Cynthia Khoo

Really enjoyed this discussion for @rabble.ca w/ host Reshma Budhu & co-guests @jeff.doctor & @hadrianmk.bsky.social (even if wish our points didn't need to be made). Highlights: "whose sovereignty", "magic beans", "you CAN unring the bell", AI is ideological, and (my paraphrase) f@%* inevitability.

*actually meant @canadiansorg.bsky.social

Calling @halfpastcapitalism.bsky.social and @apasek.bsky.social!

We can never just admit that conservative ideas are bad. We have to excuse their badness as a reaction to something liberals said or did. When that fails, we have to act like they are somehow a betrayal of other, better conservative ideas instead of just their natural endpoint.

Read Palestinian Speculative Fiction Reading List The following is a growing reading list for the #ReadPalestinianSpecFic challenge. This is a work in progress to create a list of all available Palestinian speculative fiction. Novels: Novels by Na…

Some of you may know that I curate a huge reading list if Palestinian fantasy, science fiction, and horror. It is not up to date… Please comment if you identify as Palestinian, or if you know of something that should be in the list! Please share for visibility. soniasulaiman.com/readpalestin...

Manufacturing Moral Panic: Weaponizing Children to Undermine Gender Justice and Human Rights Elevate Children Funders Group and Global Philanthropy Project, March 2021

Just did a quick search out of curiosity to see if anyone had written about this, and—!!

Yeah, there is so much to unpack around the implications and consequences of consistently focusing on children as seemingly the only group that can be harmed (even before distinguishing btwn genuine/good faith if narrow focus, and those using as rhetorical shield for human rights violations)

😮 Wow. Had checked for your name and was kind of wondering!

Notice in the piece that Meta would love for the focus to be entirely on children (and solved with age verification) -- where in reality, the design of these bots is wronging people of all ages

Yes!!! I stand by my point / comparison here:

I agree with this too! And considered including initially, but didn't b/c their core impact /value for me was not the usual, "i wish [dominant class] knew/understood this!!!" (though yes) but "wow, this unlocked something inside", so a specific empowering for those who more need it, vs general info

Totally. I think about this article ALL the time:

Burned After Reading: Endless Mayfly’s Ephemeral Disinformation Campaign - The Citizen Lab Using Endless Mayfly as an illustration, this highlights the challenges of investigating & addressing disinformation from research & policy perspectives.

"Burned After Reading: Endless Mayfly’s Ephemeral Disinformation Campaign" citizenlab.ca/2019/05/burn... (long enough ago that all the coverage is back in that place formerly known as twitter: xcancel.com/gabriellelim... / @gabriellelim.bsky.social )

"HKLEAKS: Doxxing Explained Role of Online Harassment Tactics to Repress 2019 Hong Kong Protests" citizenlab.ca/2023/07/hkle...

"JUICYJAM: How Thai Authorities Use Online Doxxing to Suppress Dissent": citizenlab.ca/2025/04/how-...

"We Say You Want a Revolution: PRISONBREAK – An AI-Enabled Influence Operation Aimed at Overthrowing the Iranian Regime": citizenlab.ca/2025/10/ai-e...

Linking to these reports + threads below to make it easy. Researchers at @citizenlab.ca put so much work into these investigations & can be hard to keep up with each new one. Worth noting yet again that just because someone presents something as new, esp in tech, doesn't mean it is:

"That the same online communities that continually prodded and mocked black women are incubators for sex criminals who expose private pictures of celebrities isn’t shocking, it’s inevitable. They watched the world not care, why should they anticipate consequences now?" — 2014.

Hi !
“acceptable people” are “breaking stories” around things I’ve spoken about for decades

While I’m important I’m not alone

Besides being factually wrong, it’s antithetical to the point I’m trying to emphasize

A civic conversation space is historical infrastructure that must be maintained

A note to say @blackamazon.bsky.social and her colleagues warned about this sort of thing many years ago.

This is a wild ass thing to get supported for doing for 24 hours when it’s been a known phenomenon since 2012

With multiple researchers ( some of whom I don’t even like) noting this phenomenon

“It is unacceptable that the Liberal government continues to use the excuse of protecting ‘national security’ to justify laws that will make people across Canada less safe, that threaten our privacy, that erode protections for migrants and refugees, and that will force people... 4/

As a member of the network of orgs holding today’s news conference, ICLMG supports the ongoing call to withdraw Bill C-12, which will significantly undermine the Charter rights & civil liberties of people across Canada, and especially migrants and refugees already facing threats to their safety. 3/

At a news conference today, a coalition of civil society groups call for the withdrawal of the federal government’s border security bill, C-12.

Watch & read the press release at iclmg.ca/c-12-press-c...

+ TAKE ACTION to stop C-12 & C-2: iclmg.ca/stop-bill-c-2/ 1/ #cdnpoli #Canada #stopC12 #cdnimm

That is such a feminist hope: to help many people be freer 💜

10/ Instead of centering men who missed the boat (and still don't seem to get it), let's lift up the work of Paulina Borsook, who saw it all very clearly and tried to warn us 25 years ago.

Someone should do a profile of her very interesting life. And hey, let's drop some cash into her GoFundme!

Donate to Help Paulina Borsook: disabled writer, artist, activist, organized by paul Carter Paulina's long time friend Steve Rappaport writes, "Support P… paul Carter needs your support for Help Paulina Borsook: disabled writer, artist, activist

9/ I had launch with Paulina Borsook last month in Oakland. Her life is hard, but she still has a lot to say! She's trying to raise funds to get a new version of the book reissued on the Internet Archive.

Some of her friends have a running GoFundMe to support her:

www.gofundme.com/f/support-fo...

"Predicted the future but did not sell well" captures so well how we got here in a nutshell. Perhaps, even more to the point, "predicted the future, accurately and while being a woman, therefore did not sell well".

7/ During a decade in which the USA's favorite “tech critics” were busy shining the shoes of people like Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, Borsook saw very clearly where things were headed. Because these things were obvious by the late 90s, at least to journalists like Borsook.

From Cyberselfish: Although many impor- tant potential and actual violations of constitutionality and What's Right are bruited about on alt.cypherpunks with sense and smarts, the tone is mostly a mixture of the paranoid rantings, reminiscent of what showed up occasionally in '60s underground newspapers, plus something new, more desperate and more scary. The gestalt is of testosterone-poisoned guys with chips on their shoulders and too much time on their hands.

6/ Borsook described “paranoid” anti-government rantings and a tech libertarian culture in which the “gestalt is of testosterone-poisoned guys with chips on their shoulders and too much time on their hands.”

And soon, these guys would morph into multi-billionaires...