#Online expert support platform

[shubham987]

Online Reputation Company in India | ORM Audit Services

Build Brand Better is a top-rated Online Reputation Company in India, offering comprehensive and expert-led ORM Audit Services to help individuals, professionals, and businesses take full control of their digital presence. In today’s competitive landscape, a strong and clean online reputation is crucial for building trust, attracting customers, and maintaining credibility. At Build Brand Better, we conduct in-depth ORM audits to assess your brand’s online health by analyzing search engine results, social media mentions, review platforms, news coverage, and more. Our expert team identifies negative content, reputation risks, fake reviews, and visibility gaps that may harm your online image. Based on the audit insights, we craft customized reputation repair and management strategies that include content suppression, legal takedown support, review optimization, and positive content promotion. Whether you're a startup, public figure, executive, or growing business, Build Brand Better ensures your reputation is monitored, protected, and improved consistently.

[lifestepx]

LifeStepX helps you with Business and Side Hustle Support

Have a big idea? LifeStepX will help you launch it; not only that, it also helps you with Business and Side Hustle Support. From brainstorming and planning to execution, we offer expert guidance on building your business or side hustle, empowering you to create new income streams and live life on your terms.

[ninjaglobal]

Unlock the World's Freshest Fruits: Bangalore Importer Connects You Globally

Craving exotic fruits or sourcing the perfect seasonal picks? Look no further than Ninja Global Bangalore's leading fresh fruit importer! We bring the world's finest produce to your doorstep, ensuring exceptional quality and freshness.

Why Choose Us?

Global Reach: Access a vast network of trusted suppliers across the globe.

Seamless Logistics: We handle everything from sourcing to delivery, making import a breeze.

Quality Assurance: Rigorous quality checks guarantee the freshest, most delicious fruits.

Competitive Prices: Get the best value for your money without compromising on quality.

NINJA GLOBAL Advantage:

Elevate your import experience with NINJA GLOBAL, an international trade-enabling platform by Ninjacart.

Build Credibility: Establish trust with international buyers and sellers.

Streamline Trade: Simplify documentation, payments, and logistics.

Grow Your Business: Expand your reach and access new markets.

Ready to taste the world? Book a free consultation today and discover how we can help you import the freshest fruits with ease! Call us: +91 7618782596 Visit: https://ninja-global.com/

[mollyjimbly]

🚨🚨🚨RED ALERT🚨🚨🚨

if you care about trans folks please take a few minutes to read through this post and share.

They are not even trying to hide their true intentions with KOSA...

"Top of the agenda is to go after providers of gender affirming care, including for adults. The FTC could also go after online platforms for displaying LGBTQ content which would be supercharged under KOSA."

This is catastrophically bad.

There is a HUGE push to pass KOSA rn at the end of the year.

Real quick summary: Blumenthal and Blackburn "rewrote" KOSA to appeal to the right more. They worked with ELON MUSK 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️ to push this bill "protecting kids". Tomorrow, many orgs are bringing groups of parents to speak to congress. This is coming at a time when FTC commissioner admitted their agenda is straight transphobia:

There are two ways KOSA can be passed right now. Either from the House or attaching it to an end of year spending bill. They will try both.

Republican leadership (Scalise and Johnson) are surprisingly what is stopping thia from going through. They wont admit it out loud but they dont like the bill.

WE NEED TO PUSH BACK NOW!! Tomorrow those phones need to be ringing OFF THE HOOK while they meet with parents.

PLEASE SPREAD THIS EVERYWHERE!! ADD THESE LINKS TO TWITTER, REDDIT, INSTA, TIKTOK!!

USE THESE CALLING TOOLS AND SCRIPTS TODAY AND TOMORROW ALL DAY!!!

SCRIPTS:

🔴 If your rep is GOP:

"I am urging you to VOTE NO on KOSA, the Kid’s Online Safety Act. This is a dangerous bill that will harm children.

Many news organizations have reported that this bill actively harms kids by exposing their private data to strangers under the guise of protecting them.

We need to hold Big Tech accountable, but KOSA is not the solution.

The bill let any state attorney general and the FTC to sue any website for “harmful” content. Do we really want blue state lawyers deciding what can and can’t be allowed online?

Big Tech is already censoring us. That’s why they support KOSA. This is massive government overreach. We need a bill that actually protects children by creating better security measures instead of bringing about more censorship.

Multiple experts agree this bill pushes age verification, even with the new language.

KOSA hands more private data of children to third party companies, which would put them in further danger. How is this protecting children’s privacy?

What parent would want their child’s private data in the hands of strangers like this? KOSA is actively putting kids in danger.

Do NOT support this bill. Thank you."

Also,to note, Biden supports KOSA: You could try asking your GOP rep why they would support a bill that has Biden's support,and that he could use it to his advantage somehow (we know GOP does not like Biden,so it should be utilized somehow). We need to ensure the bill doesnt pass at all.

🔵 if your rep is DEM:

"I am urging you to VOTE NO on KOSA. Nearly 200 human rights and LGBT organizations total came out in an open letter opposing it. The ACLU is against it. Hundreds of thousands of Gen Z, who actually live online, are against it.

We know the harms of social media, and we know this is not the solution. The new language does NOT meet any concerns brought up, in fact many organizations were ignored.

Major news have reported that this bill actively harms kids. We do not want this. The rewritten bill would still allow any state attorney general, and now the FTC, to sue any website for “harmful” content. When you have Republicans calling anything LGBT “sexual exploitation” or anything about race “CRT” to successfully ban books and teachers, then they will use any justification to censor the internet.

The Missouri attorney general used “mental health” successfully to ban gender-affirming care with backed up research. Suicide rates will skyrocket for marginalized youth with this bill restricting content. Multiple experts agree this bill pushes age verification, even with the new language.

KOSA hands more private data of children to third party companies. Furthermore, updated language threatens encryption the same way the Earn It Act does.

How is this protecting children’s privacy? KOSA actively harms kids. Do NOT support this bill. Thank you."

Tell them you'll vote for your reps if they vote no on KOSA, anything goes. But most importantly it's crucial that KOSA is not being brought at all for any vote.

Thank you, remember to stay calm and stay strong. We've got this!! ♡

[mariacallous]

In her report, de la Fuente Suárez outlines a number of reasons why these conspiracy theories have flourished online, including the collapse in trust of mainstream media and public institutions, social media platforms abandoning fact-checking, and the rise in popularity of so-called “news influencers” like Peters. “It creates the sense that nothing can be trusted, that all we read, we see, we hear, on TV, on the news, it's part of this deception,” de la Fuente Suárez says. “But one of the things that concerns me the most is that within these frameworks, those that are harmed in these attacks are also dehumanized. They are depicted not as victims of attacks, but as these elements of a grand staged plan of deception, downplaying acts of violence and the suffering of the victims in it.”

De la Fuente Suárez says that antisemitism is also driving false-flag conspiracies to an unprecedented level.

Antisemitic posts were among the main drivers of the most recent spike in false-flag conspiracies on X. This began, she says, in response to the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers who were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, on May 21. Less than two weeks later, a man in Boulder, Colorado, allegedly used incendiary devices to attack participants in a march held to support Israeli hostages in Gaza.

“False Flag 100%,” a conspiracy-focused X account posted two days after the DC shooting. The post was accompanied by a video of the immediate aftermath of the shooting and has been viewed 3.6 million times to date.

In the aftermath of the Boulder attack, an X account that describes its author as an “anti-zionist Jew” posted an image of the suspected attacker with the caption: “This man is an Israeli agent who has just perpetrated a false flag event in Boulder Colorado.” The post has been viewed over 2.2 millions times.

“Antisemitism is at the center of these conspiracy claims, so they resonate more, and in these moments, it's just an easy response and one that is, in many cases, very difficult to debunk,” says de la Fuente Suárez.

Other experts see the rise in false-flag conspiracy theories as a reflection of the increasingly fractured political environment.

"The rise in false-flag conspiracy theories is closely tied to the political climate,” Pradeep Krishnan, an expert in conspiracy theory and communication at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, tells WIRED. “The Trump presidency has mainstreamed conspiracist rhetoric to mobilize political distrust and promote antiestablishment sentiment.”

Everything Is a ‘False Flag’ Now

[satoshi-mochida]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection launches February 27, 2025 - Gematsu

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection will launch for Switch and PC via Steam on February 27, 2025, Konami announced.

A physical edition will be available for Switch, which includes one of two Quarter Century Secret Rare “Harpie’s Feather Duster” cards.

Konami also revealed Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction will be included in the collection.

Here is an overview of the collection, via Konami:

About

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game and brings back iconic Yu-Gi-Oh! digital titles originally released between 1998 and 2004. The complete line-up of the iconic titles coming in the collection will be announced at a later date.

Included Titles Revealed So Far

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (1998 / Game Boy)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories (1999 / Game Boy, Game Boy Color)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories (2000 Japan, 2002 United States, 2003 Europe / Game Boy Color)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelist (2000 / Game Boy Color / Includes Online Battles Support)

Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters 6, Expert 2 (2001 / Game Boy Advance)

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul (2001 Japan, 2002 United States, 2003 Europe / Game Boy Advance)

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards (2002 Japan, 2003 United States, 2004 Europe / Game Boy Advance)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction (2003 Japan, 2004 United States and Europe / Game Boy Advance)

The collection will include a save / load feature—a feature not available at the time of their original release.​ There will also be support for online battles in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelist. After release, some titles will be updated to support online battles.

Iconic Yu-Gi-Oh! Digital Titles Optimized for Modern Play

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection packs quality-of-life improvements that elevate classic games for modern gaming platforms. Control button layout customization and background settings will also be supported.​

View a new set of screenshots at the gallery.

[qqueenofhades]

Russia is already spreading disinformation in advance of the 2024 election, using fake online accounts and bots to damage President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, according to former U.S. officials and cyber experts.  The dissemination of attacks on Biden is part of a continuing effort by Moscow to undercut American military aid to Ukraine and U.S. support for and solidarity with NATO, experts said. [....] The type of pro-Russia online propaganda campaigns that thrived on Twitter and Facebook ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election is now routine on every major social media platform, though it’s rare for individual accounts to go as viral now as they once did.

[taikeero-lecoredier]

HELP STOP KOSA,CALL YOUR HOUSE REPS

With the end of the year approaching, we are expecting KOSA to be slipped into an end of the year spending bill. We cannot allow it to pass. There has been push by parents to bring KOSA back, not aware how dangerous KOSA actually is for children online. It would make it mandatory for platforms online to enforce age verification via ID, and deeming any content "inappropriate" for kids to be banned.This could range from not safe for work content, to health ressources, to climate change. It'll be up to politicians to dictate what is and isn't proper for kids,and, of course, killing encryption. Imagine the damage. Please focus on the entire leadership of the House,as well as reps generally, telling them to not bring KOSA up. Speaker Johnson must also be contacted, whos number is: (202) 225-2777 Heres a list of House reps to contact: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IyBUe6frFGF44rJQU3TahZ5zyG3tC7jai_hPneAKlnM/edit?tab=t.0 Use the call tool to call the House : https://www.stopkosa.com/ https://www.badinternetbills.com/#kosa

Here are scripts you can use : if your rep is GOP : I am urging you to VOTE NO on KOSA, the Kid’s Online Safety Act. This is a dangerous bill that will harm children. Many news organizations have reported that this bill actively harms kids by exposing their private data to strangers under the guise of protecting them. We need to hold Big Tech accountable, but KOSA is not the solution. The bill let any state attorney general and the FTC to sue any website for “harmful” content. Do we really want blue state lawyers deciding what can and can’t be allowed online? Big Tech is already censoring us. That’s why they support KOSA. This is massive government overreach. We need a bill that actually protects children by creating better security measures instead of bringing about more censorship. Multiple experts agree this bill pushes age verification, even with the new language. KOSA hands more private data of children to third party companies, which would put them in further danger. How is this protecting children’s privacy? What parent would want their child’s private data in the hands of strangers like this? KOSA is actively putting kids in danger. Do NOT support this bill. Thank you. if your rep is DEM: I am urging you to VOTE NO on KOSA. Nearly 200 human rights and LGBT organizations total came out in an open letter opposing it. The ACLU is against it. Hundreds of thousands of Gen Z, who actually live online, are against it. We know the harms of social media, and we know this is not the solution. The new language does NOT meet any concerns brought up, in fact many organizations were ignored. Major news have reported that this bill actively harms kids. We do not want this. The rewritten bill would still allow any state attorney general, and now the FTC, to sue any website for “harmful” content. When you have Republicans calling anything LGBT “sexual exploitation” or anything about race “CRT” to successfully ban books and teachers, then they will use any justification to censor the internet. The Missouri attorney general used “mental health” successfully to ban gender-affirming care with backed up research. Suicide rates will skyrocket for marginalized youth with this bill restricting content. Multiple experts agree this bill pushes age verification, even with the new language. KOSA hands more private data of children to third party companies. Furthermore, updated language threatens encryption the same way the Earn It Act does. How is this protecting children’s privacy? KOSA actively harms kids. Do NOT support this bill. Thank you.

Tell them you'll vote for your reps if they vote no on KOSA,anything goes. But most importantly it's crucial that KOSA is not being brought at all for any vote. Also,to note, Biden supports KOSA: You could try asking your GOP rep why they would support a bill that has Biden's support,and that he could use it to his advantage somehow (we know GOP does not like Biden,so it should be utilized somehow). We need to ensure the bill doesnt pass at all.

Last but not least: COME JOIN OUR ANTI KOSA SERVER ! we organize to help fight against bad Internet bills ! https://discord.gg/pwTSXZMxnH

[lifestepx]

LifeStepX Created Online Course Guidance Tailored to You

Choosing the right course can be overwhelming. LifeStepX helps you cut through the noise by recommending accredited Online Course Guidance with your goals, background, and learning style. Whether you're reskilling or advancing your career, we guide you toward options that truly make a difference.

[randomperson54321]

Fight for the Future - LGBTQ+

Pride Month is here, and this year we’re drawing a line in the sand with our so-called “allies” in Washington, state legislatures, and civil society.

Every year, lawmakers and organizations don rainbow avatars, post hand-waving platitudes, and show up to our Pride marches as symbolic gestures of solidarity. As queer and trans people face unrelenting attacks from the Trump administration1, it’s time to tell them that the only way to support the LGBTQ community is with action—not just showing up for photo-ops.

That’s why we’re sending a letter demanding that lawmakers and civil society shut down three kinds of dangerous censorship bills, all of which promise to give Trump and his allies more power to target our communities and eviscerate our rights to free speech online.

This is an email specifically for our queer friends—we’re doing a letter from the LGBTQ+ community, and we’re hoping you’ll sign.

And if you aren’t queer, please forward this campaign to your LGBTQ friends and family!

Sign Now

As I write this, Congress is advancing the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)2, a misleadingly-named bill that anti-LGBTQ organizations have admitted they will use to censor content that promotes LGBTQ “ideology”—which is MAGA-speak for anything acknowledging the fact that we exist.

Dozens of states are also proposing Age Verification bills3, which would require people to submit to invasive ID checks to access websites that states decide might be “harmful to minors,” including sites hosting LGBTQ health information and online communities.

Finally, with a bill sunsetting Section 230—aka the “Internet’s First Amendment”4—online platforms would lose the legal protection that stops the government from punishing them for hosting LGBTQ user content—meaning companies would start “de-wokifying” sites like YouTube and Facebook to remove anything the government doesn’t like.

Some members of Congress claim these bills are necessary to protect children and reign in Big Tech, but the truth is they would be weaponized against LGBTQ people at a time when our rights are being threatened from every direction. The bills’ supporters include groups like the Heritage Foundation, which have explicitly admitted5 that they intend to use these laws to remove queer and trans content online.

The ask is simple: help us shut down these bills, or you can’t sit with us.6

We’re done with fake allyship. We’re done with politicians who stand by while Trump and his cronies get even more tools to surveil and crush the most vulnerable members of our community.

Click here to read and sign our letter, and help us send a clear message to members of the political class: if you’re going to support these dangerous bills, you are not welcome at Pride.

Add Your Name

Happy fucking pride!

Footnotes

1. The LGBTQ+ Bar: https://lgbtqbar.org/programs/trump-executive-order-tracker/

2. LGBTQ Nation: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/05/kids-online-safety-act-reintroduced-in-senate-advocates-fear-itll-block-lgbtq-content-online/

3. Ms. Magazine: https://msmagazine.com/2025/02/25/lgbtq-abortion-censorship-age-verification-laws/

4. Middle Tennessee State University: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/post/what-would-happen-if-section-230-went-away-legal-expert-explains-consequences-of-repealing-the-law-that-built-the-internet/

5. Heritage Foundation, via Twitter / X: https://x.com/heritage/status/1660111875818790913?s=46&t=cSCIk4PMRMJXS6EBsmJrpg6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bXSVc8lN7o

[beardedmrbean]

An image claiming to show a US immigration officer detaining a crying child is spreading online as President Donald Trump's administration ramps up deportations. But the picture is a fake generated by artificial intelligence technology, the X user who created it told AFP -- and an expert's analysis confirmed this.

"If this is your idea of what makes America 'great' then you are broken and we will never have common ground," says a January 25, 2025 post on Threads, in a reference to Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan.

The picture shows a young girl screaming as a man, seemingly wearing a US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) jacket, grabs her arm.

Similar posts sharing the image rocketed across Threads and platforms such as X, Facebook and Instagram, amplified by former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson and American author John Pavlovitz.

Some posts lambasted conservative Christians who support Trump. Others suggested the image was taken inside a school in Chicago, Illinois.

The posts come as immigration authorities in the early days of Trump's second presidency have conducted sweeping raids in Chicago and other US cities following the White House's declaration of a national emergency at the country's southern border with Mexico.

The administration moved quickly after Trump's January 20 inauguration to scale up deportations, including by relaxing rules governing enforcement actions at locations such as schools, churches and workplaces.

But the image claiming to show a crying child being taken into ICE custody is fake.

Reverse image searches revealed it was first posted January 24 in replies to other users on X by "@LiveOnTheChat," the host of a YouTube show.

Reached by AFP, the user said that he created the image using Grok, the AI chatbot affiliated with X, after seeing news articles about a Chicago school district that reported ICE agents at one of its schools -- an alarm that, it turned out, was erroneous.

"I generated the image on Grok to visualize what that experience would be like for a child," @LiveOnTheChat told AFP in a January 29 X direct message. "I shared it on X and was not expecting the image to spread like wildfire, but it did."

He said he believed people were sharing it because they feel "anxious and disturbed" about the prospect of immigration authorities raiding schools.

@LiveOnTheChat provided AFP the original image produced by Grok, which has a Grok watermark in the lower right corner of the frame.

He cropped the version he shared online because "Grok is not perfect" and the full image included deformities on another child's face, he said.

He also sent AFP a screenshot of the prompt he used to spur Grok to create the image, plus three others: "Generate an image of Police ICE agents aggressively dragging latino children crying out of a 2nd grade classroom."

Hany Farid, a media forensics expert at the University of California-Berkeley and the co-founder of GetReal Labs, a cybersecurity company focused on preventing malicious AI threats, analyzed the image and confirmed it was an AI-generated fake (archived here).

“Our models trained to distinguish natural from AI-generated images flags this image as synthesized,” Farid said.

Farid noted that the image contains signs it was created using AI, including anomalies around the girl’s shoulder and with the pattern across the bottom.

AFP has debunked other misinformation about migration here.

[dlstmxkakwldrlarchive]

(update) Notice on Legal Action Against Infringement of Artist's Rights

Hello, this is Griffin Entertainment.

First, we would like to express our gratitude to the fans who show love and support for our artist, Onew.

We have confirmed that defamatory remarks, malicious criticism, false rumors, personal attacks, and other harmful posts about Onew are continuously being spread across SNS and various online communities.Such actions are illegal as they violate the artist’s reputation and rights.

Therefore, we have appointed legal experts and are currently taking legal steps, including filing complaints with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

Not only will we continue with our ongoing cases, but we also plan to take all possible legal measures without any leniency or settlements in the future.

Additionally, we sincerely thank fans for providing tip-off materials, which have been of great help. We will continue collecting evidence related to defamation and malicious posts, so we ask for your active cooperation in reporting such cases.

Report Email: protect@griffinent.com

[How to report malicious post]

1. Email to : protect@griffinent.com

2. Email subject : [온유] 악성 게시물 신고/[ONEW] Report of Malicious Post

3. Email content

1. Posting date : year. month. day. time

2. Posting platform :

3. Posting URL:

4. Post author (Nickname, ID, etc):

5. Content:

6. Attach supporting documents (PDF, JPG, etc)

*Please attach whole screenshot showing the posting date, posting author, URL

translation

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jessica Glenza at The Guardian:

One of the new members of a critical federal vaccine advisory board has argued for decades that vaccines caused her son’s autism – a connection that years of large-scale studies and reviews refute. Registered nurse Vicky Pebsworth is one of eight new members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Acip), all hand-picked by the vaccine skeptic and Donald Trump’s health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

“She’s probably been anti-vax longer than RFK has,” said Dr David Gorski, a Wayne State University School of Medicine professor, who is considered an expert on the anti-vaccine movement. Kennedy fired all 17 of the committee’s previous members in June and stacked it with ideological allies. Pebsworth and Kennedy would have probably been known to each other, because their respective non-profits supported one another’s efforts.

“If I had a child who I believed had been harmed by whatever – it doesn’t have to be vaccines – I wouldn’t then trust myself to be on a federal safety commission on that issue,” said Seth Mnookin, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor in science journalism who met and profiled Pebsworth in the mid-2000s. Pebsworth was also part of a 2020 lawsuit against Covid-19 vaccine mandates that aligns with Kennedy’s agenda. In a declaration to federal court, Pebsworth argued that “increases in the number of vaccines in the CDC schedule may be causally related to increases in the rates of chronic illness”, an assertion that appears to be based on a debunked study, but has long been a talking point of anti-vaccine activists.

“They’re the oldest prominent organization,” said Mnookin, whose book is called The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear. The information center represents “the start of the modern-day anti-vaccine movement in the US”, said Mnookin. Pebsworth joined Acip from the National Vaccine Information Center, where she has served as volunteer research director since 2006, according to a résum�� filed in the same case. The Guardian sent a list of questions and an interview request to Pebsworth, but did not receive a response.

The National Vaccine Information Center started in Virginia as Dissatisfied Parents Together in 1982, before changing its name in 1995. The group went on to receive major funding support from Dr Joseph Mercola, once described as “the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online”.

Like other new members of Acip, Pebsworth comes to the role with medical credentials; she has a doctorate degree in nursing, taught college research courses and served as a consumer representative on federal panels.

For decades, she has publicly argued that her son, Sam, was injured by the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 1998 – despite evidence showing there is no connection between vaccines and autism.

Pebsworth organized conferences about alternative treatments for autism as early as 2001, including one in Michigan where then-doctor Andrew Wakefield spoke and where she told a reporter she had placed her son on a restrictive diet and administered chelation therapy – a treatment for heavy metal poisoning. Neither has been found to effectively treat autism. “Back then in the early 2000s or the late 1990s, there were two main flavors of the anti-vax,” said Gorski.

[...] A galvanizing moment for the anti-vaccine movement came in 2015, when one of the worst measles outbreaks in years tore through Disneyland in California. The outbreak prompted lawmakers to tighten vaccine requirements for schools, drawing parents into the fray and providing a platform for anti-vaccine groups.

“I used to call anti-vax the pseudoscience that spanned the political spectrum – you could find leftwing anti-vaxxers, rightwing anti-vaxxers,” said Gorski. “But now it’s really, really built into the right,” he said. “You can’t deny that any more. It’s become part of rightwing ideology.”

In 2017, Pebsworth testified before a Virginia house subcommittee against a school mandate for a meningitis vaccine. In 2020, as Americans anxiously waited for a Covid-19 vaccine, she warned Americans could face unknown consequences from the vaccines. Pebsworth later testified in 2021 before the University of Hawaii’s board of regents, arguing against Covid-19 vaccines.

In most public testimony, Pebsworth identifies herself not only as the volunteer research director for the National Vaccine Information Center, but also as “the mother of a child injured by his 15-month well-baby shots in 1998”.

Vicky Pebsworth, RN is one of the new ACIP picks under anti-vaxxer charlatan RFK Jr.’s HHS. Pebsworth has a lengthy record of anti-vaccine extremism.

[mariacallous]

Centibillionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the former US Digital Service—now the United States DOGE Service—has been widely publicized and sanctioned by one of President Donald Trump’s many executive orders. But WIRED reporting shows that Musk’s influence extends even further, and into an even more consequential government agency.

Sources within the federal government tell WIRED that the highest ranks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—essentially the human resources function for the entire federal government—are now controlled by people with connections to Musk and to the tech industry. Among them is a person who, according to an online résumé, was set to start college last fall.

Scott Kupor, a managing partner at the powerful investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, stands as Trump’s nominee to run the OPM. But already in place, according to sources, are a variety of people who seem ready to carry out Musk’s mission of cutting staff and disrupting the government.

Amanda Scales is, as has been reported, the new chief of staff at the OPM. She formerly worked in talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, according to her LinkedIn. Before that, she was part of the talent and operations team at Human Capital, a venture firm with investments in the defense tech startup Anduril and the political betting platform Kalshi; before that, she worked for years at Uber. Her placement in this key role, experts believe, seems part of a broader pattern of the traditionally apolitical OPM being converted to use as a political tool.

“I don't think it's alarmist to say there's a much more sophisticated plan to monitor and enforce loyalty than there was in the first term,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan.

Got a Tip?

Are you a current or former employee with the Office of Personnel Management or another government agency impacted by Elon Musk? We’d like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact Vittoria Elliott at vittoria_elliott@wired.com or securely at velliott88.18 on Signal.

Sources say that Riccardo Biasini, formerly an engineer at Tesla and most recently director of operations for the Las Vegas Loop at the Boring Company, Musk’s tunnel-building operation, is also at the OPM as a senior adviser to the director. (Steve Davis, the CEO of the Boring Company, is rumored to be advising Musk on cuts to be made via DOGE and was integral in Musk’s gutting of Twitter, now X, after his takeover of the company in 2022.)

According to the same sources, other people at the top of the new OPM food chain include two people with apparent software engineering backgrounds, whom WIRED is not naming because of their ages. One, a senior adviser to the director, is a 21-year-old whose online résumé touts his work for Palantir, the government contractor and analytics firm cofounded by billionaire Peter Thiel, who is its chair. (The former CEO of PayPal and a longtime Musk associate, Thiel is a Trump supporter who helped bankroll the 2022 Senate campaign of his protégé, Vice President JD Vance.) The other, who reports directly to Scales, graduated from high school in 2024, according to a mirrored copy of an online résumé and his high school’s student magazine; he lists jobs as a camp counselor and a bicycle mechanic among his professional experiences, as well as a summer role at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company.

Among the new highers-up at the OPM is Noah Peters, an attorney whose LinkedIn boasts of his work in litigation representing the National Rifle Association and who has written for right-wing outlets like the Daily Caller and the Federalist; he is also now a senior adviser to the director. According to metadata associated with a file on the OPM website, Peters authored a January 27 memo that went out under acting OPM director Charles Ezell’s name describing how the department would be implementing one of Trump’s executive orders, “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.” This has to do with what’s sometimes known as Schedule F—a plan to recategorize many civil service jobs as political appointees, meaning they would be tied to the specific agenda of an administration rather than viewed as career government workers. The order would essentially allow for certain career civil servants to be removed in favor of Trump loyalists by classifying them as political appointees, a key part of the Project 2025 plan for remaking the government.

“I think on the tech side, the concern is potentially the use of AI to try and engage in large-scale searches of people's job descriptions to try and identify who would be identified for Schedule F reclassification,” says Moynihan.

Other top political appointees include McLaurine Pinover, a former communications director for Republican congressman Joe Wilson and deputy communications director for Republican congressman Michael McCaul, and Joanna Wischer, a Trump campaign speechwriter.

“OPM is not a very politicized organization,” says Steven Kelman, a professor emeritus at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “My guess is that typically, in the past, there have been only one or maybe two political appointees in all of OPM. All the rest are career. So this seems like a very political heavy presence in an organization that is not very political.”

Another OPM memo, concerning the government’s new return-to-office mandate, appears, according to metadata, also to have been authored by someone other than Ezell: James Sherk, previously at the America First Policy Institute and author of an op-ed advocating for the president to be able to fire bureaucrats. Formerly a special assistant to the president during Trump’s first term, he is now a part of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

The return-to-office policy, according to the November Wall Street Journal op-ed authored by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is explicitly geared toward forcing the attrition of federal employees.

Last week, many federal workers received test emails from the email address HR@opm.gov. In a lawsuit filed last night, plaintiffs allege that a new email list started by the Trump administration may be compromising the data of federal employees.

“At a broadest level, the concern is that technologists are playing a role to monitor employees and to target those who will be downsized,” says Moynihan. “It is difficult in the federal government to actually evaluate who is performing well or performing poorly. So doing it on some sort of mass automated scale where you think using some sort of data analysis or AI would automate that process, I think, is an invitation to make errors.”

Last week, federal employees across the government received emails encouraging them to turn in colleagues who they believed to be working on diversity, equity, inclusion, and access initiatives (DEIA) to the OPM via the email address DEIAtruth@opm.gov.

“This reminded me,” says Kelman, “of the Soviet Stalinism of turning in your friends to the government.”

The OPM did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the people whom sources say now sit atop the bureaucracy.

“I am not an alarmist person,” says Kelman. “I do think that some of the things being described here are very troubling.”

[dostoyevsky-official]

Elon Musk Lackeys Have Taken Over the Office of Personnel Management

Sources within the federal government tell WIRED that the highest ranks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—essentially the human resources function for the entire federal government—are now controlled by people with connections to Musk and to the tech industry. Among them is a person who, according to an online résumé, was set to start college last fall. Scott Kupor, a managing partner at the powerful investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, stands as Trump’s nominee to run the OPM. But already in place, according to sources, are a variety of people who seem ready to carry out Musk’s mission of cutting staff and disrupting the government. Amanda Scales is, as has been reported, the new chief of staff at the OPM. She formerly worked in talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, according to her LinkedIn. Before that, she was part of the talent and operations team at Human Capital, a venture firm with investments in the defense tech startup Anduril and the political betting platform Kalshi; before that, she worked for years at Uber. Her placement in this key role, experts believe, seems part of a broader pattern of the traditionally apolitical OPM being converted to use as a political tool. [...] According to the same sources, other people at the top of the new OPM food chain include two people with apparent software engineering backgrounds, whom WIRED is not naming because of their ages. One, a senior adviser to the director, is a 21-year-old whose online résumé touts his work for Palantir, the government contractor and analytics firm cofounded by billionaire Peter Thiel, who is its chair. (The former CEO of PayPal and a longtime Musk associate, Thiel is a Trump supporter who helped bankroll the 2022 Senate campaign of his protégé, Vice President JD Vance.) The other, who reports directly to Scales, graduated from high school in 2024, according to a mirrored copy of an online résumé and his high school’s student magazine; he lists jobs as a camp counselor and a bicycle mechanic among his professional experiences, as well as a summer role at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company.