Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Rachel Auslander

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 1d

The MMR shot is safe and effective, and there is no credible evidence otherwise.

Breaking MMR into three shots means 3x more copays at the doctor’s office, 3x more hours of missed work, 3x more bummed out kiddos, and probably more than 3x as many kids who aren’t fully vaccinated.

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Reposted by Rachel Auslander

Neil Turkewitz @neilturkewitz.bsky.social · 1d

“Every time a news story frames AI competition as a race between companies or countries, it obscures the fact that ordinary people have been drafted into that race without their consent.”

We should all be Luddites | Brookings

Courtney Radsch discusses rehabilitating the idea of Luddites as people concerned with the control and impact of technology.

www.brookings.edu

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Reposted by Rachel Auslander

ACLU @aclu.org · 7d

BREAKING: Our client Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist detained by ICE in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity, will be deported tomorrow to El Salvador.

Mario and his family are being punished for his reporting. This cruelty is meant to stifle our free press.

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The Verge @theverge.com · 27d

The WSJ carelessly spread anti-trans misinformation www.theverge.com/politics/777...

The WSJ carelessly spread anti-trans misinformation

The Wall Street Journal’s fuckup while covering Charlie Kirk’s killing needs more than an editor’s note.

www.theverge.com

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David Mack @davidmackau.bsky.social · 27d

internet culture desks aren't just for cute meme trend stories. ever since gamergate, understanding how and why info moves online is critical to seeing how we got *here*

Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social · 27d

National political reporters: consult your gaming desk. You likely have a massively blind spot — this isn’t a dig at anyone, because I have this blind spot too b/c I’m not a gamer and am trying to adjust for it in real time — covering this very important moment if u don’t game & don’t know the memes

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 29d

What, exactly, does this string of words mean? Why does everyone who stands to profit from selling "AI" love to repeat it? And what's the value of slogans that masquerade as history?

sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...

"The Printing Press Democratized Knowledge": When Slogans Masquerade as History — Sonja Drimmer

The phrase is said so frequently it seems, like the mechanism it celebrates, to mechanically replicate itself.  It's become a favorite catchphrase among tech boosters of any sort (see my post on...

sonjadrimmer.com

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Rachel Auslander @rachelauslander.bsky.social · Aug 22

Thank you!

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Reposted by Rachel Auslander

Tim Newman @tnewmsblues.bsky.social · Aug 22

Fantastic — and actually quite heartening — interview with @histoftech.bsky.social.

And this is a great cross-cutting reminder to always keep in mind:
“It’s not inevitable…There’s always time to change things.”

It’s not inevitable. History doesn’t just happen. People, organizations, and institutions make it happen. There’s always time to change things. Even once a technology or a set of practices becomes entrenched, it can still be changed. That’s real revolution. To say that the technology can become inevitable and sort of entrenched in these simple terms is, let’s just say, a big oversimplification.

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Reposted by Rachel Auslander

Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · Aug 22

Historian of tech @histoftech.bsky.social on how AI hype is a way of gaming the system by "reengineering society around the technology." The goal is to "create an environment—a labor environment, a regulatory environment, a user environment—that will bring that unlikely thing closer to reality."

Rachel Auslander @rachelauslander.bsky.social · Aug 21

I spoke with @histoftech.bsky.social about AI hype, how tools are used to amass power and reshape systems, expertise, and more! www.fastcompany.com/91384078/not...

Historian Mar Hicks on why nothing about AI is inevitable

The author of Programmed Inquality peers through the AI hype by recalling the rise of past technologies.

www.fastcompany.com

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Rachel Auslander @rachelauslander.bsky.social · Aug 22

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me!!

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Reposted by Rachel Auslander

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · Aug 21

"Large data centers, many devoted to researching artificial intelligence, are expected to use more than 150 billion gallons of water across the U.S. over the next five years, according to the advocacy organization Alliance for the Great Lakes."

AI could deplete drinking water sources around Illinois, Midwest

Large data centers working on artificial intelligence that need water for cooling could drain area water supplies, a Great Lakes advocacy group warns.

chicago.suntimes.com

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Rachel Auslander @rachelauslander.bsky.social · Aug 21

Thank you for reading!

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Rachel Auslander @rachelauslander.bsky.social · Aug 21

I spoke with @histoftech.bsky.social about AI hype, how tools are used to amass power and reshape systems, expertise, and more! www.fastcompany.com/91384078/not...

Historian Mar Hicks on why nothing about AI is inevitable

The author of Programmed Inquality peers through the AI hype by recalling the rise of past technologies.

www.fastcompany.com

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Reposted by Rachel Auslander

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · Aug 21

We have apparently entered the "papers, please" stage of Trump's takeover of D.C. law enforcement.

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · Aug 21

NEW—Earlier this evening agents from ICE/other fed agencies were outside Rhode Island Ave metro in DC asking people exiting the station for their IDs, per someone who experienced it. When the person presented their Real ID license, an agent said that wasn't sufficient. Luckily they had secondary ID.

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The Conversation U.S. @us.theconversation.com · Aug 20

Google's data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa used 1 BILLION gallons of water in 2024 - enough to supply all of Iowa's residential water for five days.

Researchers in water law and policy explain how companies rarely tell the public exactly how much water data centers consume: buff.ly/uRvYWPN

Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much

In 2024, one data center in Iowa consumed 1 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the state’s residences with water for five days.

buff.ly

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Reposted by Rachel Auslander

Julia Métraux @juliametraux.bsky.social · Jul 27

As I reported earlier this year at @motherjones.com, Russell Vought's daughter has benefited immensely from NIH research, and her condition (cystic fibrosis) has received more research funding than most rare diseases. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

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Scott Nover @scottnover.bsky.social · Jul 15

"If you lose a local newspaper in a small community, someone can come in at another point and start up another local newspaper. But once broadcast licenses are gone, they’re gone." www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Rural America and kids will suffer if PBS is defunded, its chief says

PBS’s Paula Kerger said that federal cuts to public media will harm local member stations — especially ones in rural America — the most.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · Jun 17

I often think about the essay from Sam Harnett about how tech media sold the gig economy to the public and overlooked the problems with the model it was rolling out, especially seeing what they’ve done with generative AI and chatbots.

Words Matter: How Tech Media Helped Write Gig Companies into Existence

When companies like Uber and TaskRabbit appeared in Silicon Valley, there was a collective media swoon over these new app-based service-delivery corporations an

papers.ssrn.com

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · Jun 17

One month apart.

A screenshot of a Wired article by Dell Cameron and Dhruv Mehrotra, published May 14, 2025, with the headline: "CFPB Quietly Kills Rule to Shield Americans From Data Brokers."

A screenshot of a Wired article by Lily Hay Newman, published June 16, 2025, with the headline: "Minnesota Shooting Suspect Allegedly Used Data Broker Sites to Find Targets' Addresses."

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John Herrman @jwherrman.bsky.social · Jun 18

Meta AI leakage is a massive scandal, a careless company exposing deeply private stuff. It's also a window into what the AI companies see in their data — what they know about how people actually use chatbots nymag.com/intelligence...

Intelligencer
GIVE A GIFT
A lot of people are looking for help with tasks that are either annoying or difficult in other ways. I listened to one man talk Meta's Al through composing a job listing for an assistant at a dental office in a small town, which it eventually did to his satisfaction; Meta promoted another in which a woman co-wrote an obituary for her husband with Meta. AI, remembering and adding more details as she went on. There was obvious homework "help" from people with young-sounding voices, who usually seemed to get what they wanted. Other conversations just trailed off. Quite a few followed the same up-and-down trajectory, which was emphasized by shifting tones of voice. The user writing the dental job listing started out terse, then loosened up as he got what he wanted. When he asked Meta Al to share the listing on other Meta platforms, though, it couldn't, and he was annoyed. A woman asking for help getting a friend who had been accused of theft removed from a retail surveillance system sounded relieved to have an audience and was pleased to get a lot of generically helpful-sounding advice. When it came to actionable steps, however, Meta.ai became more vague and the user more frustrated. Many conversations resemble unsatisfying customer-service interactions, only with the twist that, at the end, users feel both let down and sort of stupid for thinking it would work in the first place. Meta.ai has made a fool of them. It's not the best first impression.

Far more common, though, than transactional conversation like these were voice recordings of people seeking something akin to therapy, some of whom were clearly in distress. These are users who, when confronted with an ad for a free Al chatbot, started confiding in it as if they were talking to a trusted professional or a close friend. A tearful man talked about missing his former stepson, asked Meta.ai to "tell him that I love him," and thanked it when the conversation was over. Over the course of a much longer conversation, a woman asked for help coming down from a panic attack and gradually calmed down. In a shorter chat, a man concluded, after suggesting he was contemplating a divorce, that actually he had decided on a divorce. Some users chatted to pass the time. A lot of recordings contained clear evidence of mental-health crises with incoherent and paranoid exchanges about religion, surveillance, addiction, and philosophy, during which Meta.ai usually remained cheerfully supportive. These chatters, in contrast to the ones asking for help with tasks and productivity, often came away satisfied. Perhaps they'd been indulged or affirmed - chatbots are nothing if not obsequious - but one got the sense that mostly they just felt like they'd been listened to.

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Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · Jun 18

There are no distractions. It's all bad. Systematically stripping trans people of their rights, guys in balaclavas shoving any brown person with a tattoo into a ummarked vans, ending healthcare for millions. It's all in service of fascism and technofeudalism. It's all one thing. That's the point.

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Gizmodo @gizmodo.com · Jun 18

Silicon Valley Execs Join the Army as Officers (But Won't Have to Attend Boot Camp)

The tech industry is fully on board, but the rank and file won't have to do time as grunts.

gizmodo.com

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Rachel Auslander @rachelauslander.bsky.social · Jun 17

There is a push to use AI in newsrooms as a tool to assist reporters with research, fact-checking, and data analysis with the justification that it’s not replacing reporters’ jobs. But this overlooks the fact that those tasks are actually real jobs that are being automated away in the process

Rainesford Stauffer @rainesford.bsky.social · Jun 17

This kills me, not just because of inevitable factual errors & how this further erodes trust in facts to begin with, but because many publications (not to mention publishing) don't employee fact-checkers. Without those specific skills, everything is already worse off. And this makes it even worse.

Kathryn VanArendonk @kvanaren.bsky.social · Jun 17

am i having a stroke

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · Jun 17

If you, like Casey Newton, use LLMs for fact-checking, that should be disclosed directly beneath your byline

Kathryn VanArendonk @kvanaren.bsky.social · Jun 17

am i having a stroke

NEWTON Right. I mentioned that one way I use large language models is for fact-checking. I’ll write a column and put it into an L.L.M., and I’ll ask it to check it for spelling, grammatical and factual errors. Sometimes a chatbot will tell me, “You keep describing ‘President Trump,’ but as of my knowledge cutoff, Joe Biden is the president.” But then it will also find an actual factual error I missed. So I get to see the limitations of the chatbot but also the power.

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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · Jun 12

Research conducted by the African Content Moderators Union and Personaldata.io reveals the extent to which African workers are indirectly employed in the tech sector, doing content moderation, customer service, and data annotation for AI models, among other jobs, per Rest of World.

How Big Tech hides its outsourced African workforce

New data reveals the hidden network of African workers powering AI, as they push for transparency from the global companies that employ them indirectly.

restofworld.org

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