iCloud, Mega, and as a torrent. Archivists have uploaded the 60 Minutes episode Bari Weiss spiked.

Spotify was archived by Anna's Archive 2 days ago. When the company starts filing lawsuits, remember this bit from the book "Spotify Teardown": Spotify *exists* because of bittorrent, and because it began ... *with an archive of pirated music*.

Let me tell you a story. Perhaps you can guess where this is going... though it does have a bit of a twist. I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵

Well now that's interesting. Anna's Archive scraped nearly all of Spotify, making it available through bit torrent, starting with the metadata. Some quantitative description in the post. annas-archive.org/blog/backing...

If only anyone said at the time that a law giving the executive branch power to ban an entire speech platform (or, of course, extract value under threat of ban) was a giant bipartisan congressional self-own.

Gift link to an Interview with the Vanity Fair photographer who took photos of Trump’s staff. I’m struck by his response to the response: “If presenting what I saw, unfiltered, is an attack, then what would you call it had I chosen to edit it and hide things about it?” wapo.st/49ixYtq

The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.

My friend Isaac Brickman of @officehourspodcast.bsky.social and I have a new article out on middleware in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: journals.sagepub.com/eprint/JMYZ3...

"If the court had carefully scrutinized the government’s national security arguments, it would have seen [...] a familiar example of the government exploiting national security fears to intimidate courts into giving it power that the constitution puts off limits." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🎉 Celebrate Wikipedia Day NYC 2026 with us as we honor 25 years of the world's largest online encyclopedia! Enjoy keynote speeches, panel talks, edit-a-thons, family fun activities, swag, and more! 🎂 Register by Jan 20 wikipediadaynyc2026.eventbrite.com #Wikipedia25 #WikipediaDay #WikimediaNYC

MRC/Daily Wire's inane "expose" on Wiki Education is useful in that it's the most transparent expression of "yes, the war on Wikipedia is a direct extension of the war on education." Look, an org that supports any class supports classes we don't like!

Since Elon Musk joined the Trump Administration in January 2025, Starlink has entered 26 new countries, sometimes in places where they had struggled for regulatory approval for years until they were suddenly greenlit https://restofworld.org/2025/musk-starlink-trump-doge

It’s that time of year: what was the piece of writing about AI that stuck with you the most this year, pop press or academic? A few of mine in the thread. ⬇️

Recently attended the @oii.ox.ac.uk workshop on the Future of Social Media Research. Just went ahead and jotted down a few notes in a recap post here: rhododendrites.com/posts/OII-Wo... Thanks again to @manueltonneau.bsky.social and other organizers for two days of impressive sessions!

Most interesting talk at this [early] morning's PlatGovNet conference was Sohini Banerjee's work on the caste/gender/labor exploitation of maid-on-demand app gig workers in India. Service upgrades like "do you want to add a background check - 3 in 10 maids are criminals!" marketing.

Perfect ending to this @theguardian.com article about the tech industry's own coddling media bubble. “If you were a cupcake, what cupcake would be?” “I don’t want to be a cupcake because I don’t want to be eaten,” Karp said. “I’m resisting becoming a cupcake.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The newest rule on the English Wikipedia is a single line: "Large language models (LLMs) can be useful tools, but they are not good at creating entirely new Wikipedia articles. Large language models should not be used to generate new Wikipedia articles from scratch."

Planned to do some liveskying from a workshop at Oxford last week, but forgot about age verification. Rather than upload documents to Bluesky (surprised it's on board when Mastodon's not yet) I figured it could until I get back. Great workshop full of impressive people -- recap coming soon.

YouTube's reach in the US is astounding. It's used by: 62% of kids under 2 (as reported by parents) 84% of kids 2-4 (as reported by parents) 89% of kids 5-12 (as reported by parents) 90% of teens 13-17 95% of adults 18-29 92% of adults 30-49 85% of adults 50-64 64% of adults 65+

On Wednesday, the Trump administration circulated a six-page draft executive order titled “Eliminating State Law Obstruction of National AI Policy.” It would create an “AI Litigation Task Force” led by the Attorney General to challenge state AI laws, among other provisions.

Key points in new Cornell Tech research: 56% of Grokipedia entries carry the Wikipedia CC license, suggesting wholesale ingestion Grokipedia’s top 100 sources include fewer news outlets and more UGC (e.g. LinkedIn scraping) Grokipedia has fewer citations overall, making it harder to check sources

The Wikipedia Signpost republished this Grokipedia essay today (from @techpolicypress.bsky.social last week). Signpost is the unofficial (but sorta official) newspaper of the English Wiki community, and is reliably useful for all things Wikipedia "Inside Baseball." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

Nice piece from @columjournreview.bsky.social / Tow Center on the broad importance of news data access via the recent @mediacloud.bsky.social conference (still bummed I couldn't make it) www.cjr.org/tow_center/w...

US knowledge infrastructure is under attack, write Dean Jackson and Sam Woolley, as part of a series of provocations ahead of a symposium at the University of Pittsburgh's Communication Technology Research Lab (CTRL) on threats to knowledge and democracy. The assault is complex and multidirectional.

Another in our series, Seeing the Digital Sphere: The Case for Public Platform Data. This week’s elections show how central social media has become to campaigns with politicians on nearly every platform. But as Josephine Lukito and Kaitlyn Dowling explain, access to this data is shrinking.

And check out the Coalition for Independent Technology Research's recent report, "The State of Independent Technology Research 2025: Power in Numbers." independenttechresearch.org/citr-report-...

Revising this finding based on my understanding of the method: "the heaviest AI users are *self-styled* 'thought leadership writers'" Though unsure how valuable a non-random study by a ghostwriting company (whose writers by definition do not get credit/blame for their AI use) is.

If you're in NYC and haven't seen one of these Depths of Wikipedia shows, they're very funny and very charming. Not the typical kind of "Inside Baseball" Wikipedia event I'd normally be talking about -- very much a Wikipedia-based comedy show for a general audience.

🚨 New paper drop! How does a social movement once started out powerful somehow turn into a partisan battle? In our new publication in @icsjournal.bsky.social, we answer this question by analyzing 83 million #MeToo tweets from 2017–2020. 1/

These montages are peak Daily Show. But why stop there? Here's NYPost in 2006, for example: nypost.com/2006/11/05/d...

Online platforms shape what we know, how we connect & who gets heard. In partnership with KGI, we are launching a new series, Seeing the Digital Sphere: The Case for Public Platform Data. The series starts today, with an essay from Leticia Bode & Peter Chapman. www.techpolicy.press/seeing-the-d...

In contrast with Wikipedia’s mission to “set knowledge free,” Elon Musk's "competitor" Grokipedia represents “the use of technological power to re-exert top-down authority over information and knowledge," @antisomniac.bsky.social writes. www.techpolicy.press/with-grokipe...

Tough Conversations in Academia, episode #79: "It's fun to play with ChatGPT to see what it can do, but if your methodology section includes 'then we dumped the data into ChatGPT' and the study isn't *about* ChatGPT... that's not ideal, my dude." Stay tuned for #80 on the punctuating "right?"

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia is one of many experiments designed to replace human-generated writing with LLMs. But Ryan McGrady says its defining feature is its use of technological power to re-exert top-down authority over information and knowledge. Who is Grokipedia for, he asks, other than its owner?

I have a piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social today: With Grokipedia, Top-Down Control of Knowledge Is New Again Trying to consider the nature of the project and its vision of neutrality vs. @wikipedia.org's (without getting into e.g. article comparisons). www.techpolicy.press/with-grokipe...

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia is one of many experiments designed to replace human-generated writing with LLMs. But Ryan McGrady argues that its defining feature is its use of technological power to re-exert top-down authority over information and knowledge. buff.ly/odvgs4q

Err @gizmodo.com FYI the headline/first line is incorrect on a basic factual level. Wales didn't lock anything. Another user entirely did that, and a few days before Wales got involved. gizmodo.com/wikipedia-ga...

I have a piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social today: With Grokipedia, Top-Down Control of Knowledge Is New Again Trying to consider the nature of the project and its vision of neutrality vs. @wikipedia.org's (without getting into e.g. article comparisons). www.techpolicy.press/with-grokipe...

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia is one of many experiments designed to replace human-generated writing with LLMs. But Ryan McGrady says its defining feature is its use of technological power to re-exert top-down authority over information and knowledge. Who is Grokipedia for, he asks, other than its owner?

All headlines, even @mcsweeneys.net headlines, are 2017 headlines again. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hi-...

Doomer visions are fundamentally about language and persuasion, not maximizing paperclips. Very, very old challenges for humans, now wrapped in technical complexity that leads us to debate silly things like the subjective experience of bicycles instead of focusing on e.g. trust.

How long must we wait in the trajectory of slopular culture before the use of AI-generated Studio Ghibli portraits is intelligible as ironically funny?

I fell into the trap: starting with "please RT" ensures nobody RTs. Spencer still needs a few more survey responses. Help to shape an important tool!

Folks, I've made it. Namechecked by @caseynewton.bsky.social @kevinroose.com on Hard Fork! Well, ok, not so much by name as "some scholar who said...". But still maybe more exciting than the original quote.

Notes on Grokipedia: Trying to do "neutral encyclopedia" means defining neutrality. Wikipedia defines it as not a platonic ideal of balance or objective reality but faithfully and proportionally summarizing what the best sources say, without adding personal opinions or ideas. [1/9]

Recap of #WikiConferenceNA: Gun, Community, Leadership, Permission. rhododendrites.com/posts/WikiCo... It's too long for a recap, but I'm giving myself a pass on this one.

Here I am, posting to both bluesky and mastodon at the same time via Gobo, which also lets me organize a combined feed. (see previous post/toot)

Please RT! Critical discourse about social media frequently emphasizes the role (& opacity) of recommendation/filtering systems. My @idpiumass.bsky.social colleague @slane.bsky.social is developing a "loyal client" that aggregates your social media feeds & gives you control. He needs your help! 1/2

@404media.co is increasingly excellent. Not just deepfakes, scraping, surveillance, privacy, and Wikipedia, but also butt breathing. Don't let anyone dull your sparkle, 404.