The bill passed 352-65 in a lopsided bipartisan vote, but it faces a more uncertain path in the Senate where some favor a different approach to regulating foreign-owned apps posing security concerns. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will review the legislation.

“This is a critical national security issue. The Senate must take this up and pass it,” No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise said on social media platform X.

The fate of TikTok, used by about 170 million Americans, has become a major issue in Washington. Lawmakers said their offices had received large volumes of calls from teenage TikTok users who oppose the legislation.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday “we want to see the Senate take swift action.”

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in a video posted Wednesday the legislation if signed into law “will lead to a ban on TikTok in the United States… and would take billions of dollars out of the pockets of creators and small businesses. It will put 300,000 American jobs at risk.”

He added the company will “not stop fighting” and will exercise its legal rights to prevent a ban.

He visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday on a previously scheduled trip and plans to return Thursday, a source briefed on the matter said, amid popular support for the app.

The measure is the latest in a series of moves in Washington to respond to US national security concerns about China, from connected vehicles to advanced artificial intelligence chips to cranes at US ports.

The political climate is growing in favor of the bill. President Joe Biden said last week he would sign it and White Hous national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday asked “Do we want TikTok, as a platform, to be owned by an American company or owned by China? Do we want the data from TikTok – children’s data, adults’ data – to be going, to be staying here in America or going to China?”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized the legislation Tuesday, arguing “though the U.S. has never found any evidence of TikTok posing a threat to the US’s national security, it has never stopped going after TikTok.”

A number of prominent Democrats in the House voted against the bill including House Democratic Whip Kathleen Clark, Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well as the top Democrats on the Judiciary, Ways and Means, Transportation and Intelligence committees.

“There are serious antitrust and privacy questions here, and any national security concerns should be laid out to the public prior to a vote,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell, who will play an important role in the Senate’s next move, said she wants legislation “that could hold up in court,” and is considering a separate bill, but is not sure what her next step is.

The vote comes just over a week since the bill was proposed following one public hearing with little debate, and after action in Congress had stalled for more than a year. Last month, President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign joined TikTok, raising hopes among TikTok officials that legislation was unlikely this year.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee last week voted 50-0 in favor of the bill, setting it up for a vote before the full House.

Several dozen TikTok users rallied outside the Capitol before the vote. The company paid for their travel to Washington and accommodations, a TikTok spokesperson said.

But the political climate is growing in favor of the bill. Biden said last week he would sign it and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday said the goal was ending Chinese ownership, not banning TikTok.

“Do we want TikTok, as a platform, to be owned by an American company or owned by China? Do we want the data from TikTok – children’s data, adults’ data – to be going, to be staying here in America or going to China?” he said.

It is unclear whether China would approve any sale or if TikTok’s U.S. assets could be divested in six months.

If ByteDance failed to do so, app stores operated by Apple, Alphabet’s Google, and others could not legally offer TikTok or provide web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump sought to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat but was blocked by the courts. In recent days he had raised concerns about a ban but nearly all House Republicans shrugged those off.

Representative Mike Gallagher, one of the bill’s authors, said they don’t want a ban but divestiture and said Trump if re-elected in November “may have an opportunity to consummate the deal of the century” in a TikTok sale.

It remains unclear if Tencent’s WeChat or other high-profile Chinese-owned apps could face a ban under the legislation.

Any forced TikTok divestment from the US would almost certainly face legal challenges, which the company would need to file within 165 days of the bill being signed by the president.

There are still potential legal issues with the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups arguing the bill is unconstitutional on free speech and other grounds.

In November, a US judge blocked a Montana state ban on TikTok use after the company sued. – Rappler.com

The vote is expected around 10 am under fast-track rules that require support by two-thirds of House members for the measure to pass.

The vote comes just over a week since the bill was proposed and after one public hearing with little debate. The House Energy and Commerce Committee last week voted 50-0 in favor of the bill, setting it up for a vote before the full House.

The FBI, Justice Department, and Office of the director of national intelligence held a classified briefing for House members on Tuesday.

“We’ve answered a lot of questions from members. We had a classified briefing today. So that members can see even more details about what’s at risk and how the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) can jeopardize the risk to American families,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

Tiktok CEO Shou Zi Chew will visit Capitol Hill on Wednesday on a previously scheduled trip to talk to senators, a source briefed on the matter said.

“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company said. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression,” it added.

Some opponents of the legislation, including Democratic Representative Maxwell Frost, think the bill will pass in the House. Frost said many lawmakers who will vote for the bill are motivated by a desire to protect users, which he supports. Frost was among four lawmakers out of the 432-member House that held a press conference opposing the bill.

“The problem is the process here, the fact that it’s been steamrolled and people really can’t digest the consequences,” Frost said. “I would like to see TikTok ownership changed, but not at the expense of our First Amendment rights, business owners, and content creators.”

The fate of the legislation is uncertain in the US Senate, where some senators want to take a different approach.

President Joe Biden said last week that he would sign the bill.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday that the goal is ending Chinese ownership – not banning TikTok. “Do we want TikTok, as a platform, to be owned by an American company or owned by China? Do we want the data from TikTok — children’s data, adults’ data — to be going, to be staying here in America or going to China?”

It is unclear if China would approve any sale or if TikTok could be divested in six months

The bill would give ByteDance 165 days to divest TikTok. If it failed to do so, app stores operated by Apple, Alphabet’s Google and others could not legally offer TikTok or provide web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump sought to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat but was blocked by the courts. In recent days he had raised concerns about a ban. – Rappler.com

Trump reiterated his concerns as lawmakers weigh a bill this week that would give TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the short video app used by 170 million Americans.

The US House of Representatives is set to vote on Wednesday under fast-track rules that require two-thirds of members to vote “yes” for the measure to win passage.

TikTok told Congress late Monday in a letter seen by Reuters it is “not owned or controlled by the Chinese government” and argued if the company was sold another buyer would not continue TikTok’s $1.5 billion effort to protect US data.

“Ironically, US user data could be less secure under a divestment scheme,” the company said.

The FBI, Justice Department, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence plan to hold on Tuesday a classified briefing for House members, two sources said. FBI Director Chris Wray reiterated concerns about TikTok at a hearing on Monday.

The 2024 Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community released on Monday said “TikTok accounts run by a PRC propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the US midterm election cycle in 2022.”

The Justice Department detailed its security concerns about TikTok in a document last week first reported by Reuters.

“I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size,” Trump told CNBC on Monday. “And if you if you ban TikTok, (then) Facebook and others, but mostly Facebook, will be a big beneficiary. And I think Facebook has been very dishonest.”

Trump met recently with investor Jeff Yass, whose investment firm Susquehanna International Group has a stake in ByteDance, he confirmed on CNBC. Trump said they did not talk about TikTok.

Meta Platforms shares closed down 4.4% at $483.59 on Monday. The company declined to comment.

‘Kids will go crazy’

Trump previously criticized the company now called Meta Platforms for revoking his access to Facebook and Instagram after removing two of his posts during the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. His accounts were reinstated in February 2023.

Trump also said a TikTok ban could impact young people. “There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it,” he said. “There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok.”

Tiktok CEO Shou Zi Chew will visit Capitol Hill later this week on a previously scheduled trip to talk to senators, a source briefed on the matter said.

President Joe Biden said last week he would sign the bill after a committee unanimously approved the measure.

TikTok, which says it has not and would not share US user data with the Chinese government, argues the House bill amounts to a ban. It is unclear if China would approve any sale or if TikTok could be divested in six months.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said “we must ensure the Chinese government cannot weaponize TikTok against American users and our government through data collection and propaganda.”

The bill would give ByteDance 165 days to divest TikTok. If it failed to do so, app stores operated by Apple, Alphabet’s Google and others could not legally offer TikTok or provide Web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.

In 2020, Trump sought to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat but was blocked by the courts.

The app is popular and getting legislation approved by both the House and Senate in an election year may be difficult. Last month, Biden’s re-election campaign joined TikTok.

Trump’s campaign has not joined TikTok. – Rappler.com

Play Video

The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters, alongside Getty Images, released kill notifications, or instructions for retracting the photo, which was released by Kensington Palace on Sunday, March 10.

The image came alongside her first public message since undergoing abdominal surgery in January.

According to the Associated Press’ kill notification shared by Chris Ship of ITV News, “at closer inspection it appears the source has manipulated the image.”

The Associated Press added in a report, “The photo shows an inconsistency in the alignment of Princess Charlotte’s left hand.” 

In a social media post on March 11, Middleton, who also goes by Catherine, apologized for “any confusion” caused by the photograph posting.

The post, bearing her initial C, said, “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day.”

The BBC earlier reported the image of Middleton and her children – Prince George, Prince Louis, and Princess Charlotte – was taken by Prince William, and is the first official photo released of her since she was last publicly seen on December 25.

News organizations hold strict guidelines on the usage of manipulated photographs, such as adding notices if a photograph has been altered or changed from its original, or allowing only minor touch-ups for quality or image visibility purposes, depending on the organization. – Rappler.com

Rating: FALSE

Why we fact-checked this: The claim was made in a YouTube video that has garnered 8,991 views, 440 likes, and 61 comments as of writing. 

At the 3:42 mark of the video, the narrator says: “Ngunit sa aking inaakala, hindi ito basta basta isang shutdown, dahil hanggang ngayon hindi pa rin naglalabas ang Meta patungkol sa ano talaga ang rason kung bakit nangyari ito. Ngunit para sa akin, ito’y parang may kinalaman sa nangyari nito-nito lamang linggo, na ang pinaka malakas sa solar flare sa loob ng anim na taon ay nangyari sa ating planeta.” 

(In my view, this was not just any shutdown because until now Meta has not explained the cause of the outage. To me, it seems to have something to do with what happened just this week, when the strongest solar flare in six years happened on our planet.)

The bottom line: The outage of Meta’s social media platforms was caused by “technical issues,” according to Meta Communications Director Andy Stone in an X (formerly Twitter) post on March 6. 

“Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” the post said.

The outage lasted for over two hours and affected 550,000 Facebook users and about 92,000 Instagram users at its peak. There have been no reports from reputable sources that stated that a solar flare or solar superstorm had anything to do with the almost two-hour-long outage. 

Meta’s services also previously suffered a prolonged disruption in 2021, when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were down for more than six hours. At the time, the outage was caused by “configuration changes on backbone routers.” 

Solar storms explained: Solar magnetic storms, also known as coronal mass ejections, occur when the sun releases bursts of plasma. The strongest flares, when directed at the Earth, can disrupt satellites, communication systems, and even power grids. Solar activity is at its peak during a period known as the solar maximum. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Space Weather Prediction Center, the sun will reach its peak activity between January and October 2024, in the 25th solar cycle. 

Recent solar activity: Two major solar flares occurred earlier this year. The flares erupted from the sun beginning in the late afternoon of February 21 until February 22. The levels of the flares reached an R3 (Strong) rating, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

In a post on February 26, NOAA said: “While solar flares can affect communication systems, radar, and the Global Positioning System, based on the intensity of the eruption and associated phenomena, it is highly unlikely that these flares contributed to the widely reported cellular network outages.”

However, the February 21 and 22 solar flares had nothing to do with the Meta outage that occurred on March 5.

Solar flares can reach Earth in minutes while its accompanying coronal mass ejections (CMEs) usually take at least a day to reach the planet, a Washington Post article said. Both solar flares and CMEs can affect communication systems here on Earth.

Rappler has debunked a similar claim from the same user that a solar superstorm would cause a global internet shutdown in 2024. – Katarina Ruflo/Rappler.com

Katarina Ruflo is a graduate of Rappler’s fact-checking mentorship program. This fact check was reviewed by a member of Rappler’s research team and a senior editor. Learn more about Rappler’s fact-checking mentorship program here.

Keep us aware of suspicious Facebook pages, groups, accounts, websites, articles, or photos in your network by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.

The disruptions started around 10 am ET (1500 GMT), with many users saying on rival social media platform X they had been booted out of Facebook and Instagram and were unable to log in.

There were more than 300,000 reports of outages for Facebook and 40,000 reports for Instagram on tracking website Downdetector.com.

“We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a post on X.

The social media giant, shares of which were down 1.5% in late morning trade, has about 3.19 billion daily active users across its family of apps, which also include WhatsApp and Threads.

Meta’s status dashboard showed the application programming interface for WhatsApp Business was also facing issues.

Though the outage for WhatsApp and Threads was much smaller, with under 200 incident reports each on Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including users.

Several employees of Meta said on anonymous messaging app Blind that they were unable to log in to their internal work systems, which left them wondering if they were laid off, according to posts seen by Reuters.

The outage was among the top trending topics on X, formerly Twitter, with the platform’s owner Elon Musk taking a shot at Meta with a post that said: “If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working”.

X itself has faced several disruptions to its service after Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social media platform in October 2022, with an outage in December causing issues for more than 77,000 users in countries from the U.S. to France.

– Rappler.com

The deepfake video manipulated a November 2022 interview of Ressa by American talk show host Stephen Colbert in his show. 

It was circulated using a newly created Facebook page and an ad on Microsoft’s Bing platform. Microsoft and Facebook have since taken down the post and the ad that circulated the deepfake.

Using digital fingerprints left by the fakers, a follow-up investigation where Rappler collaborated with Swedish digital forensic group Qurium linked the deepfake to a Russian scam network. The investigation also indicated that the campaign specifically targeted Philippine audiences.

Spotting the deepfake

The deepfake video was initially spotted on January 25, 2024, on the Facebook page, “Method Business,” which was created just a few days before. 

Twenty-one hours after the video was posted, it had already garnered 22,000 views. (See screenshot below.)

Rappler was also later alerted to a webpage, hosted under URL ultimainv.website, which alternately cloned the story pages from the websites of Rappler and CNN Philippines. The impostor site was promoted through an ad served on Microsoft’s Bing platform. (Ad encircled by Rappler in the screenshot below)

Ultimainv.website is a newly registered domain. The first record on its domain history is dated January 10, 2024.

The creators of the deepfake video manipulated a November 2022 interview by Colbert where he asked Ressa questions about her book, How To Stand Up To A Dictator, and the cases filed against her and Rappler upon the instigation of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. 

The manipulated video used a fake voice, generated by AI, which mimicked Ressa’s voice. Most of the time, the fake video showed her speaking in sync with the audio. But there were a number of times that the syncing failed, which was the strongest indication that it was a deepfake video. Watch the video embedded below which compares the original interview with the manipulated video that had the AI-generated audio.

Play Video

The video may look convincing to a user who isn’t paying attention or isn’t aware of how AI technology can copy voices or how a deepfake video might look. Rappler reported the video to Meta, and it has since been removed, but the page, Method Business, remains active.

More than an effort to scam people into investing in bitcoin, the fake articles published on webpages mimicking Rappler and CNN Philippines also implied that Ressa was involved in the scam.

Both headlined, “Maria Ressa could be sued for her remarks on live TV,” the fake CNN Philippines and Rappler articles both claimed that Ressa’s career “hangs in balance” supposedly following remarks she made on live TV. The ad which promoted the impostor websites used the text: “The end for her?” as lead, implying that Ressa was embroiled in a scandal.

The fake articles also claimed that the live broadcast was supposedly interrupted following demands by leading banks to stop it and erase the recording. (See screenshots of fake articles below.)

Russian origin, targeting a Philippine audience

The pages where the video and the fake Rappler and CNN Philippines articles were posted were also engineered to be viewed only through Philippine internet service providers (ISPs). Investigators who looked into the deepfake had to employ various techniques to view the impostor sites from their location. This implies that those behind the deepfake were specifically targeting Filipinos.

CNN Philippines’ website had already shut down on February 1, 2024, days before the February 5, 2024 publication date of the fake article.

A follow-up investigation with Swedish digital forensic group Qurium Media discovered later that the clone sites were part of a fraudulent online network that tricks victims into paying for a product that usually ends up as an empty box or a random low quality object when delivered.

The network, according to Qurium, appears to be of Russian origin.

Links found in the network also showed the use of Cyrillic script, and a timezone time stamp of GMT+3 (Moscow, St. Petersburg), which, Qurium said, is “solid indication” but “not conclusive proof” that the network is of Russian origin.

The content on the platform used to set up the fake websites is in Russian language.

Qurium analyzed domain registration and hosting information data of the fake sites, metadata from images and the embedded video on the fake sites, and metadata from the original articles scraped from the original CNN and Rappler websites to create the fake pages.

The campaign was in operation from November 28, 2023 to February 25, 2024.

Qurium’s analysis of the network shows an elaborate scheme that skirts legal accountability by dividing the operation into separate entities, allowing for deniability and anonymity.

The scam network, as discovered by Qurium, uses a multi-role scheme that ensures no one will be held accountable for the scam. These are the roles:

• The affiliate advertiser or the publisher

This is the webpage, collecting the names and phone numbers of potential victims to an intermediary, which, in this case, is the “M1 Shop.” Qurium said that on their site, “they make clear that they just advertise goods and they are not responsible for anything related to the merchandise.”

The affiliate advertiser in this case was identified as “TD Globus Contract.” Aside from ultimainv.website, which hosted the fake CNN and Rappler pages, TD Globus Contract was found to have links to more than 40 other websites with ties to the scam network.

• The intermediary

The intermediary (M1 Shop) takes the victims’ info from the publisher, and forwards it to the advertiser for a fee. They are responsible for paying the publisher for the information they receive or the clicks the publisher’s webpage generates that send victims to the M1 Shop.

• Advertisers

Advertisers create the fraud offerings, which, in this case, have ranged from nutrition goods to cryptocurrency offers.

Qurium explained that the fraud works as the advertisers’ identities are protected by the intermediary, while publishers or webpages are changed “once their reputation has been compromised.”

“Ultimately none takes responsibility for the fraud,” Qurium said. “The websites that promote the products are registered under fake companies, and claim that they do not know the final product vendors, and the advertisement network claims that they do not monitor what is promoted in their platform. Something is guaranteed though, victims get scammed and everyone in their network gets paid for their ‘services.'”

Meanwhile, M1 is playing a “brokering role” in the scam network, hiding the malicious advertisers from scrutiny.

Rappler has already reached out to M1 shop via the Telegram accounts on its website. We will update this story when we receive a response from M1.

Potential harm 

Deepfake videos can be convincing and powerfully persuasive, which is why scammers would attempt to use it.

However, there are other potential motivations. In India, politicians have used deepfakes to malign opponents or confuse the electorate. In Taiwan, deepfakes and cheap fakes were spread online ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. In Indonesia, deepfakes had been in use, too, in the lead up to their own presidential elections.

The nature of disinformation is not in the outright lie at times. Oftentimes, it could be merely to plant a seed in the minds of audiences that could later be exploited, Qurium added in its report.  

Regardless of the motivation, potentially, deepfakes can be used to sway public opinion, like a very powerful lie, which is especially harmful in situations such as national elections and fast-moving scenarios like situations of violence, for example. 

Must Read

What can the Philippines learn from how AI was used in Indonesia’s 2024 election?

In this specific case, if the intent was to scam people, the scammers may have thought that using a Maria Ressa deepfake could convince some to invest in a product that ultimately doesn’t exist. The fake campaign may have attempted to leverage a journalist’s reputation as an authoritative voice, at her expense.

Other figures of authority can be victimized, too, putting their reputations on the line. While Rappler and Qurium were investigating this specific deepfake, a similar one which involves a Filipino businessman was also circulated through what appears to be the same process. Very recently, deepfakes which used GMA7 Network anchors were used to promote a necklace supposedly coming from the Vatican.

There are other possibilities. What is curious about the Maria Ressa deepfake is that the ads on Bing, which were promoting the impostor CNN Philippines and Rappler sites, did not appear to be promoting a product. They were implying a scandal involving Ressa.

“What’s particularly concerning (about the Ressa deepfake) are the layers of malicious intent behind a single act of digital manipulation and the consequent harms these inflict,” De La Salle University Communications professor Cheryll Soriano told Rappler.

Soriano, who has been doing research on disinformation on platforms like YouTube, was one of those who spotted and alerted Rappler about the deepfake video. She said: “First, it (the deepfake video) attempts to push a scam. Second, it makes the scam appear news-like, pretending as Rappler and CNN Philippines, undermining the credibility of news organizations. Third, it is clearly motivated to discredit Maria Ressa by maligning her reputation.”

Soriano added that the deepfake also “perpetuates a disturbing trend of misogynistic practices, utilizing deep fakes to humiliate women. Even if the scam itself fails, it still exposes and perpetuates the latter three, spreading them across networked publics.”

Addressing the deepfake threat

There is a general consensus about fact check groups and disinformation experts that the deepfake problem will only continue to grow in the future now that generative AI technologies are readily available to ordinary citizens.

This makes nuanced and immediate platform action critical to mitigate their impact.

In various public statements, the platforms used to circulate the Maria Ressa bitcoin deepfake – Facebook and Microsoft – have both been saying they have programs addressing deepfakes.

In a recently released statement, Meta, the owner of Facebook, said it is working with industry partners on common technical standards for identifying AI content, including video and audio. It said it will label images that users post when they detect these industry standard indicators. It also said it has been labeling photorealistic images created using Meta AI since the product was launched.

In an email interview with Rappler, a Microsoft spokesperson said they have closed 520,000 accounts engaging in fraudulent and misleading activity since April 2023, using both automated and manual methods. The company said that they build upon their knowledge base with each incident to help them detect similar ones in the future, and that they have instituted Information Integrity and Misleading Content policies.

The Microsoft spokesperson also said they are investing in technology to detect deepfakes. “AI is also being harnessed to identify deepfakes. Major players like Microsoft are investing heavily in developing technologies to detect these sophisticated forgeries.”

Microsoft is also part of a group of tech companies and news organizations that have been working with Adobe on the Content Integrity Initiative, an effort that promotes the adoption of an open industry standard for content authenticity and provenance.

Challenges to detecting AI-generated fakes

There are, however, challenges to automated detection of AI-generated fakes.

The Microsoft spokesperson said that bad actors employ sophisticated techniques to elude detection.

“AI technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace, leading to the daily emergence of new platforms worldwide that enable the creation of deepfakes. Ideally, companies producing such content would implement watermarking or similar technologies to facilitate easy detection. However, there are challenges: technology capable of removing watermarks already exists,” the spokesperson said.

Most technologies for creating deepfakes are also open-source, referring to software that is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified by anybody. Microsoft says this allows for modification or deletion of the watermarking code, “complicating detection efforts.”

The practice of making the source code of large language models (LLMs) available for anyone to examine, copy, and modify has played a critical role in accelerating the development of generative AI technologies. In fact, even big tech companies released versions of their own LLMs to the public.

In July 2023, Meta released an open source version of Llama, its artificial intelligence model. More recently, Google also released Gemma, the open source version of Gemini, its proprietary AI model.

While open sourcing the language model may help make them more transparent and auditable, some experts note that the biggest threat in unsecured AI systems lies in ease of misuse, making these systems “particularly dangerous in the hands of sophisticated threat actors.”

Preventing AI misuse, holding fakers accountable

Since even the source code of AI models are now accessible to anybody for them to freely modify, having the capability to trace the source of a particular deepfake becomes very important.

As illustrated above, people behind fakes usually leave traces of who they are when they use digital systems. However, much of the data that could trace accountable actors still reside in platforms. “The greatest challenge of disinformation is not the lies, but in the lack of accountability of those that disseminate the fake information,” Qurium said.

The Swedish group also criticized platforms like Meta and others that profit from it, and allow the disinformation to thrive.

The Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged that the use of deepfakes is “a new and emerging threat,” and that platforms need to do more. “We need to do more at Microsoft, and there are roles for all of industry, government, and others.”

The company said that aside from working with law enforcement, and other legal and technical steps, they’ve also recently “helped move forward an industry initiative to combat the use of deepfakes to deceive voters around the world, and we’ve advocated for legislative frameworks to address AI’s misuse.”

Whether these measures are enough to address the avalanche of deepfakes, that those fighting disinformation are expecting to deal with more and more in the coming months, remains to be seen.

Days after Microsoft took down the ad promoting ultimainv.website, a new ad popped up again on the platform. The ad linked to a site with the same content as the previously mentioned Rappler impostor site, but on another newly-created domain.

The game of whack-a-mole continues. – Rappler.com

Help us spot suspected deepfakes by emailing dubious content you find on social media to factcheck@rappler.com

This special report was produced with support from Internews

News publishers and governments like Australia have argued that Facebook and Google unfairly benefit in terms of advertising revenue when links to news articles appear on their platforms. Meta has been scaling back its promotion of news and political content to drive traffic and says news links are now a fraction of users’ feeds.

Meta will discontinue a tab on Facebook which promotes news in Australia and the United States, it said in a statement, adding that it cancelled the news tab last year in the UK, France, and Germany.

As a result, “we will not enter into new commercial deals for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers,” the statement added.

The decision pits Meta against the Australian government and its 2021 law.

“The idea that one company can profit from others’ investment, not just investment in capital but investment in people, investment in journalism, is unfair,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters.

“That’s not the Australian way,” he added.

The government is seeking advice from the Treasury Department and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about its next steps.

Rod Sims, the former ACCC chair who oversaw the design of the law, called Meta’s reversal selfish and he was concerned about the impact on society as the decision undermined the quality of journalism which appears on social media.

“This is Meta thumbing its nose at the Australian parliament,” he said.

Under the 2021 law, the country’s government must decide whether it will appoint a mediator to set Meta’s fees and potentially fine Meta if it fails to cooperate. Most of Meta’s deals with Australian media ran for three years and are set to expire in 2024.

Meta is, however, not obligated to pay news publishers if it blocks users from reposting news articles as it did briefly in 2021. It has done the same in Canada since 2023 when the country passed similar laws. Meta said on Friday, March 1, that publishers could continue posting news content on Facebook.

Tama Leaver, an internet studies professor at Curtin University, said Meta will be reluctant to escalate the dispute by stopping its users from posting news links in Australia and will more likely challenge the government in court if it intervenes.

“Meta is going ‘what are you going to do?’ and the Australian government has a real decision to make,” he said.

Australia’s biggest media outlets lambasted the decision, calling it an attack on the industry.

“Meta is using its immense market power to refuse to negotiate, and the government is right to explore every option for how the Media Bargaining Code’s powers can be used,” said News Corp Australasia Executive Chairman Michael Miller.

Nine Entertainment CEO Mike Sneesby said the decision failed to acknowledge the value that the media firm, which owns the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review mastheads and a free-to-air television channel, created for Meta.

While no deal values have been disclosed, Australian media outlets have reported Facebook’s deals are worth A$70 million ($45 million) a year to the industry.

Google’s Australian media licencing deals mostly ran for five years, expiring in 2026. A spokesperson said the company has already started negotiations for deal renewals.

Many governments around the world remain keen on protecting their local news industries from being elbowed out of the online advertising market. Indonesia said last month it also plans to make large tech firms pay for news content. – Rappler.com

The complaints by the consumer groups in the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain to data protection authorities in their countries are the latest grievances against Meta’s trove of user data.

The consumer bodies said Meta is not complying with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules on fair processing, data minimization and purpose limitation and that there was no legal basis to the company’s data collection and processing.

“Surveillance-based business models pose all kinds of problems under the GDPR and it’s time for data protection authorities to stop Meta’s unfair data processing and its infringing of people’s fundamental rights,” Ursula Pachl, deputy director general of the European Consumer Organization said in a statement.

She also criticized Meta’s recent launch of paid, ad-free subscriptions to Facebook and Instagram in Europe, which the company said aims to comply with new EU tech rules.

But critics say this amounts to users having to pay for their privacy. Users who do not mind ads can continue to use the two services for free.

“Meta’s offer to consumers is smoke and mirrors to cover up what is, at its core, the same old hoovering up of all kinds of sensitive information about people’s lives which it then monetizes through its invasive advertising model,” Pachl said.

Meta has said subscription for no ads addresses the latest regulatory developments, guidance and judgments shared by European regulators and the courts in recent years. – Rappler.com

The platform said the video had violated their policies on harassment and cyberbullying. It later republished an edited version without the reporter’s private information.

In response, Lopez Obrador accused the platform of censorship and said it was acting with an overbearing and authoritarian attitude.

The message was accompanied by a picture of the Statue of Liberty, which he said had become a “empty symbol.” YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, Lopez Obrador read aloud a letter from the Times requesting comment on a story reporters were preparing about a shelved US government investigation into allegations that his allies met with and took millions of dollars from drug cartels after he took office in 2018.

Then he read the phone number of Times’ bureau chief. The same day, Mexico’s freedom of information body INAI said it was initiating an investigation into his revealing the number.

After the news conference, the Times issued a statement that called it “a troubling and unacceptable tactic from a world leader.”

Making public a journalist’s private phone number is particularly worrisome in Mexico, one of the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters outside of war zones, especially for Mexican journalists investigating criminal gangs and widespread corruption.

Lopez Obrador frequently attacks the news media during his daily press conferences.

“She is slandering us and if she is very worried, then she should change her phone number,” Lopez Obrador told reporters after the video was released. “Above the personal data protection law, there is the dignity of the president.”

In the days that followed, social media users published the private numbers of one of Lopez Obrador’s sons and both candidates for the country’s June presidential race, Claudia Sheinbaum from the president’s MORENA party and rival Xochitl Galvez.

Galvez said that she had gotten a flood of messages since her number was published – both critical and supporting – and that she would not change it.

MORENA’s New York committee protested outside the Times’ office in New York City on Sunday afternoon.

The New York Times story in question, published just after Lopez Obrador revealed the reporter’s phone number, noted that the United States never opened a formal investigation and that officials ultimately shelved the inquiry.

Lopez Obrador denied all accusations and said it was “completely false.”

That story came on the heels of other recent reporting from other media outlets about a different US investigation into possible collusion between a drug cartel and Lopez Obrador associates to accept money for his 2006 presidential campaign in exchange for leniency.

Lopez Obrador has denied those accusations, calling them slander, and responded by saying the journalist who broke the story was a “mercenary in the service” of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which carried out the investigation.

Concerns about media safety have remained consistent throughout Lopez Obrador’s presidency. In January, the theft of the personal data of hundreds of journalists in Mexico, including addresses and copies of voter ID cards and passports, raised fresh worries.

International free-speech organization Article 19 has documented 163 journalist murders in Mexico since 2000. – Rappler.com