Reclaim the Net reported: We are now seeing tireless efforts by the same groups, official and informal, the same centres of power who spent years circulating alarmist statements about a supposedly dangerous prevalence of “misinformation” in the media – wanting to be the ones to tell the world how to “rebuild trust in the media.”

In the new episode of the World Economic Forum (WEF) series of musings – a bid to lay the foundations of a future “world (dis)order” on a number of key issues – the Switzerland-based global elite’s mouthpiece touches on precisely the trust in the media – and how to bake AI into their proposed solution.

It bears repeating, that the problem of mistrust in the media is created by the likes of the WEF, i.e, its “stakeholders”: it’s the censorship enacted by the most influential legacy media, with the excuse of fighting “misinformation.”

CNN Business reported: Two new bills meant to protect children’s mental health online by changing the way they are served content on social media and by limiting companies’ use of their data will be introduced in the New York state legislature, state and city leaders said Wednesday.

The “Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act” would limit what New York officials say are the harmful and addictive features of social media for children. The act would allow users under 18 and their parents to opt out of receiving feeds driven by algorithms designed to harness users’ personal data to keep them on the platforms for as long as possible. Those who opt out would receive chronological feeds instead, like in the early days of social media.

The bill would also allow users and parents who opt in to receiving algorithmically generated content feeds to block access to social media platforms between 12am and 6am or to limit the total number of hours per day a minor can spend on a platform.

The bill targets platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube, where feeds are comprised of user-generated content along with other material the platform suggests to users based on their personal data. Tech platforms have designed and promoted voluntary tools aimed at parents to help them control what content their kids can see, arguing that the decision about what boundaries to set should be up to individual families. But that hasn’t stopped critics from calling on platforms to do more — or from threatening further regulation.

FoxBusiness reported: Microsoft just disclosed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has asked for a hefty sum of taxes that it believes the tech company has not paid.

The funds, sought through notices of proposed adjustments, totalled $28.9 billion not including penalties and interest, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing submitted on Wednesday by Microsoft. The IRS apparently believes the company owes that amount for tax years 2004 to 2013. Microsoft said the IRS sent the notices late last month.

“We disagree with the proposed adjustments and will vigorously contest the NOPAs through the IRS’s administrative appeals office and, if necessary, judicial proceedings,” the tech company said. The situation will likely not see a resolution at any time in the near future. The company estimated that appealing through the IRS could last “several” years.

Over the course of its 2023 fiscal year, Microsoft produced $211.9 billion in revenue, up roughly 6.9 per cent compared to the $198.3 billion it generated in the prior year. Its annual net income, meanwhile, experienced a 0.5 per cent decline, hitting $72.36 billion.

Reuters reported: The EU’s industry chief Thierry Breton on Wednesday gave Meta Platforms 24 hours to inform him of measures taken to counter the spread of disinformation on its platforms following the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel.

“I would ask you to be very vigilant to ensure strict compliance with the DSA rules on terms of service, on the requirement of timely, diligent and objective action following notices of illegal content in the EU, and on the need for proportionate and effective mitigation measures,” Breton told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a letter.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) forces very large online platforms to remove illegal online content on their platforms.

Reuters reported: A US judge questioned Montana’s first-of-its-kind state ban on the use of short video-sharing app TikTok hearing arguments on a legal challenge before it is set to take effect on January 1.

US District Judge Donald Molloy, considering a court challenge from TikTok and users, on Thursday questioned the state attorney general’s office at a hearing on the state’s ban approved by the legislature. He noted that no other state has followed suit to ban TikTok. “Does that seem a little strange to you?” Molloy asked at the hearing.

Reclaim the Net reported: Italy, Namibia and Mauritania are among the countries implementing SIM card activation via digital ID – and Italy has now reached the phase where its telecommunications regulator, AGCOM, has greenlit the practice.

A statement from AGCOM said that mobile operators are free to activate SIMs with either the electronic ID card (CIE), the national services charter (ID), known as CNS or the SPID, the Public Digital ID System.

Axios reported: New York-based tech firms and investors see the advent of AI as the latest opportunity to try to unseat the Bay Area as tech‘s global capital.

What’s happening: To achieve its potential, the generative AI industry must win adoption in key industries concentrated in the New York area – finance, communications and media, law and medicine.

Driving the news: New York will become an AI showcase next week as the city hosts a 370-event “Tech Week” beginning October 16, coordinated by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The big picture: A growing number of tech companies are opening and expanding offices and hosting major events in New York.

The intrigue: Even Amazon is having a New York revival – expanding into an iconic 600,000 square foot Fifth Avenue building, four years after nixing a second headquarters in the city amid a pressure campaign led by freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democratic – New York).

Axios reported: Harvard and University of Oxford researchers are harnessing AI to predict threatening new strains of Covid-19 and other viruses. Why it matters: The approach could prove more efficient than lab-based testing because it doesn’t rely on people becoming infected or getting vaccinated to develop antibodies.

This could lead to better and quicker vaccines, including in the next pandemic. How it works: Researchers developed a generative AI model that’s trained on historical viral sequences to predict ways in which the organism could mutate.

They then added structural details about the virus, like regions most easily targeted by the immune system. To test its predictive power, the researchers drew on the trove of data about Covid-19 from the pandemic and how the stealthy virus kept evolving.

What they found: When presented with ancestral strains of coronavirus from before the pandemic, the tool, called EVEscape, predicted the most frequent mutations and dangerous variants of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers wrote on Wednesday in Nature. What we’re watching: EVEscape is being used in real-time to make predictions about how Covid will evolve next.

Cleveland.com reported: Patients at Cleveland Clinic hospitals may soon be seeing a little bit less of their doctors – their faces, that is. The hospital system has requested that caregivers and visitors on inpatient floors of its Ohio hospitals return to masking, beginning next week.

The Cleveland Clinic stopped requiring masks for most patients, visitors and caregivers on April 20 of this year, but they were still required in specialized hospital units caring for particularly vulnerable patients. Back in April, the Clinic alluded to the fact that the decision to relax its masking policy might only be temporary.

• The Defender report