Thousands of individuals expressing support of Palestine online — including on LinkedIn — might find their details on anti-israel-employees.com, a website which emerged 10 days ago that is publicly sharing the names and employers with staff who expressed pro-Palestinian views, the New York Times reports. While Itai Liptz, a hedge fund manager and one of the brains behind the website, says that it was intended to expose individuals who support Hamas and make some feel “threatened,” the website flagged posts supporting Palestine or raising awareness about the humanitarian crisis in the ongoing siege. LinkedIn sent the website a cease-and-desist letter, which prompted the founders to move the website to an Israeli domain.
The site used scraping, an illegal practice, to glean the data. The company utilized “automated software” to extract over 17k profiles and posts from LinkedIn, a spokesman for the platform said. This practice directly violates LinkedIn’s usage policies. But Liptz denied these allegations and an Israeli lawyer insisted that the site would not get removed.
LinkedIn’s move is prompting wider discussion about how pro-Palestine online content is being handled: Meta has been under fire from many Facebook and Instagram users, who say their posts are being suppressed or deleted — known as a “shadow ban” — under claims of violating community guidelines. These users say that their posts actually don’t cross any lines, and that they are simply being punished for voicing support for Palestine. Meta initially claimed that a bug was causing this content to be hidden, and that it was working on fixing the bug.
Museum heists aren’t just on TV anymore. The British Museum has been at the center of a rather embarrassing scandal since news of 2k stolen artifacts broke back in August. Since 2020, Ittai Gradel, a Danish antiquities dealer profiled by The Wall Street Journal, has been trying to alert the museum to the hundreds of artifacts being sold on eBay. According to Gradel, whose reports were met with dismissal until August of this year, the thefts have been taking place for over two decades. The stolen items are valued at mns of GBP.
It started in 2013… An account under the name Sultan1966 was selling what was advertised as a 19th century glass gem for GBP 15, but Gradel recognized it as a Roman Medusa cameo from the second century. After consistent listings from Sultan1966 at dirt-cheap prices, Gradel started to become suspicious. Upon being asked the origin of his finds, Sultan1966 told Gradel that he had acquired them from his deceased grandfather’s junk shop.
… The chase began in earnest in 2020. Gradel came across an image on the British Museum’s website that showed an item that Sultan1966 had listed back in 2016, and came to the conclusion that there was a thief in the museum, presenting the museum with files of evidence. While the museum reluctantly admitted that 2k items were missing only two months ago, no one has yet been charged. The scandal has prompted several countries to renew long-running petitions requesting that the British Museum return all stolen colonial artifacts to their rightful owners. Among these petitions is the return of the Rosetta Stone to Egypt.
The Gen Z approach to fiscal responsibility: “Soft-saving,” or spending more and saving less. This new trend emerging from the tranches of today’s workforce approaching their 30s is another term focused on living well and saving less for the future, explains CNBC. This change prompted a drop in personal saving rates in the US to 3.9%, a drop of almost five percentage points, over the past decade. Soft-saving sees Gen Z spending on and investing in their hobbies and passions, such as entertainment.
What’s underpinning this brand of financial savviness? The drop in spending during the pandemic which led to splurging to make up for lost time, and, of course, inflation, which made it harder for people to save, were instrumental for this trend to grow. But there is a caveat: A US study found that the majority of workers don’t see themselves retiring, with many considering working past the age of 65, even though some Gen Z employees are signed up for a 401(k) account.