The richest man on earth owns X. The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok. The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post. See the problem here?

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

I spent seven years writing a book on this and she just… said it in three succinct paragraphs to politico.

turns out climate change will cost dramatically more than economists predicted, and the cost of addressing it is actually negative. oops! prospect.org/environment/...

Mooie quote van wethouder Scholtes in het tweegesprek met Elisabeth IJmker "Ik heb ook naar @[email protected] geluisterd" als ondersteuning van punt dat stappen gezet worden in de gemeente om digitaal onafhankelijker te worden #PubConf2025

Ooh look at that, Bluesky creates a link to Elena's account that is on Mastodon! Love this cross platform feature ❤️

Its clear @_elena is the first genuine superstar of the Fediverse? #pubconf2025

This @politico.eu piece threatens a reality checks against a position that, uh, no one has been advocating for. They erect a strawman position backed by no quote or reference according to which European tech sovereignty involves "decoupling" from the world. Huh? www.politico.eu/article/euro...

Don’t be deceived by democracy- and sovereignty-washing: The US government has most to gain from ‘OpenAI for countries’ ↘️ on.ft.com/4kJLh93

So, Internet, we really do need to talk about Elon. How did we get to a place where a single billionaire with daddy issues could take over and control our global public square? I picked up my paintbrush as a means to answer that question.

Silicon Valley’s alliance with Donald Trump has brought me to my breaking point with US tech. I’m going to keep pushing for governments to get serious about digital sovereignty, but in the meantime I’m looking for non-US alternatives — and will have more on what I’ll be using instead soon.

You have to read this article. "The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants." By @naomiaklein.bsky.social and @astra.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

I can't emphasize enough that the most important thing journalists can do right now is publish exactly this kind of article

The movement's official website...

"My name is Ibtihal, and for the past 3.5 years, I’ve been a software engineer on Microsoft’s AI Platform org. I spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice."

The dominoes keep falling. Doing the government's bidding, changing speech rules, and harming vulnerable minorities is still appeasement. Even if you do it YouTube style, quietly and with little fanfare.

.. and that's the whole point..

Trump and Musk have ushered in the era of cataclysm capitalism. But I have a plan to counter it www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... The speed with which US democracy is being dismantled is dizzying, but if we organise resistance now we can stop this @jksteinberger.bsky.social

One major challenge of any opposition to authoritarianism is to make critical thinking, self-responsibility, acknowledgement of and desire to repair crimes, more appealing to the public than insane nationalistic narcissism.

A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile removed by employer Indiana University, & had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why. arstechnica.com/security/202...

Right now there are a lot of new eyes on Signal, and not all of them are familiar with secure messaging and its nuances. Which means there’s misinfo flying around that might drive people away from Signal and private communications. 1/

We expected 2,000 people out in GOP-held Greeley, Colorado. 11,000 people showed up. Something special is happening, folks. Now is the time to organize in every dimension possible and get to work.

Case closed! 🤩💥🚀. In settling my case, Meta has agreed to stop processing my personal data for direct marketing purposes. In non-legalese, that means I will no longer be shown surveillance-ads on Facebook. www.thetimes.com/article/ae70...

In December, I wrote a piece about people's declining ability to process information, to distinguish fact from opinion, etc, and how this might soften us up to become overly-dependent on AI. You could read it, but this guy just summarised it in two tweets!

Investigative journalism on the Gates Foundation is always difficult--b/c it means challenging the one-sided narratives most newsrooms push out. Now climate activists are adding to the misinformation, amplifying Gates's bogus claims on climate change. Read on! timschwab.substack.com/p/divesting-...

Lordy. The Dutch. Hardly the frontline of anti-Americanism www.reuters.com/world/europe...

I am moderating this round table on social media moderation policies. Register below! We have a great lineup of speakers @muendges.bsky.social @ovinhas.bsky.social @sandervdwaal.bsky.social @waag.bsky.social Sarah Eskens, MacKenzie fomer @reutersinstitute.bsky.social Meta Oversight Board.

you’re fired. wait you’re rehired. email us a list of things you’ve done today wait forget it you’re fired again. come back your job was important. you’re fired. or hired. come in to the office. wait the office has no computers go home. we are the department of government efficiency.

JD Vance last month: "If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there’s nothing America can do for you" www.politico.com/live-updates...

Can journalists please be a bit more helpful here? The fact that journalists are not asking their questions from the perspective of being baffled by the position the US president is taking is NOT HELPING

Incredibly expected and nevertheless incredibly disappointing.. where previously the brolichargy may have pretended to have some form of integrity, the masks are now truly coming off..

Why does 25% AfD among young men spark a thousand "what is going on with young men?" posts yet Die Linke 34% among young women generates...nothing at all? Yes, young men voting for the radical right is an important phenomenon. But so is young women going rad left *at even higher rates*.

This is insane. If you wonder why some of us think the rule of law is about to fall, it's this. The U.S. Attorney for DC is not "President Trump's lawyer" and its job is not to "protect his leadership" nor prosecute people who "refuse to put America first".

Happy to announce that Waag Futurelab installed Peertube to host our video content. Check tube.waag.org We are in the process to migrate our Vimeo en Youtube content to the Fediverse. @waag.bsky.social @sandervdwaal.bsky.social

A dictatorship hosting another dictatorship to negotiate with an aspiring dictatorship about the future of a democracy that’s not represented.

It's easier for an aspiring autocrat than ever before, because you really don't have to prohibit the free press anymore.

I was in Paris last week for the #AIActionSummit & was honoured to participate in the “AI in public interest” panel. 👇🏾 my thoughts & reflections on what AI in public interest is/isn’t & some concrete steps/initiatives for `bending the arc of AI towards the public interest' aial.ie/pages/aiparis/

Scytáles, a Swedish digital identity specialist, in partnership with Deutsche Telekom, was selected by the European Commission to develop a “privacy-compliant age verification system across the EU” that will be integrated with the European Digital Identity Wallet www.scytales.com/post/deutsch...

Elon Musk and his band of interns are ransacking the government, and online, big tech is colonizing the web with AI slop. How do the humans, the users, fight back? Guest host Cory Doctorow helps break down the carnage and even offers some words of hope. Listen: www.buzzsprout.com/2425400/epis...

Very interesting to read how the TikTok influence campaign was organised for the Romanian presidential elections. How would we design a social media platform that would be immune to such a coordinated attack with so much funding attached? 🤔 context.ro/how-tiktok-a...

Pro-democracy energy pulsating in Europe. Bring it on Putin, Trump, Musk and other extremists. European values will be victorious 💪🔥🇪🇺

Just wrote about the UK Apple encryption mess. This is a BIG deal. It doesn't just apply to the UK. It would be an absolute disaster for online privacy and security. www.techdirt.com/2025/02/07/u...

Meta’s policy changes have allowed neo-Nazi content to flourish on Instagram, with accounts openly spreading hate, antisemitic rhetoric, and Nazi symbols while profiting from it. This unchecked extremism is spreading faster than ever. Read more: globalextremism.org/post/neo-naz...

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

I had forgotten to link this super-insightful piece by Zoe Hu in @dissentmag.bsky.social on why young men seek out far-right masculinist ideology: too comfort their ideas of supremacy and entitlement, rather than for community. A must-read. www.dissentmagazine.org/article/mr-l...

The "he's not gonna listen to her" reactions are missing many points. Lots of other people are also hearing it. Lots of people can see him hearing it, then weigh what she's said with what he'll do. Lots of people can see her refusal to surrender these ancient teachings to the latest face of empire

🚨In Nature🚨 Meta is dropping fact-checking to avoid anti-conservative bias- but is there actually evidence of bias? We this test empirically & find that conservatives * ARE suspended more * BUT share more misinfo So suspension isn't necessarily evidence of bias www.nature.com/articles/s41...