Social Media's Dirty Secret, Big Food Raking in Billions From Food Price Gouging, French Farmers Go Organic
Revealing News Articles
July 2, 2024

I had to watch every frame of a recent stabbing video ... It will never leave me,” says Harun*, one of many moderators reviewing harmful online content in India, as social media companies increasingly move the challenging work offshore. Moderators working in Hyderabad, a major IT hub in south Asia, have spoken of the strain on their mental health of reviewing images and videos of sexual and violent content, sometimes including trafficked children. Many social media platforms in the UK, European Union and US have moved the work to countries such as India and the Philippines. While OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, has said artificial intelligence could be used to speed up content moderation, it is not expected to end the need for the thousands of human moderators employed by social media platforms. Content moderators in Hyderabad say the work has left them emotionally distressed, depressed and struggling to sleep. “I had to watch every frame of a recent stabbing video of a girl. What upset me most is that the passersby didn’t help her,” says Harun. “There have been instances when I’ve flagged a video containing child nudity and received continuous calls from my supervisors,” [said moderator Akash]. “Most of these half-naked pictures of minors are from the US or Europe. I’ve received multiple warnings from my supervisors not to flag these videos. One of them asked me to ‘man up’ when I complained that these videos need to be discussed in detail.”

Trevin Brownie had to sift through lots of disturbing content for the three years he worked as an online content moderator in Nairobi, Kenya. "We take off any form of abusive content that violates policies such as bullying and harassment or hate speech or violent graphic content suicides," Brownie [said]. Brownie has encountered content ranging from child pornography, material circulated by organized crime groups and terrorists, and images taken from war zones. "I've seen more than 500 beheadings on a monthly basis," he said. Brownie moved from South Africa, where he previously worked at a call center, to Nairobi, where he worked as a subcontractor for Facebook's main moderation hub in East Africa, which was operated by a U.S.-based company called Sama AI. Content moderators working in Kenya say Sama AI and other third-party outsourcing companies took advantage of them. They allege they received low-paying wages and inadequate mental health support compared to their counterparts overseas. Brownie says ... PTSD has become a common side effect he and others in this industry now live with, he said. "It's really traumatic. Disturbing, especially for the suicide videos," he said. A key obstacle to getting better protections for content moderators lies in how people think social media platforms work. More than 150 content moderators who work with the artificial intelligence (AI) systems used by Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT, from all parts of the continent, gathered in Kenya to form the African Content Moderator's Union. The union is calling on companies in the industry to increase salaries, provide access to onsite psychiatrists, and a redrawing of policies to protect employees from exploitative labour practices.

Once upon a time, Google was great. They intensively monitored what people searched for, and then used that information continually to improve the engine’s performance. Their big idea was that the information thus derived had a commercial value; it indicated what people were interested in and might therefore be of value to advertisers who wanted to sell them stuff. Thus was born what Shoshana Zuboff christened “surveillance capitalism”, the dominant money machine of the networked world. The launch of generative AIs such as ChatGPT clearly took Google by surprise, which is odd given that the company had for years been working on the technology. The question became: how will Google respond to the threat? Now we know: it’s something called AI overviews, in which an increasing number of search queries are initially answered by AI-generated responses. Users have been told that glue is useful for ensuring that cheese sticks to pizza, that they could stare at the sun for for up to 30 minutes, and that geologists suggest eating one rock per day. There’s a quaint air of desperation in the publicity for this sudden pivot from search engine to answerbot. The really big question about the pivot, though, is what its systemic impact on the link economy will be. Already, the news is not great. Gartner, a market-research consultancy, for example, predicts that search engine volume will drop 25% by 2026 owing to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.

A global network of powerful entities, fueled in part by Wall Street, is buying up land and water around the world. This global land rush has led to wrecked wells and lost farms from Arizona to Zambia — and it risks sowing the seeds for future global conflict, according to “The Grab,” a new documentary out today from Gabriela Cowperthwaite. The film follows a seven-year investigation by producer and journalist Nathan Halverson of The Center for Investigative Reporting. In part, “The Grab” argues that power is being exercised over individual landowners by a convoluted and opaque network of sovereign wealth funds, national governments and Wall Street. One critical focus of this push is Africa. Halverson interviewed Brig Siachitema, an activist in the Zambian town of Serenje, where he says foreign investors have been buying up the ancestral land of villagers and kicking them off it. Late in the movie, he presents La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin with evidence that the Arizona State Retirement System — her own pension fund — is invested in the project that is draining the aquifer beneath the county. Rather than fighting to protect U.S. land and food from other multinational corporations, “the governments are working for the corporations.” There are enough calories worldwide to feed a growing global population, even with climate change, and even in 2050. The race to lock down resources, and governments’ panic over the unrest caused by spiking food prices, risks scaling up to a war between great powers.

Dr. Robert Lufkin, a physician and father of two young children, has been diagnosed with four chronic diseases — the same ones that claimed his father’s life. Inspired by his own medical struggles, Lufkin decided to write a book exposing what he calls “medical lies” that contribute to the risk of chronic disease in the US – some of which he says he himself once taught as a professor at UCLA and USC. His own diagnoses, Lufkin said, “woke him up” to the flaws in the medical system. The doctor noted that ... a “new class of diseases” has posed a challenge. These include obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease and even mental illness, Lufkin said. “Up to 80% of our resources are now spent on these chronic diseases.” The tools that were so effective in the 20th century — “the pills and surgeries” — might save lives in the moment. But they only address the symptoms of these chronic diseases — not their root causes. “There’s a common metabolic cause that underlies most of these diseases,” Lufkin said. Ten percent of American adults have type 2 diabetes, and about 38% have prediabetes. The diabetes lie declares that the best way to treat type 2 diabetes is with insulin. However, it will also raise the body’s overall insulin levels, worsening insulin resistance, the underlying cause of type 2 diabetes. Additionally, elevated insulin levels drive other chronic diseases. There are also financial incentives. In 2013, sales of insulin and other diabetes drugs reached $23 billion, according to data from IMS Health, a drug market research firm. That was more than the combined revenue of the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association.

Americans are paying too much for prescription drugs. Pharmacy benefit managers ... are driving up drug costs for millions of people, employers and the government. The three largest pharmacy benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, act as middlemen overseeing prescriptions for more than 200 million Americans. They are owned by huge health care conglomerates — CVS Health, Cigna and UnitedHealth Group — and are hired by employers and governments. The job of the P.B.M.s is to reduce drug costs. Instead, they frequently do the opposite. They steer patients toward pricier drugs, charge steep markups on what would otherwise be inexpensive medicines and extract billions of dollars in hidden fees. Most Americans get their health insurance through a government program like Medicare or through an employer, which pay for two different types of insurance for each person. One type covers visits to doctors and hospitals, and it is handled by an insurance company. The other pays for prescriptions. That is overseen by a P.B.M. The P.B.M. negotiates with drug companies, pays pharmacies and helps decide which drugs patients can get at what price. In theory, everyone saves money. But those savings appear to be largely a mirage, a product of a system where prices have been artificially inflated so that major P.B.M.s and drug companies can boost their profits while taking credit for reducing prices.

Food costs have skyrocketed. Americans paid roughly 25 percent more on groceries and dining out this March than they paid in January 2020, outpacing the rate of general inflation. Over that same period, the companies behind the country’s 10 largest grocery and restaurant brands have together returned or pledged to return more than $77 billion to shareholders. The Department of Agriculture calculates that the average American spent 11 percent of their disposable income on food in 2022, the highest amount in nearly four decades. Grocery prices rose over 10 percent that year alone, the largest annual increase since the 1970s. According to an analysis by Food and Water Watch, a corporate watchdog group, food costs for an average family of four living on a “thrifty” budget increased 50 percent from January 2020 to January 2024, from $654 to $976 a month. The number of households facing food insecurity grew by 3.5 million between 2020 and 2022. Some 28 million adults in America lack constant access to enough food to lead an active and healthy life, forcing them to eat unbalanced diets, cut portion sizes, and skip meals. The nation’s biggest food processors and retailers [are] spending billions of their record profits buying back their own shares on the open market to inflate stock value and issuing generous dividends. The main purpose of buybacks is to enrich senior corporate executives and hedge-fund managers.

An analysis from Accountable.US showed how more than 100 million people who rent their homes in the U.S. are not seeing the benefits of what one Biden spokesperson called "the great American comeback" in their housing costs, particularly millions of people whose homes are owned by corporate landlords. The government watchdog found that the six largest corporate landlord companies brought in close to a combined $300 million in increased profits in the first quarter of 2024, with the profits mostly stemming from rent hikes. Overall in the U.S., rent prices have skyrocketed by 31.4% since 2019 while wages have increased by just 23%, meaning tenants need to earn nearly $80,000 per year to keep from being rent-burdened. The six companies included in the Accountable.US analysis on Wednesday have more than rent increases in common: They have all faced lawsuits regarding their use of the property management software company RealPage, which is alleged to have used an algorithm to fix rent prices, impacting about 16 million rental units in the United States. The group's analysis was released weeks after the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a raid on an Atlanta-based property management firm in the Department of Justice's antitrust investigation into RealPage regarding "allegations of a nationwide conspiracy to artificially inflate apartment rents." RealPage's ... influence covers 70% of multifamily apartment buildings.

Venture capital and military startup firms in Silicon Valley have begun aggressively selling a version of automated warfare that will deeply incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). This surge of support for emerging military technologies is driven by the ultimate rationale of the military-industrial complex: vast sums of money to be made. Untold billions of dollars of private money now pouring into firms seeking to expand the frontiers of techno-war. According to the New York Times, $125 billion over the past four years. Whatever the numbers, the tech sector and its financial backers sense that there are massive amounts of money to be made in next-generation weaponry and aren’t about to let anyone stand in their way. Meanwhile, an investigation by Eric Lipton of the New York Times found that venture capitalists and startup firms already pushing the pace on AI-driven warfare are also busily hiring ex-military and Pentagon officials to do their bidding. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt [has] become a virtual philosopher king when it comes to how new technology will reshape society. [Schmidt] laid out his views in a 2021 book modestly entitled The Age of AI and Our Human Future, coauthored with none other than the late Henry Kissinger. Schmidt is aware of the potential perils of AI, but he’s also at the center of efforts to promote its military applications. AI is coming, and its impact on our lives, whether in war or peace, is likely to stagger the imagination.

Renowned economist Gabriel Zucman released a blueprint Tuesday showing the world's governments that a global minimum tax on billionaires would be both technically feasible and economically beneficial, leaving political will as the only major obstacle preventing transformative changes to an international tax structure long exploited by the ultra-rich. A 2% minimum tax on the wealth of global billionaires would raise between $200 billion and $250 billion annually in revenue from roughly 3,000 individuals globally, resources that "could be invested to support sustained economic development through investments in education, health, public infrastructure, the energy transition, and climate change mitigation." Billionaires ... pay lower effective income tax rates than those in the working class, often making use of holding companies and other complex maneuvers to dodge their obligations and stockpile massive fortunes. The world's billionaires collectively own $14.2 trillion in wealth. Structuring a new tax based on a specific percentage of billionaires' wealth would prevent ultra-rich individuals who report little to no taxable income from completely avoiding taxation. The primary barrier to establishing a global tax on billionaires is not technical, Zucman argued, but political, particularly given the sway the ultra-rich have over economic policy. A YouGov poll ... found that 59% of U.S. millionaires would support a global tax on billionaires equal to 2% of their wealth.

About 100 miles southeast of Paris ... a charming stone aqueduct cuts across the green fields. “That’s the Aqueduct of the Vanne,” says [farmer] Zoltan Kahn. The Vanne, which supplies a fifth of Paris’s tap water, is fed by the water sources in these parts. The region is rich in biodiversity and has been a key drinking water catchment area for centuries. Since 2020, Eau de Paris, the city’s public water service, has been supporting farmers near its watersheds ... to reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers on their crops. In other words, to go organic. When Kahn was approached by Eau de Paris with support to go fully organic, he jumped at the opportunity. In exchange for switching to organic, he would receive a so-called “Payment for Environmental Services” for each hectare of his farmland. As part of the €48 million ($51.8 million) project, Eau de Paris and the Seine-Normandy Water Agency, a public institution fighting water pollution in the region, are supporting 115 farmers based in watersheds that supply the city to either reduce their use of chemicals or go fully organic (as 58 percent of the farmers have). Already €32 million of that funding has been granted, according to Anne-Sophie Leclere, deputy director general of Eau de Paris. “It’s better for us to have cleaner, purer watersheds,” says Leclere. “This will save Paris from having to pay much more to process the water once it arrives in the city.”

Each year, US cities lose an estimated 36 million trees to development, disease and old age, many of which ultimately end up in landfills. Losing these urban trees — known to help cool their neighborhoods, lower carbon emissions and improve mental health, among other benefits — costs an estimated $96 million annually. In Philadelphia, a partnership is giving the City of Brotherly Love’s fallen trees new life. Philadelphia Parks & Rec joined forces with Cambium Carbon, a Washington, D.C.-based startup that repurposes waste wood, and PowerCorpsPHL, a local nonprofit that creates job opportunities for unemployed and under-employed 18- to 30-year-olds, to launch the Reforestation Hub. Rather than sending trees straight to the landfill or the city’s organic recycling center to simply become mulch or wood chips, the Reforestation Hub (which is co-located in the city’s organic recycling center) will salvage as many trees as it can. As many as possible will be turned into Cambium’s Carbon Smart Wood, which stores 5.23 pounds of carbon in each board foot. Fifteen percent of sales that come out of the hub will be donated to Tree Philly at the end of each year to support tree planting and maintenance across the city. While the hub formally launched only recently, in the year and a half that it’s taken to get the infrastructure in place, it has already diverted 542 logs to create 28,000 board feet of Carbon Smart Wood.

It was six years ago when CEO Dan Price raised the salary of everyone at his Seattle-based credit card processing company Gravity Payments to at least $70,000 a year. Price slashed his own salary by $1 million to be able to give his employees a pay raise. He was hailed a hero by some and met with predictions of bankruptcy from his critics. But that has not happened; instead, the company is thriving. He said his company has tripled and he is still paying his employees $70,000 a year. "I make $70,000 a year," Price [said]. According to the Economic Policy Institute, average CEO compensation is 320 times more than the salaries of their typical workers. Price said despite the success his company has had with the policy, he wishes other companies would follow suit. "I would say that's the failure of this. You know, I feel like I've been shouting from the rooftops like, 'This works, this works, everybody should do it!' and zero big companies are following suit because the system values having the highest return with the lowest risk and the lowest amount of work," Price said. Price thinks Gravity's returns are up in large part because bigger paychecks have lead to fiercely loyal employees. "Our turnover rate was cut in half, so when you have employees staying twice as long, their knowledge of how to help our customers skyrocketed over time and that's really what paid for the raise more so than my pay cut," said Price.

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