Has the clock started ticking for social media algorithms? Algorithms are opaque, they optimise for the wrong things — engagement, virality, outrage — and they’re not neutral. @kellyfincham.bsky.social writes in the @irishexaminer.bsky.social 🔗: www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

I would totally watch a post-match conversation led by Kevin McGahern! Please make it happen!!!

Bringing the joy!

Someone has been sitting on this historic property on Fr Matthew Quay, Cork city centre for a very, very long time Everyone else has to suffer consequences Built around 1800, sad to see this level of vandalism, captured so well by the photo, particularly the bleakness & scale #DerelictIreland

Cork City Council has a public consultation 1.5 years ago to reduce speed limits Yet our urban roads still have fast cars So we still have deaths near deaths and life changing injuries on our roads #Speirgorm

We are so grateful for the strong grassroots, self-organising, de-centralised community that built around our work tackling #DerelictIreland From Donegal to Kerry, from Sligo to Drogheda, & all in between, & of course our huge international support, a massive thanks to you all for people power 😍

According to Irish Water, as of 2021, data centres across Ireland drank about 810 megalitres of water from the public mains a year. But that same year, Meta reported that it withdrew 928 megalitres of water for its data centres in Clonee alone. How is this possible?

It’s still unfathomable to me that this even happened. A wonderful journalist who also turned out to be a great travelling companion when you’re unexpectedly gifted corporate tickets to Old Trafford.

When I complain that the current government refuses to do anything, about anything, it is very literally true. They do not know how to govern. #speirgorm

The Political Studies Association of Ireland annual conference is coming to Cork in October (16th-18th). The call for papers is open now, papers from across the discipline are welcome. Information is available at www.psai.ie/conferences/.... Please do share with interested colleagues.

Yeah. This is happening.

We regret that our event on Extreme Heat: Improving governance and strengthening action around the world has been cancelled due to the red extreme heat warning issued by the UK Met Office. Our apologies to everyone who was planning to attend the event.

🗣️ “61 months to plug a gap that you already identified is not evidence of a government taking this seriously.” Housing Minister James Browne joined #MondayGR to discuss his short-term letting bill and why it took the Government over five years to address the issue.

How are things in Belfast? Are the people with Legitimate Concerns about paedophilia attacking unionist politicians’ homes in response to the Donaldson verdict? They aren’t? How strange. Their Concerns seemed so Legitimate when they were burning foreigners out of their homes a few weeks back.

Labour TD @gednashtd.bsky.social speaking at a protest outside Drogheda’s Cottage Hospital today (22 June) where scarce step-down beds are at risk of being removed. Drogheda needs MORE services, not fewer!!!

"It seems that a growing number of councils are getting their acts together and become more proactive in tackling dereliction" Wonder why there's more action on dereliction 🫣🫢🤔🤨 #DerelictIreland anyone?

😂😂😂

Take the bosses’ snacks, then form a union anyway.

Design flaws and groupthink are likely very familiar problems to many of us - does everything have to fail so tragically and spectacularly for meaningful changes to take place? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Great thread, age verification would require everybody using social media to prove they were over 16. It's worth noting that all expert recommendations are to regulate social media platforms (overwhelmingly owned by evil losers) yet govs around the world are turning to digital IDs

I think a post-restoration America could take care of this problem on its own. But completely agree with these ideas: it’s time for institutional actors the world over to stop ducking fights with this awful degenerate. Responsible leaders wouldn’t leave this up to protest or boycott movements alone.

Elon Musk's incitement of pogroms in Belfast reveals he'll use his immense wealth and influence to foment untold fascist violence in the future. Only a global movement can break his power. New piece from @polphilpod.bsky.social and me. Threading highlights below. 1/ newrepublic.com/article/2119...

Would love to see the proportionality assessment for forcing all adults into age verification to use an app no kids use to protect the kids

When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.

The second part of this sounds absolutely groundbreaking. Could the era of platform impunity finally be coming to an end?

Bob Odenkirk is a national treasure. Take 44 seconds and watch. www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0rB...

Until the government withdraws from X, every journalist should challenge every word they say about social media harms.

There's more on this in my piece for the New Statesman this week, who I'll once more thank for letting me go through this entire cesspit at greater length. bsky.app/profile/seam...

On legitimising yet another pogrom.

Ah yes, some more of the “giving back” malarkey.

No Vellum during school hours.

Russians have struck the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and are burning down one of Ukraine's oldest Orthodox churches‼️ The roof of the Dormition Cathedral is ablaze. The cathedral itself is a significant part of our history, it is older than Moscow.

Bluesky doesn't have an algorithmic feed so this is reflective of who you choose to follow.

All because Starmer’s afraid of upsetting Elon Musk.

Musk deserves more ire than he's gotten, not less. But there's plenty to go around, and much of it should be directed at the army of sensible, respectable suits who've nodded along while fascists flood the zone with racist bile, eagerly sanitising their talking points for as long as I've been alive.

Again, to be clear, the “Online safety for children” policy Ireland is advancing is just the Meta proposal to evade regulation and increase surveillance.

Reposting for the Irish audience…

Talk from others of attempted beheading being "alien culture". Interesting. Were the UDA members who killed Senator Paddy Wilson and Irene Andrews from Mars? Were the Shankill Butchers from Planet Zog?

I've been a broken record on this for three years and I'll be a broken record for as long as that fucking website exists: X is a viciously racist far-right organising platform that ONLY WORKS because a huge number of centrists, lefties and progressivs cannot stop propping it up

And this is why the study of history is essential. You can't leave the interpretation of this stuff to social media or AI machines. You need trusted sources of truth such as universities and a free press to report that truth. Both are under attack in the US. And under threat in the UK.

Condemning riots isn't enough. We need policy action, including an immediate appraisal of X as a vehicle for coordinating far-right disorder. And we need political leadership, to challenge white nationalism as an idea, not to validate it daily and then complain when it turns violent.

How much hate is being ignited and poured out from that other site tonight? Yet, how many Irish politicians continue to post on that sewer?

Commentary: I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake

Multiple homes and vehicles on fire. Loads of properties having their windows smashed. Cars being stopped and their passengers skin colour checked. Reports of people being forced from their homes in multiple locations. Masked men roaming the streets. Journalists threatened.

I think every politician who proposes to ban anything on the internet for teens should be required to propose, as an alternate, a free and accessible and all weather space for teens to hang out in their own hometown

This is an interesting and useful read on how what we call social media has evolved over the past 20 years - the main point for me is that it has changed from being about interacting with small known groups to much more passive consumption of slick content crafted for monetisable engagement

To illustrate @worklesshard.bsky.social's point about the volume of slop content circulating online. This monestised YouTube channel appears to have automatically generated 1 AI video "news stories" scraped from Irish right-wing social media influencers a day, every day for a year now. 🧵

Giving this a Sunday morning push if you're in the mood for a policy focused read on divisive politics, blue tick programmes, bad incentives and supply side regulation. fulldisclosure.whotargets.me/p/the-other-...

Young men have always enjoyed crass humor, but the 'it's just a joke' defense is wearing thin. I wrote about how the 'humor' of the manosphere and figures like Nick Fuentes exploits the subversive urges of young men -- but how it is fundamentally different from transgressive movements of the past

This will be a revolution on LinkedIn.