This is our last thread here at Accountable Tech. But the good news is, the fight continues with our partner, @designitforus.bsky.social – and they’re just getting started.

Meet @designitforus.bsky.social! Our youth-led partner, fighting for a safer digital world, especially for young people. Having grown up online, they’ve got the lived experience to know just how Big Tech harms young people, and how to fix it.

We’ve got a big announcement: After five years of working with advocates like you to hold Big Tech accountable, we’ve made the decision to wind down operations.

A race to the bottom if you ask us www.theverge.com/news/719756/...

CW: Suicide A new study shows that jailbroken AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity still give dangerous advice on suicide and self-harm. time.com/7306661/ai-s...

The Trump administration is pushing an initiative to track people’s health and behavior. This is not just dystopian. It’s dangerous. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

DOGE is using an AI tool to remove and end federal regulations, “with the goal of eliminating half of Washington’s regulatory mandates by the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.” Sources say the tool is already in use. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

In a rejection of EU regulations, Meta will stop distributing political or social issue ads in the region. They claim the regulations are “unworkable,” but the EU’s regulations center on controlling disinformation around elections and politics. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/b...

A new lawsuit alleges that Meta has been pirating copyright porn videos since 2018, potentially distributing them to minors and using them to train their AI. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Scammers are using AI deepfakes to impersonate Trump-era officials and CEOs, tricking diplomats, job interviewers, and executives. apnews.com/article/arti...

Meta is pulling all political ads in the EU starting this October. Why? New EU transparency laws require clear disclosure around political ad spend, targeting, and funders. Instead of complying, Meta is just... opting out. www.forbes.com/sites/emmawo...

Media organizations are losing website traffic at an alarming speed thanks to Google’s AI summaries in search. Those outlets rely on site visits for advertising dollars that support their work. Without visits, we could witness “the death of quality information online.”

The Trump administration is letting Big Tech have free rein on AI development, free from what Trump is calling “foolish rules,” also known as regulations, in order to win the AI race. www.cnn.com/2025/07/23/t...

SpOoKY: “this experimental technology reads the electrical signals that pulse through your muscles when you move your fingers. These signals, generated by commands sent from your brain, can reveal what you are about to do even before you do it.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/s...

Meta is the biggest Big Tech lobbying spender, shelling out almost $6M in the past quarter. They’re trying to influence policy around: misinformation, “AI, kids' online safety, and more.” www.axios.com/pro/tech-pol...

That’s why we’ve joined @eff.org @accountabletech.bsky.social @peoplestechproject.bsky.social and other civil society organizations in demanding an AI Action plan to provide relief from tech oligarchies 👇 Sign + share! peoplesaiaction.com

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok praised Hitler. Now he wants it to teach your kids. After a wave of antisemitic and extremist responses, Musk announced “Baby Grok”—a child-friendly version of the same bot. gizmodo.com/elon-musks-a...

Grok AI was used to generate non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women like Evie, a Twitch streamer who spoke out after being targeted. This isn’t just tech gone wrong, it’s image-based sexual abuse. www.usatoday.com/videos/life/...

An AI action plan written by and for tech billionaires cannot and will not serve the interests of the broader public. We cannot let Big Tech special interests buy Washington and write the rules for AI and our economy. That's why we need a People’s AI Action Plan. peoplesaiaction.com

OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, wants to “democratize” AI’s “benefits” by “getting them into the hands of people to do stuff), not concentrating them in the hands of the few." www.axios.com/2025/07/21/s...

Layoffs could be more due to AI than companies are letting on. “Firms often limit their explanations to terms like reorganization, restructuring, and optimization, and that terminology could be AI in disguise.” www.cnbc.com/2025/07/20/i...

After failing to deliver on AI for years, Mark Zuckerberg is throwing money at the problem in the hopes of winning the AI race. He's offering top researchers in the industry hundreds of millions of dollars to join his “superintelligence” team. This time’s the charm?

Meta is yet again allowing advertisers to violate their policies, even after being made aware of the violation. Now, advertisers are fundraising for the IDF, specifically seeking civilian drones that drop bombs on unarmed people. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Grok’s AI “anime girlfriend” will start sexually charged conversations with anyone – including children. And AI chatbots are becoming the norm. They provide a false sense of intimacy and have an addicting personalized business model to keep people coming back. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

The more AI develops, the more it gets personified — and that’s not always a good thing. See: Grok’s new “anime girlfriend.” Check out the recent podcast from [tag] The Verge on how AI is getting creepy. www.theverge.com/the-vergecas...

AI is supposed to make our lives easier, but at what cost? Netflix, a multi-billion dollar corporation, admitted to using AI to “cut costs.” Just pay people. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Meta is refusing to sign the EU’s voluntary AI “code of practice," which requires “documentation about their AI tools and services; bans developers from training AI on pirated content; and [compliance] with content owners’ requests to not use their works.” techcrunch.com/2025/07/18/m...

Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook billionaires are being sued for their role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal that resulted in “tens of millions” of users’ data being accessed by the now-defunct consulting firm, violating an agreement with the FTC. www.cbc.ca/news/world/m...

Trump’s admin is trying to square their “pro-business” agenda with the Trump base’s wariness about Big Tech – so far it looks like big antitrust talk without stopping mergers from taking place. We’ve yet to see how Big Tech’s existing antitrust cases play out: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

“Hollywood is currently in the midst of an AI insurgency [...] the effort is increasingly looking like a full-on takeover, a Pixar-like artquake that aims to change the provenance of images, the business of production and [...] the language of cinema itself.”

Humans have been using technology for “cognitive offloading” on “difficult or tedious mental tasks” for eons. But AI offloads a more “complex set of processes.” and once the brain gets used to that, it may rely on that offloading in more and more areas. www.economist.com/science-and-...

Delta is using AI to decide how much you should pay for a plane ticket. Not based on the seat, but on your data. Dynamic pricing like this could make air travel more expensive and more unfair, especially for vulnerable consumers. fortune.com/2025/07/16/d...

Teens are turning to AI companions for emotional support, and Big Tech is already monetizing their loneliness. From grief to anxiety to body image struggles, kids are seeking out chatbot “friends” but these tools are unregulated, exploitative, and unfit to provide actual care.

A new $8.4 billion lawsuit alleges Facebook ignored years of warnings about its invasive tracking and misleading privacy practices, even after pledging reform. The evidence? Internal emails showing Meta prioritized profits over user consent. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

“Grok reveals what's been true all along: there's no such thing as unbiased AI – only AI whose biases we can see with varying degrees of clarity.” www.cbsnews.com/news/grok-mu...

Yikes. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Google is rolling out AI summaries in Discover, the main news feed inside Google’s search app on iOS and Android. Now users will see an AI-generated summary. techcrunch.com/2025/07/15/g...

“Mothers who were in the habit of spending more time on social media talked much less to their kids when they played with them than did moms who spent less time on social networks, and that difference carried over when they weren’t using their devices.” www.cnn.com/2025/07/13/h...

A band went viral with over a million streams. Turns out, everything about them is AI-generated, with no transparency on which artists’ content the bots trained on. It poses some serious ethical questions: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Nudify apps – platforms that create non-consensual AI-generated deepfake nude images of people – have risen in popularity and make millions. And “most of the sites rely on tech services from Google, Amazon, and Cloudflare to operate and stay online.” www.wired.com/story/ai-nud...

Meta is continuing its attempt to become a leader in AI by acquiring a voice-generating AI startup. techcrunch.com/2025/07/13/m...

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, recently made antisemitic remarks. According to @techcrunch.com, the bot seems to get its positions on “controversial subjects” like “the Israel and Palestine conflict, abortion, and immigration laws” directly from Elon’s posts. techcrunch.com/2025/07/10/g...

This is extremely concerning and a major overreach: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/u...

People's accounts have been “permanently disabled” by Meta after being falsely accused of “breaching its rules on child sexual exploitation” – likely due to AI moderation. Businesses are losing money, people are getting isolated, and users are losing years of memories.

When AI isn’t regulated, it’s dangerous – that danger includes addiction. AI chatbots are known to be sycophantic and agreeable, encouraging people to engage. Now, self-proclaimed addicts are turning to Reddit to find support from other humans with similar issues.

In a sick twist of irony, the companies we use to help us get and vet jobs are cutting over 1,000 of positions between them to make room for AI – doesn’t exactly bode well for us job seekers using their services. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

“Electricity bills are projected to surge by more than 20% this summer in some parts of PJM Interconnection's territory, which covers 13 states - from Illinois to Tennessee, Virginia to New Jersey - serving 67 million customers.” www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Elon Musk felt that his chatbot was too politically correct, so he updated it. Now, it’s spewing antisemitic spiels and “invoking Hitler.” The company xAI says they’ll “improve Grok’s training model.” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Meta is banking on people using AI smart glasses, investing billions in “the world’s largest eyewear manufacturer.” Why? Because unlike competitor smartphones, “glasses offer Meta a chance to build its own hardware and control its own distribution, Zuckerberg has said.”

Paid escort services have been promoting their businesses on Instagram, against Meta’s policies around “human exploitation.” www.cbsnews.com/news/meta-in...