Tom

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, and it internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day, company documents show.

If 10% of my business was based on defrauding and scamming people, and was called a "pillar of the global fraud economy", I would have some serious moral qualms about my business. Not our friends at Meta though.

www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Right, the answer isn't to abandon the party to these weasels.

The answer is to flood the party with people who will take it over and transform it.

The notion that Palantir's "code of conduct" would stop it from engaging in civil liberties violations is a bad joke theintercept.com/2017/02/22/h...

A graphic with a white and gray gradient background contains bold red text that reads: “BELIEVING THE REPUBLICANS WHEN THEY ‘PROMISE’ A VOTE ON HEALTHCARE IS LIKE BELIEVING TRUMP WHEN HE SAID PROJECT 2025 WASN’T THE PLAN OF HIS ADMINISTRATION.” At the bottom, it credits @kdnerak33.bsky.social, and in the corner is the logo BRIAN TYLER COHEN.

To the 8 senators who voted to give up the only leverage they had and trust the GOP:

oh so these people do pay attention to who politicians follow on social media, they just don’t care that the vice president follows a bunch of actual neo-nazis

“woke” is when you acknowledge that black people have contributed to the united states

incredible that these guys have a massive hard on for a country that, if it were a state, would rank behind kansas in terms of wealth and which would be a total backwater if it weren’t economically integrated with more functional countries

Tech guys six months ago: haha yes we’re cutting all this WASTEFUL spending by eliminating medical research and USAID

Tech guys now: yes I think taxpayers will be excited to bailout my non consensual pornography machine

Tech Billionaire Marc Andreessen Bet Big on Trump. It’s Paying Off for Silicon Valley. The Trump administration’s gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been good for venture capitalists like Andreessen, who previously accused the agency of “terrorizing” fintech startup...

Billionaire Marc Andreessen said in 2024 that the CFPB exists to “terrorize finance, terrorize financial institutions, prevent fintech, prevent new competition, new startups."

Now, he and other Silicon Valley firms have benefited from Trump's gutting of the agency.

This is going to make trying these people harder. We still have to try them.

TBH there's not a better example of "everybody is 12" than this. The whole reason we have food aid is because if we don't send food, we'll eventually have to send troops and that's a lot more expensive.

when you start thinking of their tax cuts and billions in government contracts as an investment we couldve put towards something else you eventually ask yourself “what have we gotten in return?”

so far the answer is NFTs and chatbots that tell teens to take their own lives

Nuremburg trials is the moderate position

The world’s first trillionaire initiated a move that has left more than half a million people dead, most of whom are children.

Trump goes to court to starve kids should be a headline everywhere today

Good literary translation requires understanding (language, culture, genre--on both sides of the translation) and an ability to write well. "AI" can't do that. There are no shortcuts. Treat your work and foreign language readers with the respect they deserve. You won't fool anyone with this.

keep his name ready for the trial

Mark Zuckerberg Opened an Illegal School at His Palo Alto Compound. His Neighbors Revolted Neighbors complained about noise, security guards, and hordes of traffic. An unlicensed school named after the Zuckerbergs’ pet chicken tipped them over the edge.

SCOOP (free, as it's FOIA-based!): I obtained 1,665 pgs of documents about "Bicken Ben," a growing private school the Zuckerbergs ran illegally out of their Palo Alto compound

Neighbors complained the school for years. Then, in 2024, they reached their breaking point:
www.wired.com/story/mark-z...

A confidential manifesto lays out Isaacman's sweeping new vision for NASA The former, and possibly future, nominee for the space agency said he did not intend for the document’s public release.

Space X billionaire fanboy Jared Isaacman, back as Trump's NASA nominee, has a secret plan to demolish the agency and turn it into a slush fund for Space X and other private aerospace contractors:

#ACA

Bail Reform Has Made NYC Safer, Yet Another Study Confirms You wouldn't know it from talking to most public officials, but the 2019 reforms drove recidivism down.

You wouldn't know it from talking to most public officials, watching TV news, or reading the Post, but the 2019 reforms drove recidivism down, making everyone safer.

hellgatenyc.com/bail-reform-...

Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how

Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design.

news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

Meta earns $3.5 billion every six months from showing Faceboon and Instagram users 15 billion “higher legal risk” scam ad impressions a day, internal documents state.

That haul vastly exceeds how much the company expects regulators
To fine it for running scam ads.

www.reuters.com/investigatio...

When Storytelling Is Called ‘Terrorism’: How My Friend and Fellow Journalist Was Targeted by ICE As a DACA recipient, Ya'akub Ira Vijandre’s arrest holds drastic implications for the state of free speech in America.

This is chilling.

"Ya’akub isn’t being accused of breaking immigration law — his DACA protection doesn’t expire until May 2026. In fact, Ya’akub’s lawyers say he hasn’t been accused of any crime. Rather, the Trump administration is alleging he’s 'glorifying terrorism' via social media posts."

WHAT IF WE JUST INVESTED IN ARTISTS AND AUTHORS LIKE MANY OTHER COUNTRIES

Bad AI supplanting human expertise is an issue that transcends any one field, but man—not many people on earth whose knowledge and dedication deserves respect like LIBRARIANS.

Using a government jet to fly you to a girlfriends country music gig/wrestling match and then covering it up and rage tweeting about it on X is sort of a microcosm of Trumpism. thebulwark.com/p/kash-patel-fbi-director-private-jet-problem-nashville

YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations The tech giant deleted the accounts of three prominent Palestinian human rights groups — a capitulation to Trump sanctions.

“It is outrageous that YouTube is furthering the Trump administration’s agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes from public view.“

— Katherine Gallagher, senior staff attorney

FBI Warns of Criminals Posing as ICE, Urges Agents to ID Themselves In a bulletin to law enforcement agencies, the FBI said criminal impersonators are exploiting ICE’s image and urged nationwide coordination to distinguish real operations from fakes.

Well well well if it isn't the thing I have been talking about all week. If ice will not identify themselves how do we know that they are actually real ice agents? How can we possibly be resisting arrest when we believe we are trying to escape a kidnapping by masked and identified men w/o warrants?

They also believed he was innocent of crimes because the DOJ never prosecuted him in a meaningful way, including for sedition. In early 2021, most Americans DID think he was guilty. That changed over three years thanks to DOJ inaction. They thought "If he were really a threat, they would stop him."