Was Hines v Stamos Cheryl Hines suing John Stamos over the long-awaited Full House/Curb Your Enthusiasm crossover? Nope, it was an attempt to suppress academic research into the organized manipulation of online platforms. After three years we finally won. But at great cost.

This Wired article about Meta red-teaming the AI of others without their knowledge is mysterious but the subsequent BlueSky pearl clutching isn’t helpful. How do you think AI gets better? How will academics detect that AI isn’t safe? Through red teaming. www.wired.com/story/meta-c...

"It's just vibes-based regulation." Alex Stamos spoke to Justin Hendrix about the White House yanking Anthropic's Fable with no written standard, no warning, and no procedural path back. He compares it to grounding a jet without telling Boeing why. It's sending the wrong message abroad, he says.

Well, it looks like the PRC paid for the conference center RightsCon was supposed to be hosted in. Guess they didn't appreciate last year's event in Taipei. zm.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/dsxxx/ds...

I was recently asked why I don't post on BlueSky more. Well, if Jamelle Bouie isn't pure enough to survive here...

OFFS. When Iran tried to interefere in 2020, researchers caught them and called them out. Then the Benz-Weiss-Taibbi-Musk-Jordan-Trump axis labeled those researchers "censors" ... and set about defunding them and dismantling their organizations.

Fatality.

Another day, another phishing site protected by @cloudflare.social. This one is totally ripping through my kids’ school. Thanks CloudFlare, for the useless reply to my abuse report! Toxs[.]digital for the threat hunters

Microsoft hands BitLocker keys to the government as @leolaporte.me, @stamos.org, @docrock.bsky.social, & @notpatrick.com discuss TikTok's privacy panic on TWiT, covering Europe's secret tech backups & Grok making millions of sexualized images! twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1068

@leolaporte.me, @stamos.org, @docrock.bsky.social, and @notpatrick.com unpack privacy fears, encryption access, and digital resilience. Listen here:

Watching the Katseye documentary with my daughter and my initial conclusions are: 1) Wow, these young ladies are talented and work hard 2) How has @agrobbonta.oag.ca.gov not opened an investigation into HYBE for child work conditions? There are two orthopedic surgeries documented ON CAMERA.

AI boosts productivity while arming adversaries as @leolaporte.me, @jilleduffy.bsky.social, @stamos.org, & @gigastacey.bsky.social discuss the coming wave of AI-fueled cyberattacks on This Week in Tech covering OpenAI's security researcher & the F5 hack! twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1056

I published a Wide World of Cyber edition today about the f5 incident with @stamos.org and @thekrebscycle.bsky.social No video for this episode… our video platform is AWS dependent 🤦‍♂️ risky.biz/WWC11/

The Wide World of Cyber podcast is back, featuring @thekrebscycle.bsky.social, @stamos.org and yours truly! AUDIO: risky.biz/WWC10/ VIDEO: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8B7...

I guess AI safety work isn’t just woke censorship.

🎹(80’s synthesizer)🎹 🎼Da da da da da da dum da da da Block! Yah Just go ahead and block! Blockkkk!

There’s a super article by @genevievelakier.bsky.social about the “non-First Amendment law of free speech,” which argues, essentially, that it’s a mistake to think the protection of free speech in this country is a matter only (or even principally) of First Amendment doctrine. 1/

I wrote about the Trump Admin's use of federal funding as a jawbone, and why the very reason the First Amendment bar on jawboning is so broad is the very reason jawboning is so effective: intermediaries have strong incentives to just comply. They must not. knightcolumbia.org/blog/federal...

Well, at least taking my grandkids to the museum exhibit on the new listening devices the Chinese invented to have the Qataris plant will be educational for them.

This was a fun mystery to explore with PJ. Have a listen if you are looking for a podcast not about… (gestures around at Rome burning).

Here's my blogpost in support of Krebs. It's different enough from those by @stamos.org or @k8em0.bsky.social that it's worth writing, though the conclusion is much the same. cybersect.substack.com/p/i-am-speak...

Working with Chris Krebs and getting to know his wife Emily and their family has been one of the great honors of my life. The attack against their family should be condemned by all. I have written a post about what is happening to them here: www.linkedin.com/posts/alexst...

First day of class and I have the perfect lecture hall for Trust and Safety.

📢 Excited to share that I started a new company, Corridor, with Ashwin Ramaswami! Corridor is the AI-powered secure by design platform – and we're backed by @stamos.org, Chris Krebs, Christina Cacioppo, @alip.bsky.social at Neo, and Sarah Guo at Conviction. forms.gle/3LsFxtNqzok2...

So I am getting the distinct feeling that Google (in addition to Apple) got a Technical Capability Notice from the U.K.

A New Wide World of Cyber podcast with @stamos.org and @thekrebscycle.bsky.social is out now! We talk about AI, DeepSeek, and regulation. Everyone’s freaking out over this new model. But should they be? VIDEO: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aniE... AUDIO: risky.biz/WWC7/

Following up on the recent news about the U.K. government attempting to force Apple to backdoor its cloud encryption, @stamos.org and I wrote this op-ed in the WSJ. www.wsj.com/opinion/u-k-...

1) This is bad bad bad 2) I'll have more coming out on this soon 3) A huge scoop for @joemenn.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

I laughed.

The multiple jailbreaks available to get DeepSeek to eventually figure out something happened in Tiananmen in 1989 are fascinating, and hint towards a Chinese AI censorship regime that is very specific and fragile. Do they just throw the most obvious queries at the model and call it a day?

Deepseek-R1... 1) Is very impressive 2) The 32B version runs very well locally on a 4090 3) Will put a lot of pressure on the big US labs to open-source 4) Will be used in a lot of abuse/spam 5) Has some interesting holes in its knowledge:

This is basically what the DPRK’s teams live for, except with the added frisson of possibly restarting the Korean War* while also racking up the biggest crypto heist in history. *Technically isn’t over yet!

If you want to see how well the war against bots is going on X, just mention that you have a Facebook account that was stolen.

I’m watching the NVIDIA keynote to see if I’ll need to sell a car or my house to afford a 5090.

It’s amazingly considerate of the Iranians/Aliens to adopt the FAA’s approved lighting scheme.

Smartest model ever, still doesn't know who Jonathan Turley is. 🤔

New Bingo card entry dropped.

The @bsky.app team has days to get the fake account problem under control before this poses a serious problem to the value of the platform. It’s bad enough that I would recommend putting some temporary brakes on new account creation, such as required no-VOIP SMS, even if that stunts growth.

1) Many underestimate the investment the PRC has put into influencing the US social media sphere. 2) The destruction of Trust and Safety at X has made it a playground for PRC actors. 3) It's nice to see them whine about BlueSky. 4) But there is nothing magical about BlueSky to keep them away.

Excited to see this out in the world! In which @genevievelakier.bsky.social and I try to make sense of the equivocal signals sent by the Court in last Term's platform cases, and what it might mean for the future of internet regulation. harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-13...

[cw: AI-generated CSAM discussion] New Publication: In a case study for the Partnership on AI, my HAI colleague Caroline Meinhardt & I explain why direct disclosure mechanisms (e.g. content labels) can’t serve as a panacea for all the harms of synthetic media. partnershiponai.org/hai-research...

Listening to today’s hearing on AI harms, I hear Sen. Klobuchar imply that there is not already a federal law against making pornographic deepfakes of kids (there is) and that platforms don't currently have any obligations to do anything about such material (they do). I am going to become The Joker.

Periodical shameless plug 😎 blue.mackuba.eu/skythread/ → Reddit-like thread UI, can also look up quotes blue.mackuba.eu/directory/ → catalog of custom handles & PDSes blue.mackuba.eu/scanner/ → check moderation labels blue.mackuba.eu/labellers/ → labelers mackuba.eu/2024/02/21/b... → Bsky intro

I need to write a BlueSky moderation tool that automatically blocks for content-free quote-tweet dunks. Unicorn startup right there.

YOU GUYS our little baby book made the Kirkus list of best books for 2024!!!! Me and @rmac.bsky.social are freaking out. Thank you so much for supporting Character Limit www.kirkusreviews.com/book-lists/b...

Somewhere in a basement in Beijing, a beleaguered group of MSS analysts are struggling with how to assemble the Chairman’s morning briefing so they can get through it without being executed for pulling a prank.