The evolution of Musk’s X network is complete; why Reddit is profitable; and niche Halloween costumes * Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, technology news editor at Guardian US. Today in the newsletter: X’s final form, learnings from a packed week of earnings, and niche online Halloween costumes. Thank you for joining me. With the US election, X’s transformation into Elon Musk’s weapon reaches its peak. He has succeeded in bending his social network to his will. Continue reading...

Experts say top chief executives are treading a fine line to avoid any backlash in the event of a Trump victory After the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, America’s business leaders came out strongly in their criticism of Donald Trump. Now – as the Harris campaign brands Trump a “fascist” and Trump threatens retribution against “the enemy within” – there appears to be a conspiracy of silence. In fact, as the nation heads to the polls in an election that is too close to call, some of America’s most powerful chief executive appear to be cozying up to Trump again. Continue reading...

Child actor Kaylin Hayman fought back after she learned that a man had used AI to make child sex abuse materials from images on her Instagram page Last year, Kaylin Hayman walked into a Pittsburgh court to testify against a man she’d never met who had used her face to make pornographic pictures with artificial intelligence technology. Kaylin, 16, is a child actress who starred in the Disney show Just Roll With It from 2019 to 2021. The perpetrator, a 57-year-old man named James Smelko, had targeted her because of her public profile. She is one of about 40 of his victims, all of them child actors. In one of the images of Kaylin submitted into evidence at the trial, Smelko used her face from a photo posted on Instagram when she was 12, working on set, and superimposed it onto the naked body of someone else. Continue reading...

The megalomaniacs who control X and Facebook are only able to pollute the public sphere and undermine democracy because of our deference to money There are two kinds of aphrodisiac. The first is power. A good example was provided by the late Henry Kissinger, who could hardly be described as toothsome yet was doted upon by a host of glamorous women. The other powerful aphrodisiac is immense wealth. This has all kinds of effects. It makes people (even journalists who should know better) deferential, presumably because they subscribe to the delusion that if someone is rich then they must be clever. But its effects on the rich person are more profound: it cuts them off from reality. When they travel, writes Jack Self in an absorbing essay: “The car takes them to the aerodrome, where the plane takes them to another aerodrome, where a car takes them to the destination (with perhaps a helicopter inserted somewhere). Every journey is bookended by identical Mercedes Vito Tourers (gloss black, tinted windows). Every flight is within the cosy confines of a Cessna Citation (or a King Air or Embraer)… The ultra-rich never wait in line at a carousel or a customs table or a passport control. There are no accidental encounters. No unwelcome, unapproved or unsanitary humans enter their sight – no souls that could espouse a foreign view. The ultra-rich do not see anything they do not want to see.” Continue reading...

Data is vital to AI systems, so firms want the right to take it and ministers may let them. We must wake up to the danger Imagine someone drives up to a pub in a top-of-the-range sports car – a £1.5m Koenigsegg Regera, to pick one at random – parks up and saunters out of the vehicle. They come into the pub you’re drinking in and begin walking around its patrons, slipping their hand into your pocket in full view, smiling at you as they take out your wallet and empty it of its cash and cards. The not-so-subtle pickpocket stops if you shout and ask what the hell they’re doing. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” the pickpocket says. “It’s an opt-out regime, mate.” Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: China’s Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media Continue reading...

Oversight Board says parent company Meta has ‘serious questions’ to answer over two posts allowed to remain online Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta must answer “serious questions” about its handling of anti-immigration material, according to the company’s content watchdog, as it opened an investigation into two Facebook posts. The Oversight Board is investigating Meta’s decision to keep the posts online after acknowledging that it receives a significant number of complaints from users over content that shares anti-immigrant views. Continue reading...

Facebook and Instagram owner reportedly dismisses about 24 workers for abusing $25 meal credit system Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has reportedly fired about 24 staff at its Los Angeles offices for using their $25 meal credits to buy items such as toothpaste, laundry detergent and wine glasses. The tech firm, which is worth £1.2tn and also owns the messaging platform WhatsApp, is said to have dismissed workers last week after an investigation discovered staff had been abusing the system, including to send food home when they were not in the office. Continue reading...

Tech companies aren’t transparent about what they do with our photos – we asked experts about best baby-pic practices Welcome to Opt Out, a semi-regular column in which we help you navigate your online privacy and show you how to say no to surveillance. If you’d like to skip to a section about a particular risk you’re trying to protect your child against, click the “Jump to” menu at the top of this article. Last week’s column covered how to opt yourself out of tech companies using your posts to train artificial intelligence. You’ve got the cutest baby ever, and you want the world to know it. But you’re also worried about what might happen to your baby’s picture once you release it into the nebulous world of the internet. Should you post it? Continue reading...

The assistant, which has sparked privacy concerns, can also be accessed on £299 Ray-Ban Meta sunglasses Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has launched its artificial intelligence assistant in the UK, alongside AI-boosted sunglasses modelled by Mark Zuckerberg. Meta’s AI assistant, which can generate text and images, is now available on its social media platforms in the UK and Brazil, having already been launched in the US and Australia. Continue reading...

Facebook owner claims Movie Gen can create realistic-seeming video and audio clips that rival competitors’ Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, announced on Friday it had built a new artificial intelligence model called Movie Gen that can create realistic-seeming video and audio clips in response to user prompts, claiming it can rival tools from leading media generation startups like OpenAI and ElevenLabs. Samples of Movie Gen’s creations provided by Meta showed videos of animals swimming and surfing, as well as clips using people’s real photos to depict them performing actions like painting on a canvas. Continue reading...