Claire Atkin
@catthekin.checkmyads.org
Co-founder of Check My Ads, the adtech watchdog. Please send me protopian fiction.
wrote about Trump, AI slop and how they're making wildfire misinformation even worse
The Narwhal@thenarwhal.ca · 3h agoAs wildfires rage on across Canada, misinformation rages on social media — and AI and American politics are making it worse. @michellecyca.com explains why: thenarwhal.ca/wildfire-mis...
Activist and grassroots organizer Will Lawrence has won the Democratic primary election in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, with a campaign focused on data centers’ regulation and demanding accountability for big tech and AI companies. www.wired.com/story/anti-d...
The Anti-Data-Center Movement Is Reshaping Michigan Politics
Climate activist Will Lawrence cofounded the Sunrise Movement. Now, he has shifted his focus in his attempt to compete for a swing-district seat by calling for a data center moratorium.
wired.com
Daaaamn. “AI is the asbestos we're shovelling into the walls of our technological society. Our descendants will spend generations digging it out again, and the longer the bubble goes on without popping, the longer it will take to repair the damage." www.thenerve.news/p/cory-docto...
Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying
It has become impossible to tell managers mesmerised by artificial intelligence that the tools are not, in fact, helpful. So employees just play along with the fiction to keep their jobs, writes our t...
thenerve.news
The last bastion of every single VC backed tech is advertising. Phones, fridges, cars, cameras, chatbots, baby monitors… it is all surveillance and it is all, eventually, advertising.
852dude@852dude.bsky.social · yesterdayThis sucks ass. When I start my car I want to be able to put my foot on the pedal and drive off. I dont want to watch an ad. A distracting ad. Right in the middle of my console. Again. This sucks ass.
No soft fingernail touches allowed, meanwhile Crowder is having the time of his life joking about people being thrown from helicopters
Sam Cole@samleecole.bsky.social · 5d agoa bunch of popular ASMR artists lost their channels forever this week, after YouTube cited them for violating terms against "sexually gratifying" content: www.404media.co/youtube-asmr...
I was already on team "Never Buying Another Samsung Device Again," but using my fridge's smartphone app to send me push notification ads really sealed the deal.
Essential reading for anyone who’s thinking about what comes next. Reconstruction must start with (re)building political power for pro-democracy actors *and* deconstructing the power of authoritarian actors. The one I’m focused on is Silicon Valley’s broligarchy and surveillance capitalism.
Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 5d agoVery excited for this new essay at "Can We Still Govern?": The key claim is that planning for a progressive future cannot just focus on new policies. It also has to include - to start with - political power. What does a power-shifting perspective look like? 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rebuilding...
IMPACT: that company that was offering to buy books for AI companies’ training data — and probably destroy them in the process — says it will no longer offer this service following 404 Media’s exposure of it www.404media.co/ai-company-t...
Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage
Citing backlash, ISBNdb removed its webpages about training AI, denied ever buying, scanning, or selling a book for AI training, and said the site was a "test of market interest."
404media.co
putting aside the destruction of rare books, how is digitizing a copyrighted text "transformative" for anthropic but the internet archive is guilty of infringement for the national emergency library
chiller@chiller.eurosky.social · last wk.This is ... horrific
Shopify announces customers can use promo code PLUTOCRACY for 10% off all orders
Shopify announces customers can use promo code PLUTOCRACY for 10% off all orders
TORONTO – In the wake of CEO Tobi Lutke endorsing an electoral system in which votes are allocated based on how much income tax you pay, e-commerce platform Shopify has announced that customers can pu...
thebeaverton.com
Sat down to write about the Hugging Face/AI incident. Ended up drawing this instead.
Turned this rant into a blog post. davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/the-data-c...
The data center backlash Is working. That's why the New York Times is so concerned.
I have a
davekarpf.beehiiv.com
Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social · last wk.I'm reading the "environmentalists are wrong about data centers" piece from the NYT and ohmygoditssofuckingbad. Apparently, so long as you're punching left, they'll just let you say any goddamn thing you please... www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/o...
Fitch is now warning that an AI Market Correction is emerging as a major credit risk, with “the the medium- and long-term potential of [AI] being highly uncertain” www.fitchratings.com/research/ban...
Yes. Once again thinking about Kate Losse’s work: modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-m...
The Male Gazed
Surveillance, Power, and Gender
modelviewculture.com
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last wk.FWIW, Meta was fully aware of how these glasses would primarily be used. The glasses were designed to erase consent, and that is why they exist. Anything that they do that suggests they want to ameliorate this use is an attempt to win the PR battle and manipulate public opinion.
Just in case you still use any Basecamp products, DHH is crashing out about his AI product gently pointing out that it’s bad for him to have extermination fantasies about the Roma people.
Like, I shouldn’t have to pay every journalist who does good work 80 bucks a year. Someone should be paying them who is rich enough to own a newspaper. And also it shouldn’t be so hard to pay the 80 bucks a year.
Once more: Mamdani understands that you can't just do things in politics and expect voters will notice on their own and thank you for it. You've got to work just as hard selling yourself to voters once you're in office as you did selling yourself to them to get into office. This is the way.
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · last wk.Now serving: a new era for small business.
Yeah, this is truly sad. How can anybody justify this?? They raised this mother’s rent 6x, she couldn’t afford to move her trailer home, so they destroyed it.
Justin Hendrix@justinhendrix.bsky.social · last wk."The secrecy was agreed to by nearly everyone involved, from utility executives to the governor’s office to a local elected official who knew about the talks with Meta and sold 300 acres of his own property for the project."
Plain and simple my politics is that nobody should be wealthy enough to make their insecurities my problem.
Yeah anyone recording you without your knowledge or consent is not your friend and framing them as such is an attempt at manufacturing consent for a suite of behaviors and a technosocial paradigm these people Know is wrong and are trying to justify to themselves. This is predator behavior.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2w agoDefinitionally, these are not “friends.”
had such a lovely time hearing from @fieldsmeyer.com and @juliaangwin.com last night—considering taking all headshots from now on at Onion HQ because the evening lighting is NOT like this in my home office
What a lineup of people modeling political courage. It was an honor to hang with this crew!!! @bencollins.bsky.social @catthekin.checkmyads.org @katmabu.bsky.social @nandoodles.checkmyads.org @cohen489.bsky.social
Rachel Cohen@cohen489.bsky.social · 2w agohad such a lovely time hearing from @fieldsmeyer.com and @juliaangwin.com last night—considering taking all headshots from now on at Onion HQ because the evening lighting is NOT like this in my home office
companies are sourcing millions of printed books for AI labs that scan them for training data, then destroy them. printed books are more valuable because they're free of AI slop, and AI labs know destroying them is an "optics problem." www.404media.co/ai-companies...
AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop
ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”
404media.co
Apps like Granola make it easy to transcribe conversations without asking for consent. Those transcripts are a subpoena honeypot. werd.io/people-are-t...
People are transcribing your conversations without asking. That puts you at risk.
Apps like Granola make it easy to transcribe conversations without asking for consent. Those transcripts are a subpoena honeypot.
werd.io
Hello everybody in Chicago! I'm throwing a book event with my friend @juliaangwin.com at The Onion's office next week. It's free (although you better fuckin' buy her book). We'll also be playing next week's InfoWars one day in advance. Obviously extremely limited seats, so sign up below.
On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear
Join The Onion's Ben Collins in conversation with On Courage authors Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer on July 22nd at 7pm.
eventbrite.com
