SAN FRANCISCO — TikTok permitted advertisements containing election disinformation just weeks before the US presidential election, despite its restriction on political marketing, according to a report published Thursday by the charity Global Witness.

The technology and environmental watchdog group filed ads aimed to test how successfully social media companies’ systems recognize various sorts of election misinformation.

The group, which conducted a similar analysis two years ago, discovered that corporations, particularly Facebook, have improved their content control processes since then.

TikTok Let Through Disinformation In Political Ads Despite Its Own Ban, Global Witness Finds

It did, however, criticize TikTok for approving four of the eight ads submitted for review that contained misleading information regarding the election. That is despite the platform’s restriction on all political adverts, which has been in effect since 2019.

The advertisements never appeared on TikTok because Global Witness removed them before they went live.

“Four ads were incorrectly approved during the first stage of moderation, but they did not run on our platform,” TikTok spokesman Ben Rathe stated. “We do not allow political advertising and will continue to enforce this policy on an ongoing basis.”

According to the research, Facebook, owned by Meta Platforms Inc., “did much better” by approving only one of the eight submitted ads.

In a press release, Meta stated that while “this report is extremely limited in scope and as a result not reflective of how we enforce our policies at scale, we nonetheless are continually evaluating and improving our enforcement efforts.”

Global Witness reported that Google’s YouTube performed the best, authorizing four ads but not allowing any to be published. It requested further identification from the Global Witness testers before publishing them, then “paused” their accounts when they did not comply. However, the investigation noted it’s unclear if the advertising would have been approved if Global Witness had provided the necessary identity.

Google did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

TikTok Let Through Disinformation In Political Ads Despite Its Own Ban, Global Witness Finds

Companies almost always have tougher restrictions for paid ads than for user-generated content. Global Witness’ commercials contained outright incorrect statements about the election, such as claiming that Americans can vote online, as well as deceptive material intended to suppress voting, such as assertions that voters must pass an English exam before casting a ballot. Other false ads incited violence or endangered electoral workers and processes.

Global Witness submitted text-based adverts, which the group claimed were transformed into “algospeak.” This is a common tactic used to circumvent internet corporations’ text-focused content moderation systems by swapping numbers and symbols for letters, making it more difficult for automated systems to “read” the content.

SOURCE | AP

BRADENTON BEACH, FL –  When a hurricane approaches Florida, storm-weary locals may envision catastrophic wind, torrential rain, and a hazardous storm surge. Are sand mounds eating their homes? Not very much.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton wreaked havoc on Florida’s Gulf Coast in less than two weeks, making this reality for some. Storm surges up to 10 feet (3 meters) drove mountains of sand into settlements, some of which were 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall or more.

Florida’s beaches are renowned for their pristine, white sand. However, the severe storms have transformed the precious commodity into a costly nuisance, with sand forming real hurdles to recovery as homes and communities dig their way out.

“I’ve never seen sand like this,” said Scott Bennett, a contractor who has been working on storm cleanup since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “Wind, rain, water, but never sand.”

Florida Digs Out Of Mountains Of Sand Swept In By Back-To-Back Hurricanes

The morning after Hurricane Milton hit land, the roadways near Bradenton Beach, about an hour south of Tampa, were bordered with sandbanks a few feet (less than a meter) high, encircling several bungalows. The vistas from the Old Florida beach town were similar to those after a stormy Midwestern blizzard.

“The best way to describe it, it’s like getting 4 to 6 feet (1.2 to 1.8 meters) of snow up north,” said Jeremi Roberts, a member of the State Emergency Response Team who surveyed the damage that day.

Another hour south, Ron and Jean Dyer said that the storms swept nearly 3 feet (0.9 meters) of sand up against their Venice Island condo.

“The beach just moved over everything,” Ron Dyer explained.

After Hurricane Helene, hundreds of volunteers armed with shovels and wheelbarrows worked for two days to remove all of the sand from the condo’s pool, just to have Milton refill it, he said.

“They continued excavating and spinning… “They spent two days doing that,” he added. “We got to do it all over again.”

Larry West, a storm recovery contractor, estimates that his team will spend roughly $300,000 cleaning up the sand and debris left behind at one of the condo buildings he is rehabilitating on Manasota Key, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of Sarasota. He expects that many property owners, particularly those without flood insurance, will have to pay for this type of cleanup themselves.

“The poor homeowner who’s going to have to spend $150,000 cleaning up, that’s going to hurt them hard,” West told me.

West said he’s not sure where to take the sand after learning that a nearby park designated as a drop-off location by Charlotte County officials was filling up. According to the county, two sand drop-off sites remain open.

“Right now I’m building mountains in their parking area,” West said of the condo complex he’s rebuilding. “We’re just kind of waiting to find out if they’re gonna have us transport it to a different location.”

Officials in Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, are still calculating how much damage Helene and Milton caused to the county’s coastline, but county Public Works director Kelli Hammer Levy estimates that 1 million cubic yards (765,000 cubic meters) of sand were lost.

“A lot of volume has been lost, and that’s our main concern here right now,” she told the county’s Tourism Development Council. “It’s difficult to be optimistic in the face of some of these circumstances. I understand the photographs are not what we want to see.”

A 2018 beach renourishment project to shore up the county’s shoreline with 1.3 million cubic yards (994,000 cubic meters) of sand cost more than $50 million, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Levy hopes that most of the displaced sand may be recycled. Pinellas County officials are encouraging individuals to cart their sand right back onto the beach, as long as it is clean.

Florida Digs Out Of Mountains Of Sand Swept In By Back-To-Back Hurricanes

“Again, we only need to clear debris. “I’ve seen some piles out there with kitchen cabinets in them,” Levy explained. “We’re going to have a problem if we have a lot of that stuff out there.”

The county has also established a drop-off station where residents can leave sand for staff to screen and clean, or dispose of if it is polluted, in accordance with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection guidelines.

Meanwhile, Florida homeowners continue to dig out of the storm-driven sand, many by hand.

“Every shovelful is heavy,” explained West, the building contractor. “This is horrendous, as far as the cleanup.”

SOURCE | AP

Meta dismissed over two dozen employees from its Los Angeles office for misusing company meal credits to purchase items such as laundry detergent, wine glasses, and acne treatment pads, according to a company source.

Many of the social media giant’s corporate buildings have elaborate dining services that give meals to staff as a reward. Meta’s two-year-old workplace near New York City’s Penn Station, for example, has an expensive food court-style cafeteria with multiple booths that are all free for employees.

However, for employees in smaller locations without food services, the company provides meal coupons — $20 for breakfast and $25 for lunch and dinner — so they can have food delivered to the office while on the job.

Meta Fires Employees For Spending Food Allowances On Personal Items Like Acne Pads And Wine Glasses

The meal vouchers are intended for employees to eat while working at the office, which can involve lengthy hours spread throughout multiple meals of the day, as is common in the computer industry.

According to the source, an internal inquiry discovered that several Los Angeles-based employees utilized meal monies to purchase items other than food or to have meals delivered to their homes.

Meta’s median total yearly salary for individual employees (excluding CEO Mark Zuckerberg) is $379,050, according to a regulatory filing released earlier this year.

The firings, which occurred last week, were originally reported by the Financial Times.

The firings came after Meta said on Thursday that it was laying off employees across the company as part of a number of unrelated restructurings.

“Today, a few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy,” Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton stated. “This includes relocating certain teams and assigning some individuals to alternative positions. When a role is terminated, we work diligently to locate other opportunities for impacted personnel.”

Meta declined to say how many staff were laid off.

Meta Fires Employees For Spending Food Allowances On Personal Items Like Acne Pads And Wine Glasses

The cuts affected Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Reality Labs, which houses Meta’s virtual reality and metaverse initiatives.

Jane Manchun Wong, a well-known security researcher who predicted new social media features such as a Facebook resume feature and a tool on the platform formerly known as Twitter that allowed users to hide replies to their tweets, was among those laid off before being hired by Meta in June 2023 to work on the Instagram and Threads teams.

Last year, Meta laid off around 20,000 employees in successive rounds of cuts in an effort to reverse a year of revenue declines and stagnant user growth, which Zuckerberg dubbed the company’s “year of efficiency.” The company’s shares (META) have up roughly 80% since this time last year.

SOURCE | CNN