We can debate the worthiness of Elon Musk’s accomplishments—building up Tesla, hollowing out the government, shooting for Mars—but we can all agree that his insistence on being seen as funny is his most grating quality.
From the constant 4:20 references to his quote tweet “dunks” to awarding “Certified Bangers” badges to silly X posts, Musk’s desperation for validation knows no bounds. It can get pretty annoying when the richest guy on earth makes a joke and then awkwardly eyes the room waiting for everyone to laugh.
But over the weekend, I was intrigued when a clip emerged of Musk telling Joe Rogan that using Grok’s Unhinged Mode to deliver an “epic vulgar roast” is a surefire way to “make people really laugh at a party.”
“Point the camera at them, and now do a vulgar roast of this person … then keep saying, ‘no, no, make it even more vulgar. Use forbidden words,’” Musk excitedly tells Rogan in the clip taken from their three-hour-plus conversation published on Rogan’s podcast in October. “Eventually it’s like, holy fuck, you know. I mean it’s trying to jam a rocket up your ass and have it explode. It’s next level. Beyond fucking belief,” he continues, chuckling and even raising his arms above his head at the mere thought.
The best roast jokes tend to be smart, reflect a familiarity with the person being roasted, and contain just the right amount of mean. It’s not a task one would think a large language model would be great at. But, with Thanksgiving and holiday season on the horizon, I figured why not test Musk’s claim that Grok can deliver a foul-mouthed razz with the best of them? I gave it a test spin at the office by turning Grok loose on my colleagues. (I do not recommend anyone else do this at work.)
Three of my coworkers and I set up shop in my boss’s office so I could privately undertake the embarrassing task of telling Grok to roast all of us one by one. I used Musk’s exact instructions, “forbidden words” and all.
Admittedly, we all burst out laughing when Grok told me my bangs looked like “pubic hair.” But it got tedious fast, with all four of us getting variations of the same sophomoric disses including: looking like a lumberjack’s “discard pile” or “crusty asshole” depending on the amount of vulgarity I encouraged; looking like a “goddamn librarian”; looking like a “thrift store tragedy”; wearing glasses from a “hipster’s landfill.” Eventually, these common themes culminated in one of us being described as a “tweed-wearing hipster who fucked up a lumberjack audition.” Grok advised the roastee to sit up straight “before those jeans rip open and expose your sad, corduroy-loving ass.”
For all the talk of being “unhinged”—keep in mind this is a chatbot that knows how to take things off the rails; it once referred to itself as “MechaHitler”—these results are downright boring. In fact, when I started a draft of this story, my autocorrect changed the Google Doc name from “Grok roast” to “Grim roast.” I didn’t bother correcting it.
A new feature on X has revealed that a number of major MAGA accounts on the platform are operated by people based overseas. And in the days since these accounts were exposed, President Donald Trump has continued boosting several of them.
Many of the accounts, which have large followings and claim to be conservative people based in Texas or “America First” accounts “promoting good resisting evil,” are actually operated everywhere from Chile and Nigeria to Russia and across Eastern Europe.
These accounts largely post about divisive issues, including immigration, gender, and Israel. In one instance, a verified account called MAGA NATION with almost 400,000 followers and the American flag in its screen name was revealed to be operated from a non-EU country in Eastern Europe. Many of the accounts feature the names of members of the Trump family, including an Ivanka Trump news account with over 1 million followers that was based in Nigeria. The account has since been suspended.
On Saturday, Trump shared on Truth Social a screenshot of an X post from an account called “Fan Trump Army.” The account has over 500,000 followers and features an image of Trump as its profile picture. The account operator, according to the new X location feature, is based in India. The account is followed by several people convicted for their parts in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as well as disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
In recent days, the account holder changed their bio to read: “An Indian who loves America, President Trump, Musk!” An earlier version of the account’s bio, however, made no mention of the account being run by someone in India.
On Sunday, Trump shared another screenshot of an X post on Truth Social, this time from a verified X account with the screen name: “Commentary Donald J. Trump.”
“Would you support the idea of foreign-born citizens be barred from running for office? Yes or No,” reads the screenshot. The post also featured a picture of Representative Ilhan Omar with Omar Fateh, a Somali-American lawmaker in Minnesota who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Minneapolis earlier this month. The account has a picture of the president as its profile picture with a bald eagle in front of the American flag as its background picture. According to X’s new feature, the account appears to be run from somewhere in Africa. (In some cases, X doesn’t specify the country, only the continent or region.)
In responses to Trump’s post, many called for a ban on foreign-born citizens holding political office, with some posters going further and calling for Omar and Fateh to be deported.
A worldwide outage at the network of cybersecurity firm Cloudflare Inc. has been resolved after several hours of disruption on Tuesday. The outage had taken down the websites for everything from the chief US energy regulator, ChatGPT, the New Jersey transit authority and the social-media platform X. ChatGPT and X were among the services that […]
How to track Doppler radar, traffic and rain totals for California storm
Follow the storm with interactive radar and see the latest traffic conditions and rain totals.
TIME RIGHT NOW IS 7 A.M. TODAY IS ALSO A WEATHER IMPACT DAY, AND HERE’S A LIVE LOOK FROM SACRAMENTO, RANCHO CORDOVA AND STOCKTON WHERE RAIN IS COMING DOWN RIGHT NOW. IT ALL STARTED EARLY THIS MORNING AND IS EXPECTED TO LAST THROUGHOUT THE DAY. HEADING INTO THE WEEK, LET’S GET WEATHER CHECK NOW WITH METEOROLOGIST KELLY CURRAN. YEAH, THAT RAIN HAS BEEN COMING DOWN THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE OVERNIGHT HOURS, ESPECIALLY AROUND MODESTO, PICKING UP MORE THAN THREE QUARTERS OF AN INCH JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT. AND IT’S BEEN RAINING EVER SINCE. NOW THIS IS A LIVE LOOK OUTSIDE IN RANCHO CORDOVA, WHERE NOT ONLY ARE WE DEALING WITH THOSE SCATTERED SHOWERS, WE’RE ALSO DEALING WITH SOME AREAS OF PATCHY MORNING FOG. WE’RE GOING TO SEE SCATTERED SHOWERS ON AND OFF THROUGHOUT THE DAY TODAY. BUT THEN A SECOND STORM ARRIVES TONIGHT, BRINGING IN EVEN HEAVIER BAND OF SHOWERS. AND THEN ON TOP OF ALL THAT, WE’RE GOING TO BE DEALING WITH SNOW SHOWERS IN THE SIERRA, WHICH WILL LIKELY PROMPT CHAIN CONTROLS. WE ALREADY HAVE A FEW OUT THERE, BUT MORE WILL LIKELY BE HAPPENING, ESPECIALLY AS THAT SNOW LEVEL CONTINUES TO DROP. SO LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT THE RADAR FIRST. AND YOU CAN SEE FROM I-5 EASTWARD. THAT’S WHERE WE’RE REALLY CONTINUING TO SEE THOSE RAIN SHOWERS. NOW YUBA CITY STARTING TO DRY OUT NOW. STILL A FEW LIGHT SHOWERS AROUND CHICO SACRAMENTO DOWNTOWN AREA. THE SHOWERS ARE STARTING TO LET UP, BUT WE’RE STILL SEEING MORE FURTHER TO THE EAST. AUBURN GRASS VALLEY LIGHT RAIN SHOWERS, DONNER SUMMIT SEEING SNOW AND POLLOCK PINES. WE HAVE SOME MODERATE TO HEAVY RAIN COMING DOWN, INDICATED BY THOSE SHADES OF YELLOW HEADING FURTHER TO THE SOUTH AROUND STOCKTON WE’RE SEEING LIGHT TO MODERATE RAIN SHOWERS. SAME AROUND GALT. MODESTO CONTINUES TO SEE THAT LIGHT RAIN, AND THEN YOU CAN SEE HERE FROM SNELLING ALL THE WAY UP THROUGH SONORA AND ARNOLD UP TOWARD 88. THAT’S WHERE WE’RE SEEING THAT BAND OF YELLOW INDICATING AGAIN, THE MORE MODERATE SHOWER ACTIVITY. AND THIS IS MOVING ITS WAY EASTWARD. WE’LL BE SWITCHING OVER TO SNOW AS IT GOES UP IN ELEVATION. SACRAMENTO 56 DEGREES. THAT’S THE CURRENT TEMPERATURE. WE’RE AT 52 IN AUBURN. TRUCKEE 36. AND THESE TEMPERATURES ARE NOT GOING TO BE WARMING UP MUCH TODAY. WINDS AT THE MOMENT NOT TOO STRONG, BUT THEY HAVE SWITCHED DIRECTIONS. SO THEY’RE OUT OF THE SOUTH. WE’RE GOING TO SEE EVEN STRONGER WINDS AS WE GET INTO THE EVENING HOURS. HIGHS TODAY. WE’RE ONLY GOING TO MAKE IT INTO THE UPPER 50 IN THE SACRAMENTO AREA. WE’RE GOING TO BE TALKING MORE ABOUT THAT COMING UP IN ABOUT TEN MINUTES. KELLY, THANK YOU SO MUCH. AND LET’S GET A CHECK RIGHT NOW. OUTSIDE LIVE TRACKER THREE ON THE ROADS THIS MORNING IN KCRA 3’S. ERIN HEFT IS LIVE IN PLACER COUNTY. AND AARON WHAT ARE YOU SEEING RIGHT NOW? OH, IT IS SLICK THIS MORNING, LETICIA. AND VERY MUCH CHANGING CONDITIONS AS WE GET HIGHER IN ELEVATION. SO LET ME SHOW YOU OUTSIDE OF OUR WINDSHIELD. THIS THE CAMERA THAT’S STILL INSIDE THE VEHICLE AND A SHOT OF THE ROAD SO YOU CAN SEE LOTS OF WATER KICKING UP OFF OF THE INTERSTATE RIGHT NOW. AND THEN OUR ROOF CAMERA, WHICH IS THE CAMERA LOCATED ON TOP OF THE VEHICLE, YOU CAN SEE QUITE DAMP OUT THERE. SO THINGS YOU NEED TO BE AWARE OF IS THAT YES, IT IS VERY WET, SPECIFICALLY THROUGH PLACER COUNTY AS WE’VE LEFT SACRAMENTO AND NOW PAST BAXTER AND ARE MAKING OUR WAY EVEN HIGHER. STILL VERY WET. SO NOTHING THAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT BEING SLICK FOR ANY ICY REASONS, BUT THAT CHANGES WHEN IT COMES TO KINGVALE BECAUSE KINGVALE THERE ARE TWO LEVEL CHAIN RESTRICTIONS RIGHT NOW, SO JUST BE AWARE THAT THESE ROADS GET A LITTLE SLICK UP THERE. IT’S A VERY SHORT AREA THAT’S IN CHAIN RESTRICTIONS AND CHAIN CONTROLS, BUT THERE ARE SNOWPLOWS OUT. AND FOR MORE SPECIFIC AREA OF THAT, THAT WOULD BE FROM KINGVALE TO AROUND THE DONNER LAKE AREA. SO THAT’S WHERE THE R2 CHAIN CONTROLS ARE. THAT’S WHERE THE MAJORITY OF THE TOW TRUCK EXCUSE ME, SNOWPLOWS ARE AT THE MOMENT. SO THAT GIVES US AN INDICATOR THAT THAT’S THE AREA THAT’S MOST SLICK. BUT PLEASE BE AWARE IF YOU’RE WORKING YOUR WAY UP INTERSTATE 80, JUST BE PREPARED. IT’S THAT KIND OF SEASON WHERE YOU NEED TO HAVE CHAINS IN YOUR VEHICLE, OR YOU HAVE TO HAVE FOUR WHEEL DRIVE. IT’S THE BEGINNING OF THE SEASON WHERE INTERSTATE 80 GETS A LITTLE DICEY. JUST BE PREPARED. LETICIA. THINGS CHANGING INDEED. ERIN, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR LIVE REPORT. WE’LL CHECK BACK IN WITH YOU. AND REMEMBER, YOU CAN ALWAYS GET THE LATEST WEATHER UPDATES BY DOWNLOADING THE KCRA 3 APP.
How to track Doppler radar, traffic and rain totals for California storm
Follow the storm with interactive radar and see the latest traffic conditions and rain totals.
KCRA 3’s weather team issued Impact Days for Sunday and Monday because of how wet and windy conditions will affect outdoor activities and travel for the Valley, Foothills and Sierra. See the latest forecast here. Share your weather photos and videos at kcra.com/upload.Below are resources to find live, interactive radar and traffic maps on KCRA.com to help keep you prepared. You can also see the latest rain totals below. Download our app for the latest breaking news and severe weather alertsHere is where you can download our app for the latest weather alerts.Track real-time traffic updates in Northern CaliforniaClick here to see our interactive traffic map.Track California Doppler radar Click here to see our interactive radar map.)Track California highway road conditions hereHere is where you can search Caltrans road conditions by highway and see if chain controls are in effect. Track the rain totals below Here are key websites to prepare for and track California power outages.Preparing for power outages: Ready.gov explains how to prepare for a power outage and what to do when returning from one here.Keeping informed when you’ve lost power and cellphone service: How to find a National Weather Service radio station near you.Here is how to sign up for CalAlerts emergency alert notifications for any county in California.Track PG&E power outages here. Track SMUD outages here. Track power outages across all California counties. Follow our KCRA weather team on social mediaMeteorologist Tamara Berg on Facebook, Instagram and X. Meteorologist Heather Waldman on Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok.Meteorologist Kelly Curran on X, Facebook and Instagram.Meteorologist Dirk Verdoorn on Facebook.Meteorologist Ophelia Young on Facebook, X and Instagram. Watch our forecasts on TV or onlineHere’s where to find our latest video forecast. You can also watch a livestream of our latest newscast here. The banner on our website turns red when we’re live.We’re also streaming on the Very Local app for Roku, Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV. See more coverage of top California stories here | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
KCRA 3’s weather team issued Impact Days for Sunday and Monday because of how wet and windy conditions will affect outdoor activities and travel for the Valley, Foothills and Sierra.
Below are resources to find live, interactive radar and traffic maps on KCRA.com to help keep you prepared. You can also see the latest rain totals below.
Download our app for the latest breaking news and severe weather alerts
Although she effortlessly whacked Musk multiple times, Oates isn’t overly concerned with the billionaire. She posts frequently on both BlueSky and X about a range of topics, and is more than happy to respond to fans and critics alike on the platforms. Since publicly humiliating Musk and sending him to a tizzy, she’s gone on to tweet political musings about Zohran Mamdani, and Charlie Kirk, as well as less fraught fare about Faulkner and Hemingway and a photo of her beloved cat.
Those who are new to the online life of Joyce Carol Oates may be surprised to learn that she’s been doing these for years. At this point, she’s arguably as prolific a poster as she is a novelist, logging more than 180,00 posts on her official X account @JoyceCarolOates as of the publication of this story. Years ago, she was more likely to be the dunker than a dunkee: Oates experienced the other side of viral fame in 2014, when she loosed this hot take on another prolific but controversial writer. “Though Woody Allen has been much denounced, very likely many of his denouncers greatly admire Nabokov’s ‘Lolita.’” No contradiction?” she tweeted (it was still called tweeting back then). The false equivalency didn’t go over well; at the time, the public flogged Oates for her support of Allen. “Thats not the same at all thats terrible youre terrible but thank you for inventing oatmeal,” read one viral response, which ratioed Oates’s original tweet. (And yes, despite her last name, Joyce Carol Oates didn’t invent oatmeal.)
Years later, Oates made another Twitter faux pas, taking a gravely serious stance on innocent Halloween decorations. “You can always recognize a place in which no one is feeling much or any grief for a lost loved one & death, dying, & everyone you love decomposing to bones is just a joke,” posted Oates on October 1, 2021, drawing a wide variety of scornful reactions.
Oates kept posting through it—and now it seems that was the correct strategy. Time heals all wounds on the internet—time, and banger tweets that eviscerate the world’s richest man. Joyce Carol Oates? More like Joyce Carol Roasts.
Nearly a decade after going offline, Vine is (sort of) back and, in a truly bizarre twist, Jack Dorsey is at least partially responsible. An early Twitter employee has released a beta version of a rebooted Vine — now called “Divine” — that revives the app’s six-second videos and includes a portion of the original app’s archive.
The project comes from Evan Henshaw-Plath, a former Twitter employee who goes by “Rabble,” and has backing from Dorsey’s nonprofit “and Other Stuff,” which funds experimental social media apps built on the open source nostr protocol. Rabble has so far managed to resurrect about 170,000 videos from the original Vine thanks to an old archive created before Twitter shut down the app in 2017. In an FAQ on Divine’s website, he says that he also hopes to restore “millions” of user comments and profile photos associated with those original posts as well.
But Divine is more than just a home for decade-old clips. New users can create six-second looping videos of their own for the platform. The app also has many elements that will be familiar to people who have used Bluesky or other decentralized platforms, including customizable controls for content moderation and multiple feed algorithms to choose from. The site’s FAQ says Divine plans to support custom, user-created algorithms too.
Divine is also taking a pretty strong stance against AI-generated content. The app will have built-in AI detection tools that will add badges to content that’s been verified as not created or edited with AI tools. And, according to TechCrunch, the app will block uploads of suspected AI content.
“We’re in the middle of an AI takeover of social media,” Divine explains on its website. New apps like Sora are entirely AI-generated. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are increasingly flooded with AI slop—videos that look real but were never captured by a camera, people who don’t exist, scenarios that never happened. Divine is fighting back. We’re creating a space where human creativity is celebrated and protected, where you can trust that what you’re watching was made by a real person with a real camera, not generated by an algorithm.”
While all that may sound intriguing, Divine has a long way to go before it can accomplish all that. The app hasn’t made it onto either app store yet, though it’s already added 10,000 people to an iOS beta, according to its founder. In the meantime, you can also browse some of the app’s videos, including some old Vine posts, on its website, though not all of the videos are working properly at the moment.
Still, any kind of reboot is good news for fans of the original, who have long hoped the app might make a comeback. Elon Musk has suggested more than once that he would revive Vine in some way, but has yet to follow through.
As generative AI content starts to fill our social apps, a project to bring back Vine’s six-second looping videos is launching with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s backing. On Thursday, a new app called diVine will give access to more than 100,000 archived Vine videos, restored from an older backup that was created before Vine’s shutdown.
The app won’t just exist as a walk down memory lane; it will also allow users to create profiles and upload their own new Vine videos. However, unlike on traditional social media, where AI content is often haphazardly labeled, diVine will flag suspected generative AI content and prevent it from being posted.
Image Credits:daVine
DiVine’s creation was financed by Jack Dorsey’s nonprofit, “and Other Stuff,” formed in May 2025. The new effort is focused on funding experimental open source projects and other tools that have the potential to transform the social media landscape.
To build diVine, Evan Henshaw-Plath, an early Twitter employee and member of “and Other Stuff,” explored the Vine archive. After Twitter announced it was shutting down the short video app in 2016, its videos were backed up by a group called the Archive Team. This community archiving project is not affiliated with Archive.org, but is rather a collective that works together to save internet websites that are in danger of being lost.
Unfortunately, the group had saved Vine’s content as large, 40-50 GB binary files, which wouldn’t be accessible to someone who just wanted to watch some old Vine videos. The fact the archive existed prompted Evan Henshaw-Plath (who goes by the name Rabble) to see if it was possible to extract the old Vine content to serve as the basis for a new Vine-like mobile app.
Image Credits:daVine
“So basically, I’m like, can we do something that’s kind of nostalgic?” he told TechCrunch. “Can we do something that takes us back, that lets us see those old things, but also lets us see an era of social media where you could either have control of your algorithms, or you could choose who you follow, and it’s just your feed, and where you know that it’s a real person that recorded the video?”
Rabble spent a couple of months writing big data scripts and figuring out how the files worked, then reconstructed them along with the information on the old Vine users and the user engagement with the videos, like their views and even a subset of the original comments.
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“I wasn’t able to get all of them out, but I was able to get a lot out and basically reconstruct these Vines and these Vine users, and give each person a new user [profile] on this open network,” he said.
Rabble estimates the app contains a “good percentage” of the most popular Vine videos, but not a large number of the long tail. For instance, he says there were millions of K-pop-focused videos that were never even archived.
Image Credits:daVine
“We have about 150,000 to 200,000 of the videos from about 60,000 of the creators,” he noted, adding that, originally, Vine had a couple of million users and a few million creators by comparison.
Vine creators, who still own the copyright to their work, can send diVine a DMCA takedown request if they want their Vines removed, or they can verify they’re the account holder by demonstrating they’re still in possession of the social media accounts that were originally listed in their Vine bio. (This process isn’t automated, though, so there could be a delay if a large number of creators try to do this at once.)
Once they have their account back, they can also choose to post new videos or upload their old content that the restoration process missed.
To verify that new video uploads are human-made, Rabble is using technology from the human rights nonprofit the Guardian Project, which helps to verify that content was actually recorded on a smartphone, along with other checks.
Image Credits:daVine
Plus, because it’s built on Nostr, a decentralized protocol favored by Dorsey, and is open source, developers can set up and create their own apps and run their own hosts, relays, and media servers.
“Nostr – the underlying open source protocol being used by diVine – is empowering developers to create a new generation of apps without the need for VC-backing, toxic business models or huge teams of engineers,” Jack Dorsey said in a provided statement. “The reason I funded the non-profit, and Other Stuff, is to allow creative engineers like Rabble to show what’s possible in this new world, by using permissionless protocols which can’t be shut down based on the whim of a corporate owner.”
Twitter/X’s current owner, Elon Musk, has also promised to bring back Vine, having announced in August that the company discovered the old video archive. But so far, nothing has been publicly launched. The Dorsey-backed diVine project, meanwhile, believes that because the content is coming from an online archive and creators still own their copyrights, it’s fair use.
Image Credits:daVine
Rabble also believes there’s consumer demand for this type of non-AI, social experience, despite the popularity of generative AI content and widespread adoption of apps like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta AI.
“Companies see the AI engagement and they think that people want it,” explained Rabble. “They’re confusing, like — yes, people engage with it; yes, we’re using these things — but we also want agency over our lives and over our social experiences. So I think there’s a nostalgia for the early Web 2.0 era, for the blogging era, for the era that gave us podcasting, the era that you were building communities, instead of just gaming the algorithm,” he said.
DiVine is available on both iOS and Android at diVine.video.
If you’re a former Twitter user still using and rely on a hardware security key for your two-factor authentication (2FA) method, you need to re-enroll it before November 10. As spotted by , X’s account notified users of the deadline in a post last week. The Elon Musk-owned company eventually intends to retire the twitter.com domain, which hardware keys such as YubiKeys remain tied to until they’re re-enrolled.
“By November 10, we’re asking all accounts that use a security key as their two factor authentication (2FA) method to re-enroll their key to continue accessing X. You can re-enroll your existing security key, or enroll a new one. A reminder: if you enroll a new security key, any other security keys will stop working (unless also re-enrolled),” the account said.
X later clarified that the change only applies to YubiKeys and passkeys, and not 2FA authenticator apps such as Microsoft Authenticator or Authy. Users who fail to re-enroll their affected keys before November 10 will have their accounts locked until they either complete the re-enrollment process, choose a different 2FA method or decide to not use 2FA altogether (which X says it advises against).
To re-enroll your hardware key or add a new one, head to Settings in the X app, then click “Security and account access” and “Manage Passkeys” within the Security section.
Elon Musk Twitter to X in 2023, and last year fully the social network’s core systems to X.com, leaving no trace of the blue bird logo that was once synonymous with the platform.
Upon navigating to WhiteHouse.gov, the official website for the happenings and history of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, users are met with a banner at the top of the page, “Democrats Have Shut Down the Government,” it reads, with an active timer tick-tick-ticking away, counting, to the second, how long the shutdown has been going on.
Of an estimated 1.4 million government workers, roughly half are considered essential workers, and are currently performing their jobs without pay, while the other half have been furloughed. The government isn’t working at capacity, and the executive branch would like you to know exactly who they’d like to blame.
The events highlighted on the page make sense at first, beginning with George Washington selecting the future site of the White House in 1791, the 1814 burning of the building and subsequent rebuilding, and so on. It’s mostly porticos and additions from there, welcoming the Rose Garden and the Briefing Room to the party, until you scroll to 1998, when the definition of “major events” takes an abrupt turn in the first entry after Richard Nixon’s bowling alley addition in 1973.
“Bill Clinton Scandal: President Bill Clinton‘s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky was exposed, leading to White House perjury investigations,” the caption beneath an archival photo of Clinton and Lewinsky in the Oval Office reads. “The Oval Office trysts fueled impeachment for obstruction.”
The next entry takes us to 2012’s “Muslim Brotherhood Visit,” describing President Barack Obama (informally referred to only as “Obama”) hosting members of “a group that promotes Islamist extremism and has ties to Hamas” and describes it as a terrorist organization.
Lest you think the timeline is all scandal, users next see a recap of the biggest, most memorable headline to come out of 2020. If you think that’s the Covid-19 pandemic, try again. Of course, it’s Melania Trump’s South Lawn tennis pavilion, which “unifies the tennis court, Children’s Garden, and Kitchen Garden, enhancing recreational opportunities for First Families.” If that’s not major, it’s hard to say what is.
Elon Musk loves responding to posts on X with heart emojis. He’s sent dozens this year alone, often in response to people praising his cars or directly to his mother’s posts.
But this week, Musk sent a heart emoji to Tommy Robinson, the far-right Islamophobic activist from the United Kingdom. Though Musk largely ignored UK politics this year while working in the US government at his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he appears to be back across the pond, spending his money and using his platform to elevate far-right extremists.
“A HUGE THANK YOU to @elonmusk today. Legend,” Robinson wrote on Monday, following the first day of his two-day trial for a charge related to counter-terrorism law at Westminster Magistrate’s Court in London. Robinson claimed this week that Musk had funded his defense.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was charged under the Terrorism Act after he refused to give police access to his cell phone in July 2024 while trying to leave the UK. Prosecutor Jo Morris told the judge this week the police believed “there may be information relevant to acts of terrorism” on the phone at the time. Robinson has pleaded not guilty and claimed the stop was unlawful. A decision in this case is due next month.
In a video posted on X ahead of the trial this week, Robinson said Musk had agreed to fund his defense. Robinson did not say how much Musk was contributing to his defense fund, but Mark Stephens, a prominent British solicitor who has in the past served as legal counsel for Julian Assange, tells WIRED that if he were covering Robinson’s entire defense, Musk’s bill would come to “easily half a million pounds [$665,000], maybe more with appeals.”
Robinson and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Musk posted incessantly about British politics at the beginning of the year, until his focus was consumed by DOGE. But, following his stormy departure from Washington, Musk’s focus on Europe is once again creating chaos. WIRED analyzed data provided by BrightData that shows a significant dropoff in the number of posts Musk made about the UK after January of this year. After he left DOGE in May, Musk’s posts about the UK increased dramatically again in August.
Experts believe Musk’s current outpouring of support for the UK’s far right is part of a possible concerted effort to destabilize the region politically to prevent onerous regulations—such as the EU’s Digital Services Act or the UK’s Online Safety Act—being used to punish X.
Peter Thiel, PayPal’s first CEO, turned his fintech fortune into a far-reaching empire of influence spanning venture capital, politics and power. Marco Bello/Getty Images
In 2007, Fortune magazine reimagined a classic mafia scene with a Silicon Valley twist: 13 male founders and early employees of PayPal, all long gone from the company, posed at a San Francisco café with slicked-back hair, poker chips and dozens of whiskey glasses. The crowd included some of the most recognizable names in today’s tech scene, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. The magazine dubbed them the “PayPal mafia,” not for their time at the fintech company, but for their outsized impact on Silicon Valley through the companies they launched afterward.
PayPal went public in early 2002 and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion the same year. Most of its early employees left the company after the acquisition. They went on to found YouTube, SpaceX and LinkedIn, among other legendary names in Silicon Valley. However, like their cinematic namesake, the group hasn’t avoided controversy. These former colleagues have built billion-dollar businesses while also finding themselves in the crosshairs of public criticism.
For instance, Thiel has faced controversy over his political affiliations and, most notably, for funding Hulk Hogan’s 2012 lawsuit against Gawker Media with $10 million — a case that ultimately drove the online media company into bankruptcy. Musk has also faced criticism for his takeover of Twitter and his prior role in the Trump administration, where he led widespread federal employee firings.
Here’s what they are up to these days:
Peter Thiel: venture capitalist
Peter Thiel. Marco Bello/Getty Images
Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Luke Nosek founded PayPal in 1998, originally as a software security company. After merging with Elon Musk’s X.com (unrelated to the social media platform he owns today), PayPal shifted its focus to digital payments.
Thiel served as CEO from 1998 until 2002, leaving after the company was sold to eBay. He then co-founded Palantir Technologies, a major U.S. government contractor providing data analytics services. The company now has a market capitalization of $439 billion.
Thiel is also known as a prolific angel investor. He co-founded Clarium Capital, Founders Fund, Valar Ventures and Mithril Capital. In 2004, Thiel became Facebook’s first outside investor after acquiring a 10.2 percent stake in the company for $500,000.
Thiel is among the many former PayPal employees who have entered political and high-profile public arenas. An active donor to the Republican Party, Thiel supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign but withheld donations during the 2024 election. He is also credited with helping JD Vance reach the Vice Presidential ticket.
Elon Musk: entrepreneur, the world’s richest person
Elon Musk. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Elon Musk briefly served as PayPal’s CEO before being ousted by the board in 2000. He went on to build one of the most influential portfolios in technology, spanning electric vehicles, space exploration, social media and A.I.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and has led Tesla since 2008. He also founded Neuralink and The Boring Company, expanding his reach into brain-computer interfaces and infrastructure. In 2022, Musk gained global attention for acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, later rebranding it as X.
His ties to A.I. run deep: Musk co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015 but left in 2018 over strategic disagreements. In 2023, he returned to the field by launching xAI, a research venture focused on building A.I. that is more understandable for humans.
Today, Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $400 billion. He is also perhaps the only PayPal alumnus to ascend into direct political influence. During the Trump administration, he led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a name shared with his cryptocurrency venture—before stepping down in May after clashing publicly with the President.
Max Levchin: computer scientist
Max Levchin. John Lamparski/Getty Images
Position at PayPal: co-founder, chief technology officer from 1998 to 2002
As PayPal’s chief technology officer, Max Levchin helped lead the company’s anti-fraud efforts by co-creating the Gausebeck-Levchin test—the foundation for the widely used CAPTCHA security tool. After leaving PayPal, he launched the media-sharing platform Slide in 2004, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Levchin briefly served as Google’s vice president of engineering until Slide was shut down the following year.
In 2012, he co-founded Affirm, a leading “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) company, where he continues to serve as CEO. Today, Affirm has a market capitalization of $27.5 billion, with 21.9 million consumers and more than 350,000 merchant partners on its platform.
Levchin has also held board positions at Yahoo and Yelp. In 2015, he became the first Silicon Valley executive appointed to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s advisory board, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between companies and regulators.
Reid Hoffman: entrepreneur, investor
Reid Hoffman. Kimberly White/Getty Images for WIRED
Before joining PayPal, Hoffman worked as a senior user experience architect at Apple, contributing to the company’s online social network eWorld. He later became director of product management at Fujitsu. After his online dating startup, SocialNet, folded, Hoffman joined PayPal in 2000 as chief operating officer.
In 2003, he co-founded the career networking site LinkedIn. Following Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2017, Hoffman joined Microsoft’s board, a move that greatly increased his wealth.
Over the years, Hoffman has served on the boards of Airbnb and OpenAI, where he was also an early investor. Through the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, he has backed dozens of A.I. startups. In 2022, he co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman, who now serves as CEO. Earlier this year, he teamed up with cancer researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee to launch Manas AI, a startup focused on drug discovery.
David Sacks: investor, White House A.I. and Crypto Czar
David Sacks currently serves as the White House A.I. and Crypto Czar. JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images
Position at PayPal: chief operating officer from 1999 to 2002
Since leaving PayPal, David Sacks has built a career spanning film, tech, investing and politics. In 2005, he produced and financed a political satire that earned two Golden Globe nominations. The following year, he founded Geni.com, a genealogy-focused social network that later spun off Yammer, one of the earliest enterprise social networking platforms. He went on to co-found Craft Ventures, the startup Glue, and the podcast platform Callin.
Jeremy Stoppelman joined Musk’s X.com in 1999 and became vice president of engineering after its transition to PayPal. In 2004, he co-founded Yelp, where he has served as CEO ever since. Under his leadership, the company turned down a 2010 acquisition offer from Google and went public two years later. Stoppelman’s net worth is estimated at more than $100 million.
Ken Howery: investor, U.S. ambassador
Position at PayPal: chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002
Ken Howery served as PayPal’s chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002. After PayPal’s sale to eBay, he became eBay’s director of corporate development until 2003. He later joined Peter Thiel at Clarium Capital as vice president of private equity and went on to co-found Founders Fund as a partner. Beyond investing, he is a member of the Explorers Club, a nonprofit dedicated to scientific exploration, and an advisor to Kiva, the micro-lending nonprofit founded by former PayPal colleague Premal Shah.
Howery is also among the former PayPal executives who have moved into politics. He has donated at least $1 million to Donald Trump’s campaign through Elon Musk’s political action committee. During Trump’s first term, Howery was appointed U.S. ambassador to Sweden and today serves as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark.
Roeloth Botha: venture capitalist
Roelof Botha joined PayPal as director of corporate development shortly before graduating from Stanford University. He later became vice president of finance and went on to serve as chief financial officer until the company’s acquisition by eBay.
Position at PayPal: software architect from 1998 to 2003
Companies later founded: Yelp, Learnirvana
Russel Simmons helped design PayPal’s payment system as a software architect. After leaving the company, he and fellow PayPal alum Jeremy Stoppelman set out to build a platform for restaurant reviews. With a $1 million investment from Max Levchin, they launched Yelp in July 2004. Simmons served as chief technology officer until his departure in 2010. At the time, Yelp said he would remain a “significant” shareholder, though the size of his stake—and whether he still holds it—remains unclear.
In 2014, Simmons co-founded Learnirvana, an online learning platform.
Andrew McCormack: entrepreneur
Position at PayPal: assistant to Thiel from July 2001 to November 2002
Companies later founded: Valar Ventures
Andrew McCormack began his career as an assistant to Peter Thiel at PayPal and followed him into subsequent ventures. From November 2002 to April 2003, he oversaw operations at Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital.
In 2010, McCormack co-founded Valar Ventures with Thiel and James Fitzgerald, focusing on fintech investments. He remains a general partner at the firm.
Luke Nosek: investor
Position at PayPal: co-founder and vice president of marketing and strategy from 1998 to 2002
Companies later founded: Founders Fund, Gigafund
In 2005, Luke Nosek joined Peter Thiel and Ken Howery to launch Founders Fund, a San Francisco–based venture capital firm that has backed companies such as Airbnb, Lyft and SpaceX. While his exact net worth is unclear, Nosek has made substantial investments through his venture firms. At Founders Fund, he led one of the firm’s earliest major deals with a $20 million investment in SpaceX, later serving on its board.
In 2017, Nosek left to co-found Gigafund, which went on to invest $1 billion in SpaceX, according to the company. He also sits on the board of ResearchGate.
Premal Shah: entrepreneur
Position at Paypal: product manager
Companies later founded: Kiva
Three years after leaving PayPal, Premal Shah co-founded Kiva, a nonprofit that provides loans to entrepreneurs in underserved communities worldwide. He also serves on the boards of other nonprofits, including the Center for Humane Technology, the Change.org Foundation, Watsi and VolunteerMatch.
Keith Rabois: investor
Position at PayPal: executive vice president of business development
After leaving his executive role at PayPal, Keith Rabois became an active investor, backing companies including Slide, YouTube and Palantir. He also invested in LinkedIn, where he served as vice president of business and corporate development, and Square, where he was chief operating officer.
Rabois joined venture capital firm Khosla Ventures from 2013 to 2019 and was a partner at Founders Fund from 2019 to 2024.
Elon Musk says his company xAI is planning an alternative to Wikipedia. He first mentioned the so-called “Grokipedia” after Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who has been critical of the platform he helped to build, joined former Fox News host and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on his podcast.
“We are building Grokipedia @xAI,” Musk posted Tuesday on social media platform X. “Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia. Frankly, it is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
Carlson posted his podcast episode with Sanger to X on Monday. During the over 90-minute conversation, Sanger inflamed the far right by sharing sources that Wikipedia has flagged for attribution, as well as sources that have been “fully greenlit.”
“The blacklisted sources are Breitbart, Daily Caller, Epoch Times, Fox News, New York Post, The Federalist, so you can’t use those as sources on Wikipedia,” Sanger told Carlson.
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The problem with this, as The Daily Beast noted, is that only Breitbart is officially blacklisted, whereas the others are considered either “generally unreliable” or “deprecated,” meaning they can be used for some citation purposes such as uncontroversial self-descriptions. Furthermore, Wikipedia considers Fox News’ reporting on politics and science to be “generally unreliable,” but categorizes its other reporting as “no consensus,” meaning it is marginally reliable. It’s also worth noting that Wikipedia also considers some left-leaning media companies such as the aforementioned Daily Beast and HuffPost Politics as only marginally reliable.
Even so, the episode set off a wave of conservative backlash on X. Musk’s PayPal mafia colleague and current Trump administration AI and crypto czar David Sacks called Wikipedia “hopelessly biased.” Social Capital founder and CEO Chamath Palihapitiya also chimed in on X, describing Wikipedia as a “massive psy-op.”
“I think Elon is unhappy that Wikipedia is not for sale,” Wikipedia’s other co-founder Jimmy Wales posted on X at the time. “I hope his campaign to defund us results in lots of donations from people who care about the truth. If Elon wanted to help, he’d be encouraging kind and thoughtful intellectual people he agrees with to engage.”
Musk didn’t share many details about what a so-called Grokipedia might entail. But he did call on X users to “join @xAI and help build Grokipedia, an open source knowledge repository that is vastly better than Wikipedia,” adding, “This will be available to the public with no limits on use.”
After Musk announced his intentions to launch his own version of Wikipedia, powered by his controversial chatbot, Grok, Sanger expressed his own reservations about the plan.
“Let’s hope it won’t be as biased as Grok itself,” he wrote on X.
Alphabet President Donald Trump $22 million as part of a settlement in a class action lawsuit brought against the company over the suspension of various YouTube accounts following the January 6 riot at the US capital, as first reported by the. The suit includes other plaintiffs whose YouTube channels were banned that will split an additional $2.5 million in settlement payouts.
Trump in 2021, alongside lawsuits against Twitter and Facebook over similar suspensions, claiming they infringed on his first amendment rights. Twitter, now known as X since its acquisition and rebrand by Elon Musk, paid President Trump roughly $10 million to settle that suit. Meta also with the president over his suspension from the platform for $25 million earlier this year.
This settlement comes shortly after Alphabet to the House Judiciary Committee lambasting government pressure to moderate content on its platforms. The company also shared that YouTube would be offering a path to reinstatement for accounts previously banned for COVID-19 or election integrity related misinformation.
The settlement from Alphabet will be paid to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, and will be earmarked for construction of the that President Trump is building at The White House. The monies from the Meta settlement were similarly earmarked.
This summer Paramount, parent company of CBS, brought by the president over claims that the network intended to “confuse, deceive and mislead the public” by editing an interview with Kamala Harris. The media company paid $16 million to settle the president’s suit. Three weeks later the the $8 billion acquisition of Paramount by Skydance.
OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor has held many notable titles in tech. Katelyn Tucker/ Slava Blazer Photography
A.I. agents are the next big platform shift in tech, on par with the dawn of the internet 30 years ago and the rise of mobile apps a decade ago, according to OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor, who also runs his own A.I. startup, Sierra. Speaking at the Skift Global Forum in New York City yesterday (Sept. 18), the tech executive argued that enterprises are now racing to adopt A.I. agents much like they once scrambled to build websites or launch mobile apps.
“I think this is an opportunity that, probably, the closest catalog would be the birth of the internet,” Taylor said during an onstage interview.
Taylor has seen several waves of disruption firsthand. At Google in the early 2000s, he helped launch Google Maps. He went on to serve as chief technology officer at Facebook (now Meta), co-CEO of Salesforce, and chair of Twitter’s board during Elon Musk’s tumultuous takeover. In 2023, he was tapped as chairman of OpenAI’s board after the ChatGPT-maker briefly ousted and reinstated CEO Sam Altman.
Now, his focus is on Sierra, the conversational A.I. startup he co-founded two years ago with former Google colleague Clay Bavor. The company has quickly become a “decacorn,” hitting a $10 billion valuation earlier this month after raising $350 million from Greenoaks Capital. Sierra already counts hundreds of enterprise customers across financial services, health care and retail. A fifth of Sierra’s customers have annual revenue over $10 billion.
Taylor insists that A.I. agents are more than just cost-cutting tools. Increasingly, they’re revenue drivers. Sierra’s platform is helping companies sell mortgages, make outbound sales calls and even manage payroll for small businesses. “These agents are not only doing services, but also doing sales,” he said.
And the form factor is evolving. While chatbots dominate today’s landscape, Taylor believes voice-enabled A.I. is “as, or more important, of a channel than chat.” Multi-modal agents are also emerging. For instance, retailers are beginning to process warranty claims by analyzing photos of damaged products.
Just as the internet gave rise to search engines and aggregation platforms, Taylor expects agentic A.I. to spawn entirely new business categories. The challenge will be ensuring that they meet consumer expectations as their desires inevitably evolve with the technology’s development. “Consumers are moving faster than most companies can make decisions,” Taylor warned, noting that ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app in history. “It’s on all of us leaders to push decisively towards this new world.”
Now, this error has been there for a while, and there is not a lot of information about what causes it or how to fix it.
When the data saver mode is activated, it can stop you from posting media files that are of high quality or larger in terms of file size.
Furthermore, you can also check your Data Saver settings, along with the format of the media you are trying to upload.
If you post frequently on X, formerly known as Twitter, then you must have encountered an error where your media file was unable to upload. Now, this error has been there for a while, and there is not a lot of information about what causes it or how to fix it. After testing multiple methods to resolve, we have found four working solutions. In this article, let’s see how you can fix issues related to uploading media files on X or Twitter.
Why Can’t You Upload Images on X
Now, if you are facing errors multiple times while uploading your photos or videos, then there might be some issues in your media files. There are certain limitations around the videos and images you can upload to X/Twitter. You can learn about all those limitations here. Furthermore, you can also check your Data Saver settings, along with the format of the media you are trying to upload. Now, it can also be just bad internet coverage around you, so leave no stone unturned.
Method 1: Check Your Data Usage Settings
The issue might be related to your data usage settings for the app. When the data saver mode is activated, it can stop you from posting media files that are of high quality or larger in terms of file size. So, to check this, follow the steps mentioned below.
1. Tap on the profile icon on the top left of your device.
2. From there, tap on Settings and privacy.
3. Scroll down and tap on Accessibility, display, and languages.
4. Finally, tap on Data usage and toggle off the Data saver option.
5. Also, to enable high-quality media uploads, tap on High-quality image uploads and then select Mobile data or wi-fi.
Method 2: Turn off System-wide Data Saver mode
The above-discussed error can also occur if you have enabled a system-wide Data Saver mode. Here is how you can fix it.
1. Head over to settings and from there tap on Mobile network.
2. From there, click on Data usage, and then on Data savings.
3. Toggle off the Data saving option, and your error will be fixed.
For iPhones, go to Settings > Mobile Service > Low Data Mode and toggle it off.
Method 3: Try converting the Format of your media file
As we learned earlier, X/Twitter supports specific image and video formats. Furthermore, if you have your media files in any other format that is not supported by X/Twitter, then you can simply change the format of that file. You can use Iloveimg for images, and for videos, you can use Cloudconvert.
Sometimes the best thing you can do to fix things is to log out of your X account. Here are the steps to do so.
1. Click on the Profile icon, then on Settings and privacy.
2. Then tap on Your account.
3. Finally, tap on Account information and then tap on Log out.
4. Once you are logged off, you can log back in using your credentials.
FAQs
Q. Why are videos not playing on my X account?
This can be caused by multiple reasons. First, check the internet connectivity of your device. Then, clear out the cache of the application.
Q. How can I convert my MP4 files from one format to another?
You can use Cloudconverter, which is a great tool to convert your MP4 files from one format to another.
Wrapping Up
In this article, we have discussed multiple fixes for images and videos not uploading on X/Twitter. All the methods that we have discussed in this article have been tested. These methods do not require any third-party application. You can share this article with your friends who are facing the same issue.
You may also like to read:
Have any questions related to our how-to guides, or anything in the world of technology? Check out our new GadgetsToUse AI Chatbotfor free, powered by ChatGPT.
Early in the Dallas Cowboys’ win over the New York Giants, it seemed like the best part was that it was a noon game and that other, hopefully better, games would follow later in the day. But boy, did things escalate…
Another TikTok video Degeling shared with WIRED showed a slow-motion, close-up angle of the bullet hitting Kirk’s neck. The tone of the video was conspiratorial: The user who uploaded it added spooky music and a digitally narrated voice, asking, “What is the black thing on his shirt and why did it move like this before he got shot?” As of Thursday morning, the video was still online. It had been up for eight hours and had more than 900 comments (with many saying the “black thing” was a microphone).
As of Thursday morning, on Instagram, a search for “Charlie Kirk shot” surfaced a close-up video of the incident as the first result. The video autoplays as a thumbnail, without warning. At the time of writing, the video had 15.3 million views.
Not only are the Kirk shooting videos spreading rapidly, but some are in clear violation of the platforms’ social media policies. For example, TikTok’s terms of use state that the company does not allow “gory, gruesome, disturbing, or extremely violent content.”
On other platforms, the Kirk video falls into a gray area. Meta’s overarching policy is to age-restrict certain content, require warning labels, and remove some graphic depictions of violence.
A spokesperson for Meta said that, per the company’s Violent and Graphic Content policies, it’s applying a “Mark as Sensitive” warning label to footage of the Kirk shooting, and are age-gating it to users 18 and older. The spokesperson also said that the company has 15,000 people reviewing content for Meta—though it did not say whether these are employees or contractors—and that it does not allow videos that glorify, represent, or support the incident or perpetrator.
Meta also states in its online Transparency Center that it does not allow content of “terrorist attacks, hate events, multiple-victim violence or attempted multiple-victim violence, serial murders, or hate crimes perpetrator-generated content relating to such attacks; or third-party imagery depicting the moment of such attacks on visible victims.” Still, the widely circulated footage of Kirk being shot, for now, is allowable. It will get a warning label and be age-gated, but not removed from Meta platforms unless determined to be in clear violation of the “glorified content” policy.
X tells users that they “may share graphic media if it is properly labeled, not prominently displayed and is not excessively gory or depicting sexual violence.” The platform notes that content that is “explicitly threatening, inciting, glorifying, or expressing desire for violence” is not allowed.
Mahadevan, from the Poynter Institute, says that he saw the Kirk shooting video without his consent multiple times on X on Wednesday, likening it to a version of “4Chan turned into a mainstream social media platform.” (He also says he opened up Facebook on Thursday morning and immediately saw a video of Kirk being shot.)
X did not reply to requests for comment or questions about whether the Kirk video was considered “excessively gory” by X’s standards.
But X appears to have another content moderation problem: A few hours after Kirk was pronounced dead, the AI chatbot Grok, which runs on X, insisted that Kirk was “fine and active as ever.” X did not reply to further questions from WIRED about Grok’s misinformation about the Kirk shooting.
TikTok did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. Bluesky has said it’s suspending accounts that encourage violence and taking down close-up videos of the event.
For now, the videos of Charlie Kirk’s shooting continue to spread online.
“This is all psychologically damaging to our society in ways we don’t understand yet,” Mahadevan said. “We’re seeing posts on X of people saying, ‘Congratulations, you’ve radicalized me.’ And part of that is because they’re seeing the video of Kirk being killed. They’re not just reading about it. They’re actually seeing it.”
Hugo Larochelle assumed his new role as head of Mila on Sept. 2. BENEDICTE BROCARD
Hugo Larochelle first caught the A.I. research bug after interning in the lab of Yoshua Bengio, a pioneering A.I. academic, during his undergraduate studies at the University of Montreal. Decades later, Larochelle is now succeeding his former mentor as the scientific director of Quebec’s Mila A.I. Institute, an organization known in the A.I. field for its deep learning research.
“My first mission is to maintain the caliber of our research and make sure we continue being a leading research institute,” Larochelle, who began his new role yesterday (Sept. 2), told Observer.
Larochelle will oversee some 1,500 machine learning researchers at Mila, which Bengio founded in 1993 as a small research lab. Today, the institute is a cornerstone of Canada’s national A.I. strategy alongside two other research hubs in Ontario and Alberta.
Larochelle “has the rigor, creativity and vision needed to meet Mila’s scientific ambitions and accompany its growth,” said Bengio, who left the institute to focus on a new A.I. safety venture he launched in June, in a statement. “Our collaboration goes back more than 20 years, and I am delighted to see it continue in a new form.”
After his early work with Bengio, Larochelle completed a postdoctoral fellowship under Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Montreal. Bengio, Hinton and Yann LeCun went on to win the 2018 Turing Award for their contributions to neural networks—a field once overlooked but now central to the A.I. revolution.
Larochelle’s own career reflects that shift. His first paper was rejected for relying on neural networks, but as their applications became clear, the field’s importance skyrocketed. “We felt like we were at the center of what’s important in the field, and that was exhilarating,” said the Larochelle.
He went on to co-found Whetlab, a machine learning startup later acquired by Twitter (now X), before leading A.I. research at Google’s Montreal office in 2016. While most of his eight years at Google were highly productive, Larochelle noted that growing competition and a stronger focus on consumer products made publishing more difficult—a key factor in his decision to leave for Mila. “My passion was really scientific discovery, and simultaneously, I heard that Yoshua was going to find a successor,” he said.
In his new role, Larochelle wants to build on Montreal’s tradition of scientific discovery. “I want to set the condition that we make the next one in the next five years, and that’s really the foundation of everything else we do,” he said. He also highlighted interests in advancing A.I. literacy, developing tools for biodiversity and accelerating scientific research.
More broadly, Larochelle hopes to ensure that innovation moves faster—both across the industry and within Mila. “There’s definitely an interest in also making sure that our researchers, who might be interested in taking their own research and doing a startup based on what they’ve discovered, are well equipped in doing that,” he said.
Minutes after the perpetrator of the shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis last week was identified, YouTube appeared to delete several videos they had shared that morning.
But not before the videos were downloaded and reshared in full on X.
Within hours, the platform was flooded with wild claims about the shooter and her motivation, with everyone from Elon Musk, the site’s owner, to the head of the FBI and left-wing activists posting half-baked allegations blaming anti-Christian hate, transgender genocide, and white supremacy. Many of the posts racked up millions of views per X’s public metrics.
While other social media platforms were also used to share unfounded claims about the shooter’s motivations, X, under Musk, has become the perfect platform to supercharge the spread of dangerous disinformation during breaking news events. The entire team tasked with tackling disinformation on the platform was first culled years ago, and now X’s biggest users claim they are incentivized by the platform to share out-of-context clickbait content over verified facts.
“X’s feed algorithm is fully designed to maximize engagement, even negative engagement,” says Laura Edelson, an assistant professor in the computer sciences college at Northeastern University who specializes in tracking disinformation online. “In these conditions, conspiratorial, extreme content tends to perform very well. And when you couple that with the fact that with X’s significantly weakened content rules, this is exactly what we would expect to result.”
X did not respond to WIRED‘s request for comment.
An 11-minute video from the shooter, which was shared by dozens of X accounts in the minutes after their identity was revealed, includes a wide array of guns and ammunition. The weapons were adorned with over 120 symbols, words, and phrases that reference dozens of hateful ideologies, mass shooters, memes, and coded language used by the nihilistic online communities the shooter was a member of.
As extremism researchers warned people against jumping to quick conclusions given the huge swathe of digital, written, and video content that needed to be analyzed, X users took very little notice.
The same day, screenshots from the video were used by everyone from elected lawmakers and senior government officials to law enforcement personnel, activists, podcasters, and conspiracy theorists on X to push particular narratives about what was to blame for the latest mass shooting.
In one of the primary narratives erroneously pushed immediately after the shooting, conservative influencers and politicians claimed that the perpetrator’s gender identity was at fault. Information about the shooter, who identified as transgender and changed her name to Robin Westman when she was 17 years old, spread like wildfire on X, pushed by a huge list of right-wing figures, including Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson, and Musk himself. X’s own AI-powered chatbot Grok refuted the idea that transgender people disproportionately carry out mass shootings.
Many X users, like right-wing commentator Nick Sortor, claimed the attack was motivated by hatred of God, citing “all the anti-Christian and and anti-God writings” on the shooter’s guns. FBI director Kash Patel seemed to boost these claims by posting that the shooting was being investigated as a “hate crime targeting Catholics.” Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer alleged that the shooter was “radicalized by leftism and Islam.” Others cited anti-Israel phrases written on the weapons as proof the shooting was antisemitic.
