Speaking of early-impressions of Gemini, users' confidence in Google might be shaken further to learn that the company pretty much faked the most impressive demo of Gemini. TechCrunch: A video called "Hands-on with Gemini: Interacting with multimodal AI" hit a million views over the last day, and it's not hard to see why. The impressive demo "highlights some of our favorite interactions with Gemini," showing how the multimodal model (that is, it understands and mixes language and visual understanding) can be flexible and responsive to a variety of inputs.

To begin with, it narrates an evolving sketch of a duck from a squiggle to a completed drawing, which it says is an unrealistic color, then evinces surprise ("What the quack!") when seeing a toy blue duck. [...] Just one problem: the video isn't real. "We created the demo by capturing footage in order to test Gemini's capabilities on a wide range of challenges. Then we prompted Gemini using still image frames from the footage, and prompting via text." So although it might kind of do the things Google shows in the video, it didn't, and maybe couldn't, do them live and in the way they implied. In actuality, it was a series of carefully tuned text prompts with still images, clearly selected and shortened to misrepresent what the interaction is actually like.

"Researchers have identified a large number of bugs to do with the processing of images at boot time," writes longtime Slashdot reader jd. "This allows malicious code to be installed undetectably (since the image doesn't have to pass any validation checks) by appending it to the image. None of the current secure boot mechanisms are capable of blocking the attack." Ars Technica reports: LogoFAIL is a constellation of two dozen newly discovered vulnerabilities that have lurked for years, if not decades, in Unified Extensible Firmware Interfaces responsible for booting modern devices that run Windows or Linux. The vulnerabilities are the product of almost a year's worth of work by Binarly, a firm that helps customers identify and secure vulnerable firmware. The vulnerabilities are the subject of a coordinated mass disclosure released Wednesday. The participating companies comprise nearly the entirety of the x64 and ARM CPU ecosystem, starting with UEFI suppliers AMI, Insyde, and Phoenix (sometimes still called IBVs or independent BIOS vendors); device manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, and HP; and the makers of the CPUs that go inside the devices, usually Intel, AMD or designers of ARM CPUs. The researchers unveiled the attack on Wednesday at the Black Hat Security Conference in London.

As its name suggests, LogoFAIL involves logos, specifically those of the hardware seller that are displayed on the device screen early in the boot process, while the UEFI is still running. Image parsers in UEFIs from all three major IBVs are riddled with roughly a dozen critical vulnerabilities that have gone unnoticed until now. By replacing the legitimate logo images with identical-looking ones that have been specially crafted to exploit these bugs, LogoFAIL makes it possible to execute malicious code at the most sensitive stage of the boot process, which is known as DXE, short for Driver Execution Environment. "Once arbitrary code execution is achieved during the DXE phase, it's game over for platform security," researchers from Binarly, the security firm that discovered the vulnerabilities, wrote in a whitepaper. "From this stage, we have full control over the memory and the disk of the target device, thus including the operating system that will be started." From there, LogoFAIL can deliver a second-stage payload that drops an executable onto the hard drive before the main OS has even started. The following video demonstrates a proof-of-concept exploit created by the researchers. The infected device -- a Gen 2 Lenovo ThinkCentre M70s running an 11th-Gen Intel Core with a UEFI released in June -- runs standard firmware defenses, including Secure Boot and Intel Boot Guard. LogoFAIL vulnerabilities are tracked under the following designations: CVE-2023-5058, CVE-2023-39538, CVE-2023-39539, and CVE-2023-40238. However, this list is currently incomplete.

"A non-exhaustive list of companies releasing advisories includes AMI (PDF), Insyde, Phoenix, and Lenovo," reports Ars. "People who want to know if a specific device is vulnerable should check with the manufacturer."

"The best way to prevent LogoFAIL attacks is to install the UEFI security updates that are being released as part of Wednesday's coordinated disclosure process. Those patches will be distributed by the manufacturer of the device or the motherboard running inside the device. It's also a good idea, when possible, to configure UEFIs to use multiple layers of defenses. Besides Secure Boot, this includes both Intel Boot Guard and, when available, Intel BIOS Guard. There are similar additional defenses available for devices running AMD or ARM CPUs."

Samuel Axon reports via Ars Technica: The trailer for Amazon's Fallout TV series dropped this weekend, and it's either craven fan service or wonderfully authentic, depending on your point of view. The trailer depicts a lead character leaving a vault after an apparent catastrophe, discovering the broken world outside, and encountering ridiculous monsters as well as factions like the Brotherhood of Steel. It also features some extreme gore, which you'd expect from Fallout.

We've written a few times about the slowly unfolding saga of this show, which has Westworld's Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan as producers. To be clear, though, they won't actually be the showrunners; that honor goes to Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel, Tomb Raider) and Graham Wagner (Portlandia, The Office, Silicon Valley). The two showrunners each cover one-half of what Fallout has traditionally been: Robertson-Dworet brings the sci-fi action credentials, and Wagner brings the satirical comedy. As announced in October, the show will premiere on April 12th, 2024, exclusively via Prime Video.

Microsoft is detailing a number of new features coming to its Copilot service soon, including OpenAI's latest models. Copilot will get support for GPT-4 Turbo soon, alongside an updated DALL-E 3 model, a new code interpreter feature, and deep search functionality inside Bing. From a report: Copilot will soon be able to respond using OpenAI's latest GPT-4 Turbo model, which essentially means it will "see" more data thanks to a 128K context window. This larger context window will allow Copilot to better understand queries and offer better responses.

While you're waiting on the GPT-4 Turbo model to appear in Copilot, Microsoft is now using an improved DALL-E 3 model in Bing Image Creator and Copilot. Microsoft Edge, which includes a Copilot sidebar, is also getting the ability to compose text within websites' text input to rewrite sentences inline. You can also now use Copilot in Microsoft Edge to summarize videos you're watching on YouTube. Coders and developers might be interested in a new code interpreter feature coming to Copilot soon. This new feature will allow Copilot users to get more accurate calculations, data analysis, or even code from the AI chatbot.

Trevor Jacob, a daredevil YouTuber who deliberately crashed a plane for views in a moneymaking scheme, has been sentenced to six months in federal prison. Jacob posted a video of himself in 2021 parachuting out of a plane that he claimed had malfunctioned. In reality, the aircraft was purposely abandoned and crashed into the Los Padres National Forest in Southern California. From a report: Jacob pleaded guilty to one felony count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation on June 30. "It appears that (Jacob) exercised exceptionally poor judgment in committing this offense," prosecutors said in the release. "(Jacob) most likely committed this offense to generate social media and news coverage for himself and to obtain financial gain. Nevertheless, this type of 'daredevil' conduct cannot be tolerated."

Jacob received a sponsorship from a company and had agreed to promote the company's wallet in the YouTube video that he would post. [...] The release said Jacob lied to federal investigators when he filed a report that falsely indicated his plane lost full power approximately 35 minutes into the flight. He also lied to a Federal Aviation Administration aviation safety inspector when he said he had parachuted out of the plane when the airplane's engine had quit because he could not identify any safe landing options.

Rockstar Games has officially revealed the trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI, which is coming in 2025. You can watch it on YouTube. IGN reports: The trailer gives us a look at the game's female protagonist, a first for the series. Her name is Lucia, and that she starts off in prison -- "bad luck, I guess," she quips. The trailer confirms, too, that it's set in Vice City with a large sign - not a huge surprise for those who've been following the series, but exciting nonetheless. In addition to lots and lots of quick shots of crime, we also get glimpses of TikToks and live-streams, hinting that social media will be a big part of this game.

It all takes place as Tom Petty's "Love Is a Long Road" plays in the background, appropriate for the many car-related crimes we see. And yes, true to the Florida setting, there are alligators in locations where they shouldn't be. It ends by showing us a little more of Lucia and a male character, seemingly both lovers and partners-in-crime. "The only way we're gonna get through this is by sticking together and being a team," Lucia says at one point. Fans have been talking about GTA 6 ever since GTA 5 was released in 2013, perhaps unsurprisingly as IGN deemed that one a "masterpiece" in our review.

"Advent of Code" has begun. New programming puzzles will appear every day until Christmas at AdventOfCode.com — and the annual event (first started in 2015) has grown into a worldwide phenomenon. This year's first puzzle has been completed by over 150,000 programmers (with another 115,652 completing Day Two's puzzle). And 108,000 fans have also joined the Advent of Code subReddit.

Contest-related comments are popping up all around the web. Some participants are live streaming their puzzle-solving efforts on Twitch. Self-described computer nerd Gary Grady is tweeting cartoons about each day's puzzle. JetBrains is even giving away some prizes in their "Advent of Code with Kotlin" event. And JetBrains developer advocate Sebastian Aigner is also hosting daily livestreams about each puzzle.

It's hard to overstate how big this event has become. This year's event attracted 60 sponsors, including Kotlin (for the third consecutive year), as well as Spotify, Shopify, and Sony Interactive Entertainment (as well as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and American Express). Individual donors can get a special badge next to their name, and there's also a shop selling coffee mugs and t-shirts. But at its core is real-world developer Eric Wastl (plus a team of loyal beta-testers) sharing his genuine fondness for computer programming. Wastl is also the creator of a satirical web page for the fast, lightweight, cross-platform framework Vanilla JS ("so popular that browsers have been automatically loading it for over a decade") and also curates a collection of "things in PHP which make me sad".

And you can find him on X sharing encouraging comments for this year's participants.

"Two articles from Electrek and InsideEVs describe Hyundai and Kia's new 'Uni Wheel' drive system that could revolutionize EV design," writes longtime Slashdot reader Uncle_Meataxe. From a report: Described by its makers as a "paradigm-shifting vehicle drive system," the Uni Wheel moves the main drive system components to the vacant space within an EVs wheel hubs. The approach utilizes a planetary gear configuration consisting of a sun gear in the center, four pinion gears on each side, and a ring gear surrounding everything. Traditional ICE vehicles utilize CV joints, but by moving them closer to the wheels requires a short drive train length and as a result, a decrease in efficiency and durability -- especially over bumpy terrain. Hyundai and Kia's Uni Wheel system on the other hand, can transmit power with almost zero changes to efficiency, regardless of wheel movement. "Advantages include more platform space and more room within an EV's interior," adds Uncle_Meataxe. "When this system may be integrated into an actual EV remains unclear, but Kia and Hyundai have already registered eight patents related to the technology." You can learn more about the new drive system via an instructional video on YouTube.

Jennifer Ouellette reports via Ars Technica: Back in 2012, a crowdfunding effort on Indigogo successfully raised the funds necessary to purchase the Wardenclyffe Tower site on Long Island, New York, where Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla once tried to build an ambitious wireless transmission station. The goal was to raise additional funds to build a $20 million Tesla Science Center there, with a museum, an educational center, and a technological innovation program. The nonprofit group behind the project finally broke ground this April after years of basic restoration work -- only to experience a devastating setback last week, two days before Thanksgiving, when a fire broke out.

Over 100 firefighters from 17 local departments responded and battled the flames throughout the night, as residual embers led to two additional outbreaks. One firefighter sustained bruised ribs after falling off a ladder, but there were no other injuries or fatalities. Once the blaze was extinguished, the TSC group called in their engineers to assess the damage and make recommendations for repairs. While an investigation is ongoing as to the cause of the fire, Fire Chief Sean McCarrick said during a press conference on Tuesday, November 28, that they had ruled out arson. According to project architect Mark Thaler, there was nothing flammable in the lab that could have caused the fire, although the back buildings had wood-frame roofs. The original brick building, designed by Stanford White, is still standing, although there is considerable damage to the structure of the roof, steel girders, chimney, cupola, and a portion of a wall. Some elements have been irreparably destroyed, but fortunately all museum artifacts in TSC's collection were stored offsite. The most pressing concern is that water from the firehoses saturated the brick walls, according to Thaler, since the upcoming colder winter temperatures could freeze that moisture and cause the brick work to break apart and collapse. The engineers have also recommended adding strategic wall supports to both the interior and exterior to shore up the structure.

All of this comes with a hefty price tag: $3 million for immediate remediation to seal the roof and dry the building in order to stave off further damage. The building was insured, but that insurance won't come close to covering the cost. The TSC group has set up a 60-day Indiegogo campaign to raise those funds, which is separate from the $14 million it had already raised toward their targeted $20 million goal. "The best way to help right now is to donate if you can," said TSC Executive Director Marc Alessi. "We've never needed it more. We need to secure this lab, stop the water intrusion and future damage. And then we need to complete this project." [...] "Buildings burn down and can then be rebuilt," said John Gaiman, deputy county executive for Suffolk County. "The ideas behind them, the person, the history, the narrative that was created over 100 years ago still exists, and that will continue."

Anton Shilov reports via Tom's Hardware: Engineers from Frore Systems have integrated the company's innovative solid-state AirJet cooling system, which provides impressive cooling capabilities despite a lack of moving parts, into an M2-based Apple MacBook Air. With proper cooling, the relatively inexpensive laptop matched the performance of a more expensive MacBook Pro based on the same processor. The lack of a fan is probably one of the main advantages of Apple's MacBook Air over its more performant siblings, but it also puts the laptop at a disadvantage. Fanless cooling doesn't have moving parts (which is a plus), but it also cannot properly cool down Apple's M1 or M2 processor under high loads, which is why a 13-inch MacBook Air powered by M1 or M2 system-on-chip is slower than 13-inch MacBook Pro based on the same SoC. However, making a MacBook Air run as fast as a 13-inch MacBook Pro is now possible. A video posted to YouTube by PC World shows how the AirJet system works. They also released a recent demo showing off the strength of the AirJet technology.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: YouTube is branching out into games -- at least for its paid subscribers. The platform is giving Premium users access to a set of online games that can be directly played on either the mobile app or desktop app. Known as "Playables," the company first debuted the experimental feature to select users in September. As noted by Droid-Life, YouTube sent a notification last week to Premium subscribers informing them of Playables and allowing them to try it out. Those who opt in will be able to play a total of 37 mini-games that effectively live inside YouTube -- there's no need to download or install them.

The selection of games isn't too challenging or "out there" -- they include crowd-pleasers like Angry Birds Showdown, Brain Out, Daily Solitaire, The Daily Crossword, and a number of arcade games. And they may not be here to stay. YouTube Premium's notification stated that the games would be available until March 28th, 2024. For now, Premium members can find the full library of games under the "Playables" section in the Explore tab.

There's yet another technological revolution happening, reports the Los Angeles Times. Bowling alleys across America "are ditching traditional pinsetters — the machines that sweep away and reset pins — in favor of contraptions that employ string.

"Think of the pins as marionettes with nylon cords attached to their heads. Those that fall are lifted out of the way, as if by levitation, then lowered back into place after each frame... European bowling alleys have used string pinsetters for decades because they require less energy and maintenance.

"All you need is someone at the front counter to run back when the strings tangle." String pinsetters mean big savings, maybe salvation, for an industry losing customers to video games and other newfangled entertainment. That is why the U.S. Bowling Congress recently certified them for tournaments and league play. But there is delicate science at play here. Radius of gyration, coefficient of restitution and other obscure forces cause tethered pins to fly around differently than their free-fall counterparts. They don't even make the same noise. Faced with growing pushback, the bowling congress published new research this month claiming the disparity isn't nearly as great as people think.
Using a giant mechanical arm, powered by hydraulics and air pressure, they rolled "thousands of test balls from every angle, with various speeds and spins, on string-equipped lanes," according to the article: They found a configuration that resulted in 7.1% fewer strikes and about 10 pins fewer per game as compared to bowling with traditional pinsetters... Officials subsequently enlisted 500 human bowlers for more testing and, this time, reported finding "no statistically significant difference." But hundreds of test participants commented that bowling on strings felt "off." The pins seemed less active, they said. There were occasional spares whereby one pin toppled another without making contact, simply by crossing strings.

Nothing could be done about the muted sound. It's like hearing a drum roll — the ball charging down the lane — with no crashing cymbal at the end.
Still, one Northern California bowling alley spent $1 million to install the technology, and believes it will save them money — partly by cutting their electric bill in half. "We had a full-time mechanic and were spending up to $3,000 a month on parts."

The article also remembers that once upon a time, bowling alleys reset their pins using pinboys, "actual humans — mostly teenagers... scrambling around behind the lanes, gathering and resetting by hand," before they were replaced by machines after World War II.

New submitter Kiddo 9000 writes: Dbrand, a company known best for making cases for phones, game consoles, and laptops, has filed a lawsuit against case manufacturer CASETiFY over their "Inside Out" case lineup. Dbrand alleges that CASETiFY copied the designs from their Teardown skins and put them on their own products without permission. In a video published by JerryRigEverything, several easter eggs placed in the Teardown skins were found in the CASETiFY designs, alongside numerous tweaks and layout changes, and even Dbrand's logo.

Bard, Google's AI chatbot, has steadily been getting more useful after a lackluster introduction. Now the bot's YouTube integration is getting a handy upgrade so it can analyze individual videos to surface specific information for you -- like key points or recipe ingredients -- without ever pressing play. From a report: That's potentially a hugely useful tool, but could spell more worry about generative AI for creators. To try it out, I turned Bard on a YouTube video I regularly reference for spiritual guidance: America's Test Kitchen's recipe for an Espresso Martini. Seriously, it's really good. I often find myself in my kitchen with half the ingredients in a cocktail shaker trying to remember how much Benedictine I'm supposed to add, then re-watching the video to find out. But with Bard on the case, all I have to do is type a few prompts and viola -- I have the full list of ingredients and some step-by-step instructions.

OLED monitors risk burn-in, especially with static images. Newer models combat this using improved materials, algorithms, efficiencies, features, and heat management. However, long-term data is minimal as quality selection is recent. An unexpected quirk applies to ultrawides: playing 16:9 content creates brighter center areas versus darker sides, quickening OLED degradation. In an extreme test by RTINGS, Samsung ultrawides developed heavy differential wear in just 700 hours. ArsTechnica adds: Even OLED monitors that have already been released can see their capabilities change in a way that could impact burn-in risk. For example, the Odyssey G8 monitor got a firmware update in August that removed the ability to use the Peak Brightness setting in SDR mode. While this is just one specific mode that, again, some users might not use, it's worth noting how this could change the amount of wear an OLED monitor could see. RTINGS' review said that after the firmware update, the monitor's max luminance "when displaying a bright highlight in an SDR scene" went from 331 nits to 230 nits. Samsung hasn't confirmed the reasons for this change, but such changes highlight how OLED monitor burn-in risk can change from use to use and from update to update, across different products.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Firefox users across the internet say that they are encountering an "artificial" five-second load time when they try to watch YouTube videos that exists on Firefox, but not Chrome. Google, meanwhile, told 404 Media that this is all part of its larger effort against ad blockers, and that it doesn't have anything to do with Firefox at all. [...] Mozilla, which makes Firefox, told 404 Media that it does not believe this is a Firefox-specific issue. Enough people have posted about it, however, that it is clearly happening for some users and not others.

In a statement to 404 Media, Google did not provide specifics but also did not deny implementing an artificial wait time. "To support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube, we've launched an effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience, the spokesperson said. "Users who have ad blockers installed may experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using."

Last week, Android smartphone manufacturer "Nothing" announced that it's bringing iMessage to its newest phone through a new "Nothing Chats" app powered by the messaging platform Sunbird. After launching Friday, the app was shut down within 24 hours and the Sunbird app, which Nothing Chat is a clone of, was put "on pause." The reason? It's a security nightmare. Ars Technica reports: The initial sales pitch for this app -- that it would log you into iMessage on Android if you handed over your Apple username and password -- was a huge security red flag that meant Sunbird would need an ultra-secure infrastructure to avoid disaster. Instead, the app turned out to be about as unsecure as you could possibly be. Here's Nothing's statement: "We've removed the Nothing Chats beta from the Play Store and will be delaying the launch until further notice to work with Sunbird to fix several bugs. We apologize for the delay and will do right by our users."

How bad are the security issues? Both 9to5Google and Text.com (which is owned by Automattic, the company behind WordPress) uncovered shockingly bad security practices. Not only was the app not end-to-end encrypted, as claimed numerous times by Nothing and Sunbird, but Sunbird actually logged and stored messages in plain text on both the error reporting software Sentry and in a Firebase store. Authentication tokens were sent over unencrypted HTTP so this token could be intercepted and used to read your messages. [...]

Despite being the cause of this huge catastrophe, Sunbird has been bizarrely quiet during this whole mess. The app's X (formerly Twitter) page still doesn't say anything about the shutdown of Nothing Chats or Sunbird. Maybe that's for the best because some of Sunbird's early responses to the security concerns raised on Friday do not seem like they came from a competent developer. [...] Nothing has always seemed like an Android manufacturer that was more hype than substance, but we can now add "negligent" to that list. The company latched on to Sunbird, reskinned its app, created a promo website and YouTube video, and coordinated a media release with popular YouTubers, all without doing the slightest bit of due diligence on Sunbird's apps or its security claims. It's unbelievable that these two companies made it this far -- the launch of Nothing Chats required a systemic security failure across two entire companies.

theodp writes: In a panel on AI at the Paris Peace Forum just 10 days ago, Microsoft President Brad Smith gave Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun a lecture on the importance of OpenAI's nonprofit independence.

"Meta is owned by shareholders," Smith argued. "OpenAI is owned by a nonprofit . Which would you have more confidence in? Getting your technology from a nonprofit? Or a for-profit company that is entirely controlled by one human being?"

But on Sunday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pretty much trashed Smith's argument with his announcement that Microsoft was hiring OpenAI's co-founders and some of its top talent to head up a "new advanced AI research team." Another case of Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish?

Python "come with downsides," argues a new article in Communications of the ACM. "Its programs tend to run slowly, and because it is inefficient at running processes in parallel, it is not well suited to some of the latest AI programming."

"Hoping to overcome those difficulties, computer scientist Chris Lattner set out to create a new language, Mojo, which offers the ease of use of Python, but the performance of more complex languages such as C++ or Rust." Lattner tells the site "we don't want to break Python, we want to make Python better," while software architect Doug Meil says Mojo is essentially "Python for AI... and it's going to be way faster in scale across multiple hardware platforms." Lattner teamed up with Tim Davis, whom he had met when they both worked for Google, to form Modular in January 2022. The company, where Lattner is chief executive officer and Davis chief product officer, provides support for companies working on AI and is developing Mojo.

A modern AI programming stack generally has Python on top, Lattner says, but because that is an inefficient language, it has C++ underneath to handle the implementation. The C++ then must communicate with performance accelerators or GPUs, so developers add a platform such as Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) to make efficient use of those GPUs. "Mojo came from the need to unify these three different parts of the stack so that we could build a unified solution that can scale up and down," Lattner says. The result is a language with the same syntax as Python, so people used to programming in Python can adopt it with little difficulty, but which, by some measures, can run up to 35,000 times faster. For AI, Mojo is especially fast at performing the matrix multiplications used in many neural networks because it compiles the multiplication code to run directly on the GPU, bypassing CUDA...

"Increasingly, code is not being written by computer programmers. It's being written by doctors and journalists and chemists and gamers," says Jeremy Howard, an honorary professor of computer science at the University of Queensland, Australia, and a co-founder of fast.ai, a. "All data scientists write code, but very few data scientists would consider themselves professional computer programmers." Mojo attempts to fill that need by being a superset of Python. A program written in Python can be copied into Mojo and will immediately run faster, the company says. The speedup comes from a variety of factors. For instance, Mojo, like other modern languages, enables threads, small tasks that can be run simultaneously, rather than in sequence. Instead of using an interpreter to execute code as Python does, Mojo uses a compiler to turn the code into assembly language.

Mojo also gives developers the option of using static typing, which defines data elements and reduces the number of errors... "Static behavior is good because it leads to performance," Lattner says. "Static behavior is also good because it leads to more correctness and safety guarantees."
Python creator Guido van Rossum "says he is interested to watch how Mojo develops and whether it can hit the lofty goals Lattner is setting for it..." according to the article, " but he emphasizes that the language is in its early stages and, as of July 2023, Mojo had not yet been made available for download."


In June, Lattner did an hour-long interview with the TWIML AI podcast. And in 2017 Chris Lattner answered questions from Slashdot's readers.

"The Chinese government has built up the world's largest known online disinformation operation," reports CNN, "and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses."

CNN reports that disinformation operation is even "at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found." The onslaught of attacks — often of a vile and deeply personal nature — is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show. The U.S. State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world's information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping... Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs.

They say it's all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia. Often, these victims don't know where to turn. Some have spoken to law enforcement, including the FBI — but little has been done. While tech and social media companies have shut down thousands of accounts targeting these victims, they're outpaced by a slew of new accounts emerging virtually every day. Known as "Spamouflage" or "Dragonbridge," the network's hundreds of thousands of accounts spread across every major social media platform have not only harassed Americans who have criticized the Chinese Communist Party, but have also sought to discredit U.S. politicians, disparage American companies at odds with China's interests and hijack online conversations around the globe that could portray the CCP in a negative light.
Some numbers from the article:

• Meta "announced in August it had taken down a cluster of nearly 8,000 accounts attributed to this group in the second quarter of 2023 alone."

• YouTube owner Google "told CNN it had shut down more than 100,000 associated accounts in recent years."

• X "has blocked hundreds of thousands of China 'state-backed' or "state-linked" accounts, according to company blogs."