Michael Zimmer
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michaelzimmer.bsky.social
Michael Zimmer
@michaelzimmer.bsky.social

Privacy & data ethics scholar. Director of @MUDataEthics.bsky.social at Marquette University. I also curate @ZuckerbergFiles.bsky.social

Michael Zimmer is a privacy and data ethics scholar. He currently is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Marquette University and Director of the Center for Data, Ethics, and Society. Previously, he was on the faculty at the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and director of the Center for Information Policy Research. Zimmer is on the advisory board of the Future of Privacy Forum, and was on the executive committee of the Association of Internet Researchers from 2009-2016. He was the Microsoft Resident Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School from 2007-2008. .. more

Computer science 32%
Political science 22%

Reposted by Michael Zimmer

Now we have a good amount of free time and people look for things to do. One of the media tried warming a banana over the camp fire. She was very disappointed in the result. #BM100

Reposted by Michael Zimmer

The conch was blown at 5:00am. The 2026 Barkley Marathons begins in one hour. #BM100
Facebook plans to put facial recognition in its glasses and they think we’re too stupid to fight back.

Their internal memo: “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”
Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses
www.nytimes.com

Read this thread.
I have a friend who said, of Starfleet Academy, that this took them out of it - that seeing a person in a wheelchair in the 32nd century seemed unrealistic, since medicine in Star Trek "should be able to cure whatever was wrong with them."

That's not the case, for any number of possible reasons.
I have a friend who said, of Starfleet Academy, that this took them out of it - that seeing a person in a wheelchair in the 32nd century seemed unrealistic, since medicine in Star Trek "should be able to cure whatever was wrong with them."

That's not the case, for any number of possible reasons.
Trump nominated a legit white nationalist to a top post at the State Department. I asked him some basic questions about his belief in the “erasure of white culture”. Watch this embarrassing, fumbling answer. Like he has never before been asked to explain his views.
News: The top-secret whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. www.wsj.com/politics/nat...
Gabbard Whistleblower Complaint Based on Intercepted Conversation About Jared Kushner
The substance of the conversation, which covered in part issues related to Iran, isn’t known.
www.wsj.com
NUDE ELON MUSK: The invisible clothes I'm wearing are a product of xAthleisure, which will roll out self-dressing outfits within two years at the latest

THE CREDULOUS PRESS: Fully Clothed Tesla Innovator Does It Again
I am increasingly scared of flying and this does not help.

The reason the El Paso Airport was closed, my colleagues report, is that federal agents shot a laser into the sky that could take down an airplane.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/u...

For the 2nd year in a row, the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES) is the same week as as the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW). @acm-cscw.bsky.social #SHM

You’re in for a treat. Enjoy!
A Reuters photographer captured this image of a page from Pam Bondi's "burn book," which she used to counter any questions from Democratic lawmakers during an unhinged hearing today.

It looks like the DOJ monitored members of Congress’s searches of the unredacted Epstein files.

Just wow.
Please... do not do any of this...

@evystadium.bsky.social has more. full story by @jasonkoebler.bsky.social here: www.404media.co/rfk-jrs-nutr...

Reposted by Michael Zimmer

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

*IF* we think AI models are capable of conducting scoping/structured literature reviews, then let’s just do that. But then we should *NOT* pretend clever prompt engineering and formatting the results into a manuscript should be a “publication” in any traditional scholarly sense. #OldManYellsAtCloud
“Researchers from Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and Yale universities recently found that 60 FDA-authorized medical devices using AI were linked to 182 product recalls, according to a research letter published in the JAMA Health Forum in August.”
As AI enters the operating room, reports arise of botched surgeries and misidentified body parts
Medical device makers have been rushing to add AI to their products. While proponents say the new technology will revolutionize medicine, regulators are receiving a rising number of claims of patient ...
www.reuters.com
i forget who made it but it cracks me up lol

Reposted by Michael Zimmer

Back into my binge-watch of #DS9. I'm up to the 2-part Bell Riots episode. It's scary AF just how well they predicted where we'd be... and this was in the 90s. Three decades later and we haven't learned a goddamned thing.
This is bleak: Jes Staley, currently CEO of Barclays, reassuring Epstein that popular revolt against financial elites is unlikely because capitalism and pop culture have defanged social movements, leaving people more invested in consumption than justice.

Really sad to hear that First Monday is shutting down after 30 years. It was one of the first journals devoted to internet research & fully open access: no fees, no paywalls, and authors retained copyright.

My very first publication was there in 2004. End of an era.

firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...
First Monday @ 30 | First Monday
firstmonday.org

Was it Scovino? I hope it was Scovino.
NEW: Racist video of Obamas removed from Trump social account

A White House official blamed a staffer for erroneously posting the video.
Racist video of Obamas removed from Trump's social account
The post was up on Trump's Truth Social account for about 12 hours.
www.axios.com

Working on a little re-branding and re-focusing of the @mudataethics.bsky.social. So far, campus leadership has declined my proposal for the Center for the Butlerian Jihad.

Back to the drawing board.

Reposted by Michael Zimmer

NEW: Racist video of Obamas removed from Trump social account

A White House official blamed a staffer for erroneously posting the video.
Racist video of Obamas removed from Trump's social account
The post was up on Trump's Truth Social account for about 12 hours.
www.axios.com

Some real top-notch age verification tech over at DOJ. #click
That Jeff Bezos's Amazon gave Brett Ratner, someone photographed with Jeffrey Epstein and in the Epstein Files, $75 million to make a doc about Melania Trump, while he chooses to destroy The Washington Post, says about all you need to know.
I don’t like this
INBOX: Washington Post Ukraine Correspondent Lizzie Johnson announces that she has been laid off in the middle of a below-freezing war zone without power, heat, or running water.
Highlighting the speaker who stood in front of the Surprise mayor and told him to consider what the Mayor of Ohrdruf must’ve thought before he died by suicide: “He might have thought ‘how is this my fault I had no jurisdiction over this’ maybe he said ‘this site was not subject to local zoning.’”