Zach McDowell
@zacharymcdowell.bsky.social
Researcher and writer on Wikipedia, AI, media and tech policy, and the political economy of knowledge. Communication and information Professor @ UIC. Nerd. Editor of communication +1. Posts are mine, reposts are interesting.
The union election does not discover the workers’ preference. It creates a window in which to change it. Textbook union-busting by the Wikimedia Foundation: medium.com/regarding-wi... @wikipedia.org #Wikipedia
The Wikimedia Foundation’s Union Busting Is Textbook
They’re acing the test. Unfortunately, it’s for doing the wrong thing every step of the way.
medium.com
Grokipedia hasn’t been updated in 3 months. Edit requests land in a queue and stall “In Review”. The autonomous edit bot is not editing itself, either. We did an analysis of edits, page view counts, and more. Auditability matters as agentic systems become reference infrastructure.
Lawfare@lawfaremedia.org · 5h agoGrokipedia appears not to have updated any articles since April 24. @noupside.bsky.social and @rer.bsky.social explore why it matters that the encyclopedia hasn’t edited itself or processed edits from humans in more than 3 months. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/grok...
We are destroying pipelines — for training young people "replaced by AI" jobs and destroying journalistic funding to feed these machines. Just to give it to billionaires. But this time, we might not even have the infrastructure to rebuild. 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…
thenerve.news
Fun data of the day Post-Gemini Wikipedia traffic decline: Spanish: -39.3% Portuguese: -32.9% English: -6.6% Japanese: -0.2% (3/4) Spanish Wikipedia's decline is nearly 6x worse than English's. The same pattern @katecrawford.bsky.social notes at the physical layer of AI — also at the informational
I use RECAP data all the time - these folks are doing amazing work and allowing things that should be free to actually be freed.
Free Law Project ⚖@free.law · 23h agoSome recent reviews of the RECAP extension are incredibly kind — thank you! If you haven't tried RECAP and you know what PACER is, give it a shot. It takes 1 minute to install, literally, and then you'll save money while helping others. free.law/recap/
Everyone is freaking out about Pokémon Go data training delivery bots - wait until they use it to train military bots. This type of data can be used for far more than just tasty treats. www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/new...
How Pokemon Go players have been unwittingly training AI navigation robots
independent.co.uk
Had a lovely chat with Laura Fraser about Wikipedia and the threats it faces. www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday...
At 25, Wikipedia faces a double threat: the rise of AI and the decline of local media | CBC Radio
It's been 25 years since Wikipedia first launched, but what does its future look like in a world where traditional media is on the decline and AI is on the rise?
cbc.ca
@darthvetter.bsky.social and I will be appearing on Breaking Culture Live on February 25th at 11 am Chicago time. Live/Recorded We will be discussing some of the threats to Wikipedia, the “last best place on the internet.” www.youtube.com/@BreakingCul...
Yes it’s Valentine’s Day. But it’s also the chosen birthday of Frederick Douglass who was born in 1818 on a plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. He escaped from slavery & rose to become the most eloquent and forceful voice for the abolition of slavery & for Black voting rights in the U.S.
Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. It’s disgustingly ironic this is happening while our administration who actively is friends with these AI companies, is protecting sexual predators and p3dos. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...
Exclusive | OpenAI Executive Who Opposed ‘Adult Mode’ Fired for Sexual Discrimination
Ryan Beiermeister, who served as the vice president leading OpenAI’s product policy team, had raised concerns about the upcoming launch of erotic content.
wsj.com
Dismantling everything he touches one step at a time. smdh. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/u...
Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ Would Have Global Scope but One Man in Charge
nytimes.com
🚨 CFP: In Defense of the Commons 🚨 Communication+1 Deadline: January 15, 2025 openpublishing.library.umass.edu/cpo/news/24/ Looking for papers to diagnose problems & explore the strategies of resistance, repair, and rehabilitation necessary to sustain vital public digital (and analog) resources.
CFP: In Defense of the Commons
Call for Papers: “In Defense of the Commons”communication +1, vol 12edited by Zachary McDowell, Steve Jankowski, Matthew Vetter, and Fenwick Mckelvey **Premise**As the Internet becomes more and more o...
openpublishing.library.umass.edu
Lovely to talk with these folks about the problematic ways that crawlers are breaking the Internet lately
ARTICLE 19@article19.bsky.social · 9mo ago🕷️Creepy AI crawlers are haunting the internet🕷️ This Halloween, Tanu I and @ccs.bsky.social ocial explain how AI crawlers are ruining the internet for all of us. Read this season’s real horror story in @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/creepy-ai-cr...
🧊 is actual Gestapo. No ID, masks, improper labels (they're not "police"). And worse - our police (the few that wanna help) can't actually force 🧊 to show ID. Why? Because if they are 🧊 then they're "impeding a federal investigation." They are tying the hands of police to actually protect citizens.
I cannot express how absolutely bull this is www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
Officials restrict Chicago airspace, citing 'credible threat' of attacks on agents
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed a temporary flight restriction was put in place “at the request of the Department of Homeland Security."
nbcnews.com
Pretty soon, they're going to ban video altogether; they just haven't figured out how to. It will be labeled as a matter of "security" chicago.suntimes.com/news/2025/10...
FAA restricts private drones over Chicago as feds step up immigration arrests
The Federal Aviation Administration set the sweeping restrictions Wednesday at the request of the Department of Homeland Security.
chicago.suntimes.com
To be honest I’m not even surprised about this considering everything else. americanjournalnews.com/tumblr-linke...
Tumblr linked to Republican John Reid engaged with Nazi porn accounts
Reid denies ownership with the blog.
americanjournalnews.com
Let me get this right… the “teachers are indoctrinating our kids” group is … creating a propaganda campaign to indoctrinate kids? www.ed.gov/about/news/p...
U.S. Department of Education, AFPI, TPUSA, Hillsdale College, and Over 40 National and State Organizations Launch America 250 Civics Coalition
The U.S. Department of Education, alongside the America First Policy Institute, Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, and more than 40 leading national and state-based organizations today announced th...
ed.gov
I’m tired of being upset and tired of all of this. You get DOGE to cancel stuff to fund a 300M ballroom and then destroy $10M birth control? This is the point. Distract. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/h...
$10 Million in Contraceptives Have Been Destroyed on Orders From Trump Officials
nytimes.com
What do you do when the President makes a threat of “war” to the city you live in? Asking for all of us. Can the Governor deploy the Illinois national guard to defend its residents against masked thugs? www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...
Trump threatens Chicago with ‘Department of War’ and suggests ICE raids imminent
‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,’ Trump’s TruthSocial post read
the-independent.com
The ignorance of how things work makes me facepalm constantly. WIKIPEDIA IS COMMUNITY GENERATED CONTENT! are they gonna “investigate” 4chan next? Maybe they should just read my open access book… thehill.com/homenews/hou...
Republicans investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias
Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee opened a probe into alleged organized efforts to inject bias into Wikipedia entries and the organization’s responses. Chair …
thehill.com
Yet again the party of “free speech” and “don’t tread on me” www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
Trump’s war on free expression could plant a burning flag on the Supreme Court steps
Trump is picking a fight he knows he can’t win, writes John Bowden. Does he want to provoke protests or merely rile up his supporters against liberal judges?
independent.co.uk
I mean we are all pretty tired of yelling “it’s like Hitler” but this is pretty intense. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Trump Has a New Definition of Human Rights
State Department reports portray Germany as more oppressive than El Salvador.
theatlantic.com
It’s funny that the administration wants to strip nonprofit status from orgs while groups like this remain fine with their tax exempt churches. www.newsweek.com/church-preac...
Church doubles down after preacher encouraged prayers for LGBTQ deaths
A preacher from the Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Indianapolis said LGBTQ+ people "deserve the death penalty."
newsweek.com
“If they spit we hit” - Violence as a reaction from an armed force as a response to protest is absolutely authoritarianism. www.axios.com/2025/06/10/l...
Unrestrained Trump flirts with Insurrection Act as Marines deploy to L.A.
Trump already has broken decades of precedent by federalizing California's National Guard without the state's consent.
axios.com
Major General Randy E. Manner, former Acting Vice Chief, National Guard Bureau statement to Fox News: "This is an inappropriate use of the National Guard and is not warranted.”
