this is one of the best episodes yet. if you aren't listening to this podcast you're playing yourself

Great oped by @citizenlab.ca ‘s @rondeibert.bsky.social on AI + disinformation. Two quotes I feel especially close to: 1/ Social media & AI platforms have shut down open interfaces previously used by researchers, while becoming litigious toward critics & researchers, stifling independent watchdogs.

The People's Forum (TPF), along with BreakThrough News, which I was also told was the streaming partner of this conference, co-organized an event with this flyer, cosponsored by ANSWER coalition, another genocidal org that gives on giving, and the fake, New Africa Institute.

Wow! So while I still wish this case would’ve gone to trial, and believe the amount given per work should have been EVEN higher, $1.5 billion in settlement AND the destruction of infringing datasets is still a fantastic start! Congratulations to all those involved as these things are not easy!

I asked Lord Dannatt 3x whether he had lobbied on behalf of Blue Gold, a Ghanaian gold mining firm in which he held shares. He didn't answer. Eventually, only after the ICO forced them to comply with an FOI request, the foreign office revealed that he had. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Gaza’s journalists are talented, professional and dignified. That’s why Israel targets them | Nesrine Malik

The absolute depravity of this from a Canadian national newspaper. I am basically speechless with rage.

Recognising a hollowed state after allowing two years of genocide is hollow self placation.

As soon they assassinated Shereen with absolute impunity and no accountability, every journalist in Palestine became a target.

This conclusion strikes me as analytically lazy — there are “structures” at play even if blatantly horrific, & they arguably grew out of the contradictions & half truths of the “liberal world order” (the decline of which the author so uncritically laments) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

“The purpose is to quieten the public through verbal laudanum, or distract it by the lowest-cost calls for recognising a Palestinian state.” “What else public anger is capable of achieving can only be realised if it does not relent.”

Signal boost. Also if you give to the Khartoum Kitchen you get somewhat regular updates about how the money is being used and how else you can help. www.gofundme.com/f/fight-hung...

Adding Sa7ten for Palestine www.sa7ten.org/donatenow And EASE (supporting those still displaced by the Tigray war) www.easeing.org to this excellent list

“Despite concerns about AI tools [junk science, inequities] ministers are exploring other potential use The science and technology secretary, announced on Monday a deal with OpenAI, the company that runs ChatGPT, to explore deploying AI in areas including justice, security and education.” 🚮

Interesting thread, up and down, on "epistemicide"

A problem with LLMs is not so much that they shift control or rights over information and knowledge, as things or data, and by doing so degrade them, but rather how they remediate & assert new arrangements of power between how we choose to associate with each other to construct our reality together

Disinfo and propaganda are in fact modern terms for a lineage of practices used to enact epistemicide. Conspiracism and cults (and moral panics of “cults”) emerge socially and are sometimes harnessed to the same end. The technological remediation of information is at home here.

please UNDERSTAND this. It's why I just can't stand the "private prisons" discourse. No matter how many times I explain that this is NOT the problem re: US prisons. People refuse to understand that the vast majority of US PRISONS ARE PUBLIC. PUBLIC and NOT OPERATING WITH PROFIT IN MIND.

Dotson's testimonial smothering (from: www.jstor.org/stable/23016...) is my favourite idea from the epistemic injustice lit. because it assumes we're strategic agents who anticipate the kinda stuff the rest of the epistemic injustice literature talks about and adjust our own behaviour to preempt it.

Well, if someone’s going to create AI-generated avatars of Sudanese refugees (a solution in search of a problem; answer to a question refugees did not ask) it should be us… the good guys… with inexplicable AI budgets… while real funds for real refugees are slashed 🤷‍♀️

William Blake handling rejection 🤝 me being forced to write a nut graf

Really surprised, really happy, to have had my work shortlisted for the @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social essay prize (alongside these five other projects, which all sound amazing!)

For two years our team has been digging into this extensivley. It's one of the clearest examples of how Big Tech uses humans to power its business model without giving them the support or compensation they deserve for driving massive profits and keeping social media safe(er) for the rest of is.

Moderators tend to be among the lowest-paid workers at a tech company. Those who are outsourced will be paid even less. Meta made $62bn last year. It's contractor Teleperformance made $589m. These companies can afford to pay their moderators more – they are simply choosing not to.

Our reporter Niamh McIntyre has spent the last two years investigating the content moderation systems that keep big social media platforms running

Excellent to see tonnes of pickup on our revelations about the secret base of Meta content moderators in Ghana. The BBC has now interviewed one of our key sources for the story. Give it a listen. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Great to see our investigation into #Meta 's hidden content moderators in #Ghana featured on the BBC They spoke to one of our sources, Solomon, who attempted suicide because of a mental health crisis he says was brought on by his work @tbij.bsky.social Listen here 👇 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

“We might liberate women from the very need to be defined. Or at the very least we would make it harder, not easier, to define women, loosening the hold of that history.” Predictably good piece by Sara Ahmed

Meta’s new content moderation operation was kept a closely guarded secret – that didn’t stop us … We’ve uncovered one of the company’s new operations in Ghana – where moderators continue to struggle with poor mental health, low wages and actively being silenced (3/4)

‘Standards of proof are not neutral features of public institutions. They are political: what counts as evidence and who must prove what to whom is always bound up in questions of power.’ Claire Wilmot on counting the civilians killed by British forces, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ap...

Talked to @tbij.bsky.social about the tech paradox: the only ones who can set standards are the ones least willing to. That's why @towardsfairwork.bsky.social is launching a new AI supply chain certification to fill the gap.

On a related note, please read @timnitgebru.bsky.social @dairinstitute.bsky.social & others' paper on the role of expertise in the effective moderation of content on social media, & check out the data workers' inquiry project data-workers.org drive.google.com/file/d/1gPcU...

"When conditions of moderators are exposed, tech firms [...] promise that workers will be looked after and protected. Today, @tbij.bsky.social & the @theguardian.com have revealed that those promises are worth very little." @jasperjackson.bsky.social www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025...

NEW: after union busting / sacking ALL content moderators in Kenya, Meta moved the work to Ghana. To even worse conditions. Foxglove & partners are investigating. More soon. Great from @tbij.bsky.social & @theguardian.com @clairelwilmot.bsky.social www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025...

Investigative journalism at its best. Great work @clairelwilmot.bsky.social and team.

Since facing workers' rights lawsuits in Kenya, #Meta moved its moderation operations to a secret new location. We found them, in Ghana, where conditions appear to be even worse. Our joint investigation from @tbij.bsky.social and @theguardian.com out today 👇

Since #Meta was hit by workers' rights lawsuits in #Kenya, it moved it outsourcing operation to a secret new location. We found them, in Ghana, where conditions appear to be even worse than those documented in Kenya. 👇

Meta has gone to great lengths to hide its content moderation operation, where workers are tasked with reviewing disturbing content Workers say they were instructed to tell no one, not even their families, about the nature of their work (1/4) www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025...

For @lrb.co.uk online, I wrote about the politics of proof burdens playing out in a case brought by @airwars.bsky.social against the UK’s MoD for refusing to disclose how it counts its dead.

If you're in Nairobi this May Day, join us at MacMillan Library to meet some of the workers featured on the podcast and learn more about the budding AI workers' movements in Kenya!

NEW: Queen Elizabeth’s private solicitor spent eight years helping to manage the offshore wealth of an alleged war criminal, Rifaat Al-Assad, the "butcher of Hama" and uncle of Bashar. Via @tbij.bsky.social & @theguardian.com www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025...

For @lrb.co.uk online, I wrote about the politics of proof burdens playing out in a case brought by @airwars.bsky.social against the UK’s MoD for refusing to disclose how it counts its dead.

‘The politics of counting those killed in the war became so distasteful to the government that officials resorted to making dubious legal arguments against collecting data at all.’ Claire Wilmot on counting the civilians killed by British forces, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ap...

Here are the two recent procurement records, which provide an update to Palantir's ongoing ICE contract. They are unusually explicit. www.404media.co/ice-just-pai...

“Ma’am please empty your pockets” My pockets: “The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly, and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered: ‘Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?’ (1/5)

NEW: 404 Media has seen parts of a Palantir-powered ICE database that allows for highly specific filtering of people, which allows for searches of students, people with tattoos, from specific countries, by visa status, etc: www.404media.co/inside-a-pow...

a lot of very important stories and memories in this issue. it was very moving to read even as an editor

I especially appreciate how it delves into the artistic nature of literary translation. Our Data Workers' Inquiry Project led by Dr. @milamiceli.bsky.social also features an invited piece from Tadhg Mac Eoghain on the art of translation: data-workers.org/tadhg/.