Top Chinese research institutions linked to the People's Liberation Army have used Meta's publicly available Llama model to develop an AI tool for potential military applications, according to academic papers and analysts.
In a June paper reviewed by Reuters, six Chinese researchers from three institutions, including two under the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) leading research body, the Academy of Military Science (AMS), detailed how they had used an early version of Meta's Llama as a base for what it calls "ChatBIT".
The researchers used the Llama 2 13B large language model (LLM) that Meta released in February 2023, incorporating their own parameters to construct a military-focused AI tool to gather and process intelligence, and offer accurate and reliable information for operational decision-making.
ChatBIT was fine-tuned and "optimised for dialogue and question-answering tasks in the military field", the paper said. It was found to outperform some other AI models that were roughly 90% as capable as OpenAI's powerful ChatGPT-4. The researchers didn't elaborate on how they defined performance or specify whether the AI model had been put into service.
"It's the first time there has been substantial evidence that PLA military experts in China have been systematically researching and trying to leverage the power of open-source LLMs, especially those of Meta, for military purposes," said Sunny Cheung, associate fellow at the Jamestown Foundation who specialises in China's emerging and dual use technologies including AI.
Meta has embraced the open release of many of its AI models, including Llama. It imposes restrictions on their use, including a requirement that services with more than 700 million users seek a license from the company.
Its terms also prohibit use of the models for "military, warfare, nuclear industries or applications, espionage" and other activities subject to U.S. defence export controls, as well as for the development of weapons and content intended to "incite and promote violence".
However, because Meta's models are public, the company has limited ways of enforcing those provisions.
In response to Reuters questions, Meta cited its acceptable use policy and said it took measures to prevent misuse.
"Any use of our models by the People's Liberation Army is unauthorized and contrary to our acceptable use policy," Molly Montgomery, Meta's director of public policy, told Reuters in a phone interview.
The Chinese researchers include Geng Guotong and Li Weiwei with the AMS's Military Science Information Research Center and the National Innovation Institute of Defense Technology, as well as researchers from the Beijing Institute of Technology and Minzu University.
"In the future, through technological refinement, ChatBIT will not only be applied to intelligence analysis, but also ... strategic planning, simulation training and command decision-making will be explored," the paper said.
China's Defence Ministry didn't reply to a request for comment, nor did any of the institutions or researchers.
Reuters could not confirm ChatBIT's capabilities and computing power, though the researchers noted that its model incorporated only 100,000 military dialogue records, a relatively small number compared with other LLMs.
"That's a drop in the ocean compared to most of these models (that) are trained with trillions of tokens so ... it really makes me question what do they actually achieve here in terms of different capabilities," said Joelle Pineau, a vice president of AI Research at Meta and a professor of computer science at McGill University in Canada.
The research comes amid a heated debate in U.S. national security and technology circles about whether firms such as Meta should make their models publicly available.
U.S. President Joe Biden in October 2023 signed an executive order seeking to manage AI developments, noting that although there can be substantial benefits to innovation," there were also "substantial security risks, such as the removal of safeguards within the model".
This week, Washington said it was finalising rules to curb U.S. investment in artificial intelligence and other technology sectors in China that could threaten national security.
Pentagon spokesman John Supple said the Department of Defense recognised that open-source models had both benefits and drawbacks, and that "we will continue to closely monitor and assess competitors' capabilities".
'COOKIE JAR'
Some observers say China's strides in developing indigenous AI, including setting up scores of research labs, have already made it difficult to keep the country from narrowing the technology gap with the United States.
In a separate academic paper reviewed by Reuters, two researchers with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) - which the United States has designated a firm with ties to the PLA - described using Llama 2 for "the training of airborne electronic warfare interference strategies".
China's use of Western-developed AI has also extended into domestic security. A June paper described how Llama had been used for "intelligence policing" to process large amounts of data and enhance police decision-making.
The state-run PLA Daily published commentary in April on how AI could help "accelerate the research and development of weapons and equipment", help develop combat simulation and improve military training efficiency".
"Can you keep them (China) out of the cookie jar? No, I don't see how you can," William Hannas, lead analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), told Reuters. A 2023 paper by CSET found 370 Chinese institutions whose researchers had published papers related to General Artificial Intelligence - helping drive China's national strategy to lead the world in AI by 2030.
"There is too much collaboration going on between China's best scientists and the U.S.' best AI scientists for them to be excluded from developments," Hannas added.
One of this year’s most anticipated events—the U.S. presidential election—is approaching rapidly. With Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump locked in a close race, Polymarket, the Web3 prediction market platform, is experiencing a surge in activity like never before.
In October, the platform registered a record trading volume of $2.4 billion. This reflects not only such (literally) high-stakes event as the U.S. election, but also Polymarket’s own rising popularity.
Indeed, compared to the 2020 election, Polymarket’s trading volume has grown by a factor of 47. The number of monthly active traders skyrocketed from slightly over 2,000 four years ago to over 214,000 now (source: Dune Analytics).
Polymarket is one of the notable real-world applications of blockchain technology. Its decentralized nature allows for cost-effective, accessible, and 24/7 trading.
Its primary user base comes from the crypto community, a trend underscored by a notable skew toward pro-Trump bets. While official polls suggest a close race, 65% of Polymarket wagers currently back the Republican nominee, reflecting the community sentiment. Yet, the platform is also gaining traction beyond the crypto crowd, surfing on the election betting fever.
This surge in interest is a good thing for overall crypto adoption, but Polymarket’s success isn’t without controversy, including wash trading allegations and an ambiguous legal standing in the U.S.
How Polymarket works
Polymarket is a Web3 platform allowing users to buy and sell shares in probabilities of real-world events, from elections to sports outcomes. It's built on Polygon, an Ethereum layer-2 allowing faster and cheaper transactions. Its smart contracts automate transaction execution, ensuring transparency and security.
Unlike traditional betting platforms, Polymarket doesn’t act as the “house” or take opposing sides, thus canceling the risks of potentially unfair usage of the house knowledge. It is a purely peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace where prices are determined by supply and demand. Prices on the platform reflect collective probabilities, shifting as users buy and sell shares, much like a stock market. All trades are denominated in USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar.
Since users maintain control of their funds through self-custodial wallets, Polymarket does not access users’ private funds.
Being decentralized, it's globally accessible, with the exception of the U.S. After a $1.4 million fine from the country’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for offering event-based contracts, the platform reduced its services in the U.S. while expanding globally.
Controversies around Polymarket
A recent Fortune article brought attention to controversies surrounding Polymarket. Analysts from blockchain firms Chaos Labs and Inca Digital reported signs of wash trading on the platform. Wash trading is a form of market manipulation where shares are bought and sold repeatedly to inflate the platform’s volume. Such practices are generally banned in traditional finance as they can create misleading signals about actual demand. According to the analysts, up to a third of Polymarket’s volume was artificially boosted.
The company’s representatives responded by pointing out the transparency of their platform – which allowed the researchers to detect such patterns. Some speculate that such activity could be linked to "airdrop farming," where users engage in high-frequency trades to qualify for potential token giveaways. Since Polymarket charges no transaction fees (only small amounts paid to liquidity providers), the platform’s structure may encourage this practice.
Though Polymarket has yet to issue its own token, speculations around its possible launch remain. Issuing a token could be a way for the platform to boost its activity, attract new users, and reward the existing ones.
Polymarket also previously faced scrutiny over a "whale" trader who reportedly boosted Donald Trump’s odds on the platform. However, these trades could also be strategic rather than an attempt to influence market sentiment.
Amid these controversies, Polymarket has drawn interest beyond the crypto community. Coverage in mainstream media outlets such as Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Vox, and Fortune is raising awareness and attracting new users, with many opening crypto wallets to join. The election betting fever helps drive broader crypto adoption, exposing non-crypto audiences to Web3 applications that are straightforward and relevant to everyday interests.
One major unresolved issue is Polymarket’s compliance in the U.S. Despite appointing a former CFTC head J. Christopher Giancarlo on its advisory board in 2022, the platform remains restricted in the U.S. With both Trump and Harris signaling support for a more favorable regulatory environment for crypto, Polymarket could hope for an eventual approval in this key jurisdiction.
LOS ANGELES—As police across California crack down on illegal street racing, takeovers, and sideshows, technology companies are marketing new surveillance tools to meet the demand—prompting questions about the implications for privacy rights and Fourth Amendment protections.
In the Bay Area and Los Angeles, where incidents have become increasingly brazen and violent in recent years, often drawing hundreds of attendees and overwhelming police, agencies already rely on planes, drones, and automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras as they aim to reduce the risk to first responders.
And they’ve begun to see results.
On Oct. 25 in the Bay Area, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) reported the seizure of 16 vehicles that had been involved in two separate takeovers a month prior. Officers couldn’t reach the center of the sideshow before it moved to another location, but they collected video evidence from cameras placed around the Bay Bridge. That led investigators to a list of vehicles, allowing them to request seizures orders from a judge.
Armed with these technologies, CHP officers sent to Oakland to crack down on illegal sideshows and rising violent and retail crime have seized more than 2,000 stolen vehicles since February.
And a controversial surveillance system used by police to detect gunshots and fireworks is now being remarketed as a tool to listen for the sounds of illegal street racing, takeovers and sideshows—like screeching tires—according to an Oct. 23 announcement from Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that leases surveillance systems to thousands of law enforcement agencies across the United States.
Audio detection offers an additional angle that can be integrated with existing camera networks and analytics, which Flock said in its announcement will provide a “deeper layer of insight, enabling [police] to track repeat offenders and analyze patterns linked to sideshows.”
When the cameras mounted at intersections are used in conjunction with audio detectors, the analytics system generates a report that lists vehicles, ranked by frequency, near confirmed shootings, fireworks, sideshows or takeovers, according to the company.
The selling point is that the AI-powered system identifies patterns nearly instantly that would typically take hours or days for humans.
The newly reconfigured technology raises old questions about the balance between privacy and public safety, which civil rights groups have already been litigating—in the courts and in the public sphere—for years.
For critics, the deployment of such technologies is part of a long march, a stealth encroachment on constitutional rights that has accelerated in the years since 9/11.
“Some of these are mass surveillance technologies that shouldn’t be permitted to operate in a democratic society,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Epoch Times. “We don’t watch everybody all the time, just in case somebody does something wrong somewhere.”
Technologies like Flock’s cameras and audio detection devices, mounted at public intersections throughout the country in an increasingly dense network, raise questions about the “boundary between what can be done in today’s technology and what should be done,” Stanley said.
According to a February 2020 report by the state auditor, nearly all of California’s law enforcement agencies already use surveillance cameras that automatically read and report license plate data along with other details of the vehicle, time, and location.
These typically use infrared cameras to read license numbers and feed them into databases, but some cameras, like Flock’s, can capture more than license plates—things like car color and make, as well as small identifying details.
According to Flock’s website, police departments in New York, California, Illinois, Texas, and Louisiana are among those already using the company’s Raven system for gunshot detection, which the company claims is 90 percent accurate in identifying gunshots.
Accuracy Claims
Various reports have called such claims into question—including a May annual review by the City of San Jose, which initially found around half of alerts were confirmed to be gunshots, with around a third being false positives. After some adjustments to the system, the confirmed number went up to nearly 80 percent.
Critics argue the tendency of acoustic gunshot detection toward false positives can put people at risk, for example by sending police to a location expecting gunfire where there are innocent people. Such technologies can also record human voices, which law enforcement agencies have used in court.
“As is so often the case with police surveillance technologies, a device initially deployed for one purpose (here, to detect gunshots) has been expanded to another purpose (to spy on conversations with sensitive microphones),” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on the intersection of civil rights and digital technology.
Some cities have canceled contracts with Flock or similar providers after analysis revealed disappointing results.
A 2021 investigation of Flock competitor ShotSpotter found the acoustic gunshot detection system generated more than 40,000 dead-end deployments in Chicago in less than two years, with the vast majority of alerts turning up no evidence of gunfire or related crime.
The Champaign Police Department in Illinois last year opted not to renew its contract with Flock after results fell short of marketing claims. Data obtained by local journalists showed 59 out of 64 alerts were “unfounded,” with 21 of those likely caused by fireworks.
“To date, the system has not yet lived up to performance expectations, including misidentifying some sounds—such as fireworks or a vehicle backfire—as possible gunfire,” a police official told CU Citizen Access.
Flock did not offer an estimate of accuracy in its announcement of the Raven systems repurposed to listen for vehicular chaos, nor did it respond to an inquiry about how many communities use Raven to detect the sounds of street takeovers. But other media have reported at least two Bay Area law enforcement agencies are already using it.
Cameras that read license plates and microphones that listen for gunshots have been around for decades, but in recent years, California municipalities have expanded their surveillance networks—and rapidly developing AI-powered technology is adding an unprecedented accelerant.
On Oct. 22, the San Diego Sheriff’s Department announced plans to install 60 additional cameras in unincorporated areas, adding to five cities that have already used them with “significant investigative success,” including solving homicides, kidnappings, vehicle theft, burglaries, and assaults.
Nodding to privacy and data security concerns, the Department said it has implemented “strict protocols,” including adherence to Senate Bill 34, state legislation from 2015 that regulates how data is used, stored, and shared, and requires regular audits to ensure compliance. San Diego keeps ALPR data for a maximum of one year unless it is being used in ongoing investigations.
Earlier this year, San Francisco installed 400 ALPR cameras, and Oakland, in partnership with the California Highway Patrol, installed 480 Flock cameras that read license plates and other identifying details.
“When we’re talking about car break-ins and car theft ... when we’re talking about sideshows and some of the other issues that have happened in our city, automatic license plate readers can play an invaluable role in helping us to track some of the perpetrators of these crimes and hold them accountable,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said at the time.
In some California cities, police can now also access private security camera networks if neighbors grant them permission.
For example, Sacramento currently has 809 cameras registered in a program that allows people to register their cameras with the police department, which lets investigators know where the camera is and request video evidence in case of an incident. Businesses and residents can also choose to “integrate” their cameras, giving the police department direct, live access to the feed.
And “real-time crime centers” in major cities across the United States already combine these modalities. Last month, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department opened its first center in Agoura Hills, and LAPD plans to open multiple in the coming months.
These centers can tap into license plate readers and existing cameras at intersections, as well as footage from private cameras if businesses or residents allow it.
Citing low staffing levels and rising crime—including 50 car burglaries across the course of a single weekend in one L.A. City Council District—an LAPD report to the Board of Police Commissioners cited “an acute need to explore new measures, like the use of technology, to mitigate these impacts and improve the department’s response to crime.”
Privacy Regulations
In an April memo, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said the “crime-fighting cameras” installed at Oakland intersections would protect privacy by limiting data storage to 28 days and not disclosing footage to third parties beyond other law enforcement agencies, while complying with recent bulletins from the California Attorney General’s office outlining state law that governs data collection, storage and use, including SB 34.
Police can use ALPRs to match license plates with those on a “hot list” of known offenders. But even if they don’t match, the data is still stored in a database, prompting questions about how it is protected and used.
The ACLU raised this issue in a 2013 report titled “You Are Being Tracked,” noting that the readers “would pose few civil liberties risks if they only checked plates against hot lists and these hot lists were implemented soundly.” But the networked systems store the compiled data, not just license plates of vehicles that generate hits.
The “enormous databases” of motorists’ location information that are created as a result, and often pooled among regional systems, are often retained permanently and shared with little to no restriction, the report argued.
The 2020 state auditor report found that while most California law enforcement agencies use the technology, “few have appropriate usage and privacy policies in place.”
The report looked at four agencies—the Fresno and Los Angeles police departments, and the Sacramento and Marin County sheriff’s offices. All of them accumulated a large number of images in their ALPR systems, but most of those did not relate to criminal investigations.
For example, 99.9 percent of the 320 million images Los Angeles stored at the time were for vehicles that were not on a hot list when the photo was taken.
And according to a Sacramento grand jury investigation, a vast ALPR system deployed by the county’s sheriffs department and city’s police departments couldn’t distinguish between cars used for criminal activities and those operated legally.
“And we subsequently learned that both the Sheriff’s Office and Sacramento Police Department have been lax in following state law regarding how ALPR data is shared with other law enforcement entities,” the report said.
In fact, the investigation found that those departments regularly shared license plate data out of state, which is prohibited by SB 34.
In an emailed statement, the California attorney general’s office told The Epoch Times such technological tools “are helpful in deterring and investigating crime, serving both to prevent wrongdoing and ensure accountability for those who violate the law,” but that they must be used with “the utmost respect for ethical and legal standards.”
The attorney general’s office said that recently it has been working with local agencies “to ensure that they are using ALPR systems for their intended use.”
4th Amendment Concerns
A federal lawsuit filed Oct. 21 against the use of Flock’s surveillance network in Norfolk, Virginia, alleges the city is violating Fourth Amendment rights by tracking “the whole of a person’s public movements,” thus amounting to a search.
The City of Norfolk gathers information about “everyone who drives past any of its 172 cameras to facilitate investigating crimes,“ and in doing so, ”violates the long-standing societal expectation that people’s movements and associations over an extended period are their business alone,” the complaint states.
With all of this done without a warrant, the complaint continues, “This is exactly the type of ‘too permeating police surveillance’ the Fourth Amendment was adopted to prevent.”
Flock released a statement to media countering that Fourth Amendment case law shows license plate readers don’t constitute a warrantless search because they photograph cars in public, where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, and case precedent in numerous states has upheld the use of evidence from ALPRs as constitutional without requiring a warrant.
Jay Stanley, the ACLU policy analyst, noted courts are still in the relatively early stages of grappling with these technologies.
“But courts have also made a number of rulings that sweeping surveillance technology is not consistent with the Fourth Amendment. ... I think that automatic license plate readers raise a lot of the same concerns that the Supreme Court addressed in some of the big privacy cases in recent years,” he said.
Among those are United States v. Jones, in which the government tracked someone’s vehicle with a GPS tracker without a warrant for 28 days, subsequently securing a conviction with the resulting data; the court held that such constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. Previously a lower court had ruled the data was admissible because the suspect had no reasonable expectation of privacy when his car was on public streets.
And in Carpenter v. United States, the court held that acquisition of a suspect’s cell-site records—historical location data from cell phone providers, obtained without a warrant—constituted a Fourth Amendment search.
“When you have enough license plate readers out there, it becomes tantamount to being tracked with a GPS. And so it raises the same issues that the court has already ruled on,” Stanley said.
He suggested that communities need time to digest these technologies and their potential consequences before adopting them at such speed and scale.
“Communities need to decide whether they want to allow the police departments that serve them to have the new powers these technologies convey and whether they’re even effective at reducing crime and ultimately making communities a better place—which is the whole point of law enforcement and government,” he said.
Washington, DC authorities are hardening security for potential social unrest after next week's presidential election. With four days remaining, workers have been busy boarding up government buildings and retail stores with plywood.
"Work crews have begun covering up the windows of buildings and stores near the White House as the election comes down to the final week," DC resident Andrew Leyden wrote on X.
Leyden posted a video on YouTube of himself riding around on a bike near the White House complex, showing the various buildings being boarded up.
In the video's description, he wrote, "When there is a threat of civil unrest, these landlords cover their windows, much like you do when a hurricane is coming."
"We do expect the Capitol complex to be much more hardened," DC Mayor Muriel Bowser said last week, who was quoted by Axios. She told residents to be "flexible" as demonstrations and detours emerge.
The ultra-hardening of security around and near the White House might be preparation for a possible Trump victory. With far-left corporate media outlets pushing 'Trump Nazi,' 'Trump Hitler,' and 'Trump fascist' rhetoric nonstop ahead of the election, this hate speech propaganda could certainly fuel leftist radicals to become violently unhinged if Trump wins next week.
A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey showed that most Americans are somewhat worried about social unrest after or during next Tuesday night's election results.
Ohio Rep. (D) Greg Landsman told Axios that even as September approached, security was "preparing in a way that is very different from what has happened in the past," adding, "I had never seen anything like it."
Amazon's push to offer more everyday essentials like toothpaste is hurting its average selling prices, but it is also a guard against rivals such as Temu and Shein who offer rock bottom prices on goods they ship from China.
People are shopping more frequently at Amazon, adding more low-priced items with each checkout, Amazon said on Thursday, after it reported third-quarter revenue and profit that beat Wall Street expectations.
The e-commerce giant has seen its market share erode in apparel as Shein and Temu quickly expanded in international markets with $12 dresses and $10 gadgets. But offering a variety of everyday products like dish detergent and floss is helping Amazon.
"The strength in everyday essentials revenue is a positive indicator that customers are turning to us for more of their daily needs," said Amazon's Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky. "We see that when customers purchase these types of items from us, they build bigger baskets, shop more frequently and spend more on Amazon."
In August, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said average selling prices were falling because customers were trading down to cheaper items and buying more essential goods, and that sales of bigger ticket items like computers and electronics were growing "more slowly" than in a robust economy.
John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds which owns Amazon shares, said that he is expecting more pressure on Amazon's selling prices in the fourth quarter because of the company's mix of products.
LOCAL WAREHOUSE STRONGHOLD
To offset the impact of lower average selling prices, Amazon is relying on its deep network of local warehouses that allows it to ship quickly.
It's "pretty easy to choose to supply" lower average selling price (ASP) merchandise, but much harder to be able to afford to supply them, Jassy said on Thursday.
"One of the reasons that we have been so maniacal about cost-to-serve over the last few years is that as we're able to take our cost-to-serve down, it just opens up the aperture for more items, particularly lower ASP items that we're able to supply in an economic way," he said.
Shein is trying to ramp up selling everyday products too.
Earlier this year, it began courting skincare and personal care brands such as Colgate-Palmolive to sell more household names on the platform. It launched a third party marketplace in 2023 to expand its product selection to include beauty and personal care products, household items and furniture.
But companies such as Shein would be less successful in expanding to day-to-day products, said Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson.
Shein and Temu have specialized in offering dresses, accessories and gadgets "that the consumer is less time-sensitive about," he said.
"They're not in the U.S., so they can't get me toothpaste quickly," Luria said, adding that any market for shipping essentials from China is likely to be a small one.
Amazon is also facing competition from rivals at home.
Walmart, the world's biggest supermarket chain, and smaller retailer Target have both slashed prices on essentials in a race to the bottom as they each try to woo inflation-wary shoppers.
Walmart, scheduled to report third-quarter results on Nov. 19, is expected to post a 4% rise in revenue, according to analysts polled by LSEG, a slightly slower pace of growth than in the second quarter.
Amazon on Thursday reported a 7% improvement in retail sales in the third quarter. In the second quarter, its retail sales had risen 5%.
The operating margin for Amazon's international business jumped to 3.6% in the third quarter from 0.9% in the second quarter. Its North America margin ticked up to 5.9% from 5.6% in the previous quarter.
The Washington Post — reeling from amass exodus of subscribersover its refusal to endorse Kamala Harris — “aggressively ramped up its paid advertising campaign” on social media platforms that boost stories critical of Donald Trump, according to a report.
Owner Jeff Bezos has faced backlash over his decision last week to kill the endorsement for the vice president, which has led to the resignations of several high-level staffers and a loss of more than 250,000 digital subscribers.
On Thursday, the news site Semafor reported that the publication had rolled out an ad blitz at the start of the week on social media sites such as Facebook that boosts its anti-Trump coverage.
The newspaper has been in turmoil in recent days over owner Jeff Bezos’ decision not to endorse a candidate.AP
The promoted stories centered around the former president’s campaign rhetoric, misstatements, supporters leaving his rallies early and Trump’s controversial comments about migrants in Ohio eating dogs, Semafor reported.
By contrast, the promoted stories about his Democratic challenger were neutral in tone and informative, Semafor found.
Before Monday, the newspaper had run around a dozen ads on Facebook for the month of October, mainly promoting the Washington Post brand and steering clear of any mention of Trump.
The New York Post reached out to the WaPo for comment.
A source close to the situation told the New York Post that the Washington Post’s promoted stories on social media reflect high-performing content.
The content of the advertising posts is directly pulled from the respective reporting, according to the source.
“This isn’t new,” the source insisted.
The Washington Post’s promoted posts span a mix of its content across all of its verticals, including climate, style and other sections, the source added.
The Beltway paper’s increase in paid ads this week could also be a reflection of Facebook parent company Meta’s policy that prohibits new ads during the week of the election, which is set for Tuesday.
The Washington Post is promoting ads on social media that promote stories critical of former President Donald Trump.REUTERS
A source said the Washington Post was likely getting some new ads up before the tech giant freezes new ad buys.
As of Thursday, at least 250,000 readers — or 10% — canceled their digital subscriptions to the Washington Post in apparent protest of Bezos’ move to end the paper’s decades-long practice of endorsing a presidential candidate, according to National Public Radio.
Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, published a guest essay Monday saying the decision to forgo endorsements was a matter of “principle” intended to dispel the notion that his newspaper was biased.
But the move elicited howls of protest from readers on social media as well as journalists who are either current or former employees of the Washington Post, such as award-winning Watergate sleuths Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, said blocking an endorsement was a matter of “principle.”Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
David Shipley, the newspaper’s opinion editor, listened as his colleagues blasted Bezos for harming the publication’s reputation as an “independent journalistic organization,” according to the Washington Free Beacon, which obtained audio of the meeting.
One staffer reportedly told Shipley that the “one thing that can’t happen in this country is for Trump to get another four years.”
Shipley responded by telling staffers that they were welcome to vent their frustration but that they would then need to either come to terms with Bezos’ decision and move on — or resign.
“Whatever you decide, I’m good with it,” Shipley said.
“What I really do want to impart is that you do not get stuck in the middle. Don’t be here if you don’t want to.”
Shipley told his colleagues that he spent an hour on the phone with Bezos in an effort to get him to change his mind and allow the editorial board to issue its endorsement of Harris — but the mogul refused to budge.
The Washington Post editorial board reportedly had an endorsement of Harris drafted and ready to be published.Getty Images
He said that while he agreed with the “principle that you do not have to do presidential endorsements,” he took issue with Bezos’ “timing, and the way in which the timing could be read.”
A similar dynamic has been playing out at the Los Angeles Times, where billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the editorial board from publishing an endorsement of Harris.
Soon-Shiong said he wanted the editorial board to present a side-by-side comparative analysis of the two candidates and their positions so that readers could decide for themselves whom to support.
At least three LA Times staffers quit in protest and between 10,000 and 18,000 readers canceled their subscriptions to the paper, according to reports.
