
“No company—particularly one that claims all advertisements are reviewed and approved prior to distribution and then accepts payment for that distribution—should permit its advertising systems to be used in this manner,” Chiu writes in the four-page letter his office sent to Meta’s lawyers.
The letter raises a host of questions about how Meta’s ad policies and safety systems operate and asks that the company’s legal, child-safety, and advertising staff engage in “prompt discussions” with the city office. “These findings are especially troubling because they do not appear to reflect an isolated failure that Meta corrected when first alerted to the problem,” Chiu writes.
Meta says there is “no indication” that the ads were displayed in San Francisco and this means they are “outside the city attorney’s jurisdiction.” While Meta’s ad library, which is a repository of ads, includes some data about ads published in the US, it does not break down where in the US ads may have run.
Meta previously told WIRED that many of the ads identified by the TTP researchers had already been removed before they were reported—all of them have now been removed for violating its policies—and most had “fewer than 200 impressions” from accounts. “We don’t tolerate nudify apps or any kind of child exploitation, whether real or AI-generated,” a Meta spokesperson previously said.
The company said the “total ad spend” for the 300-plus ads found by the researchers was “under $5,000.”
The letter, which says the City Attorney’s Office has reviewed many of the ads found by the TTP researchers, demands that Meta stop the ads from running on its platforms and explain how the ads managed to avoid its moderation systems and how it escalates and reports ads to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and asks the company to detail how it addresses the advertisers behind the content and repeat offenders.
The letter continues to say the findings suggest “broader systemic problems” with how the company detects potential child sexual abuse in advertising and that it raises “significant legal questions” for the company.
“My Office’s objective is not simply to identify past failures but to ensure that Meta puts systems in place that prevent children from being sexually exploited through advertisements Meta is paid to distribute, and that Meta reliably satisfies the legal obligations that arise when it becomes aware of apparent child sexual exploitation,” Chiu writes in the letter.
The findings from the TTP researchers stated that in some cases Meta did not respond to reports the agency made about abusive ads for more than a week, during which the ads were seen by hundreds more people. When some ads were removed, they were initially not marked as containing child sexual abuse content, according to TTP and a WIRED review of Meta’s ad library.
“The scale, persistence, and nature of the problems documented here suggest that Meta’s isolated takedown efforts are woefully inadequate,” the letter from Chiu says, requesting Meta provide a response within 28 days.
Meta’s community standards and advertising policies do not allow child sexual exploitation, abuse, or nudity, nor adult exploitation or adult nudity. The company also does not allow the promotion of nudify apps. Meta’s ad standards say that all advertisements are reviewed against its policies using automated, and sometimes manual, reviews. The company has previously removed hundreds of thousands of ads for nudify apps.
Despite Meta taking action against nudify apps, including suing a Hong Kong–based company linked to one set of nudifier platforms and working with other tech companies, researchers continue to find thousands of ads that direct people to the harmful apps and that contain sexual activity and nudity.
During WIRED’s reporting on the Tech Transparency Project findings, we identified hundreds of “nudification” ads currently running across Meta’s platforms.
Katie Paul, the director of TTP, says that Meta is “not effectively” addressing the issue, and ads containing child sexual abuse are still appearing on its plaform as of Wednesday. “Meta has claimed it takes a hard stance against child sexual abuse material, but since TTP’s September 8 report published, more brand-new ads have run featuring some of the same children TTP sent to Meta,” Paul says. The organization has reported the ads to Meta and the NCMEC and noted that some had already been removed. Meta did not immediately respond to WIRED’s question about new ads still appearing.
“The findings are clear,” Paul adds. “Meta is not effectively addressing this issue.”Ban the fuckers from Canada! Banning Meta is the only way to appropriately address Meta’s abusive operating practices and callous not give a shit attitude. If they can’t control child sexual abuse by AI, shut the fuckers down.
@christyceeck.bsky.social:
This is not a good key message. It should make no Canadian feel better. In fact, it should raise more alarm bells.
“Asked whether Ottawa has a plan should the technology go terribly awry, Solomon emphasized the benefits of AI.
“There are many, many parts of this technology,” he said.”
@saffyre9.bsky.social:
Lol we’re so fucked with Solomon on this portfolio
@ohcarolinian.bsky.social:
Deeply fucked. Greasy mf’er.
@wolfelake2002.bsky.social:
It’s the Old Boys Club that Carney’s is becoming famous for. Solomon was never a good choice but he fits in with the Club. His arrogance in the role is mind boggling though.
@dayintoronto.bsky.social:
Having this shady character in cabinet is one of the more boneheaded decisions PMMC has made imho – nothing Solomon has said has given me any confidence he has true understanding of this tech. It’s embarrassing and incredibly dangerous given the massive risks to literally everything
@davidmordecai.com:
He sounds like a twit. And I would be surprised if the Prime Minister didn’t notice.
@christyceeck.bsky.social:
What’s worse is that I think they’re actually buddies.
@psvrh.bsky.social:
They bonded over their shared love of unethicalart dealing.
@cfraser146.bsky.social:
Sounds like a joke. One requirement of data centres is they should be powered by solar, wind, renewable energy. We can’t afford further increases in greenhouse gas emissions. The bots will survive but humans won’t.
@qtainpfaulkes.bsky.social:
Ontario keeps saying data centers must bring their own power. They mean gas fired generators. The federal government is financing up to $200m in gas fired turbines for the AB Meta data center. The energy bands data centers use also contain a potential exception rule (and you know it’ll get used).
@mari2023.bsky.social:
Why would we allow foreign tech companies to build data Centers in Canada?Because King Trump demands it, and Carney and Smith always bow down to him (the trade hiccup won’t last long, Carney is using it for political advantage, and to con Canadians deeper into his cult)
@ntusikov.bsky.social:
Non-binding ‘expectations’? Solomon & Carney are not serious about governing data centres in Canada; they’re offside w/ the large & growing anti-data centre public sentiment. These companies won’t comply w/ voluntary ‘rules.’ They have lied about energy & water use. This is weak & shameful.and Solomon and Carney fucking know it. They’re sleazy cowards, heeding the rich’s and Trump’s orders
@ikilledmyheroes.bsky.social:
Musk is a conman like any other. He buys up companies & claims he created them. He has invented nothing. He’s not a genius. He’s a run of the mill Aspie who cons people.
@therealzman.bsky.social:
That had secretly been funded by Russia since day one
@resistnow47.bsky.social:
Now this knucklehead need to be deported !
New from me (paywall): Voluntary agreements lack transparency, efficacy & serve corporate interests. Canadians are making clear their strong opposition to AI data centres: the federal govt is abdicating its governance role in hiding behind a voluntary framework.
www.hilltimes.com/2026/09/09/w…
@josemachismo.bsky.social:
Making an ethically-challenged talk show host the government’s point man on this is a pretty good indication of all the fucks Mark Carney has to give over legitimate concerns.
“Given how quickly #MarkCarney killed our #AntiGreenwashing laws it’s doubtful we’ll see any #Renewables -friendly data centre LEGISLATION & ENFORCEMENT on his watch absent real pressure from the Canadian people. His inner circle trumpet #DataCentres as a brand new lucrative market for #NaturalGas.”
@bhaggart.bsky.social:
Expectations not backed by sanctions are worthless, especially when dealing with these tech companies.
“Several top companies are listed as signatories to the framework, including Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Bell Canada, Cohere, eStruxture, Hypertec, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Telus.”
Regulatory theory tells us that voluntary agreements don’t work with bad actors. The companies listed above are some of the least trustworthy of the past several decades.
Pinky-swearing data centre expectations by Dale Smith,
Yesterday morning, minister of digital asbestos, Evan Solomon, was in Markham to announce that the government had created a new framework of “key expectations” for building data centres in Canada, and that 23 major digital asbestos companies had signed on. It all sounds good, until you realise that this is a voluntary code of conduct made with bad faith actors, and that the federal government has pretty much no levers to enforce any of these promises that these companies make, because so much of the regulation is either a provincial or municipal responsibility. So what you have instead is Solomon once again putting on a performance for the cheap seats at the community theatre, and is expecting applause and bouquets for said performance. It’s like we’re back in the Trudeau era of “the announcement is the policy.” This is not serious governance, and governance is the cornerstone of digital sovereignty—that thing that Solomon keeps claiming to care about.
Later in the day, prime minister Mark Carney announced via press release the launch of Digital Transformation Canada, which aims to “refine how the government develops, buys and uses technology.” While this could be a good thing, particularly if it means developing home-grown digital solutions that would get us off of American platforms, that was not really mentioned in the release at all. Instead, it was more about the CEO bullshit around digital asbestos, with “eliminating duplication” aka deregulate for the abusive lying rich tech fuckers and “improve outcomes,”aka, more deregulation which just sounds like more hype that Carney has swallowed. We have real needs when it comes to our digital sovereignty, but if there is any consideration about how to do that, it doesn’t appear to be coming from this plan as outlined.
@whodat35.bsky.social:
“They don’t take energy,” Trump falsely says of data centers, “because, you know, the new ones that I approved, they all create their own energy.”
Fact check: Most planned projects do not intend to use behind-the-meter generation.
Trump praising and pimping data centres, means to me, they’re much more harmful and intended for much more evil use than even I think. The Orange Idiot sounds just like Danielle Smith, Mark Carney and Evan Solomon pimping them. Who wrote their script?
@204queenb0574.bsky.social:
Letting AI write laws for AI just like letting oil and gas write energy policy.
Calgary sheriff won’t face criminal charges for nude AI images of female coworkers by Jonny Wakefield, Sep 03, 2026
The fate of a Calgary sheriff who used AI to create nude images of three female co-workers is up in the air after Alberta’s policecrime enablerwatchdog concluded his actions weren’t a crime at the time.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) on Wednesday announced it had completed an investigation into an unidentified Alberta Sheriff who used AI software to generate nude images of three female coworkers. The sheriff created the images using non-suggestive photos the women had posted on social media, ASIRT said.
While finding his conduct was “serious,” ASIRT opted not to recommend charges against the sheriff because he did not share the images with anyone else.JFC! Disgusting misogynistic assholes, ASIRT and the sherrif, and why the hell aren’t they naming him? The public needs to know to protect women and kids.
ASIRT executive director Matthew Block said that when Alberta Sheriffs were notified of the images in April, Parliament had yet to pass criminal code amendments making it a crime to generate sexualized images of a person.
Those provisions came into effect in Julyya, sure, but kids in Edmonton who did similar abusive shit to their class mates, were charged on June 1!!! (article on those shits is copied below), a month after ASIRT began investigating the sheriff.
“Prior to the amendment, there was … one offence: publishing, distributing, transmitting, selling, making available or advertising an intimate image, which at the time did not expressly include AI-generated representative images,” Block wrote.You fucking asshole, there are endless ways to charge this gross sheriff; let the courts decide the crime and punishment
“After the amendment, the offence was expanded to include artificial intimate images and made it an offence to threaten to publish, distribute, transmit, sell, make available or advertise an intimate image.”
Block said that when ASIRT opened its investigation June 30, the old provisions applied. No evidence the sheriff shared the images was ever uncovered.
“The (sheriff’s) conduct is serious,” Block said. “It will have lasting impacts on his female coworkers and their ability to feel safe in the workplace. At the same time, it was not a criminal offence.”JFC! I don’t feel safe, he’s a fucking sheriff FFS, a demented creepy abusive man in a position of authority! You fucking police crime enabling asshats won’t let a judge decide. Did Danielle Smith order this ASIRT bullshit?
An Alberta Public Safety spokesperson said the sheriff has been removed from active duty pending an internal investigation.Of course it will clear the abusive fucker, and they’ll give him a big bonus for getting caught doing the dirty.
“As that investigation is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time,” Sheena Campbell said in an email. “The Alberta Sheriffs Branch is committed to upholding the values of accountability, integrity and respect but we make sure sheriffs can violate those values every day! This is misogynistic Bible Belt Alberta, after all. Men rule! Abusive men rule above God! Those values are the foundation of the professional standards and workplace conduct expected throughout the organizationbut we proudly allow those values to be violated, in the name of God!.”
email hidden; JavaScript is required
Chuck Myles:
And we’re suppose to trust these people?? This is a bad and dangerous man with a badge. Unbelievable
‘A new phenomenon’: Edmonton teens, 14, charged after AI used to make sexualized images of classmates “It is very illegal, it is very predatory in nature to do something like this, and … yes you will be held accountable, even if you’re a kid yourself” by Jonny Wakefield, Jun 17, 2026, Edmonton Journal
Two Edmonton junior high students are facing child sexual exploitation charges for allegedly using AI to generate sexualized images of classmates.
Such charges are only the tip of the iceberg in an emerging area of online child sex abuse, police say, adding it remains difficult to hold AI platforms themselves accountable.Only because the ugly orange Kid Rapist King himself has ordered them to be unregulated, thus filthy corrupt cowardly misogynistic fuckers, Danielle Smith, Mark Carney and Evan Solomon, refuse to regulate them.
The Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT) on Wednesday announced two 14-year-old boys have been charged with voyeurism and making and possessing child sexual exploitation material — formerly known as child pornography — by feeding images of female classmates into AI apps that produce realistic nude images.
The name of the junior high is not being released to protect the identity of the victims, ALERT said, but investigators believe the number of victims could be in the double digits.I bet they don’t give a damn about the victims, rather are protecting the criminal boys
Const. Stephanie Bosch of ALERT’s Internet Child Exploitation unit said many kids don’t understand that sexualized AI images are illegal.
“This is a new phenomenon,” Bosch told a press conference at the Zebra Child and Youth Advocacy Centre. “This is something that has popped up that is incredibly harmful.”and easily stopped, regulate the fucking abusive misogynistic tech billionaires who are creating this AI shit, and unleashing it upon the world.
“It is very illegal, it is very predatory in nature to do something like this, and yes you will be held accountable, even if you’re a kid yourself.”But, we let gown men sheriffs who do it off.
Platforms difficult to hold accountable: police
Investigators said photos of “several” female students at the Edmonton school were taken without their consent, then uploaded into AI software along with images from their social media profiles. At this point, investigators believe the boys only shared the images with each other, though the case came to police attention when a teacher received a complaint from other students about the images.
The two teens were charged June 1 and cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
The charges announced Wednesday are just the second ALERT has laid for sexualized AI images of minors after an investigation in Calgary last year led to charges against a high schooler who used an app to sexualize photos of “numerous” young girls at area schools.
Investigators in the Edmonton case declined to say which AI platform the youths used, but said there are apps that exist solely to create nude images from existing photos.
“When we look at apps and we look at platforms, we aren’t vilifying necessarily those platforms,” said ALERT Staff Sgt. Alison Church. “What we’re highlighting is bad behaviour on those platforms.”NO NO NO NO! It’s the platforms FFS that are evil too and bad behaviour created them. If there were no such platforms, kids, sheriffs, police and others would not be able to undress photos of kids and women. JFC! This is disgusting and infuriating, that ALERT and ASIRT are protecting the lead creators of the sexual abuse.
Bosch said pursuing criminal charges against AI companies themselves is beyond the scope of a local police unit. Let the courts determine that FFS! Smells to me that vile Danielle Smith has ordered this sleazy enabling of the tech bro creators of AI porn. Charge the fucking company that made the AI platform!
New legislation would likely be required to hold such companies criminally accountable, she said.I don’t believe you. Charge the companies, let the courts decide. Fuck, what is about religious jurisdictions like Bible Belt Alberta that protect abusers of kids and women? Disgusting and horrifying.
“As a police officer in my unit, we’re not going after platforms, I can tell you that. We’re going after offenders, so whether they’re part of organized crime groups, lone offenders, or kids that are doing things like this.It’s because in my view you are chicken shit and ought to be fired for your cowardice.
“In terms of going after companies criminally, that’s so above the policing that we do, I just can’t answer (questions about) that confidently,” she added.You don’t have to. Charge the company or companies that created the tools of the crimes and let the courts decide if it’s so new (it’s not new, it’s creating porn without consent).
Apps ‘solely to harm other people’
Wednesday’s announcement comes as the federal government mulls the Safe Social Media Act, which would prevent children under 16 from holding accounts on certain social media platforms until those platforms can prove to a new regulator that they’re safe for kids.It’s clear to me that the tech billionaires want their platforms to harm us all, including kids, that’s where the money is. I believe they are operating in cahoots with the catholic church and Epstein Class (including Mark Carney and Trump and his Pedo Regime) to desensitize humans to kid rape, CSAM, making porn without consent etc. to make humans eventually accept them legalizing rape of women and kids. The tech billionaires and their politico pimps, Carney, Trump, Smith et al, need to be shut down, and put in prison for their enabling the abuse of so many.
The legislation would also introduce new rules for AI chatbots, which have been linked to suicides and other violent incidents.
Bosch said social media companies like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram have built-in reporting mechanisms that are mostly ignored to detect child sex abuse material and report it to police. That’s not the case with many of the apps used for sexualizing images.
“We’re talking about applications that exist solely to harm other people,” she said. “There is no need for those applications.” then charge the fucking companies that enabled this horrid abuse. 14 girls who will likely never feel safe again; only punishing the boys lets the real criminals, Elon Musk’s grok et al, off the hook.
Emmy Stuebing, Zebra Centre CEO, said she believes there is “room for improvement” when it comes to holding AI companies accountable for nude image generators.
“But I do believe things are starting to move in that direction,” she said.
Bosch said sexualized image generators are particularly pernicious because they victimize girls simply for existing online or at their school.
“In this specific situation, this choice was taken away from these kids,” she said. “They never took nude images of themselves — these two boys took it upon themselves to create those images. So that trust is broken and now that control is taken away from them.”Same with that Calgary Sheriff (one of Danielle Smith’s?) who is not getting charged for abusing his coworkers, thanks to ASIRT’s fabrications (which contradicts this case of the Edmonton kids) to protect the abusive piece of shit fucker.
Church said she expects such cases to become more common as people realize there can be criminal consequences for people who use such apps.
“I expect that we will get more reports about it, because when you know you’re not alone, you are more willing to come forward,” she said.That Calgary Sheriff needs to be fucking charged!
—with files from Postmedia News
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Mark Freisen June 17, 2026:
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and its integration with GrokAI has made the site the world’s number one source for AI CSAM and he doesn’t seem to care at all because he’s far more concerned with retweeting all the white supremacists he let back on the platform. More than likely this was created using Grok.
Forever Chemicals Want a Piece of the Data Center Boom, Environmental groups are lining up against an influx of new PFAS designed to cool AI infrastructure by Jeva Lange, August 31, 2026, Heatmap
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images
This spring, the chemicals company Chemours asked the U.S. government for permission to begin manufacturing 3-Hexene, 1,1,1,2,2,5,5,6,6,6-decafluoro-, (3E)- (CAS RN 1256353-26-0). Because that’s a mouthful, the company also gave the new compound an easier-to-say name: Opteon 2P50.
Under normal circumstances, the filing for Opteon 2P50 would not have been particularly remarkable. As it stands, the compound is one of several hundred chemicals currently under review by the Environmental Protection Agency, pursuant to Section 5 of the Toxic Substances Control Act — the statute that requires companies to seek government approval before they start pumping out new goos, gels, gases, and solvents for commercial use. But when filing its premanufacture notice this spring, Chemours flagged Opteon 2P50 for priority review, describing the “critical societal need” the chemical “directly addresses” — that is, the build-out of data centers.Humans do not need AI. It’s not a societal need of any kind, never mind “critical.”
A surge in demand for coolants, water treatments, specialized fire suppressants, and coatings for semiconductors, among other chemicals, has paralleled the data center boom. One market research firm projects that the market for immersion-cooling fluids alone will grow from just shy of $4.9 billion to $11.1 billion by 2030. The industry has seized on the opportunity, with the American Chemistry Council running sponsored content in Beltway publications like Politico and Axios last year pushing for regulatory easements. “AI and other breakthroughs depend on chemistry,” and massive deregulation to be able to poison us, other species and earth freely with toxic chemicals, CO2, methane and frac chemicals, and and andone such headline reads.
Then last summer, President Trump issued an executive order to streamline the federal permitting and regulatory processes around artificial intelligence. And that’s why Carney and Solomon, corrupt fuckers, refuse to regulate AI, likely the most dangerous creation by humans yetEPA Administrator Lee Zeldin followed that move with an announcement that the agency would henceforth prioritize TSCA reviews for any data center-related chemicals and compounds, bypassing what is often a years-long bottleneck. In the eight months since, I’ve counted four new filings for chemicals with purported data center cooling uses, including a rival coolant to Opteon 2P50 from Schimmer & Schwarz.
But Opteon 2P50 stands out for a few reasons. The biggest is that the compound is a polyfluoroalkyl substance, which, along with perfluoroalkyl substances, are referred to as PFAS, or colloquially as “forever chemicals.” Opteon 2P50’s fast-track request has alarmed environmental, public health, and watchdog groups, who fear that the Trump administration’s regulatory shortcut has created a fast lane for approving new PFAS, which can be nearly impossible to remove from the environment once contamination occurs.
So far, two data center-related PFAS are under review by the EPA, Maria Doa, the chemicals policy senior director at the Environmental Defense Fund, told me: a heat transfer fluid with an “almost completely redacted” filing, and Opteon 2P50. While the latter filing is also heavily redacted, it left enough of a paper trail of lab work and toxicology studies that Earthjustice felt it had the grounds to build a credible opposition. “There was a lot of information for us to comment on and make an opinion on the chemical,” Adriana Antezana, a staff scientist at Earthjustice, told me. “It was also one of the few chemicals so far that have been submitted for the EPA to do a priority review under the executive order to prioritize data center infrastructure. That’s why we flagged it.”
It’s fairly common for premanufacture notices, or PMNs, to include heavy redactions as companies argue they need to shield confidential business information; about two-thirds of TSCA filings from 1979 to 2009 did so in the name of protecting trade secrets, according to a review by the Environmental Working Group, a nonpartisan public health and accountability organization. Still, an Earthjustice-fronted coalition of 17 environmental groups has formally asked the EPA to deny the premanufacture notice for Opteon 2P50 because they say it presents “unreasonable risk” to human health and the environment as a PFAS. They also contend that the full information on the risks to people who’ve been exposed to Opteon 2P50 is “unlawfully” redacted from the filing.
“It seems like chemical companies that create PFAS are hopping on the opportunity to create them for electrical industries,” Antezana said. “Obviously this administration is very supportive of semiconductor manufacturing and data centers, and it seems like, unfortunately, there is an opportunity there for a lot of them to get their chemicals approved and used widely.”
Also at play: The company 3M ceased manufacturing PFAS at the end of last year, leaving a vacuum that Chemours appears eager to fill with Opteon 2P50. The new liquid could replace 3M’s Novec immersion-cooling fluid, the previous industry standard, because it also doesn’t conduct electricity. The appeal of such a chemical is obvious: Many data centers currently use water-intensive evaporative cooling or chilling systems to keep their electronics from overheating. (This is why some opponents describe AI as “thirsty.”) Opteon 2P50, on the other hand, facilitates a completely closed-loop system. Because it doesn’t conduct electricity, electronic equipment can be submerged directly into the fluid, which boils off the heat. The vapors cool and condense back into a liquid — the referent in “two-phase immersion cooling” — and recirculate into the tanks.
Chemours has said that Opteon 2P50 can lead to a 90% reduction in cooling energy, a 60% reduction in a data center’s physical footprint, and “nearly eliminate water use,” all with minimal leakage into the environment — the estimated upper-bound emission rate is 2% per year, a company spokesperson told me. (Chemours declined to make a spokesperson available for an interview for this story and provided a statement about its filing via email. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.)
Chemours has also insisted that Opteon 2P50 is not, in fact, a PFAS. On its face, that is a dubious argument. Per the internationally used structural definition of a PFAS, it’s right in the compound’s long formal name, with the initial string of 10 numbers describing the location of 10 fluorine atoms bonded to carbon — the strongest common single bond in organic chemistry and the reason “forever” chemicals are so difficult to break down and remove once they enter the environment. (It’s also why they make great water-resistant coatings.)
But if a PFAS designation is intended to characterize the persistence of a compound — a narrower definition used by the EPA — then Opteon 2P50 doesn’t fit the bill. After a lifespan of only about 70 days in the atmosphere, it reacts and breaks apart into perfluorinated aldehyde, which in turn breaks down into two ultra-short-chain PFAS: perfluoropropanoic acid (PFPrA) and trifluoroacetic acid (TFA).
It might seem like splitting hairs — if Opteon 2P50 eventually breaks down into PFAS, shouldn’t that be all that matters? — but the company’s aversion to the label is understandable. Concern around PFAS has ballooned in recent years as awareness of the difficulty (and in some cases, near impossibility) of removing such compounds from drinking water has increased. The known and suspected health and pregnancy complications. The issue has created a rift in Trumpworld, dividing the Make America Healthy Again contingent from regulatory reform advocates and industry lobbyists.
While a minority of data centers across the country use closed-loop cooling systems at this point, and of those an even smaller subset use immersion cooling that requires a specialized dielectric fluid like a PFAS, new facilities are already facing public opinion headwinds that a PFAS association could compound. (In a statement, the American Chemistry Council told me: “Not all PFAS are the same. Individual chemistries have differing properties, uses, and environmental and health profiles, and should be evaluated based on their specific characteristics and the best available science rather than treated as a single class.”)
While Chemours argues that leakage isn’t an issue with Opteon 2P50, the fact that it shared an estimated emission rate with me at all acknowledges the realistic possibility that some will reach the outside world. That may be during manufacturing — Chemours said in its filing that it will make Opteon 2P50 outside the United States and import it to its headquarters, but if the PMN is approved, it will also have legal grounds to produce it stateside — or during its disposal, after an estimated 20 years of use in a data center, as confirmed to me by a company spokesperson. But there are few clues to what that end-of-life disposal process would look like. Antezana of Earthjustice told me that in Chemours’ filing, there is “virtually no acknowledgment of disposal” at all. Chemours’ marketing also suggests it is interested in exploring the use of Opteon 2P50 outside data centers, including in electric vehicle batteries, where leaks would presumably be more difficult to contain.
“The rule of thumb is that refrigerants leak,” Lenny Siegel, the director of Chips Communities United, a CHIPS Act watchdog group that also opposes the approval of Opteon 2P50, explained to me. “They can leak when they’re being made; they can leak when they’re being stored; they can leak when they’re being transported; they can leak when they’re being installed in tanks or removed from tanks. My refrigerator might last 20 years, but the electronics in a data center will probably be obsolete in a few years, and there’s been no discussion of how they’re going to make sure that there’s no release [of Opteon 2P50].”I bet because the company doesn’t give a shit, and EPA doesn’t either.
Siegel mentioned his refrigerator because Opteon 2P50 is also a hydrofluoroolefin, or HFO — a class of compounds that break down in the atmosphere in a matter of weeks and are used as alternatives to older CFCs and HFCs, refrigerants that deplete the ozone. In addition to fueling the argument that it isn’t a PFAS, this characteristic is also why the company goes further to say it can actually help fight global warming. It has a far lower warming potential than traditional coolants, which Chemours said in its sustainability report released last week is helping it to reduce its scope 3 emissions.
But this is also where things start to get tricky. Remember those two ultra-short-chain PFAS Opteon 2P50 breaks down into: PFPrA and TFA? The pair are “known for their high mobility in water and difficulty to contain and remediate, resulting in their ubiquitous presence, widespread contamination, and substantial risks to human health and the environment,” Earthjustice said in its public comment. The organization further cites the European Chemicals Agency’s June decision to classify TFA as a reproductive toxin that “may damage fertility.”
“Assuming [Opteon 2P50 is] used, it will be released into the environment, go into the upper atmosphere, and break down and spread TFA on the landscape,” Siegel told me. Its main pathway into humans is through uptake by plants that we or other animals eat; TFA has been detected across food types, one study found, including in bananas, tomatoes, muffins, chicken breast, and wheat.
But Mads Sulbaek Andersen, a professor of chemistry at California State University, Northridge, whose research on TFA Earthjustice cites in its filing to the EPA, told me he thinks the opposition has blown the danger way out of proportion. “You will find people in industry saying sometimes that TFA is not a problem because it is not toxic,” he said. “I would say that’s not quite correct. Everything is toxic [in large enough amounts], but the risk that we see from TFA is not worth worrying about.”
Sulbaek Andersen is a panel member for the United Nations Environmental Program under the Montreal Protocol, which recently concluded an update to the parties on the state of the environment and the gases being used as replacements for the old ozone-depleting CFCs. During its review, which projected how TFA is likely to accumulate in the environment through 2100, “the conclusion is that the risk to environmental health and human health is de minimis,” he told me. He further told me that he thinks the European Chemicals Agency made a mistake in defining TFA as toxic at all, basing its decision on what he described as a “problematic study” with “laboratory issues,” and that Earthjustice, by extension, is overreacting to the Opteon 2P50 filing. (Some research has linked TFA exposure to eye and skeletal abnormalities in rabbit offspring, though animal studies are not necessarily indicative of toxicity to humans.)
“They’re saying that the EPA shouldn’t approve it because it’s a PFAS? That statement is nonsense,” he told me when I asked him about it. “You can decide that you don’t want any PFAS [approved], but that’s not founded in science — that’s just opinion.”
Not everyone in his field agrees. Hans Peter Arp, an environmental chemist at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, is the lead author of a 2024 paper that describes the buildup of TFA as an irreversible “global threat.” “It’s just a matter of time before PFAS from different sources accumulate to levels that are more concerning,” he told me. The pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries are other sources of atmospheric TFA, and it’s yet unclear how a compound like Opteon 2P50 could add to that contamination if it is widely adopted in data centers.
A single immersion tank holds around 1,270 liters of fluid, and a hyperscale data center could house hundreds of tanks.
“That’s what I’m worried about in all my discussions of TFA and PFAS,” Arp went on. “That this new Opteon will be one more source, of many sources, that will lead to an accumulation that is a permanent, fixed thing. It’s not like we stop using it and it goes away. It doesn’t work like that.”
Real questions remain about the practical use of Opteon 2P50, too. As Earthjustice’s filing notes, all the data from Chemours about its use and efficiency are based on small-scale tests, and there is still “no indication it can be used at scale in data centers.” A 2016 study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that assessed a different dielectric heat transfer fluid that was functionally analogous to Opteon 2P50, though chemically distinct, and found “significant issues with the substance and deemed its use ‘not viable at this time,’” Earthjustice’s report notes.
Chemours faces substantial competition. PFAS-free hydrocarbon, CO2 and ammonia chillers, and CO2 CRAC units “are already cooling data centers in Europe and North America efficiently,” ATMOsphere, a market accelerator for clean cooling, writes in its 2025 report. Though there are some concerns that these so-called “natural refrigerants” aren’t as effective as PFAS, “I try to emphasize that if there are safer chemicals that we can use in the production, we should favor those technologies,” Arp told me. “I know I probably can’t do much about limiting data center growth,” he went on.
“But we can at least try to make them in as environmentally sustainable a way as possible, such as using geothermal energy — and using cooling systems that do not require PFAS.”
Though Sulbaek Andersen insisted on avoiding the clumsy vilification of PFAS — a term that describes a molecular structure found in millions of compounds — as uniformly “bad” or “dangerous,” several U.S. states and the EU have made moves toward phasing them out. Still, given the prevailing atmosphere, Chemours’ bet on Opteon 2P50 surprised me.
But whether Opteon 2P50 is ultimately deemed unviable or quickly made obsolete by laws or competitors, it appears certain to be among the first of many data center-related chemicals and PFAS for an overtaxed and understaffed EPA to review. “I suspect there will be more chemicals coming along the pipeline,” Antezana, the Earthjustice scientist, told me, sounding weary.
Given the pressure on the EPA from the Trump administration, coupled with business-friendly exceptions for transparency around health impacts that make it difficult for watchdog groups to sound the alarm, now may be a poor time to play fast and loose with a substance that could end up in the environment forever.
As Arp, the environmental chemist, warned, the agency needs to get a decision on a chemical like Opteon 2P50 right the first time; if toxicology studies later confirm serious human health impacts of TFA, it would be too late to backtrack. “This is something we’ve gotten to too late, too often,” he said.
@apasek.bsky.social:
My take on the feds’ new AI data centre framework: It’s basically just a copy of Trump’s rate payer protection pledgeand copies the oil gas and frac industry’s “Best Practices” which are voluntary useless dust collectors. It rebrands voluntary corporate pledges as if they were government mandates. They’re not. They’re pinkie promises, and they’re already falling short.
@crimethinc.com:
The purpose of Flock and other surveillance systems is to enable a police state to monitor us all in order to use violent force against people whenever they engage in activity that could change the balance of power.
You can hear Flock’s director of market management describe the details here.
“I want to make sure that I have as many tools to make myself dangerous if and when I need it.”
—Caity Peak, Flock’s director of market management, instructing police officers on how they can use Flock technology to surveil and repress No Kings demonstrations and other public gatherings.
@josephcox.bsky.social:
Flock taught cops how to monitor No Kings Protests, you can see it in this video.
More here: www.404media.co/flock-taught…
@jessecharleslee.bsky.social:
As GOP postures against data centers, here’s what their moneyman Elon Musk just demanded at G20 on data centers:
“It is pretty straightforward, you have to have an environment that is relatively free of regulation. New things must be default legal instead of default illegal.”
Want to build a data centre in Canada? These are the federal government’s new expectations, Framework is ***non-binding***, but AI minister says provinces, territories, municipalities have powerNot in Nazi Alberta where Smith can overrule any municipality to get her way and her way is unreregulated noisy polluting abusive AI data centres everyfuckinghwere by Benjamin Lopez Steven · CBC News · Posted: Sep 03, 2026
The federal government has announced a new framework outlining key expectations for responsible data centre development, as politicians and companies grapple with public pushback to the infrastructure underpinning AI technology.
“If we don’t build the infrastructure of the future here, we will have to buy it from somewhere else. And if we don’t innovate here, we will rent that from someone else,” AI Minister Evan Solomon said at a news conference in Markham, Ont., on Thursday morning.We don’t fucking want AI or to be mass spied on via AI by Trump’s Pedophile KKKlan.
But Solomon said the federal government is aware that trust is vital for AI development, and the new principles will help people and companies “understand what responsible development looks like and what Canadians expect from projects that are seeking to build in their communities.”
The framework sets out five expectations for data centre projects, saying they must:
- Create lasting local benefits.That’ll for sure never happen.
- Not shift electricity costs to Canadians.It absolutely will, every fucking where the greedy tech billionaires invade. The shitty fuckers got rich raping earth and people, they don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves and their rich pals
- Minimize water use and environmental impacts.What fucking joke is Solomon?
- Be transparent about local impacts.ha, all the tech bros do, is lie lie lie lie and lie some more, and steal from the commons via their insidious impacts (the worse the impacts the more money the billionaires make; mitigation costs money)
- Bring strategic value to Canada.Via fibre line from Meta’s monstrosity in Alberta to the fucking Nazi USA, which regularly threatens us?
According to the federal government, the principles are supported by a “broad cross-section of Canada’s data centre, cloud, artificial intelligence and technology sectors.”That means to me that Solomon’s pathetic unenforceable principles only protect the AI and tech billionaires.
Several top companies are listed as signatories to the framework, including Amazon No humans with a soul ought to be using that sleazy rip off Nazi company’s services, or Anthropic, or Cohere, or Meta, or Microsoft, or OpenAI. Telus provides super lousy service, shit companyWeb Services, Anthropic, Bell Canada, Coherethat’s fucking most evil corp on earth, Palantir, eStruxture, Hypertec, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Telus.
WATCH | Solomon announces new guidelines:
Without Canadian data centre rules, ‘we will have to follow someone else’s,’ minister says
Duration 0:42AI Minister Evan Solomon announced new frameworks for responsible data centre development It’s impossible to operate AI data centres responsibly; it’s Nazi tech on Thursday. Solomon says the principles will allow for ‘more capacity at home’ and push to ‘build responsibility.’WTF does “push to build responsibility” mean? Just fucking say no to the evil inhumane AI Nazis. We don’t want their abusive data centres or their abusive AI!
Solomon emphasized the five expectations do not mean there’s a new federal approval process — and do not replace provincial, territorial or municipal responsibilities.Oh FFS. Carney deregulated AI data centres, slashing the requirement for impact assessments and putting them onto the provinces, which Smith promptly used to kill those assessments, and which I bet all others will copy. There is no fucking federal approval process, fucking Nazi American asshats run the AI show and do what they want, they harm billions more than AI could ever serve positively.
Asked how these expectations will then protect Canadians, Solomon said they have been endorsed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities — an advocacy group representing more than 2,000 municipalities.Endorsement by the greedy and corrupt is no fucking protection. JFC.
“This is not for the federal government to say what a city, a town, a rural place in a province or territory should ask — but they should be armed with the fact they are beginning not three steps back, but three steps ahead.”OMG! That Solomon blah blah means nothing. And, no community is ahead with AI data centres. None on earth.
Data centre pushback across Canada
The principles are being released at a time when politicians at all levels of government are facing public pushback about data centres over concerns about noise, costs and environmental impacts.and mental health and sexual abuse by AI, and nefarious users of AI
According to a poll from Leger, which surveyed 1,505 Canadians in July, 46 per cent of respondents viewed data centre development as positive, compared to 37 per cent who viewed it as negative.That’s likely because those shits want to sexually abuse and harm women and kids, and or, they swallowed the AI lies and propaganda spewed by Carney and his bestie, Smith, and Solomon, etc.
But the poll also found Canadians are more divided on AI data centre development in their own province; 44 per cent of respondents supported the idea, while 42 per cent opposed it.
WATCH | The push for AI data centres is growing. So is the angry backlash:
The push for AI data centres is growing. So is the angry backlash
June 5|
Duration 2:16As the federal government’s newly announced AI strategy champions more giant data centres, a growing number of Canadians want nothing to do with them, including Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew who just killed a plan to build one near Winnipeg. Backlash is also growing across the U.S.
The Alberta government has been running town halls across the province on this issue, following an announcement from tech giant Meta that it plans to build a $13-billion AI data centre project northeast of Edmonton. It is to be fed by a $4.6-billion frac’d (which means much water used to frac that gas out will be permanently lost to reuse) natural gas-fired power plant.
At the town halls held so far, Alberta officials have faced fury from rural residents about prospective data centre projects, but the officials argue lie and lie and lie and lie that they bring economic benefits and will be constructed responsibly.Construction is not the issue, it’s the toxic noisy abusive operation, and the use of the AI by millions of abusive fucking evil humans sexually exploiting kids and women (I’d hate to see what’s on Trump’s devices), and using AI to make stupidity.
A similar outcry occurred in Vancouver earlier this summer, when hundreds of demonstrators marched to oppose the construction of two new AI data centres in the city. They called for the projects — a partnership between Telus and the federal government — to be halted.
- ASK CBC NEWS Why are there suddenly so many data centres planned in Canada? Your questions answered
- Alberta minister faces more fury at second town hall on AI data centres
Some politicians have responded to concerns by outright denying certain projects, as Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew did earlier in June when he announced a large AI data centre pitched for a 141-hectare tract of farmland south of Winnipeg will not go ahead.
Others are keen to attract more development, but have laid down their own core expectations, like Ontario Premier Doug Ford, when he announced his province’s Data Centre Playbook last month.
According to the document, data centres in Ontario must invest “substantially” in the province and local communities, and must pay the full cost of electricity. Plus, Ontario will only offer “non-financial support to attract data centre investments.”Everywhere there are AI data centres, the price to ordinary families for water and electricity will rise spectacularly, promises from corrupt politicos just don’t solve the billionaire greed problem.
OpenAI faces 30 new lawsuits from witnesses to mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. by Chuck Chiang, The Canadian Press, Sep. 2, 2026, Winnipeg Free Press
VANCOUVER – Artificial intelligence company OpenAI and founder Sam Altman are facing 30 new lawsuits from witnesses to the deadly mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., with plaintiffs including a teacher who described trying to protect pupils from the shooter, and a teenage student who recalled his classmates arming themselves “with kitchen knives and heavy tools.”
“My colleagues and I are haunted by the memory of shielding children with our own bodies as our ears rang from the sound of continual gunshots and high-pitched screams. An entire generation of young lives, gone in a second,” teacher Deidre Rushlow said in a statement provided by Vancouver-based law firm Rice Parson Leoni and Elliott.
“And for what? So OpenAI could get to an IPO? Were the lives of my students and educational assistant just the cost of doing business?”
The lawsuits were to be filed Wednesday in California on behalf of “injured and traumatized students and educators” at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in the northern British Columbia community, the law firm said. Six of the eight victims who died in the shootings were killed at the school.
“These students and teachers were eyewitnesses to gun violence, murder and emergency life-saving efforts rarely seen outside of a theatre of war, and only in the most lawless of places on Earth,” said John Rice, lead Canadian counsel.
He said in a statement that OpenAI had the chance to stop the attack after its staff identified the shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, as a credible threat of imminent gun violence months beforehand, but police in Canada weren’t notified.
The company had banned Van Rootselaar’s account on its ChatGPT platform, but “nothing else was done,” the law firm’s statement said.
“Based on what we understand the shooter to have discussed with ChatGPT, this murderous rampage was specific, predictable and preventable,” Rice said.
The claims have not been tested in court.
In addition to compensatory and punitive damages over what Rice described as OpenAI’s “reckless disregard for public safety,” he said the plaintiffs are seeking Van Rootselaar’s messaging history with ChatGPT before the shooting.
They are also seeking OpenAI’s internal documents outlining the decision not to alert authorities, along with measures to prevent future mass shootings, including obligations for major online platforms to make safety reforms and mandatory reporting to law enforcement for foreseeable acts of violence.
The plaintiffs include a principal at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School as well as a teacher who shared a classroom and “the same moment of terror” with her nephew, the law firm said in a separate email.
Among the student plaintiffs are “siblings who were separated, each fearing the other had been killed,” it said.
The lawsuits are being filed in the Northern District of California, the same jurisdiction where seven previous lawsuits from victims’ families were filed.
The Feb. 10 attack began with Van Rootselaar killing her mother and brother in their family home before moving to the school and killing five students and an educational assistant. She then fatally shot herself.
OpenAI and Altman have been heavily criticized after the revelation that Van Rootselaar’s use of the company’s ChatGPT chatbot months before the attack was concerning enough for the account to be banned, yet police were not notified.
In a social media post, Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, said the company was approaching litigation related to Tumbler Ridge “with respect for both the legal process and the families and victims” and would “continue to engage in good faith.”
“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about what happened at Tumbler Ridge, or the victims of this devastating tragedy and their families,” he said.
But Kwon said it was “completely untrue” those working at OpenAI don’t prioritize safety. They “work continuously to identify potential warning signals of serious violence,” while also protecting the privacy and security of ChatGPT users, he said.
Members of OpenAI’s legal department and intelligence and investigations team employ “hard-to-define standards and processes for when to report cases to law enforcement” in complex situations, he said in the statement issued Wednesday.
“They use automated systems that leave the toughest calls to human judgment, but within standards to minimize discretion and produce principled decisions that strive to balance security and privacy for the people who use our service and the public,” Kwon said.
“That judgment is not infallible, but it is always rooted in looking out for this balance for people.”
B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma issued a statement saying the province supported the latest claims filed against the company.
“We are deeply disappointed that OpenAI has made no meaningful efforts to address the harm suffered by those affected by this tragedy,” she said.
Sharma said the province would work with families and community members in Tumbler Ridge while it explores the potential for its own, separate legal action. Sharma had announced in July that B.C. had retained legal counsel in the matter.
“The commitments made by OpenAI’s leadership, including Sam Altman and Ann O’Leary (OpenAI’s vice-president of global policy), have yet to be matched by meaningful action for the people most affected by this tragedy,” Sharma said in her statement on Wednesday.
“It is not too late for the company to demonstrate a genuine commitment to survivors, families and the Tumbler Ridge community.”
Rushlow, a Grade 7 English and humanities teacher, said in her statement that she had sent her students to the library at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where police have said most of the shootings would take place.
“I did not know, nor could I know, that when I sent them to the library with my educational assistant, they were living their final moments,” Rushlow said.
Another plaintiff, an unnamed Grade 10 student, said in an account provided by the law firm that he had to step over a victim’s body during the school’s evacuation.
The student said he had witnessed his teacher perform 45 minutes of CPR on the victim in an attempt to save her life, and other students taking refuge with the group in a small storage closet had “armed themselves with kitchen knives and heavy tools, ready to use them if the shooter came through the door.”
Meta’s $17 Billion Settlement is a Bad Deal for Teens and All Social Media Users by David Greene, September 1, 2026, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Meta’s settlement with 52 state attorneys general is a bad deal for all internet users, and especially for teens. That’s what we said the day the settlement was announced.
In this post, we go through the Settlement’s provisions in detail and explain why that is so, including how:
- The Settlement embeds age assurance technology and age-gates into Meta’s social media products and requires all users—minors and adults—to undergo a rights-threatening age estimation process
- The Settlement places severe restrictions on Teens that can largely only be modified by the Teens’ parents and only then in exchange for giving their parents a ton of information about their online community and usage;
- The Settlement seems to empower the attorneys general to enforce Meta’s content restriction on “age inappropriate content,” categories that Meta itself has had trouble administering without excluding information about sexuality, sexual and reproductive healthcare, and abortion medication;
- The Settlement actually requires Meta to collect, analyze, and retain more information about its Teen users—when the pressure should have been on Meta to diminish its surveillance capitalism. And the Settlement in no way limits the attorneys general from seeking the user information for their own law enforcement purposes.
Note: A chunk of the settlement addresses unauthorized users under age 13, and Meta’s obligations to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Meta policy has banned users under 13 since the company opened to the public in 2006. Aside from the age assurance frameworks that support both those and the other parts of the Settlement, the under-13 provisions are not addressed in this post. Those provisions essentially require Meta to detect and delete all under-13 accounts.
Further note: All U.S. states are parties to the Settlement except Florida, New Mexico, and Texas. The Settlement includes D.C., American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico.
Age Gates Reinforced By Age Estimation Technology
In the Settlement, Meta agrees to age-gate Instagram and Facebook, thus making age gates a legal mandate. And further, Meta will now enforce these age gates with age assurance technology, ditching its previous practice where the person signing up for the services self-attests to their birthdate. This concession firmly embeds deeply flawed age estimation technology into the online experience of millions of people around the world. First and foremost, the age verification setup seriously threatens online anonymity and privacy for everyone, as we’ve said before. The technology also just adds a layer of creepiness into the use of any service. In the Settlement, Meta pledges to, within one year, apply one or more age assurance methods to each Instagram or Facebook user in the states and territories that joined the Settlement. [P. 10, §II.A.1]
1. Age Assurance Framework. Within one (1) year of the Effective Date, Meta will adopt an age assurance framework (“Age Assurance Framework”), wherein it will apply one or more age assurance methods developed by a third party and licensed to customers (“Commercially Available Age Assurance Methods”) or age assurance methods developed by Meta (“Proprietary Age Assurance Methods”) (collectively, “Age Assurance Methods”) to each Meta SMP user in the Settling States. For the purposes of this Section II.A, an age assurance method developed or acquired by Meta that uses the same or functionally identical technology and methodology to a Commercially Available Age Assurance Method shall be treated as a Commercially Available Age Assurance Method. The Age Assurance Framework must include Age Assurance Methods to evaluate whether a Meta SMP user is a Teen User or U13, as described in Section II.A.6. New users of Meta SMPs who have not yet had their age assessed by an Age Assurance Method pursuant to Meta’s Age Assurance Framework shall receive the Default Protections pursuant to Section II.A.10 of this Agreement.
Those methods might include commercially available products, as well as proprietary age estimation process Meta might have or develop. Meta also pledges to consider age signals from Google and Apple operating systems and app stores. [§II.A.5] Meta has previously advocated for age assurance requirements to fall on Google and Apple rather than on individual services.
This age assessment essentially dumps users into one of three age-range buckets: 18+, 13-17, and under-13. Users under 13 have long been barred from Meta products, but this Settlement creates new obligations to search for and detect users who may have said they were older.
For those estimated to be over-18, the Settlement guarantees no direct benefit to you: no privacy protections, no greater user controls for your own accounts, no dent in Meta’s surveillance capitalism.
Those estimated to be 13-17 years old will be limited to Teen User accounts.
Those estimated to be under-13 will lose their accounts altogether.
Those who open new accounts will have two weeks to submit to age estimation, and if they decline to do so, Meta is now required to treat them as a Teen User by default, even if they self-identify as being 18 and older. [P. 18, §II.A.10.b]
(b) Fourteen (14) days or more after creating a Meta SMP account, Meta SMP users who have not yet had their age assessed by an Age Assurance Method pursuant to the Age Assurance Framework shall be treated as Teen Users for the purposes of this Agreement regardless of their stated age, except that Meta SMP users with a stated age of 18 years old or older shall receive the protections described in Section II.A.10.a.ii.
What about people with existing accounts, who are well past that two-week period to submit to age estimation? Will they also be defaulted to Teen User status if they decline age estimation? It seems so—the AGs would likely not have accepted a settlement that did not require Meta to take action against existing teen users who choose to forgo the age assurance process. Perhaps Meta will use its existing store of information about its current users as a type of permitted proprietary age assurance process? Thus, perhaps, an adult user whose Facebook account is itself older than 18 will be assessed as being over-18? Or a user who is identified as the spouse of a user who has been age-assured? But Meta can only rely on a proprietary process if it meets the accuracy standards set out in the Settlement Agreement, and that seems to require a formal assessment of accuracy.
How accurate does the age assurance process need to be?
The Settlement sets maximum false-positive rates for both commercially available and proprietary age assurance methods [Pages 12-13, §II.A.6]. Within two years, each shall be no more than 10% for ages 16-17 and no more than 3% for ages 13-15.
6. Age Assurance Standards.
(a) U18 False Positive Rate Thresholds.
(i) Any Commercially Available Age Assurance Methods deployed by Meta for any new and existing users in the Settling States shall
meet or fall below the following U18 False Positive Rates excluding method circumvention within one year of the Effective Date: 10% for minors aged 16-17 and 3% for minors aged 13-15.
(ii) Any Proprietary Age Assurance Methods deployed by Meta for any new and existing users in the Settling States shall meet or fall below the following U18 False Positive Rates excluding method circumvention within 1 and 2 years of the Effective Date:
(A) Year 1: Within one year of the Effective Date: 14% for minors aged 16-17 and 7% for minors aged 13-15.
(B) Year 2: Within two years of the Effective Date, 10% for minors aged 16-17 and 5% for minors aged 13-15.
Notably, there is no limit indicated in the error rate for false negatives, when the process wrongly identifies an adult as being under 18. The Settlement generally shows little concern for those falsely placed in its Teen User category. The Settlement only requires Meta to maintain an appeal process for users whose age range is wrongly assessed. [P. 17, §II.A.9]
9. Appeals Process. Users claiming to have been mis-identified as minors must be offered a Clear and Conspicuous means to appeal the decision. Decisions on all user appeals must be made in a timely manner and communicated to the user along with a basis for the decision.
Meta must also employ measures to discourage age estimation circumvention, including placing limits on the number of attempts any user might make. [P. 16, §II.A.7] As part of this, Meta agrees to proactively monitor adult accounts to determine whether a user needs to undergo additional age estimation. [P. 16, §II.A.7.c]
This is just one of the ways the Settlement embeds Meta’s active surveillance of its users for the next ten years (see below for more).
(c) Incorporating a proactive monitoring system that requires users to undergo an additional Age Assurance Method where a user is determined, including based on their conduct on Meta SMPs, to have likely circumvented the Age Assurance Method and is: (A) likely a Teen User after having been previously assessed as 18 or older; or (B) likely U13 after having been previously assessed as 13 or older. Users Meta determines are likely Teen Users after having been previously assessed as at least eighteen may choose not to undergo additional age assurance but then will be treated as Teen Users; and
Any age assurance process Meta uses must be tested annually.
Data minimization
The Settlement does have data minimization requirements for the data collected during the age assurance process. [§II.A.8] But there are numerous holes. The Settlement requires that all information obtained and retained as part of the age assurance processes thereafter be “immediately enqueued for deletion, after which it shall be deleted after a reasonable period of time.” The “reasonable period of time” is not defined. And the Settlement defines a category of “Retainable Data” that may be retained for 90 days. This includes “metadata about the age assurance method used by the user information … where required to ensure the ongoing integrity of age assurance systems, including but not limited to the ability to identify circumvention and related patterns over time, and only for as long as it is required for those purposes.” The Settlement requires that all data collected by Meta or its vendor be stored according to industry-standard data security measures,” a standard that unfortunately does not eliminate the risk of a data breach.
Restrictions For Teens (And Anyone Who Opts Out of Age-Gating)
Teen User Accounts are subject to time, feature, and content restrictions. These will be applied to those estimated to be 13-17 as well as any new user who declines to submit to the age assurance process and to existing users who decline to submit to age estimation and for whom Meta cannot ascertain that they are older than 17.
Time restrictions
Teen Users will be subject to the following time restrictions (§II.B). These measures seem to assume that most of teen’s social media use is frivolous and unserious (not that those are in and of themselves bad; the right to play is among young people’s human rights), ignoring the fact that teens use social media for school and personal research, conducting activism campaigns, and other endeavors that might naturally not fit within these time limits, and that some teens may need to work at the restricted times to support their families and themselves:
- Night Access Mode – no access (except messaging) to Instagram and Facebook from Midnight to 6 AM, and no push notifications from 10 PM – 7 AM.
- School mode – no push notifications from 8 AM – 3 PM Monday-Friday from Aug 15-June 15.
- Daily cumulative time limit of 2 hours per day across Instagram and Facebook, resetting at midnight, excluding video and audio content at least 22 minutes long, absent artificial prolongation, defined by the Settlement as “longform content.”
- “Productive pauses and notices” designed to “reduce or prevent excessive, mindless, or unintended teen usage.” This means that a teen’s usage will be momentarily paused after 60 and 90 minutes of daily cumulative use with notices sent every 15 minutes of continuous use. According to the Settlement, these productive pauses and notices will look like this:
- exhibit_g_meta.jpg
To be clear, the ability to set time limits, blackout times, and scheduled pauses are all useful features that should be available and easy to implement for users of all ages. Such tools would have allowed teens, and all users, the ability to design their own safe experience, customized to their own needs, online. Such user controls would have recognized that teens have human rights, agency, and autonomy.
But that’s not what these restrictions are. They are not tools that give the teen users control. Rather, they are imposed, top-down, on teens and anyone else who declines to submit to Meta’s age assurance process.
Feature restrictions (§II.C-D)
Within four months of the effective date of the Settlement, Meta must offer teens an option for a non-personalized feed, which is defined as a feed of chronologically ordered posts from friends and follows. Teens will also be able to disable autoplay as part of an “optional protective settings” package. Each of these settings must be “viewable within three user gestures and clearly labeled, easy to notice, viewable without scrolling, and discoverable in an intuitive location within” the service.
Again, these would be useful user controls that should be offered to users of all ages. And while a Teen User potentially has control over these features, they cede that control to their parent once they enroll in Parental Supervision, part of the Parental Supervision Tradeoff discussed below.
Also, by default, teens will not see the number of likes or other reactions to their posts.
Teens will also not have access to what the Settlement calls “Cosmetic Procedure Filters,” that is, “any digital filter or augmented reality effect that distorts, sculpts, redefines, or idealizes a user’s face in a way that cannot be achieved without cosmetic surgery or extreme make-up techniques.”
X. “Cosmetic Procedure Filter” shall mean any digital filter or augmented reality (AR) effect that distorts, sculpts, redefines, or idealizes a user’s face in a way that cannot be achieved without cosmetic surgery or extreme makeup techniques. For the avoidance of doubt, “Cosmetic Procedure Filter” does not include: (1) Fantasy/Character Effects: Filters that change a user’s facial structure for the purpose of turning the user into a non-human or fictional character (e.g., an elf or cartoon) or an animal (e.g., a dragon or puppy); (2) Makeup/Smoothing Effects: Filters that smooth skin or alter appearance in ways that can be achieved by ordinary makeup techniques without altering the appearance of underlying physical facial structure or meaningfully changing skin tone; or (3) Parody and Exaggeration Effects: Effects that entertain users by distorting their appearance through parody, satire, or exaggerated forms (e.g., extreme visual distortions outside the scope of normal cosmetic procedures). To help operationalize this definition, the Settling States will provide Meta illustrative examples and guidance of AR effects that are Cosmetic Procedure Filters and AR effects that are not Cosmetic Procedure Filters in a letter to be sent within two (2) months of the Effective Date.
Meta has had rules about cosmetic effects directed at teens since 2019. But the Settlement will give the states a major role in helping Meta identify what features are and are not Cosmetic Procedure Filters.
Content restrictions (P.1, §II.E, as defined by §I.C, E, F)
For content, Meta is basically pledging to continue its existing practices limiting Teen Users to age-appropriate content and accounts, to default Teen Users to age-appropriate experiences. This includes limiting access to accounts that “regularly share content that is inappropriate for teens” such as content from the following Meta community standards categories: Adult Nudity & Sexual Activity, Restricted Goods & Services, Suicide, Self-Harm or Eating Disorders.
C. “Age Appropriate Experiences” refers to content that is appropriate for Teen Users based on input from experts, parents, and teens. For the purposes of this Agreement, Age Appropriate Experiences shall mean content captured in Meta’s applicable Ages 13+ content setting, which is tied to policies inspired by movie ratings for ages 13+ and parent feedback.
D. “Age Assurance Methods” shall have the meaning set forth in Section II.
E. “Age Inappropriate Accounts” refers to accounts that regularly share content that is inappropriate for teens or that have account information that otherwise suggests the account is inappropriate for Teen Users. For the purposes of this Agreement, Age Inappropriate Accounts shall mean accounts that: (1) regularly share Age Inappropriate Content in the following categories: Adult Nudity & Sexual Activity, Restricted Goods & Services, Suicide, Self-Harm or Eating Disorders, or (2) have account names or profile photos or bios that suggest the account is otherwise inappropriate for minors, based on Meta’s policies for the following categories: Adult Nudity & Sexual Activity, Restricted Goods & Services, Suicide, Self-Harm or Eating Disorders.
F. “Age Inappropriate Content” refers to content that is generally perceived by U.S. parents, youth experts, and teens as not being appropriate for Teen Users. For the purposes of this Agreement, Age Inappropriate Content shall mean content prohibited by Meta’s Community Standards concerning bullying and harassment; nudity and sexual activity; child sexual exploitation, abuse, and nudity; sexually explicit language; suicide, self-harm and eating disorders; graphic violence and incitements to violence; gambling; and restricted substances or goods (including illegal drug use), as well as policies specifically focused on protections for Teen Users, including those regarding high-risk viral challenges and risky stunts.
The issue here is that some of these categories are problematic. For example, the Restricted Goods & Services standard has been used by Meta to justify removing information about abortion medication, as we detailed in our Stop Censoring Abortion campaign, and in our comment to the Meta Oversight Board. And under the Adult Nudity & Sexual Activity standard, Meta blocks teens from “real world art of visible genitalia … where the nudity is the focus of the image” and has a history of applying the standard inconsistently, including with respect to representations of indigenous women, breast cancer awareness posts, educational posts about ovulation, and posts about testicular and breast self-exams. And it has disproportionately applied the standard negatively to gay and lesbian content as compared to straight content.
And even more worrisome, even though this is just Meta continuing its existing practices, the Settlement empowers the states to enforce its provisions. [P. 40, §IV.C.1.i; §VII.C] That means that over the next ten years, the duration of the Settlement, Meta will face the threat that a state attorney general will pursue legal action against it because it disagrees with how Meta interprets these categories of community standards, and pressures Meta to eliminate Teen User access to posts about sexuality and reproductive and sexual health. And Meta will now lack the hard-earned First Amendment defenses to make its own curatorial decisions.
C. Notwithstanding anything in Sections VIII.A-B above, a Settling State may take any action, including but not limited to legal action to enforce compliance with the Agreement, without delay if the Settling State believes that a threat to the health or safety of the public requires immediate action.
The Parental Supervision Tradeoff
All of these Teen User restrictions can be modified – but only if the Teen User enrolls in Parental Supervision that links their account to a parent’s or guardian’s account. Once their accounts are linked, parents can modify the Teen User settings to make them less restrictive (they need the teen’s permission if they want to make them more restrictive).
Parental Supervision comes with huge tradeoffs. There is a huge privacy tradeoff: in exchange for designating someone as their Parent, the Parent gets a lot of information about the Teen’s use: the usernames of all of the teen’s connections, reports on how much time the Teen User spends on a Meta service, the time spent watching longform content, usernames of all those messaging with the Teen User, and any evidence Meta has about suspected secondary accounts. The Supervising Parent also gets notices of the teen’s repeated searches related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. [P. 28, §II.G] And there are huge autonomy tradeoffs: once enrolled in Parental Supervision, the ability to control features like recommendations and autoplay, discussed above, transfer from the Teen user over to their parent.
Parental Supervision
1. Meta agrees to provide Supervising Parents with information concerning the amount of time their Teen User is spending on Meta SMPs, including separately for time on the Meta SMP, time using the Meta SMP’s messaging features, time viewing Longform Content (to the extent excluded from the calculation of daily limits pursuant to Section II.B.3.a.i), and the usernames of the Teen User’s social connections and individuals messaging the Teen User, and usernames of any user reported by a Teen User. In addition, Instagram will notify Supervising Parents should their Teen User engage in repeated searches for terms related to suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders, and Facebook will notify Supervising Parents should their Teen User engage in repeated searches for terms related to suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders.
2. For Teen Users, Supervising Parents will be notified on a daily basis when the Teen User communicates directly with each adult user for the first time with the Teen User and shall provide a link to the adult user’s profile to provide information such as their stated hometown or city or mutual connections, to the extent the information is publicly available.
3. Upon a Teen User enrolling Parental Supervision, Meta SMPs shall prompt the Supervising Parent to review their Teen User’s settings to consider making updates to support how their Teen User spends their time on Meta SMPs. Meta shall not preselect, recommend, or encourage settings to Supervising Parents that are less restrictive than the default settings in this Agreement.
4. Meta SMPs will periodically suggest checkups for Supervising Parents to do with their Teen Users to evaluate their settings and usage.
5. Meta SMPs agree to continue to take steps designed to encourage enrollment in their Parental Supervision tools.
6. If a Teen User is enrolled in Parental Supervision, Meta shall notify the Supervising Parent if the Teen User creates or explicitly links a new secondary Meta SMP account within their Accounts Center or has been linked to a Soft Matched Account through Meta SMPs, including a link to the secondary account’s profile. Meta SMPs shall automatically apply the Supervising Parent’s approved time management settings in Section II.B and content restrictions to all explicitly linked Meta SMP accounts and all Supervised Accounts for a Teen User belonging to the same Meta SMP.
Unfortunately, Meta doesn’t have a great way to learn whether there exists a genuine parent-Teen User relationship. But it will try to get it right. [§II.G.8]
This may be ultimately workable for young people with healthy and safe relationships with their parent or guardian. But obviously it is not good at all for a Teen User lacking such a safe relationship.
More Surveillance, Not Less
Moreover, rather than pushing Meta away from the collection, analysis, and retention of user data, the Settlement requires Meta to do more of it for the next ten years. Several provisions of the Settlement require Meta to carefully track its users’ use of Instagram and Facebook for the purposes of determining whether its age assurance framework and Teen User restrictions are working as intended.
For example:
- Meta promises to review detected U13 users’ friend networks to identify other possible U13 users. [§II.A.6.(b).(i).(D)]
- Meta will incorporate a “proactive monitoring system” to identify possible Teen Users among those who were initially determined to be older than 17 by its age assurance process. [§II.7.(c)]
- Meta pledges to utilize and improve its existing “soft matching models” that track signals such as “device IDs, phone numbers, and email addresses” to identify duplicate accounts. [§II.B.6.(a)]
- Meta will continue to monitor Teen Users’ activity to “regularly evaluate the prevalence of Teen User exposure to Age Inappropriate Content, and Teen User exposure to experiences that are not Age Appropriate Experiences,” [§II.E.3] and also to “regularly evaluate the prevalence of Teen User exposure to Harmful Experiences on Meta SMPs.” [§II.F.3]
- Monitor Teen Users’ messaging to identify message threads with potentially suspicious accounts. [§II.F.4]
- The Settlement also requires Meta to actively monitor use of its services so that it can supply data to the Independent Auditor that will now monitor its compliance with the Settlement. “The Independent Auditor is entitled to access the non-privileged information, personnel, systems, and records that are reasonably relevant and sufficient to evaluate Meta’s implementation of the Injunctive Relief Terms, including, but not limited to, access to raw data; aggregated data; information; internal documents and communications” plus information from its age assurance processes, data regarding Teen User responses to the Productive Pauses, data regarding its models for soft matching of secondary accounts, data regarding the prevalence of Teen User exposure to Age Inappropriate Content and Harmful Experiences, and to experiences that are not Age Appropriate Experiences. [§III.E]
Moreover, one of the chief threats of Meta’s surveillance is the honeypot of data it creates that may be accessible to governments for law enforcement and other investigations. Nowhere in the Settlement do the 52 attorneys general pledge to not try to access all of the data the Settlement requires Meta to collect and retain.
Meta Has To Pay The States And Pays To Establish Norms Beyond Meta
The Settlement also includes annual payments from Meta to the states, apparently proportionate to the size of each state’s teen user base. Over the ten-year life of the Settlement, these annual payments will total over $11 billion. And the states then get an additional $5 billion if Meta competitors adopt the same measures.
This quirk of the Settlement incentivizes the States to pursue similar age assurance processes and at-least-as-restrictive teen user measures for Meta’s chief existing competitors for teen use, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap, and for any new service that may gain widespread teen use over the life of the Settlement Agreement. If the states are able to get Meta’s competitors to adopt the same measures, then the states will get the additional $5 billion in annual payments. That’s quite the incentive for the states to pursue litigation and regulatory measures against those companies. All of this will further entrench age assurance, age-gating, and the ceding of teen autonomy as the norm across online services.
1. In the event the Contingent Monetary Payment Trigger has occurred in a Settling State, Meta shall be obligated to pay to such Settling State ten equal installments in the amount as set out in Exhibit B (each, a “Contingency Installment Payment”).
2. Following the date the Contingent Monetary Payment Trigger has occurred, the Contingency Installment Payments shall be made to the Settling State on January 15 in each subsequent calendar year of the Agreement Term as follows:
(a) At the next scheduled payment date, the Settling State shall be paid the Contingency Installment Payment for that payment date and all prior payment dates.
(b) For each of the remaining payment dates, the Settling State will be paid the Contingency Installment Payment for that payment date.3. If a Settling State fails to achieve the Contingent Monetary Payment Trigger during the Agreement Term, the Contingency Installment Payments shall be permanently forfeited by such Settling State and retained by Meta. For the avoidance of doubt, no Settling State will have an obligation to repay the Contingency Payment
The Settlement is thus a bad deal for all users of Facebook and Instagram. It normalizes age gating and age assurance for millions of internet users. It denies teens the tools to create their own safe experiences online and places their social media experience firmly under the control of either Meta or their parents. And rather than addressing Meta’s collection, analysis, and retention of data about teens’ use of Instagram and Facebook, it binds Meta to continued surveillance, and does nothing to protect access to such data by the states.
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