Fasica is an incredibly gifted writer and storyteller, and it’s been such a joy and privilege to watch her vision come to life. Congrats, @fasica.bsky.social! So well deserved! ❤️

🎉✨ Huge congrats to @fasica.bsky.social for being shortlisted for the True Story Award! Her brilliant piece on content moderation stood out among over 1000 submissions from around the world, placing in the top 3%. truestoryaward.org/story/508

The spectacular Glistening-Green Tanager at Doña Dora #Colombia #birds #nature 🌿

Thank you to @prithvi97.bsky.social for covering our research on the failures of content moderation in the context of #TigrayGenocide and how to prevent genocidal speech from being proliferated by social media platforms. www.techpolicy.press/what-a-new-s...

Walt Kelly’s Pogo poster for the inaugural #EarthDay on April 22, 1970.

My painting TROUT WATER

I would choose the bear too 😆

The Earth provides enough for every living being. Same flower, both the bee and butterfly ate from it without putting a fight. I think something humans should learn from. I'm spending more time in nature, & I'm happy to experience this 😊

And if you do nothing else, please watch this short video narrated by Fasica, the lead author of the CHI paper, Nuredin Ali, and exiled Ethiopian journalist @zekuzelalem.bsky.social: peertube.dair-institute.org/w/wTpAFSQkB2...

Please send it over to anyone who will listen and can do something about it. Our people can’t afford another war. Our first academic paper on the topic will be presented at CHI in May: drive.google.com/file/d/1gPcU....

➡️ Find our work thus far on www.dair-institute.org/tigray-genoc.... ➡️ More importantly, we have a statement describing the unbridled war mongering currently spreading on ALL social media platforms, setting the stage for all out war between Ethiopia & Eritrea: www.dair-institute.org/blog/tigray-...

I will never forget the genocidal mania among the Ethiopian intelligentsia. It was a popular genocide, with your “progressive” diaspora falling over themselves to deny and justify it. The least we can do is raise awareness about what has happened and what is about to happen.

and the longest continuous internet shutdown ever recorded & moderating genocidal content targeting your people. One of the moderators saw his cousin being murdered because that was a video routed to him. He wasn’t even allowed to take a short mental health break. www.noemamag.com/the-human-co...

We collaborated with content moderators like Fasica to understand the horrific working conditions of moderators. Imagine your family going through one of the worst sieges in recorded history with nothing going in & out for 2 years, data-workers.org/fasica/

all social media is 4chan in these languages & contexts. We've spent 3 years documenting these failures. We had no language technology to do this–not even the equivalent of a spell checker. So we partnered with Lesan founded by Asmelash Teka to create those tools. restofworld.org/2023/3-minut...

The VP who sent an “anonymous” letter to HR telling me to retract my paper & setting the stage for my firing commented that plenty of work was being done in that arena. But contrary to his claims & Yann LeCun’s lies saying that “95% of hate speech on Facebook is removed by ‘AI’,”

I told people @ Google about this & asked them to build language technology & have human moderation, in so-called "under-resourced languages” like Tigrinya. Even though we were at Google, any concerns sent to YouTube went into a void never to even be acknowledged. restofworld.org/2021/why-fac...

Unlike Tigrayans in the diaspora whose sisters were being raped & parents murdered, I didn’t know what was happening on the ground & who to believe. But I did see the genocidal speech targeting them on social media, particularly from Eritreans, in Tigrinya. www.goodreads.com/book/show/21...

🔇🔇🔇Announcing new work from DAIR which is very close to my heart, 3 years in the making. When #TigrayGenocide, the deadliest genocide of the 21st century thus far, started in November 2020, it was 1 month before I got fired from Google. 🧵 english.elpais.com/internationa...

Our paper for ACM CHI 2025 is out, I'm super proud to collaborate with multidisciplinary scholars and researchers assessing social media's role in spreading genocidal content during the Tigray war. www.dair-institute.org/tigray-genoc...

Imagine that! #Teachers #Education #Students #the future #Technology #modernsoulutions #Peopleover processes www.dair-institute.org/blog/a-futur...

22nd February 2025 07.43

And who they didn't like

Golden hour, Pacific time.

The sun bows low in crimson grace, kissing waves in soft embrace. Shadows dance on golden shore, whispering tales of days before. The ocean hums a lullaby, as stars awaken in the sky. Night arrives on painted seas, carried home by the twilight’s breeze.

Reading this book 📕 for the third time, might be a blueprint for how Marc Cuban can help build a news 📰 network with journalists like Jim Acosta, who can tell the TRUTH to POWER 💪💪💪 and lead the RESISTANCE 🙏🙏🙏

Even if it's only the backyard, sometimes the sky is so beautiful you just gotta take a picture. #okwx

Write new worlds. Write beautiful places. Write angry people. Write imaginary beasts, futile quests, broken hearts, lifelong injustices, mysteries, love affairs, lost children, newfound purpose. Write anything that allows you to escape or heal or vent or rage or explore or reconcile. Write 🖤

And this morning the Shed is a path between stand of trees, all scattered with crocus and aconite…

3rd February 2025 07.59

My 2025 hobby is helping my pals de-centre tech from their lives. Acquire CDs, records, DVDs, paper books, reference books, magazines, dictionaries, etc. Go to the library! Going analog is a small way to stop relying on tech bro monsters & helps preserve knowledge they're literally deleting.

I used to try to avoid posting about politics too much, because I know people followed me for art and comic stuff. But politics are affecting my ability to exist and create art, so I'm going to keep posting about politics until it gets better.

#SriAgenda save the date - #Feb12 5pm CET Dehumanization, Discrimination and Deskilling: The Impact of Digital Tech on Low-Wage Workers. The Case for Shareholder #Engagement​ By @iccr.bsky.social https://buff.ly/4gd8kqm download the report here: https://buff.ly/4hukg8f #responsibleinvestment

📢We're proud to support the launch of the Data Labelers Association of Kenya with an online event! Join to meet and support the workers: 📅Feb 13 ⏰8pm Kenya/ 6pm EU/ 12pm ET ✅Watch and submit your questions to the speakers: twitch.tv/dair_institute