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.
Accountable Tech
@accountabletech.bsky.social
Doing what our name says, holding Big Tech accountable. #ReinInBigTech accountabletech.org
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.
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...
AI Chatbots Can Be Manipulated to Give Suicide Advice: Study
Researchers found that some LLMs’ safety guardrails can be easily bypassed.
time.com
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...
Trump administration launching health tracking system with big tech’s help
Initiative involving Americans’ personal data on systems run by private firms has ‘enormous concerns’, say experts
theguardian.com
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...
DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations
The U.S. DOGE Service is using a new AI tool to eliminate federal regulations, aiming to cut 50 percent of rules by the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
washingtonpost.com
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...
Citing New Rules, Meta Says It Will End Political Ads in E.U.
nytimes.com
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/...
Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says
Lawsuit: Meta may have seeded porn to minors while hiding piracy for AI training.
arstechnica.com
Scammers are using AI deepfakes to impersonate Trump-era officials and CEOs, tricking diplomats, job interviewers, and executives. apnews.com/article/arti...
Creating realistic deepfakes is getting easier than ever. Fighting back may take even more AI
The use of deepfakes to impersonate high-level officials in the U.S. presents a growing security challenge.
apnews.com
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...
Meta To Pull All Political Ads In The EU
Meta has decided to stop serving political, electoral, and social advertising on its platforms in the EU, rather than be subject to upcoming regulation.
forbes.com
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.”
AI summaries cause ‘devastating’ drop in audiences, online news media told
Exclusive: Study claims sites previously ranked first can lose 79% of traffic if results appear below Google Overview
theguardian.com
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...
Trump reveals plan to win in AI: Remove ‘red tape’ for Silicon Valley | CNN Business
The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled its AI action plan, a package of initiatives and policy recommendations meant to cement the United States as a global leader in a technology that’s expec...
cnn.com
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 Unveils Wristband for Controlling Computers With Hand Gestures
nytimes.com
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...
Meta tops Big Tech lobbying spending as more industries shell out over AI
Meta once again outspent its Big Tech counterparts in lobbying, but dropped far less cash than last quarter.
axios.com
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
People's AI Action Plan
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...
Elon Musk’s AI Praised Hitler. Now He Wants It to Teach Your Kids
It's his most audacious pivot yet: Can an AI known for chaos and conspiracy be trusted to educate the next generation?
gizmodo.com
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/...
Grok AI deepfakes used to target women in growing image abuse trend
Grok AI is being used to create porn-like deepfakes of women, including feminist X user Evie.
usatoday.com
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
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...
Altman plans D.C. push to "democratize" AI economic benefits
Altman wants to continue driving debate over the effect AI will have on jobs.
axios.com
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...
In recent layoffs, AI's role may be bigger than companies are letting on
As companies use terms like reorganization, restructuring, and optimization in job cuts, AI may be at work more than they want employees to know.
cnbc.com
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 Swears This Time Is Different
The tech giant has floundered on AI. Now it’s going all in on a “superintelligence” team.
theatlantic.com
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...
Meta allows ads crowdfunding for IDF drones, consumer watchdog finds
Paid ads hosted on Facebook, Instagram and Threads seem to violate Meta’s stated policies yet remain active
theguardian.com
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...
Elon Musk Is Cashing In on the AI Romance Boom
Grok’s new flirtatious character may be lucrative, but it only offers an illusion of intimacy.
bloomberg.com
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...
The creepy AI era is here
On The Vergecast: Alexa Plus, Waifu Grok, Sony’s RX1R III, and Thunder Round take two.
theverge.com
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...
Netflix uses AI effects for first time to cut costs
The streaming firm says AI allowed The Eternaut to complete a sequence faster and cheaper.
bbc.com
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...
Meta refuses to sign EU's AI code of practice | TechCrunch
Meta will not sign the EU's new rules, calling the implementation "over-reach"
techcrunch.com
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...
Remember Cambridge Analytica? What to know about the $8B US lawsuit against Meta's board | CBC News
An $8 billion US trial by Meta Platforms shareholders against Mark Zuckerberg and other current and former company leaders kicks off on Wednesday over claims that they illegally harvested the data of ...
cbc.ca
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/...
What 'America First Antitrust' means for Big Tech
politico.com
“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.”
Rise of the Machines: Inside Hollywood’s AI Civil War
The technology is already transforming the industry — and could forever change the entertainment we consume. But the battle to contain it has just begun.
hollywoodreporter.com