These companies are stealing every scrap of data they can find, throwing compute power at it, draining our aquifers of water and our national grids of electricity and all we have so far is some software that you can’t trust not to make things up broligarchy.substack.com/p/the-great-...

Marketed for productivity but used for personal use and emotional conversations, an analysis of 47,000 conversations with ChatGPT by the @washingtonpost.com finds www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

We urge qualitative researchers to...reject the use of GenAI in such analyses... 1 GenAI as simulated intelligence is incapable of meaning making 2 Qualitative research should remain a distinctly human practice 3 harms of GenAI to the environment & workers in the Global outh ssrn.com/abstract=567...

Public service media equip citizens with the critical skills to identify mis- and disinformation. De-legitimising public service media is then unctional to a certain political agenda

I appreciate the work of these authors to show that this problem not only is still here but has grown: www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne... But it is also quite frustrating 🧵>>

The "womanosphere" and “pastel QAnon” lure young women "into far-right conspiracies through content about motherhood and female-coded aesthetics. Some beauty and wellness influencers have proven to be a natural fit for this ecosystem." www.teenvogue.com/story/womano...

“the excessive visibility of a highly active minority at the tip of the iceberg can not only mislead social scientists, but also deceive social media users themselves.”https://www.techpolicy.press/what-a-new-study-reveals-about-the-productionconsumption-gap-on-social-media/

X is designed to radicalise people. The algorithm promotes Elon Musk's agenda to promote racists and people who want violence bought - specifically - to the streets of Britain. Members of Parliament, major institutions and the media should not be there. news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

Creepy crawlers collecting data for generative AI are making the internet work less well for everyone, write Article 19's Tanu I & Corinne Cath. AI crawlers slow sites, strain libraries, and push journalism behind paywalls, they write. But there are solutions, if AI firms choose to respect them.

evidence is piling up that LLMs are culturally biased, since traiend on data from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries, thus unsuitable to understand people from different regions and cultures, study finds: coevolution.fas.harvard.edu/sites/g/file...

AI companies are pulling user conversations for training, with great privacy risks hai.stanford.edu/news/be-care...

A very comprehensive critique of the AI moment by @couldrynick.bsky.social to start off Day Two of the #ZeMKI2025 20th anniversary conference. Liveblog here:

🎤 The first keynote speech of the day is presented by Nick Couldry and titled “Media and the Corporatization of Everything“. The focus is on the question of how media and communication have become part of a comprehensive process over the past two decades! #ZeMKI20 #ZeMKIAnniversary

And our paper on talking politics with Communicative AI

Wikipedia is seeing a significant decline in human traffic because more people are getting the information that’s on Wikipedia via generative AI chatbots that were trained on its articles and search engines that summarize them without actually clicking to the site www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

CA governor Gavin Newsom vetoed both of the major AI bills on his desk that Silicon Valley meaningfully opposed—one making it illegal for bosses to use AI to fire workers with no oversight, one requiring chatbot sellers to ensure their products do not harm children before marketing to them.

Newly emerging AI laws fail to provide adequate safeguards against emotional AI surveillance, only imposing narrow bans and restrictions that contain loopholes and broad exemptions. www.techpolicy.press/how-ai-power...

@neilselwyn.bsky.social “Young people spend way more time outside school, so really we should be talking about how parents and families regulate their children’s device use at home,” he says. “Unfortunately, this isn’t something that most politicians want to do." www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Must-read piece in @theguardian.com (h/t @dpcarrington.bsky.social). In #ScienceUnderSiege, we describe how petrostates Saudi Arabia & Russia leveraged Musk's buyout of twitter so they could weaponize it for climate denial propaganda & attacks on renewables. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

“One of the negative consequences AI is having on students is that it is hurting their ability to develop meaningful relationships with teachers, the report finds. Half of the students agree that using AI in class makes them feel less connected to their teachers.”

"children living in areas with higher levels of societal inequality, ..., were linked to having a reduced surface area of the brain’s cortex, & altered connections between multiple regions of the brain ... regardless of their economic background. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

"Trump is putting Europe under pressure to water down its digital rulebook. But now more than ever, Europe should hold large US tech firms accountable for anti-competitive market rigging, snooping on Europeans, and preying on our children" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Anthropic settlement list is up. Authors, check here to see if your books are included: www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

If your institution requires you to use Blackboard for teaching (like me), be aware its parent company is broke and it's getting new private equity owners whose plans for the platform, and how they'll capitalize on it, remain unknown (bet it includes "AI") onedtech.philhillaa.com/p/anthology-...

Social media companies are letting hate flood our timelines. Their algorithms amplify hate to play with our emotions & biases, keeping us glued to their platforms. Call on social media giants & lawmakers to stop the spread of online hate. Take action today ⤵️

On TikTok and YouTube “children may still be exposed to gambling content, violent images, far-right material and conspiracy theories simply by not logging in to the sites… ‘The law does not prevent under 16s from accessing or viewing content without an account.” www.theguardian.com/media/2025/s...

Beyond proving #hallucinations were inevitable, the OpenAI research revealed that industry evaluation methods actively encouraged the problem… binary grading that penalized “I don’t know” responses while rewarding incorrect but confident answers. www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Great 50th anniversary issue of Communications. @goranbolin.bsky.social, @giovannamas.bsky.social, @blurky.bsky.social and others revisit and assess articles and reviews published in the journal in previous decades. Very stimulating discussions! www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/...

as AUS is about to introduce a #SocialMediaBan a trial of age verification sw reveals age and racial bias: Asian & indigenous youth are more likely to be miscategorised as above the age limit www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se... Read @eukidsonline.bsky.social statement www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-co...

Had fun writing a review of Sherry Turkle's Life on Screen almost 30 years later for the Jubilee issue of Communications The European Journal of Communication Research doi.org/10.1515/comm...

Extremist murders by ideology, 2013 to 2022. www.pbump.net/o/reassessin...

New longitudinal study by Keith Hampton & Gabriel Hales shows social media use and screen time have a small negative effect but a strong indirect effect on academic performance through digital skills www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Australian eSafety Commissioner published a summary fo consultations on the social media ban: 1 parents want a strong narrative to postpone access 2 expert raise privacy, inclusion, equity and wellbeing issues 3 children demand platform responsibilities to protect them from harmful content

Disney to Pay $10 Million to Settle FTC Allegations the Company Enabled the Unlawful Collection of Children’s Personal Data www.ftc.gov/news-events/...

luckily, automated care doesn't feel appropriate, not to mention privacy and ethical issues "AI responses were rated as conforming better to therapeutic best practice. However, when participants suspected responses to have been written by ChatGPT, they ranked them lower."

So many problems here, but if you are a therapist doing this, why wouldn’t your client just drop you and use a chatbot. You’re just the bot’s puppet at that point.

The EU is a market with 450 million people. There is vast public support for regulation of big tech and for companies to meet their responsibilities. Giving in after a decade of efforts in this space is undesirable and unnecessary. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/b...

Adam Raine, 16, died from suicide in April after months on ChatGPT discussing plans to end his life. His parents have filed the first known case against OpenAI for wrongful death. Overwhelming at times to work on this story, but here it is. My latest on AI chatbots: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...

Melania Trump’s approach to AI : “It is essential that every member of our academic community, including our great educators, administrators, and students rise to this historic challenge with on-going curiosity, perseverance, and ingenuity.” www.rawstory.com/melania-trum...

The data you depend on – about jobs, weather, health, water and more – is quietly vanishing from federal sites. Here’s how it’s happening and how you can join efforts to help save it: buff.ly/GIa2psq

What does it mean to be a scholar when the conditions needed to think, teach & create are stripped away? What does academic freedom mean when intellectual, political & pedagogical freedom is restricted by siege? What does it mean to mentor youth... www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

AI may contribute to social and cognitive deskilling, and children and young people are likely to be more affected @adalovelaceinstitute.org www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/blog/relatio...

“the more we know about this technology, the more it is the source of hope and worry.” Gen Z’s voices on AI in @theguardian.com today www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

algorithmic opacity, economic extraction, and epistemic erosion are not isolated problems but interconnected features of a system that prioritizes efficiency over accountability, convenience over verification, and corporate profit over democratic discourse. www.techpolicy.press/how-ai-drive...

If these moderate views of AI are right, then in the next few years A.I. tools will make steady but gradual advances. Many people will use AI on a regular but limited basis… But AI may not massively disrupt the job market, and more hyperbolic ideas like superintelligence may come to seem unserious

“Within hours, users began expressing disappointment with the new model on the r/ChatGPT subreddit… “biggest piece of garbage even as a paid user.” www.newyorker.com/culture/open...

None of this keeps kids safe or away from harmful material. Use of VPNs has rocketed, raising even more privacy risks and shuffling kids into even more extreme, less regulated corners of the internet. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🤔🤔🤔 «Immediately after the child safety rules came into effect, platforms began classifying breaking news footage, war coverage, investigative journalism and political protest material as harmful content. Even some content on Wikipedia could soon be blocked».