Love for the people, no love for the data centers. We love to see it. @bcmerchant.bsky.social @parismarx.com share.inquirer.com/Sg6ABj

respectfully tapping the "support billionaire-free, worker-owned, independent media" sign again

Bring back cross ownership bans www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/b...

Shout to everyone who's writing such thoughtful (and challenging, even) comments to this piece. Truly lucky to have a reader community like this at BITM.

This is a major PR coup for Anthropic. In rejecting the DoD's demands that it allow the surveilling of Americans and autonomous killing, it gets immediate claim to the moral high ground, which other AI co's won't take. Anthropic is the AI company that *won't* kill and surveil you.

I find myself truly bewildered by the petulant attitudes of tech CEOs and AI pushers. For years now, they've gleefully told people to "learn to do something else then," when confronted with the labor costs of gAI, and laughed/mocked critics. Why do they expect to be treated nicely in return?

I've reported 2-3 stories in my career that have sucked the spirit out of my body and this was one of them. But! Seeing the response of the fgc to help their brother genuinely put it right back. Im humbled to have been trusted with this. Help your neighbors friends those in need are all around you.

"The most common left-liberal position is not that generative AI is just a stochastic parrot, but a product built by powerful profit-seeking firms that’s capable of serious harms... a threat to jobs, education, mental wellbeing, the arts, child safety, the information ecosystem..."

I had some similar thoughts on the "you can't talk to the left about AI" discourse

To read, library folks 📚

When faced with a shockingly exploitative new employment contract that would’ve forced them to sign away their IP, their likeness rights, and their power of attorney, Jupiter Jetson and her coworkers at Sheri’s fought back—fast. They organized a union in SIX DAYS. www.thenation.com/article/econ...

A must-read synthesis around this technological moment. #AI #ML

“Rejecting or resisting a commercial technology designed to attempt a mass wealth transfer and to erode public institutions is a valid political position.”

The left is winning the AI debate. Really outstanding piece by Brian Merchant. www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/actually-t...

The left is not "missing out" on AI. It's winning the argument. Americans worry about AI and dislike tech CEOs. They're mobilizing against data centers. They support regulation, even refusal. Calls for the left to embrace AI are an effort to change the terms of the debate in Silicon Valley's favor.

To do this, anti-trans lawmakers in Kansas moved fast to change the law, overrode the governor’s veto, and pushed for the legal changes to go into effect nearly immediately. That kind of power—to void gender on official documents, to compel gender conformity—is terrifying and it will not stop here.

"Rejecting or resisting a commercial technology designed to attempt a mass wealth transfer and to erode public institutions is a valid political position." - @bcmerchant.bsky.social

The AI critics have, once again, been right about everything www.cnn.com/2026/02/25/t...

This is not an isolated case, nor is The Luddite Renaissance, as @bcmerchant.bsky.social dubbed it, confined to elite campuses (as maybe it was six months ago).

My book Radical Infrastructure came out last week! It goes deep into the political and economic roots of technological infrastructure to explain hype around various technical projects, and counters it with cases of people pushing back. Download OA: www.ucpress.edu/books/radica...

I've seen a couple of Flock cameras in #Memphis that were taken down. I've also, while out knocking doors, seen many Ring cameras and doorbells disabled or outright removed from houses in some of the richest parts of the city. People are angry at ICE. And they're angry at collaborators.

"A gap in US accounting rules allows Big Tech companies to conceal tens of billions of dollars of potential liabilities for their AI data centres, the credit rating agency Moody’s warned... liabilities might not show up anywhere" in the accounting

Well this story blew up. Went to the front page of reddit, hacker news, Gizmodo. People donated thousands of dollars to the legal fund of Jeff Sovern, who dismantled 13 Flock surveillance cameras. The response was near-universal enthusiasm for the project of smashing invasive, exploitative tech.

“For every aspect of a student’s life, there’s a tech company trying to digitize it.“

As cool as this is, modern luddism can be much more. Imagine a self-perpetuating DDOS attack that forces LLMs to cycle through tokens, or Palantir getting its data wiped. The most effective luddites are angry programmers, and there's a growing number of them out there.

This is so incredibly predictable. With no real regulations, privacy protections, and a decreasing security of legal protections people are going to take privacy into their own hands more and more. Any public device will be a target. www.schizochronotopia.com/p/notes-on-p...

A modern Luddite tale. Be inspired, my restless friends.

Yesterday, our #GooglersAgainstICE petition opposing Google’s partnerships with DHS/ICE/CBP hit 1,400 signatures. This powerful & growing response from Google workers represents widespread anger with leadership’s collusion with ICE’s horrific detention-deportation machine.

Resisting works.

things like this is what gives me hope

NEW: DHS left embedded comments in a PDF outlining its plans to warehouse immigrants, identifying the architects and laying bare the gross extent of its regulatory capture. Great scoop by @regret.bsky.social: www.wired.com/story/metada...

Eugene Oregon really said "I hate to recommend destructive direct action to anyone, but it's always worked for me"

Folks, demand that your local gov'ts cancel contracts & take down these cameras. Ours did.

From my research a handheld laser powerful enough to burn out a camera lens costs around 80$, and can be used to destroy them from a distance, making it easier to do without getting caught. Not that I would ever advocate such a thing. Definitely DON'T, do that.

DIRECT ACTION GETS THE GOODS.

I wrote about this happening in Riverside County last August. It’s a costly problem, but one that reflects people’s dislike of the cameras. www.joeyscott.xyz/foia-friday-...

Across the US, people fed up with Flock cameras surveilling their communities, and with local governments that are often unwilling to listen to concerns over privacy violations and ICE data sharing practices, are taking matters into their own hands—and tearing them down.

Of course in the way that @bcmerchant.bsky.social writes about Luddites in his Blood in the Machine newsletter, I'm a Luddite and so probably are you.

A good response to the AI ~discourse~ by @bcmerchant.bsky.social. A few choice top-line quotes: 1. "We’re in the midst of another concerted, industry-led hype cycle, this time driven more visibly by Anthropic, which just landed a $30 billion investment round."

I am a luddite and to me there is a lot of joy in technology. In technology that we deploy for all our wellbeing. Solar panels and vaccines, high-speed rail and wikipedia. But they joy stems from the feeling of being able to be part of humanity in an embedded, meaningful way. Not from buying shit.

in america, if you go over your 3 minute allotment to speak, men with guns come to take you away.

i read that stupid blog about the left "missing out" on AI and got big mad aftermath.site/anthropic-cl...

Interesting analysis by @bcmerchant.bsky.social explaining how the US regime is not quite giving American AI companies free rein, but is regulating it to increase the power of the state, in this case, worryingly, a far right one. ttps://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/what-trump-really-wants-with-ai

"Meta is preparing to spend $65 M this year to boost state politicians who are friendly to the AI industry...To do that, Meta is quietly starting two new super PACs... The new PACs join two others already started by Meta, one of which is focused on California" www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/t...

Nothing is surer to generate goodwill around the world than the US curating its very own state-sponsored 4chan board

@alexisgoldstein.bsky.social is a real one and she's running for Congress. www.democracynow.org/2026/2/18/al...?

countercultural transgression as terms of service violation