The #DigitalServicesAct has finally been put to use. 👏 Yesterday, the European Commission imposed its first-ever penalty under the bloc’s content moderation law. The EU must enforce digital rules, not dilute them or roll them back, in order to protect citizen rights and democracy.

To no surprise; research suggests AI chatbots are particularly good at seductive disinformation. 👀 “[This] could have malign consequences for public discourse and the information ecosystem” Persuasiveness at the expense of accuracy and fact is the point where communication becomes manipulation.

@annpettifor.bsky.social touches on the hype and marketing behind the #AI bubble at the #FinanceForSociety Forum: "The AGI bubble may just be a vast techno-dystopian power play to put tech bosses at the helm of political and economic control. This is class war at its most brutal."

Amazon is remaking the global economy in its own image — extractive, exploitative and authoritarian. But we don’t have to let it get away with that: join the workers, activists and citizens from across the globe to Make Amazon Pay this Black Friday to Cyber Monday. ✊ makeamazonpay.com

AI shouldn’t come at the cost of workers and the environment ! Over 1,000 Amazon employees have signed an open letter warning that the accelerated approach to AI development could cause a “staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth”. 🌎 Another reason to #MakeAmazonPay

As it stands the AI inudstry is foresaking our planet and wellbeing for their computing power. Left unchecked, OpenAI will need “almost exactly as much electricity as India’s 1.5 billion people, and “emit nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as ExxonMobil”

This report estimates that up to 435 million people work as data workers globally. That’s a huge amount of people working so-called ‘gig jobs’ that offer little to no protection, with uncertain income streams and no clear career pathways.

🚨 Conditions remain dire at at Amazon India. A recent survey conducted by @uniglobalunion.org reveals 68% of workers suffer heat-related illness, and 42% fear retaliation for raising safety concerns. We need to keep up the pressure and boycott Amazon this coming Black Friday to #MakeAmazonPay.

Organiser Grace Mausser from @socialists.nyc on @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s campaign being laser focused on affordability for New Yorkers, and how to win electoral campaigns. “Socialism can beat fascism but we have to organise our communities on the ground.” #Manifiesta2025

@parismarx.com and @arunkundnani.bsky.social on tech and its allyship with the far right, the resurgence of a Cold War with China, and MAGA’s vision of American capitalism. “Capitalism is highly malleable. We have to rethink our reflexes.” #Manifiesta2025

@annpettifor.bsky.social warns that when central bankers espouse economic policies that impose austerity and fuel despair, it can open the door to a rise in authoritarianism.

Republicans & major US tech firms renew attacks on digital rules; mounting coordinated pressure on the EU’s #DigitalServicesAct by portraying it as a threat to free speech & #US interests. The campaign backed by firms like X and Meta show growing US resistance to European digital rule-making.

@pnorwood.bsky.social and @max-kretschmer.bsky.social warn that AI in retail finance is already excluding consumers - citing account closures, opaque credit scoring and unfair insurance pricing. While the #AIAct will address some risks, major gaps remain and must be addressed by EU policymakers.

AI doomers are fascinating; attributing undue sentience to a technological tool. If “the risk of extinction from AI” is "as serious as dangers posed by pandemics & nuclear warfare", it'll be likely due to its impact on critical resources or climate more than any risk of becoming a 'digital God'.

"AI systems help decide who gets a loan, how much someone pays for insurance, or whether a bank account is closed." My @financewatch.bsky.social colleague @pnorwood.bsky.social warns that it's time for the EU to close regulatory gaps in the EU's #AIAct before innovation comes at consumers’ expense.

There is a quasi-religion in Silicon Valley that views AI as godlike. This faith has always been parallel to Evangelical Christianity: salvation (transhumanism), the rapture (the technological singularity), and demons (Roko's Basilisk) Lately the AI faith has fully fused with Christian Nationalism.

Collective bargaining is still the best defense against unchecked technological disruption. As #AI disrupts the workplace, labour unions in the US are fighting to protect worker's rights by demanding guardrails, human oversight, and fair contracts.

Trump’s #AIActionPlan is not just a tech industry wish list — it’s also pro-boss, anti-worker, and anti-regulation. It fast-tracks the building of data centers, bans words like ‘diversity’, promotes boss-friendly AI at work and calls to scrap copyright for AI firms.

Figures of #DarkEnlightenment have captured the attention of #MAGA, creating a coalition between tech & far right. They want nothing less than to tear down & rebuild the government from the ground up. We must reject the tech feudalism that seeks to replace democracy with corporate fiefdoms. 1/2

Have you noticed a yellow tint on #AI generated #images? Like the em dash for ChatGPT text, it could become a tell tale feature of AI art. The phenomenon is due to models now training on their own outputs — essentially cannibalising its own data set.

🚨 Trump is set to reveal the new #AIActionPlan. Worryingly — but not surprisingly — it would ditch #guardrails and lean into Silicon Valley pitches, focusing on accelerating AI sales, and the building of data centres. Such a plan dangerously puts corporate interests before that of the public.

@willoremus.com on the authors at the forefront of the battle on copyright and ‘fair use’ in the age of AI. We can’t allow AI to steal creative and intellectual work of writers and artists - just to sell it back to us. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Suddenly, AI is everywhere. But what kind of hidden trade-offs are we making? And are they worth it? Great piece by @ethanz.bsky.social on the impact of AI on energy consumption, water, the health of communities local to data centres, and much more.

"If AI drives federal decision-making instead of aiding human experts, glitches could unfairly deprive people of benefits or harm public safety, said Elizabeth Laird, a director at the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology."

Your Prime Day reminder that half of Amazon warehouse workers struggle with food & housing costs. A third have had to rely on government assistance like SNAP — which is about to get cut. If Bezos can spend $50M on a wedding, Amazon can afford to treat its workers with dignity.

Great piece by @timchristiaens.bsky.social about democracy, work, and the need for a publicly owned European AI system. "As long as private companies with capricious CEOs own the basic technologies that shape our daily lives, we are at the mercy of their arbitrary power."

In Georgia this week, they had to deliver brain-dead Adriana Smith’s baby over 3 months before the due date. Her body was decaying too fast despite being on life support. Her family had no say. This is the tragic result of backwards ‘pro-life’ policies. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

In India, app worker power is growing. In 2023, Rajasthan was India’s first state to pass social security protections for gig workers. Now, in Karnataka law goes further to guarantee social security, and in Telangana, the Gig Workers Bill ensures fair wages, social security & grievance redressal.

If AI is cheaper, more productive, and easier to use, then why are AI companies outsourcing their labour to human workers? Oh yeah, it's because it's not really about innovation or even productivity - it's about outsourcing and driving down labour power and extracting even more profits.

Catholic theologians pose a central question on AGI: Will it serve to satisfy the needs of humanity, or just serve to enrich and empower tech giants? “we [should develop] AI tools that help cure diseases & solve practical problems, but not autonomous (...) machines that nobody knows how to control"

Tech companies are building their riches off of labour extraction. Employing workers through intermediaries allows them to limit their responsibility. “These companies go to African countries, like Kenya, where the government is a bit fragile, the economy, the politics, [are] complicated.”

It's far from 'inspiring' to see a rich cohort of women take an 11 min trip and support Jeff Bezos - whose billions come from fueling climate disasters & exploiting workers. If we are to be truly 'connected to love', we should reroute these millions to protecting our planet & people's livelihoods.

“The idea that Meta can ‘remove bias from our AI models’ is ridiculous — in a very real sense, LLMs are collections of biases extracted from data and expressed on demand.”

We have to meet this critical moment in history characterised by shocks, scarcity and collapse: climate breakdown, unregulated AI and end times fascism. “the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.”

The #RubenVanstiphout case - the med student avoiding jail for raping a fellow student - exemplifies the misogyny still endemic in Belgium. Once again, the focus is on empathy towards the perpetrator instead of the victim. What about HER talent? What about HER ambition? What about HER future??

The use of peoples’ pictures and identities by chatbots & facial recognition products represents the latest wave of theft by tech companies. We need to have a conversation about the regulatory boundaries concerning AI's propensity to mimic people's 'like-ness'.

Techniques used by Amazon to disrupt organizing “include leveraging algorithmic discipline on worker devices, algorithmic slack-cutting or ‘electronic whipping,’ in which algorithms rapidly alter quotas and rules, mobile device spamming, and social media monitoring.”

#ChatGPT and other generative search tools haven't just trained their algorithms on largely stolen text, but they're also cutting off traffic flow to original sources whilst 'hallucinating' information.

The DOGE Purge Isn’t About Efficiency—It’s an authoritarian tactic. I wrote a more in depth piece on the empirical evidence showing how liberal-leaning agencies are being disproportionately targeted and how this mirrors authoritarian strategies seen in Hungary and Turkey.

Cutting 'waste' and simplifying 'regulation' are just the latest political weapons used to assault our hard-won protections and the very fabric of our societies. Where's the fraud? Where's the overregulation? The math is not mathing.

Sonia Kgomo, organiser with African Tech Workers Rising, reiterated that Meta's approach of replacing factchecking with community notes is the wrong course. Instead, the work needs to be professionalised: standards for workers, training, health and safety, reasonable quotas, and a living wage.

Insightful read on the effects of the tech industry's outsourcing of digital labour: "AI is not magic. Behind every algorithm are thousands of hidden workers labelling, training and moderating data under precarious conditions."

Meanwhile, in Paris Ursula von der Leyen just promised to 'cut the red tape' of our AI protections, watering down hard-won victories in the #AIAct. The EU caving in on pushback against tech laws will mean even less regulatory oversight on the AI companies' already obscure data sets & practices.

It's no real surprise that Meta illegally trained its AI models on pirated books and journal articles. Under the cover of AI, corporate oligarchs are continuing their sweep of our intellectual property - and trying to sell the content back to us. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Spotted: cute dogs, cheetah print everything, and cool local creators at le reservoir bar last Sunday in Brussels! I still have some stock of my #Valentines day bunny for sale ❣️🐰 DM if interested ❤️

Come find me this Sunday at the creator’s market in Brussels to celebrate art and love 🫶 📍Le Reservoir Bar from 10h-18h

What is most irritating with the #Arizona coalition’s policies regarding pensions is that they explicitly reward the standard working relationship (stable, long term work) — yet they fuel the very hyperflexibility and precarity leading workers to seek various and fragmented employment.

Live blog for new government updates @brusselstimes.com

Austerity is back in Europe. Belgium’s new nationalist-led #Arizona coalition government has revealed its plans after a marathon 48h of negotiations this weekend. It signals a clear shift in priorities, with social rights and benefits on the chopping block. 1/5

As a digital anthropologist, it's fascinating to see how users find ways to combat the loss of community, commodification of user data, and politicization of algorithmic feeds. Now, they're seeking the cozy, niche, corners of the internet. Is this a return to the personal web? A 🧵.