Wes’ News Filter

04/07/2025

Scattered Spider Is the Most Imminent Cyber Threat, Experts Warn (Wired, 3 July 2025)
https://www.wired.com/story/scattered-spider-most-imminent-threat/

The Scattered Spider hacking group has caused chaos among retailers, insurers, and airlines in recent months. Researchers warn that its flexible structure poses challenges for defense.

02/07/2025

Multiple AI Companies Bypassing Web Standard to Scrape Publisher Sites Without Licensing (Reuters, 21 June 2024)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/multiple-ai-companies-bypassing-web-standard-scrape-publisher-sites-licensing-2024-06-21/

Multiple artificial intelligence companies are circumventing a common web standard used by publishers to block the scraping of their content for use in generative AI systems, content licensing startup TollBit has told publishers.

02/07/2025

Control How Your Content Is Used for AI Training With Cloudflare (Cloudflare Blog, 1 July 2024)
https://blog.cloudflare.com/control-content-use-for-ai-training/

Cloudflare is making it easier for publishers and content creators of all sizes to prevent their content from being scraped for AI training by managing robots.txt on their behalf, and allowing targeted blocking of AI crawling on sites that serve ads.

01/07/2025

“One higher education observer said that universities breaking from established accrediting agencies is akin to restaurants turning away government food inspectors. Watch out for what will be served afterward. That the University of North Carolina System is joining this revolt is discouraging. Once, it was a source of pride that the University of North Carolina took a higher path than other southern states. Now it’s joining DeSantis on the low road of curtailing academic freedom and replacing an honest account of the U.S. past and present with denial and jingoism.”

NC Republicans Banished Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Now the Only Perspective That Matters to Them Is Their Own (Herald Sun, 30 June 2025)
https://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/article309546875.html



AI image generated by Wes Fryer using ChatGPT 4o for iPadOS. Learn more:
https://ai.wesfryer.com

01/07/2025

Mark Zuckerberg Already Knows Your Life—Now He Wants His AI to Run It (Gizmodo, 30 June 2025)
https://gizmodo.com/mark-zuckerberg-already-knows-your-life-now-he-wants-his-ai-to-run-it-2000622496

In a sweeping new plan, the Meta CEO is assembling an AI "Avengers team" to build not just a better chatbot, but a personalized intelligence that anticipates your needs, manages your schedule, and guides your decisions. Welcome to Life-as-a-Service.

30/06/2025

Inside AI Addiction Support Groups Where People Try to Stop Talking to Chatbots (404 Media, 28 June 2024)�https://www.404media.co/inside-ai-addiction-support-groups-where-people-try-to-stop-talking-to-chatbots/

People are self treating themselves and other community members in subreddits like character_ai_recovery, ChatBotAddiction, and AIAddiction.

29/06/2025

: Interrogating Tech Power and Democratic Crisis by

https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/e1256a00-4ba1-0139-3381-0acc26574db2/9e7d7b90-8137-475d-b9cc-99b14fab0974



Description: If you’ve been reading Tech Policy Press closely over the last three weeks, you may have come across one or more posts from collaboration with Data & Societycalled “Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis.” The articles in the series examine how powerful tech billionaires and authoritarian leaders and thinkers are leveraging AI and digital infrastructure to advance anti-democratic agendas, consolidate control, and reshape society in ways that threaten privacy, labor rights, environmental sustainability, and democratic governance.

29/06/2025

Ukraine F-16 pilot killed in large-scale Russian attack, Zelenskiy calls for US help (Reuters, 29 June 2025)
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/least-six-wounded-large-scale-russian-air-attack-ukraine-ukrainian-authorities-2025-06-29/

26/06/2025

Social Media's Role In Fueling Extremism And Misinformation In A Divided Political Climate (PBS NewsHour, 11 Sept 2024) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/social-medias-role-in-fueling-extremism-and-misinformation-in-a-divided-political-climate

26/06/2025

[PODCAST] Peter Thiel and the Antichrist by Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

https://pca.st/episode/d3c84739-30eb-4e2b-bda3-6f0fadf98bb1



“The billionaire Peter Thiel is unimpressed with our pace of innovation. In this episode, he critiques artificial intelligence, longevity science and space travel — and warns that our lack of progress could lead to catastrophic outcomes, including the emergence of the Antichrist.”

25/06/2025

Trump-Era Official Quietly Dismantled DHS Anti-Terrorism Program (ProPublica, 25 June 2025)
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-dhs-thomas-fugate-cp3-terrorism-prevention

One year out of college and with no apparent national security expertise, Thomas Fugate is the Department of Homeland Security official tasked with overseeing the government’s main hub for combating violent extremism.

25/06/2025

Facebook Group Admins Complain Of Mass Bans, Meta Says It’s Fixing The Problem (TechCrunch, 24 Jun 2025)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/24/facebook-group-admins-complain-of-mass-bans-meta-says-its-fixing-the-problem/

The bans have affected thousands of groups both in the U.S. and abroad and have spanned various categories. The reason for the mass bans is not yet known, though many suspect that faulty AI-based moderation could be to blame.