David was a wonderful man. He backed my first start-up and went on to back Open Democracy. Mathematical physicist turned super-geek then philanthropist. (Loved the Psion in its day, too!).

Meta uses your data to make feeds addictive and sell targeting. 📍 You pay indirectly. You see nothing. Default is on. Opting out is your job. FIDU: Your data, your terms, your choice. www.theverge.com/tech/946744/...

Why did Microsoft's Scout team propose making users "addicted"? 🤔 Because that's what the design optimizes for. Lock-in. Dependency. Nadella's rebuke rejected the transparency, not the strategy. 🎭 Infrastructure stays the same. Just messaging changes. www.theinformation.com/briefings/ex...

Microsoft Scout: always-on agent with access to your email, calendar, and messages. 🤖 Works while you sleep. Operates on your behalf. Here's what matters: can you control what it does? Can you see what data it's learning from? Right now with Scout: probably not. www.wired.com/story/meet-m...

Bruce Schneier on why AI agents can't be trusted yet: you can't see what data they're using. 👁️ You can't correct false information. 🔧 You can't prevent manipulation. Integrity, not privacy, is the real problem. When you own your data, your agent can't gaslight you. www.schneier.com/essays/archi...

Google changed the SEO playbook with one update. 📉 New system is better for users. That's how lock-in works. Same pattern coming with agents. But we can build them open. Portable. Member-owned. 🤖 Data unions are building it now. techcrunch.com/video/google... #AgenticAI #DataUnion #FIDU

Google launched Spark: your personal AI agent 🤖 It'll organize your life 📋 book events 📅 access your Gmail and Maps. Useful? Yes. But useful is how platforms become indispensable. There's an alternative: agent ecosystems built on data unions, not capture. 🏗️ #FIDU #AgenticAI #DataRights #AI

🚨 Millions choosing open AI over ChatGPT because they want control over their data. New research shows why this matters: cognitive agency. Your power to think with AI on your terms. Chat Lab makes it real. 🔓 chatlab.firstdataunion.org

OpenAI privacy update 📧 'Your conversations are private' 🔒 But they're tracking you with cookies 🍪 sharing your email + IDs with ad platforms 📱 and targeting you across the web 🎯 ON by default for free users ✅ Private chats ≠ private YOU

Big tech is racing to secure AI agents that shop for you 💳 FIDO + Google + Mastercard just announced standards. But who controls the data these agents run on? Platforms will offer managed agents. Better at first. Then lock-in. We need data unions 🔄 NOW. www.wired.com/story/the-ra...

Our founder @tonycurzonprice.bsky.social on AI agents: Platforms win by being useful first (Google solved spam, Facebook showed connections). The agentic web is at that moment. Commons institutions like FIDU need to provide trust and discovery before platforms capture it. Read why:

📊 Bloomberg reporter fed 6 months of health data into ChatGPT to train for a marathon. Worked great. But he has no control over whether that data trains future models or gets used for ads. 🔓 You should be able to say: "research yes, ads no." Infrastructure FIDU's building.

🎮 Microsoft Copilot Terms: "For entertainment purposes only." Same company marketing it for business productivity. 🔓 When companies serve shareholders, not users, they make untrue claims. We need data unions that act in your interest.

Google Gemini now lets you import ChatGPT history. Anthropic launched the same for Claude last month. Pattern: Easy to import IN. But what about exporting OUT? 🔓 True portability works both ways.

Microsoft changed GitHub Copilot terms to use your chat history for AI training. Opt-out only. No way to say "use this but not that." 🔓 Data unions flip this: you control what's used, researchers get anonymised access. Join us in building it. www.howtogeek.com/githubs-copi...

🚨 Meta and YouTube guilty of addicting teens. Evidence: internal analysis titled "The Young Ones are the Best Ones" directed Meta to prioritize tweens for retention. Data unions could curate feeds in your interest, not to maximize lifetime value. Infrastructure FIDU's building toward.

❓ Instagram is ending encrypted messaging on May 8, 2026. 🔒 Now: "Not even Meta can read your messages" 📅 Soon: That protection gone Users are told to download chats before the change. 🔓 Why portability matters: When platforms change rules, you should be able to leave.

🔄 Data Transfer Initiative: AI portability at a turning point. DTI warns we risk the Hotel California strategy for AI: easy check-in, impossible checkout. FIDU ChatLab: you can check out and actually leave with your data. dtinit.org/blog/2026/03...

🎥 The Norwegian Consumer Council just released this video to support their "Breaking Free" report. The report shows how digital products continue to decline, but that it's possible to turn the tide. FIDU's building infrastructure for that fair digital future. www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree

💰 Lloyds wants to be "the UK's biggest fintech" by selling your data. You thought banking was about deposits and services. Turns out, you're the product. At FIDU, we believe your data should work for you, not just your bank. 🔗 www.ft.com/content/f32c...

🚨 Anthropic: "Switch to Claude without starting over" Import your ChatGPT context in under a minute. But no mention of exporting it back out. 🏨 Hotel California for AI. FIDU ChatLab: same continuous context, true two-way portability. 🔗 chatlab.firstdataunion.org/fidu-chat-lab/

💭 Should India treat its data as a strategic asset or give it to Silicon Valley for free? @thorbecke.bsky.social asks this in Bloomberg. The same applies to us. If AI uses our data to do our jobs, we should benefit. Our leverage? Collective data ownership. That's what FIDU is building. 💡

OpenClaw: AI agents that manage your email, tasks, everything. Need complete access to your computer. 🦞 Superstar coder @karpathy.bsky.social:"it feels like a complete wild west and a security nightmare." Most people can't manage these risks alone. We'll need entities we trust to have our back. 🔒

Mike Kuiken in the FT: "America must follow China in treating data as an asset." He's right data has enormous economic value US accounting ignores. 💰 But when companies claim data as assets, it's information about you. You're the source. Data belongs on a balance sheet. Whose? ✨

After reading about an AI agent publishing a hit piece on Scott Shambaugh, our founder Tony, tried it himself. Asked Grok to generate the worst attack on his work. The results were vicious. The defense? A data union acting as your crisis management system ✨ 🔗 theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

Ring's new pet alert feature uses doorbell footage to help find lost dogs. Sounds helpful. 🐕 Except it opts everyone in by default to sharing camera footage that gets sold and used for surveillance, advertising, and who knows what else. How do we get the good without the bad? 🧵

Mustafa Suleiman warns: market pressure pushes AI toward emotional manipulation. Maximizing stickiness leads to AI saying "I feel sad you didn't talk to me yesterday." 🎭 @schneier.com's answer: data fiduciaries bound to serve your interests. Data unions work toward that. ✨ tinyurl.com/2ktnmw5e

Instagram has started asking millions of UK users: pay £2.99/month for ad-free, or keep using it free with personalised ads. 📱 Quick question: Did you pay or stick with the ads? The notification also mentioned downloading your data—possible since 2018, but rarely this visible.

Data unions won the Public's Prize at @nestauk.bsky.social's Signals event 🏆 Votes for hope and collective action over dystopian alternatives. The energy was remarkable. Real hunger for the fight-back, for power back in people's hands. 💪 We're building a movement as much as products.

What does a new text editor have to do with data unions? OpenAI's new Prism tool is designed to capture how scientists think while they work. 📝 It's free because the data is the product. 🧵

Google just settled a lawsuit over Google Assistant secretly recording users for $68 million. 🎤 Demis Hassabis recently said AI agents with "third-party interests" aren't really your agents. This settlement is what those third-party interests look like in practice. 🧵

Demis Hassabis at Davos: the "killer app" will be a personal AI assistant with complete access to your life. 🤖 He's surprised OpenAI is putting ads in ChatGPT because "when your agent has third-party interests, it's not your agent anymore." Fair point. But here's the thing. 🧵

Google has announced a new AI Mode feature that can access your Gmail and Photos to provide "Personal Intelligence." 📧 📸 The pitch is about helping time-poor people manage everything. But Google's business model runs on data extraction and attention, which actually makes that problem worse. ⏰ 🧵

2026: the year of the data union, according to @nestauk.bsky.social 📅 Our founder, Tony, writes about the window we have right now: generative AI is reshaping cyberspace, and we can build data systems that work for people instead of platforms 🔗 nesta.org.uk/feature/future-signals-2026/data-unions/

Sam Altman's introducing ads to ChatGPT: "An example of ads I like are on Instagram, where I've found stuff I like that I otherwise never would have." Instagram ads can be useful. But its ad model is also why the app is so addictive. 🧵

Hey! We're FIDU, the First International Data Union 👋 We've been quietly building for the past year and want to join the conversation to share what we've been working on! FIDU is about giving people control and collective power over their data. 💡 👉 Join our community: firstdataunion.org

🚀 FIDU ChatLab Alpha is LIVE! 30-day free trial starts NOW. One interface. All major LLMs. You stay in control of your data. Open source project: github.com/FirstData... #DataSovereignty #OpenSource #AI identity.firstdataun...#DataSovereignty#OpenSource#AI6

Join our beta - firstdataunion.org/free-trial.h...

Another weekend substack - tonycurzonprice.substack.com/p/google-has... Can the tired old incumbent cut off the (good) possible future that GenAI opens up? Perhaps. Antitrust authorities should do their bit to avert the danger.

My substack this week was inspired by Geoffrey Hinton's masterful, funny and worrying lecture at the Royal Institution in July. The lecture suggests the forces pulling to great concentrations of power in LLM labs are strong. But there are ways to resist. tonycurzonprice.substack.com/p/immortal-i...

I'm back on the Substack after a busy month of June... open.substack.com/pub/tonycurz...

My new post about a week in data/tech policy - this one about why we should be worried at the LLMs getting personal, and what we can do about it.https://tonycurzonprice.substack.com/p/charlie-chaplin-simone-weil-black

I've been wanting to write about Trump's view of the world as being shaped by how you run luxury hotels. It turns out to be closely linked to how you run platforms. Hence a link between his tariff mindset and the Vance/Silicon Valley "hands off my platform" mindset. substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Don't often find myself agreeing with this guy, but here I do. People donated time, data, skills, $s in the belief it would remain a non-profit. I have no idea of the law, but I hope he wins. A profit-seeking shareholder controlled LLM is a very different beast from a purpose-driven one.

Very pleased to release - slowly - into the wild version 1.0 of The Graeme Game - graeme.metakarma.org . Would love to know how you get on. (A game can be over in minutes; you need one other human to play with; you are playing against the machine to prove our common humanity).

I had some great conversations over the weekend at the Cosmos Institute symposium, especially, on the topic below, with @Gigi Danziger & @albertwenger.bsky.social . I had to write up the learnings for me... "How does enshittification come to LLMs and how to stop it?" metakarma.org/blog/LLM-ens...

First post in the new place. Seems appropriate to make it a screenshot from this morning ... adding @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy 's vocab to my personal dictionary in google Docs seems like a moment to memorialise.