Dean Jackson

Man my Trump Derangement Syndrome (TM/BS) is really flaring today

Have you, too, attempted to pressure a female mentee into a sex while calling her racist names in an email exchange with a criminal sex trafficker? Don't worry, this guy has your back!

There is always another, higher peak.

Never forget that just a week ago, Ross Douthat and the NYTimes were asking if women ruined the workplace.

AI 'Trustwashing' Changes How Consumers Judge Credibility | TechPolicy.Press Generative AI is changing how people decide what to believe, writes Hannah Bailey.

Hannah Bailey takes on a different side of the AI question: Does the use of LLMs to find information reduce lateral reading, critical thinking, and exposure to diverse perspectives?

www.techpolicy.press/ai-trustwash...

Generative AI is Neither Too Unprecedented Nor Too New to Regulate | TechPolicy.Press It is time to recognize the myth of the “unprecedented” and hold tech accountable, writes Sarah Barrington.

Sarah Barrington questions the narrative that AI is "too new to regulate," pointing to examples of harm-based and use-based regulation that policymakers can easily understand and adapt to fit new technology

www.techpolicy.press/generative-a...

That is no longer the case. Platform companies are multi-vocal assemblages. The people who civil society groups and researchers partnered with in the past—the ‘allies’ within the firms – have been fired, quit, or been reassigned. They lost the internal arguments. This time, the companies will provide no check on authoritarian excess. Billions of dollars are flowing to Trump’s favored companies—and hundreds of millions have flowed from those companies to Trump’s inauguration, Presidential library, and White House ballroom. Platforms are eager to be part of this circular money-moving machine. This moment will not last forever. The generative AI financial bubble will burst. The ongoing fraud and corruption will take a toll on everyone. Authoritarian governments are not known for their prosperity or their long-term stability. But neither will it be brief. Stable, legitimate institutions are not hastily constructed or easily repaired. Those who advocate for change have fewer allies than last time, when we had some limited success in appealing to the better angels of big tech’s nature. Those angels are no more. If we are going to repair democratic institutions, we are going to have to do it ourselves.

@davekarpf.bsky.social meanwhile describes how the dynamic between advocates, tech companies, and the government has shifted dramatically over the past year--necessitating new strategies for change in an era of fewer cross-sector alliances.

www.techpolicy.press/the-dance-wi...

This shift enables us to promote critical media literacy that fosters a profound understanding of history, politics, and culture, rather than just discrete skills. It forces us to stop appealing to the moral sensibilities of tech companies whose business models are often aligned with the spread of disinformation and whose political lobbying ensures they remain unregulated. We know that tech companies, like Facebook, have been implicated in electoral interference; yet, we accept their ineffective stopgap measures, such as labeling false information on social media. The solution is not to train users to better survive a broken system, but to reimagine and rebuild it.

@brooklyne.bsky.social makes a compelling case that it's beyond time to focus on corporate accountability, not citizen education, in the fight for a healthier information ecosystem

www.techpolicy.press/its-time-to-...

Re-upping this as I update the thread with more entries. Check them out! They're good! I'm not biased!

@rhetoricpj.bsky.social on how little facts matter when the government places itself above accountability and "your mom" becomes the official response to public inquiry.

"For decades the American right invested in infrastructure and networks... All that it has won them is the world."

Authoritarian Arrogance and the End of the 'Reality-Based Community' | TechPolicy.Press As trolling continues to arrogate power and authority, reality’s move from bent to broken accelerates, writes Paul Elliott Johnson.

Wrote a little bit about our slide into trolling-as-governance and its connection to the now-bonkers concentration of authority amongst autocratic techlords

www.techpolicy.press/authoritaria...

wihbey.bsky.social writes that the "authenticity crisis" created by GAI requires vigorous reinvestment in institutions which can provide an "epistemic backstop"--that is, professionals like journalists and scholars who can help sort fact from fiction.

Reading for researchers: The original post in this thread features a perspective piece encouraging researchers to look at the role of emotion in the spread of disinformation. The one directly below is an empirical study showing how outrage fuels the spread of misinformation online.

Provocations for the University of Pittsburgh's Communication Technology Research Lab (CTRL) Symposium on Threats to Knowledge and US Democracy | TechPolicy.Press Tech Policy Press is a nonprofit media and community venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy. We publish opinion and analysis.

I'm excited to announce a series of short essays in @techpolicypress.bsky.social, published in conjunction with CTRL at the University of Pittsburgh, on

"Threats to knowledge and US Democracy"

All the pieces will be made available here:

www.techpolicy.press/category/pro...

It’s a pattern that follows the same playbook: fire career professionals who maintain the nation’s information institutions, replace them with loyalists, then defund ongoing data collection and management efforts that took decades to build. In the spring of 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner was fired hours after releasing disappointing jobs data. The first woman to serve as the Librarian of Congress was dismissed in a two-sentence email. The National Archivist was removed despite having previously blocked the Biden administration’s Equal Rights Amendment ratification. Each firing portends further erasure of critical knowledge production in the nation’s most robust institutions, by systematically weakening America’s ability to collect and preserve information that markets, policymakers, and citizens depend on.

Amelia Acker's contribution describes the administration's self-destructive assault on the value chain of knowledge: government workers and scientists create data, used by academics, to produce knowledge, curated by libraries and taught by schools.

www.techpolicy.press/week-after-w...

Nice piece, and consistent with our findings that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online www.science.org/doi/full/10....

In a “post-truth” era defined by “alternative facts” and “fake news,” calls for media literacy have gained new urgency but face technological, social, and institutional headwinds. Meanwhile, the sources of disinformation adapt and multiply. Interventions designed to help the public process information and better evaluate logic are necessary but not sufficient because the issues we face are not confined to information or logic problems. Modern thought distortion—targeted propaganda, misinformation, conspiracism, and so on—is, above all, a problem of affect. “Affect” refers to the predispositions, intensities, and attachments that condition how we respond emotionally to stimuli.

@dratropos.bsky.social, meanwhile, critiques common approaches to counter-disinformation for neglecting the role of emotion and affect, even though many of the most prominent "tactics of digital emotional manipulation" exploit frustration and rage.

Public health depends on citizens accepting scientifically-grounded guidance. When official institutions produce politically-determined science and independent verification infrastructure is eliminated, the capacity for evidence-based health policy collapses. This is agnotology at scale: the strategic construction of conditions where ignorance thrives, not by suppressing specific facts, but by hollowing out the systems that once produced and verified them. Understanding these dynamics as strategic and interlinked is essential for grasping what’s at stake in contemporary assaults on epistemic institutions, and in devising equally strategic responses.

In her contribution, @noupside.bsky.social describes an opposing infrastructure using public health as a case study: Through the capture of institutions which produce data and science, the politically powerful can produce structural ignorance instead.

In the United States today, the infrastructure of knowledge is under attack. The assault is complex and multidirectional. Narratives about AI and technology mistake knowledge for information. They suggest that generative artificial intelligence can make knowledge professionals like journalists and educators redundant. This is one of many economic shifts which have degraded the role of knowledge in the public sphere and elevated grift and outrage. This change has given rise to a public which is at once more cynical and easily manipulated.

The first piece, an intro to the series, is by me and Sam Woolley at CTRL.

In it, we describe knowledge as a source of human flourishing created not by lone geniuses, but through infrastructure.

We have reached a new and accelerated phase in the deconstruction of that infrastructure.

Provocations for the University of Pittsburgh's Communication Technology Research Lab (CTRL) Symposium on Threats to Knowledge and US Democracy | TechPolicy.Press Tech Policy Press is a nonprofit media and community venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy. We publish opinion and analysis.

I'm excited to announce a series of short essays in @techpolicypress.bsky.social, published in conjunction with CTRL at the University of Pittsburgh, on

"Threats to knowledge and US Democracy"

All the pieces will be made available here:

www.techpolicy.press/category/pro...

I have something called "Sample?" on my calendar at noon tomorrow and if anyone knows what that's about, call me.

Of course there's also the issue of, Dems need to win voters in red states more than R's need to win voters in blue states.

Going to do my one trick and blame this on media asymmetry. Easier to complain about "RINOs" and run an insurgent campaign when you have a partisan echo chamber. Hard to imagine a campaign against "DINOs" on behalf of the Working Families Party having the same impact as the Tea Party.

Party of the working class!

Predictions markets and the suckerfication crisis Why is Kalshi tweeting like UnusualWhales?

What will happen if we replace journalism with dopamine-chasing gambling sites? Let's find out!

maxread.substack.com/p/prediction...

Remember Rev. David Black, the Chicago pastor who was shot in the head with pepper balls? If you haven't heard him speak yet, listen to this.

To ICE: "You can repent"

Very cool, very chill, very sound policy basis for not letting federal cyber experts talk to state officials about election threats

Farewell sweet Prince

The long-term threats AI poses to democracy

Check out our newest episode with @dwj88.bsky.social and Samuel Woolley

Hello,

My name is Ozymandias, and I am King of Kings. Please look upon my works!

All best,

- O