Sam Gregory

Video: How Battlefield Tech Was Used in Minneapolis Our reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff, who deployed twice to Afghanistan as a Marine and later was our Kabul bureau chief, looks at the battlefield technology used for an immigration arrest at a home in Mi...

"Our reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff, who deployed twice to Afghanistan as a Marine and later was our Kabul bureau chief, looks at the battlefield technology used for an immigration arrest at a home in Minneapolis." www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬. (𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩) Jon… | Sam Gregory 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬. (𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩) Jon Stewart says it well. A smartphone camera is more than just technology. In the hands...

From Minneapolis to Tehran, witnesses are filming. State lies and AI fakes are trying to bury truth.

@witnessorg.bsky.social makes evidence matter - in streets with documenters, in halls of power shaping tech so truth can be trusted.

It's what we do. And we need your help.

tinyurl.com/5b7kw85f

Disappeared bodies, mass burials and ‘30,000 dead’: what is the truth of Iran’s death toll? Testimony from medics, morgue and graveyard staff reveals huge state effort to conceal systematic killing of protesters

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

False Posts and Altered Images Distort Views of Minnesota Shooting

False Posts and Altered Images Distort Views of Minnesota Shooting
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/u...

For Trump, the Truth in Minneapolis Is What He Says It Is

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/u...

How Iran Crushed a Citizen Uprising With Lethal Force

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/w...

Imagine how much they’d be lying about what happened without all the videos showing it from multiple angles.

Gov. Tim Walz: "Thank God we have video, because according to DHS, these seven heroic guys took an onslaught of a battalion against them or something. It's nonsense, people. It's nonsense and it is lies."

Don't believe your lying eyes:

Videos Show Moments in Which Agents Killed a Man in Minneapolis

this is clear & expert reporting (by journalists trained in visual investigations at berkeley's human rights center) demonstrating ICE's execution of alex pretti

US court allows ICE to arrest and pepper-spray peaceful protestors in Minnesota

Appeals Court Stays Restrictions on Federal Tactics in Minnesota The Eighth Circuit granted the Trump administration’s request to block, at least for now, a lower court’s injunction limiting how federal agents interact with protesters in the state.

One court decision, two different headlines.

Guardian on the left, NY Times on the right. Which one more directly conveys information and the stakes to the reader?

2025 saw the most AI child sex abuse in history—and likely the least amount of it for years to come:

Turns out we invaded to protect indigenous communities in Venezuela. Who knew?

I wrote about Iran's protests for @theatlantic.com: how AI manipulation and the suspicion of it is being weaponised to dismiss real footage of protests.

This piece draws on work from my stellar team at WITNESS and years of studying information controls in Iran and beyond.

How Doubt Became a Weapon in Iran AI manipulation, and the very suspicion of it, serves those who have the most to hide.

If you want to know about the future of AI, take a look at the kaleidoscope of disinfo and psychological operations underway in Iran 🇮🇷

This excellent piece by @mahsaalimardani.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com is a great start

www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

I'm just sitting here, trying to figure out how to threat model for armed, masked thugs who may kidnap you off the street, then steal, and possibly sell your phone.

Opinion | There’s One Easy Solution to the A.I. Porn Problem

I have an op-ed in the NYT today about the Grok scandal, sharing my research from last year finding that legal risk hinders AI companies from making their models safer against CSAM - an echo of the years where white-hat hackers were chilled from good-faith research. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/o...

Cell phone footage shows that Renee Good tried to drive away from the ICE agent who shot her. But an AI video shows Good pledging allegiance to ISIS before plowing her car into a crowd of blonde Christian children. For busy presidents of the United States, it can be hard to know what to trust.

People are fighting for the truth in Minneapolis Ordinary civilians aren’t playing along with Trump

Consensus reality has been under assault by Trumpism and by tech for years now. But it's important to underline that people are still putting their lives on the line because they believe it matters. www.theverge.com/policy/85905...

For those keeping score, Bellingcat, The New York Times Visual Investigation Team, & Washington Post's Visual Forensic team have all published analysis showing the ICE shooter wasn't in the path of Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle when he shot her, contradicting statements by the President & his cronies

Forensic analysis of objective video evidence. This is how you serve readers searching for clarity.

Must-read - I've long thought the effects of social media on the mass public are likely overrated but their effects on elites are underrated

X basically industrialized the creation of fake porn of women who don't consent. Others did it first, but Grok made it normalized and centralized: publicly visible, instantly creatable by anyone, regardless of who's being targeted and dehumanized. Only question now is will X suffer any consequences

FINANCIAL TIMES FT Alphaville X Corp + Add to myFT Who's who at X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter A look inside Elon Musk's big tent POP CIRCUS © "circus tent" by electricnude on Flickr, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

FINANCIAL TIMES Anthony Armstrong — Chief Financial Officer Grok xl @grok • 1m Armstrong is a former Morgan Stanley banker and trusted lieutenant of Elon Musk who advised on the takeover of Twitter. He was appointed late last year to head up the finance function for both X Corp and xAI.

FINANCIAL TIMES Jared Birchall — adviser Grok @grok • 32s Formerly of Morgan Stanley, Birchall has run Musk's family office since 2016. He is reported to oversee day-to-day operations at xAl, which merged with X Corp in March.

Come for the perfect @financialtimes.com headline and stay for the images created by Grok of the X leaders dressed up as clowns.

www.ft.com/content/ad94...

Although it's very much a niche market, cassettes also saw a 53.8% sales increase to 164,491 units in 2025. The soundtrack to Robbie Williams' biopic Better Man was, for reasons that remain unclear, the year's best seller on tape.

Top 5 best-selling cassettes of 2025 Position Artist Title 1 2 3 4 5 Robbie Williams Better Man - Original Soundtrack Dave The Boy Who Played The Harp Central Cee Can't Rush Greatness Sam Fender People Watching Sabrina Carpenter Man's Best Friend Source: Official Charts Company / BPI B C

Happy new year! My favourite fact so far of 2026 is that "for reasons that remain unclear", Robbie Williams was last year's best-selling artist on cassette www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

AI app causes distress across US with false crime alerts An AI-powered app called CrimeRadar has apologised for the distress caused by false crime alerts issued to local US communities after a BBC Verify investigation.

“BBC Verify has found multiple instances from Florida to Oregon of CrimeRadar sending misleading and inaccurate alerts about serious crime to local residents”

🤦🤦🤦

Thanks - will email you!

A tribute to Rob Reiner after a horrific news weekend

#deepfakes #sora #openai #aislop | Sam Gregory In the New York Times On Tech newsletter, they highlight "A.I. Videos Have Flooded Social Media. No One Was Ready" by Stuart Thompson and Steven Lee Myers. I'm quoted on the failures of platforms to ...

But we 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒚. The problems we're seeing now 𝐰̲𝐞̲𝐫̲𝐞̲ and 𝐚̲𝐫̲𝐞̲ avoidable, and are simply not inevitable. Recently, WITNESS shared 6 steps directly to OpenAI that they could have taken and should take to mitigate the harms they're creating
www.linkedin.com/posts/samgre...