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a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service
A new startup backed by one of the biggest venture capital firms in silicon valley, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is building a service that allows clients to “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through both bulk content creation and deployment.” Essentially, the startup, called Doublespeed, is pitching an astroturfing AI-powered bot service, which is in clear violation of policies for all major social media platforms.
“Our deployment layer mimics natural user interaction on physical devices to get our content to appear human to the algorithims [sic],” the company’s site says. Doublespeed did not respond to a request for comment, so we don’t know exactly how its service works, but the company appears to be pitching a service designed to circumvent many of the methods social media platforms use to detect inauthentic behavior. It uses AI to generate social media accounts and posts, with a human doing 5 percent of “touch up” work at the end of the process.
On a podcast earlier this month, Doublespeed cofounder Zuhair Lakhani said that the company uses a “phone farm” to run AI-generated accounts on TikTok. So-called “click farms” often use hundreds of mobile phones to fake online engagement of reviews for the same reason. Lakhani said one Doublespeed client generated 4.7 million views in less than four weeks with just 15 of its AI-generated accounts. “Our system analyzes what works to make the content smarter over time. The best performing content becomes the training data for what comes next,” Doublespeed’s site says. Doublespeed also says its service can create slightly different variations of the same video, saying “1 video, 100 ways.”
“Winners get cloned, not repeated. Take proven content and spawn variation. Different hooks, formats, lengths. Each unique enough to avoid suppression,” the site says. One of Doublespeed's AI influencers Doublespeed allows clients to use its dashboard for between $1,500 and $7,500 a month, with more expensive plans allowing them to generate more posts. At the $7,500 price, users can generate 3,000 posts a month.
The dashboard I was able to access for free shows users can generate videos and “carousels,” which is a slideshow of images that are commonly posted to Instagram and TikTok. The “Carousel” tab appears to show sample posts for different themes. One, called “Girs Selfcare” shows images of women traveling and eating at restaurants. Another, called “Christian Truths/Advice” shows images of women who don’t show their face and text that says things like “before you vent to your friend, have you spoken to the Holy Spirit? AHHHHHHHHH” On the company’s official Discord, one Doublespeed staff member explained that the accounts the company deploys are “warmed up” on both iOS and Android, meaning the accounts have been at least slightly used, in order to make it seem like they are not bots or brand new accounts. Doublespeed cofounder Zuhair Lakhani also said on the Discord that users can target their posts to specific cities and that the service currently only targets TikTok but that it has internal demos for Instagram and Reddit. Lakhani said Doublespeed doesn’t support “political efforts.”
A Reddit spokesperson told me that Doublespeed’s service would violate its terms of service. TikTok, Meta, and X did not respond to a request for comment.
Lakhani said Doublespeed has raised $1 million from a16z as part of its “Speedrun” accelerator program “a fast‐paced, 12-week startup program that guides founders through every critical stage of their growth.”
Marc Andreessen, after whom half of Andreessen Horowitz is named, also sits on Meta’s board of directors. Meta did not immediately respond to our question about one of its board members backing a company that blatantly aims to violate its policy on “authentic identity representation.”
What Doublespeed is offering is not that different than some of the AI generation tools Jason has covered that produce a lot of the AI-slop flooding social media already. It’s also similar, but a more blatant version of an app I covered last year which aimed to use social media manipulation to “shape reality.” The difference here is that it has backing from one of the biggest VC firms in the world.
A prototype app called Impact describes “A Volunteer Fire Department For The Digital World,” which would summon real people to copy and paste AI-generated talking points on social media.
Domenica prossima, al vostro risveglio, potrete ascoltare la seconda puntata del nuovo #podcast in cui, girando per l'Europa, cerco una nuova casa.
Non cerco un edificio (quello arriverà dopo), ma un posto dove il Cuore voglia stare e la Ragione non abbia niente da obiettare.
E' una sfida, è una necessità, è un progetto di lungo termine ma che devo portare a compimento.
Comincio raccontandovi di quando, con tanta aspettativa e speranza, ho messo piede nell'isola più remota delle #Canarie, un'isola particolarissima che...
Potete ascoltare il podcast sulla vostra piattaforma audio preferita, su Youtube nel canale "Verso Casa" e naturalmente qui nel Fediverso, all'indirizzo castopod.it/versocasa
Se vi va, potete anche seguire l'account @versocasa@castopod.it
Graham Platner's tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol is a test for allies like Bernie Sanders, and a lesson in the risks of first-time political candidates.
Right now to create a post with multiple images, you have to create an image post for the first one then add every other image in the body of the post, as a result only the first image will show in the feed and you have to click on the post to see th…
No. Not yet at least. Like lemmy, piefed is limited to just one image as the lead image in a post. You can embed other images using markdown in the body of the post, but it is just that first image that is shown in the feed until somebody expands/opens the post to see the rest of the post body.
Mastodon and some other fediverse software have image galleries that can be a post. Currently in both piefed and lemmy, just the first image in the mastodon gallery is used as the image for the post. It's kind of been a wishlist item for me to have some kind of equivalent gallery post type in piefed.
Please do! It's something I have thought about how to implement and I started on a proof of concept at one point. However, the bulk of my development effort was then shifted to the api and it kind of fell by the wayside.
The problems with generative AI are endless. The environmental costs of the technology have been well litigated these past couple years, as the data centers that power it demand vast quantities of water and obscene amounts of electricity that creates pressure to build out even more fossil fuel power generation at a time we should be doing the very opposite. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Long before [Irish presidential candidate Catherine] Connolly was targeted by a political deepfake, a far wider swath of people — particularly women and girls — were the victims of nudify apps and explicit deepfakes made possible by image generators powered by generative AI models. More recently, a wave of stories have been published about the mental health risks that can come with forming a dependence on chatbots, including everything from breakdowns and institutionalization to the worst possible outcome of young people taking their own lives — sometimes even with coaching from the chatbot on how to do it.
Governments are belatedly waking up to the harms of social media, particularly as the companies prioritize profits and shareholder value above any other possible metric. Companies no longer care about the individual harm their products can cause, or the political and societal disruptions they can contribute to. Political leaders’ policy responses are open to criticism, like why so many are focusing on age limits rather than much wider regulation that recognizes it’s not just teenagers being harmed by how companies govern their platforms. But it’s quite clear action must be taken to rein in these sources of social disruption.
Social media regulation took far too long to arrive, and even then, it came in an imperfect form. But governments don’t appear ready to grapple with the reality that chatbots and image and video generators are speedrunning the harms caused by social media. The deceptive critical framing of the superintelligence argument has sent governments chasing that red herring as they try to present themselves as being friendly to tech investment to attract a small slice of the trillions of dollars being shelled out on generative AI and data centers. In short, they’re sacrificing the wellbeing of their citizens and arguably the foundations of a democratic society for a chance at short-term investment.
Aspetta che devo iniziare a commentare per capire se ho seguito bene il talk di Fabri che però riesco a citare solo come @fabrixxm e non con l istanza glcomo
Ciao @Gianni Carabelli 😀 hai citato il mio account su peertube 😁 Puoi seguire questo account, dovrebbe essere più facile. O puoi citare mettendo l'indirizzo completo @fabrixxm@social.gl-como.it
Earlier this month, Tesla rolled out a new firmware update that added a pair of new driving modes for the controversial full self-driving (FSD) feature. One, called “Sloth,” relaxes acceleration and stays in its lane. The other, called “Mad Max,” does the opposite: It speeds and swerves through traffic to get you to your destination faster. And after multiple reports of FSD Teslas doing just that, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to know more.
In fact, “Mad Max” mode is not entirely new—Tesla beta-tested the same feature in Autopilot in 2018, before deciding not to roll it out in a production release after widespread outcry.
These days, the company is evidently feeling less constrained; despite having just lost a federal wrongful death lawsuit that will cost it hundreds of millions of dollars, it described the new mode as being able to drive “through traffic at an incredible pace, all while still being super smooth. It drives your car like a sports car. If you are running late, this is the mode for you.”
Earlier this month, we learned that the NHTSA had opened a new preliminary investigation into Tesla following dozens of complaints of its EVs running stop signs or crossing into oncoming traffic while operating under FSD. Now, according to Reuters, NHTSA is seeking more information from the automaker about “Mad Max” mode.
Il 25 ottobre 2011, in sole sei ore, oltre 350 mm di pioggia si abbatterono sulle #CinqueTerre. I torrenti esondarono, le colate di fango travolsero #Vernazza e #Monterosso, e un paesaggio modellato nei secoli andò in frantumi in poche ore.
Il 25 ottobre 2011, in sole sei ore, oltre 350 mm di pioggia si abbatterono sulle Cinque Terre. I torrenti esondarono, le colate di fango travolsero Vernazza e Monterosso, e un paesaggio modellato nei secoli andò in frantumi in poche ore.
Le Cinque Terre, situate nella regione italiana della Liguria, sono una serie di pittoreschi villaggi costieri noti per la loro bellezza e la loro attrattiva turistica.
Pro-[url=https://www.thecanary.co/topics/israel/]Israel[/url] lobby groups, media, and trolls have tried to manufacture outrage by claiming that a man – not named, but described as the “founder of the Society of Independent Legal Observers” (SILO) – was ‘
Pro-Israel lobby groups, media, and trolls have tried to manufacture outrage by claiming that a man – not named, but described as the “founder of the Society of Independent Legal Observers” (SILO) – was ‘arrested for wearing a Star of David necklace’ over the weekend. Stephen Pollard, former editor of the libel-riddled Jewish Chronicle, went to the Tory Spectator to demand to know why “the Met think [sic] the Star of David is offensive”:
Far-right broadcaster GB News described the arrest as ‘insane’:
But the man was not arrested for ‘wearing a Star of David’, nor even for “antagonising pro-Palestine protesters”.
No, he was not arrested for ‘wearing the Star of David’
Instead, a statement from the Met reveals that he was arrested for repeatedly defying orders to stay away from a group of Jews peacefully protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, members of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) – and the Israel lobbyists had dishonestly edited video to support their false claim:
We understand the concerns raised, but the claim this man was arrested for wearing a star of David necklace is not true. He was arrested for allegedly repeatedly breaching Public Order Act conditions that were in place to keep opposing protest groups apart.
The conditions required protesters from the pro-Israel group Stop the Hate to remain in one area with protesters from the pro-Palestinian group IJAN required to remain in a separate area.
The man told officers he was acting as an independent legal observer but his actions are alleged to have breached the conditions in place, and to have gone beyond observing in an independent and neutral way to provoking and, as such, actively participating as a protester.
Over the course of an hour, the man is alleged to have continuously approached the area allocated to IJAN, getting very close to protesters to film them and provoking a reaction. Officers had to intervene at least four times to ask the man to return to the Stop the Hate area as required by the conditions.
When he failed to do so after multiple warnings, he was arrested. He was released on bail and the investigation continues.
The clipped footage released, in which officers question the man’s status and actions as an independent legal observer, is six minutes of an hour-long interview. We can fully appreciate why this clip in isolation causes concern and we are continuing to review and work with communities to understand the concerns they have voiced.
METROPOLITAN POLICE
We’ve been here before
The case brings to mind the incident last year involving Gideon Falter, boss of the Israel-funded lobby group that calls itself ‘Campaign against Antisemitism’ (CAA). Falter claimed he had been prevented from crossing the road because he was Jewish and an anti-Israel (in fact, anti-genocide) march was approaching. UK ‘mainstream’ media immediately (of course) amplified his claim, giving abundant airtime to interviews in which he repeated his claim and his attacks on anti-genocide protest.
But video evidence proved that Falter had not been ‘just trying to cross the road’. Instead, accompanied by a clan of minders and bodyguards, he was trying deliberately to impede the march. Under eventual challenge on camera, Falter fell to pieces and refused to discuss the issue. Only Sky Newsappeared even to have modified its reporting when this evidence became public – no doubt because it doesn’t help the regime’s narrative that anti-genocide protests are ‘hate marches’ and peaceful protesters are a threatening ‘mob’.
CAA, described by human rights group CAGE as one of the two key pro-apartheid organisations in the UK, is one of the most prominent groups among the UK Israel lobby, even boasting of its role in getting the Starmer government to ban the non-violent anti-genocide protest group Palestine Action as terrorists. CAGE has complained to the Charity Commission about CAA’s lack of transparency about its sources of funding and its blatantly political activities.
What is SILO?
SILO, the group apparently ‘founded’ by the alleged agitator arrested by the Met, is mentioned by the trolls as if it is something noteworthy and substantial. However, a ‘WHOIS’ search for its domain reveals that its website, which is hosted on Israeli domain firm Wix, only came into existence in June.
The website’s ‘about’ section – in fact the whole website – contains nothing except a two-line ‘welcome’, an email address and an image of what appear to be pencil cases or make-up bags:
The ‘welcome’ claims the organisation is “dedicated to upholding justice and protecting rights”, but gives no detail of any justice it has upheld or rights it has protected, nor whose rights it is interested in protecting, or even of who else is in the ‘society’ except for its un-named ‘founder’ – who may be named Levy, according to an apparently now-deleted reference to him in an AOL article whose link is still listed by Google:
Arrested for wearing the Star of David = it was a scam
Without any detail on its own site or others about its activities, it’s not currently possible to say what rights SILO is interested in, but the arrest of Mr Maybe-Levy at the weekend for allegedly trying to get at a group of Jewish anti-Zionist protesters strongly suggests that the rights in question may be those of Israel and those who support it, like CAA – and its fellow apartheid-apologist group (according to CAGE) UK Lawyers for Israel, who are currently under investigation for making ‘baseless and vexatious’ legal threats to try to silence Israel’s critics and have used such tactics against everyone from doctors and hospital boards to streaming services.
As always, if an Israeli official or supporter are talking, there’s a very good chance the story is not what you are being told. As an Iranian official observed drily last week in reference to a promise from Israeli PM Netanyahu that he isn’t planning to attack Iran, they are:
Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..25 years of yore.
Some Notable Events in 1725
20 January.20. James Figg hosts the first recorded international boxing match, fought between English livestock drover Bob Whitaker and Venetian gondolier Alberto di Carni in London .
20 February. The first reported case of white men scalping Native Americans takes place in New Hampshire colony.
25 March. Bach’s chorale cantata Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, is first performed on the Feast of the Annunciation, coinciding with Palm Sunday.
30 March. The second performance of Bach’s St John Passion takes place at St Thomas Church, Leipzig.
12 May. The Black Watch is raised as a military company, as part of the pacification of the Scottish Highlands under General George Wade.
24 June. The Grand Lodge of Ireland in Dublin holds its first recorded meeting, making it the second most senior Grand Lodge in world Freemasonry.
24 September.Born. Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer (d.1803).
29 September.Born. Robert Clive, British general, statesman (d.1774) .
24 October.Died. Alessandro Scarlatti, Italian composer (b.1660).
26 November. British astronomers James Bradley and Samuel Molyneux set up a telescope in Molyneux’s private observatory to begin their observations of stellar parallax of the star Gamma Draconis. The observations lead to Bradley’s pioneering discovery of the aberration of light.
Unknown Date.Gradus ad Parnassum, a seminal work on counterpoint, laying out rules of constructing music, is published by Johann Joseph Fux.
I've removed it on our end for you. No idea how it would work cross-software/instances, but would you like to moderate this community? Its currently unmoderated.
PUTRAJAYA: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has failed to prevent wars, as many global conflicts arise from its member nations acting without consensus.
I was trying to think for a couple days on what can be done to make Linux phones a reality. Then I realized the EU is already pushing for more Open Source/ Linux to be used so why not make the most of it?
So if I may make a couple suggestions for Europe Linux enthusiasts and collectively all of us to push for:
1st. For EU and Europe to partner up with PostmarketOS, Mobian, Ubuntu Touch, Edited In: Next Iteration of GrapheneOS for their partnership, and FSF Librephone Project to fund/produce/distribute open source repairable changable OS linux phones . Then for future tablets. To have multiple eggs developing
2nd. For EU and Europe to partner up with KDE, Framework, and Tuxedo Computers to fund/produce/distribute Laptops/Computers
Edited In: 3rd. Partner up with OEM Manufacturers such as Nokia and Motorola. Both of whom have good track records
Linux Community over there has so much ability to grow Linux if everyone there collectively gets it done. I humbly request you do that and I’ll do the same. Who should I call to get all this going as well? Want to help do this in a way that benefits all sides while keeping those projects independent
(I would have posted this on LinuxPhone but this community is way bigger and still open source related)
Really hoping all of you in and out of Europe and EU can push for it to be done. Edited In: Maybe Latin, African, and Asian Countries can partner up as well to make it happen even faster. But the most protections are within the EU so far
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
I see you're making a joke about it actually being worse for the environment.
But serious answer: I think they'll be sourced from companies using bulk onions as an ingredient, who can now sell the skins for a profit, thus lowering the prices of those end products while keeping the prices of onions the same.
[img]https://cloud.mastodon.uno/s/yR6WKNyzExz9DJM/preview[/img]
Un libro, scritto a quattro mani, nato d’impeto al termine di un’intervista pubblica del giornalista Roberto Orlando al commissario della Polizia di Stato Flavio Bottaro.
Un libro, scritto a quattro mani, nato d’impeto al termine di un’intervista pubblica del giornalista Roberto Orlando al commissario della Polizia di Stato Flavio Bottaro.
Il libro racconta l’esperienza, unica e non replicabile, di vent’anni di investigazioni nella Squadra Omicidi genovese, in un intreccio di rapporti umani e professionali - fuori dal comune e vissuti nei frangenti forse più dolorosi e delicati di un’epoca di grandi trasformazioni nella storia recente della città - che meritano di essere conosciuti e ricordati.
Questo libro, scritto a quattro mani, nasce d’impeto al termine di un’intervista pubblica del giornalista Roberto Orlando al commissario della Polizia di Stato Flavio Bottaro.
Svettanti e abnormi prominenze sui confini delle terre frequentate dalle antiche civilizzazioni, le colonne d’Ercole servivano in maniera funzionale il proprio scopo mitologico e ancestrale: da una parte il monte Abila, massiccio forse corrispondente…
QUEEN’S PARK - After resale tickets to the Blue Jays’ World Series immediately skyrocketed into the thousands of dollars, Ontario Premier Doug Ford held a press conference to place the blame solely on the total dickhead of a premier who scrapped a resale-capping law in 2019.
QUEEN’S PARK - After resale tickets to the Blue Jays’ World Series immediately skyrocketed into the thousands of dollars, Ontario Premier Doug Ford held a press conference to place the blame solely on the total dickhead of a premier who scrapped a re…
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has revealed that his administration is already considering possible locations for foreign military bases should a referendum scheduled for November 16 authorize such measures.
One of Doublespeed's AI influencers
wjs018
in reply to SatansDaughter (she/her) • • •wjs018
in reply to SatansDaughter (she/her) • • •No. Not yet at least. Like lemmy, piefed is limited to just one image as the lead image in a post. You can embed other images using markdown in the body of the post, but it is just that first image that is shown in the feed until somebody expands/opens the post to see the rest of the post body.
Mastodon and some other fediverse software have image galleries that can be a post. Currently in both piefed and lemmy, just the first image in the mastodon gallery is used as the image for the post. It's kind of been a wishlist item for me to have some kind of equivalent gallery post type in piefed.
SatansDaughter (she/her)
in reply to wjs018 • • •wjs018
in reply to SatansDaughter (she/her) • • •Rimu
in reply to wjs018 • • •Bonus
in reply to wjs018 • • •Kiara 🌸 (she/her)
in reply to wjs018 • • •SatansDaughter (she/her)
in reply to Kiara 🌸 (she/her) • • •