Aliya Bhatia
@aliyabhatia.bsky.social
Tech & human rights @cdt.org Posts, thoughts, dreams my own. Not Alia Bhatt aliya-bhatia.com
Apropos of Meta apologizing to India's IT Minister for a content moderation decision today, sharing an article I wrote last year on how social media companies increasingly see governments as their primary constituents, regardless of their human rights track records foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/14/c...
Social Media Companies Now Work for Governments—Not Users
Content from rap videos to protest photos is being removed in the name of “national security.”
foreignpolicy.com
“Social media made the protest feel like a conversation, not a lecture.” My deep dive for @foreignpolicy.com, on how India's Gen Z and the @cockroachjparty.bsky.social took the fight to Modi online, is in front of our paywall and free to read: foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/30/c...
How Gen Z ‘Cockroaches’ Beat Modi at His Own Game
India’s prime minister is famous for his savvy use of social media. Now he’s getting a wake-up call.
foreignpolicy.com
Great piece on the student protests in India. Students were mobilized by an online account that brought to attention a Supreme Court's Justice' paternalistic comment and showed up online and off. Those missing this are missing something akin to the Arab Spring foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/30/c...
How Gen Z ‘Cockroaches’ Beat Modi at His Own Game
India’s prime minister is famous for his savvy use of social media. Now he’s getting a wake-up call.
foreignpolicy.com
I just saw an interstitial blurring a friend's story on Instagram. The post? A song by Rage Against the Machine.
TPS is set to end for hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants living in the United States. ICE is gearing up for deportations. Last year, Pooja Bhatia described the economic and spiritual effects of mass deportation in one Ohio community. thebaffler.com/salvos/home-...
Home City, USA | Pooja Bhatia
The residents of Springfield, Ohio, have been terrorized by Donald Trump—and many now face the prospect of state-sponsored violence.
thebaffler.com
Congrats to education reporter Nadia Rahman whose article about the student protest movement in India is the most heavily cited article by Gemini in my tests for how Gemini changes its responses to questions about the protest based on my IP address location northeasttimes.com/2026/07/28/i....
India's student 'Cockroach' movement threatens new protests after mass arrests - Northeast Times
India's Cockroach Janta party accuses the Modi government of reneging on a deal to protect student protesters, threatening to resume demonstrations over exam system corruption.
northeasttimes.com
I'm at #TrustCon2026 come say hi! Great to start TrustCon with a warm intro from T&S superhero @charlottewillner.bsky.social and an incredible keynote from @daphnek.bsky.social on protecting users' rights. Come find me to talk kids safety, T&S vendors, and governance of AI powered T&S, and football.
Really great work from Tattle on NCII, how AI amplifies online abuse towards women, and the economy powering it. www.decodeinternet.in/life/investi... tattle.co.in
Desi Faces, Foreign Servers: Inside the AI Economy Undressing Women
A revenge account. A teenager's stolen reels. Behind both: an economy built on undressing Indian women without their consent.
decodeinternet.in
Breaking: A federal court has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing an immigration policy targeting noncitizen researchers, advocates, fact-checkers, and trust and safety workers based on their work. knightcolumbia.org/content/fede...
Federal Court Suspends Trump Immigration Policy Targeting Technology Researchers
knightcolumbia.org
Everything is content moderation - even the World Cup.
Aliya Bhatia@aliyabhatia.bsky.social · 3w agoWhat does footy have to do with content moderation? A lot. Between AI-generated Kimmel rants, racist speech targeting French players, and VARgentina conspiracies, T&S teams have their hands full ahead of the World Cup semi finals beginning today: cdt.org/insights/its...
What does footy have to do with content moderation? A lot. Between AI-generated Kimmel rants, racist speech targeting French players, and VARgentina conspiracies, T&S teams have their hands full ahead of the World Cup semi finals beginning today: cdt.org/insights/its...
It’s Game Time for Content Moderation
What can we do?-down-approaches-miss-nuanced-coverage" href="#top-down-approaches-miss-nuanced-coverage" class="toc-anchor">Top-down approaches miss nuanced coverageltural-linguistic-and-football-expe...
cdt.org
1. How @klaudia.bsky.social, @aliyabhatia.bsky.social, and Yanick Kemayou are working at the intersection of large language models and marginalization across news, languages, and colonial replications in data extraction. www.themaybe.org/podcast/real...
REAL Resistance: The AI Information Warp
Klaudia Jaźwińska, Aliya Bhatia, and Yanick Kemayou come together to answer: What happens when a small collection of AI companies start colonising the truth?
themaybe.org
In a new op-ed for @disabilitylab.bsky.social, CDT's Ariana Aboulafia argues that independent living means more than remaining at home. It requires autonomy, agency, and the ability to make choices without constant monitoring or surveillance.
From Inside The House: How Surveillance Tech Further Threatens Independent Living — Disability Culture Lab
Independent living is facing a threat from a less obvious source: tech tools often marketed explicitly as facilitating the ability of aging and disabled people to stay at home. The use and proliferation of these sorts of tools is being encouraged by the same administration that is openly hostile to the idea of independent living.
disabilityculturelab.org
Question: if you go to google.com outside the US, what "skin" does the Google logo have? I see a US football team logo and I think Google should give you the ability to choose the "skin" of your Google logo during the World Cup rather than them de facto choosing based on where you're logging on from
New from me and the inimitable @caitlinvogus.bsky.social for @theintercept.com! Age verification comes at a great cost to our rights and democracy, including by undermining the anonymity that is crucial for journalists and their sources to document and report on government abuse of power freely
Online Age Verification Law Could Kill Whistleblowing
The KIDS Act, ostensibly aimed at protecting children, will raise the risk for journalists, dissidents, and whistleblowers.
theintercept.com
Mandating age verification "effectively hands Big Tech and the government a skeleton key to the identities of every whistleblower, dissident, and investigative reporter who uses online platforms," FPF's @caitlinvogus.bsky.social and @aliyabhatia.bsky.social write in @theintercept.com.
Online Age Verification Law Could Kill Whistleblowing
The KIDS Act, ostensibly aimed at protecting children, will raise the risk for journalists, dissidents, and whistleblowers.
theintercept.com
When AI becomes the primary filter for the world’s information, what happens to our news, language, and knowledge? I spoke with @klaudia.bsky.social, @aliyabhatia.bsky.social, and Yanick Kemayou for our first episode of REAL Resistance to find out. Listen to the conversation here:
REAL Resistance: The AI Information Warp
Klaudia Jaźwińska, Aliya Bhatia, and Yanick Kemayou come together to answer: What happens when a small collection of AI companies start colonising the truth?
themaybe.org
Catch the first episode with @klaudia.bsky.social, @aliyabhatia.bsky.social, and Yanick Kemayou here: www.themaybe.org/podcast/real...
REAL Resistance: The AI Information Warp
Klaudia Jaźwińska, Aliya Bhatia, and Yanick Kemayou come together to answer: What happens when a small collection of AI companies start colonising the truth?
themaybe.org
"We talked a lot about how to navigate this complex world, both online and off. We considered the available access-limiting tools and whether to take on the burden of setting them up. Yet never once did I want the state to step in and make those decisions for us."
Justin Hendrix@justinhendrix.bsky.social · last mo.As governments rush to age-gate the internet, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior counsel David Greene argues we're skipping a vital question: not "how do we age-gate while protecting privacy?" but "should we be doing this at all?" He reflects on the issue as an expert, and as a parent.
Read @immcouncil.org's statement on today's disastrous decision for asylum seekers here: www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/press-releas...
In Blow to Asylum Rights, Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to Block Asylum Seekers at Border - American Immigration Council
The Supreme Court ruled today that the Trump administration could turn back asylum seekers at ports of entry along the southern border, and that doing so does not violate federal immigration law. The ...
americanimmigrationcouncil.org
Steve Vladeck@stevevladeck.bsky.social · last mo.Third (but *not*) last ruling from #SCOTUS is in Al Otro Lado. For the usual 6-3 majority, Justice Alito sides with Trump administration; holds that non-citizens stopped at the border have not "arrived in" the United States for purposes of asylum eligibility: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
How can public sector AI systems be designed to serve everyone, incl. people with disabilities? Join CDT’s @arianaaboulafia.bsky.social & accessibility leaders from govt & industry for “Invisible Barriers: Disability Rights & Public Sector AI” on June 25 at 2 PM ET. Register:
Invisible Barriers: Disability Rights and Public Sector AI
Time: 2:00 – 3:00 PM ET Date: June 25, 2026 As governments adopt artificial intelligence to improve efficiency and service delivery, disability rights and accessibility are increasingly becoming central governance concerns rather than niche technical issues. Yet many AI systems are still built on datasets, assumptions, and design practices that fail to account for the […]
cdt.org
"The data annotation workers — who are often football players themselves, or have extensive knowledge of the game — are largely in cities such as Manila, Cairo, Chennai, and Ternopil"
Aliya Bhatia@aliyabhatia.bsky.social · last mo.FIFA touts this World Cup as the most innovative and tech-savvy one yet. Behind the veneer of state-of-the-art football sensors and ref body cams are data workers from Brazil, the Philippines, Cambodia, and India tracking the play-by-play restofworld.org/2026/fifa-wo...
FIFA touts this World Cup as the most innovative and tech-savvy one yet. Behind the veneer of state-of-the-art football sensors and ref body cams are data workers from Brazil, the Philippines, Cambodia, and India tracking the play-by-play restofworld.org/2026/fifa-wo...
The AI-powered World Cup runs on thousands of data workers
Human annotators in Brazil, Cambodia, and the Philippines are tracking every movement in the football tournament for teams, broadcasters, and the betting industry.
restofworld.org
New from @annamaria.bsky.social and myself about the new approach to foreign aid, which be given “in a way that directly benefits the American people and directly promotes our national interest,” according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio www.propublica.org/article/trum...
“Digital Colonialism”: U.S. Demands to Access Africans’ Data Raise Privacy, Sovereignty Concerns
The United States is requiring access to health data as part of lifesaving aid deals with African countries. The U.S. says the data will be aggregated and anonymized, but privacy experts fear the info...
propublica.org
What my algorithmic feed filled with Argentina national team inspired saris taught me about engagement-based recommender systems and youth safety...
Huge news for language preservation, expanding language representation for enhancing multilingual technology capabilities, and for multistakeholderism. Indigenous languages are systematically underrepresentated but this move will no doubt help fill critical gaps: www.unesco.org/en/articles/...
UNESCO and Unicode strengthen collaboration for Indigenous languages
Aligned with the vision of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032), the collaboration of UNESCO and Unicode aims to accelerate efforts in language preservation, revitalization
unesco.org
Indigenous creators have had to tone down posts, going from documenting systemic prejudice and institutional burdens to posting about local cuisine, to avoid takedowns and account bans on YouTube restofworld.org/2024/youtube...
Indigenous creators are clashing with YouTube’s and Instagram’s sensitive content bans
Deep in the heartlands of Brazil, Indigenous creators are having to censor themselves to avoid getting banned on social platforms.
restofworld.org
Who is tracking the number of World Cup players who cite visa restrictions. Most recent: Vozinha, Cape Verde's goalkeeper, whose mother could not meet the financial reqs to be granted a visa. US tourist visa application includes submitting bank records to show that you have money to spend in the US
Keir Starmer keeps referring to the consultation as evidence for why the social media ban isn't a last gasp by-election gambit in his answers to the press. The consultation had 116,211 responses to 54 questions. The government has published a single percentage of answers to just two questions
