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It’s a long weekend for most, but that doesn’t mean we’d leave you without a weekly roundup.
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On the podcast this week: how an ID verification service for TikTok, Uber, and X exposed driver licenses, and what the FBI found when it investigated a specific Zoom Bombing ring. In the subscribers-only section, we get into TLO, a powerful data tool that is being advertised on Fiverr to dox anyone for $30.
Listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or watch it on YouTube.
It was a short week, but here’s what happened:
WHAT IS GOING ON IN ROBLOX
A racist 'Zoom Bombing' group was made up of American teenagers collaborating on a Roblox-owned chat with foreign nationals, according to a newly-unsealed criminal complaint. This group in particular was made up of people living overseas and American children organizing primarily on Guilded, which is owned by Roblox, and the gamer chat app Discord, according to the complaint.
SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS FOR SALE
Dozens of sellers on the freelancing platforming Fiverr are advertising access to a powerful data tool used by private investigators, law enforcement, and insurance firms, and are selling the claim that they can dig through that data for prospective buyers, including uncovering peoples’ Social Security numbers for as little as $30. We found nearly 50 advertisements by searching for “TLOxp SSN” on Fiverr.
I DEMAND TO ZOOM WITH A MANAGER
At a car rental service in Charlotte, North Carolina, in-person agents have been replaced with virtual staffers on a monitor on video chat software. No one is physically behind the counter; instead, there’s one monitor bearing the Nu Car Rentals logo and the message, “Tap this screen to be connected with an agent.” “When we got there, there were three offices each with a video screen with a customer in each,” a would-be customer told 404 Media. “They all looked aggravated, some were yelling...I didn’t actually go into the office, my boyfriend immediately booked something at Hertz and we left within 10 minutes but the vibe in there was dark.”
THEY WILL FIND THE GUYS WHO DID THIS
Generative AI could “distort collective understanding of socio-political reality or scientific consensus,” and in many cases is already doing that, says a new research paper from Google—which also happens to be one of the biggest companies in the world cramming generative AI everything down our throats. How these tools “undermine public trust,” as the researchers say, are often “neither overtly malicious nor explicitly violate these tools’ content policies or terms of service.” OK!
THAT LOOKS FAMILIAR
Figma pulled the plug on a newly launched AI-powered app design tool after a user showed that it was clearly copying Apple’s weather app. Oops! The feature, named Make Design, was disabled by Figma after CEO and cofounder of Not Boring Software Andy Allen tweeted images showing that asking it to make a “weather app” produced several variations of apps that looked almost identical to Apple’s default weather app.
Replying to “Car Rental Service Replaces Desk Agents With People On Video Chat” Nick Miller writes,
“The sentence ‘In another photo, a Christmas-themed gnome sits on the desk next to the video chat monitor’ so poignantly captures the desolation of where neoliberal tech-chauvinism is leading us”
Black Mirror meets “elf on a shelf.”
And responding to “Fiverr Freelancers Offer to Dox Anyone With Powerful U.S. Data Tool,” Joshua Long commented:
“I think it's dubiously-attributed to Mark Twain, but in data ‘a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes’ can be neatly and truthfully transposed into ‘your data can travel halfway through the interwebs while the data protection officers are drafting their emails.’”
BEHIND THE BLOG
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss turning our brains off with some gaming for the long weekend, dogs and fireworks, and the staying power of a meme.
EMANUEL: Full disclosure: I’m writing this BTB on Wednesday because we’re going to try to take some much needed time off this 4th of July weekend. A significant portion of that time will be spent mentally preparing, surviving, and then recovering from the fireworks with my extremely cowardly dog, but I also plan on at least one serious grill sesh and getting absolutely hammered on beer, which for me is one and a half IPAs.
I’m also planning on catching up with video games when I can. I hope to boot the Riven remake because it looks extremely chill, and an opportunity to fill a hole in my video game history education. I remember trying Myst and Riven as a kid, but they seemed soooo boring back then. I remember my uncle, who did not play video games and only had a Mac, loved Myst, which also helped me decide that they are lame. Now that I am old and washed they seem more my speed.
Read the rest of Emanuel's Behind the Blog, as well as Jason, Joseph and Sam's, by becoming a paid subscriber.
Okay, I need to do a background check. See you next week.
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