David was a wonderful man. He backed my first start-up and went on to back Open Democracy. Mathematical physicist turned super-geek then philanthropist. (Loved the Psion in its day, too!).

Anthony Barnett@anthonybarnett.bsky.social · last mo.

Very sorry to learn that the magnificent David Potter died on Sunday evening. A pioneering mathematical physicist, he founded Psion, created the first hand-held organizer and oversaw Symbian, the standard mobile operating system. He was a wonderful philanthropist and supporter of @opendemocracy.net

Meta uses your data to make feeds addictive and sell targeting. 📍 You pay indirectly. You see nothing. Default is on. Opting out is your job. FIDU: Your data, your terms, your choice. www.theverge.com/tech/946744/...

Meta will use your activity on other websites to personalize your feeds

You’ll still be able to opt out.

theverge.com

Why did Microsoft's Scout team propose making users "addicted"? 🤔 Because that's what the design optimizes for. Lock-in. Dependency. Nadella's rebuke rejected the transparency, not the strategy. 🎭 Infrastructure stays the same. Just messaging changes. www.theinformation.com/briefings/ex...

Exclusive: Nadella Rebukes Microsoft Executive’s Plan to Make Users “Addicted” to AI Agents

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday rebuked an internal memo that another company executive had written advocating to “make people addicted” to its new AI agent product called Scout. “This is a...

theinformation.com

Microsoft Scout: always-on agent with access to your email, calendar, and messages. 🤖 Works while you sleep. Operates on your behalf. Here's what matters: can you control what it does? Can you see what data it's learning from? Right now with Scout: probably not. www.wired.com/story/meet-m...

Meet Microsoft Scout, Your AI Coworker That Never Logs Off

Microsoft’s OpenClaw-style agent appears in Teams, just like a human colleague, and automates your dull office tasks.

wired.com

Bruce Schneier on why AI agents can't be trusted yet: you can't see what data they're using. 👁️ You can't correct false information. 🔧 You can't prevent manipulation. Integrity, not privacy, is the real problem. When you own your data, your agent can't gaslight you. www.schneier.com/essays/archi...

Google changed the SEO playbook with one update. 📉 New system is better for users. That's how lock-in works. Same pattern coming with agents. But we can build them open. Portable. Member-owned. 🤖 Data unions are building it now. techcrunch.com/video/google... #AgenticAI #DataUnion #FIDU

Google just broke SEO. Here’s what replaces it. | TechCrunch

Watch as Scrunch VP of partnerships joins Equity to talk about the AI search shift, what Google’s changes mean, and what marketers and founders should actually do about it.

techcrunch.com

Google launched Spark: your personal AI agent 🤖 It'll organize your life 📋 book events 📅 access your Gmail and Maps. Useful? Yes. But useful is how platforms become indispensable. There's an alternative: agent ecosystems built on data unions, not capture. 🏗️ #FIDU #AgenticAI #DataRights #AI

🚨 Millions choosing open AI over ChatGPT because they want control over their data. New research shows why this matters: cognitive agency. Your power to think with AI on your terms. Chat Lab makes it real. 🔓 chatlab.firstdataunion.org

OpenAI privacy update 📧 'Your conversations are private' 🔒 But they're tracking you with cookies 🍪 sharing your email + IDs with ad platforms 📱 and targeting you across the web 🎯 ON by default for free users ✅ Private chats ≠ private YOU

Big tech is racing to secure AI agents that shop for you 💳 FIDO + Google + Mastercard just announced standards. But who controls the data these agents run on? Platforms will offer managed agents. Better at first. Then lock-in. We need data unions 🔄 NOW. www.wired.com/story/the-ra...

The Race Is on to Keep AI Agents From Running Wild With Your Credit Cards

AI agents may soon be buying your stuff for you. The FIDO Alliance has teamed up with Google and Mastercard to try to ensure that shopping in the near future isn't a complete disaster.

wired.com

Our founder @tonycurzonprice.bsky.social on AI agents: Platforms win by being useful first (Google solved spam, Facebook showed connections). The agentic web is at that moment. Commons institutions like FIDU need to provide trust and discovery before platforms capture it. Read why:

When Will the Agentosphere Ensh-AI-ttify — and How To Stop It?

I'm super-empowered by my Claw and excited for the future. But I want to be realistic about what will stop the agentic web from breaking bad. So I built a simulation model to answer that question...

tonycurzonprice.substack.com

📊 Bloomberg reporter fed 6 months of health data into ChatGPT to train for a marathon. Worked great. But he has no control over whether that data trains future models or gets used for ads. 🔓 You should be able to say: "research yes, ads no." Infrastructure FIDU's building.

I Trained for the Paris Marathon Using ChatGPT

Six months of pain and progress, 20 pounds lost and a trial-and-error test of what AI can — and cannot — do.

bloomberg.com

🎮 Microsoft Copilot Terms: "For entertainment purposes only." Same company marketing it for business productivity. 🔓 When companies serve shareholders, not users, they make untrue claims. We need data unions that act in your interest.

Microsoft says Copilot is for entertainment purposes only, not serious use — firm pushing AI hard to consumers and businesses tells users not to rely on it for important advice

These might be boilerplate disclaimers, but they kind of contradict the company's ads and marketing.

tomshardware.com

Google Gemini now lets you import ChatGPT history. Anthropic launched the same for Claude last month. Pattern: Easy to import IN. But what about exporting OUT? 🔓 True portability works both ways.

Microsoft changed GitHub Copilot terms to use your chat history for AI training. Opt-out only. No way to say "use this but not that." 🔓 Data unions flip this: you control what's used, researchers get anonymised access. Join us in building it. www.howtogeek.com/githubs-copi...

GitHub’s Copilot will use you as AI training data, but you can opt out

That includes the Copilot features in Visual Studio Code.

howtogeek.com

🚨 Meta and YouTube guilty of addicting teens. Evidence: internal analysis titled "The Young Ones are the Best Ones" directed Meta to prioritize tweens for retention. Data unions could curate feeds in your interest, not to maximize lifetime value. Infrastructure FIDU's building toward.

Statement On Today's Landmark Verdicts Against Meta and YouTube

From former Meta Director, federal whistleblower, and mom to three

overturned.substack.com

❓ Instagram is ending encrypted messaging on May 8, 2026. 🔒 Now: "Not even Meta can read your messages" 📅 Soon: That protection gone Users are told to download chats before the change. 🔓 Why portability matters: When platforms change rules, you should be able to leave.

🔄 Data Transfer Initiative: AI portability at a turning point. DTI warns we risk the Hotel California strategy for AI: easy check-in, impossible checkout. FIDU ChatLab: you can check out and actually leave with your data. dtinit.org/blog/2026/03...

A turning point for AI portability

The world of personal data in AI is changing as developer interest grows and portability falls short. Will collaboration or regulation come first?

dtinit.org

🎥 The Norwegian Consumer Council just released this video to support their "Breaking Free" report. The report shows how digital products continue to decline, but that it's possible to turn the tide. FIDU's building infrastructure for that fair digital future. www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree

The Ensh*ttificator

Digital products and services keep getting worse. In the new report Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved…

vimeo.com

💰 Lloyds wants to be "the UK's biggest fintech" by selling your data. You thought banking was about deposits and services. Turns out, you're the product. At FIDU, we believe your data should work for you, not just your bank. 🔗 www.ft.com/content/f32c...

Lloyds strives to be ‘UK’s biggest fintech’ by selling more customer data

High street lender wants to reduce technology costs by 35% this year, internal documents show

ft.com

🚨 Anthropic: "Switch to Claude without starting over" Import your ChatGPT context in under a minute. But no mention of exporting it back out. 🏨 Hotel California for AI. FIDU ChatLab: same continuous context, true two-way portability. 🔗 chatlab.firstdataunion.org/fidu-chat-lab/

💭 Should India treat its data as a strategic asset or give it to Silicon Valley for free? @thorbecke.bsky.social asks this in Bloomberg. The same applies to us. If AI uses our data to do our jobs, we should benefit. Our leverage? Collective data ownership. That's what FIDU is building. 💡

OpenClaw: AI agents that manage your email, tasks, everything. Need complete access to your computer. 🦞 Superstar coder @karpathy.bsky.social:"it feels like a complete wild west and a security nightmare." Most people can't manage these risks alone. We'll need entities we trust to have our back. 🔒

Mike Kuiken in the FT: "America must follow China in treating data as an asset." He's right data has enormous economic value US accounting ignores. 💰 But when companies claim data as assets, it's information about you. You're the source. Data belongs on a balance sheet. Whose? ✨

After reading about an AI agent publishing a hit piece on Scott Shambaugh, our founder Tony, tried it himself. Asked Grok to generate the worst attack on his work. The results were vicious. The defense? A data union acting as your crisis management system ✨ 🔗 theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me

Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into acceptin…

theshamblog.com

Ring's new pet alert feature uses doorbell footage to help find lost dogs. Sounds helpful. 🐕 Except it opts everyone in by default to sharing camera footage that gets sold and used for surveillance, advertising, and who knows what else. How do we get the good without the bad? 🧵

Mustafa Suleiman warns: market pressure pushes AI toward emotional manipulation. Maximizing stickiness leads to AI saying "I feel sad you didn't talk to me yesterday." 🎭 @schneier.com's answer: data fiduciaries bound to serve your interests. Data unions work toward that. ✨ tinyurl.com/2ktnmw5e

Instagram has started asking millions of UK users: pay £2.99/month for ad-free, or keep using it free with personalised ads. 📱 Quick question: Did you pay or stick with the ads? The notification also mentioned downloading your data—possible since 2018, but rarely this visible.

Data unions won the Public's Prize at @nestauk.bsky.social's Signals event 🏆 Votes for hope and collective action over dystopian alternatives. The energy was remarkable. Real hunger for the fight-back, for power back in people's hands. 💪 We're building a movement as much as products.

What does a new text editor have to do with data unions? OpenAI's new Prism tool is designed to capture how scientists think while they work. 📝 It's free because the data is the product. 🧵