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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams
@fractalecho.bsky.social
2.4K followers 710 following 780 posts
Common Cyborg | NB ND Mad Bean | Disability and Epistemology | Research Ethics and Dissensus
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 21d
Why are the negative consequences of so-called AI so consistently directed at disabled and racialized people? Disabling Intelligences details the ongoing effects of the eugenicist mindset on our corporate ventures and our interpersonal relationships. link.springer.com/book/9783032...
Disabling Intelligences
This book discusses the influences of eugenics on the AI industry and the impacts of AI opportunism on disabled people.
link.springer.com
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 15h
Yikes
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Reposted by Rua M. Williams
spavel.bsky.social
Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 2d
Big tech is laying off user researchers in droves, because it believes that coercing its customers is more profitable than silly things like "making good products people want to buy."

But now the FAFO pendulum is coming around, with Amazon's $2.5B dark pattern settlement and #a11y lawsuits galore.
UX so bad that it's illegal
Big tech is divesting from user-centered design, and getting into hot water with the law.
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
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Reposted by Rua M. Williams
authorwinifred.blacksky.app
Winifred Tylenol Spice Burton @authorwinifred.blacksky.app · 2d
They don't mind the cultural cache that comes from being a gather place, but that is simply not what they're for. Not really.

Now that leadership is ENTIRELY mask off, use this place to build meatspace connections that can scale or transfer. None of these platforms are safe right now anyway.
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 2d
"Mise en fiches de l'homme" can be translated as "Indexing of Man," but a clunkier yet somewhat more illustrative translation is "to set the man in files." The data becomes the man. This is one way in which the state controls narratives of its citizens*, both in life and in death.

*and all present
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 2d
To become a data subject is to bear witness in one's own self-alienation through an algorith-mic rasterization into bits. Simone Browne uses Frantz Fannon's "mise en fiches de l'homme" to describe how surveillance capitalism creates a kind of unauthorized biography of its subjects (Browne 2015).
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 2d
This performance of respectable mental fitness, or even "greatness," is made compulsory by what Oscar Gandy calls "The Panoptic Sort" which, through predatory data regimes, determines what goods, services, and rights, you have access to (Gandy 2021, 100-116).
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 2d
For those conditions of deviance which are legible and seemingly immutable, the performance of a respectable mental fitness is always required (Chan 2025, Chapter 3).
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 2d
This metaeugenic drive of self-surveillance is multifaceted and can adapt and flux to the surveil-lance and repression of all expressions "out of line."
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 2d
The surveillance of and oppression of Black people is designed in part to keep white people "in line" to keep them afraid of deviance and produce within them self-surveillance and self-policing beliefs and practices.
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 2d
Surveillance designed to detect, trace, and contain blackness works against all freedoms because it is inevitably seeking out expressions of so-called blackness within all subjects (Browne 2015).
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 2d
Re: the Windy City, 🧊, and social media surveillance

Patricia Hill Collins reminds us that "oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type, and that oppressions work together in producing injustice."

link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Image of page from Disabling Intelligences. The text is in this thread.
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Reposted by Rua M. Williams
chantalalive.blacksky.app
Chantal James @chantalalive.blacksky.app · 7d
Happy Hoodoo Heritage Month hoodoos! I wrote a novel for you with a hex at its center if you care to support.
bookshop.org/p/books/none...
None But the Righteous: A Novel
A Novel
bookshop.org
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 7d
Yes the differences in what power you have in various domains is acknowledged.
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 7d
Yes the differences in what power you have in various domains is acknowledged.
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Reposted by Rua M. Williams
lizjackson.bsky.social
Liz Jackson @lizjackson.bsky.social · 8d
Posting again, because I think this has an audience beyond my reach. @fractalecho.bsky.social and I published a piece detailing Microsoft's inaccurate 'Inclusive Design' story and what it says more broadly about who 'Inclusive Design' omits from the record. buttondown.com/TYFYFL/archi...
Screenshot of the headline, Human Censored Design - and a blurb "The Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit popularized norms about disability inclusion that when teased out, become taboos. It doesn’t just sacrifice the one for the many. It also exploits misconceptions about representation in order to locate and select whichever one can be used to neutralize, undermine, bury, and censor the many. There are three primary methods embedded within Inclusive Design power grabs, and they often work together to achieve something more resembling Human Censored Design"
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Reposted by Rua M. Williams
lizjackson.bsky.social
Liz Jackson @lizjackson.bsky.social · 9d
Our latest for Buttondown, @fractalecho.bsky.social and I dug into Microsoft's inaccurate telling of its own 'Inclusive Design' story and who Inclusive Design erases more broadly. bsky.app/profile/lizj...
lizjackson.bsky.social
Liz Jackson @lizjackson.bsky.social · 9d
Our latest for Thank You for your Feedback Loop. A story and an idea. I'm hoping @fractalecho.bsky.social can better explain. buttondown.com/TYFYFL/archi...
Screenshot of the Human Censored Design header with a blurb: The Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit popularized norms about disability inclusion that when teased out, become taboos. It doesn’t just sacrifice the one for the many. It also exploits misconceptions about representation in order to locate and select whichever one can be used to neutralize, undermine, bury, and censor the many. There are three primary methods embedded within Inclusive Design power grabs, and they often work together to achieve something more resembling Human Censored Design
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Reposted by Rua M. Williams
lizjackson.bsky.social
Liz Jackson @lizjackson.bsky.social · 9d
Our latest for Thank You for your Feedback Loop. A story and an idea. I'm hoping @fractalecho.bsky.social can better explain. buttondown.com/TYFYFL/archi...
Screenshot of the Human Censored Design header with a blurb: The Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit popularized norms about disability inclusion that when teased out, become taboos. It doesn’t just sacrifice the one for the many. It also exploits misconceptions about representation in order to locate and select whichever one can be used to neutralize, undermine, bury, and censor the many. There are three primary methods embedded within Inclusive Design power grabs, and they often work together to achieve something more resembling Human Censored Design
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 9d
🫨
awyrm.bsky.social
Adryana H. @awyrm.bsky.social · 9d
I read Rua's new book in one go because I literally couldn't put it down. I can't recommend this enough.
fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 21d
Why are the negative consequences of so-called AI so consistently directed at disabled and racialized people? Disabling Intelligences details the ongoing effects of the eugenicist mindset on our corporate ventures and our interpersonal relationships. link.springer.com/book/9783032...
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 9d
😱🥹😭
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 10d
Yes. I should have clarified LLM integration but I'm le tired
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 10d
Speech to text is signal processing and text to speech is signal generation and the reason I resist calling it AI is because people are corrupting these technologies by adding machine learning components that make them less reliable.
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 10d
It is something I wish for, along with open access, but I do not know the timeline. I know that robot voice doesn't work for everyone, but I use voice reader to convert my PDFs to audio. (text to speech synthesis is not "AI")
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 10d
And that's because the people who are building these technologies hate - us -
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 10d
The gendered and raced aspect of "the tasks we hate" is central, yes.
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fractalecho.bsky.social
Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 10d
I don't like that I missed your book. I cover several AI related texts. This would have been useful for chapter 5.