Whistleblower complaint expands on claims that Facebook once built a censorship tool to win over China
Wynn-Williams — a former Facebook global policy director who was fired in 2017 — said in the complaint that the company formed a team in 2014 focused on creating a version of Facebook that would comply with China's laws, under the code-name 'Project Aldrin,' The Washington Post reports. In addition to building a censorship system, it was reportedly proposed during negotiations with Chinese officials that the company allow a Chinese private-equity firm to review content posted by users in China, and that Facebook hire hundreds of moderators dedicated to the effort of squashing restricted content.
In a statement to The Washington Post, spokesperson Andy Stone said the company's past interest in the Chinese market is 'no secret,' and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced a move away from these efforts in 2019. But Wynn-Williams' complaint paints a fuller picture of how far Facebook (pre-Meta) was allegedly willing to go to gain a Chinese userbase. Read The Washington Post's full report here.
Zuckerberg has since become vocal about 'free expression' and made changes to how Meta's platforms approach moderation. Earlier this year, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram would end fact-checking and instead adopt X-style Community Notes.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
12 minutes ago
- Forbes
What Trump's AI Action Plan Means For Copyright
President Trump's recently-unveiled AI Action Plan conceptually attempts to address the tension between the rights of copyright owners to control their works and the need of AI companies to use copyrighted works to train their systems. Other solutions, some pro-copyright owner and some not, have arisen to try and address the problem. Federal Courts find Fair Use Whether AI companies must secure permission from copyright owners to use their copyrighted works to train generative AI models continues to be a murky and debatable issue. In two recent federal court rulings on the issue, federal judges in the Northern District of California ruled that the use of copyrighted books to train AI systems - Anthropic's Claude system and Meta's Llama system, respectively - was a fair use and therefore did not require the book authors' permission. Those decisions, however, are not controlling outside of their jurisdictions, and, more importantly, are on or subject to appeal. Therefore, they could be reversed - although in my opinion, they will not be. Thus, they do not provide any definitive answer. Moreover, those decisions, like all court decisions, are limited to their facts. Other AI models, which use copyrighted works differently than Claude or Llama, might require different legal outcomes. Of note, Universal Studios and Disney are currently suing Midjourney for using their copyrighted works, alleging facts that seem much more troublesome than those involved in the Anthropic and Meta suits. President Trump's Proposed Solution The Trump administration favors the fair use position. President Trump has just released an AI Action Plan that prioritizes building the country's AI capabilities and removing regulatory and other barriers to that end. Speaking at a recent AI Summit, the President said: 'You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or whatever you've studied you're expected to pay for. We appreciate that, but you just can't do that because it's not do-able. And if you're going to try and do that, you're not going to have a successful program.' Echoing the analysis of Judge Alsup in his fair use decision, which analogized reading a book to increase one's knowledge to using a book to train an AI system, the President said: 'When a person reads a book or an article, you've gained great knowledge. That does not mean that you're violated copyright laws or have to make deals with every content provider,' he said. 'You just can't do it. China's not doing it.' How exactly the administration will implement such a rule, whether it will, and what authority the AI Action Plan would have remains to be seen. Legislative Solutions Meanwhile, on July 21, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced a bill that would require AI companies to secure permission from copyright owners before using their works to train AI systems. The AI Accountability and Personal Data Protection Act would create a private tort action against any company using copyrighted material to train an AI system without the copyright owner's permission. The bill also contains provisions that any agreement to the contrary, other than a collective bargaining agreement, would be void. Market Based Solutions Some AI companies are striking deals to compensate copyright owners – or at least the companies who control copyrighted works - for using their works to train AI systems. Examples include a deal struck between Amazon and the New York Times, and between Open AI and News Corp. and the Associated Press. Opt-Out Solutions Other AI models have instituted 'opt-out' features in their end user agreements or user settings, allowing users to opt out of allowing the model to use its own creations to further train itself. Indeed, laws in countries outside the U.S., such as in the EU, have laws that expressly allow rightsholders to reserve their rights in their work from data-mining, effectively an opt-out of AI data training. Article 4(3) of the 2019 Directive on Copyright and Related Rights in the Digital Single Market states: 'The exception or limitation provided for [purposes of text and data mining] shall apply on condition that the use of works and other subject matter referred to in that paragraph has not been expressly reserved by their rightsholders in an appropriate manner, such as machine-readable means in the case of content made publicly available online.' Given this, I noted with interest that DreamWorks used the following disclaimer in the credits of its recent film The Bad Guys 2: 'ALL RIGHTS IN THIS WORK ARE RESERVED FOR PURPOSES OF LAWS IN ALL JURISDICTIONS PERTAINING TO DATA MINING OR AI TRAINING, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ARTICLE 4(3) OF DIRECTIVE (EU) 2019/790. THIS WORK MAY NOT BE USED TO TRAIN AI.' Whether this opt-out is or will be legally effective under U.S. law remains to be seen. The copyright/AI wars continue. Stay tuned.
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Beneath Trump's China truce, a race to find pressure points in high stakes game of ‘3D chess'
The United States and China have settled into a steady state of pragmatic, if uneasy, détente. Tariffs sit at unprecedented, but not economically debilitating levels. Three rounds of bilateral talks have steadily developed and expanded, with a fourth expected this fall. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are circling an in person meeting before the end of the year. 'I don't think anyone wants to see those tariffs snap back to 84%,' US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said ahead of Trump's decision to sign off on a 90-day extension of the trade truce agreement put into place in May. But beneath the surface, Trump's trade war has dramatically accelerated efforts to find and demonstrate an ability to exploit vulnerabilities that will define the future of the relationship and shape the potential conflict for years ahead. '3D chess' China's grip on rare-earth elements, critical for electronics, defense equipment and other crucial products, has triggered an urgent scramble across the US government and its allies. Despite an agreement that China would unlock the supply of rare earths, US officials and corporate executives with knowledge of the acquisition and export process say there remain difficulties for critical industries, exceedingly granular demands for corporate data and a seemingly implicit effort to choke off some national security related purchases. 'It was a wakeup call to the world,' a senior White House officials said. 'That was a major thing in world geopolitics.' Xi's ability the choke off western access to essential components has become the dominant topic of discussion during all three rounds of bilateral talks so far. 'We're focused on making sure that the flow of magnets from China to the United States and the and the adjacent supply chain can flow as freely as as it did before the control,' said Greer, leading up to Trump's extension of the pause, as US and Chinese continued intensive technical discussions behind the scenes. 'And I'd say we're about halfway there.' At the same time, US technological advantages have sparked sharp rebukes and a push to rapidly ramp up capabilities in Beijing. The United States also probed clear choke points in supply for industries critical to China's economy. America imposed export controls for software tools, aerospace equipment and the sale of ethane, a major petroleum byproduct for China. The actions weren't heavily publicized – most of the coverage came from corporate securities filings or leaks from frenzied executives. Some of those executives were Republican donors, people familiar with the matter said, and raised concerns directly to Washington. The lobbying appeared to have little effect, as US officials leveraged the economic pressure as an unequivocal counter to China's rare-earth actions in the second round of bilateral talks. They were maintained in the immediate aftermath as US officials continued to press for quicker action on the matter. Shortly before the July 4th holiday, US Commerce officials notified major ethane producers the export controls had been rescinded. 'I am informing you that effective as of the date of this letter, the license requirements set forth in my June 1, 2025 and June 25, 2025 letters are hereby rescinded,' a top export administration official wrote in the notification letter sent July 2 to Enterprise Products Partners. Over the last several weeks, Trump clinched a rolling series of bilateral trade frameworks that have included explicit commitments to shore up US supply chain vulnerabilities and implicit agreements to shift production, supply chains and security assets away from Chinese influence. New penalties for 'transshipped' products – an additional 40% tariff on goods shipped from a high-tariff country to a lower tariff country prior to export to the US – have been put into place, with new regulations expanding their reach forthcoming. At the same time, China has grown more aggressive in pushing against regional players in territorial disputes as US officials have used Trump's brute-force tariff approach to build a nascent but deeply consequential new alignment that breaks from the global trading system the president has long pilloried. Even student visas for Chinese citizens have been leveraged for effect. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump's lead negotiator in three rounds of trade talks with China, has told associates it's the equivalent of 'three-dimensional chess.' 'The world's with us now' Bessent insists that the US now holds a clear advantage – a message he said he delivered directly to his Chinese counterparts last month during two days of negotiations in Stockholm, Sweden. 'I just said the world's with us now,' 'It looked in April, May like that the US was alone against the world,' Bessent said during a policy event with Breitbart news shortly after he returned from the third round of US-China trade talks. 'Now that we've done deals with our top trading partners, we have a lot more leverage.' The near-term goal, US officials say, is to utilize any leverage to accomplish Trump's overarching desire to secure a major trade deal with Chinese Leader Xi Jinping. Trump's trade agreements sharply diverge from any traditional 'trade deal' format and each remain devoid of the granular detail that historically takes years for negotiators to hammer out. There are significant questions about how much of what Trump has announced will actually become reality, according to diplomats and former trade officials, though administration officials say the threat of future tariffs serve as the ultimate dispute mechanism. But the decidedly Trumpian bespoke nature of the deals includes a series of significant commitments from countries like Japan and South Korea to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to the US for the explicit purpose of shoring up US supply chain vulnerabilities. Bessent, in an interview on Fox Business this week, described the unprecedented arrangement designed to use foreign capital for investments entirely subject to Trump's discretion as a way 'other countries are, in essence, providing us with a sovereign wealth fund.' 'We will be able to direct them as we re-shore these critical industries,' Bessent said. 'We are trying to de-risk the US economy.' Rankling allies Trump and his advisers have framed the size and structure of the commitments as a way for foreign partners to 'pay down' or 'buy out' of a higher tariff rate in bilateral talks. That option, however, is not on the table for Xi or his negotiators. 'The funds from the buyout are going to go to critical industries that we need to reshore,' Bessent said. 'And a lot of those need to be reshored away from China.' Still, the Trump's version of trade deals have created friction with the very partners viewed as a necessity in any new trade alliance to counter China's economic strength. Japanese officials have raised concerns with the way the structure and delivery have been framed by US officials, which in turn created domestic backlash for the critical Indo Pacific ally. 'The other party is not a normal person,' Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said of Trump earlier this month to members of parliament demanding details of the US-Japan agreement. 'In negotiations like this, implementation is far more difficult than reaching an agreement.' Ishiba's comment wasn't framed as a criticism, but instead a candid expression of reality. 'It's a feature, not a bug,' a senior administration official said of how the administration took the comments. 'He's stating a fact, and one that we use to our advantage.' Reality bites But the rapidly evolving tools deployed across economic, security and diplomatic actions – since Trump initially triggered a de facto trade embargo between the two nations – has laid bare a far more existential reality: Trump needs China. The bilateral agreement to extend the temporary trade war truce this week came after a third round of negotiations framed by both sides as positive. Trump's advisers regularly cite his 'excellent' personal relationship with Xi and continue to weigh the possibility of a face-to-face meeting in China later this year. But, to accomplish that peace, Trump gave the green light for US companies to sell less-advanced artificial intelligence chips to China, drawing the ire of hawks within his own party. 'If he doesn't reverse this decision, it may be remembered as the moment when America surrendered the technological advantage needed to bring manufacturing home and keep our nation secure,' Matt Pottinger, Trump's first term deputy national security adviser, wrote this week with Liza Tobin, who served as China director on the National Security Council in during Trump's first term and under former President Joe Biden. Trump officials counter that the chips represent lower-tier technology and the highest end of the US chip stack isn't will remain blocked. More critically, they say, Chinese access to the chips would anchor the rapidly developing global AI race to US technology at the same time Trump, in a series of Oval Office meetings and calls over the last several weeks the CEOs of the largest tech firms in the world, has offered exemptions from forthcoming semiconductor tariffs in exchange for commitments to manufacture in the US. 'His objective is to get semiconductor manufacturing done here of our best technology and that way we can control it the best,' Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last week. 'That's the strategy.' Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
40 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Meta AI takes first step to superintelligence — and Zuckerberg will no longer release the most powerful systems to the public
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Researchers at Meta claim to have observed the company's artificial intelligence (AI) systems improving themselves without human input. "Over the last few months we have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a policy paper published July 30 on the company's website. "The improvement is slow for now, but undeniable." Zuckerberg added that self-improving AI is the first step towards achieving artificial superintelligence (ASI) — an artificial intelligence that is capable of surpassing the cognitive abilities of humans. Broadly speaking, AI researchers consider AI's capabilities in three strata. While current AI models can achieve extraordinary superhuman feats, like predicting protein structures, these capabilities are extremely narrow. In such cases, the system can only outpace humans in one specific area but lacks general intelligence for this capability to apply across different disciplines. The next tier is called artificial general intelligence (AGI), and refers to models that can understand, learn and adapt in much the same way as the human brain. ASI is the final state that Zuckerberg referenced in the blog post, and concerns models that have evolved to far exceed human potential — and could improve themselves at an exponential rate, leading to an "intelligence explosion." Scientists refer to the hypothetical moment that we achieve AGI as the technological singularity. Related: AI is entering an 'unprecedented regime.' Should we stop it — and can we — before it destroys us? Zuckerberg's reference to catching sight of AI self-improvement is not the first time this phenomenon has been spotted. In October 2024, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara published a paper to the preprint arXiv database centered on the notion of self-improvement. In it, they defined, created and tested an AI framework based on the idea of a Gödel Machine — a theoretical device capable of improving itself by rewriting its own code and instructions. Importantly, the machine would only implement a change if it could produce a formal proof that the change would be beneficial. Related: AI could soon think in ways we don't even understand — evading our efforts to keep it aligned — top AI scientists warn The team experimented with an AI framework based on that concept, and proved that their Gödel Agent could improve its own performance in various tasks, including coding, science, math and reasoning. Almost all models are not typically empowered to rewrite their own code. The Gödel Agent could not only access its entire codebase but also the code used to develop improvements, while showing that those improvements were beneficial. The AI consistently showed better performance in key areas than the human-designed agents to which it was compared, according to the said that ASI could represent a transformative step in humanity's technological progress, and that it could lead to the "discovery of new things that aren't imaginable today." RELATED STORIES —New AI system can 'predict human behavior in any situation' with unprecedented degree of accuracy, scientists say —The more advanced AI models get, the better they are at deceiving us — they even know when they're being tested —AI could soon think in ways we don't even understand — evading our efforts to keep it aligned — top AI scientists warn That said, he added that Meta would be far more careful about which models the company chooses to release to the public under an open source framework — meaning anybody could have access to it. "I am extremely optimistic that superintelligence will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress. But perhaps even more important is that superintelligence has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where people will have greater agency to improve the world in the directions they choose," Zuckerberg wrote. "As profound as the abundance produced by AI may one day be, an even more meaningful impact on our lives will likely come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, experience any adventure, be a better friend to those you care about, and grow to become the person you aspire to be."
