Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tech Drop, a roundup of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Meta taps MAGA influencer for anti-‘bias’ role
Meta has brought on right-wing influencer Robby Starbuck in an advisory role purportedly focused on rooting out political bias from its artificial intelligence models. The announcement came after Meta settled a lawsuit filed by Starbuck that accused Meta’s AI of wrongly naming him as part of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Starbuck is known for supporting Donald Trump’s 2020 election denialism, for promoting anti-trans and anti-diversity misinformation, and for using his social media accounts to crusade against companies that support diversity, equity and inclusion policies. The Trump administration is pressuring companies to drop policies that root out “bias” (as well as to drop references to misinformation, DEI and climate change).
Starbuck’s new gig also continues the MAGA-fication of Meta under CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has spent several months currying favor among conservatives by hiring right-wingers to key positions while abandoning DEI efforts and policies meant to curb the spread of disinformation.
Read more at The Verge here.
Texas House speaker launches snitch line
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows said he has launched a tip line for callers to use to help track down quorum-breaking Democratic state lawmakers. Democrats left the state to stave off Republican efforts to force a vote on new gerrymandered congressional districts demanded by Trump, which would add five Republican-favored districts at Democrats’ — and voters’ — expense.
Read more at Raw Story here.
Trump’s attack on free enterprise
Trump met Monday with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan after having posted days earlier on social media that Tan should resign on the grounds he is “conflicted” (Trump’s post didn’t get into details about those alleged conflicts).
Read my blog post about the meeting here.
ICE buys iris-scanning tech
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is instrumental in Trump’s bigoted anti-immigration and mass incarceration agenda, plans to purchase mobile AI-assisted technology that will reportedly allow the agency to scan people’s irises and determine their identities from several feet away.
Read more from NBC affiliate KUSA of Denver here.
Nationalize it
In a disturbing step toward nationalizing independent companies, the Trump administration reportedly reached an agreement with tech companies AMD and Nvidia to receive 15% of the companies’ revenue from the sales of some computer chips to China.
Learn more at NBC News here.
CDC union calls for repudiation of anti-vax disinfo
A union representing workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has demanded the Trump administration unequivocally condemn vaccine disinformation — spread in no small part by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. — after its headquarters were targeted last week in a shooting that killed a police officer and appears to have been motivated by the gunman’s anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Read the union’s statement here.
Meta used menstruation app to snoop
A California jury has found Meta illegally accessed communications sent by users of Flo, a period-tracking app, and collected their data without permission. The jury determined a preponderance of evidence showed Meta had “intentionally eavesdropped on and/or recorded conversations using an electronic device,” without Flo users’ knowledge. Meta said in a statement: “The plaintiffs’ claims against Meta are simply false.”
Read more at CNBC here.
Cyberattacks target top courts
The federal court system said in a recent statement that it is taking measures to strengthen protections for sensitive documents amid “sophisticated and persistent” cyberattacks on its case management system. A statement out of the court’s administrative office said it is “working with courts to mitigate the impact” of the cyberattacks on litigants.
Read the statement here.
Dems probe DOGE’s USDA ‘interference’
After NPR reported in July that members of Trump’s dubiously named Department of Government Efficiency had gained access to payment systems at the Agriculture Department and had the power to cut off crucial payments to farmers, a dozen congressional Democrats, led by Rep. April McClain Delaney of Maryland, are pressing the USDA for answers on DOGE’s “interference” at the agency.
Read more at FedScoop here.
Instagram map garners bipartisan pushback
A new opt-in map feature on Instagram that shares users’ precise locations garnered widespread pushback over security concerns last week, and Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., are urging Meta, Instagram’s parent company, to drop the feature.
Check out NBC News Now’s report on the backlash here: