Meta

Wednesday

Matthew Foldi

FTC chair Lina Khan accused of résumé inflation and lying to Congress

From our US edition

Lina Khan, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission was supposed to be the next great trustbuster. But on the course of her rise to the nation's top antitrust law office, Khan allegedly misrepresented her credentials throughout her career and stands accused of lying to Congress. Representative Harriet Hageman, a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, levied a series of accusations to Khan in a barrage of Questions for the Record obtained by The Spectator. Hageman’s most sensational claims are that Khan lied to Congress, lied by omission to Congress and misrepresented herself as a lawyer while lacking the appropriate law license.

lina khan

Saturday

Joel Kotkin

The new corporatism that’s killing capitalism

From our US edition

Over the years since the financial crisis, economic power and wealth has become ever more concentrated in fewer hands. This is something leaders have acknowledged, and policymakers have tried to do something about. And yet, despite brave talk of breaking up mega-giant companies, anti-trust efforts have been anemic, as most recently demonstrated by the failure to stop Microsoft from swallowing game maker Activision. The future looked a little brighter in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. There were signs of a grassroots resurgence, with a strong uptick in new business formations in the United States. But since then, as interest rates have risen and regulatory pressures have increased, there has been a slackening off of new firms.

the new corporatism

Monday

Ross Anderson

Why is Sarah Silverman suing artificial intelligence?

From our US edition

Crypto was a wonderful Wild West of anarchic financial innovation, absurd idiocy and scamming. Lots of scamming. Then regulators came along and made everything a lot more sensible and boring. Given how fast Generative AI has developed — from computer science theory to high school cheating scandals in but a few years — it was inevitable that the lawsuits would quickly follow. On Friday, the comedian Sarah Silverman joined authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey in class action copyright lawsuits, claiming OpenAI and Meta had stolen material from their books to train their Large Language Models (LLMs). They allege the LLMs were trained on their books through pirated online libraries, such as Library Genesis and Z-Library. (No, I haven’t used them for years, don’t ask.

Thursday

Spectator Editorial

Make tech great again

From our US edition

Mark Zuckerberg has dubbed 2023 Meta’s “year of efficiency.” The slogan is a corporate euphemism for layoffs, of course — and not an especially subtle one. Zuckerberg’s company has parted ways with tens of thousands of employees this year. Other tech firms are following suit. Crunchbase estimates that US tech firms fired more than 118,000 employees in the first quarter of 2023. These are lean times in Silicon Valley — and, as Joel Kotkin explains in this month’s cover story, there is more to this tale than Big Tech belt-tightening after a pandemic-era hiring spree. The Valley, Kotkin explains, is in trouble. A place that America, and the world, once looked to for an ambitious and optimistic vision of the future, has grown sclerotic.

tech
metaverse
Matt Purple

Good riddance to the metaverse

From our US edition

So pack it all in then. Away with the wisecracking butterfly that sits on your shoulder during work meetings. Out with the Gamorrean Guards who play Texas Hold’em with you around a floating table. The metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg’s fever dream of a virtual-reality infused world, is dead. That’s assuming it was ever alive and kicking in the first place. To assess just how “real” the metaverse ever was, we need to go back to its inception in the fall of 2021. That was when Zuckerberg released a video of himself in suspiciously Steve Jobs-esque garb — black shirt and pants, sneakers — tooling around what he called a “home space” that brimmed with holographic bric-a-brac.

Friday

Ben Domenech

How taxpayer money was used to silence speech

From our US edition

Here's a simple question: how much American taxpayer money is being spent to silence, censor, and blacklist opinions? Legacy media reporting on the House Oversight Committee's initial look into the actions of Twitter during the 2020 elections focused mostly on questions surrounding Hunter Biden's laptop. The committee's investigative reports, however, ought to hone in on the most disturbing aspect of this story: social media giants were routinely directed and coerced into censoring and silencing American citizens by entities funded by those same taxpayers.

tax dollars free speech censorship disinformation

Monday

Spectator Editorial

How to survive the ‘permacrisis’

From our US edition

Are we in a permanent state of crisis? The Britain-based lexicographers at the Collins Dictionary think so. Last month they chose “permacrisis” as their word of the year. Defining the neologism as “an extended period of instability and insecurity,” Collins explained that their selection “sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people.” It’s easy to see why the word has particular resonance for the Brits, now onto their third prime minister this year. But the sense that we are stuck in an endless cycle of crises is a global one. As 2022 draws to a close, the world faces a daunting set of overlapping disasters.

permacrisis

Friday

Steerpike

Zuckerberg’s curious confession

Well, there you have it. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has confirmed that Facebook did indeed censor news of the New York Post’s 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story. But The Zuck had a rather curious tale to tell. Appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience, Zuckerberg was questioned by Rogan on Facebook’s approach to fake news and misinformation. In the discussion, the question of Hunter Biden’s laptop arose.

Thursday

Mary Kate Skehan

Sheryl Sandberg leans out

From our US edition

There’s a revealing moment at the very end of “Why We Have So Few Women Leaders,” a 2010 TED talk delivered by Facebook’s then-chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. After expounding on her vision of a world in which 50 percent of CEOs and heads of state are women, Sandberg shares a more personal dream: “I want my daughter to have the choice not just to succeed, but to be liked for her accomplishments.” Now, as Sandberg leaves Facebook’s parent company Meta after fourteen years, she leaves behind a mixed and controversial record in her public life. Sandberg has earned success, but she hasn’t won much public admiration.