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This Week's Updates:
Samuel Alito’s Billionaire-Funded Field Trip
Apparently, Clarence Thomas isn’t the only Supreme Court Justice who has enjoyed the hospitality of wealthy executives with business before the Court. On Wednesday, ProPublica reported that hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer paid to fly Justice Samuel Alito to Alaska via private jet for a luxury fishing excursion, which Singer took part in. The men were also joined by conservative judicial powerbroker Leonard Leo, who was the subject of a recent CfA complaint which alleged that he had used his network of nonprofits to illegally channel money to himself. Leo also seems to have participated in at least one retreat with billionaire Harlan Crow and Justice Thomas, appearing alongside them in a realistic oil painting commissioned by Crow. Like Thomas, Alito pushed the boundaries of “personal hospitality” to include luxury travel, though the Judicial Conference has sincetightened those guidelines to apply only to food and lodging in personal homes.
YouTube Ignored Animal Torture Ring, Enriched Video Creators
On Tuesday, the BBC revealed that YouTube had played a role in supporting an underground industry of monkey torture videos, which were monetized by their creators or used to advertise private Telegram groups where more graphic footage could be bought and sold. Concerned individuals began stumbling upon this content through YouTube’s recommendations and attempted to report it, but the videos stayed up. The BBC eventually found hundreds of such channels, which were connected to a Telegram network of animal-abusers. Eventually, law enforcement got involved.
“It’s actually just like a child abuse investigation,” said Special Agent Paul Wolpert, who works for the Department of Homeland Security. “The groups, the secrecy, the way they vet people — it’s exactly the same.” Recent reporting on an Instagram pedophile network, revealed that accounts selling child sexual abuse material used similar tactics to advertise their content and direct potential buyers to even less regulated platforms. By failing to moderate their platforms and identify bad actors, both Meta and YouTube allowed themselves to become facilitators of real-world harm, driven by recommendation algorithms and flimsy safeguards.
FTC Accuses Amazon of Misleading Consumers, Thwarting Investigations
Over a year ago, Insider reported that Amazon was deploying a process called the “Iliad Flow” to make it difficult for consumers to unsubscribe from Prime. Rather than simply ending recurring payments, Prime members were forced to click past multiple pages and questionnaires, all of which were designed to keep them from following through with cancelling. Now, the FTC is investigating Amazon for this and other practices, including the use of misleading interfaces to trick consumers into signing up for Prime without their consent. The agency’s complaint also noted that Amazon’s executives were aware of the problem, and that the company attempted to “delay and hinder” the Commission’s work by withholding documents relevant to its subpoenas.
