@tmsqrll
Professional abyss gazer. Tech horrors in 57 varieties, head of strategy @foxglovelegal.bsky.social but my views are shared only by the demented and damned. I also have a PhD in Online, so that’s Dr 🐿️ to you
Great description from @foxglovelegal.bsky.social here (if I do say so myself), "inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse"
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
UKTV Gold Fascism: neofascist aesthetics but for an audience of 70-something ex-pats living in Spain
Aside from anything else in this mess, it's galling to hear the co-founder of Childnet say "well we're an online safety organisation, *of course* we take money from Big Tech". That's not a given! You don't have to do that!
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
reading these captions it's deeply upsetting to me that i wrote a thing in 2018 about how incel language was leaking out into the mainstream and i had no idea how bad it was going to get
Please tell me more about the current right wing thing about cortisol. I've seen it come up a bit on my feed but it always seems more generic wellness/pseudo-spirituality-tinged rather than in the right wing griftosphere
Hmm, maybe it’s time
I also FOI'd this and received a response saying the info was already in the public domain, referencing a letter correcting the '10.8m families use X as their main news source' figure to '10.8m families use X'. No actual source for the figures. So good to finally get a source. Shame it's *X itself*.
I just signed a petition calling for an urgent investigation into Peter Mandelson's dealings with Palantir. Did he use his position as UK Ambassador to benefit the US spy tech firm? Sign now: www.foxglove.org.uk/campaigns/ma...
Foxglove is calling on the government to expose the extent of Mandelson’s involvement in contracts awarded to Palantir. We know he may have leaked to Jeffrey Epstein. The public deserves to know if Palantir, a client of his consultancy, also benefited.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
do we prioritise the impending catastrophe that may make the planet inhospitable to life? or do we want these magic beans?
for this government the choice is clear: beans, every time
none of us have any money to buy things, so nobody wants to advertise to us
The longer I think about it the more grimly funny this release is. Ofcom spends ages describing the minutiae of what's in scope of the OSA for chatbots, aligning quite well with what Grok does, then throws up its hands and says "we just can't know if Grok is in scope ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"
They have powers related to chat bots if&onlyif they produce pornographic content, search the web or allow user-to-user sharing. The former is trivially true; second unclear; the third arguable but in my view true in this case given Grok Imagine's scrolling UGC feed and in-built X sharing feature
They are not certain whether it is in scope of the OSA. From a porn perspective it certainly is (in my view). From the user-to-user sharing standpoint it's less clear but certainly arguable, given Grok Imagine has a scrolling feed of content generated by others.
Here's Ofcom's statement from today, confirming that they are not investigating the Grok app. They should reconsider this; it's clearly in scope for the production of pornographic images if nothing else.
www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safet...
Ofcom has just confirmed that xAI (and therefore the standalone Grok app) is not in scope for their investigation of X. They need to urgently rethink this: Grok produces sexualised images of people without their consent that can be easily shared and used for public humiliation.
This quote from Kendall about AI is so telling. "If we can *show* that AI helps" -- not "if we can determine whether it helps".
No curiosity about whether AI is a force for good or not, just zealous certainty that the people need to be made to see that it is.
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
A lot going on here and all ugly, but one thing I still can't get my head around is how any British government can do business with Thiel at this point.
‼️SPAIN'S PM SANCHEZ: SPAIN WILL BAN ACCESS TO SOCIAL MEDIA FOR MINORS UNDER 16
‼️SPAIN'S PM SANCHEZ: WE WILL CHANGE SPANISH LAW TO HOLD SOCIAL MEDIA EXECUTIVES ACCOUNTABLE FOR ILLEGAL, HATEFUL CONTENT
In September, TikTok told Lynda and her team of moderators to apply for new jobs. They were identical, but with an "AI element". Every union member who applied, including Lynda, was rejected. Every successful applicant was not a union member.
news.sky.com/story/former...
We @foxglovelegal.bsky.social are supporting a second case against TikTok for union-busting. Very proud to be helping with this action.
www.foxglove.org.uk/2026/02/02/p...
the AVOCADOs are finally achieving class consciousness
This piece by Rebecca Solnit is one of the most deeply moving explorations of what tech takes from us, how it transforms us, how it demands we become more like it and less human, that I've read www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
Big win for @foxglovelegal.bsky.social and others as the CMA announces they intend to force Google to let publishers opt out of having their content used for AI *without being penalised in search*. This is what we've been asking for since last year. Cautiously optimistic. digiday.com/media/google...
The CMA has said publishers should be able to opt out of Google’s AI Overviews without it affecting how they appear in search
The regulator also said the way Google decides how content is ranked in search results should be made “fair and transparent” pressgazette.co.uk/news/google-...
If you're in London, last spots available for this event at Newspeak House with Noortje Marres Alex Taylor @tmsqrll.bsky.social Dominique Barron @halcyene.bsky.social Annie Radcliffe Yasmine Boudiaf and Mukul Patel, on AI infra in public spaces luma.com/p4fmir78 (cc @edsaperia.bsky.social)
Government admitted they’d failed to ensure that the developer, Greystoke, and any future operator would be held to the commitments they’d made to mitigate the climate impact of their 90MW data centre.
🎉 UK govt today admitted a “serious error” in approving the hyperscale Woodlands data centre and said their decision should be “quashed”. Big win for @foxglovelegal.bsky.social and @globalactionplan.bsky.social. www.foxglove.org.uk/2026/01/22/u...
unfortunately I think this is going to be evergreen —
“It’s now been revealed that one of the most shocking ChatGPT-linked suicides happened shortly after Sam Altman claimed on X that ChatGPT 4o was safe.”
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
It’s quite galling to see data centre proposals be lauded by planning officers for their “commitment to mitigating climate change” by chucking some solar panels on a roof to cover off the 0.1% of energy use associated with the office blocks