a question of jurisdiction?

In the news: San Francisco Orders Meta to Stop ‘Allowing’ AI Child Abuse Ads. San Francisco’s city attorney, David Chiu, wants Meta to stop serving ads containing AI-generated CSAM, but Meta says they don’t have to care. The ads are “outside the city attorney’s jurisdiction.”

But this is California. So even though Meta can afford to spend more on lawyers than the city can, the city has other ways to get Meta to pay attention.

Much of the data that Meta uses to target people for CSAM, scams, and AI-Generated Quack Cures is data that gets provided to Meta by legitimate businesses.

Those businesses—Meta’s often under-informed enablers—are a better leverage point than going up against the company directly.

A city attorney in California who has a problem with Meta can start by drafting a new addition to the paperwork that goes out to city suppliers. A few simple points.

1. Wiretapping is illegal in California.
2. Internet surveillance methods, such as tracking pixels and conversions APIs, are wiretapping under California law.
3. The city will investigate wiretapping, with particular attention to Internet wiretapping that enables large-scale criminal activity. (Don’t have to call out Meta by name, if you mention big-time crime on the Internet, people will get that it’s about Meta and/or Google.)

They can even make it a little vague on whether number 3 applies to just wiretapping of city employees, or anybody in the city.

Then offer a free pass to a city-organized “how to do business on the web without wiretapping and enabling crime” event. If you provide a venue and enough lead time, web developers and legit advertising and marketing people will speak at this, do Q&A, and so on. (Big Tech’s economic takeover can be beat.)

The draft wiretapping policy wouldn’t even have to become official in order to get some response from Meta. They’ll try to turn it into a “why is the city picking on small business” story, but the city can lean on the “enabling crime” angle, and in my experience, the more that people hear about how Meta tracking works, the madder they are at anyone involved in it. So in order to prevent the story from dragging on too long, Meta would be likely to do something for the city on CSAM, like staffing up on moderators. They gave the UK a special scam reporting tool to settle the Martin Lewis case, and this issue is a lot creepier.

Bonus links

WEBSITE TRACKING UNDER CIPA: Surviving Motion to Dismiss Without Technical Specificity.

Did I miss something? And you can turn off the ads on Samsung refrigerators now?

Tesco alerts police as supermarket becomes latest victim of scam ‘endorsement’ ads by Rob Davies. (Meta’s advertising system is designed to give advantages to deceptive advertisers.)

How Meta tried, and failed, to grab its employees’ data for AI by Charles Rollet. (Employees “revolted” over employee surveillance, but not any of the other…all this?)

Meta Releases Uber-Creepy AI Chatbot as Its Platforms Crumble Under Grotesque Child Abuse by Victor Tangermann, Facebook Is Hosting Huge Numbers of Horrifying AI-Generated Videos of Violent Child Abuse, and Meta Is Barely Even Pretending to Care About Taking Them Down by Jon Christian.

What the settlement left out: Meta can still collect data from kids by Randolph A Robinson II. [W]hile Meta agreed to some limited changes to safeguard young users, it also succeeded in protecting its surveillance-based business model.

Billions in fines might not change Big Tech, but $5,000 per victim payouts just might by Bob Sullivan. But last year’s Flo Health period tracking app case is different. It went to trial. Victims testified. Experts exposed Meta’s misbehaviors. A jury weighed the evidence and found Meta guilty. And most of all, consumers are probably going to get something for their trouble. California residents who used the app during the time covered in the case are entitled to $5,000 compensation, as long as the class action judgment holds.

Here’s How to Protect Your Privacy If Someone Is Recording You With Their Glasses by Eric Ravenscraft. Meta’s smart glasses are earning a reputation for being a privacy nightmare—to put it mildly….Know your rights if someone is recording you.