 |
|
|
|||||
A post circulating on Facebook shows a man named Henek, a violinist allegedly forced to play in the camps orchestra at Auschwitz. “His role: to play music as fellow prisoners were led to the gas chambers, reads the caption. But there is no Holocaust victim by the name of Henek. The image is also AI-generated. Publishing fake, AI-generated images of Auschwitz is not only a dangerous distortion. Such fabrication disrespects victims and harasses their memory.If you see such posts, please dont share them. Instead, follow the official @AuschwitzMuseum, where every name, every photo, and pic.twitter.com/8sMBxvPkOt— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) July 6, 2025 A new BBC investigation uncovered an international network of spammers posting fabricated Holocaust images on Facebook to profit from Metas content-monetization program. In recent months, images of children abandoned on train tracks or lovers meeting across concentration camp fences have appeared on Facebook, attracting clicks and shares. None of the victims or stories are real. According to the BBC, the images originate from spam networks in Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and Nigeria, where AI slop creators trade tips in private groups about exploiting Metas monetization scheme. Holocaust imagery, in particular, has proven to be a reliable traffic driver. One account claimed to generate more than 1.2 billion views and 16,000 in four months from mass-produced content. The BBC also interviewed a Pakistani man enrolled in these monetization schemes. While he does not post Holocaust content, he said the work has become his sole source of income, noting that posts targeting U.K., U.S., and European audiences earn up to eight times more than those aimed at Asia. Many history-themed pages and groups impersonate businesses to build audiences and qualify for monetization before pivoting to churn out Holocaust AI slop. Meta told the BBC the images themselves do not violate its policies but confirmed it had removed certain spam accounts flagged in the investigation. (Fast Company has reached out to Meta for comment.) In an X post earlier this year, the Auschwitz Museum addressed the disturbing trend and the impact it has on real victims and their families: What makes this particularly troubling is that their posts copy real contentincluding names, dates, and biographical facts taken directly from our posts,” the museum wrote. “Yet they pair this information with fabricated, AI-generated images that mislead viewers. The use of artificial intelligence to generate fictional images of Auschwitz victimsas done by the Facebook page 90s History (https://t.co/oNPzY9Ykq0)is not a tribute. It is a profound act of disrespect to the memory of those who suffered and were murdered in Auschwitz. It pic.twitter.com/wCdtySoBWK— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) May 22, 2025 The post continued: The history of Auschwitz is a well-documented story. Altering its visual record with AI imagery introduces distortion, no matter the intent. Using made-up images, no matter how poignant they seem, is a dangerous distortion of facts.
Category:
E-Commerce
European Union regulators on Friday hit Google with a 2.95 billion euro ($3.5 billion) fine for breaching the blocs competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services, marking the fourth such antitrust penalty for the company. The European Commission, the 27-nation blocs executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the U.S. tech giant to end its self-preferencing practices and take steps to stop conflicts of interest along the advertising technology supply chain. EU regulators had previously threatened a breakup of the company but held off on that threat for the time being. Google said the decision was wrong and that it would appeal. It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money, Lee-Anne Mulholland, the companys global head of regulatory affairs, said in a statement. The decision was long overdue, coming more than two years after the European Commission announced antitrust charges against Google. The commission had said at the time that the only way to satisfy antitrust concerns about Googles lucrative digital ad business was to sell off parts of its business. However, this decision made only a brief mention of possible divestment and comes amid renewed tensions between Brussels and the Trump administration over trade, tariffs and technology regulation. Top EU officials had said earlier that the commission was seeking a forced sale because past cases that ended with fines and requirements for Google to stop anti-competitive practices have not worked, allowing the company to continue its behavior in a different form. It’s the second time in a week that Google has avoided a breakup. Google is also under fire on a separate front in the U.S., where prosecutors want the company to sell off its Chrome browser after a judge found the company had an illegal monopoly in online search. On Tuesday, a U.S. federal judge found that Google had illegal monopoly in online search and ordered a shake-up of its search engine but rebuffed the government’s attempt to break up the company by forcing a sale of its Chrome browser. But the EU indicated that breakup option is not totally off the table. Google has 60 days to tell the Commission its proposals to end its conflicts of interest, and if the regulators aren’t satisfied they will propose an appropriate remedy. The Commission has already signaled its preliminary view that only the divestment by Google of part of its services would address the situation of inherent conflicts of interest, but it first wishes to hear and assess Googles proposal, it said in a press release. The commissions penalty follows a formal investigation that it opened in June 2021, looking into whether Google violated the blocs competition rules by favoring its own online display advertising technology services at the expense of rival publishers, advertisers and advertising technology services. Its investigation found that Google abused its dominant positions in the ad-technology ecosystem, the commission said. Online display ads are banners and text that appear on websites and are personalized based on an internet users browsing history. Mulholland said, “Theres nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before. Google is facing pressure on other fronts. In a separate U.S. case, the Justice Department asked a federal judge in May to force the company to sell off its AdX business and DFP ad platform tools that are also at the heart of the EU case. They connect advertisers with publishers who have ad space to sell on their sites. The case is scheduled to move to the penalty phase, known as remedy hearings, in late September. Authorities in Canada and Britain are also targeting the company over its digital ad business.
Category:
E-Commerce
Twice recently, the people who run Fox News were reminded of their biggest nightmare. The conservative network Newsmax’s $67 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over false claims after the 2020 election recalled Fox’s own $787.5 million deal with the same company more than two years ago. New legal papers filed last month by a second company suing Fox, Smartmatic, also put an episode they would like to forget back in the news. Between the staggering payment to bypass a defamation trial and revelations about the lengths to which Fox went to avoid telling its audience what it didn’t want to hear about Donald Trump’s defeat, many wondered if its actions in November 2020 would damage Fox News or compel it to change directions. Not so much, it turns out. Fox News Channel has defied gravity with its ratings, and is more popular with viewers this summer than ABC, CBS or NBC. Its top personalities resolutely support Trump, who has filled his second administration with former Fox stars like Pete Hegseth and Jeanine Pirro. Time after time, the White House turns to Fox to make news; shortly after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump was sitting with Sean Hannity. Reached by The Associated Press, Fox declined to make anyone available to speak for this story. No regrets, no surrender An ethos many at Fox share with the president no expressed regrets, no apologies has also shown signs of spreading, given Newsmax’s swagger following the Aug. 11 settlement announcement. Fox News averaged 2.63 million viewers in weekday prime-time for the second quarter of 2025, up 56% from the same period in 2023, the Nielsen company said. While the increase is somewhat inflated since Fox took a hit in the ratings two years ago following the firing of Tucker Carlson, the advance of cord-cutting means that any network gaining viewers now is unusual. MSNBC’s prime-time audience of 1 million this spring was down 21% in two years, and CNN’s viewership of 538,000 was down 6%, Nielsen said. Forty-five percent of people watching one of the top three cable news networks at any given time two years ago were tuned to Fox. This year, that audience share jumped to 62%. Clearly, Fox’s audience is more interested in following a Trump administration than it was for a Joe Biden administration. Just as clearly, the Dominion case had little appreciable impact on viewership. Fox’s audience didn’t really look at that verdict and say, Oh, I cant watch them anymore,’ said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center. I think Fox’s audience looked at that and said, oh, the left is coming after them. Absorbing some hits and moving on Financially, the Dominion settlement was stiff enough that Newsmax is spreading its payments out over three years. The much larger Fox had a greater ability to absorb its hit. Fox confirmed at the time that it could deduct the settlement from its income taxes, and insurance could make the payment lower. Meanwhile, Fox News is a profit engine and becoming even more so; Axios reported earlier this year that the company expected to make half a billion dollars on non-TV products like books, podcasts and streaming. Carlson was the face of the network before he was fired shortly after the settlement was announced, but Fox has always been able to generate new stars. Carlson took over from Bill O’Reilly when he was fired in 2017. Fox started The Five, arguably its centerpiece show, when Glenn Beck was shown the door in 2011. Jesse Watters now owns Carlson and O’Reilly’s old time slot. Yet, it’s hard to understate the worry many at Fox had about losing audience immediately following the 2020 election. Trump, and many of his fans, were angry that the network declared Biden the winner in Arizona before most news outlets, a pivotal moment in the vote-counting. Internal messages and deposition interviews revealed in court papers tied to Smartmatic’s lawsuit reveal much of that drama. Management criticized anchor Neil Cavuto for ordering his show to cut away from Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany when she began talking about election fraud. News reporters were disciplined for fact-checking some of Trump’s claims. Many in Fox’s audience expressed anger at hearing Trump corrected and wanted to hear conspiracy theories. Cavuto left Fox after 28 years last December. McEnany is now a co-host of Fox’s midday show, Outnumbered. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, hosts a weekend show at Fox. Former Fox politics editor Chris Stirewalt, who was fired by Fox shortly after the network’s correct call in Arizona, identified in a Smartmatic deposition a programming strategy that Fox excels at. The best way to capture an audience is to make them afraid, make them fearful of something to make them hate or resent other people to try to keep them with your telecast and that they’re afraid to change the channel, he said. Fox has also maintained its dominance by playing a form of hardball that Newsmax alleged, in a lawsuit filed this week, violates antitrust laws. Newsmax said Fox has tried to block television distributors from carrying its rival, hired private detectives to investigate Newsmax executives and pressured guests not to appear on the network. In response, Fox said, Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers. Newsmax once expressed regret about coverage. Not anymore Smartmatic said Fox has never retracted, or apologized for, programs that falsely suggested the company was involved in changing votes in 2020. Fox, which would not make an executive available for this story, said fraud charges made by a president or his representatives were newsworthy, and the ntwork is defending itself on free speech grounds. Newsmax has twice publicly expressed some regrets about its post-election coverage. The network settled a lawsuit with Smartmatic in 2024. In a statement aired on Newsmax in December 2020, the network said that no evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election. The following April, Newsmax apologized for airing false allegations that a Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, manipulated voting machines or tallies to the detriment of Trump in 2020. Coomer, in turn, dropped Newsmax from a defamation lawsuit. According to court papers in the case, Newsmax executive Gary Kanofsky wrote about conspiracy theorists to a colleague shortly after the election: Simply giving them a microphone to spew more anti-election rhetoric and advance their claims without being properly equipped to question the legitimacy or factual accuracy of their assertions may be fun, but its terrible journalism. But Newsmax offered no apology in making the Dominion settlement, announced Aug. 11. The network’s CEO, Chris Ruddy, attacked the judge, saying he effectively entered a confiscation of our property because our reporting was not always sympathetic to Joe Biden. The network said on the air: Newsmax believed it was critically important for the American people to hear both sides of the election disputes that arose in 2020. We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced and conducted within professional standards of journalism. What has changed? Newsmax has grown, and two months after Trump took office again, it went public. It invites members of its audience dominated by Trump fans to invest in the network. If you’re paying attention to your audience at Newsmax, Graham said, you don’t want to give the impression that you’re knuckling under. David Bauder, AP media writer
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||