Werd I/O

[Mike Masnick at TechDirt]

On Zuckerberg's claims about why he's changing Meta's fact-changing policy:

"If you only remember two things about the government pressure campaign to influence Mark Zuckerberg’s content moderation decisions, make it these: Donald Trump directly threatened to throw Zuck in prison for the rest of his life, and just a couple months ago FCC Commissioner (soon to be FCC chair) Brendan Carr threatened Meta that if it kept on fact-checking stories in a way Carr didn’t like, he would try to remove Meta’s Section 230 protections in response.

Two months later — what do you know? — Zuckerberg ended all fact-checking on Meta."

His appearance on Joe Rogan's show served as a way to whitewash this argument. I don't doubt that the government placed pressure on him to enact certain kinds of community moderation policies, but the timing makes the underlying reasons clear.

This is a long piece that goes into Zuckerberg's claims and debunks them soundly. Here's what you really need to know: it's a PR move to placate the incoming administration, and that Zuckerberg capitulated so soundly and so quickly is a very bad sign.

#Technology

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[Ethan Zuckerman in The Atlantic]

I completely agree with the points Ethan makes here. The TikTok ban was a spectacular own-goal for all kinds of reasons. In particular:

"[...] This is a depressing moment for anyone who cherishes American protections for speech and access to information. In 1965, while the Cold War shaped the U.S. national-security environment, the Supreme Court, in Lamont v. Postmaster General, determined that the post office had to send people publications that the government claimed were “communist political propaganda,” rather than force recipients to first declare in writing that they wanted to receive this mail. The decision was unanimous, and established the idea that Americans had the right to discover whatever they wanted within “a marketplace of ideas.”"

Truly, so much for the country that is allegedly about freedom of speech. There's something particularly messed-up and McCarthyist about how this ban came about, not least because some representatives have admitted that the ban is partially because of the availability of pro-Palestinian content on the platform. If we endorse this ban, do we also need to revisit the rightly widely-derided un-American-activities policies of the past? I'd rather we leave them in the dustbin of history.

But luckily, the kids are alright. This is also true:

"Although I don’t think this specific rebellion can last, I’m encouraged that American TikTok users realize that banning the popular platform directly contradicts America’s values. If only America’s leaders were so wise."

#Democracy

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[Matthew Green]

I think this is the most important discussion with respect to AI:

"[...] I would say that AI is going to be the biggest privacy story of the decade. Not only will we soon be doing more of our compute off-device, but we’ll be sending a lot more of our private data. This data will be examined and summarized by increasingly powerful systems, producing relatively compact but valuable summaries of our lives. In principle those systems will eventually know everything about us and about our friends. They’ll read our most intimate private conversations, maybe they’ll even intuit our deepest innermost thoughts. We are about to face many hard questions about these systems, including some difficult questions about whether they will actually be working for us at all."

I lead technology at a non-profit newsroom where we've banned use of hosted AI models on sensitive data like reporting notes and source information. We've turned off AI assistants on our cloud services, and we've deployed client-side encryption for sensitive documents.

Even if we think vendors are trustworthy (I don't), sending this level of data to any third party creates a honeypot for surveillance and potential misuse by government, law enforcement, the vendors themselves, and beyond. If a vendor has access to your most personal data and receives a criminal subpoena, which could easily come from the government or from a third party, you might never know that your information was compromised. (Civil subpoenas sometimes allow vendors to notify you that this happened.)

So these solutions are pretty interesting, although fall far short of the encryption standard the author and I would both like to see:

"Apple’s approach to this problem is called “Private Cloud Compute” and it involves the use of special trusted hardware devices that run in Apple’s data centers. [...] Apple ensures that no long-term state is stored on these machines, and also load-balances your request to a different random server every time you connect."

As the author notes, when this level of data is being gathered centrally and is potentially available for government use (or even vendor use beyond our intent as users), serious questions are raised about who this software actually works for. Is it ours? Is it empowering? Is it covertly a system of control and monitoring? Or all of the above?

I think the answer, sadly, is inevitable.

#AI

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[David Marchese in The New York Times]

This profile of Curtis Yarvin in the New York Times (paywalled, probably for the best) is far softer than it should have been, with far less formal fact-checking. It is of the moment, though: this guy’s writing is highly influential to the political class that’s about to land in power, as well as to prominent VCs and other tech luminaries.

It’s not a bad idea to shine a spotlight on who he is and what he’s all about — this is a man who has directly inspired JD Vance, multiple prominent venture capitalists, and other people in our still-forming tech oligarchy. And as softball and cozy as the conversation really is, it’s still hard to come away without thinking: this guy is genuinely evil.

In this interview he argues, among other things, that the Civil War (what he calls the “War of Secession”) didn’t improve anybody’s lives, and that women’s lives before suffrage were pretty great. He argues that people had at least as much liberty in the era of kings than they do today.

Towards the end of the interview, you'll find this exchange:

"What’s your Achilles’ heel? I also have self-confidence issues. I won’t bet fully on my own convictions."

I mean: good.

#Democracy

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[Oliver Milman in The Guardian]

Car culture isn't just physically bad for us, it affects us mentally too:

"The car is firmly entrenched as the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans, with more than nine in 10 households having at least one vehicle and 87% of people using their cars daily. Last year, a record 290m vehicles were operated on US streets and highways.

However, this extreme car dependence is affecting Americans’ quality of life, with a new study finding there is a tipping point at which more driving leads to deeper unhappiness. It found that while having a car is better than not for overall life satisfaction, having to drive for more than 50% of the time for out-of-home activities is linked to a decrease in life satisfaction."

The trick, of course, is that most of our communities have been heavily designed around the car, in part because of a century of lobbying and pressure from the automotive industry. It's obvious that more integrated city planning that doesn't heavily favor car use leads to a happier and healthier life, but American society is largely not built for it.

In turn, most Americans can't even imagine a world that isn't car-centric, and vehicles have become a core part of the culture. That's as intrinsically toxic as smoking culture, but because it literally has dictated how the environment around us has been designed and built, it's going to take a long time to undo - and before we get there, we need to have the widespread will to undo it, which doesn't seem to exist.

Compounding that, our most walkable and transit-enabled communities are also by far the most expensive to live in, because - shocker! - they're the most desirable. So a reasonably healthy living environment has become the preserve of the relatively wealthy.

This is the kind of thing that needs to be legislated for: new built environments need to hit certain standards for integration, transit, and walkability, and then our existing environments need to be iteratively rebuilt. That seems like a tall order in the current American cultural era, but I don't see how this gets better on its own.

#Society

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[Joan Westenberg]

An absolutely spot-on call to action:

"Cynicism is the cheap seats. It’s the fast food of intellectual positions. Anyone can point at something and say it’s broken, corrupt, or destined to fail. The real challenge? Building something better.

[...] Cynicism comes with hidden taxes. Every time we default to assuming the worst, we pay in missed opportunities, reduced social trust, and diminished creative capacity. These costs compound over time, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in which cynical expectations shape cynical realities."

We've got to have optimism. Not the dumb kind that Andreessen talks about; the kind where we know we can make the world better, we just have to go out and do it.

A thousand times, this:

"The world has enough critics. What it needs are builders who can see problems clearly without being paralyzed by them, people who can maintain hope without succumbing to naïveté, and people who can engage with reality while working to improve it."

Criticism is useful, but the real work is in imagining something new, something better, and making it a reality.

#Culture

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[Dave Karpf at Tech Policy Press]

Peter Thiel and other tech oligarchs are seeking to weaponize US foreign policy as a way to enforce their corporate agendas:

"Thiel is developing a blueprint for putting Big Tech’s policy agenda at the center of US foreign policy. Australia’s social media ban is bad for American social media companies. The European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act impose regulatory requirements on very large online platforms that operate within the EU. Peter Thiel expects the US government to do something about that, in the guise of investigating and redressing past wrongdoings.

Tech billionaires like Thiel simply do not believe that their companies and investments should be beholden to governments. And now that they have control of the US government, they are suggesting that, if any other countries interfere with their business, the US government ought to intervene on their behalf."

The thing is, protections like the ones offered by the European Union are really good, and significantly better than we enjoy in the United States. Part of the worry is that if they're allowed to stand, similar restrictions will emerge here too. We're already seeing that in more progressive states like California.

That's an inevitability: as we all get more used to the internet now that most of us are on it, beyond the initial excitement, we're going to make more nuanced policy decisions. Clearly, privacy is an important democratic prerequisite, and countering the internet's tendency to support monopolies is similarly important to prevent outsized centralization of power. When it comes to the free reign moguls have enjoyed to build giant businesses unencumbered, time is ticking. But in the meantime, they'll keep trying to protect their interests - in increasingly dramatic ways.

#Democracy

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[Sergio Hernández, Nat Lash, Brandon Roberts and Ken Schwencke at ProPublica]

Private schools in the US are much whiter than public schools. My colleagues over in the newsroom at ProPublica explored this data while illuminating the ongoing extent of segregation academies in the south:

"Our analysis of that survey revealed, among other things, Amite County, Mississippi, where about 900 children attend the local public schools — which, as of 2021, were 16% white. By comparison, the two private schools in the county, with more than 600 children, were 96% white."

But that data hasn't traditionally been easy to explore. Until now:

"In the course of our reporting, we realized that this data and analysis were illuminating and useful — even outside the South. We decided to create a database to allow anyone to look up a school and view years worth of data."

The Private School Demographics database is available to use for free. It makes it very easy to examine disparities between private schools and their surrounding school districts. And knowing is the first step towards changing something.

#Democracy

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[Joseph Cox at 404 Media]

Not just obeying in advance but actively collaborating:

"Multiple speech and content moderation experts 404 Media spoke to drew some parallels between these recent changes and when Facebook contributed to a genocide in Myanmar in 2017, in which Facebook was used to spread anti-Rohingya hate and the country’s military ultimately led a campaign of murder, torture, and rape against the Muslim minority population. Although there are some key differences, Meta’s changes in the U.S. will also likely lead to the spread of more hate speech across Meta’s sites, with the real world consequences that can bring.

“When we look at the history of mass atrocities against particular groups, we always see a period where the information landscape is shaped away from recognizing the humanity of the targeted group. By letting hate speech flourish online, you enable the pre-conditions for group violence offline,” [Rebecca Hamilton, law professor at American University] added."

We're in for a rough few years, and Meta and its big tech compatriots seem to be all in.

#Technology

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[Mark Lemley on LinkedIn]

Meta's lawyer in its AI case has fired them as a client, and is not beating around the bush as to why:

"I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness. While I have thought about quitting Facebook, I find great value in the connections and friends I have here, and it doesn't seem fair that I should lose that because Zuckerberg is having a mid-life crisis.

[...] I have deactivated my Threads account. Bluesky is an outstanding alternative to Twitter, and the last thing I need is to support a Twitter-like site run by a Musk wannabe."

I wish I could read a response from Zuckerberg himself. I suspect none will be forthcoming.

#Technology

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[Andrew J. Hawkins at The Verge]

I think this is the wrong kind of protectionism:

"The Biden administration finalized a new rule that would effectively ban all Chinese vehicles from the US under the auspices of blocking the “sale or import” of connected vehicle software from “countries of concern.” The rule could have wide-ranging effects on big automakers, like Ford and GM, as well as smaller manufacturers like Polestar — and even companies that don’t produce cars, like Waymo."

I would much rather see a ban on vehicles that spy on you, regardless of who manufactures them. The rule as it stands provides very uneven protection, and allows domestic vehicle manufacturers to conduct significant surveillance over their customers. Legislators should just ban the practice outright, and conduct inspections to ensure that it's the case across the board.

#Technology

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[Free Our Feeds]

The non-profit social media foundation space is really heating up. Which is not a bad thing!

Enter Free our Feeds:

"It will take independent funding and governance to turn Bluesky’s underlying tech—the AT Protocol—into something more powerful than a single app. We want to create an entire ecosystem of interconnected apps and different companies that have people’s interests at heart.

Free Our Feeds will build a new, independent foundation to help make that happen."

The names involved in this particular venture are really fascinating. Nabiha Syed is the ED of the Mozilla Foundation and is joined by Mark Surman, its President; Robin Berjon has done some of the most important writing and thinking in this space, particularly with respect to governance; Eli Pariser is an experienced activist who co-founded Avaaz and used to run MoveOn; Mallory Knodel is the ED of the ActivityPub-centric Social Web Foundation.

And then the signatories to the letter are people like Jimmy Wales, Mark Ruffalo, Cory Doctorow, Roger McNamee, Shoshana Zuboff and Audrey Tang.

So the Social Web Foundation is ActivityPub-centric and Free Our Feeds is AT Protocol-centric. My (figurative) money is increasingly on A New Social, which posits that all these individual protocols and sub-networks will ultimately be universally addressable as one social internet, and is backing tools to help make that happen.

It's all wonderful. It's all such a great change from the old model - and in a week where Zuckerberg went "full Musk", the timing couldn't be better.

#Fediverse

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[Mastodon]

Mastodon is growing up:

"Simply, we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new non-profit organization, affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.

[...] We are in the process of a phased transition. First we are establishing a new legal home for Mastodon and transferring ownership and stewardship. We are taking the time to select the appropriate jurisdiction and structure in Europe. Then we will determine which other (subsidiary) legal structures are needed to support operations and sustainability."

Eugen, Mastodon's CEO, will not be the leader of this new entity, although it's not yet clear who will be. He's going to focus on product instead.

Another note, right at the end of this announcement: the non-profit seeks to grow its annual budget to €5 million. That's a big increase from current levels, but is absolutely needed. It sounds like plans are in place to make that happen.

I'm excited for everyone involved; everyone who uses Mastodon; everyone on the web. Greater competition through a truly federated solution with decentralized ownership is good for everyone. I can't wait to see what happens next.

#Fediverse

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[Social Web Foundation]

The Social Web Foundation's statement about Meta's moderation changes is important:

"Ideas matter, and history shows that online misinformation and harassment can lead to violence in the real world.

[...] Meta is one of many ActivityPub implementers and a supporter of the Social Web Foundation. We strongly encourage Meta’s executive and content teams to come back in line with best practices of a zero harm social media ecosystem. Reconsidering this policy change would preserve the crucial distinction between political differences of opinion and dehumanizing harassment. The SWF is available to discuss Meta’s content moderation policies and processes to make them more humane and responsible."

This feels right to me. By implication: the current policies are inhumane and irresponsible. And as such, worth calling out.

#Fediverse

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[Adria R Walker at The Guardian]

A full century after the Bureau of Investigation blamed the Tulsa race massacre on Black men and claimed that the perpetrators didn't break the law, the DoJ has issued an update:

"“The Tulsa race massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general of the DoJ’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings, and locked the survivors in internment camps.”"

Every one of the perpetrators is dead and can no longer be prosecuted. But this statement seeks to correct the record and ensure that the official history records what actually happened. There's value in that, even if it comes a hundred years too late.

It's worth also checking out Greenwood Rising, which will be the first to tell you that discrimination against Black citizens of the town and the descendants of the race riot has been ongoing.

The Tulsa race massacre "was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence". Calling it a stain on our history would paint it as a one-off; instead, it's part of a continuum of hate, violence, and discrimination.

#Democracy

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[Jared White]

I've been thinking about this paragraph since I read it:

"In times past, we would worry about singular governmental officials such Joseph Goebbels becoming a master of propaganda for their cause. Today’s problem is massively scaled out in ways Goebbels could only dream of: now everyone can be their own Goebbels. Can someone please tell me what the difference is between an “influencer” holding a smartphone and…a propagandist? Because I simply can’t see the distinction anymore."

This brings me back to Renee DiResta's Invisible Rulers: whoever controls the memes controls the universe.

#Democracy

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[Mike Masnick in TechDirt]

Mark Zuckerberg is very obviously running scared from the incoming Trump administration:

"Since the election, Zuckerberg has done everything he can possibly think of to kiss the Trump ring. He even flew all the way from his compound in Hawaii to have dinner at Mar-A-Lago with Trump, before turning around and flying right back to Hawaii. In the last few days, he also had GOP-whisperer Joel Kaplan replace Nick Clegg as the company’s head of global policy. On Monday it was announced that Zuckerberg had also appointed Dana White to Meta’s board. White is the CEO of UFC, but also (perhaps more importantly) a close friend of Trump’s."

He then announced a new set of moderation changes.

As Mike Masnick notes here, Facebook's moderation was terrible and has always been terrible. It tried to use AI to improve its moderation at scale, with predictable results. It simply hasn't worked, and that's often harmed vulnerable communities and voices in the process. So it makes sense to take a different approach.

But Zuckerberg is trying to paint these changes as being pro free speech, and that doesn't ring true. For example, trying to paint fact-checking as censorship is beyond stupid:

"Of course, bad faith actors, particularly on the right, have long tried to paint fact-checking as “censorship.” But this talking point, which we’ve debunked before, is utter nonsense. Fact-checking is the epitome of “more speech”— exactly what the marketplace of ideas demands. By caving to those who want to silence fact-checkers, Meta is revealing how hollow its free speech rhetoric really is."

This is all of a piece with Zuckerberg's rolling back of much-needed DEI programs and his suggestion that most companies need more masculine energy. It's for show to please a permatanned audience of one and avoid existential threats to his business.

I would love to read the inside story in a few years. For now, we've just got to accept that everything being incredibly dumb is all part of living in 2025.

#Technology

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[Rae Morey at The Repository]

The bananas activity continues over at Automattic / Matt Mullenweg's house:

"Members of the fledgling WordPress Sustainability Team have been left reeling after WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg abruptly dissolved the team this week.

[...] The disbandment happened after team rep Thijs Buijs announced in Making WordPress Slack on Wednesday that he was stepping down from his role, citing a Reddit thread Mullenweg created on Christmas Eve asking for suggestions to create WordPress drama in 2025."

Meanwhile, a day earlier, Automattic announced that it will ramp down its own contributions to WordPress:

"To recalibrate and ensure our efforts are as impactful as possible, Automattic will reduce its sponsored contributions to the WordPress project. This is not a step we take lightly. It is a moment to regroup, rethink, and strategically plan how Automatticians can continue contributing in ways that secure the future of WordPress for generations to come. Automatticians who contributed to core will instead focus on for-profit projects within Automattic, such as WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. Members of the “community” have said that working on these sorts of things should count as a contribution to WordPress."

This is a genuinely odd thing to do. Yes, it's true that Automattic is at a disadvantage in the sense that it contributes far more to the open source project than other private companies. Free riders have long been a problem for open source innovators. But it's also why the company exists. I have questions about the balance of open source vs proprietary code in Automattic's future offerings. That's important because WordPress is the core value of its products and the open source core guarantees freedom from lock-in.

Is there a proprietary CMS coming down the wire? Is this bizarre board activity behind the scenes? Is something else going on? This whole situation still feels to me like there's another shoe ready to drop - and the longer it goes on, the bigger that shoe seems to be. I hope they don't completely squander the trust and value they've been building for decades.

#Technology

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[Natasya Salim, Najma Sambul, and Bill Birtles at ABC News]

This is something that every nation should provide. It's really impressive that Indonesia is putting it into action:

"Indonesia has launched a transformative free meal program designed to combat malnutrition and support underprivileged communities.

Championed by President Prabowo Subianto, the initiative aims to provide nutritious meals to almost 83 million Indonesians by 2029, focusing initially on school children and pregnant women."

Over here, this would likely be dismissed as socialism, because how dare we simply provide for people who need it? (The horror!) But the bet is that it will lead to greater growth and prosperity, not least because of investment in the ecosystem itself:

"On the other hand, Mr Prabowo called the program one of the main drivers of economic growth, saying it would eventually add an estimated 2.5 million jobs and spur demand for local produce."

Over in the Financial Times, they additionally note:

"Prabowo, who took office in October, has touted the programme as a solution to improve children’s nutrition and boost local economies — which he hopes will have a ripple effect on economic growth and development in the world’s fourth most-populous country.

“This is a long-term investment in human capital,” said Dadan Hindayana, head of the newly created national nutrition agency, which will oversee the free meals programme. "

There will be a lot of people incentivized to not make this work. But it should. And we should be looking to this as leadership; we should be following suit.

#Democracy

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[Jason Kottke]

Jason nails what the supposed focus on free speech by Meta and others is really about:

"What Zuckerberg and Meta have realized is the value, demonstrated by Trump, Musk, and MAGA antagonists, of saying that you’re “protecting free speech” and using it as cover for almost anything you want to do. For Meta, that means increasing engagement, decreasing government oversight and interference, and lowering their labor costs (through cutting their workforce and strengthening their bargaining position vs labor) — all things that will make their stock price go up and increase the wealth of their shareholders."

It's a grift, pure and simple. One that happens to help them curry favor with the incoming President and his fan-base.

#Technology

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[Arno Rosenfeld at the Forward]

The Heritage Foundation is out to "identify and target" Wikipedia editors, using antisemitism as a cover:

"Employees of Heritage, the conservative think tank that produced the Project 2025 policy blueprint for the second Trump administration, said they plan to use facial recognition software and a database of hacked usernames and passwords in order to identify contributors to the online encyclopedia, who mostly work under pseudonyms. It’s not clear exactly what kind of antisemitism the Wikipedia effort, which has not been previously reported, is intended to address. But in recent months some Jewish groups have complained about a series of changes on the website relating to Israel, the war in Gaza and its repercussions."

Given that Wikipedia has also been under attack from Elon Musk and other right-wing figures, multiple groups should archive multiple snapshots of its content before major changes are made (or worse) to the encyclopedia. Wikipedia currently provides a full history of edits as part of its core software, but there are no guarantees about what might be required by the administration in the future.

I'd also strongly consider donating to support it to help it weather any future assaults on truth.

#Democracy

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[Alex Weprin at The Hollywood Reporter]

I don't think this is a great thing at all:

"Meta will also move its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, with content review to be based in Texas. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said."

Its lack of effective moderation previously led to aiding and abetting an actual genocide in Myanmar; there's a reason why trust and safety on large online platforms evolved in the way it did. The idea that Texas is somehow a politically-neutral place to run these teams from is also completely laughable.

A funny thing about cries about censorship on social platforms is that they all seem to relate to people wanting to be abusive to vulnerable people who are already systemically oppressed. I guess we're allowing more of that now. This really is a new era of prosperity!

Of course, this is a move to placate the incoming President, which is likely just one of many. It's, in many ways, pathetic to see. It's just business, they'll shrug and tell you. Well, just business and peoples' lives.

#Technology

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[A.R. Moxon at The Reframe]

An interesting election mortem and post-mortem, from an arguably refreshing perspective:

"Here's what I think is going on: Our system is foundationally built to devour human beings in order to enrich the already wealthy, and it's moved so far down that road that a critical mass of people now understand this, for the very good reason that they are now being devoured."

"[...] We're in a time when most people understand we are in a systemic fight, and so most people want a fighter—and, to the perceptions of most people, Trump and the Republicans are fighting, and Democrats are not."

Perhaps I'm including this link here because it's cathartic, or because it's because I happen to agree with the premise that the Democrats are trying to be centrists again even though being centrists doesn't at all work for them and shouldn't work for them. I don't think it'll change anything; I don't think I'll be anything but disappointed. But, anyway, here this piece is. It would be nice to not be in the position we're in, and it would be nice to have politicians who will genuinely make this a more progressive country that will fight for the people who really need it. I'm not holding my breath.

#Democracy

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[Things we learned about LLMs in 2024]

Simon's overview of what happened in the LLM space during 2024 is genuinely excellent. For example, on the environmental impact:

"Companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are all spending billions of dollars rolling out new datacenters, with a very material impact on the electricity grid and the environment. There’s even talk of spinning up new nuclear power stations, but those can take decades.

Is this infrastructure necessary? DeepSeek v3’s $6m training cost and the continued crash in LLM prices might hint that it’s not. But would you want to be the big tech executive that argued NOT to build out this infrastructure only to be proven wrong in a few years’ time?"

His comparison to the railway bubbles of the late 1800s and the UK's railway mania is inspired, and a helpful way to think about what's happening. (I will say that similar claims were made about the crypto space: that the resulting infrastructure would be useful even after the crashes. Is it?)

There's also an important lesson about how the prevalence of slop isn't actually making training LLMs harder, despite frequent claims to the contrary.

The whole piece is very much worth your time.

#AI

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[Joshua Kaplan at ProPublica]

This ought to be a movie:

"Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night. He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials. He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist, then improvised ways to sabotage the militants’ schemes. In one group, his ploys were so successful that he became the militia’s top commander in the state of Utah."

This long-read about John Williams's work to infiltrate right wing militias is vividly told. It's inspired other reporting at ProPublica, but now it's time to tell the story of the mole who brought the information forward.

It's also a good reminder that many of the people who participated in the Capitol riot weren't just misled civilians: they were members of dangerous, armed, right-wing militias. These are the people that Trump would like to pardon:

"Now President-elect Donald Trump has promised to pardon Jan. 6 rioters when he returns to the White House. Experts warn that such a move could trigger a renaissance for militant extremists, sending them an unprecedented message of protection and support — and making it all the more urgent to understand them."

That understanding is important. This is a good piece to get started with.

#Democracy

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