It seems that dynamic pricing is starting to go to more industries, McDonals started this in their physical branches and now PlayStation. So this is a reminder that it's all possible thanks to the surveillance adtech business model, and this should be illegal. www.techradar.com/gaming/ps5/i...

Sony was caught testing dynamic pricing again on PS5 — yet again proving why digital-only games are a terrible thing for gamers

Sony just gave us yet another reason to hate its digital-only strategy in the form of dynamic pricing.

techradar.com

Earlier this week, I agreed to interviews with two USA Today journalists. They wrote fantastic articles about the Cornell case that I'm proud to have been a part of. What I did not know is that their employer considers interviews to proprietary and opens up recordings to be used by any journalist.

My partner and I are watching The Golden Girls and wow, for a show that was aired 40 years ago they are so progressive! In just a few episodes in season 2, Sofia was watching porn, Rose was dealing with menopause and Dorothy's lesbian friend was welcomed in the house. I absolutely adore this show 😍

The Golden Girls Hug: Thank You For Being A Friend

ALT: The Golden Girls Hug: Thank You For Being A Friend

static.klipy.com

All of this. I also want to add that, in my research, I found that a lot of “inconsistencies” in a victim’s story actually came from gender bias affecting investigators’ record keeping and interview methods.

Kat Tenbarge@kattenbarge.bsky.social · 4d ago

Just a reminder that people don’t always realize they were raped in the immediate aftermath. It can take hours, days, months, and even years to realize you were raped, and it doesn’t make it any less true. There are many kinds of responses, including fawning and trying to appease your rapist

We just had a discussion on this in our editorial meeting of Internet Policy Review. It would be great to hear from other academic journal editors what are their policies around researchers using synthetic data. -> www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/20...

Can AI Stand In for Human Survey-Takers? Not Really

Synthetic surveys using digital twins do a poor job estimating the public mood and are especially error-prone for some subgroups, including Republicans and Black adults.

pewresearch.org

So it’s a PR campaign to try and make stuff like the pervert glasses and ‘always listening devices’ seem cool? Yeh, no thanks.

Techmeme@techmeme.com · 4d ago

Google partners with talent agency Range Media to launch 100 Zeros, a rotating fund designed to shape positive onscreen depictions of tech and test AI tools (Brooks Barnes/New York Times) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

“Stop accusing us of spying! We’ve been watching you!”

Carole Cadwalladr@carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 5d ago

It’s pretty nuts. Tom Watson’s very first intervention in his new job at spytech firm Palantir is to write a letter to his former colleague @labourlewis.bsky.social detailing all the times the firm has monitored his anti-Palantir activities

Went to work today and the tube was absolutely insane at times which are nit technically rush hour, 10am and 3pm! It was rammed! Some colleagues said it's because more people are ebing asked to go back to the office. Do people in London feel a change?

I see that digital consent is brought up a lot this week because Meta's Muse seems to do a lot of actions without people's consent (insert surprised face) So I want to share again my open access paper about the myth of digital consent journals.oslomet.no/index.php/se... ->

evacide@evacide.bsky.social · 7d ago

Meta Muse appears to read your Apple messages and upload them to the cloud even if you explicitly tell it not to: appleinsider.com/articles/26/...

Exactly. @moreperfectunion.bsky.social did an incredible video explaining how Ticketmaster and Live Nation became monopolies and how that influences venues, prices and artists. Really worth a watch as we are all losing on the way... youtu.be/u--se25_px8?...

What Ticketmaster Doesn't Want You To Know: Concerts Were Cheap For Decades

YouTube video by More Perfect Union

youtu.be

This skeet will self destruct@pardoguerra.bsky.social · 7d ago

Do you mean “can the arts business model survive monopolies?” Half of the story here is of concentration of power in a quasi-monopsony (eg Spotify) and a de facto monopoly (LiveNation). That’s what’s actually killing the arts.

Did you know that a Farage Reform govt intends to scrap the NHS? The private health care system he wants to introduce would cost you £10,000s, like the US, where getting ill can bankrupt you. #ReformUK #Labour #GreenParty #Newcastle #SAFC� #NUFC

Out of curiosity, are people stockpiling following the UK government's recommendation?

Just helping with editing here. These bots aren’t sentient. They’re doing what they’re programmed to do. OpenAI, a private company supposedly bound by laws, committed federal crimes.

I would not be shocked if in 20 years time there was a study published showing that people who heavily used LLMs for their work and personal lives, were more prone to developing Alzheimer’s. (AI boosters will say this is fine as AI will have found a cure for it by then…)

Dr. Elinor Carmi@elinorcarmi.bsky.social · last wk.

"If we stop using our brains to think, socially interact, concentrate or problem-solve, what will be the impact on our quality of life and our chances of ageing healthily? Will we see a rise in chronic disease linked to the brain?" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"If we stop using our brains to think, socially interact, concentrate or problem-solve, what will be the impact on our quality of life and our chances of ageing healthily? Will we see a rise in chronic disease linked to the brain?" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

We all know a lack of exercise is bad for our bodies. So what is relying on AI doing to our brains? | Devi Sridhar

Most of my students use AI, and I worry about its corrosive effects. We must not entrust tech companies with our long-term health, says Prof Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the Universi...

theguardian.com

Here we go again, you know who does feel pain? 1. People whose loved ones killed themselves because AI told them to. 2. People who can't afford health care and got wrong diagnose from AI. 3. People who live next to data centres & developed various health issues cause their air & water are polluted.

Science Magazine@science.org · last wk.

Can the new cutting-edge AI models feel pain? They at least behave as if they do, according to a recent study. The work, which has not been peer reviewed, has divided #AI researchers. https://scim.ag/4hHU6BA

Five cops in Indianapolis were just criminally charged with abusing Flock to spy on their ex-wives, their wives' ex-partners and women they met on duty. Audit was triggered by us at the @washingtonpost.com, the prosecutor said. From last month: wapo.st/4yfNHng

🤩 I had an amazing time yesterday giving my keynote "Leaving Dark Patterns Behind: Moving Toward Bright Patterns" at the #HCID2026 conference "Rage against the machines" yesterday at City St. George's 👩💻 . Loved so many talks at conference but the highlights were ->

Very happy to have in our! trembling hands the hard copy of Law, Policy and the Internet 2nd edn( Hart/Bloomsbury), just out in the nick of time for first semester 2026/7! Order or inspection copies at share.google/RCRm2lmLQNAb... & do note a guide to teaching sample "tech law" course with it!

This is outstanding work from our Norwegian friends. Google's consumer-facing apps and services are intensively deceptive manipulative, systematically backstabbing users after encouraging trust (the worst of course being Google Chrome). 🧵

Ailo@airavn.eurosky.social · 2w ago

It’s been 8 years since we published our report on how Google tricks people into extensive location tracking, and simultaneously filed complaints against Google. Today the decision from the Irish Data Protection Commission arrived: a €400 million euros fine. www.forbrukerradet.no/siste-nytt/d...

"A spokesperson for ATG Entertainment, which operates several of London’s iconic West End theatres including Picadilly Theatre, told CNN that audience members will be asked to remove the eyewear and delete any footage if caught with them". edition.cnn.com/2026/09/22/t...

‘Turn the cameras off:’ London’s growing privacy pushback against smart glasses | CNN Business

Some Londoners told CNN that smart glasses make them feel uneasy in places where people expect a degree of privacy, like bars, restaurants and other social settings.

edition.cnn.com

New: OpenAI has thousands of contractors improving its AI, including reading ChatGPT users' prompts We've found many of those contractors have been fired for themselves using AI to train the AI. People using AI "all the time and people are let go for it all the time" www.404media.co/people-train...

People Training OpenAI’s AI Fired for Using AI to Train the AI

OpenAI has thousands and thousands of contractors helping improve the company's AI models. Multiple contractors have been fired for using AI to train the AI.

404media.co

Meta's new AI agent wanted my passport info. Not to help me. To train on me. Actually, it wanted everything: bank accounts, email inboxes, ID info. No surprise coming from Meta. But always worth reminding readers that AI automations come with major privacy risks. www.wired.com/story/metas-...

Meta's Muse Is Better at Surveilling Than Helping Me

The Muse app continues Meta’s trend of opting users into data collection for AI training. It also nudges you to share your bank account, email, and passport information.

wired.com

👏 This is the type of work of what I've been thinking about when I argued that we need a utopian media studies. Getting offline is not the answer. Instead, there's just a lot of work to do. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

So you just learned about the AI cult, huh? Here is the longform explainer you need to make sense of the very, very strange ideas driving tech policy in 2026. Buckle up, it’s a wild ride. www.techpolicy.press/what-policym...

What Policymakers and the Public Need to Know About the Cult of AI

Nathalie Maréchal asks, why are we betting the economy and the future of democracy on cult-like beliefs?

techpolicy.press

Zuckerberg: Regulate us! Also Zuckerberg: But not like this! www.theguardian.com/media/2026/s...

Meta launches legal challenge against UK media regulator over Online Safety Act

Action against Ofcom comes as social media companies are being accused of using courts to slow down implementation

theguardian.com

"This is why, in 2026, my primary piece of advice to someone who wants to make the world a better place is: don’t become an online activist. In fact – seriously – don’t be online at all". I sympathize with the author but is logging off the hopeful solution? -> www.theguardian.com/media/2026/s...

Caitlin Moran: social media went from utopia to hellhole in a decade – if you want to feel hopeful again, get offline

Fourteen years ago, Twitter was the fastest, funniest game on the web. Now I’ve been driven out by so-called ‘online activists’. The only answer is to unplug and try this instead

theguardian.com

Every chatbot prompt box says "check answers for accuracy." But increasingly, "humans in the loop" refuse to do that. Instead, they become complicit in the AI industry's project of destroying the provenance of information. But you are person, and it is an app. It can't take responsibility for you.

Assigning agency to AI means surrendering your own

Claude is not a colleague, collaborator, or sentient being. It is a SaaS product.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com

Trump asked Russ Vought, OMB Director and the devil incarnate, to draft an executive order placing political appointees in charge of NIH grant funding, following the NIH director’s refusal to cut grants to Harvard.

Trump asked budget chief to draft order bringing health research funding under his control

The move came after the NIH director refused Trump’s request to cut Harvard grants in an Oval Office meeting.

politico.com

I don't want to be a party pooper but can rom-com authors do more research? The Love Hypothesis premise is that a professor needs to fake date a PhD student in his department to get grant money??? The only thing he would get in real life is an email from HR about problematic power relationship 🙄