179003018
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Alain Williams writes:
Publicly available government contracts show that Israel’s advertising bureau, which reports to the prime minister’s office, has since embarked on a mass advertising and public messaging effort to conceal the hunger crisis. The push includes the use of American influencers widely reported on last month. It also includes a high-dollar spending spree on paid advertising, yielding tens of millions for Google, YouTube, X, Meta, and other tech platforms.
“There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie,” asserted a propaganda video published by Israel’s foreign ministry to Google’s YouTube video sharing platform in late August and viewed more than 6 million times. Much of the video’s reach results from an ad placed during an ongoing and previously unreported $45 million (NIS 150 million) advertising campaign initiated between Google and Netanyahu’s office in late June. The contract—which is with both YouTube and Google's advertising campaign management platform, Display & Video 360—explicitly characterizes the ad campaign as hasbara, a Hebrew word whose meaning is somewhere between public relations and propaganda.
Records show that the Israeli government similarly spent $3 million (NIS 10 million) for an advertising campaign with X. The French and Israeli advertising platform Outbrain/Teads is also set to receive roughly $2.1 million (NIS 7 million).
The existence of an Israeli Google ads campaign to discredit the UN’s primary aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, was similarly reported by WIRED last year. Hadas Maimon, head of public awareness for Israel’s diaspora ministry, stated during the March 2 Knesset hearing that, “For almost a year now, we have been leading a major campaign on the issue of UNRWA.”
178597186
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Alain Williams writes:
The tech giant developed a customized version of its cloud platform for Israel’s Unit 8200, which is housing audio files of millions of calls by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, a joint investigation reveals.
The Israeli army’s elite cyber warfare unit is using Microsoft’s cloud servers to store masses of intelligence on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — information that has been used to plan deadly airstrikes and shape military operations, an investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian can reveal.
178287040
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Alain Williams writes:
Elon Musk is obsessive about the design of his supercars, right down to the disappearing door handles. But a series of shocking incidents – from drivers trapped in burning vehicles to dramatic stops on the highway – have led to questions about the safety of the brand. Why won’t Tesla give any answers?
178116833
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Alain Williams writes:
The BBC is threatening legal action against Perplexity AI, in the corporation’s first move to protect its content from being scraped without permission to build artificial intelligence technology.
The corporation has sent a letter to Aravind Srinivas, the chief executive of the San Francisco-based startup, saying it has gathered evidence that Perplexity’s model was “trained using BBC content”.
177681101
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Alain Williams writes:
Vaniya Agrawal, a former Microsoft engineer, says she was fired for protesting against what she says is the company’s ties to Israel.
Watch her story a 5 minute video.
177008339
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Alain Williams writes:
US President Donald Trump's administration has exempted smartphones and computers from reciprocal tariffs, including the 125% levies imposed on Chinese imports.
US Customs and Border Patrol published a notice late on Friday explaining the goods would be excluded from Trump's 10% global tariff on most countries and the much larger Chinese import tax.
The move comes after concerns from US tech companies that the price of gadgets could skyrocket, as many of them are made in China.
The exemptions also include other electronic devices and components, including semiconductors, solar cells and memory cards.
176704075
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Alain Williams writes:
Meta has won an emergency ruling in the US to temporarily stop a former director of Facebook from promoting or further distributing copies of her memoir.
The book, Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, who used to be the company's global public policy director, includes a series of critical claims about what she witnessed during her seven years working at Facebook.
Facebook's parent company, Meta, says the ruling — which orders her to stop promotions "to the extent within her control" — affirms that "the false and defamatory book should never have been published".
The UK publisher Macmillan says it is "committed to upholding freedom of speech" and Ms Wynn-Williams' "right to tell her story".
You can also hear Ms Wynn-Williams interviewed in the BBC Radio 4 Media Show on 12 March.
176587515
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Alain Williams writes:
An Elon Musk ally installed in the US government said in a late night email going into Saturday that the office behind a popular free online tax filing option would be shuttered – and its employees would be let go.
The 18F office within the General Services Administration (GSA) created the IRS Direct File program that allows for free online tax filings. It has been a frequent target of Musk, and one of the billionaire businessman’s close associates who holds a key position in the GSA informed staffers that the agency would close 18F in an email to staffers that arrived around 1am on Saturday morning.
176139045
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Alain Williams writes:
United Nations officials removed criticisms of the Saudi government from the official record of a UN-organized internet governance conference in Riyadh in December 2024, and retaliated against civil society organizations, Human Rights Watch said today. The events at the 19th annual UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) were the latest example of repressive government hosting a major UN conference censoring and intimidating civil society representatives.
The IGF secretariat censored criticism of Saudi Arabia by a well-known Saudi human rights defender at a Human Rights Watch workshop, threatened to eject Human Rights Watch’s Saudi Arabia researcher, and confiscated materials highlighting the cases of human rights defenders.
176138981
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Alain Williams writes:
Google has become the latest big US firm to scrap its goals to recruit more workers from underrepresented groups, BBC News understands.
The decision to abandon the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruitment targets comes after the company carried out an annual review of its corporate policies.
The technology giant is also reviewing some of its other DEI programmes.
176043061
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Alain Williams writes:
Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and sales of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army have skyrocketed since the beginning of its onslaught on Gaza, according to leaked commercial records from Israel’s Defense Ministry and files from Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary.
175614133
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Alain Williams writes:
‘Progressive except for Palestine’: how a tech charity imploded over a statement on Gaza.
The board of the non-profit Code for Science & Society blocked a statement against genocide. The fallout tore the high-profile organization apart.
174479231
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Alain Williams writes:
Palestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning — cutting them off from crucial online services.
They say it has left them unable to access bank accounts and job offers — and stopped them using Skype, which Microsoft owns, to contact relatives in war-torn Gaza.
Microsoft says they violated its terms of service — a claim they dispute.
173021140
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Alain Williams writes:
Users of Ring video doorbells have reacted angrily to a huge price hike being introduced in March.
After buying the devices, customers can pay a subscription to store footage on the cloud, download clips and get discounted products.
That subscription is going up 43%, from £34.99 to £49.99 per device, per year, for basic plan customers.
The firm, which is owned by Amazon, insisted it still provided "some of the best value in the industry."
Its customers appear not to to agree.
172303617
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Alain Williams writes:
Time to get ready to hide behind the sofa.
In preparation for 3 new adventures starting today (25 Nov) to celebrate the Dr Who programme turning 60. Of course the Dr himself is over 2,000 years old.
