Onur Bakiner
bakiner.bsky.social
Onur Bakiner
@bakiner.bsky.social
Assoc. prof. of political science & director of Tech Ethics Initiative at Seattle University. Works on tech governance, human rights, law & society, transitional justice. He/him.
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Announcing…our transition committees! Between now and Inauguration Day, this team of stellar community leaders will identify and connect with dozens of additional community advisors to gather the broadest possible range of input, skills, and knowledge from across our city.
November 26, 2025 at 10:42 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Indigenous actor Elaine Miles of "Northern Exposure" was detained by ICE at a Redmond bus stop. When she showed them her Tribal ID, they told her it was fake.
Native American actress gave ICE agents her tribal ID. They called it 'fake,' she says
www.seattletimes.com
November 27, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Honored to serve on Mayor-elect @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social Transition Committee on Technology. For too long, too many New Yorkers have been left behind. NYC deserves governance that centers affordability, equity, and the public good-looking forward to the work ahead. www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...
NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announces transition committees
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani​ announced Monday the creation of 17 transition advisory committees made up of more than 400 people.
www.cbsnews.com
November 24, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait.

My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.
November 23, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
DOGE was created for data theft and infrastructure dismantling and it wildly succeeded on both counts within the first few weeks of its existence. It will take a generation to rebuild what it destroyed and the breach of data is unprecedented.
Bye bye, “DOGE”.

It no longer exists as a “centralized entity”, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

@reuters.com
www.reuters.com/world/us/dog...
November 23, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
NEW: US President Donald Trump is considering signing an executive order that would seek to challenge state efforts to regulate artificial intelligence through lawsuits and the withholding of federal funding, WIRED has learned.
Trump Takes Aim at State AI Laws in Draft Executive Order
The draft order, obtained by WIRED, instructs the US Justice Department to sue states that pass laws regulating AI.
www.wired.com
November 20, 2025 at 2:01 AM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
The latest trend in Facebook’s ever downward spiral down the AI slop toilet are AI deportation videos. And the Facebook algorithm is rewarding creators for it. @jasonkoebler.bsky.social reports.

Full story: www.404media.co/ai-generated...
November 17, 2025 at 10:37 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Thank you! 🙏🏻 💛💙
November 15, 2025 at 1:36 AM
They invent dozens of completely unrelated charges (e.g., corruption and espionage in İmamoğlu's case), so if he got released or acquitted, they would immediately re-arrest him for something else. They've been doing the same with Kurdish politicians and democracy activists for almost a decade now.
And in the EU: 🦗🦗🦗
November 11, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Seattle's Mamdani is winning by an absurdly small margin over our incumbent mayor, who once pulled a gun on a pregnant woman in a parking lot.

Vote in your local elections!
www.thestranger.com/news/2025/11...
November 11, 2025 at 1:35 AM
"To use pickaxes is to be cognitively and physiologically shaped for various modes of understanding. Telling this story, and remembering it actively on the ground today, is an act of “taking notice” and “avoiding oblivion.” This is truth as unconcealing."

www.seattleu.edu/technology-e...
The Pickax Unconceals
Blog Series: The Secret Lives of Tools
www.seattleu.edu
November 7, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
For @techpolicypress.bsky.social I laid out a tech agenda for Mayor-elect zohrankmamdani.bsky.social that resists surveillance and extraction while advancing his goals for affordability, dignity, and justice.
Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social)
Mayor-Elect of New York City
zohrankmamdani.bsky.social
November 5, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York City mayoral race, NBC News projects. nbcnews.to/4nIzNUC
November 5, 2025 at 2:33 AM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Unions, Lawsuits and Whistleblowers: Public Sector Leadership from Below

Excited to share my piece for the @mtlaiethics.bsky.social's State of AI Ethics Report on AI in Government: Public Sector Leadership and Implementation.

montrealethics.ai/state/
November 4, 2025 at 11:05 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
You can now search our database of 1.7 million Community Notes on X. The database contains every Community Note that has ever been produced, even those that are not yet publicly available. notetracker.socialmediadata.org
NoteTracker Dashboard
App for Discovering and Analyzing X Posts with Community Notes
notetracker.socialmediadata.org
November 1, 2025 at 11:04 AM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Everyone is talking about AI. It's obviously having a transformative impact across all sectors of society.

So how should the Canadian government approach it?

My interview with Yvonne Lau for the @financialpost.com

financialpost.com/technology/c...
Canada isn't doing its part to stop AI government surveillance, UofT director says
Ronald Deibert says the ability of governments and criminal actors to surveil and target people is growing in scope thanks to AI. Read more.
financialpost.com
October 29, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Character.AI plans to stop offering chatbots to users under 18 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/t...
Character.AI to Bar Children Under 18 From Using Its Chatbots
www.nytimes.com
October 29, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
"OpenAI said on Tuesday that it had adopted a new for-profit structure, a long-sought change that could allow the business to operate like a more traditional company while it raises the billions of dollars it needs to develop artificial intelligence."
OpenAI Restructures to Become a More Traditional For-Profit Company
www.nytimes.com
October 28, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Geliyor!
October 19, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
Today's AWS outage, which affected a range of websites and applications—from Signal to Fortnite to key UK government services—reveals the dangers of relying on a handful of Big Tech firms, write Article 19's Corinne Cath and Don Le. These are not glitches; they are democratic failures, they say.
Amazon Cloud Outage Reveals Democratic Deficit in Relying on Big Tech | TechPolicy.Press
The AWS outage demonstrates the need for a fundamental shift in how we think about digital infrastructure, write Corinne Cath and Don Le.
www.techpolicy.press
October 20, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
For the last 7 months, I’ve partnered with @rweingarten.bsky.social @aft.org to launch Vital Lessons, a series of free national town halls on key topics in public health.

Last week, we found out this series was awarded the Gold Medal by the Academy of Interactive and Digital Media.

Real impact!!
October 13, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
On Monday, RFK posted a rambling video on the HHS X account showing a series of graphs and directly stating that vaccines have had minimal impact on human health and saving lives.

Today, in response, we brought our own graphs.

We will not let his dangerous nonsense go unanswered.
October 2, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
WE WON: "This case -– perhaps the most important ever to fall w/in..this district court squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in US..have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.”"
October 1, 2025 at 12:03 AM
Reposted by Onur Bakiner
AAUP v. Rubio is out, and look at how it starts. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
September 30, 2025 at 4:37 PM