NEW - The Data Doesn’t Lie: How ProPublica Reports the Truth in an Era of False Claims As federal data becomes less available, our editor-in-chief @sengelberg.bsky.social explains how our journalists are providing readers with precise numbers.

One of the things about crypto is the sheer waste of human time, talent and computing power, let alone the money. Imagine if this level of energy had gone into something socially useful instead. as.ft.com/r/1cd4200c-b...

The EU’s €120M fine on Musk’s X is a first step, yet the platform remains a vector for a broader US agenda steering Europe to the right, says Alexandra Geese, a Member of the European Parliament from Germany. Digital oversight must match the scale of the threat to Europe’s sovereignty, Geese argues.

I like this. But also my view is that the root causes of the internet being awful are: (1) lack of competition and (2) scammy advertising that makes scammy content profitable. So I think the solutions are (1) actual antitrust enforcement and (2) much bigger fines for allowing illegal scams.

Remember when the internet wasn't awful? We can go back to that. Some friends and I have released the Resonant Computing Manifesto: a call to bring back such a time, to see if we can bring back a world where technology works for us, rather than against us. resonantcomputing.org

Here's the reality this example illustrates: It's not even just about people blindly trusting what ChatGPT tells them. LLMs are poisoning the entire information ecosystem. You can't even necessarily trust that the citations in a published paper are real (or a search engine's descriptions of them).

The part about googling to check hallucinated citations and getting hallucinated summaries of non-existent papers

Yep: "Being shitty to your supporters is not just the cost of doing business, so to speak — it’s a choice. Make a different one."

Bad content drives out good. www.wired.com/story/ai-slo...

2025 Year In Review: Not feeling so great about the rule of law. Zero stars.

We're going to need a new mythical beast if there's a nearly trillion-dollar unicorn. www.wsj.com/business/spa...

I think a lot of people saw this coming... users enshittifying the commons until they collapse; now using LLM writing tools. www.wired.com/story/ai-slo...

EU has fined X $140m for breaking European laws and refusing to address that when warned. Likely Musk won't pay and the Trump regime will pressure EU, but if so, they should stand strong and ban the website. And oh the irony that this won't cover the UK, where Musk is stoking division and violence.

My reading is that much of this is going for transparency to address fraud campaigns. Interesting that disrupting fraud will also disrupt disinfo and hurt the profits of companies that spread fraud and disinfo. bsky.app/profile/irah...

Speaking of which, as a Chicagoan and longtime fan of @theonion.com, I cannot praise enough what @bencollins.bsky.social and his friends have done. They raised money, bought the Onion from its neglectful owner, and have restored it to financial health and relevance.

The blue checks thing is about consumer deception. X changed the rules in a way that allowed impersonation and scams to flourish. Kind of like if Kellogg's said it was checking your cereal to remove any bugs or glass shards, and then stopped actually checking but kept that representation. 2/

Don't let anyone tell you that the Commission's DSA enforcement against X is about speech or censorship. That would, indeed, be interesting. But this is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring laws that would get bipartisan support in the U.S. (I bet similar bills *have* had that support.) 1/

the one hope with the new CBS/TikTok/Paramount/Free Press/MMA Bro superunion is that there's really no evidence this odd assortment of nepobabies and brunchlords have absolutely any idea what they're doing, outside of a vague hope of turning the entertainment dial back to 1987

If anyone in Europe was still clinging to the idea that the Trump administration isn't immovably pro-Russian and hostile to Western institutions and values, they need to read the 2025 National Security Strategy and think again.

For those following the news re: EU fining X for DSA violations, this thread explains that (despite how we may see the right and the U.S. gov frame things), it isn’t about “censorship” or even content moderation, but about X failing to follow laws about platform transparency and deception. A thread:

X isn’t being penalised for hosting lawful speech. It is being penalised for business practices that make fraud easier and transparency harder. In any other sector, a product that enables impersonation or conceals the identity of advertisers would be recalled.

There will be many who claim this is about "free speech," but it's not—it's about X and Musk's shady business practices: -meaningless blue checks w no real verification -a lack of ad transparency -not providing data access for researchers ...all req'd under DSA. www.euractiv.com/news/eu-slap...

I wrote this for the @nytimes.com: Scammers are calling seniors more than 50 times a day. Some who get scammed wind up with weird charges on their Medicare and mysterious packages on their porches

Fraud on Meta (Facebook, Instagram). Meta estimates that 10% of their revenue is from fraud — It’s their business model! Its “platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day.” Go after fraud. This is something state attorneys general could and should do. 2/2 www.reuters.com/investigatio...

The U.S. government continues to kill people for the amusement of the President and other members of his administration.

If you think rampant gambling is bad for sports, just wait until you see what mainstreamed prediction markets do for society as a whole.

This is what government censorship actually looks like: defunding entire fields, deporting researchers, and quite effectively chilling speech that helps people understand how our information systems are being exploited and calls out powerful people and platforms for their bullshit.

The pro-democracy perspective is the opposite of Vance's... the EU should be enforcing the law it passed to preserve free expression from the illegal garbage hosted and propagated by reckless American companies. We'll see what happens.

Mark zuckerberg, summer 2021: “within five years, people will see us as primarily a metaverse company.” Mark Zuckerberg, winter 2025: “jk jk guys. But hey the AI revolution is inevitable amirite?”

🚨 I am hearing from multiple sources that the EU Commission is announcing its first DSA fine tomorrow against X on ad transparency, blue check & dark pattern, and researcher access to data. The fine is in the "100s of millions of Euros." Elon about to get big mad.

🚨 New in Nature+Science!🚨 AI chatbots can shift voter attitudes on candidates & policies, often by 10+pp 🔹Exps in US Canada Poland & UK 🔹More “facts”→more persuasion (not psych tricks) 🔹Increasing persuasiveness reduces "fact" accuracy 🔹Right-leaning bots=more inaccurate

"The catch is that the tactic seemed to work regardless of whether the claims were true or false."

The strategy of trying to change Putins mind has not worked. Time to shift to a new strategy focused on changing Putins capabilities. That means more and better weapons for Ukraine and more and better sanctions for Russia.

New: AI chatbots can change voters' minds, according to a pair of in-depth studies published just now in Science and Nature. How they do it is interesting — and concerning. Gift link: wapo.st/49RSstP

Researchers tested several ways to train the AI chatbots to persuade people. The most effective tactic turned out not to be pyschological manipulation, but simply addressing voters' concerns one-by-one by presenting a ton of factual claims. Troublingly, that worked even when the claims were false.

Holy shit. Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Consumers also expressed much less of an appetite for holiday gift spending compared with what they said earlier in the season. Consumers often trim their holiday spending plans as the season progresses, to be fair -- but this year’s midseason decline is the largest Gallup has recorded.

Economic confidence just dropped to a 17-month low, per Gallup. And that's not the only bad news... (short 🧵) news.gallup.com/poll/699311/...

Reminder about Jan 6: it really happened It was a horror 140+ police were injured A range of violent weapons were used by attackers Chants to hang Mike Pence were heard There was a gallows and guns Pipe bombs diverted police as mob approached

whether hegseth gets away with it remains to be seen but it is interesting to see that he thought trump handed him a license to murder with this job, no questions asked, and now questions are definitely being asked.

New today from @gallup.com: "Americans' economic confidence has fallen to its lowest level in over a year, accompanied by a historic drop in planned holiday spending."

In an interview, Dario Amodei suggests some AI companies are taking on too much risk by "YOLO-ing" and committing to spend hundreds of billions on data centers (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Some people are feeding their private medical information into chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, only to receive generalized or inaccurate diagnoses in response (Maggie Astor/New York Times) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Thrilled to announce the publication of our @rooseveltinstitute.org report that uncovers the policy roots of the current crises facing our news, information & communication systems. We argue that media reform must become central to a US pro-democracy movement. rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

Sources: Meta plans deep budget cuts to its metaverse efforts in 2026, potentially as high as 30% and most likely including layoffs as early as January (Kurt Wagner/Bloomberg) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

At least they didn’t name the company after it www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

congrats to Meta on the massive corporate rebrand around a product literally no one wanted

What a time to be alive

All corporate CEOs should understand: If you agree to attend an event at the White House, you are very likely to be filmed nodding appreciatively at a delusional racist rant. If you're ok with that, go. If not, you probably should stay away.

[audience going nuts as I pull a big lever that says "IS THAT GOOD?"]