Commentary on links that caught my attention around the web.
Technology
"Grammarly has signed a deal to acquire email efficiency tool Superhuman as part of the company's push to build an artificial intelligence-powered productivity suite." I did not see this coming.
Democracy
"Some schools have asked staff to use secure messaging systems like Signal instead of text and email to keep sensitive conversations from public reach." They, like many others, need more private, self-hosted software.
Democracy
"I’m a political scientist, and I found that Americans were far less likely to publicly voice their opinions than even during the height of the McCarthy-era Red Scare."
Democracy
Stephen Miller and at least a dozen other Trump appointees own stock in Palantir, the company that provides "mission critical" services to ICE.
AI
A federal court agreed that using copyrighted works to train AI is fair use - but that pirating them to do so infringes creator rights.
Media
"Substack's One Weird Marketing Trick was leveraging the economic interests of traditional media employees against their publishers to get positive "earned media"."
Democracy
"There are clear indications from oppressive governments around the world that biometrics will be used to harm human rights, regardless of their accuracy or fairness."
Democracy
"When the government can track where you go, whom you associate with, and what you spend your money on, it [...] chills freedom of expression, undermines your freedom to travel, and destroys the fundamental privacy right that underlies American liberty."
AI
Ten years ago, Google crawled two pages for every visitor it sent to a publisher. Today, Anthropic crawls 60,000.
Democracy
404 Media reveals collaboration between ICE and local police
Democracy
It's going to be a long summer. WIRED has some advice for being prepared.
Notable Links
404 Media reports that the country's major airlines are selling passenger data to Customs and Border Protection and ICE.