AI firm considers banning creation of political images for 2024 elections

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Admin

Midjourney’s CEO David Holz says company close to ‘hammering’ images of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and others ‘for next 12 months’

The groundbreaking artificial intelligence image-generating company Midjourney is considering banning people from using its software to make political images of Joe Biden and Donald Trump as part of an effort to avoid being used to distract from or misinform about the 2024 US presidential election.

“I don’t know how much I care about political speech for the next year for our platform,” Midjourney’s CEO, David Holz, said last week, adding that the company is close to “hammering” – or banning – political images, including those of the leading presidential candidates, “for the next 12 months”.

‘Cheering section’ for violence: the attacks that show 4chan is still a threat

Posted on May 1, 2022 by Admin

The Washington DC shooting was the most recent to spawn out of the extremist culture of unregulated ‘chan’ message boards

When police in Washington DC burst into a fifth-floor apartment building on 22 April in search of a man who allegedly had shot four people at random, they found Raymond Spencer dead by his own hand, a cache of guns and ammunition, and a poster with an ironic white supremacist meme.

The poster invoking the meme, popular on the extremist online forum 4chan, was a stark reminder that this attack blamed on Spencer, 23, was only the most recent mass casualty attack to spawn out of the ugly extremist culture of unregulated internet message boards such as 4chan.

Far-right online forum 8chan loses internet after protection services are cut

Posted on October 19, 2020 by Admin

Site was back online Monday morning with a Russian company enlisted to protect it from DDoS attacks

The latest incarnation of the hate-filled online forum 8chan was temporarily kicked off the internet on Sunday, after a company protecting the site from DDoS attacks cut its services.

The site, which is now called 8kun but was formerly known as 8chan, was back online on Monday morning, security researcher Brian Krebs reported, with a Russian company freshly enlisted to provide the protection services.

8chan: the far-right website linked to the rise in hate crimes

Posted on August 4, 2019 by Admin

Three attackers in six months allegedly posted their plans on the site in advance. In an exclusive interview, Silicon Valley CEO explains his ‘moral obligation’ to keep 8chan online

The suspect in the massacre that left 51 Muslims dead in Christchurch, New Zealand, allegedly posted a white nationalist screed and link to his Facebook live feed on 8chan, a far-right message board and notorious bastion of hate speech. The suspect in the shooting at a synagogue in Poway, California, that killed one person and injured three, allegedly posted a racist and antisemitic “open letter” on 8chan. And the suspect in Saturday’s attack at a crowded Walmart in El Paso, Texas, which claimed the lives of at least 20 people, is believed to also have posted a white nationalist rant on the platform.

If the connection between the 21-year-old suspect in Saturday’s massacre and the 8chan document is confirmed – and law enforcement sources told NBC News that they are “reasonably confident” that they are linked – then the El Paso attack will mark the third mass shooting in less than six months that was announced in advance on the message board. The first targeted Muslims, the second Jews, and the third appears to have been aimed at killing Latinos.