CHANGE: Has the bubble burst for America’s Realtors? Commission rates could be slashed by a THIRD after landmark lawsuit – and experts fear 80% of real estate license holders could quit.

LET THEM FREAK OUT: As the Left Freaks Out, Geert Wilders Vows He ‘Will Be Prime Minister.’

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Unsealed complaint says Meta ‘coveted’ under-13s and deceives the public about age enforcement.

The newly unsealed complaint, filed on Wednesday, reveals arguments that were previously redacted when attorneys generals from across the US first hit Meta with the lawsuit last month in the California federal court. It alleges the presence of under-13s is an “open secret” at Meta. While the policies on Facebook and Instagram state a person must be at least 13 years old to sign up, children can easily lie about their age — something the lawsuit says Meta is well aware of, and has done little to stop. Instead, when Meta “received over 1.1 million reports of under-13 users on Instagram” from 2019-2023, it “disabled only a fraction of those accounts and routinely continued to collect children’s data without parental consent,” the complaint says.

Meta “routinely violates” the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) by targeting children and collecting their information without parental consent, according to the complaint. The lawsuit also argues that Meta’s platforms manipulate young users into spending unhealthy amounts of time on the apps, promote body dysmorphia and expose them to potentially harmful content. When the lawsuit was first filed in October, a Meta spokesperson said the company was “disappointed” over the chosen course of action, stating, “We share the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online.”

Meta earlier this month published a blog post calling for federal legislation to put more responsibility on parents when it comes to kids’ app downloads. Meta’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, proposed a requirement for parents to have approval power over downloads for kids under the age of 16.

Melissa and I have never let our boys install social media apps (or any other apps without permission) and now that our oldest is turning 18, here’s to hoping he developed the good sense not to bother just because his permissions are relaxed.

Related? Russia puts the spokesman for Facebook owner Meta on a wanted list.

HMM: Oliver Stone: The 2020 Election Might Have Been Stolen.

SAGE ADVICE: This Thanksgiving, Pass (on) the Microwaved Steak.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Judge Obliterates Oregon’s Newest Gun Grab.

BREAKING: Explosion Reported at U.S.-Canada Rainbow Bridge Border Crossing.

NOBODY CAN AFFORD TO BUY, NOBODY CAN AFFORD TO SELL: Home sales fell to a 13-year low in October as prices rose.

I ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK: ‘RIP Mr. President.’

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Shortlist For EPA’s Multi-Billion Dollar ‘Green’ Fund Features Groups With Deep Connections To Biden Admin, Dems.

THIS IS CNN: CNN’s Deep Dumpster Dive Into the Shoplifting Epidemic Is Pure Garbage.

IF THEY AREN’T TOUGH, THEY’RE POINTLESS: AP tests are tough: Is the bar too high for disadvantaged students?

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: A Radical Democrat Proposal: Treat Black Voters Like They Matter. “Why is the issue of wooing black voters even an issue, anyway? The old message — Dems good, Republicans will put y’all back in chains — has worked so well for so long. Well, thanks to two men, that message isn’t working as well as it once did.”

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: China’s Self-Inflicted Economic Wounds.

Perhaps the greatest threat to China’s economic growth and development is Xi himself. Xi has spent the last few years tightening government control over all aspects of life in the country, including the economy. The regulatory crackdown on large tech companies like Alibaba, which began in late 2020, is a case in point.

Though regulators have since backed off somewhat, and China’s government is actively supporting high-tech industries like electric vehicles, Xi’s obsession with control continues to pose a serious threat to China’s prospects. Not only does it hamper innovation by domestic firms; it also discourages foreign investment.

Already, foreign companies, such as the polling and consultancy group Gallup, are fleeing the country. This can be partly explained by China’s economic slowdown, which has reduced the availability of high-return investment opportunities and, together with demographic trends, promises to shrink the Chinese market over time. But, with China still targeting 5% growth, there is clearly more going on.

In fact, foreign companies worry about becoming the target of spurious antitrust investigations, and fear that the newly expanded, but deliberately vague counter-espionage law could result in them being punished for normal business activities. Of course, US restrictions on high-tech exports to and investment in China are not helping matters.

China today shares many features with Japan in the 1980s. But the biggest risks to its economic prospects are all homegrown.

But don’t get cocky. Xi doesn’t seem to care if the average Chinese’ standing improves, so long as China’s standing improves relative to the US. If that can’t be done by improving things in China, it can be done by hurting the US.

From TikTok to energy policy to leaky infectious disease labs, he has plenty of tools for doing just that.

HUMAN CONTACT 101: Why Can’t Gen Z Communicate Like the Rest of Us? “Colleges are now offering a course on how to make small talk and network with other humans.”

OUR HANGOVER FROM DC’S OVERINDULGENCE ISN’T GOING AWAY ANY TIME SOON: Fed gave no indication of possible rate cuts at last meeting, minutes show.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Leftist Attempts to Destroy Elon Musk Won’t Work in Time for 2024. “Leftist attempts to discredit Musk and wrest Twitter/X away from him have been unceasing and remarkably unsuccessful. Perhaps the biggest indication of the latter is that they have to use Twitter/X to get out the news about how awful they think that Twitter/X is.”

BIDENOMICS ISN’T WORKING: Democrats urge Biden to revamp campaign’s economic message.

“We cannot, just through sheer repetition, convince voters of something that is not their lived reality when it comes to economics,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the PCCC.

Democratic messaging, including that coming from Biden, should be “acknowledging pain and pivoting to a contrast,” Green said, and it should focus on “beginning progress, not pretend that we’re already there.”

Doug Heye, a GOP strategist, said the Biden team has the tough task of chipping away at voters’ impressions that goods are just more expensive now than when Biden took office.

“They’ve got some good news that they can talk about, but everything that every American does that involves spending money, they’re spending more of it than they were when Joe Biden became president. And that’s now ingrained into their daily lives. And it’s very hard to chip away at that,” he said.

The current message — which amounts to “you proles don’t know how good you have it” — for some reason doesn’t seem to be resonating with voters.

THE TERM “SNAFU” ORIGINATED IN THE ARMY FOR GOOD REASON: U.S. Soldier Says Army Demands Cash for Gear Ordered Left Behind in Afghanistan.

FASTER, PLEASE: The slow demise of green energy?

The giant push toward a net zero utopia is not practical and has been a complete disservice to the American consumer. Components of the green movement are experiencing major setbacks, namely offshore wind, electric vehicles (EVs), and investments.

Offshore wind projects are struggling to secure financing and stay on track. The biggest blow came last month, when the world’s largest offshore wind developer Ørsted canceled two major projects off the New Jersey coastline, taking the wind right out of Gov. Phil Murphy’s green energy sails. Ørsted is also suspending work on offshore projects in Maryland and Delaware.
…
The EV market is also losing steam. Sales are slumping and manufacturers are scaling back on production.

To be fair, nuclear power plants are green and we should be building a lot more of those.

CHRIS QUEEN: The Dehumanizers. “Marxism puts government in charge of everything and lets government decide who lives and who dies… This is why the culture of death is so pervasive among many women, Millennials, and Gen Zers. There is no humanity in Marxism.”

MADE IN CHINA: Nothing’s iMessage app was a security catastrophe, taken down in 24 hours.

It turns out companies that stonewall the media’s security questions actually aren’t good at security. Last Tuesday, Nothing Chats—a chat app from Android manufacturer “Nothing” and upstart app company Sunbird—brazenly claimed to be able to hack into Apple’s iMessage protocol and give Android users blue bubbles. We immediately flagged Sunbird as a company that had been making empty promises for almost a year and seemed negligent about security. The app launched Friday anyway and was immediately ripped to shreds by the Internet for many security issues. It didn’t last 24 hours; Nothing pulled the app from the Play Store Saturday morning. The Sunbird app, which Nothing Chat is just a reskin of, has also been put “on pause.”

The initial sales pitch for this app—that it would log you into iMessage on Android if you handed over your Apple username and password—was a huge security red flag that meant Sunbird would need an ultra-secure infrastructure to avoid disaster. Instead, the app turned out to be about as unsecure as we expected.

How bad are the security issues? Both 9to5Google and Text.com (which is owned by Automattic, the company behind WordPress) uncovered shockingly bad security practices. Not only was the app not end-to-end encrypted, as claimed numerous times by Nothing and Sunbird, but Sunbird actually logged and stored messages in plain text on both the error reporting software Sentry and in a Firebase store. Authentication tokens were sent over unencrypted HTTP so this token could be intercepted and used to read your messages.

Feature, not a bug.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Video Of More OF That Voter Fraud That Doesn’t Exist.

MUH DEMOCRACY™: Democrats Work to Flip the House in the Courtroom, Not at the Ballot Box.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Best Buy cuts sales forecast, as holiday shoppers hunt for deals. “CEO Corie Barry said consumer demand ‘has been even more uneven and difficult to predict.'”