2/2 I'm backing FCA employees' campaign to keep Palantir out of the regulator, and have written to the Chief Executive urging the FCA to end its use of Palantir systems. The Government should be reducing its reliance on Palantir, not deepening it. @unitetheunion.bsky.social

“A rental model [for iPhones] puts consumers in the strange position of storing all of this information in a gadget that Apple and Klarna maintain a lot of control over.”

Damon Beres@damonberes.com · 7d ago

I wrote about the new "Apple Upgrade" program, which plans to entice people into *leasing* new devices—perhaps devices they can't truly afford—leading them to stay on a perpetual cycle of monthly payments and upgrades, filtering their most personal data through property that isn't truly theirs. 🎁:

The gift that keeps on giving.

Paris Marx@parismarx.com · 7d ago

ai finding a way to make *literally* everything even worse. we’re getting to the point where butlerian jihad may be the only option left.

1/4 A growing number of higher education institutions are using dirty tactics to undermine staff pension rights, pay and working conditions.

so fucking tired of how socially acceptable it is, even encouraged, to film random people for no good reason at all other than clout and post it online. I cover surveillance all day every day and this shift sometimes scares me the most watch more/subscribe: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Sb...

AI companies like to argue in court that their models don’t financially harm the people whose work they train on. They think this strengthens their claims of fair use. That argument is surely now well and truly dead. /end

"Everybody deserves a say in the future of AI. We don’t have to resort to NIMBYism and questionable environmental arguments to get it. Even if one community succeeds in keeping the data centers out, another community will let them in." TRANSLATION: the datacenter backlash is working. Please stop.

i know genai is degrading society in general but this is shameful and can't be normalised

Al Jazeera English@aljazeera.com · last wk.

Canadian politician Bill Oliver has gone viral after he appeared to accidentally read AI-generated editing instructions aloud, not once, but twice, during a speech to lawmakers in early June.

Major wildfires continue in parts of Europe🔥 Satellite imagery shows widespread smoke across Portugal, Spain and near to Bordeaux. There's little prospect of any rain relief and the heat will even intensify for some, with temperatures of over 40°C possible in places📈

"the interview should lead any right-minded person to question why the media continues to engage him in this way. He clearly despises them" Spot on.

Paris Marx@parismarx.com · last wk.

After The Economist’s interview with Elon Musk, will major media finally reassess how they cover the fascist billionaire? As its editor-in-chief did the rounds saying she was “not a Musk hater,” he was on X calling her a traitor to the West and suggesting she be murdered. Please, have some dignity.

"The UN treats the global spread of AI as inevitable and necessary."

Tech Policy Press@techpolicypress.bsky.social · last wk.

“The UN’s global AI governance discourse appears to simultaneously throttle the gas and brakes on AI, promoting global AI adoption while it warns about the serious risks it poses to society,” writes Bradley McNeil. Its AI vision risks entrenching the very concentration it warns about, he writes.

But that conversation cannot be just about the technological project of AI, it must recognize and center the much broader political projects of AI. This includes AI's anti-working class politics... 15/

Police arrested a teacher for clapping during a city council meeting last week. They went to the meeting of Emporia, Kansas City Commission to speak out against a proposed hyperscale data center that would sit on 1,000 acres of rural land. @mjgault.bsky.social reports www.404media.co/person-oppos...

This whole ethos that if digital technology empowers you to do something you are ipso facto justified in having done it, consequences or harms to other people be damned, is so deeply tied to the rise of the culture of fascism

Farage has said he thinks it’s “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant, while Badenoch says candidates aren’t welcome in the Conservative Party that support net zero. Leaders of the civilisational collapse cult.

It's not surprising that these guys tend to generate these walls of text at the same time the companies themselves disclose absolutely unfathomable reports of their climate wrecking impacts ketanjoshi.co/2026/07/01/g...

Google’s exponential path to climate-wrecking digital bloat

Google’s latest report reveals a completely unprecedented rise in energy consumption – more than any of us expected. Generative AI is a climate carbon bomb.

ketanjoshi.co

Billionaires being unafraid to say things like this publicly is a major indicator of how bad things have gotten

Rachel Gilmore@rachelgilmore.bsky.social · last wk.

Very cool that Shopify’s CEO thinks the poor should have far less of a vote than the rich. Still worth that ad read money, folks?

For many years, people didn’t randomly film others in public—not because we didn’t have the technology, but because the social contract said you didn’t do that. That’s why Meta is going full court press on their PR and celebrity endorsements. They remember how people ran google glass outta town.

Jeffrey Epstein models Zuckerberg's Meta glasses. Spoof advertisements featuring the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein wearing Meta’s AI glasses have been installed at bus stops across London in a guerrilla campaign protesting against privacy risks. The activist group Everyone Hates Elon

Spoof Epstein ads go up around London in protest against Meta AI glasses

The activist group Everyone Hates Elon targets smart glasses in a guerrilla campaign over privacy risks and non-consensual recording

thetimes.com

“The global average TikTok user watches over 100,000 videos annually, and the average American spends 50 hours a week on screens, 16 of those on social media platforms. An American born in 2025 is projected to spend 21 years of their lifetime looking at screens.” Grim stats. This needs to change.

Getting Off with the Luddites | Sarah Thankam Mathews

They see Big Tech as having eroded commonality: the common good, the social fabric, the institutions of collective interest. Luddism, as they conceive of it, is a communal, spiritual, and political pr...

nplusonemag.com

“”I think it should stand for artificial idiot,” one 9-year-old says.” www.wired.com/story/some-k...

Some Kids Will Never Think AI Is Cool

“I think it should stand for ‘artificial idiot,’” one 9-year-old says. Here’s why kids of all ages are calling AI “disgusting” and “creepy.”

wired.com

Is this true? Am I dreaming? Is this actual… (I forget what we used to call them) — ah, yes! — Good news!

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan@london.gov.uk · 2w ago

It’s official: starting today you can enjoy unlimited bus and tram journeys every weekend for the price of a single daily journey.

To make things worse, AI *can't do the jobs* it's replacing: AI is predicated on the premise that monopolies, duopolies and cartels that control the global economy can deliberately worsen their products without suffering economic or regulatory consequences, because they're the only game in town. 4/

The UK government refuses to release the register of interests of the Prime Minister's main adviser on AI, depsite her being an ex-OpenAI exec. There is obviously a possibility she owns OpenAI shares, and it is vital the public knows whether or not she does. Why will they not release it?

This is so generous. Will they also let me give them my DNA.

Google will now let you sign in to your account with a selfie video | TechCrunch

The tech giant says selfie videos give users more options to sign in if they're ever locked out or don't have access to their usual phone or computer.

techcrunch.com

@wired.com just broke that facial recognition scanners were shut off for the duration of Taylor Swift’s wedding at Madison Square Garden, demonstrating the dynamics of privilege & power when it comes to who gets to opt out of mass surveillance. www.wired.com/story/for-ta...

Librarians giving people words and tools to sweep all traces of ‘AI inevitability’ out of the window. This episode of Tech Won’t Save Us fills me with hope.

Tech Won’t Save Us@techwontsave.us · 2w ago

Libraries are still essential in the digital age. Some librarians are even helping patrons ditch AI and get off Big Tech. This week Hannah Cyrus and @flexlibris.bsky.social join @parismarx.com to discuss how libraries address people’s concerns about tech. Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/338_...

Incredible investigation. It consolidates my belief that if American oligarchs were pushed out of British politics and institutions the UK would thrive.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed@nafeez.bsky.social · 4w ago

1/🧵EXCLUSIVE: @bylinetimes.bsky.social's six-month investigation into Reform UK's policy chief: a secret donation from Peter Thiel, Thiel's life-changing offers to Cambridge scholars, and a far-right, theocratic student recruitment drive in breach of safeguarding bylinetimes.com/2026/07/09/p...

OpenAI is doing this because Mythos got airtime thanks to the media that does press-release-as-aservice. So now, as one security engineer put it, “something which would have been an embarrassment ten years ago is now repackaged as a capability demo, a heroic AI-vs-AI story and a marketing pitch"

Richard Meredith@rtm223.me · 2w ago

It's totally unprecedented, nothing like the same marketing hype cycle Anthropic did around their model "going rogue" and "breaching containment" recently. Not like that at all

1. The new Trump / Kratsios plan for US science appears explicitly designed to destroy US universities. Diverting money to tech donors is probably just a bonus. Gift link.

Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities (Gift Article)

Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.

nytimes.com