To be fair, Coates wrote this piece because very few others who could do it, did. I see this as basic truth telling with journalist skills that others refused to employ.

🚨 Our research on unions and organising in India's platform society covered in the media, for which both me and my co-author @islandexpress.bsky.social were also interviewed: "Why unions find it hard to forge worker solidarity in the platform economy". behanbox.com/2025/09/05/w...

You wait years for a headline like this on.ft.com/3Tmw16o

Please check out @adiray.bsky.social's very timely piece proposing a post colonial critical political economy approach to studying platforms and digital technologies, contesting the Asian developmental model of leapfrogging. Another wonderful article from our social media+society special issue.

Interrogating Technological Leapfrogging in Asian Development and Growth Models. Happey to see this piece out in Social Media + Society! Began life as 20K draft (another story..), with nudging I shaped part of it into a conceptual intervention. Open access 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/2056...

Yup the blunders within the show and bluster was all too visible.

Musk vs Trump (X vs TS)

NEW REPORT: Artificial Power, our 2025 Landscape Report, is out. Today’s AI isn’t just being used by us, it’s being used on us. We urgently need to reclaim public power over the future trajectory of AI. Another path is possible. Read the report: ainowinstitute.org/2025-landscape

Our article "Beyond the ‘Gig Economy’: Towards Variable Experiences of Job Quality in Platform Work" has been published by 'Work, Employment and Society'. With Nick Martindale and @brendanburchell.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/0950...

Very much looking forward to this talk from @wstronge.bsky.social on June 2nd in @uoe-sps.bsky.social

What can India’s emerging gig worker unions teach us about labour organising & welfare in the digital age? Thrilled about this new open-access paper with @islandexpress in @compchange.bsky.social Read: doi.org/10.1177/1024... It's packed with ideas. A thread of it's key interventions:

Read the chapter by @cosminpopan.bsky.social and myself about the changing composition of couriers and the consequences for collectivism!

This is gonna be great - join if you can!! 💥

The Platforms and Society journal and AdTech Research Project present an Online Symposium How to Approach and Regulate Google? A New Perspective 12 May 2025 | 9:00–10:30 AM (EST) / 3-4.30 PM (CEST) Join via Zoom: newschool.zoom.us/j/9834828717... (pw: 690528)

imagine paying $200 to watch a 2 hour French New Wave film that could have been collapsed into a 10 min scene of young people running around. $300 to watch In the Mood for Love, and in the end, they don't even kiss.

📣 Call for Papers – Special Issue of the Journal of Industrial Relations Workplace Geopolitics: Industrial Relations and International Relations journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/PD...

Tech Giants are Mapping Global Migration: Meta's vast data reveals key insights into migration. While researchers will find conclusions familiar, data frm 3B users represents powerful new analysis tool. 1/2 www.nytimes.com/interactive/... #BigData #MigrationStudies #DigitalGeopolitics #TechEthics

Meta right now

On Day 1 of the Meta antitrust trial, the government was stuck arguing about a world — and a market — that no longer really exists www.platformer.news/meta-antitru...

📣 Apply for the LaborTech Annual Awards 🏆 Got a killer monograph? A brilliant grad paper? Or been shaking things up through tech + labour organising? Designers, researchers, activists, tech workers + organisers Submit. Deadline: June 1, 2025

Meanwhile I find the collective meltdown of American 'economic moguls' about nation's Chinese dependency extremely hilarious. They manage to fault Summers, Clinton & Bush for walking China into the WTO, thus making it the monster it is. Idk why they don't go all the way back to Eisenhower.... 😆

Call for abstracts ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

Trump's tariff is shock & awe. In the long run but it will lead to tactical recaliberation of the world economy. The more countries US can individually renegotiate with the better chances it thinks it has to continue its dominance and ring fence China. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Who knows the endgame from Trump? but if tariffs are real bargaining chips - this is shock and awe. There is going to be recaliberation once the tactical onslaught settles.

In our paper 'Patchwork capitalism and the management of interlinked crises by essential public services in Poland', we explore how public service actors have responded to interlinked crises. The paper has been been just published in International Labour Review: en.ilr-rit.org/article/pubi...

Why are universities pivoting to AI after initial panic about students cheating? @tressiemcphd.bsky.social gives a mini lecture on AI, politics, and inequality building on @dmgreene.bsky.social's work on the "access doctrine" www.instagram.com/tressiemcphd...

A massive, self-inflicted wound on American higher education.

🚨Call for applications - WES PhD Showcase Writing Workshop, 2-3 June 2025 at the University of Nottingham, led by 4 @wesjnl.bsky.social editors. Excellent opportunity for 16 delegates. Open to international members, with limited contribution. see - www.britsoc.co.uk/opportunitie...

Make Bribery Great Again: "American national security depends on America and its companies gaining strategic commercial advantages around the world & Trump is stopping excessive, unpredictable FCPA enforcement that makes American companies less competitive,” according to a White House factsheet.

I have been saying this in my classes a lot. Time to back it up with some research 🧐

We took X to court. And we won! ⚖️ The courts ruled that X must urgently grant us access to their publicly available data via their API. This access is critical for our analysis of online public discourse ahead of the upcoming German elections. Read: bit.ly/4gBWGp4 Here's what's happened 1/3 👇

As an acolyte of Musk, this is hardly a surpise. For every single one that resigns there will be 10 others in the waiting.

FEMA workers responding to wildfires ordered to say 'alien' instead of 'immigrant': "This is the most 1984 email I've ever seen," one worker said. 🔗 www.404media.co/for-immediat...

Anyone who happened to know that the White House would announce and then suspend tariffs within 24 hours just made a boatload of money.

Delighted to be joining the @wesjnl.bsky.social editorial board this month (for 4 yrs). A go-to journal for me-excited to connect with colleagues, contribute to projects & support fab work on digital work, (in)equality, migration, identity, care, methods etc., esp. of/frm majority world. Submit.

The news of US administrative employees being led by Musk’s 19 year old lackeys - Bobba et al. to questioning reminds me of that severance scene…

Working conditions in the tech sector are deteriorating. Leading tech firms like Google, once considered top employers, have laid off thousands of workers despite reporting profits. Can worker cooperatives offer an alternative for tech workers? platform.coop/blog/varieti... @cornellilr.bsky.social

NEW: In 2024, the share of US workers represented by a union declined slightly from 11.2% to 11.1%. But these statistics don’t capture the millions of workers who want to join unions. www.epi.org/publication/...

Letter by alleged Twitter whistleblower: to be verified. But all of us with semblance of social media knew something like this was happening. 2024 was election disinfo year for the world. Too late in the US? What are legal avenues? Doesn't Germany go into elections 2025 - can this be taken up?

So. Vivek Ramaswamy got fired before the 'DOGE' job even started 😂 ? Claims he has other plans. So much for the honchos of government efficiency whose tenure was any way till just 2026. Heads will keep continue to roll in this unhinged cabinet, and we are here for it.

There is always a semblance of liberation when the state says FU to its own people.

Elon trippin balls with an extra dose of Ketamine (his perscription drug) & american accent today. Ofc it was a belligerent salute that he prolly practiced alone in the bathroom several times while calling himself the MAN. Avg person be criniging - its the behaviour of Adolf himself.

The so called progressive politicians also had little to contribute here. The ACLU seems right on this one: www.aclu.org/press-releas...

The Tiktok ruling raises other questions: what standing does 'foreign adversary'? Wasn't it Trump who put China on & Congress codified it (April 2024)? Can laws brought in on national security grounds be challenged at all (I'm sure there is precedence)? Does this change much (a la' Gorsuch) etc.

Good grief.

It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and #blueskies all the way. RIP David Lynch

Well, you had 4 years and then decided to drop the cases.