How AI will exacerbate “coordinated inauthentic behavior” — In July, Facebook announced they had removed four networks of accounts for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” It was the latest battle in the long running — and ever escalating — propaganda arms race. The tactics of “inauthenticity” exploded into the American political conversation following the Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference scandals…

This week in tech — When Facebook launched in 2004 I never would have guessed it (and its successors) would be the subject of international diplomacy. In part that’s because I was only 15, but it’s also because the idea that any government should care about “the new MySpace” just sounded silly. …

This week in tech — The digital panopticon continues to expand, with a lot of help from the surveillance industrial complex. The surveillance state / surveillance capitalism mega-trend — which dates back to at least the early aughts if you believe Shoshana Zuboff — got a few boosts this week. The state of Utah signed…

This week in tech — California’s controversial new law about employee classification is doing its best Oprah impression. From the very start, there were dozens of specific exemptions carved out of AB5. Some exemptions are cleanly applied to entire industries, others are more complex. But, since the law went into effect in January, many industries…

This week in tech — The Verge published a long feature looking into Lambda School, one of the controversial “coding bootcamps” that became popular in the 2010s. One of Lambda’s differentiators is their use of Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs). These alternative debt mechanisms allow students to take the course without paying any cost up front…

This week in tech — I have been obsessing over impeachment, elections, and politics in general the last few months. I watched nearly every minute of the house impeachment inquiry. It was maddening. Even worse was comparing what I saw on CSPAN to what I read in the news, on Twitter, and elsewhere. My confusion…

This week in tech — It was hard to miss the news that the world’s richest man had his phone hacked with help from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud. …

This week in tech — Microsoft has committed a billion dollars to becoming carbon neutral by 2025, and carbon negative by 2030. The company’s plans are multipronged and include powering their infrastructure with renewable energy, significant investments in carbon capture, and a research budget to help create new solutions to save the Earth from humans…

This week in tech — Two new California laws aimed at reigning in technology companies came into effect as we entered 2020. First is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) — a cousin of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — which has a host of provisions related to consumer data. The law also…