Internet shutdowns are increasing dramatically in Africa – a new book explains why theconversation.com/internet-shu...

Oligarchic sovereignty: Technology and the future of global order

"In other words, once the four AI tools locked onto a person’s age, race, or gender, those factors would form the backbone of the tissue analysis. In effect, AI would go on to replicate bias resulting from gaps in AI training data."

Journal editor reviewing paper finds himself cited in a paper he didn't write but the real shocker is then checking Google Scholar to find that the fake article has been cited 42 times in other journal paper. AI slop has to stop.

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

When Musk says his mission is 'sustainable abundance' ask for whom. When he closed down USAID he was not trying to create abundance in the global South. According to the Lancet that act alone will result in 14 million deaths globally. Despicable dishonest person. newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/USAI...

US data centre being built in the UK will consume 124 *million* litres of water per year - 50 times the volume claimed in the original proposal. share.google/aTjYqhhaIurV...

Building hyperscale datacentres to produce AI slop is dumb. Building them in hot locations is dumber. Diminishing water supply to them is dumbest. www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...

AI triggers school lockdown by mistaking a clarinet for a gun.

incredible that the oldest scam in the book — “look away from the greed and poor leadership that destroy your chance to make a career, it is the [blanks] that stole your job!” — still works

Tech companies are actually pretty explicit about this: The point is to have a device that you can’t escape, one that always has access to you and makes you a constant source of data beyond what a phone does. Surveillance-first devices.

Just trying to imagine how hearing the sound of drones would affect refugees fleeing places where drones are being used to hunt and target civilians? Drones are used to kill civilians in Ukraine and Sudan for instance.

Funny thing. At a #DAMAIreland event back in October I was asked what was the most pointless use of GenAI I had seen was. I responded: “Publishers giving AI summaries of academic papers that already have abstracts, particularly when the summary is just plan wrong”.

Coke-snorting prostitute-abusing ex-Brexit economy minister to lead OpenAI into stock crash. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Trump pitches for inaugural US Oil Company Peace Prize

IDS research fellow @phatcontroller.bsky.social writes for @uk.theconversation.com on the increasing number of internet shutdowns in Africa. 👇 theconversation.com/internet-shu...

Is biometric digital-ID a bait-and-switch scam? We sign up for the promised convenience of online services but once we're on the hook we find out it's a panoptic state surveillance and targeting scheme designed to increase taxation and suppress dissent.

Trump creates AI Führer by autocratic decree. The increasingly unhinged President of the formerly United country signed an executive order to block US legislators from regulating AI to protect citizens from known harms and risks of the technology. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Internet shutdowns are increasing dramatically in Africa – our new book explains why. My new blog on the @uk.theconversation.com @ids.ac.uk theconversation.com/internet-shu...

Bot working as intended.

Kenya sells ‘crown jewel’ of state assets to raise cash

EXCLUSION BY DESIGN Digital Identification and the Hostile Environment for Migrants Exclusion-by-Design-Report.pdf share.google/ug9qDgEDlMHV...

Journalist Corrales was red-tagged on Meta including by state officials - to target him for vigilante violence. He took Meta to court, with help from the Movement Against Disinformation, to force Meta take down posts and reveal the identity of his persecutors. globalvoices.org/2025/12/13/a...

Digital-ID Deepens Marginalisation, says some old duff academic guy. Pretty good article by the way. news.scienceafrica.co.ke/africa-new-d...

Meta-Repression

Which groups experience digital-ID as exclusion and disadvantage? www.dawan.africa/news/as-keny...

Our new open-access free-to-download book is published today. What a great way to round off the year learning from activists across the continent using digital tools and spaces in creative ways to fight the patriarchy. #DigitalRights www.bloomsbury.com/uk/feminist-...

Announcing the publication of ♀️"Feminist Digital Citizenship in Africa: agency, rights and resistance". Our new book featuring ten chapters by 15 feminist researchers from Africa. Open access and free-to-download from the publisher's website (scroll down!) www.bloomsbury.com/uk/feminist-...

From dodgy age verification to censorship, the Online Safety Act has gone wrong. That's why over 500k people have told the government to think again. MPs will debate this petition on 15 December. Tell your MP to turn up for our digital rights ⬇️ action.openrightsgroup.org/tell-your-mp...

We are the 99.999%. Wealth Tax Now! 🤑 www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...

Trump Virtually Confesses to War Crimes. Genocide funding President threatens to sanction the International Criminal Court unless it promises not to prosecute him. Totally unnecessary step if he was innocent.

Automating Racist Policing. Institutionally racist UK Police force probably see the in-built racial and gender bias of facial recognition technology as a feature not a bug. They found a technology that reflects and reproduces their existing values and practices. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Biometric IDs blocking access to rights and services for the most marginalized new report finds. www.context.news/digital-righ...

In terms of what’s understood to be socially acceptable behavior, normalizing the filming/taking pictures of people in public who are minding their own business (and putting it online) is one of the worst developments of the past 15 years.

Biometric Digital-IDs are blocking some already marginalized citizens from accessing their fundamental rights and essential government services. Our new report. www.context.news/digital-righ...

Africa’s $1bn Biometric ID Rollout Raises Concerns Over Privacy and Exclusion www.nigeriacommunicationsweek.com.ng/africas-1bn-...

Biometric ID prevents millions from accessing fundamental rights and essential services, new report shows. www.newsghana.com.gh/biometric-id...

Three more Farage bloc MEPs alleged to have followed Russian asset’s script At least eight MEPs elected for Ukip or Brexit party now known to have been focus of efforts by jailed Nathan Gill www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Data Colonialism: government deal to sell Kenyan's health data and samples to US is extractive, exploitative and structurally inequitable according to experts. nation.africa/kenya/weekly...

Free peace prize with every family meal

The setting where Facial Recognition returns false positives for black and Asian subjects is technically referred to as “ON”. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

🔥🔥

The reason that Nigel Garage will not apologise for his vile racist attacks is because he is not in the least bit sorry, he has not changed his hateful views, and he would behave in exactly the same way today if he could get away with it. Vile man.

“In 2017 there was not a single asylum seeker who arrived on a boat. Today we have 46,000 a year and do you know why? It was because of the botched Brexit deal pushed through by Boris Johnson and championed by Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage should be here apologising” Daisy Cooper

As Reform racism revelations multiply across the media so do the number of Tory defections to Reform. What does this tell us about them?

The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow

Racial recognition technology centres whiteness. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...