Day: July 1, 2023

In AI Tussle, Twitter Restricts Number of Posts Users Can Read

Elon Musk announced Saturday that Twitter would temporarily restrict how many tweets users could read per day, in a move meant to tamp down on the use of the site’s data by artificial intelligence companies. 

The platform is limiting verified accounts to reading 6,000 tweets a day. Non-verified users — the free accounts that make up the majority of users — are limited to reading 600 tweets per day.  

New unverified accounts would be limited to 300 tweets. 

The decision was made “to address extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation” by third-party platforms, Musk said in a tweet Saturday afternoon, as some users quickly hit their limits. 

“Goodbye Twitter” was a trending topic in the United States following Musk’s announcement. 

Twitter would soon raise the ceiling to 8,000 tweets per day for verified accounts, 800 for unverified accounts and 400 for new unverified accounts, Musk said. 

Twitter’s billionaire owner did not give a timeline for how long the measures would be in place.  

The day before, Musk had announced that it would no longer be possible to read tweets on the site without an account. 

Much of the data scraping was coming from firms using it to build their AI models, Musk said, to the point that it was causing traffic issues with the site. 

In creating AI that can respond in a human-like capacity, many companies feed them examples of real-life conversations from social media sites. 

“Several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, to the point where it was affecting the real user experience,” Musk said.  

“Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data,” he said.  

“It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup’s outrageous valuation,” he said. 

Twitter is not the only social media giant to have to wrangle with the rapid acceleration of the AI sector. 

In mid-June, Reddit raised prices on third-party developers that were using its data and sweeping up conversations posted on its forums. 

It proved a controversial move, as many regular users also accessed the site via third-party platforms and marked a shift from previous arrangements where social media data had generally been provided for free or a small charge.

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Morning-After Pill Vending Machines Gain Popularity on College Campuses Post-Roe

Need Plan B? Tap your credit card and enter B6. 

Since last November, a library at the University of Washington has featured a different kind of vending machine, one that’s become more popular on campuses around the country since the U.S. Supreme Court ended constitutional protections for abortion last year. It’s stocked with ibuprofen, pregnancy tests and the morning-after pill. 

With some states enacting abortion bans and others enshrining protections and expanding access to birth control, the machines are part of a push on college campuses to ensure emergency contraceptives are cheap, discreet and widely available. 

There are now 39 universities in 17 states with emergency contraceptive vending machines, and at least 20 more considering them, according to the American Society for Emergency Contraception. Some, such as the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, are in states where abortion is largely banned. 

Over-the-counter purchase of Plan B and generic forms is legal in all 50 states. 

The 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade “is putting people’s lives at stake, so it makes pregnancy prevention all the more urgent,” said Kelly Cleland, the ASEC’s executive director. “If you live in a state where you cannot get an abortion and you can’t get an abortion anywhere near you, the stakes are so much higher than they’ve ever been before.” 

Washington this year became first U.S. state to set aside money — $200,000 to fund $10,000 grants that colleges can obtain next year through an application process — to expand access to emergency contraceptives at public universities and technical colleges through the automatic dispensers. 

The University of Washington’s machine was installed after a student-led campaign. It offers boxes of generic Plan B for $12.60, about a quarter of what the name-brand versions sell for in stores, and more than 640 have been sold. 

The drug is even cheaper in some machines than it is in UW’s, as low as $7 per box. That’s because it is sold at just above wholesale cost, compared with pharmacy retail prices that might go up to $50. 

In Illinois and New York, lawmakers are developing legislation that would require at least one vending machine selling emergency contraceptives on state college campuses. 

In Connecticut, Yale had to drop plans to install an emergency contraceptive vending machine in 2019 after learning it would violate state law. 

But this year the state approved a measure allowing Plan B and other over-the-counter medications to be sold from vending machines on campuses and other locations. 

The machines can’t be placed in K-12 schools or exposed to the elements, and they must have temperature and humidity controls and include plans for power outages and expired items. 

“This just enables people to have better access and easier access,” said Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditria, one of several Republicans in Connecticut’s Democratic-controlled General Assembly who supported the measure. “You may need Plan B, as we all know, in the middle of the night, and you won’t have access to a pharmacy until the morning.” 

Although the morning-after pill has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for over-the-counter sale, many stores and pharmacies keep it behind the counter or locked up, require identification for purchase and make the experience of purchasing it intimidating. 

“There is a stigma associated with getting access to these medications,” said Zoe Amaris, a University of Washington pharmacy student and board member of UW Pharmacists for Reproductive Education and Sexual Health. “Having a vending machine is so easy. You don’t need to go to a pharmacy. You don’t need to go through your health care provider.” 

Plan B is more effective the sooner it is taken, and vending machine access could be particularly crucial for victims of rape when pharmacies are closed. The anonymity the machines afford may also be important to some assault victims. 

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FBI Turning to Social Media to Track Traitors

If you logged onto social media over the past few months, you may have seen it – a video of the Russian Embassy on a gray, overcast day in Washington with the sounds of passing cars and buses in the background.

A man’s voice asks in English, “Do you want to change your future?” Russian subtitles appear on the bottom of the screen and the narrator makes note of the first anniversary of “Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine.”

As somber music begins to play, the camera pans to the left and takes the viewer down Wisconsin Avenue, to the Adams Morgan Metro station and on through Washington, ending at FBI headquarters, a few blocks from the White House.

“The FBI values you. The FBI can help you,” FBI Assistant Director Alan Koehler says as the video wraps up, Russian subtitles still appearing on the screen. “But only you have the power to take the first step.”

The video, put out by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, first appeared as a posting on the field office’s Twitter account on February 24. Another five versions started the same day as paid advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, costing the bureau an estimated $5,500 to $6,500.

That money may seem like a pittance for a government agency with an annual budget of more than $10 billion, but it was not the first nor the last time the FBI spent money to court Russian officials.

The video is part of an expansive, long-running campaign by the FBI to use social media advertisements to recruit disgruntled Russian officials stationed across the United States and beyond, in part to sniff out Americans who have betrayed their country in order to aid Moscow.

A VOA analysis finds the FBI has paid tens of thousands of dollars, at minimum, to multiple platforms for social media ads targeting Russian officials, with the pace of such ad buys increasing just before and then after Moscow launched its latest invasion of Ukraine.

Multiple former U.S. counterintelligence officials who spoke to VOA about the FBI’s efforts described the advertising as money well spent.

The FBI wants to find well-placed Russian officials who can “help identify where American spies may be,” said Douglas London, a three-decade veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service.

“It seeks Russian agents to catch and convict American spies and Russian illegals,” he told VOA, describing the mission as a part of the bureau’s DNA.

Another veteran CIA official, Jim Olson, agreed, telling VOA the goal of the FBI’s outreach to Russian officials is unmistakable.

“I call that hanging out the shingle,” said Olson, a former counterintelligence chief.

“For every American traitor, every American spy, there are members of that intelligence service who know the identity of that American or know enough about what the production is to give us a lead in doing the identification,” Olson said.

‘All available tools’

The FBI declined to comment directly on its decision to spend several thousand dollars to run the two-minute-long video as an ad on Facebook and Instagram, simply saying it “uses a variety of means” to gather intelligence.

“The FBI will evaluate all available tools to protect the national security interests of the United States,” the FBI’s Washington Field Office told VOA in an email. “And we will use all legal means available to locate individuals with information that can help protect the United States from threats to our national security.”

Some of the FBI’s earlier forays into social media advertising did get some public attention, first in October 2019 and then again in March of last year.

However, a review of publicly available data indicates the bureau’s use of social media for counterintelligence is more expansive than previously understood.

According to data in the Meta Ad Library, which contains information on Facebook and Instagram ads dating back to May 2018, the FBI and its field offices have so far spent just under $40,000 on ads targeting Russian speakers, generating as many as 6.9 million views.

While most of the ads targeted specific locations, like Washington and New York, some were seen much further afield, getting views across much of the United States and even in countries like Spain, Poland, Nigeria, France and Croatia.

It would also appear the FBI’s paid ads ran on platforms other than Meta.

Nicholas Murphy, a 20-year-old second-year student at Georgetown University in Washington, was in his dorm room last March searching for news about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when he saw an ad on YouTube, the video-sharing social media platform owned by Google.

“[It was] just text with a kind of a strange like background to it … all in Russian,” said Murphy, a Park City, Utah, native who does not speak Russian and who used a translator app to decipher the ad.

“At the time I didn’t know if it was coming from the Russian government, if it was coming from our government, if it was kind of propaganda, if it was fake,” Murphy told VOA. “It conjured up a lot of thoughts about Russian influence over Facebook ads in the [2016 U.S.] election.”

Murphy said he came across the ad another two to three times over the ensuing weeks. And, it turned out, he was not alone. A handful of other students were also starting to see some of the ads, including a couple of classmates in a Russian literature class.

Just how many ads the FBI paid to run on YouTube, or via Google, is unclear.

A search of Google’s recently launched Ad Transparency Center shows the FBI paid to run the Russian language version of its two-minute-long video most recently on April 28. But the database only shows information for the past 30 days and Google says it does not share information on advertiser spending.

It is also unclear whether the FBI paid to run any ads on Twitter in addition to pushing out information through its own Twitter accounts. Twitter responded to an email from VOA requesting information with its now standard poop emoji.

The FBI itself refused to provide details regarding the scope of its social media advertising efforts although the Washington Field Office did acknowledge to VOA via email that it uses “various social media platforms.”

The Washington Field Office also defended its use of social media advertising despite indications that the ads themselves, like the one seen by Georgetown University student Nicholas Murphy, do not always reach the intended audience.

“The FBI views these efforts as productive and cost effective,” the FBI’s Washington Field Office told VOA. The office declined to be more specific about whether any spies have been identified as a result of the ads.

“Russia has long been a counterintelligence threat to the U.S. and the FBI will continue to adapt our investigative and outreach techniques to counter that threat and others,” it said. “We will use all legal means available to locate individuals with information that can help protect the United States from threats to our national security.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to calls or emails from VOA seeking comment about the FBI’s use of social media advertisements to target Russian officials in the U.S. But Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov did respond to a March 2022 article by The Washington Post about FBI efforts to send ads to cell phones outside the Russian Embassy in Washington.

“Attempts to sow confusion and organize desertion among the staff of @RusEmbUSA are ridiculous,” Antonov was quoted as saying in a tweet by the embassy’s Twitter account.

Some former U.S. counterintelligence officials, though, argue Russia has reason to be worried.

“I think people will come out of the woodwork,” said Olson, the former CIA counterintelligence chief.

FBI agents “see what we all see, and that is that there must be a subset of Russian intelligence officers, SVR officers, GRU officers, who are disillusioned by what’s going on,” he told VOA.

“I think some good Russians are embarrassed, shocked, ashamed of what Putin is doing in Ukraine, killing brother and sister Slavs. And I think that there will be people who would like to strike back against that.”

London, the longtime CIA Clandestine Services official and author of The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence, likewise believes the FBI’s persistent efforts to reach disgruntled Russians on social media will pay off.

“Generally, the Russians who have worked with us have done so out of patriotism … they were upset with the government,” he said.

And the Russian officials that the FBI hopes to reach just need a bit of nudge.

“They’re aiming this at Russians who are already there mentally but just haven’t crossed,” London said, adding it is not a coincidence that many of the FBI ads show Russians exactly how to get in touch, whether via encrypted communication apps like Signal or by walking right up to the bureau’s front door.

“They’re not doing metaphors here,” he said. “They don’t want anything subject to interpretation.”

Even the language used by the FBI appears to be designed to build trust.

“It’s very much not native,” according to Bradley Gorski, with Georgetown University’s Department of Slavic Languages.

But given the overall quality of the language in the ads, Gorski said it is quite possible all of it is intentional.

“It might be a canny strategy on their part,” he said of the FBI. “If they are reaching out to Russian speakers and want to both communicate with them but let them know who is communicating with them is not a Russian speaker, but is a sort of American doing their best, then this kind of outreach with a little bit stilted, though correct, Russian might communicate that actually better than fully native sort of fluent speech.”

Whether the FBI’s spending on social media advertisements is achieving the desired results is hard to gauge. Public metrics such those provided by social media companies like Meta can give a sense of how many people are seeing the ads, and where they are, but do not shed much light on who is ultimately interacting with the ads to the point of a response.

When pressed, FBI officials tell VOA only that the bureau views the ad campaigns as productive.

Others agree.

“Relative to the hardcore military aid the U.S. has provided, that’s a small chunk of change,” said Jason Blazakis, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a global intelligence firm.

And Blazakis, who also directs the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, thinks the FBI’s social media ads might be having an impact even if few Russian officials ever come forward with information.

“Part of it is also messaging to the broader Russian public,” he told VOA, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “There is this influence operational component to it, part of this PR [public relations] battle that is happening on the periphery of the conflict.”

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NASA’s Mars Helicopter ‘Phones Home’ After No Contact for 63 Days 

WASHINGTON – Long time, no speak: NASA has re-established contact with the intrepid Ingenuity Mars Helicopter after more than two months of radio silence, the space agency said Friday. 

The mini rotorcraft, which hitched a ride to the Red Planet with the Perseverance rover in early 2021, has survived well beyond its initial 30-day mission to prove the feasibility of its technology in five test flights. 

Since then, it has been deployed dozens of times, acting as an aerial scout to assist its wheeled companion in searching for signs of ancient microbial life from billions of years ago, when Mars was much wetter and warmer than today.  

Ingenuity’s 52nd flight launched on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California lost contact as it descended to the surface following its two minute, 1,191-foot (363-meter) hop. 

The loss of communications was expected, because a hill stood between Ingenuity and Perseverance, which acts as a relay between the drone and Earth.  

Nonetheless, “this has been the longest we’ve gone without hearing from Ingenuity so far in the mission,” Joshua Anderson, Ingenuity team lead at JPL, told AFP. 

“Ingenuity is designed to take care of itself when communication gaps like this occur, but we all still had a sense of relief finally hearing back.” 

Data so far indicate that the helicopter is in good shape. If further health checks also come back normal, Ingenuity will be all set for its next flight, westward toward a rocky outcrop the Perseverance team is interested in exploring.  

It’s not the first time Ingenuity has experienced downed communications. The helicopter was scouring an ancient river delta when it went missing for around six days in April, “an agonizingly long time,” chief engineer Travis Brown wrote in a blog post.

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