Claire Atkin

Adtech is almost everything you do online. They’re using Adtech to track and investigate. Every little thing you do — shopping, browsing, checking health information, connecting on social, ChatGPT — is on Adtech.

In his acceptance speech, Lula says he will work to regulate digital platforms in Brazil. “Digital crimes must be dealt with like real-life crimes.” This comes after Meta directly interfered with the Brazilian elections, favouring Flávio Bolsonaro.

We are sensing a pattern

"These stories effectively ask us to defer to these systems, the same way attributing godlike qualities to your local bishop underwrites social control, and a lot of abuse that is very difficult to check." @meredithmeredith.bsky.social a-rabbitsfoot.com/editorial/co...

SCOOP: 'Tommy' from the now-viral exchange with Abdul El-Sayed is Thomas Teepell, a former staffer for Republican Senator Josh Hawley with close ties to Christian Nationalist Sean Feucht. He's the son of a former Bobby Jindal staffer whose consultant work was instrumental in getting Hawley elected.

“The internet is a store but it used to be a library” hits me like a slug to the chest

Update: about 4 hours later and we still don't have admin access so we still can't post to the No Kings instagram account. This isn't slowing down the the 3,000+ early vote events today. We will drive the biggest early vote in history. But this should be a flashing alarm about what's to come.

❗❗❗Mark Zuckerberg's meta just suspended the No Kings Instagram account. I just rushed back from my local No Kings to jump on this. Bottom line, would be helpful for all pro-No Kings folks to elevate the issue and help us get the word out about No Kings today. The Nerd Reich strikes again.

There is so much bait-and-switch in Canada’s “digital sovereignty“ (heh) strategy. Bottom line is that building out massive polluting AI data centres to host US tech companies is a form of digital colonialism: they control the tech & the profits, and export the dirtiest, lowest-value part abroad.

Literally everywhere I look, some AI-humanities initiative is being funded by Schmidt Sciences (i.e., Eric Schmidt of Google). If this isn't corporate capture of the humanities, I don't know what is.

Salmon, rivers and wood go way back. For @thenarwhal.ca I visited Tranquil Creek to see how that relationship is being restored, logjam style: If you need a reminder that humans can meaningfully undo some of the damage we've created, this is for you! Stunning photo+video via Jillian Wilkes 📷

Finding that the evidence supports Lula's claims that Mark Zuckerberg is consciously attempting to rig the Brazilian elections in favor of Bolsonaro, a Brazilian court urgently requires Meta to undo its offending logarithms and insure equal access to Lula. www.nbcnews.com/world/south-...

Get this crap out of universities and protect your privacy by telling Congress to regulate AI. www.404media.co/how-chatgpt-...

Twitter was one of the best things to ever happen to me and I'm never going back.

Doug Ford’s war on bike lanes isn’t about traffic—it’s part of a global right-wing backlash to vilify urban residents and defend fossil fuel interests. @breachmedia.ca dove into the politics of cycling, and debunked some myths along the way www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoCz...

Employers worldwide are pulling back on AI as they navigate a flood of errors and low-quality work that sap employee time, raise privacy and security risks, and drive up costs

⚡️ 'This cannot be a coincidence' — Ukraine's Starlink access restricted without warning, Zelensky adviser says. Ukraine relies on Starlink to operate its mid-strike drones in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

No joke. I think this is the most important video I have ever seen about mobile games. This guy breaks down how this game psychologically profiles you, and makes the game harder or easier in order to show you ads

This is the first genuinely exciting web technology I've seen in years. aboard.com/introducing-...

New: I pulled the Character ai bankruptcy documents. They show: - They were spending $14 million/month on compute alone at a time their revenue was around ~$1 million/month - Currently losing $9 million a month - They admitted they enshittified & that it didnt work www.404media.co/character-ai...

As seen on @lastweektonight.com 👀 The FDA won’t tell Americans where their generic drugs are made, so we did it instead. Use information from your prescription label to locate the factory and see if the plant has a history of inspection violations: https://projects.propublica.org/rx-inspector/

I double-checked this on a couple of Xitter stat sites and it's true. Average views of the main AfD account dropped 90% and average engagement dropped by 60%. This is commercial social media for you: bots, damn bots and Russian bots.

Digger is a critical, memorable, exceptional and surprising movie that is not pleasant to watch lol. If you like sophisticated layers and textures, you’re in for a treat. I am excited for its rich text even if it was too loud in theatres and barely passed the bechdel test. Worth seeing!

If I built an AI lab and it went rogue and deleted all student loan information, I'm betting they'd suddenly figure out how to prosecute me.

Credit to the US for making the point the conference was trying to make about US foreign interference in European democracies for them, and bringing more attention to the conference and its themes than they could have possibly hoped for. www.politico.com/news/2026/10...

the Vice President of the United States has gone on record citing this man as one of his biggest intellectual influences if you didn't know this, it's probably because for some reason literally no mainstream political media outlets think it's worth mentioning

So… proposed final remedies in U.S. v. Google - for its illegal adtech monopolies and conduct that harmed publishers - quietly posted Friday. That’s what happens when you file over a weekend! DOJ = green; Google = peach. Suffice to say, Google is still fighting every word. More eyes the better. 1/2

This will be a thread of essays I recommend to students in my creative nonfiction workshop:

This is the Cult of AI - specifically the longtermist variant - at work: “getting to AGI” is deemed so self-evidently important that no sacrifice is too great. The future will be better, so tomorrow doesn’t matter.

foggy mornings in Tofino

Ahem…

Is this thing still on? Excited to share some personal news: I’m joining @wired.com as their new politics reporter!