Brian Merchant
@bcmerchant
author: BLOOD IN THE MACHINE and THE ONE DEVICE editor: TERRAFORM formerly: LA Times tech columnist, Motherboard, etc NEWSLETTER ----------v
WhatsApp shoved an unremovable AI button right where your thumb is on the screen. I don’t want this shit, I will never use it but they won’t let you disable it
You literally CANNOT opt out of seeing it or having your activity and data used to train it on Meta products in the US. It’s embedded in the search. Really irritating to have this garbage forced on us.
Big tech promotes the story that since ChatGPT burst onto the scene, AI has been so popular it's rushed to meet the demand. The reality is different. A study by a trio of design scholars shows tech co's have had to push AI on its users with a variety of intrusive tactics. 1/x
Three and a half years ago I wrote about the risk of surveillance wages thenation.com/article/societ… and I am SO thrilled that we now have a federal bill to ban it. This is not red or blue--who wants to have spooky financial insecurity data be used by your boss to lower wages?
“If Uber knows where their drivers are at any minute, and they see one of them go into a pawnshop and then offer them lower wages … we have to look at corporate behavior in this area.” — @RepCasar for @TheProspect ⬇️ prospect.org/economy/2025-0…
WhatsApp have meta ai and I can't disable it Google have gemini and I also can't disable it Most loser tech out there often opt in my data/photo/video/etc and I have to manually opt out without the option to see if my data already out the data bank or not Gen ai are f forced
Big tech promotes the story that since ChatGPT burst onto the scene, AI has been so popular it's rushed to meet the demand. The reality is different. A study by a trio of design scholars shows tech co's have had to push AI on its users with a variety of intrusive tactics. 1/x
well this hits extremely hard
Fuck it. Entire "Mama I'm Coming Home" from Ozzy's final set.
“As readers of this newsletter know, it often will not matter whether AI or automation tools work well or at all—they nonetheless can be used to justify more expansive dragnets to scoop up, administer, and weaponize our data and more aggressive intrusions into our daily lives.”
The new budget will be an absolute bonanza for state surveillance tech, AI grifters, and Silicon Valley giants that are increasingly comfortable abetting the authoritarian project to remake the US state. Link follows.