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#bigtech

25 posts25 participants2 posts today

𝑨𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒔 𝑨𝒓𝒆 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒂𝒏 𝑨𝒍𝒈𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒉𝒎𝒊𝒄 𝑪𝒂𝒈𝒆

"The private companies in control of social-media networks possess an unprecedented ability to manipulate and control the populace."

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/

The Atlantic · Americans Are Trapped in an Algorithmic CageBy Adam Serwer

"Anyone at an AI company who stops to think for half a second should be able to recognize they have a vampiric relationship with the commons. While they rely on these repositories for their sustenance, their adversarial and disrespectful relationships with creators reduce the incentives for anyone to make their work publicly available going forward (freely licensed or otherwise). They drain resources from maintainers of those common repositories often without any compensation. They reduce the visibility of the original sources, leaving people unaware that they can or should contribute towards maintaining such valuable projects. AI companies should want a thriving open access ecosystem, ensuring that the models they trained on Wikipedia in 2020 can be continually expanded and updated. Even if AI companies don’t care about the benefit to the common good, it shouldn’t be hard for them to understand that by bleeding these projects dry, they are destroying their own food supply.

And yet many AI companies seem to give very little thought to this, seemingly looking only at the months in front of them rather than operating on years-long timescales. (Though perhaps anyone who has observed AI companies’ activities more generally will be unsurprised to see that they do not act as though they believe their businesses will be sustainable on the order of years.)

It would be very wise for these companies to immediately begin prioritizing the ongoing health of the commons, so that they do not wind up strangling their golden goose. It would also be very wise for the rest of us to not rely on AI companies to suddenly, miraculously come to their senses or develop a conscience en masse.

Instead, we must ensure that mechanisms are in place to force AI companies to engage with these repositories on their creators' terms."

citationneeded.news/free-and-o

Citation Needed · “Wait, not like that”: Free and open access in the age of generative AIThe real threat isn’t AI using open knowledge — it’s AI companies killing the projects that make knowledge free
Replied in thread

@ethanz
Scary article. 😬
And the Tiktok campaign seems to lead to Russian state-actors ....
Also:
"The education system, still working through post-communist reforms, has not effectively equipped students with essential tools for critical thinking, media literacy, and political engagement.

As a result, a substantial portion of the population becomes vulnerable to easily consumable, emotionally charged content on social media."
#BigTech #Romania #Election

The FLOSS movement has failed to build a true counter power to Big Tech's hegemony.

However, I see this potential for tech autonomy with community tech.

It builds on the nonprofit, community centered aspects of free and open source software, while addressing its shortcomings.

Boosts and opinions on what I've outlined in my blog post very welcomed.

:boosts_appreciated: 🌐 ❤️

#FOSS #FLOSS #OpenSource #CommunityTech #BigTech #SurveillanceCapitalism

clayton.computer/community-tec

clayton.computer · Community Tech: Moving Beyond Free and Open Source Software
More from Clayton Dewey

Destroying Autocracy – 13 March 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

Featured Item

Tech Policy reports:

Describing the technologies that make all of this possible as “AI” masks what they really are: government surveillance targeting free speech. Today, the government’s use of (Big Tech) data threatens to deny rights while slashing government services, and the risk of being singled out hovers over anyone who disagrees with the administration.

A system linking the views expressed on an individual’s social media accounts to the platforms gathering government data is an immediate threat to the freedom to express ourselves and live without fear of government interference in that expression.

Through fear of service denials, investigations, targeted audits, and other potential abuses, the existence of this apparatus leads citizens to curtail Constitutionally protected speech acts. Creating a situation where citizens reasonably fear that their speech will lead to a suspension of rights, denial of services, or taking on other risks that threaten democratic participation and debate.

What is clear, however, is that the moment such an incursion into rights can be articulated, there is a vast legal precedent under the Privacy Act that can be brought forward in response. For that reason, Americans need more, not less, public expression of diverse ideas and robust rebuttals to the intrusion of this public-private partnership into our civic life.

The AI State is a Surveillance State

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes and other douchebaggery

The Next Web reports:

4 European satellite firms are vying to replace Starlink in Ukraine

Politico reports:

EU-US rift triggers call for made-in-Europe tech

The Next Web reports:

European cloud hosts are offering an escape from AWS, Azure, and GCP

Clayton Computer reports on:

Community Tech: Moving Beyond Free and Open Source Software

The Verge reports:

‘Careless People’ publisher won’t pull the book Meta is trying to stop

Media Matters sues X to stop lawsuits outside of the US

Krebs on Security reports:

Alleged Co-Founder of Garantex Arrested in India

404 Media reports:

NASA, Yale, and Stanford Scientists Consider ‘Scientific Exile,’ French University Says

TechPolicy reports:

Ukraine’s Hard-Won Approach to Strategic Communications and Counter-Disinformation: Lessons for Europe and Beyond

DOJ Sets Record Straight of What’s Needed to Dismantle Google’s Search Monopoly

TechCrunch reports:

UK competition probe of mobile browsers finds Apple-Google duopoly is ‘anti-innovation’

Could deeptech serve as Europe’s path to autonomy from the US?

Signal President Meredith Whittaker calls out agentic AI as having ‘profound’ security and privacy issues

Open web initiatives Project Liberty and Solid could be teaming up

Meta faces publisher copyright AI lawsuit in France

Judge allows authors’ AI copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward

ArsTechnica has more:

Meta mocked for raising “Bob Dylan defense” of torrenting in AI copyright fight

The United Nations announce:

The OSI First to Endorse United Nations Open Source Principles

Neutral

Tech Policy reports:

Out of Balance: What the EU’s Strategy Shift Means for the AI Ecosystem

BleepingComputer reports:

X hit by ‘massive cyberattack’ amid Dark Storm’s DDoS claims

Usually this would be in the cybersecurity section. But, since it was against the box of c^nts known as Shitter the story gets moved here.

OpenSource reports on:

Overcoming barriers to Open Source procurement in the European Union

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

Tech Policy reports:

How Disinformation Is Undermining Trust In Brazil’s Most Used Digital Public Infrastructure

The Guardian reports:

ICE accessed car trackers in sanctuary cities that could help in raids, files show

404 Media reports:

Here is NASA’s Contract with Clearview AI

The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring

Corporate Europe Observatory reports:

Huawei corruption scandal shows EU has learned no lessons on ethics rules

TechDirt reports:

Trump’s Latest Weapon Against Critics: Destroying Their Lawyers

Pariah States

The Register reports:

Expired Juniper routers find new life – as Chinese spy hubs

BleepingComputer reports:

Undocumented commands found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices

North Korean Lazarus hackers infect hundreds via npm packages

TechCrunch reports:

North Korean government hackers snuck spyware on Android app store

Big Media

The Associated Press reports:

Washington Post columnist quits after her opinion piece criticizing owner Jeff Bezos is rejected

The Bulwark reports:

‘State Propaganda’: Anger Erupts Inside Univision Over Airing of Trump Ad

Ethan Zuckerman reports:

Jay Rosen and Taylor Owen: Can journalism survive Trump? Can democracy?

Big Tech

Not a Tech Bro says:

The government is not our business

The Index reports:

The Fascist Tech Bro Takeover Is Here

Unfortunately, it’s true.

The BBC reports:

Facebook was ‘hand in glove’ with China, BBC told

Radio Free Asia reports:

Hong Kong media urged to back up Facebook protest videos

MalwareBytes Labs reports:

Android devices track you before you even sign in

One of the many reasons I have a Fairphone with the e/OS operating system.

The Guardian reviews:

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams review – Zuckerberg and me

Terror

Michah Flee shares a:

Step-by-step guide to reading the leaked militia chats yourself

Very cool.

Cybersecurity/Privacy

DarkReading reports:

Democratizing Security to Improve Security Posture

OpenAI Operator Agent Used in Proof-of-Concept Phishing Attack

Binance Spoofers Compromise PCs in ‘TRUMP’ Crypto Scam

He, he.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation shares:

Choosing the VPN That’s Right for You

BleepingComputer reports:

Critical PHP RCE vulnerability mass exploited in new attacks

CISA: Medusa ransomware hit over 300 critical infrastructure orgs

Fediverse

The Fediverse Report has:

Fediverse Report #107

Hamish Campbell explains:

Why the Fediverse Needs a Connection Between Mainstreaming and Grassroots

The Nexus of Privacy shares:

Notes (and thoughts) on organizing in the Fediverse and the ATmosphere

Ghost has an update:

Actually, I take that back

Mastodon has:

Trunk & Tidbits, February 2025

SplitBrain details:

Mastodon to GoToSocial Migration

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

TechCrunch reports:

Open social web browser Surf integrates with Bluesky in latest beta

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#107 #ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #ATProtocol #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Ghost #GoToSocial #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIran #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine

battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=15

Het zijn niet alleen scholen die volledig afhankelijk zijn geraakt van BigTech bedrijven die er geheel andere waarden op na houden dan de scholen zelf. Hier een interessant onderzoek en blog over gemeenten en publieke instellingen in heel Europa:

jurgen.gaeremyn.be/2025/03/08/

Pseudo Random Noise · European critical dependencies - Pseudo Random Noise
More from Pseudo Random Noise

One of the things I've been advocating for years - and where I want to raise my voice even louder - is the importance of owning your data. #OwnYourData

Over the past few days, I’ve come across two examples of how misinformation is causing immense damage, leading people to believe that there's no alternative but to hand over their data to big corporations, putting themselves entirely in their hands.

- A well-known lawyer, just before a meeting, warned about using Teams and its new "virtual assistant," which joins conferences before anyone else and transcribes everything. When I pointed out that it would be wise to use alternative tools (like Jitsi, for example, but there are others), he abruptly ended the conversation, saying, "We've lost this war. There's no alternative anymore."
That wasn’t the right moment for a detailed discussion, so I just noted that alternatives do exist - but if no one starts using them, and if we passively accept certain behaviors from certain companies, things will never improve for us.

- Just now, I received another one of those emails that hurt more in the heart than in the wallet: "Our e-commerce is taking off, so we’re moving it to Shopify to better manage our growth."
I replied, trying to explain that handing over a growing e-commerce business to a third-party company (right now, they have full access to their own server - meaning all their databases, data, etc., are under their control) means losing ownership of it. Prices could change at any moment, contract terms could shift negatively, and, worst case scenario, if Shopify itself faced issues (which seems impossible today, but think of giants like Kodak), they could lose everything. Of course, they’ll do what they think is best, but I feel obligated to warn them.

Luckily, others are making the opposite choice. But I keep wondering: since these big platforms aren’t exactly cheap, rather than "selling themselves" to them just for (potentially) fewer headaches, wouldn’t it be worth paying someone (not me, of course, but someone working exclusively for them) to handle these things - ensuring they retain full ownership of their business and their data?

"In late January, a crack appeared in the façade. The Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek released R1 (a rival to OpenAI’s reasoning model), and the company’s app quickly became the most downloaded free program in the iOS App Store. “They proved that you can make a reasoning model for cheap, and you can run it for cheaper” than Silicon Valley companies, Zitron said. It would no longer be necessary for companies like Nvidia to release an expensive new chip every year. In a panic, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index dropped about a trillion dollars in value in one day, with Nvidia alone losing nearly six hundred billion in market capitalization.

Remembering the insanity of that day, Zitron smiled. He described talking with hedge-fund managers and startup founders afterward: “Everyone was sitting around going, ‘Wait, why are we spending three hundred billion dollars on cap-ex?’ ” DeepSeek’s success showed that the narrative around A.I. was wrong. “It removed the sheen from OpenAI,” Zitron said. The market and the tech companies have not fully recovered, and Zitron said that people in the tech world are “unsettled—everyone knows that something’s shifted.”

Zitron doesn’t consider himself a tech fatalist. He can still find what he calls “genuine magic” in tech, such as the use of gallium nitride in batteries and chargers. “But then there’s all of these assholes who are making all of this money getting in the way of the cool shit that tech does,” he said.

He took a bite of his plum fried chicken. Then another."

newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03

The New Yorker · Can Artificial Intelligence Stir-Fry?By Oren Peleg

INVITATION TIL WEBINAR

Ud af tech-giganternes kløer – hvordan din organisation kan frigøre sig fra afhængighed af store tech-virksomheder

Er din kommune eller organisation afhængig af store tech-virksomheder som Microsoft og Google? Ønsker du at øge din teknologiske selvstændighed og reducere omkostningerne?

Så er dette webinar lige noget for dig!

Vi vil gennemgå, hvordan du kan overgå til alternative løsninger, der giver dig mere kontrol, fleksibilitet og sikkerhed. Vores eksperter vil dele praktiske råd og eksempler på succesfulde overgangsprojekter, så du kan træffe den rigtige beslutning for din organisation.

Dato og tid: Onsdag den 2. april 2025 kl. 9.00

Varighed: 45 minutter

Målgruppe
✅ IT-ledere og -chefer i danske kommuner og virksomheder
✅ Beslutningstagere, der ønsker at modernisere deres teknologiske infrastruktur
✅ IT-professionelle, der ønsker at forstå de seneste trends og løsninger

Bliv klogere på
✅ Fordele ved at frigøre sig fra store tech-virksomheder: Hvordan du kan øge din teknologiske selvstændighed, spare licenser væk og opnå sikkerhed ift. GDPR-lovgivning.
✅ Alternative løsninger: Introduktion til specifikke open source produkter, som kan implementeres og benyttes allerede i dag.
✅ Tjekliste og anbefalinger: Praktiske råd og en tjekliste for, hvordan du kommer i gang med din overgang
✅ Stil spørgsmål: Mulighed for at stille spørgsmål til vores eksperter og modtage personlige råd

Tilmelding
semaphor.dk/opensource/webinar

Tech bros are living, breathing embodiments of the false authority fallacy; claiming that their professed understanding of basic logic qualifies them to reason expertly upon every conceivable topic while conveniently ignoring a fundamental maxim of their purported core area of expertise: garbage in, garbage out.

Replied in thread
@ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org

I think you are focusing too much on the US, while #FreeSoftware is an international movement.

I'd also argue that right now they are eroding their own global hegemony on a daily basis, which is good for all other democracies.

So I think that the free software movement shouldn't rely on the rules of an increasily marginal nation ready collapse in a civil war.

Having said that, if I were within the US, I'd totally agree with you in abstract, but I'd recognize that it's not going to happen (without winning said civil war) because of the grip #BigTech corporations have over the Congress.

@garbados@friend.camp @ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org

Idea of #karlmarx s alienation or weber s objection to his very definition of class and www
If someone works in #google can they end up buying their own #alphabet product one day
But the means of production here can be free , thanks to open source , but can they be?
I mean server cost is never free , #labor isnt free of cost , tax cuts re not free, nor is marketing and lawsuits
But #bigtech folks dont go through alienation
Why , because they share political control ( ie bargain position ) , which can be different from ownership , while the latter , including the value, which they can influence of their stock holding is reduced in that accord and they end up being better off than their peers in #academia or #foss as bigtech is now big enough to influence policy making for that
The dictated aspect of #gametheory .
Afaik weber didnt highlight the rich gets richer or big gets bigger part