Techmeme
December 11, 2023, 5:25 AM

Top News

Associated Press:
X lifts the permanent ban on Infowars host Alex Jones, after Elon Musk conducted a 24-hour poll, resulting in 70.1% voting in favor of restoring Jones' account  —  Elon Musk has restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, pointing to a poll on the social media platform formerly known …
More: Reuters, Engadget, Reuters, Silicon Republic, Axios, The Hill, TechCrunch, Washington Post, New.blicio.us, Business Insider, Social Media Today, PCMag, Gizmodo, The Messenger, CNN, Deadline, The Messenger, New York Daily News, CNBC, Reclaim The Net, Rolling Stone, South China Morning Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Variety, Forbes, New York Times, and WAVY-TV
Sara Dorn / Forbes:
In a 2+ hour talk on X with Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, Jack Posobiec, and others, Elon Musk said X should avoid outright bans unless users “do something illegal”  —  Elon Musk and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, newly reinstated to X after a five-year ban, launched a live-streamed chat …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
A look at the Effective Accelerationism movement, which argues for open sourcing AI tools, says AI's benefits far outweigh its harms, and opposes AI regulation  —  The eccentric pro-tech movement known as “Effective Accelerationism” wants to unshackle powerful A.I., and party along the way.
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Paris-based Mistral AI raised €385M, or ~$415M, from investors including a16z and Lightspeed; sources say the deal values the 22-person startup at ~$2B  —  The company has publicly released its latest technology so people can build their own chatbots.  Rivals like OpenAI and Google argue that approach can be dangerous.
Washington Post:
Sources detail Disinfo Lab: run by an Indian intelligence officer and behind a covert influence operation on social media discrediting Narendra Modi's critics  —  NEW DELHI — Since 2020, an opaque organization calling itself the Disinfo Lab has published lengthy dossiers and social media posts claiming …
Olivia Poh / Bloomberg:
TikTok plans to invest $1.5B in a joint venture with GoTo, aiming to comply with regulations in Indonesia so that TikTok can restart its shopping service there  —  - Chinese firm will combine its shopping business with GoTo unit  — TikTok has used Indonesia as template for global shopping push
Ashraf Khalil / Associated Press:
How Street Sense, The Salvation Army, and Samaritan are using tech to help the unhoused, as people shift to cashless payment apps and don't carry spare change  —  John Littlejohn remembers the days when lots of people had a couple of dollars to spare to buy a copy of Street Sense …

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Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
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