Chicago, one week! Rogue agents & the patter of Hugging Face Finnegan’s Wake. Register ccct.uchicago.edu/events/every... @3ctworkshop.bsky.social
Sam Hinds
@samanthahinds.bsky.social
Artist. New Yorker. Senior Advisor, @criticalinternet.bsky.social. Advisory Board, @georgetownprivacy.bsky.social. Formers: BKC Harvard, Data & Society, Creative Time, International Center for Transitional Justice
Last week I gave plenary remarks at a convening in Calabria, Italy to develop Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI, "Magnifica Humanitas," into actionable standards. It’s been wild to read NYT coverage this week of influence attempts from industry.
You will also see a smaller push to advocate for revolutionary or justice AI. They don’t have to court those organizations. most will willingly embrace the idea of it because funding environment for non profits is so bad.
NEW: "Refusing Data Centers" is our briefing on the networked groups, influencers, & conspiratorial beliefs that constitute a burgeoning U.S. #datacenter opposition movement www.criticalinternet.org/research
Research — The Critical Internet Studies Institute
criticalinternet.org
Jane @janerosenzweig.bsky.social was one of the most important teachers & thinkers I encountered at Harvard, while working there myself as a communications director focused on emerging tech research. What an unnecessary loss
Jane Rosenzweig@janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 2mo agoRead @edwardongwesojr.com on “the attempt to shift Pax Americana’s oil diplomacy to Pax Silica’s silicon statecraft—from hydrocarbons & Treasuries to GPUs & data centers & AI models & the kill chains they power” www.thetechbubble.info/p/how-much-a...
How Much a Dollar Cost?
The AI Bubble in 2026 (2/4)
thetechbubble.info
I've been tracking Trump's attacks on the First Amendment -- & the broader federal govt ethos of retaliation -- all year. I've seen roughly 200 incidents of attacks on dissent & free speech, w/ particular aggression towards press, protesters, public servants: www.freepress.net/attack-on-fr...
Chokehold: Donald Trump’s War on Free Speech & the Need for Systemic Resistance
This Free Press report examines the Trump administration’s hostile relationship with dissent and free expression in 2025. It analyzes how Trump and his political enablers have sought to undermine and ...
freepress.net
Immigrants who worked in fact-checking, dis-information or content moderation will be INELIGIBLE for H-1B visas under Trump, per Reuters www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
Exclusive: Trump administration orders enhanced vetting for applicants of H-1B visa
An internal State Department memo said that anyone involved in "censorship" of free speech should be considered for rejection.
reuters.com
Here is the syllabus for the Information & Human Rights course that I taught at @pratt.edu this fall: rebeccawilliams.info/info-619-inf... Many thanks to @edwardongwesojr.com, @samanthahinds.bsky.social, & the lawyers not on Bluesky for being guest speakers & for everyone we read!
INFO 619: Information & Human Rights
Taught at the Pratt School of Information, this seminar introduced students to the foundations of information rights, the harms produced by information systems, and the creative and political strategi...
rebeccawilliams.info
Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.
pay very close attention to Wikipedia to find a way out of the AI slop internet www.404media.co/wikipedia-ed...
Wikipedia Editors Adopt ‘Speedy Deletion’ Policy for AI Slop Articles
“The ability to quickly generate a lot of bogus content is problematic if we don't have a way to delete it just as quickly.”
404media.co
This interview of Hito Steyerl by Günseli Yalcinka for Spike Magazine shows real mastery of the state of the field of critical emerging tech research, from an equally masterful artist. I will be snapping up her new @versobooks.bsky.social release spikeartmagazine.com/articles/int...
Hito Steyerl: “Who Prompted All This Shit?” | Spike Art Magazine
The artist, filmmaker, and author of “Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat” grapples with magical thinking, implication in military-industrial AI, and machine learning’s many roads not taken.
spikeartmagazine.com
This week’s Dobbs anniversary has everyone reflecting on the last three years without the federal right to abortion. Here’s what I'm reading (threaded below!). Feel free to add any highlights from your reading list in the comments below too.
More and more surveillance is the requirement for participation in public life. Companies used to attempt to do this surreptitiously, but that’s no longer the case. They are now explicit that being surveilled is the cost of doing business. tech.yahoo.com/business/art...
![The Intuit Dome opened with an atypical ticket policy—requiring visitors to have their own tickets on their own phones. Without that change, much of the experience Halo wants to build wouldn’t be possible. When one person scanned four tickets on behalf of their group, the company was missing out on information about those other three customers or fans, Zucker says. “Everybody wishes they could know everything about their customers,” she says. “We essentially [knew] 25% of the people who are coming in.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:hakzua5btcgcfjye2yujlhos/bafkreidvqw4mjnfpywungcouzjjqfbziefmhqgcxuu4s4qlecxdcveqjwy)
“Over the past 100 days, DOGE teams have grabbed personal data about U.S. residents from dozens of federal databases and are reportedly merging it all into a master database at the Department of Homeland Security” www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/o...
Opinion | Elon Musk’s Legacy: DOGE’s Construction of a Surveillance State
DOGE is rapidly assembling a sprawling monitoring system, the foundation of many authoritarian regimes.
nytimes.com
