Tag: Google

Commentary: The Future of U.S.-Led AI

Daily Caller News Foundation
AI

Winning the AI race with China is often framed in terms of expensive, long-term bets: bringing back chip manufacturing, pouring billions of dollars into data centers, and modernizing and expanding the power grid. But as we seek to win the Great Power competition of the 21st century, are we overlooking a crucial resource?

We spent our careers in uniform contributing to our country’s national security. We believe that artificial intelligence is the decisive battlefield of our age – and that the choices we make today will determine whether the United States ultimately prevails.

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Blackburn Introduces Bill to Encourage App Store Competition

Zachery Schmidt
person using phone

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), along with other senators, introduced a bill that seeks to provide enforceable rules that encourage competition and bolster consumer protections within the app market.

The Open App Markets Act (OAMA) protects developers’ rights to offer competitive pricing and to tell consumers about lower prices. Additionally, this app preserves the ability to sideload apps, which allows users to install apps outside of official app stores.

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Google Begs Employees to Quit as It Turbocharges AI Spending

Daily Caller News Foundation
Work Space

Google on Tuesday offered voluntary buyouts to U.S.-based employees across multiple divisions — including its search, advertising, research and engineering teams — as the tech giant continues trimming costs while simultaneously funding massive AI investments.

The “voluntary exit program” affects workers in Google’s Knowledge and Information division, which houses search and ad operations, as well as engineering, marketing and communications teams. Some divisions are also requiring remote workers living within 50 miles of an office to return to hybrid schedules or face potential terminations.

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Commentary: App Stores Are Enabling Online Abuse of Kids—Time to End It

The Daily Signal
kid online

For years now, children across our country have been systematically duped by predators into exposing themselves sexually online. The next step is often blackmail. This is what drove 16-year-old Carter Bremseth to take his life one night in 2021, after volunteering as an altar server at his church.

His mother Jaime—a licensed mental health counselor—went searching for answers, when she discovered the horrible truth. Her kind and caring son had become a victim of sextortion.

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Commentary: Google Is Lobbying Trump’s DOJ and It Won’t Work

Daily Caller News Foundation
Sundar Pichai

Large corporations facing antitrust actions would normally breathe a sigh of relief when a Republican replaced a Democrat in the White House. But, thanks to the Trump administration’s leadership, there’s no sign that the pressure is letting up for Google — and that’s great news.

On March 4, Bloomberg reported that the tech giant is begging President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to take it easy on them, citing “people familiar with the discussions.”

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Feds Push to Dismantle Google’s Ad Empire After Landmark Antitrust Ruling

Daily Caller News Foundation
google

The Department of Justice formally asked a federal judge to break up Google’s ad-tech empire Friday after an April court ruling found the company illegally monopolized the digital advertising market.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, a Clinton-era appointee, ruled in April that Google had unlawfully tied its ad server, DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), and ad exchange (AdX), controlling both the buy and sell sides of the digital ad pipeline. Now, the DOJ is seeking a structural remedy — specifically, a forced divestiture of both products — to restore competition.

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Activists Use AI to Identify Climate ‘Deniers’ and Pressure Social Media Companies to Censor Them

Just the News
Climate Change deniers

Climate activism has had a rough year. Voters elected a president who had called climate change a “hoax.” Though Democrats had hoped such statements would doom Donald Trump’s campaign, polls showed voters rated climate change at the bottom of their priorities, and the policies of “The Green New Deal” promised by Kamala Harris did not rate highly enough for her to avoid a crushing defeat.

After Trump won the election, investment firms pulled out of net-zero alliances, and many companies are scaling back their net-zero commitments. Shortly after, “Just Stop Oil” – the group notorious for throwing soup on paintings, blocking roads, disrupting events, and gluing themselves to various antiquities – announced it would stop such high-profile protests. 

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Tennessee AG Skrmetti Applauds District Court Ruling Finding Google Illegally Monopolized Digital Advertising Markets

Kaitlin Housler
AG Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti applauded a federal court’s recent ruling in a federal antitrust case against Google, which found that the tech company violated the law by maintaining illegal monopolies in the digital advertising technology industry.

On April 17, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by unlawfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market and the open-web display ad exchange market.

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Coalition of AGs Announces Final Plan to End Google’s Search Engine Monopoly

The Center Square
Person searching Google on their laptop

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser recently announced a coalition of 38 attorneys general and the Department of Justice have proposed a final package of remedies to end Google’s monopoly over internet search engines.

The remedies would include requiring Google to divest Chrome, as well as potentially other assets like Android if the initial remedies fail “to address the marketplace harms or if Google undermined the effectiveness of the decree.”

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In Battle for AI Dominance, Chinese Corporate Espionage Creates an Uneven Playing Field

Just the News
deepseek

New charges in an alleged artificial intelligence trade secret theft by a Chinese national is a warning about how Chinese economic espionage unfairly tips the scales in the battle for technological dominance. 

The new Chinese AI platform DeepSeek shook Silicon Valley last month when it claimed engineers had developed artificial intelligence capabilities comparable to U.S. firms at lower cost and with less advanced chips. 

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Big Tech Companies Continue to Donate to Trump’s Inauguration Fund

Zachery Schmidt
Donald Trump inauguration Jan 20, 2017

Google and Microsoft announced this week that they will invest $1 million into President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.

“Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration, with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage. We’re also donating to the inaugural committee,” Karan Bhatia, Google’s global head of government affairs and public policy, said in a statement to German-owned Politico.

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Tech Giants Secure Work Visas for Tens of Thousands of Foreigners While Kicking Existing Employees to the Curb

Daily Caller News Foundation
Worker at Desk

U.S. tech giants have been sacking employees in droves while simultaneously importing tens of thousands of foreign workers.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft have laid off at least 27,000, 12,000 and 16,000 employees, respectively, since 2022. However, in that same roughly three-year period, the companies have secured at least 61,000 H-1B visas combined for foreign workers, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

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Commentary: Trump’s FTC Has the Chance to Send a Strong Message Against Big Tech Malfeasance

American Greatness
Donald Trump

It’s no secret that many of the tech giants operate as monopolies, and one of the worst offenders is Microsoft. The Federal Trade Commission recently launched an antitrust investigation against Bill Gates’s creation, alleging it works unfairly to stifle competition and control various sectors of the tech market. The FTC wants to inquire into how Microsoft offers its cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity products. The agency is particularly concerned with the tech giant’s bundling services that kneecap the competition.

There is some uncertainty about whether the FTC will continue the investigation under the new Trump administration. It was launched by current FTC chair Lina Khan, a notorious leftist rightfully distrusted by conservatives. But while many of her initiatives should be discarded by Andrew Ferguson, Trump’s pick to replace her, the Microsoft investigation is not one of them. It aligns with conservative priorities on correcting Big Tech malfeasance.

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Big Tech Falls in Line with Trump After Years of Censorship

Daily Caller News Foundation
Trump and Zuckerberg

In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, Big Tech companies became central hubs of the so-called “resistance” against him, firing up censorship and deplatforming campaigns, culminating in the then-former president’s banishment from Facebook and Twitter after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google founder Sergei Brin famously led thousands of employees in protest against Trump’s immigration policies. During the 2020 campaign, Big Tech platforms even censored discussions of the Hunter Biden laptop story in order to curry favor with his father and Trump’s opponent — former Vice President Joe Biden.

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Lawmakers Press Google, Meta, Others on Addressing Deepfake Pornography

The Center Square
Google

A bipartisan group of 26 U.S. lawmakers have sent letters to seven major tech companies requesting updates on how the platforms plan to counter the growing prevalence of pornographic “deepfakes” on social media.

The number of artificially generated, sexually explicit impersonations of nonconsenting individuals increased by 550% from 2019 to 2023, with deepfake pornography now making up 98% of all deepfake videos online, the lawmakers cited in each of the seven letters addressed to Google, Apple, X, ByteDance, Snapchat, Microsoft and Meta.

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‘Remedying These Harms’: Federal Government Weighs Breakup of $2 Trillion Tech Giant

Daily Caller News Foundation
Google Search

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering recommending a federal judge to force Google to sell parts of its business in a bid to eliminate its alleged monopoly on online search, according to a court filing Tuesday.

A U.S. judge ruled in August that Google built and abused a “monopoly” by spending billions on exclusivity agreements to be the automatic search engine for browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. The DOJ could force Google to sell segments of its business, including its Chrome browser and Android operating system, which place Google as its default search engine, the DOJ filing showed.

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YouTube Censors Police Video of Jon Bon Jovi Talking Distraught Woman off Nashville Bridge During Music Video Shoot

Tom Pappert
Jon Bonjovi

A Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) spokesman confirmed to The Tennessee Star on Thursday that YouTube pulled its video of legendary musical artist Jon Bon Jovi talking a “distraught woman” off the ledge of a Nashville bridge, potentially saving her life.

MNPD Public Affairs Director Don Aaron confirmed to The Star the video was originally published to a YouTube channel operated by the police department, and that it was removed from the platform by YouTube. The platform did not impose additional punishment to the MNPD-operated channel beyond removal of its video, Aaron told The Star.

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Google Loses Major Antitrust Case to Department of Justice over Search Engine Monopolization

Just the News

Google lost a major antitrust case on Monday to the Justice Department, after a federal judge ruled that it has maintained an unfair monopoly when it comes to searching for things online.

US District Judge Amit Mehta Mehta ruled that Google must stop its anticompetitive behavior, where it monopolizes exclusive contracts that make it the default search engine on smartphones and computers.

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Trump Suggests Congress Could ‘Shut Down’ Tech Giant over Alleged Censorship

Admin
Trump Google

Former President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that Congress could close down Google for its alleged bias and censorship.

Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall demanded in a Wednesday letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai that the company provide answers relating to its apparent “censorship” of the Trump assassination attempt from the tech giant’s “autocomplete” feature. Trump on “Mornings With Maria Bartiromo” said the company could face additional congressional scrutiny and possibly closure for how its handled political issues.

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Trump Blasts Facebook, Google for ‘Wrongly Censored’ Photo of Assassination Attempt

The Center Square
Donald Trump in front of Google headquarters (composite image)

Former President Donald Trump blasted Facebook and Google Tuesday after Facebook admitted it had censored photos of Trump’s assassination attempt, images widely seen as a major moment and rallying point for the Trump campaign.

Users on X, formerly known as Twitter, began posting online this week that Google searches for Trump’s assassination, including the photo, were not being autocompleted like other searches. They also posted screenshots saying that searches for Trump turned up news for Trump’s opponent, Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

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Big Tech Championed Zero Emissions but Now Its Power-Hungry Data Centers are Straining the Grid

Just the News
Data center

For years, tech giants in California and Washington have been leading the charge to eliminate fossil fuels from the grid. Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple, for example, are members of Climate Group RE100, an organization of major corporations who are dedicated to accelerating “change toward zero-carbon grids at scale by 2040.”

In 2018, Apple proclaimed that it was globally powered entirely by 100 percent renewable energy.

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Conservatives Urge House to Hold Hearing on Google Gemini Over 2024 Election Integrity Concerns

Just the News
Rep. Jim Jordan

The hearing Republicans are calling for would increase public scrutiny on Google’s AI application and potentially inherent bias.

Conservative and Republican groups nationwide are urging House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to hold a hearing about potential problems posed by Google Gemini, with concerns specifically about whether it could influence the 2024 presidential election.

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Google Threatens to Demonetize Wall Street Watchdog as GOP Targets Ad Collusion

Just the News
Wall Street Bull

Google’s artificial intelligence isn’t particularly bright when it comes to evaluating publishers’ compliance with its advertising policies, if the experience of a heterodox economics blog with outsized influence is any indication.

With a megaphone from Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi, both darlings of progressives in the “Occupy Wall Street” era, Naked Capitalism accused Google of making “flagrant errors” in its threats to demonetize the 18-year-old site for verboten content.

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East Tennessee Schools Sue Major Social Media Companies

Peter D'Abrosca
Kids on tablets

More than 30 school districts in East Tennessee have joined a lawsuit first filed by Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSS) against social media companies, claiming that those companies are harming children.

According to WBIR, Knox, Anderson, Blount, Claiborne, Fentress, Grainger, Greene, Hamblen, Lenoir City, Loudon, Maryville, Oak Ridge, Oneida, and Sevier counties have joined the suit, which names eta, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Google, YouTube and WhatsApp as defendants.

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Tech Companies Plan to Combat Use of Fake AI in Elections

Admin
Facebook User

As the threat of fake images and videos generated by artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially play a role in the coming 2024 elections and beyond, several tech companies have pledged to use their resources to combat misinformation as a result of such technology.

According to Politico, multiple companies are planning to cooperate through a so-called “Tech Accord” dictating several key goals and methods that will be used in the fight against false AI. The companies intend to expose and debunk any “deepfake” images or videos produced by AI, through various tactics such as watermarks and automatic detection technology.

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Tennessee Attorney General Skrmetti Reveals Google Will Pay $700 Million to Settle Monopoly Lawsuit

Tom Pappert
Skrmetti Google

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti revealed on Wednesday that a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general announced a $700 million agreement with Google to settle their lawsuit alleging the technology company engaged in anticompetitive practices to stifle competitors to its Google Play Store.

Skrmetti stated that “Google will no longer profit from the inflated app costs it forced through its abuse of market power,” and said the settlement “will reduce app prices and increase consumer choices on the Android platform. Our office is proud to protect consumers, secure $700 million in financial relief, and be a part of this bipartisan effort to ensure one of the most powerful companies in the world follows the law.”

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Tech Watchdog Dr. Robert Epstein’s Shock Report: Google Uses ‘Ephemeral Content’ to Shift Millions of Votes Towards Democrats

Tennessee Star Staff

Dr. Robert Epstein, founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies joined Monday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy and revealed the shocking truth about how Google manipulates search engines to change voting behavior. Dr. Epstein, an expert in psychology, shares his extensive research on the subject and exposes the impact of Google’s control over” ephemeral content.” With the ability to shift millions of votes, Google poses a significant threat to the integrity of elections. However, Dr. Epstein offers a solution to stop their manipulations and reveals how his pioneering system, AmericasDigitalShield.com, is poised to protect the 2024 election. Join us as we delve into this eye-opening conversation and uncover the truth behind Google’s influence on our democracy. TRANSCRIPT Michael Patrick Leahy: 12:20 PM; broadcasting live from our studios in downtown Nashville. Original All Star panelist Crom Carmichael in-studio with us; on the newspaper line right now. Dr. Robert Epstein, Ph.D. in psychology; also an expert on how Google manipulates search engines to change voting outcome. Welcome Dr. Epstein. Thanks for joining us today. Robert Epstein: Sure. It’s my pleasure. Michael Patrick Leahy: Now, you’re the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies…

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Jury Rules Google Has Illegal Monopoly, Dealing Blow to Tech Giant

Admin

Google lost an antitrust case against popular video game maker Epic Games on Monday, with a jury ruling that the tech giant has an illegal monopoly in its app store.

Epic, which makes Fortnite, alleged that Google stifles competition and imposes excessively costly charges on app makers using its Google Play Store. Epic also alleged that Google illegally connected its app store to its billing service, compelling developers to use both.

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Commentary: A Way to Protect Kids Online That Passes Constitutional Muster

Admin

A bipartisan group of senators is about to take Big Tech CEOs to task on Jan. 31, 2024, by having them publicly address their failures to protect kids online. And the CEOs need to! The harms social media poses to children are well documented and, at this point, indisputable—even by the companies themselves.

YouTube admits that it hosts harmful content for children and even calls for legislation to address the problems it helps create. YouTube’s CEO indicated as much when he published his “principled approach for children and teenagers.”

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Freshly Launched Search Engine Allows Users to ‘Take Back the Power’ in Online Searches

Just the News

A new search engine launched titled “Luxxle” prides itself on giving users more power when it comes to searching up content and more privacy.

“Luxxle is a search engine that provides a platform for publications of all size and voice to be discovered,” Luxxle communications director Molly Koweek told Just the News in an exclusive interview. “It’s a search engine that remains unbiased which is something you don’t have right now with the big search engines.”

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Biden Challengers Nearly Nonexistent in Google Results

Just the News

Republican presidential candidates’ websites are practically nonexistent in generic Google searches for the party’s 2024 bench, and not much better for the most viable primary challenger to Democratic President Biden, according to tests by a watchdog and Just the News.

For the conservative Media Research Center and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), it’s unmistakable evidence of Google’s bias for the incumbent just as primary voters are seeking more information about the candidates on the debate stage.

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Expert to Arizona Legislature: Kari Lake Would Have ‘Won Easily’ If Google Hadn’t Interfered in the 2022 Election

Rachel Alexander

State Representative Alex Kolodin (R-Scottsdale), chair of the Arizona House Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight, Accountability, and Big Tech, held the first of a series of hearings last week investigating the impact of big tech’s election interference. The first half of the four-hour long session featured testimony by Harvard educated academic Dr. Robert Epstein, who discovered how Google influences election results. The second half consisted of testimony by First Amendment attorney James Kerwin of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, who discussed where the law is in regards to officials pressuring big tech about posts. He went over what then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office emailed to big tech during the last election, and suggested legislation the Arizona Legislature could propose to curtail the officials. 

Kolodin said during the hearing, “It is not acceptable for the government to censor free speech simply because it acts through the private sector.” He warned that the country is in the beginning of a nascent police state … nascent totalitarian society … I go to grassroots meetings where people are afraid to speak … afraid they will be arrested.” Kolodin said some presenters who were invited to speak at the hearing dropped out due to fear. 

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Pennsylvania Higher Ed System Hopes for Boost from Certificate Programs

The Center Square

In an effort to attract students and the general public alike, Pennsylvania’s higher education system will partner with Google to offer certificate programs that demonstrate their skills to potential employers.

Students can earn a certificate as they get college credit within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and the public can earn a certificate through non-credit courses and workshops without enrolling in PASSHE.

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Google Announces Another $1.7 Billion Investment in Central Ohio

Hannah Poling

Google announced on Monday the expansion of its footprint in Central Ohio, committing to invest another $1.7 billion between its data centers in New Albany, Columbus, and Lancaster.

Earlier this year, the firm announced that it would construct two new data centers in central Ohio, one in Lancaster and the other on South High Street in South Columbus, in addition to its existing data center complex in New Albany, bringing Google’s total investment in the state to over $2 billion. According to Google, as of May, it has generated nearly $13 billion in economic activity for businesses and nonprofits.

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Republican Candidates Need Not Apply: Media Tracker’s New Study Shows Just How Politically Biased Google’s Search Results Are

M.D. Kittle

Google has long been accused of suppressing conservative speech, but a new study shows the internet search engine giant is playing favorites with Democrats in the 2024 presidential race.

By typing in just one query, “Presidential campaign websites,” Google returned only Democratic Party candidates — some of whom are not even running in 2024, according to Media Research Center, the media watchdog and parent of conservative news site NewsBusters, which is “committed to exposing and combating liberal media bias.”

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Google Unveils New Tools to Give Users Control over Personal Data

Admin

Google revealed new tools and safeguards to assist users in managing personal data, privacy and online safety, in an announcement on Thursday.

The updated tools will enable users to remove personal information from Google search results such as “personal phone number, home address or email,” according to a blog post by the tech giant on Thursday. Google will also give users the choice to receive alerts about new search results that include their personal contact data, simplifying the removal process.

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Commentary: Thanks to Hacks and Henchmen, ‘Misinformation’ Is Now Code for Doing Government Dirty Work

Admin

Louisiana federal Judge Terry A. Doughty shocked Americans with his July 4th restraining order against Biden’s digital team which was supposed to be fighting “disinformation” but was in reality just banning views online it didn’t like.

Doughty’s opinion is a jaw dropping expose of how White House staff bullied Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to remove content about election fraud, COVID concerns and other matters of public interest in blatant violation of the First Amendment.  Governmental actors cannot demand that others do what they cannot under the Constitution, just as you can’t have proxies break the law for you. Yet that’s exactly what Biden officials did and that’s exactly what Judge Doughty stopped.

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Google Erodes User Privacy to ‘Train AI Models’ in Quiet Policy Update: Report

Just the News

Google quietly updated its privacy policy over the long July 4 holiday weekend to expand what it can do with user data, namely improve its artificial-intelligence abilities, according to tech blog Gizmodo.

The new policy replaced the word “language” with “AI” in a section referring to the “publicly available information” that Google uses to train its “models” for the benefit of users, Gizmodo says, citing the publicly recorded change log.

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Drag Queen ‘Peaches Christ’ Blames ‘Bigoted Christians’ at Google for Tech Company’s Removal of Performance from ‘Pride’ Events

Susan Berry, PhD

A drag queen who uses the name “Peaches Christ” lashed out against ‘bigoted Christians” in a social media post after Google removed its affiliation from his previously scheduled performance during the company’s “pride” events.

As CNBC reported, Google appeared to distance itself from its original plans to sponsor drag queen Joshua Grannell’s performance at a San Francisco LGBTQ bar as part of its “pride” month events after a petition circulating among the tech giant’s employees expressed opposition to its anti-Christian theme.

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