Smiles #7 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

this! the AI industry and CS at large literally treats the human condition as a problem to be solved

what exactly is "winning the AI race? environmental destruction, labor extraction, ever more intrusive surveillance, mass manipulation, and unprecedented power for the handful???

How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), owned by major U.S. airlines, collects billions of ticketing records and sells them to the government to be searched without a warrant. I managed to opt-out…

When you book a flight through major travel sites, a data broker owned by U.S. airlines will sell details about your flight—your name, credit card used, and where you’re flying to the government.

We found out how to opt-out of ARC selling your travel data. A guide:
www.404media.co/how-to-opt-o...

LinkedIn will use your data to train AI – how to opt out | Proton LinkedIn will share your public data with Microsoft to train AI. Find what this means for your privacy and how to opt out.

Reminder: Turn this off by Nov 3rd or LinkedIn will use your posts to train their AI. You can also formally object to this practice, as well.

And note to @Microsoft: opting people in, by default, for AI training is wrong.

proton.me/blog/linkedi...

Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers in camouflage surround and handcuff a person.

No, law enforcement should not be able to purchase our data instead of getting a warrant. 🚫 We're dedicated to closing this loophole: takebackctrl.org/get-a-warrant

Amazon Tells Driver to Keep Delivering Packages Amid Raging Wildfire Amazon is accused of controlling workers through a surveillance dragnet, while skirting responsibility for their wellbeing.

“Speaking to Futurism, DAIR director of research Alex Hanna said Amazon’s tech panopticon is ‘central to keeping control” over its workers.’”

‘AI psychosis’ discussions ignore a bigger problem with chatbots Don’t frame chatbot failures as human “insanity.”

“Relying on chatbots isn’t fringe — it’s the predictable result of care made scarce, stigmatized, and costly. Recognizing that doesn’t mean uncritically embracing chatbot care, but it’s past time to name what’s happening: Privately owned chatbots are functioning as public health resources.”

Man Alarmed to Discover His Smart Vacuum Was Broadcasting a Secret Map of His House One man's robot vacuum was constantly communicating with its manufacturer, sending a detailed 3D map of his house halfway across the world.

Roomba should have been a warning.

a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service Andreessen Horowitz is funding a company that clearly violates the inauthentic behavior policies of every major social media platform.

NEW: an a16z-backed startup called Doublespeed promises clients can “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through both bulk content creation and deployment.”

Essentially an AI-powered bot service in violation of all major social media platforms

www.404media.co/a16z-backed-...

AI Chatbots Operate As Confirmation Bias Machines new study confirms

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC

built on theft and at massive environmental cost and most importantly, numerous studies keep demonstrating that genAI tools often work a little better than by chance. how is it that we can’t expunge these slop machines out of our institutions and communities

www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

this group built a data center tracker www.distilled.earth/p/these-data...

🚨 Another massive AWS outage just took down Roblox, Fortnite, Coinbase, Snapchat, and all Supercell games.

Half the internet has gone dark because of one Big Tech company. This is not innovation, it is monopoly risk.

💡It’s time to choose alternatives.

#GoEuropean #DigitalSovereignty #AWS #Outage

Kohler Wants to Put a Tiny Camera in Your Toilet and Analyze the Contents The company's new Dekoda toilet accessory is like a little bathroom detective.

“At toilet time, you sign in via a fingerprint sensor so that the device knows who's using the facilities. (Please wash your hands before signing out or tracking your progress.) Then, check in with the app for the day's analysis and trends over time.”

Great to see this open access "Digital Africa" series taking shape. It provides a platform for African scholarship, expands African case studies and foregrounds African theorisation of the relationship between digital technologies, rights and power interests.
www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/di...

Please believe OpenAI when their research confirms that LLMs will always inevitably produce plausible but false outputs. #AIforDummies

🚨⏳ Act now! You have until 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟑, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓 to prevent Microsoft from using your LinkedIn data to train AI.

You're opted in automatically, unless you take action and turn it off.

OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

"Ignorance isn’t always innocent. A lot of the time, it’s strategic. ... White ignorance doesn’t persist bc there’s a lack of information—it persists bc there’s a refusal to engage... once you admit you knew & did nothing... you’d have to admit you were fine with it. You have to admit complicity."

YouTube video by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists How AI is fueling surveillance capitalism and undermining democracy

How AI is fueling surveillance capitalism and undermining democracy
youtu.be/cn8_lmWfXkQ?...

More of this!

Apple Shelves Vision Headset Revamp to Prioritize Meta-Like AI Glasses Apple Inc. has hit pause on a planned overhaul to its Vision Pro headset to redirect resources toward a more urgent effort: developing smart glasses that can rival products from Meta Platforms Inc.

“These developments signal a broader realignment across major tech firms toward wearable devices driven by generative AI, always-on connectivity, and seamless user interfaces.”

From “glassholes” to “slopfacer.”

Smart Ring Swells Up, Crushes Man's Finger and Sends Him to the Hospital A faulty Samsung Galaxy Ring battery caused the smart ring to swell up, sending its wearer to the emergency room for removal.

Today in luxury surveillance.

New York Knicks condemned for digital surveillance of fans and discrimination against trans fans
mailchi.mp/stopspying/p...

Tile’s lack of encryption could make tracker owners vulnerable to stalking Its anti-stalking features are reportedly too easy to circumvent.

“Tile has, historically, been a bad actor in this space in the sense that they have known about all of these problems with their design choices,” EFF’s @evacide.bsky.social told @theverge.com. www.theverge.com/news/787836...

Fossil fuel billionaires are bankrolling the anti-trans movement An investigation shared exclusively with Atmos and HEATED finds that 80% of anti-trans organizations receive fossil fuel funding.

Excellent reporting from Heated and Atmos.

It looks like some of the biggest investors in the anti-trans movement are fossil fuel billionaires who are trying to use trans issues to ensure that Republicans pass policies favorable to their industry.

heated.world/p/fossil-fue...

Leaked Meta guidelines show how it trains AI chatbots to respond to child sexual exploitation prompts A leaked Meta document shows how its AI chatbot is trained to handle child sexual exploitation prompts as it faces FTC scrutiny.

Don’t forget that they needed new guidelines because they were caught with “guidelines” that allowed for their chatbot to "engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual."

‘Biometric Exit’ Quietly Expands Across U.S. Airports, Unnerving Some

Facial recognition expansion following a new rule from DHS on surveilling foreigners in and out www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/t...

Meta is Removing Abortion Advocates' Accounts Without Warning BY LISA FEMIA | September 24, 2025This is the fifth installment in a blog series documenting EFF's findings from the Stop Censoring Abortion campaign. You can read additional posts here. When the

In a post-Roe landscape where access to accurate reproductive health information is more crucial than ever, Meta's enforcement system is silencing the very voices communities need most. www.eff.org/pages/meta-...

African Countries Recorded Over 190 Internet Shutdowns Since 2016 The signals a growing crisis of digital repression.

African Countries Recorded Over 190 Internet Shutdowns Since 2016. Our new book on Internet Shutdowns in Africa provides the most comprehensive account to date by African researchers of the impact on the ground to human rights and power relations. www.techloy.com/african-coun...