Microsite Highlighting Evidence from the Landmark Social Media Addiction Trials.

New documents show the tactics Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok execs used to disrupt learning, prey on minors, and co-opt the PTA to control the narrative with parents

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20260205123528/https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/02/03/how-ice-is-watching-you/

The Federal Communications Commission seems eager to let SpaceX experiment with massive data centers in space. On Wednesday, Chairman Brendan Carr tweeted, "The FCC welcomes and now seeks comment on the SpaceX application for Orbital Data Centers."

SpaceX’s application to launch up to one million satellites has been accepted by the agency, kicking off a public comment period. The announcement is surprising because the company only submitted its proposal on Friday. Usually, the FCC takes weeks or months to respond. In this case, it made a decision in days, even though SpaceX’s proposal appears preliminary and even rushed, according to space experts, some of whom question the constellation’s feasibility.

For perspective, only 14,500 satellites are currently in orbit. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk now wants to dramatically increase that number by about 70 times, raising questions about the environmental toll from the required rocket launches and the potential for space debris.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is surveying the commercial advertising technology market for tools capable of supplying location data and large-scale analytics to federal investigators, according to a recent Request for Information (RFI).

Framed as market research rather than a procurement, the RFI seeks information from companies offering “Ad Tech compliant and location data services” that could support criminal, civil, and administrative investigations across ICE’s mission set.

• European Commission officials met lobbyists more than 100 times on the Digital Fairness Act since December 2024. 83% of the lobby meetings that Commission top officials had on the DFA were with industry representatives, including 47 meetings with individual companies and 28 with business lobby groups. By contrast, less than 14% of these meetings were held with NGOs and trade unions.
• Meta lobbyists presented misleading claims to the European Commission about the safety of Instagram for young women. These claims are contradicted by several recent independent studies as well as analyses of Meta’s own internal documents that have entered the public domain via whistleblowers and US court cases.
• The Consumer Choice Center – a lobby group funded by Google and Meta – has launched a project called ‘EU Tech Loop’, which publishes articles on EU digital policies on the Euronews website. The content closely echoes Big Tech talking points, which raises questions about untransparent influencing via EU media spaces.
• Beyond Big Tech’s lobbying firepower, the DFA is facing at least four other obstacles: the current obsession among EU decision-makers with industry competitiveness via deregulation, pressure from the Trump administration, the growing power of the far right in EU politics, and the tendency to limit debate on social media addiction to rules for minors.

The FBI has been unable to access a Washington Post reporter’s seized iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, a sometimes overlooked feature that makes iPhones broadly more secure, according to recently filed court records.

The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and which devices it could not, after raiding the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information. It also provides rare insight into the apparent effectiveness of Lockdown Mode, or at least how effective it might be before the FBI may try other techniques to access the device.

“Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device,” the court record reads, referring to the FBI’s Computer Analysis Response Team, a unit focused on performing forensic analyses of seized devices. The document is written by the government, and is opposing the return of Natanson’s devices.

Archive: http://archive.today/gfTg9

Over the last few days hackers and trolls have targeted a slew of ICE spotting apps and their users in an apparent attempt to intimidate and stop them from reporting sightings of ICE. These hackers sent threatening text messages to users of StopICE, claiming their personal data has been sent to the authorities; attempted to wipe uploads on Eyes Up, which aims to document ICE abuses; and even sent push notifications to DEICER app users claiming their data has also been sent to various government agencies.

There is little evidence that hackers have actually provided data to the government. But it shows that apps like these, many of which Apple and Google have already kicked from their respective app stores, in some cases after direct government pressure, can be targeted by hackers or those looking to harass their users.

“Yes there is a targeted spike in attacks targeting similar [sites],” Sherman Austin, the developer of StopICE, told 404 Media in an email.

Archive: http://archive.today/iOfNf

The article title is click bait here is the full article:

Wondering what your career looks like in our increasingly uncertain, AI-powered future? According to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, it’s going to involve less of the comfortable office work to which most people aspire, a more old fashioned grunt work with your hands.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum yesterday, Karp insisted that the future of work is vocational — not just for those already in manufacturing and the skilled trades, but for the majority of humanity.

In the age of AI, Karp told attendees at a forum, a strong formal education in any of the humanities will soon spell certain doom.

“You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy; hopefully you have some other skill,” he warned, adding that AI “will destroy humanities jobs.”

Karp, who himself holds humanities degrees from the elite liberal arts institutions of Haverford College and Stanford Law, will presumably be alright. With a net worth of $15.5 billion — well within the top 0.1 percent of global wealth owners — the Palantir CEO has enough money and power to live like a feudal lord (and that’s before AI even takes over.)

The rest of us, he indicates, will be stuck on the assembly line, building whatever the tech companies require.

“If you’re a vocational technician, or like, we’re building batteries for a battery company… now you’re very valuable, if not irreplaceable,” Karp insisted. “I mean, y’know, not to divert to my usual political screeds, but there will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with vocational work or manufacturing. The global economy runs on these jobs. But in a theoretical world so fundamentally transformed by AI that intellectual labor essentially ceases to exist, it’s telling that tech billionaires like Karp see the rest of humanity as their worker bees.

It seems that the AI revolution never seems to threaten those who stand to profit the most from it — just the 99.9 percent of us building their batteries.

The Estonian state is to analyze how viable it would be to reduce dependence on U.S. tech giants such as Microsoft, Google or Amazon for its software.

The latest selloff was triggered by a new legal tool from Anthropic’s Claude large language model (LLM).

The tool – a plug-in for Claude’s agent for tasks across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis – underscored the push by LLMs into the so-called “application layer,” where these firms ‌are increasingly muscling into lucrative enterprise businesses for revenue they need to fund massive investments. If ‌successful, investors worry, it could wreak havoc across a range of industries, from finance to law and coding.

A researcher recently found that young adults who receive emotional support on social media are significantly more likely to report reduced anxiety symptoms, with a few specific personality traits reporting the most improved well-being.

Among the study's findings was that people with high openness to experience, high extraversion, high agreeableness and low conscientiousness reported an increase in perceived social media emotional support. Positive interactions and perceptions may explain why young adults with these specific traits feel more supported and less anxious overall.