Happy Tuesday, all! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories at the intersection of tech and politics.
Another brick in the Wohl
Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, two far-right activists supportive of Donald Trump, could pay up to $1.25 million in damages after settling a lawsuit related to a fraudulent, voter suppression scheme that used robocalls to spread disinformation to deter Black people from voting in the 2020 election. New York Attorney General Letitia James reached an agreement with the men that lets them pay around half of $1 million if they keep up with their payments, but they’ll be on the hook for the full amount plus another $250,000 if they fail to make a payment on time.
Read more at NBC News.
TikTok’s team of friendly faces
Over at The New York Times, Sapna Maheshwari has an article on TikTok’s multimillion-dollar advertising effort, which uses nuns, farmers and others to serve as friendly spokespeople for the company — and to curry favor among Americans — as the Senate contemplates a bill that could potentially result in a ban of the app in the United States.
Read more at the New York Times.
Artists against A.I.
Some 200 of the world’s top musical performers — including Billie Eilish, Bruno Mars, J Balvin and Jadakiss — have cosigned a letter pushing tech companies not to use artificial intelligence “to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.” The group argues that, left “unchecked, AI will set in motion a race to the bottom that will degrade the value of our work and prevent us from being fairly compensated for it.” The letter comes as platforms like YouTube have debuted A.I. tools that allow users to create songs in the style of famous artists.
Read more at NBC News.
High-tech election attacks
Over at Wired, writer David Gilbert takes a look at some of the high-tech tools that far-right conspiracy theorists, like former Trump national security advisor Mike Flynn, have unveiled to push baseless…
Read the full article here
