We may finally – finally! – have heard the last of the blockchain hype. CC-licensed photo by Mike Seyfang on Flickr.
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It’s Friday, so there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time.
A selection of 9 links for you. Unchained. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Revealed: the scammers who conned savers out of $35m using fake celebrity ads • The Guardian
Simon Goodley, Zoe Wood, Pamela Duncan and Michael Goodier:
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An organised network operating from the former Soviet state of Georgia has scammed thousands of savers from the UK, Europe and Canada out of $35m (£27m) after they fell for fake celebrity adverts on Facebook and Google that the [then Conservative] government promised to outlaw three years ago.
Deepfake videos and fictional news reports featuring the money expert Martin Lewis, the radio DJ Zoe Ball and the adventurer Ben Fogle were used to promote fraudulent cryptocurrency and other investment schemes. The scammers are understood to have still been contacting victims in recent weeks.
UK citizens were the hardest hit, accounting for a third – about £9m – of the money taken.
The fraud was exposed by a huge leak of scam call centre data to the Swedish public broadcaster SVT, which then shared the files with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the Guardian and other international reporting partners.
The UK government has introduced a new set of laws aimed at protecting children and adults online. However, while the online safety act has been passed into law and scam posts could soon prompt fines, the sections relating to fraudulent advertising by organisations are not expected to become active until next year.
…The leak, which contains over 1m recordings – including long exchanges with victims scammed out of significant amounts of money – allows rare insight into exactly how scammers created havoc in the lives of their victims. And it raises fresh questions about how successful governments, banks and technology companies have been in combating these frauds.
Operating from three office blocks in Tbilisi and referring to themselves as the skameri, Georgian for scammers, a group of about 85 well-paid call centre agents has persuaded pensioners, employees and small business owners to transfers millions out of their savings accounts.
Since May 2022, the data suggests this industrial scale boiler room fraud duped around 6,000 people across the globe out of $35m (£27m). A separate dataset contained in the leak indicates that close to half – 45% – of attempted calls placed by the scammers were made to UK numbers.
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There’s lots of detail, including the former job of the person who received the most calls. You may be surprised. But it’s long since time that the tech companies stopped this. It doesn’t need a law. It needs them to care.
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AI is the media’s chance to reinvent itself • Prospect
David Caswell and Mary Fitzgerald:
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The practice of public-interest journalism involves, among other things, establishing the veracity of information before publishing it, and correcting the record if it turns out to be incorrect. Through this process, day after day, journalism accumulates an imperfect but permanent record, archived as articles, audio and video, of what has happened. This record has been verified; it can be referenced, contested, corrected, explained and shared by many people. Its origin is known and accountable. AI-mediated news systems like X -Stories provide none of those things.
This is not to say that AI systems cannot be deployed to serve the public. In Colombia, the news outlet Cuestión Pública has prototyped a fine-tuned language model based on its high-quality investigative journalism and structured data, which delivers fact-checked breaking news in a fraction of the time it takes a human to do so. Instead of just replicating traditional news formats, this newsroom is attracting younger audiences using games: riffing on Hollywood and Netflix blockbusters (“Game of Votes” and “I Know What You Did Last Legislative Term”) to expose corruption in politics. In southern Africa, the news outlet Scrolla has deployed an AI tool that helps community-based reporters to report news in articulate and accessible formats.
There are countless prototypes and experiments like these under way around the world. But much of today’s media lacks the imagination and risk tolerance needed to reimagine for the AI era journalism’s ability to self-correct and seek accuracy at scale—and that are not owned and driven by erratic billionaires such as Musk.
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One only has to look at how effective the media industry has been at embracing and controlling every previous technological introduction to know how this one is going to play out. In brief: it will be late to it, underfunded, and will badly underestimate how to use it best.
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Uncle Sam mulls policing social media of all would-be citizens • The Register
Iain Thomson:
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The US government’s Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) is considering monitoring not just the social media posts of non-citizens coming into the country, but also all those already in America going through an immigration or citizenship process.
Back in 2019, the Department of Homeland Security, which runs USCIS, decided anyone looking to enter the US on a work visa or similar had to hand over their social media handles to the authorities so that they could be looked over for wrongdoing and subversion.
In fact, this goes back to 2014, at least, to one degree or another, and has been standard procedure for years for foreigners, particularly those coming in on a visa.
Our non-American vultures who obtain media visas to work a stint, long or short, in the United States for El Reg have had to disclose all manner of personal info, such as social media profiles, family and employment details, and whether or not we’ve ever been card-carrying communists or trafficked child soldiers. No, is the answer, by the way, to both. (One of us had a career in the military and thus had an interesting experience disclosing their expertise in explosives and weapons.)
On January 20 this year, President Trump signed an executive order calling for much tougher vetting of foreign aliens, and in response, USCIS has this week proposed rules saying all of those already in the country who are going through some process with the agency – such as applying for permanent residency or citizenship – will have their social media scanned for subversion.
That means if you came to America before foreigners’ internet presence was screened as it now is, and you’re now seeking some kind of immigration benefit, at this rate you’ll be subject to the same scanning as those entering the Land of the Free today.
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Not at all strange, no sir.
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RIP (finally) to the blockchain hype • CIO
Grant Gross:
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The blockchain hype starting in the late 2010s has nearly died, replaced by intense interest in AI and hurt by sketchy cryptocurrency and NFT schemes, some experts say.
Gartner’s last hype cycle for blockchain, released in July 2024, had most blockchain-related technologies moving past the peak of inflated expectations and headed into the trough of disillusionment. Related technologies headed into the trough include NFTs, Web3, decentralized exchanges, and blockchain for IoT.
The excitement has faded so much that the IT analyst firm may not release another hype cycle chart for blockchain, says Adrian Leow, vice president in Gartner’s applications and software engineering leaders group.
There has been limited success with blockchain technologies with specific use cases, such as the Vatican using NFTs to put its archives online. Most of the value from blockchain won’t happen for another five years or so, Leow says.Blockchain technologies “just really haven’t hit the heights that was promised,” Leow says. “This is not an overnight sensation.”
There’s still interest in some related technologies, including cryptocurrency and blockchain wallets, but Leow doesn’t see widespread adoption in the future unless blockchain is paired with other emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing. “The technology is still going to evolve, but not on its own,” he says.
For example, blockchain may be able to give organizations a level of trust and security when they string multiple AI agents together to create a multi-step business or IT process, he says.
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Nooo! Blockchain won’t be used like that. Just as it hasn’t been used for anything outside of cryptocurrency. This insistent belief that surely because a technology exists it must be a solution to something else is very tedious. It tends to come from hopeless proponents, and journalists trying to cover themselves in case something somehow stages a resurrection.
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Advanced attack drones for Ukraine in new deal struck by UK government and Anduril UK • GOV.UK
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The deal follows a meeting of world leaders in London last week, when the Prime Minister and allies agreed it was essential that military support continues for Ukraine to put the country in the strongest possible position for peace as it continues to defend itself from Russian aggression.
The new contracts, totalling nearly £30m and backed by the International Fund for Ukraine, will result in Anduril UK supplying cutting-edge Altius 600m and Altius 700m drones – known as loitering munitions – that are designed to monitor an area before striking targets that enter it.
The Defence Secretary visited Anduril yesterday, where he spoke with a number of American and British staff. Founded in California, Anduril continues to invest significantly in the UK with a large footprint across the country and plans to rapidly scale, in line with the Government’s commitment to keeping the nation safe while providing highly skilled jobs.
Securing a lasting peace in Ukraine and strengthening bonds between NATO allies set to top the agenda when the Defence Secretary meets with his US counterpart today.
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Drone warfare is a lot cheaper and effectively asymmetrical than the old infantry approach. It’s not aircraft, but it’s also a lot harder to knock out than aircraft.
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You knew it was coming: Google begins testing AI-only search results • Ars Technica
Ryan Whitwam:
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Google has become so integral to online navigation that its name became a verb, meaning “to find things on the Internet.” Soon, Google might just tell you what’s on the Internet instead of showing you. The company has announced an expansion of its AI search features, powered by Gemini 2.0. Everyone will soon see more AI Overviews at the top of the results page, but Google is also testing a more substantial change in the form of AI Mode. This version of Google won’t show you the 10 blue links at all—Gemini completely takes over the results in AI Mode.
This marks the debut of Gemini 2.0 in Google search. Google announced the first Gemini 2.0 models in December 2024, beginning with the streamlined Gemini 2.0 Flash. The heavier versions of Gemini 2.0 are still in testing, but Google says it has tuned AI Overviews with this model to offer help with harder questions in the areas of math, coding, and multimodal queries.
With this update, you will begin seeing AI Overviews on more results pages, and minors with Google accounts will see AI results for the first time. In fact, even logged out users will see AI Overviews soon. This is a big change, but it’s only the start of Google’s plans for AI search.
Gemini 2.0 also powers the new AI Mode for search. It’s launching as an opt-in feature via Google’s Search Labs, offering a totally new alternative to search as we know it. This custom version of the Gemini large language model (LLM) skips the standard web links that have been part of every Google search thus far. The model uses “advanced reasoning, thinking, and multimodal capabilities” to build a response to your search, which can include web summaries, Knowledge Graph content, and shopping data. It’s essentially a bigger, more complex AI Overview.
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Thanks, I hate it already. I simply don’t trust results found in this way, for the same reason I don’t immediately trust the first result I see for any search; I like to see what other results are offered and weigh them against each other. Too many people are too trusting of the first link; too many are already too trusting of AI results.
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An oral norovirus vaccine tablet was safe and elicited mucosal immunity in older adults in a phase 1b clinical trial • Science Translational Medicine
“Courney Malo”:
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Although most humans infected with norovirus recover after an unpleasant few days, susceptible populations, including older adults, can develop severe disease. A vaccine, especially one that is easy to administer, would thus be an important advance for protecting older adult populations. Here, Flitter et al. report that an orally delivered vaccine against the norovirus GI.1 variant is safe and elicits robust immune responses in adults between 55 and 80 years old.
This included elicitation of antibody responses in the saliva and nasal cavity, potentially offering a first line of defense against mucosal pathogens such as norovirus. These promising clinical trial results support further development of oral norovirus vaccines, including ongoing studies with bivalent vaccines.
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OK? I feel like this is an AI-generated summary (which might be unkind) but it’s pretty straightforward. Another pill to pop!
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Trump looms over Chinese smartphone players’ successful global push • CNBC
Arjun Kharpal:
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Chinese players have been a feature of MWC[Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona] for several years as they’ve expanded their footprint globally. Now eight of the top 10 smartphone players are headquartered in China, according to Canalys data. Xiaomi for example is the world’s third-largest.
Xiaomi has grown its presence in Europe while others, like Transsion, have focused on emerging markets. With that success also comes the potential for further scrutiny, Wood said.
“The danger for these manufacturers is if they put their head too far above the parapet, they’ll start to get scrutiny from the U.S. administration,” [CCS Insight analyst Ben] Wood said. “So I think they have to tread a fine line in Barcelona and make sure that they don’t make too much noise because the last thing they want is to be the poster child for Chinese technology and become the latest focal point for Trump and his advisors.”
So far, Trump has focused on raising tariffs on Chinese imports. But there has been little action on the technology restriction front. Under the previous President Joe Biden, Washington brought in several rounds of restrictions that looked to cut off China’s access to advanced technology in areas such as semiconductors.
Other analysts agree there is a risk of increased scrutiny but point to a couple of key reasons why other Chinese manufacturers may not be restricted the way Huawei was.
Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at International Data Corporation (IDC), said that the Chinese brands are focusing their efforts on Europe rather than the U.S., which could help deflect scrutiny from Washington.
“They [Chinese players] definitely don’t have a chance selling in the U.S., but if they continue targeting Europe as they are, I don’t think that’s a risk and I don’t think it will come to a point where the U.S. administration will tell whatever countries in Europe they need to stop selling Xiaomi or Honor or any other brand,” Jeronimo told CNBC.
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They’ve all learnt from Huawei and ZTE, which got badly hurt in the first Trump administrations by sanctions.
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A few words about FiveThirtyEight • Nate Silver
Nate Silver was the founder (later ejected) of FiveThirtyEight, which was shut down and wiped from the net on Monday by its latest and last owners, Disney:
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the basic issue is that Disney was never particularly interested in running FiveThirtyEight as a business, even though I think it could have been a good business. Although they were generous in maintaining the site for so long and almost never interfered in our editorial process, the sort of muscle memory a media property builds early in its tenure tends to stick. We had an incredibly talented editorial staff, but we never had enough “product” people or strategy people to help the business grow and sustain itself.
It’s always an uphill battle under those conditions, particularly when it comes to recruiting and retaining staff, who were constantly being poached by outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post.
It also doesn’t quite feel like the end, exactly. “Data journalism” may have been a dumb name for what we were doing — that one’s on me — and Fivey Fox aside, the FiveThirtyEight brand was never warm and cuddly. But it always found a huge audience, and coverage of polls and political data is now much smarter. Compare the extremely analytical polling deep dives that Nate Cohn is doing at the New York Times, for instance, to the vibes-based coverage of the Boys on the Bus era. That trend may get even more entrenched as former 538ers form a diaspora that filters out to the rest of the media.
…Collecting and maintaining a database of public polls is a lot of work, requiring diligence, meticulousness, and dealing with constant complaints about edge cases from readers and pollsters. But it’s also a public service. Polling has its challenges, but I believe it’s vital in a democracy.
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Data journalism, especially about polling, matters. It’s a fairly safe – though not totally safe – bet that 538 (named for the total number of electoral votes available in a US presidential election) will rise again in some form.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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