NEW: Meta is facing a proposed class action alleging it used Facebook and Insta photos to build its NameTag face-recognition system and train AI models without consent. WIRED found code for NameTag hidden inside Meta’s AI app downloaded by tens of millions. Meta said the feature “doesn’t exist.”

Meta Sued Over Training Data for Its AI and Face-Recognition Systems

The proposed class action alleges Meta illegally harvested people’s Facebook and Instagram photos to train its AI image-generation models and to build its unreleased “NameTag” face recognition feature...

wired.com

Appreciating @ciaranm.bsky.social's grounded, pithy rundown of the ghost stories, catastrophizing, and novice security practices dubiously shaping the current cybersecurity + AI landscape 🙏👇 ciaranmartin.substack.com/p/fud-tier-ai

Welcome to FUD-tier AI!

The not entirely serious weekly (actually one-off) newsletter charting the wild rampage of Frontier AI through the world of cyber security

ciaranmartin.substack.com

New from 404 Media: the Texas police who used Flock to track a woman who self-administered abortion also used AI to write their report about the whole situation. They used AI to summarize a discussion of “the legal implications of the situation.” www.404media.co/texas-police...

Texas Police Used AI to Write Report About Using Flock to Search for Woman Who Had Abortion

The incident shows how quickly police departments have come to use AI surveillance tools even in critically sensitive cases.

404media.co

Yes we all think this is stupid but we, the ppl brushing our teeth, are not the customers The customers are the investors who in ~1yr will be enticed to fund Dyson's smart dental AI spinoff, featuring models trained on "the world's largest real time floss dataset" gizmodo.com/dysons-smart...

Dyson’s Smart Toothbrush Uses a Camera to Floss Your Teeth

Yes, you can watch the camera feed from an app.

gizmodo.com

Perimenopause is *so* hot right now. Read @knibbs.bsky.social on the VC-backed, telehealth push to put millions of women on hormones--whether they need them or not:

Inside the Perimenopause Industrial Complex

How an alliance of tech startups, MAHA operatives, and actual medical experts made millennial women the new face of hormone therapy.

wired.com

Current state of things: there's crop art of Signal at the Minnesota State Fair www.cropart.com

One of my most deeply held beliefs is that refusing to name truth makes you stupid--literally degrades your intellect.

Engaging in mental gymnastics to justify what's convenient but unevidenced, unjust but personally beneficial, 'rewires your neural map' in ways that degrade your overall ability to understand and analyze the world around you, which is a precondition for intelligence and creativity.

Make illegal now thank you

Maggie Harrison Dupré@mharrisondupre.bsky.social · last mo.

NEW: Teen boys are using smart glasses — mainly Meta's AI Glasses — to film themselves harassing classmates at school, following girls around and "rizzing" them or "ragebaiting" them w/ insults. In several videos we reviewed, girls plead w/ the poster to stop filming. futurism.com/artificial-i...

They used to call this malware.

ChatGPT just learned to watch everything you do on your Mac

ChatGPT Computer History tracks your Mac activity to build a searchable timeline, no screenshots involved.

cultofmac.com

Perhaps this deserve a less esoteric introduction. Weaving memoir with an analysis of technology, automated decision systems and AI more broadly. This is something between a love letter and quarterly report on where Logic(s) has been and where it’s going.

Khadijah@upfromthecracks.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Needed to be silent for a while but sharing a piece meditating on my life and Logic(s). Got locked up with sheep and re-discovered awe and wonder in goat missing its two front legs that learned to move like a kangaroo. logicmag.io/2026/meditat...

🎀

“This is not a matter of a few people engaging in aberrant behavior,” @evacide.bsky.social told @19thnews.org of police abusing Flock ALPRs to stalk people. “These are just the people who have gotten caught, and who have gotten caught so blatantly that they have experienced consequences.”

Flock is just the latest example of using surveillance to stalk women

The technology is under fire for how police officers have abused it. But it’s only the symptom of a larger problem.

19thnews.org

<3

Signal@signal.org · 2mo ago

Introducing Automatic Key Verification! Complementing the existing safety number system, automatic key verification provides an additional, streamlined way to confirm the privacy of your chats. signal.org/blog/automat... TY @cloudflare.social and @trailofbits.bsky.social our independent auditors 💙🙏

“A fundamental shift is needed in how we approach the development and deployment of AI agents,” argues Meredith Whittaker. “Basic lessons in privacy and digital security are being discarded,” she warns

AI agents are coming for your privacy, warns Meredith Whittaker

The Signal Foundation’s president worries they will also blunt competition and undermine cyber-security

econ.st

This is good, necessary, common sense" www.banfacialrecognition.com/venues/

Ban AI Surveillance at Live Events

Artists and venues take the pledge: no facial recognition at shows.

banfacialrecognition.com

The Hugging Face incident was “both notable and alarming,” EFF’s @evacide.bsky.social told @sfexaminer.bsky.social, “not because ‘ooh, the model’s so powerful,’ but because it demonstrates a colossal failure on the part of OpenAI to secure the sandbox in which it was testing its model.”

OpenAI hacking incident highlights AI cyberrisks

Experts take company to task for safety efforts

sfexaminer.com

From @meredithmeredith.bsky.social is spot-on: “The extent of the tech industry’s influence over the AI research domain has parallels in the U.S. military’s dominance over scientific research during the Cold War. Tech firms are drawing from a similar playbook.” dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Flock doesn't just search for cars, it searches for you. "'FreeForm' searches... allow cops to use Flock’s system as though they would use a search engine, with Flock’s AI and image recognition interpreting what footage and which people are relevant to a police officer’s search." @404media.co

How Cops Use Flock to Track People, Not Cars

Cops have used Flock's FreeForm search feature to look for people with tattoos and wearing specific sport shirts, and searches sometimes include the target's race, according to data reviewed by 404 Me...

404media.co

Kudos to Andreas 💐 Thousands of us at Google organized against the company’s Maven contract nearly 10 years ago, even though principles like this existed. We saw no hope that such principles would survive bottom line pressure—nor were they legally drafted to do so.

Andreas Kirsch@blackhc.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I work at Google DeepMind. This won't make me popular. But it's all public reporting: 2014: DeepMind reportedly sold to Google on conditions: no military use, independent oversight 2026: a Pentagon contract for "any lawful government purpose" Not one safeguard survived intact

I blogged about last week’s viral video of the pervert on the Scottish train filming some quiet teenage girls, and why it matters for the debate on young people and smartphones. I didn’t share it anywhere, but it’s top of Hacker News. This happens to me a lot. heatherburns.tech/2026/07/08/t...

In which I speak at length with the inimitable @meredithmeredith.bsky.social for the @futurologypod.bsky.social podcast. As always, Meredith had strong, precise things to say about the ongoing digital erosion of privacy — and how AI is accelerating that erosion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYVe...

Signal’s President Says You Have Plenty to Hide | The Futurology Podcast

YouTube video by Futurology

youtube.com

👑 🙏🏾

Admirable Women@admirablewomen.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler was born #OTD in 1947. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, she became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship (1995). #booksky #litsky #scifi #SpeculativeFiction

Signal’s Meredith Whittaker: The Push for Online Safety Risks Mass Surveillance Interview by Mishal Hussain The president of the encrypted messaging app says autonomous AI agents, device scanning and digital advertising are converging into a new architecture of surveillance.

Signal's Meredith Whittaker: The Push for Online Safety Risks Mass Surveillance

The president of the encrypted messaging app says autonomous AI agents, device scanning and digital advertising are converging into a new architecture of surveillance.

bloomberg.com

AI is not your friend @meredithmeredith.bsky.social techcrunch.com/2026/06/20/s...

Signal’s Meredith Whittaker wants you to remember that AI chatbots ‘are not your friends’ | TechCrunch

"These are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not sentient interlocutors.”

techcrunch.com

"I also struggle with the persistent focus on privacy as the purported barrier to solving these issues, when we have most of the Epstein list walking around without consequences."

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4mo ago

“We can’t live a full dignified life — with the ability to question authority, have different relationships with people, test ideas [and] blow off steam — if we don’t have private communication.”

“We can’t live a full dignified life — with the ability to question authority, have different relationships with people, test ideas [and] blow off steam — if we don’t have private communication.”

Signal's Meredith Whittaker: The Push for Online Safety Risks Mass Surveillance

The president of the encrypted messaging app says autonomous AI agents, device scanning and digital advertising are converging into a new architecture of surveillance.

bloomberg.com

Our statement on the UK gov't's demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the UK be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification & content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all. signal.org/blog/pdfs/20...

New joint publication by @citizenlab.ca + @cancivlib.bsky.social! In which @kate-ro.bsky.social & I join forces w/ Tamir @digitalprivacy.ca to explain the federal govt's many... "(Un)forced Errors: Analysis of Proposed Surveillance Law Expansion under Bill C-22, An Act respecting lawful access" 🧵1/x

The Citizen Lab (Un)forced Errors: Analysis of Proposed Surveillance Law Expansion under Bill C-22, An Act respecting lawful access -

This submission analyzes Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, which would enact broad surveillance obligations and reforms in Canada. Issues include: the bill’s sweeping scope, significant constitutional...

citizenlab.ca

🇨🇦's #BillC22 is entering committee study this week - and we're hearing it may become law by end of the month. We never say this: but this is the worst, most privacy-breaking bill we've seen. It MUST be stopped. Speak up against it and read on to learn more: www.openmedia.org/StopC22-bsky 1/

Stop the Surveillance State: Stop Bill C-22!

🚨 Bill C-22 forces every Canadian internet provider, messaging app & cloud service to build surveillance backdoors and store a year of your data. Foreign state hackers exploited similar legislation in...

openmedia.org