Bill Thompson

Bill Thompson

@billt.bsky.social

Hack and pundit. BBC Research & Development. Formerly Digital Planet.

10,700 Followers 1,105 Following 417 Posts Joined Apr 2023
3 hours ago
Preview
Watchdogs call on big tech to ‘urgently’ do more to protect children online The regulators accused tech platforms of ‘failing to put children’s safety at the heart of their products’

🚨 BREAKING 🚨

The ICO and Ofcom are pushing for tech companies to strengthen age checks.

It's disastrous that the ICO wants to somehow 'protect children’s data' by compelling 13-18 year olds to use poorly regulated digital identification products that could put their biometric data at risk.

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19 hours ago

like, we've been over this. not that they care or that it's being argued on any real rational basis they just want us gone. but we know the truth
bsky.app/profile/juli...

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1 day ago
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Can anyone explain to me what the Blue Labour justification for this is? Who out there will vote Labour because Mahmood prevented a Sudanese Chevening Scholar? And to be honest, why won’t the PM simply overrule her?

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3 days ago

A substantial, thoughtful response to the BBC Charter Review green paper from the BBC WAC Campaign (of which I'm a part), focussed on Written Archives Centre issues but more broadly address to questions of trust and transparency. Do please take a look.

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5 days ago

I fear you’re right. A hypothetical tyrant could deploy a failing model and give it truly dangerous capabilities

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5 days ago

Funny thing is, I bet internally Grammarly thought journalists would LOVE this.

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5 days ago
A post on X from the betting platform Polymarket that says “BREAKING: Anthropic CEO says Claude may or may not have gained consciousness, as the model has begun showing symptoms of anxiety.”

Literally as I’m arguing with someone about whether AI companies are misleading people into believing their technology possesses God-like super-intelligence I see this monstrosity

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6 days ago

You win the internet today. Everyone else can go home early.

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6 days ago
Preview
Axel Springer buys Telegraph in £575mn deal [FREE TO READ] German media group has gatecrashed a proposed acquisition by the owner of the Daily Mail

LIke reading that Jarndyce v Jarndyce has been settled out of court. Can it really be true?

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1 week ago

Dunno… feels like a metaphor. For something

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1 week ago

I caught a trailer for this a day or so ago and that literally starts with Armstrong saying "India is a land of contrasts", and truly it is time to nuke the "middle-aged-white-man-makes-cliche-laden-travelogue" format.

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1 week ago

Images show police and a live facial recognition system, and a poster telling you that it’s all fine, nothing to see here.

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1 week ago
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Travelling via London KX? Intrusive privacy invasion in place…

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1 week ago

TIL end-to-end encryption is "controversial privacy tech" hahahahaha fuck off

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1 week ago

Wait… people who work at Palantir call themselves Hobbits not Uruk-hai? Are they ashamed of something?

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1 week ago

This is nothing. Just send Mahmood out again to announce some more anti-refugee policies and you can easily find your way to fifth place.

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1 week ago

*He's speaking Viktor-Orban, the favorite dialect of the European ethnonational-right, in which the European Union is a decliing maelstrom of sexual violence committed by Moslem rape-gangs

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1 week ago
Preview
Resist ‘dangerous and socially unacceptable’ age checks for social media, scientists warn Computer scientists are campaigning against the global march toward age checks online.

A large number of privacy and infosec researchers have published a detailed letter calling for a moratorium on laws requiring age assurance technologies until there is a scientific consensus on the risk/benefit tradeoff of using them

www.politico.eu/article/age-...

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1 week ago

Have fun typing "the government should regulate corporate platforms, not punish users" ten million times in this designed-to-catch-you-out "consultation" that they will not listen to, but do it anyway because they need to get the message.

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1 week ago

Reform win a seat: The true Volk have spoken and we all must listen.

Greens win a seat: Early reports that Muslims may have ‘voted’ (an ancient Islamic practice designed to steal elections). How severely should the franchise be limited in response?

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1 week ago

I do struggle to understand Shabana Mahmood: if this was what she came into politics to do, why was it the Labour Party that attracted her? Throughout most of the last 20 years, the Conservatives would've been a much more obvious fit.

If it's not, why's she doing it so zealously?

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1 week ago

In fact, the extract from the Home Secretary's comments suggests that her rationale is wholly dishonest - the settlement changes concern people who are here legally, not illegally

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1 week ago

And don’t forget bsky.app/profile/bbcr... to tell you what you’re listening to

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1 week ago
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Plans to make refugee a status of perpetual limbo will do nothing to stop people who need help seeking it nor make it possible for them to rebuild their lives and contribute. I call for humane and effective asylum reforms because I am true Labour, not blue Labour. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

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2 weeks ago

The culture war against trans people has unsurprisingly in US turned into criminalising them. Kansas has invalidated identity documents without time to replace them for trans people - driving licence, voting ID etc. This should be a real moment for anti-trans Brits to take a big step back...

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2 weeks ago

Can I have a nerdy joke? “That’s one database that should never be normalised”.
Thank you. I’ll be going now.

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2 weeks ago

Since the recent, massive revelations of the Epstein Files, there has been a concerted effort to rapidly change Prince Andrew's moniker to the common Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor. But this isn't coming from the public.

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2 weeks ago

This year… Rosie O’Donnell

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2 weeks ago

It never ceases to confound me just how many folks think the point of essays is to provide teachers with essays. That teachers just like, collect them, or need them for sustenance or something. Rather than the point of them being the *actual fucking act of learning how to think about shit*

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2 weeks ago

If only there was an alternative SOU like Channel 4 does the alternative Queen/King Speech

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