"Tariffs were based on bilateral US trade deficits [penalising] economies highly dependent on the US [& reliant] on labour-intensive manufacturing sectors such as clothing & footwear for employment. Women make up a large share of [this] workforce & have been hit harder than men by tariff measures"

Buffering is a thing of the past. Europe’s internet is getting a long-overdue refresh. We are proposing the Digital Networks Act, to put in place the modern, resilient digital infrastructure that citizens want and our businesses need. This is what is in it ↓

🛒🇪🇺💪 The best time to quit your dependence on the US was years ago. The second-best time is TODAY (not the day after tomorrow). #BuyEuropean 🇪🇺🇩🇰🇬🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺💪 ✅ buy-european.net/en/alternati... ✅ european-alternatives.eu ✅ hardno.eu ✅ www.goeuropean.org ✅ euroalternative.co #Grønland #tariffs #greenland #trump

This is quite a post www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/reality-is...

"Suppliers of parts for Nvidia's H200 have paused production after Chinese customs officials blocked shipments of the newly approved AI processors from entering China, the Financial Times reported on Friday. [...] Nvidia had expected more than 1 million orders from Chinese clients."

“A confidential plan is under way to turn international internet access into a ‘governmental privilege’,” according to a report from Filterwatch [...] State media & government spokespersons have already signaled this is a permanent shift, warning that unrestricted access will not return after 2026.”

“When a child dies, parents should not have to cross continents to fight multinational technology companies just to find out what happened to their child. [....] The data that could explain our children’s deaths has been withheld. If platforms have nothing to hide, they should release the data.”

When we have Big Tech CEOs who don't care even about the mum of their (latest?) child being stripped of clothes without her consent, it's very clear how deep misogyny is embedded in tech development. To think the world once idolized these men as progressives who were making the world a better place!

Internet Governance Forum 2026 Multistakeholder Advisory Group nominations deadline is 26 Feb, suggesting there will be a very late start for #IGF2026 preparations compared to past years (1st prep meeting is usually late Jan/early Feb). Also, no info on host country for 2026 available yet.

Using AI research in science: - Focuses on existing data-rich areas, leading to overlapping research Upshot: - Narrowing of scientific exploration & understanding as scientists "converge on the same solutions to known problems rather than generating new ones"

"For now, producing correct analog clocks remains a tough challenge for AI, a reminder that just because a machine can recognize a pattern doesn’t mean it can truly understand it."

From the article: "“Since discovering Grok AI, regular porn doesn’t do it for me anymore, it just sounds absurd now,” one enthusiast for the Elon Musk-owned AI chatbot wrote on Reddit."

We have reached that dystopian point where providing power to more & more data centres to keep enabling AI to strip women & children of their clothes is more important than supplying people & homes with power (fans, air-conditioning) so they *don't die* during heatwaves.

The @itu.int Plenipotentiary, held every 4 years, is Nov 2026. There are lots of ITU positions up for election, inc. Sec-Gen & Council. Russia lost its Council spot in 2022 after invading Ukraine. What effect will US govt's increasing belligerence to rest of world will have on their 2026 nominees?

The "network effect" explains why orgs & individuals with communications & outreach needs are reluctant to leave toxic social media platforms. I've noticed, tho, many news sites no longer link to Twitter but only quote text of tweets with no direct links, to prevent adding traffic to the site.

It's certainly a choice for USA to threaten the UK for finally moving to stop Grok AI enabling online sexual assault of women & children within its national borders: it's sexual assault to strip a woman down to underwear in the street without her consent; doing it online is no different.

Imagine this was men stripping women & girls down to underwear in the street instead of via Grok AI. Would govts take so long to act? More than a week of letting women be accosted online while govts prevaricate, hoping Musk voluntarily updated Grok, shows sexual assault isn't taken seriously enough.

Just wondering... when trusting an AI hallucination in a summary or chat response leads to a person's death, can the company behind the AI be sued for wrongful death?

Please read this. The UK political & media establishment is asleep at the wheel. We have made ourselves wholly dependent on a Trump ally for our national security at the exact moment Trump is threatening to invade a NATO ally open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

1/ The EFF states its mission is to ensure tech "supports freedom, justice, & innovation for *all people of the world*" but it's firmly entrenched in a specifically US mindset (many refs to US constitution throughout website) that enables hate to thrive online & US Big Tech to avoid responsibility.

1/ It's easy to think this only happens in authoritarian regimes but if Trump moves from threats to actually invading Greenland, & Europe defends the island, EU could find itself classed "enemy" & sanctions imposed on its residents, meaning no Starlink & no US based tech as long as conflict lasts.

Condemning "censorship" is an outrageous way to excuse your product undressing women and children without their consent.

UK, Australia and others have been earnestly ringing their hands over Grok's production of sexualized images of women & children, but Indonesia is the first to actually do something.

1/ Following on from my earlier thread👇, it's not just Net outages & blocked access to US apps & devices that may result from escalating US aggression (& resulting sanctions). Cloud computing reliance means entire nations' websites could go dark if US providers have to cut services to "enemy" States

Digital policy wonks, Trump still believes @itu.int is worth being a member of! But USA is exiting: ⛔Freedom Online Coalition ⛔Global Forum on Cyber Expertise ⛔UN DESA (UN department overseeing Internet Governance Forum) ⛔UNCTAD (& gets its full name wrong. No "conference" in title since 2024)

At this point, I'm wondering if the folie à deux concept can be expanded to include the entire Trump cabinet.

1/ With Venezuela clearly not being the end of the US administration's plans to invade other countries, what effect could this all have on how the Internet runs? Could the US govt order #ICANN or IANA to remove "enemy"countries' ccTLDs from the root? There's a (failed) precedent that attempt that:

We have entered a new era of competitive imperialism. Any optimism that the work of the UN 4th Committee (Special Political & Decolonization) might soon become redundant is well and truly dead. The imperial powers of the 19th & 20th centuries are trying to Make Empire Great Again.

1/ The US administration made final negotiations on UNGA's #WSIS+20 resolution a bit tense, so I'm wondering if news of Trump-related 2nd level domains being bought for satire might renew the administration's interest in #ICANN, especially given the next round of #newgTLDs just around the corner.

1/ As dystopian as it is that there's a big enough market for users of a specific drug (weight loss shots) that M&S has created a whole range of food just for them, we should be more outraged that our crops have lost up to half of their nutritional value over the past century.

US sanctions Europeans after the EC fined Musk's X for operating in the EU but breaking its laws. US govt is basically ignoring the long-established nat'l sovereignty principle that fully supports EU countries' legal jurisdiction over the actions of companies (& individuals) within their territory.

Some quick takeaways from me after the #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting: 1. Negotiations were compressed more than they should have been because the UNSG's pet project, the Global Digital Compact, took everyone's attention for the last couple of years

UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting ends with resolution adopted by consensus & to be published shortly. Expect the next year or more to be filled with States in various UN forums debating what the resolution txt *really* means & disagreeing, even tho they were all in these NYC negotiations together.

UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting: with so many Member States distancing themselves from various aspects of the WSIS+20 resolution, this is going to spill over into other processes like ITU Council WG on WSIS&SDGs, ITU Council, ITU Plenipotentiary & the CSTD meeting that drafts ECOSOC res on #WSIS.

UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting: Russia pushes back on Ukraine's earlier speech. Notes Ukraine didn't participate in any negotiations for the resolution, showing they're not interested in WSIS. Basically, Russia's saying Ukraine (mis)used this meeting to attack Russia on issues unrelated to WSIS.

UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting: time for some more expressions of concern by Member States after adoption of the resolution on WSIS+20. First up: G77, represented by Iraq. Concerned that issues of key concern to developing countries had related text diluted in resolution.

UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting: despite some previous concerns expressed by a few Member States, and concerns that some States may have called for a formal vote on the text, the resolution is adopted by consensus. Applause in the Assembly Hall!

UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting: Israel is not happy. Describes final stage of the process in negotiating the resolution as "so biased, incompetent & lacking in transparency".

UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting: After 1.5 days of high level speakers pretty much speaking from the same set of notes (digital divide still a big issue, gender disparity, etc), before adoption of the resolution, governments are now being more critical of the actual content of resolution.

UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting: USA, last speaker in the plenary, opposes resolution text's references to the Global Digital Compact, Summit of the Future & the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.

The final UNGA #WSIS+20 session is beginning in New York. There aren't many speakers left so formal adoption of the WSIS+20 resolution should happen shortly. Webcast link: webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1l...

Day 2 of the UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting is underway. Today, the text of the resolution is due to be adopted. Hopefully by consensus and not requiring a vote. Morning webcast available on UN Web TV: webtv.un.org/en/asset/k15...

UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting: Germany announces it will contribute 1 million Euros to strengthen the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

Guy Ryder, on behalf of UNSG, thanks #WSIS+20 co-facilitators for extensive consultations with academia, the private sector & civil society in the development of the WSIS+20 resolution (no mention of technical community, which will upset that sector of stakeholders mentioned in original WSIS docs)

The UNGA #WSIS+20 High Level Meeting is underway in New York. You can follow the morning session today live, and later archived, at webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1o...

It could have been so much worse. They could have chosen the un-wokest font of all time: Comic Sans.

#ICANN84 "Geopolitical Forum: #WSIS+20 focus" is now underway in Dublin. If you haven't registered for ICANN84, you can still follow the public live transcript: www.streamtext.net/player/trans... And archived Zoom will be linked later from agenda page: icann84.sched.com/event/29QIK/...

#ICANN84 GAC is spending this afternoon in Dublin discussing the next round of #newgTLD applications. It's a packed agenda.

#ICANN84 GAC: only 6 GAC representatives in the room today were around back in 2012 for the first round of #newgTLD application discussions.

#ICANN84 GAC: there are already some "Issues of importance to the GAC" flagged for inclusion the Dublin Communique: - #newgTLD Applicant Support Program implementation & outreach - Early warning procedure for the next round of new gTLDs - Registration Data - #DNSabuse