It’s no secret that X has become an even bigger cesspool of misleading information, unchecked claims and flat-out falsities since Elon Musk took over. Two new reports from The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and The Washington Post reveal that the safeguards Musk removed and replaced aren’t controlling X’s problems with misinformation.
The CCDH published a report on its investigation into X’s Community Notes feature, a user-driven reporting system in which anonymous users write and rate correction for misleading posts. Researchers took a sample of 283 misleading election posts from the social media platform that received proposed Community Notes between January 1 and August 25. The report says that 209 of those misleading sample posts did not show the Community Notes correction to all X users. Even more alarming, the 209 misleading posts in question racked up 2.2 billion views.
The Washington Post followed the CCDH’s report with its own investigation into X’s Community Notes feature and found that X’s problems with misinformation go far beyond the election.
Former President Donald Trump made the bold claim during his only presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that Haitians were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. Moderator and ABC news anchor David Muir corrected Trump’s statement as false because no such cases were reported to local police or government entities. The fact checking website Politifact rated Trump’s claim its lowest false rating of “Pants on Fire.” That didn’t stop this falsehood from spreading across X among conservative-leaning users.
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The Post found that an account called End Wokeness with a following of 3.1 million X users started disseminating the former President’s claim about Haitian immigrants. The post remained unchecked for four days until one Community Notes user flagged the post as incorrect, citing five different articles to back up the correction. Unfortunately, the note failed to garner enough votes to label the post as false and it went uncorrected. As of Wednesday, the post is still on @EndWokeness’ account with a Community Note where it’s racked up 4.9 million views.
Musk’s account hasn’t helped the problem. The Post reports that he’s become “one of the X users most often targeted with proposed Community Notes” with one of 10 posts receiving a proposed correction note.
The publication cited a July post from @elonmusk containing a manipulated video of Harris spouting about President Joe Biden’s “senility” and how she became the nominee because she’s “the ultimate diversity hire.” You know where this is going. There’s no Community Notes or correction and the post is still on X even though thousands of replies from other X users are pointing out that it’s a fake. The post has a whopping 136.6 million views.
“Community Notes maintains a high bar to make notes effective and maintain trust across perspectives, and thousands of election and politics related notes have cleared that bar in 2024,” Keith Coleman, VP of product at X, said in a statement. “In the last month alone, hundreds of such notes have been shown on thousands of posts and have been seen tens of millions of times. It is because of their quality that notes are so effective.” Coleman, who oversees Community Notes, pointed to previous academic research into the feature. That research includes studies that found posts with a Community Note were 60 percent less likely to be shared, and that Community Notes result in an 80 percent uptick in post deletions.
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The CCDH is one of Musk and X’s most vocal opponents. The British non-profit continually monitors Musk’s account for false posts that failed to earn a Community Note, particularly when it comes to the presidential election. CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said in August that X “is failing woefully to contain the kind of algorithmically-boosted incitement that we all know can lead to real world violence. X took the CCDH to court over claims the non-profit created a “scare campaign” to bring down its advertising revenue. A US district court judge dismissed the lawsuit in March.
Update October 30, 2024, 9 PM ET: This story has been updated to add a statement and additional information from X VP of Product Keith Coleman.
Nintendo has launched its own music streaming service that caters to fans of its games, including Mario and Animal Crossing. Fans will be able to listen to their favorite game tracks on their phones through the new Nintendo Music app, which has a user interface that pretty much looks like Spotify. The tracks are organized by game, so people can play the whole OST for specific titles if they want, but they can also listen to character playlists like a selection of songs performed by Animal Crossing’s K.K. Slider.
If they’re in the mood for certain songs, they can hit up one of the pre-made themed playlists, which put together tracks for themes like “boss battle” and “victory.” The app offers mood playlists, as well, that groups tracks with similar vibes, such as soft, relaxing songs for bedtime listening. One feature that’s probably unique to the service is spoiler prevention. If the listener adds a certain game to the setting, the app will hide the soundtracks that could give away a surprise ending or an unexpected final boss, among other potential spoilers. They can also extend a single track and keep it playing on repeat for up to an hour if that’s all they want to listen to.
Fans can access the new Nintendo Music service with a Switch Online membership, though they can start listening to game tracks even if they’re still on free trial. Every member on a Switch Online Family membership can also access it, so they don’t need to pay for an individual subscription.
Welcome to the third and final day of TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 at Moscone West in San Francisco! The excitement here is still in full swing, and there’s no slowing down.
Today brings some of the most anticipated stage sessions, with insights from trailblazers like Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and founder and CEO of Automattic; former NFL quarterback and Lumi CEO Colin Kaepernick; Perplexity co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas, and others. Plus, we’ll soon see who emerges victorious in Startup Battlefield 200. Don’t miss your chance to explore groundbreaking innovations from our exhibiting startups in the Expo Hall, gain invaluable knowledge from industry leaders in hands-on sessions, and make meaningful connections.
Get ready for an action-packed day — here’s what’s in store for day 3 of Disrupt 2024.
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Check-in
Grab your scannable badge at the Registration Desk anytime from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Don’t forget your ticket and government-issued photo ID. The name on your badge/ticket must match the name on your ID. You cannot pick up a badge for another attendee.
Badge return for a chance to win!
Return your badge at the end of Disrupt and you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to win a free ticket to Disrupt 2025. Only 5 out of the 10,000+ attendees will win.
Startup Battlefield 200: Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner, Mayfield Fund; Chris Farmer, CEO, Partner and Co-Founder, SignalFire; Dayna Grayson, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Construct Capital; Ann Miura-Ko, Co-Founding Partner, Floodgate; and Hans Tung, Managing Partner, Notable Capital
From Search Engines to Knowledge Engines: Perplexity’s Rush Toward an AI-Curated Web: Aravind Srinivas, Co-Founder and CEO, Perplexity
Colin Kaepernick Helps Creators Own Their Story: Colin Kaepernick, Founder, Lumi, and Super Bowl Quarterback
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Builders Stage
How to Raise in 2025 if You’ve Taken a Flat, Down, or Extension Round: Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Co-Founder and General Partner, Footwork; Dayna Grayson, Co-Founder and General Partner, Construct Capital; and Elliott Robinson, Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
How to Build Tech That Wins Over Customers: Wassym Bensaid, Chief Software Officer, Rivian
How to Pick a Unicorn: Wesley Chan, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, FPV Ventures
Making Something of Nothing: Carl Pei, CEO and Founder, Nothing
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Free but Not Cheap, the Open-Source Dilemma: Bogomil Balkansky, Partner, Sequoia Capital; Aeva Black, Section Chief, Open Source Security, U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; and Luis Villa, Co-Founder and General Counsel, Tidelift
When to Cash Out, When to Keep Fighting: Naveen Rao, Vice President, Generative AI, Databricks; Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, Head of Data Clean Rooms, Snowflake; and Dharmesh Thakker, General Partner, Battery Ventures
AI Stage
How Generative AI Is Flooding the Web with Disinformation: Imran Ahmed, CEO, CCDH; Brandie Nonnecke, Director of the CITRIS Policy Lab, CITRIS UC; and Pamela San Martín, Co-Chair, Oversight Board
Speeding Ahead: Lessons for the GenAI Evolution: Kirsty Roth, COO, Thomson Reuters
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The Advantages of “Open” AI: Ali Farhadi, CEO, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence; and Irene Solaiman, Head of Global Policy, Hugging Face
The AI Clouds Race: What’s Behind the Scenes: Roman Chernin, Co-Founder and CBO, Nebius AI
AI on Wheels with Zoox: Jesse Levinson, Co-Founder and CTO, Zoox
Navigating AI’s Legal and Ethical Minefield: Sarah Myers West, Executive Director, AI Now Institute; Aleksandra Pedraszewska, AI Safety, ElevenLabs; and Jingna Zhang, Founder and CEO, Cara
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What Does AI Governance Look Like Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond?: Elizabeth Kelly, Director, U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute; Scott Wiener, California Senator; and Jessica Newman, Director of CLTC’s AI Security Initiative, UC Berkeley
Architecting the Future: Building Hardware for an AI-Native World: Carl Pei, CEO and Founder, Nothing; Jerry Yue, Founder and CEO, Brain.ai; Mark Solomon, Co-Founder, Stealth Startup; and Lee Ott, VP of AI Products, HP
The Future of AI’s Data Infrastructure: Unlocking the Power of GenAI with MongoDB and Capgemini: Will Shulman, VP of Product, MongoDB; and Steve Jones, EVP, Collaborative Data Ecosystems and Capgemini
But Is It Art? Generative AI’s Evolving Role in Music and Video Production: Amit Jain, CEO, Luma AI; Michael Shulman, Co-Founder and CEO, Suno; and Kakul Srivastava, CEO, Splice
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Startup Battlefield 200
At last, the day has arrived to crown the winner of Startup Battlefield 200! The last group of the top 20 startups, meticulously selected and tirelessly rehearsed, are set to present on the Disrupt Stage. They’ll face an esteemed panel of VCs to compete for the coveted $100,000 equity-free prize and the Disrupt Cup. As they pitch, judges will offer key insights into what it takes to build a sustainable and successful startup.
Interactive, deep-dive sessions
Dive into interactive sessions addressing today’s biggest tech challenges. Check the full agenda for session times and details.
Roundtable Sessions
Take part in these 30-minute collaborative Roundtables, but don’t forget to pre-register on the event app. Keep in mind that Expo+ Passes do not grant access to these sessions.
AI Innovation, Product-Market-Fit, and GTM Best Practices in Startups: Aishwarya Srinivasan
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Evolution of a Consumer AI Startup: Angela Du, SoftBank Investment Advisers
Building Hybrid Teams of Tomorrow (encore): Haseeb Khan, Tkxel
Refining Pre- and Post-training Data Strategy for LLM Success (encore): Ian McDiarmid, Siddharth Mall, Kaushik PS, TELUS Digital
Visionary Companies Embrace Innovation to Thrive in the Fast-Paced Economy (encore): Meredith Roemer and Patrick Maroney, SAP America, Inc.
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From Experimental to Essential: Achieving Reliability with AI Agents in Mission-Critical Tasks (encore): Mike Carter, Vooma AI
Breakout Sessions
Engage in a dynamic 50-minute Q&A panel. Seats are limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. All ticket types are welcome.
How to Stand Out Amongst the AI Wave: Strategies for Success in Enterprise Sales: Rudina Seseri, Glasswing Ventures and Marc Boroditsky, Cloudflare
Building AI Agents — for Product Leaders & Founders: Marily Nika, Google
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Safety, Trust, and Profit: Anticipating Misuse to Build Safer Products and Attract Investment: Megs Shah, The Parasol Cooperative; Chad Sniffen, National Network to End Domestic Violence; and Sahab Aslam,Sukun Ventures
Stablecoins: The Future of Fintech: Nik Milanović, The Fintech Fund; Cuy Sheffield, Visa; and Ben Milne, Brale.
Expo Hall
The bustling Expo Hall brings together attendees and global startups, creating a hub of innovation and discovery. Meet pioneering minds and see what’s next in tech. Doors open at 8:00 a.m.
Pitch Showcase Stage
Head over to the Expo Hall to catch some of our exhibiting startups as they present their pitches.
Alongside casual interactions with other Disrupt attendees, take your networking to the next level with the Braindate app. Explore or initiate topics for more in-depth discussions. Visit the Networking Lounge powered by Braindate on level 2 for in-person meetings in 1:1 or small-group settings any time from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
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Exclusive for Investors and Founders
Founder & Investor Breakfast
This invite-only reception is where investors and founders will enjoy their breakfast with each other at Disrupt to discuss what it takes to scale groundbreaking ideas from seed to unicorn, along with actionable insights and growth strategies.
Mix and mingle with founders and investors over coffee
After the Founder & Investor Breakfast, Investor and Founder Pass holders are welcome to enjoy their morning coffee with their peers at the Deal Flow Cafe. Opens at 10:00 a.m.
Pre- and after-hours events
Disrupt AI meetup
Network with fellow AI professionals and attendees at an AI meetup, sponsored by Google Cloud and VioletX, as we wrap up our last day of Disrupt. Present your TechCrunch Disrupt badge at check-in for entry. Must be 21+ to attend. Check the Disrupt app agenda for venue information.
Side Events
More than 60 company-hosted Side Events are set to happen throughout San Francisco this week, extending the Disrupt excitement. Here’s what’s happening today. For times and more details, head to the Side Events page.
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Palo Alto AI X Web3 Summit: Hosted by CTH Group
Memo to the Mayor— Civic Innovation Lab Powered by GenAI: Hosted by NTT
Creative Tech for Future Products: Panel & Happy Hour: Hosted by JETRO, in collaboration with Japan Innovation Campus, AlchemistX, and Digital Garage
Construction Tech Happy Hour: Hosted by Brick & Mortar Ventures
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City of Ulsan Innovators Night: Meet & Connect: Hosted by SID Partners US
Happy Hour with Women Founders Bay!: Hosted by Women Founders Bay
Dnipro VC AI Summit: Hosted by Dnipro VC AI Summit
Founder Friends SF: Hosted by Hustle Fund
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Embarkr Launch Party: Hosted by Embarkr
Last chance to experience Disrupt 2024
The energy at Disrupt 2024 is still buzzing! Startups are pitching their innovations, attendees are deep in networking, and industry giants continue to share their game-changing insights onstage. Don’t miss out — this is your last chance before it’s gone for a whole year. Register here or stop by the Registration Desk at Moscone West for your ticket.
The new iPad Mini has arrived, bringing with it a faster A17 Pro chip, 8GB of RAM, support for the Apple Pencil Pro, and a taste of Apple Intelligence. However, unless you’re dead set on the tablet’s 8.3-inch form factor, the latest iPad Air is a better buy — especially since the 11-inch configuration is on sale at Amazon and Target with Wi-Fi and 128GB of storage starting at $498 ($101 off), an all-time low.
If you’re having trouble choosing between Apple’s entry-level iPad and an M4-powered iPad Pro, the 2024 iPad Air represents the middle ground. It’s a good-step option from the base iPad with USB-C charging, support for both the Apple Pencil (USB-C) and newer Apple Pencil Pro, and a laminated Liquid Retina display. The latter isn’t as nice as the 120Hz OLED screen found on Apple’s premium iPads, though, and the Air is still beholden to the same aging Touch ID sensor for logging in as previous models, as opposed to Face ID. Thankfully, it does sport a 12MP landscape-oriented webcam — a welcome tweak from the prior model — and a speedy M2 chip, which allows it to leverage AI-powered writing tools, a new and (slightly) improved Siri, and a slew of minor Apple Intelligence features found in iPadOS 18.1.
Admittedly, none of the AI features currently in beta are revolutionary — ChatGPT integration won’t arrive until December, and some most promising tools won’t arrive until 2025 — but at least you’ll have a futureproof iPad for whatever Apple ships in the coming months.
OpenAI has just announced ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode is now available for the Mac and PC versions of its chatbot, in addition to the mobile versions.
The update was revealed with the phrase “Big day for desktops” in a tweet on X.com. While the Mac version of the ChatGPT app has been out for a while now, the Windows version only just launched. Until now, however, Advanced Voice mode wasn’t available as it currently does not work in the browser-based version of ChatGPT.
Big day for desktops.Advanced Voice is now available in the macOS and Windows desktop apps.https://t.co/mv4ACwIhzA pic.twitter.com/HbwXbN9NkDOctober 30, 2024
A similar experience to mobile
We’ve tried the desktop version of Advanced Voice mode on PC and the experience is refreshingly similar to the mobile version: You click the Advanced Voice icon that’s on the right of the prompt bar and a new window pops up with the familiar floating blue orb that pulses as ChatGPT listens.
You can immediately start having a free-flowing, natural conversation with ChatGPT using one of its nine different voices about pretty much any subject you like. To change voice you simply need to hit the icon in the top right of the screen and you can switch between its nine different voices.
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(Image credit: OpenAI)
Advanced Voice mode uses ChatGPT-4o, which is OpenAI’s most accessible current model, for all interactions. A key feature of ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode is that you can interrupt the AI at any time and it should stop talking and start listening to what you’re saying. This is particularly handy when you find its answers are going on a bit too long, and it also helps keep the conversation going.
As with the mobile version, you need to be a ChatGPT Plus subscriber ($20, £16, AU$30) to access Advanced Voice Mode, but there is an option for people to use it on the free tier, although it’s limited to just 10 minutes a month of talk time.
ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode has been available in the US for some time now but recently launched in Europe. A new version of ChatGPT called Orion is rumored to be released before the end of the year, but Open AI CEO Sam Altman has dismissed the rumor as ‘fake news‘.
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The US government uses census data to distribute resources fairly
Valentyn Semenov/Alamy
A change to the US government’s system for processing the census could improve the accuracy of publicly disclosed data – without compromising the privacy of individual citizens and residents.
The government relies on national census data – gathered every 10 years by the US Census Bureau – to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding to states and local communities. Such data also plays a key political role by helping states draw Congressional district boundaries and determining how many seats in the House of Representatives go…
October is the perfect time to watch horror movies. I’d even argue that half the fun of Halloween is watching all the classic scary movies in the weeks and days leading up to the holiday. There are a few great streaming services like Shudder out there for horror fans, and all the major streamers like Netflix and Max have their own scary movies too, but nothing beats getting to watch one for free.
Luckily, there are tons of free streaming services out there that offer thousands of movies without paying a dime. Tubi in particular has leaned especially hard into the horror genre, giving fans lots of classics, modern hits, and even original movies. This Halloween, check out these five great horror movies, all streaming for free.
Rob Zombie is a controversial filmmaker. For every hit movie he releases, he makes another few duds. Luckily, his 2007 reboot of Halloween is one of the good ones. We all know the basic story of Halloween: Michael Myers stalks Laurie Strode and her friends on Halloween, killing them one by one.
But Zombie’s version added a great first half that no other film in the franchise has. The first hour of the movie actually focuses on Michael’s life as a child and young man and chronicles his descent into madness, rage, and murder. The movie also has Zombie’s trademark brutality, which actually worked this time around and helped give the 2007 film a fresh and horrifying new feel.
When audiences think your movie is a snuff film, you know you’ve made a great horror movie. Set amongst the blaring heat of a central Texas summer, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre sees a group of young travelers stranded when their van runs out of gas. They go out in search of help, only to be confronted by the cannibalistic Sawyer family and their chain-saw-wielding son (affectionately called Leatherface by fans thanks to his trademark mask made of human skin).
What makes The Texas Chain Saw Massacre so terrifying is that it’s everything a horror movie shouldn’t be. Hitchcock popularized using lighting, cinematography, and orchestral scores to help create terror. But Chain Saw used none of that, instead feeling like someone had actually found the lost, grainy footage of a group of friends being brutally murdered. Plus, this year marks the film’s 50th anniversary, so it’s a re-watch is the perfect way to celebrate.
Watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for free on Tubi and Freevee.
2021’s Candyman is a sequel to the iconic 1992 film of the same name, taking place almost 30 years later. The legend of the Candyman is revived yet again and the killing spree resumes. Luckily for viewers, the new film gives way more backstory than the original ever did, so you can actually watch the 2021 film as a standalone movie without needing to see the previous films.
The basic premise is that an urban myth is actually a real supernatural curse that gains more power every time innocent Black men are killed for a crime they didn’t commit. The movie was especially timely when it premiered in 2021 but remains a great story today.
Hellraiser is a layered horror movie that gets even more intricate when you learn about its backstory. The basic premise is that a mysterious puzzle box (called the Lament Configuration by fans) opens a portal between the mortal world and a hellish dimension inhabited by Cenobites.
As eternal beings, the Cenobites have no distinction between pleasure and pain and simply seek to experience the most intense feelings possible… which usually doesn’t end well for their human victims. But Hellraiser is a deeply symbolic movie that takes inspiration from a wide range of dichotomic source material, like religion, sexual fetishes, life and death, and queerness.
Horror anthologies have been a popular part of the genre for decades, from 1982’s Creepshow to 2007’s Trick ‘r Treat, and the long-running V/H/S series, just to name a few. In 2013, the anthology film All Hallows’ Eve premiered, giving audiences three segments — the third being “Terrifier,” which gave birth to the now-famous horror icon Art the Clown.
Since then, All Hallows’ Eve received a sequel, and Art has become a fan-favorite in the horror community, earning himself three films of his own, with the most recent, Terrifier 3, opening No. 1 at the box office. All Hallows’ Eve is a fun way to see how a grassroots horror villain got his start, and its other segments are just as enjoyable.
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