So when you get LLM output with links or citations to scholarly work: those citations aren't there because the model consulted them and they actually represent the source of the information. They were included because they look like what should appear near that kind of text.

Great new op-ed from Spencer Overton on the consequences of the recent decision by the Supreme Court's conservative majority to undermine the Voting Rights Act and what we should do about it now. thehill.com/opinion/camp...

Great article from @nathaliemarechal.net in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on technofacism and why those of us in tech policy can't stay on the sidelines anymore: www.techpolicy.press/tech-policy-...

This new pod from some long-time data center organizers looks great. The Hum: a podcast about who controls the future, featuring interviews with people fighting the march of AI and data centers into every aspect of our lives. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

For those of us working in tech policy and AI governance, we need to consider what impact AI development and deployment will have on equity in a multiracial democracy where protections against racial discrimination under the Voting Rights Act have now been taken away. www.npr.org/2026/04/30/n...

We will start interviewing folks in May, apply today! (Also I’m not doing side Q&A about this to be equitable to all applicants, but I encourage all who are interested to apply.)

Such a gutting day. I feel for the staff of @accessnow.org, all their partners and staff in Africa who have been pushing for a RightsCon to be held on the continent, and for human rights broadly. We're ready to support and show up whenever we get the chance next: www.404media.co/rightscon-hu...

We must understand that the Voting Rights Act was not merely about ensuring Black Americans rights, it was about democratizing America. This ruling is not just a decimation of Black rights and Black Americans’ ability to have representation, it is a fatal blow to multiracial democracy.

The court has simply recreated the pre-Brown world in allowing racial discrimination across a broad number fields as long as it is “facially neutral,” gutting the Reconstruction Amendments in the process.

The Voting Rights Act is essentially dead and it’s quite possible that we will, like when a similar SCOTUS gutted civil rights at the fall of Reconstruction, see a disappearance of much of the Black congressional representation, especially in the most heavily Black states, which are in the South.

Meanwhile the ACM Digital Library is creating AI “podcasts” of papers with no author approval that of course contain inaccuracies (including e.g. misgendering authors) I don’t care about copyright. Legal /= ethical & academic institutions are embarrassing themselves www.404media.co/asu-atomic-a...

Justice Kagan: "The Callais requirements have thus laid the groundwork for the largest reduction in minority representation since the era following Reconstruction." "[T]he majority makes a nullity of Section 2 and threatens a half-century's worth of gains in voting equality."

how to stop claude from deleting your production database 1. press 'ESC' this concludes the tutorial on how to stop claude from deleting your production database.

Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about whether your data can be used against you. Or, more precisely, whether your Google location data can be used against you if you opted in to location storage services across one of Google’s many products. 1/12

This wild document is the basis for the State Department's decision to cancel the visas and green cards of tech researchers who study the social media platforms and of tech regulators who enforce privacy and transparency laws. Disclosed to us last night in @thecoalition.bsky.social v. Rubio.

Part of the problem with edtech AI vendors is that they are not usually clear if there is even any evidence that AI can improve educational outcomes.

Props to the NY Times editor and reporter who refused to sanewash this www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/u...

In honor of Tim Cook's stepping down, here is the story of how I emailed him, not once but twice, with open email tracking enabled, only to discover that, not once but twice, my emails to the CEO of Apple were opened on a computer running Windows.

The data-labelling industry relies heavily on workers in Kenya and Nigeria to annotate what AI systems learn. Those same workers rarely see their languages reflected in the systems they help train. Support this vital work: globalvoices.org/donate globalvoices.org/2026/04/20/a...

“Musk’s data centers will probably bring in only a few hundred jobs while consuming millions of gallons of water a day and more electricity than is needed to power all of the homes in Memphis.”

"The series aims to re-emphasise the importance of knowledge sharing among people, as has been done for decades: communal exchange of information and expertise based on years of lived experiences, informed by local realities, and motivated by the need to feel connected with one another."

#Privacy matters! It makes you money. "Brands with strong privacy practices saw 12.31% higher purchase intent than brands with weak practices. The effect was even greater (255%) for brands that customers already liked." hbr.org/2026/05/data...

One of my biggest concerns is the rumble(.)com equivalent on AT Protocol taking off. And bad actors understanding the protocol enough to leverage it as a way to never be deplatformed. (I sit with the tension that its purpose is to be ‘the new web’ and you can’t be deplatformed from the net)

Expanding access to power when it comes to AI, democracy, and racial justice is what the Multiracial Democracy Project at the George Washington University Law School is about. That's also why I am attending #takebacktech this weekend. If you plan to be there please reach out! www.takebacktech.com

I told the BBC AI has enabled Iran to communicate with Western audiences more effectively than ever before - tools largely trained on Western data are creating "culturally appropriate" content "authoritarian countries wanting to target the West have lacked in the past". www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Looking forward to this discussion next week where I present some new analysis of the information environment facing Quechua women social media influencers. This builds on previous work I did on content moderation in so-called low-resource languages. zoom.us/meeting/regi...

When people use AI for writing assistance, it can shift their political attitudes by autocompleting sentences in biased ways. Yet people are often unaware of the AI bias & it's influence This is not merely about the facts presented, but how autocomplete worlds www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Signal has a setting to stop this (Settings > Notifications > Notification Content). It's likely not an issue limited to just Signal, but more fundamental friction between secure chat apps and phones. Very interesting data point when talking about forensics www.404media.co/fbi-extracts...

EFF is finally leaving X and here is a blog post about why: www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

this is a flip side of the pipeline problem (or paradox): AI risks destroying the systems that create expertise, while also enhancing the value of such expertise

My team @aclu.org is hiring a Learning & Development Specialist to help train staff (lawyers, organizers, etc.) on privacy best practices! It's a two-year term limited $128k/yr position based in NYC. You're in the union & report directly to me. Please circulate/apply! www.aclu.org/careers/appl...

Whether they mean to or not, gov tech innovation programs (CfA, USDS, DOGE) biggest export is the idea that government is dumb and tech is the solution. In many ways they market this idea better than the tech cos themselves & bear some responsibility for the increasing privatization of gov services.

"The content that gets “engagement” on Twitter is mostly complete crap" The reason is simple: The incentive structure and algorithm have been designed to amplify incendiary nonsense and throttle content with links to evidence. www.natesilver.net/p/social-med...

Global Voices is partnering with ExileHub, an NGO that supports human rights defenders, journalists, and activists from around the world, to center and prioritize feminist storytelling through a fellowship program. globalvoices.org/special/resi...

We’re going to keep doing this, huh.

What if we tried @cyberlyra.bsky.social 's 21 Day Cyber Cleanse for 21 weeks instead? www. optoutproject.net/the-cyber-cleanse-take-back-your-digital-footprint/ Take time on the weekend to try something new-- disentangle from a #bigtech service you've wanted to leave for a while. Join in the fun!

What’s behind the growing pushback against AI from data workers in Africa and local communities in Latin America? https://restofworld.org/2026/techno-negative-thomas-dekeyser-fighting-ai/?utm_campaign=row-social&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1774817580

The arrival of data centres in a community can cause surrounding areas to heat up - in some cases, by 9 degrees Celsius. My latest for @newscientist.com looks at research that estimates some 340 million people have already been affected www.newscientist.com/article/2521...

We're excited to give you a sneak peek of some of the expert speakers joining us at #TakeBackTech in Atlanta, GA, April 17-19th 👀 featuring: @naomikritzer.bsky.social, @safiyanoble.bsky.social, and @gilduran.com. And join us in Atlanta on April 17-19th by registering below: takebacktech.com

Protect Democracy spells out Trump's "rigged election" strategy for 2026: "to spread disinformation & conspiracy theories; tilt the electoral playing field and manipulate election outcomes; and, if necessary, try to overturn unfavorable results." Here's a rough graphic of how this strategy works:

What is marketed as AI “innovation” is, in practice, a consolidation of global labor hierarchies and a commodification of African knowledge, write Marché Arends and Kathryn Cleary, drawing on their year-long investigation supported by the Pulitzer Center and published by Africa Uncensored.

New paper from @aial.ie! @harshp.com, Dick Blankvoort, Adel Shaaban, @sashamtl.bsky.social & me We analysed 6 GenAI ToS--finding missing info, major power imbalances & user obligations that are impossible to meet without violating the terms arxiv.org/abs/2603.18964 & aial.ie/research/ter... 1/

The paper “shows that women, particularly those early in their careers, were disproportionately affected by terminations, even though they receive less funding from the NIH in general.”

NEW: For the first time, ProPublica has been able to quantify how many U.S. citizen children have been directly affected by Trump’s immigration crackdown: more than 11,000 kids had a parent detained — and that’s an undercount. 1/ 🧵 www.propublica.org/article/trum...

"the decline in [academic freedom in] the United States has been more rapid and pronounced, particularly in the last year. It has deteriorated by 50% from 2015 to 2025 and is now evaluated as moderate autonomy by country experts" academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

Interested in becoming a law professor focusing on privacy and AI? Apply to GW Law’s VAP in Privacy & Technology Law: www.law.gwu.edu/privacy-and-... @gwclt.bsky.social

DoorDash is now in the business of data work.

Lord knows I hate what Twitter / X has become. But it's only on Twitter that I can still get real-time African reactions to the Cup of African Nations stripping Senegal of the CAF championship and giving it to Morocco. I wish Bluesky were more global. It's just... not.

It was really great to join the Antidiscrimination Law x AI Convening last week at Stanford. It's not often that we get to have a meaningful interdisciplinary conversation on the benefits and risks of AI for civil rights law. We laid out a potential research agenda and next steps - more soon!

LLMs can automate writing, but they didn’t produce an ideology in which writing was something to be viewed as a mechanism to be judged in terms of speed and efficiency