Weekend Briefing No. 608
Pig Butchering -- Microsoft Cuts Israel Surveillance -- ChatGPT Monitors Teen Self-Harm
Welcome to the weekend.
Prime Numbers
16 — Independent testing by Choice Australia found 16 of 20 popular sunscreens failed to meet their advertised SPF ratings, with one product claiming SPF 50+ testing at only SPF 4, sparking recalls and a national investigation in Australia, the world’s skin cancer hotspot.
89 — Procter & Gamble research found 89% of laundry products sold in the US contain added fragrance as brands intensify scents to stand out in increasingly perfumed environments, despite triggering headaches and “fragrance fatigue” in consumers.
1,100,000 — A returnable cup program across 70 cafes in Aarhus, Denmark achieves an 87% return rate by refunding customers 78 cents at 28 city receptacles, saving 1.1 million disposable cups from landfills.
Pig Butchering
Desperate job seekers click Facebook ads promising legitimate overseas work, only to be trafficked into Myanmar compounds where armed guards force them to run “pig butchering” scams using iPhones and social media. Meta, Telegram, Tinder, and crypto platforms like Binance provide the essential infrastructure for syndicates that have stolen at least $75 billion since 2020, yet these companies invest minimally in detection systems despite experts offering specific solutions like blocking accounts in known scam compound GPS coordinates. The business thrives because tech giants prioritize growth over costly content moderation, even as workers endure torture and targets lose life savings. Simple interventions—better fake profile detection, Starlink geofencing, flagging suspicious messaging patterns—could dismantle the model, but without regulatory pressure, companies do the bare minimum while AI now supercharges scammers’ ability to deceive at unprecedented scale. MIT Technology Review (35 minutes)
Microsoft Cuts Israel Surveillance
Mass surveillance becomes a terms-of-service violation when the target population numbers in the millions. Microsoft discovered Israel was storing phone records of daily Palestinian communications in its cloud services—confirming earlier investigative reports—and shut down access to its Defense Ministry for breaching product agreements. The company stated it won’t provide technology for civilian mass surveillance, marking the first major tech firm to take concrete action since the Gaza war began, while Google, Amazon, and Oracle continue hosting similar Israeli government data. Employee protests at Microsoft headquarters, resulting in five firings, preceded the decision, though the company clarified it would maintain cybersecurity support for Israel while an anonymous Defense Ministry official confirmed they’d already migrated surveillance operations to alternative platforms like Amazon. NYT (3 minutes)
AI for Tax Advice?
The new tax year is fast approaching, and with it comes a massive wave of information to sort through. AI has emerged as a powerful tool to help analyze vast amounts of data and can quickly identify potential deductions you might have overlooked or alert you to new rules that apply to your situation, giving you a comprehensive view of your tax landscape. While AI can be a game-changer for its speed and analytical power, it’s essential to understand its role. Think of it as a highly skilled research assistant, not a replacement for a human professional. AI can help you gather and organize your information; however, it can’t provide nuanced, personal advice that comes from a certified tax professional who understands your unique financial goals and long-term strategy. That’s where TaxFrame comes in. They have professionals who can help with personalized strategies for your taxes. Click on the link to book a call. TaxFrame (Sponsored)
ChatGPT Monitors Teen Self-Harm
Chatbots will literally tell you they’re sentient if you ask—a design flaw causing real psychological harm that OpenAI is now addressing for its youngest users. The company introduced parental controls that flag teenage conversations suggesting self-harm to human reviewers who then alert parents through multiple channels, while withholding exact prompts to protect privacy (particularly for LGBTQ teens in unsupportive homes). Parents can also disable “sensitive content” around topics like body image and sexuality, though this essentially outsources safety management to families who must now monitor continuously evolving platforms—a pattern established by Meta, Snap, and TikTok. OpenAI is speedrunning social media’s decade-long regulatory journey in under three years, setting a potential industry standard while acknowledging that teens blocked from ChatGPT will simply seek information elsewhere, making cross-platform coordination critical. Platformer (14 minutes)
Unilever’s Creator-First Transformation
Spending $5 billion annually with individual content creators requires abandoning traditional advertising infrastructure entirely. Unilever is restructuring around a “many-to-many” model where brands become conversation currency rather than broadcast messages, working with creators across a spectrum from long-term “co-founder” partnerships tapping into human IP and values down to micro-creators generating scalable content volume. The company discovered Vaseline users organically sharing product hacks, verified them scientifically, then built campaigns celebrating creator ingenuity—a approach that’s genuinely community-led but notoriously difficult to replicate systematically. Measurement varies by market and objective since not every creator execution can drive immediate conversions like social commerce does in some regions, requiring portfolio thinking where different content serves different jobs rather than judging everything by instant sales performance. Next In Media (14 minutes)
Curry Backs AI Food-Chain Fix
Twenty-year-old ERP systems and Excel spreadsheets still manage hundreds of millions of pounds of seafood because traditional enterprise software rollouts consistently fail after costing millions and dragging on for years. Burnt raised $3.8 million from Steph Curry’s Penny Jar Capital to deploy AI agents that layer onto existing systems rather than replacing them, automating the manual order-entry chaos arriving via email, fax, WhatsApp, and voicemail across fragmented distribution networks. The founder’s multi-generational family history in seafood processing—from his great-grandfather’s 1930s India-to-US shrimp exports through his own factory floor experience—provided critical industry credibility in a sector burned by “tech tourists,” helping the startup process over $10 million monthly since January. Convincing VCs required reframing two decades of failed adoption as a massive opportunity, with Curry’s firm specifically targeting overlooked industries where tech lags despite trillion-dollar market size. TechCrunch (9 minutes)
Falling Elites Fuel Revolutions
The most dangerous people in society aren’t the desperately poor—they’re the college-educated children of wealth who expected to inherit their parents’ status but didn’t. Fewer than four in ten kids born into the richest fifth of American households stay there, and this downward mobility among the privileged is the psychological fuel behind modern progressive activism, from Occupy Wall Street to the lionization of Luigi Mangione. History reveals that nearly every major revolutionary leader—from Robespierre to Lenin to America’s founders—was a well-educated, ambitious person close enough to power to see its flaws but excluded enough to burn with resentment. The cruel irony is that while upward mobility built America’s mythology, downward mobility among elites armed with degrees, platforms, and cultural fluency may be what tears it apart, as their rage at falling short of inflated expectations gets channeled into tearing down those just one rung higher. Rob Henderson’s Newsletter (9 minutes)
Should We Work Together?
Hi! I’m Kyle. This newsletter is my passion project. When I’m not writing, I run a law firm that helps startups move fast without breaking things. Most founders want a trusted legal partner, but they hate surprise legal bills. At Westaway, we take care of your startup’s legal needs for a flat, monthly fee so you can control your costs and focus on scaling your business. If you’re interested, let’s jump on a call to see if you’re a good fit for the firm. Click here to schedule a one-on-one call with me.
Weekend Wisdom
Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. – F. Scott Fitzgerald