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Rebecca Williams

@rebeccawilliams.info

11K followers 3.1K following 1.7K posts

Writer, lawyer, artist exploring how technology and power shape one another. Privacy @ACLU.org, Board @MuckRock.com, Teaching @Pratt.edu. 🌐 rebeccawilliams.info Signal: rebecca.411

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 14d

Hello! I have been thinking a lot about the tech organizers are using right now (what works & what the risks are) & I am going to write something up.

If you are organizing, tell me about how you hate or love your tech stack & why.

Please DM/text me on Signal ASAP.

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 2h

During the George Floyd protests I was living in a group house in DC and my international housemate who was listening to Joe Rogan in a curious international way told me that antifa was a violent gang & I said no no I’m pretty sure I’m antifa and she got wide-eyed for a second.

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 1d

I believe debating rhetoric on its face is just as worthy or perhaps more worthy than discussing related material outcomes, because ideas lead to actions, and eventually, down the line,
material outcomes. A bad idea should not be allowed to fester, even if nothing has happened yet.

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Reposted by Rebecca Williams

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 1d

NEW: In May, a Texas police department said they used the powerful Flock surveillance network against a woman who had an abortion "for her safety"

Newly obtained court records show it was a 'death investigation,' and they considered charging her with a crime

www.404media.co/police-said-...

Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime

Court records show that the narrative Flock and a Texas Sheriff's Office has told the public isn't the whole story, and that police were conducting a 'death investigation' into the abortion.

www.404media.co

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 1d

One of my students called it "a surveillance necklace," another said it was like "bugging yourself."

Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 1d

I will say nyc has an active digital security community w/ many groups & activities folks can participate in (I keep learning about more post burner phone event), it’s really encouraging and is a zillionth reason to love this city

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 1d

this was like me w/ old film cameras in high school but more encompassing & consequential, really beautiful 🙏

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 1d

“The Luddite Club, a nonprofit group that supports taking smartphone breaks, has 26 chapters, nearly all of them at high schools or colleges.”

Young People Are Falling in Love With Old Technology

Driven by a feeling they’ve lost control to screens, twenty-somethings are resurrecting CDs, flip phones and digital cameras

www.wsj.com

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 1d

❤️

ACLU @aclu.org · 7d

A reminder that anything recorded on a device like this AI "friend" could be used against you — by hackers, private companies, or the government.

This technology isn't a friend, it's surveillance.

AI startup Friend spent more than $1M on all those subway ads | TechCrunch

If you’ve been on the New York subway recently, you’ve probably seen stark white ads promoting a wearable AI device called Friend.

techcrunch.com

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 2d

trump is papering over where public services used to be using gov tech infrastructure

Federal US domain bot @fed-us-domain-bot.bsky.social · 2d

🚀 NOTICE: Federal US website newly registered.
https://trumprx.gov

Action taken by the Executive Office of the President at or around 2025-10-06 06:13:44.

trumprx.gov

Federal US website registered. Content may not be visible yet.

trumprx.gov

Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 2d

I want to read a little history of asking the computer questions; ask jeeves -> ask.com -> gai chatbots (etc)

It's very different than going through the card catalog.

Reposted by Rebecca Williams

Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 2d

Another effort to track ICE raids was just taken offline www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/06/1...

Another effort to track ICE raids was just taken offline

People over Papers was removed by Padlet, the platform it was built on, yesterday.

www.technologyreview.com

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 5d

me too

Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 5d

I was walking through the subway today & I was like wow none of the other ads are defaced just friend & some friend ads just have a half-hearted cross out, just anything at all -- but then I kept walking & I saw "AI" carved on the face of an AI model for sketchers, beautiful, consistent, anti-AI art

Reposted by Rebecca Williams

Stone Cold Jane Austen @abbyhiggs.bsky.social · 6d

Imagine hating me and I’m just at home climbing onto my own countertop to get into a cupboard

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 6d

this does look like my end of twitter experience

Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 6d

beautiful

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 6d

@irisvanrooij.bsky.social made this due to my final metaphor in doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

AI is like a ouija board: promoting & enabling mysticism, pseudoscience, & pseudo-intellectualism; hiding the human-in-the-loop, the user & the creators of the data, who do the intelligence & provide the inputs.

AI technology is much
more akin to a ouija board than anything else: promoting and enabling mysticism, pseudoscience, and
pseudo-intellectualism (section 2: Marketing, hype, & harm); obfuscating the human-in-the-loop,
which includes the user and the creators of the data, who do most of the ‘intelligence’ and provide all
the inputs (subsection 3.4: Anthropomorphism and other circular reasoning). And combining all the
above, tricking and scamming us because we do not recognise that it merely reflects our own collective
intelligence back at us in distorted and damaging forms.

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 7d

some NYC Tech x Labor events

Oct 18/19 techworkerscoalition.org/circuit-brea...
Nov 7 www.eventbrite.com/e/new-luddis...

Circuit Breakers -- A Conference for Workers Organizing in Tech

Circuit Breakers is a conference for organizers and activists in the tech industry to come together and learn, build community, strategize, and recognize our collective power. It will be held October ...

techworkerscoalition.org

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 7d

this example of gov borrowing from tech anti-labor tactics is fascinating

Dara Kerr @darakerr.bsky.social · 7d

This is a classic tactic Uber and Lyft have used when threatened by things like minimum wage laws for drivers --overlaying their apps and websites with company messaging.

Shocking to see the federal government doing it now

Justice Department website on October 1, 2025, saying "democrats have shut down the government"

Screenshot of Uber app with a message from Uber pushing a ballot measure campaign that restricted drivers' labor rights

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 7d

They spent $1.8M on the website domain & over $1M on “the largest NYC subway ad campaign ever.”

Meanwhile, it doesn’t work & isn’t shipping. It’s Theranos, but for a surveillance necklace.

Altogether, it feels less like a real ad & more like a PsyOp test that my beloved New Yorkers have passed. ❤️

The New York Groove @nygroove.nyc · 12d

tech grifters want you to think AI is ubiquitous and inevitable, but you know what's actually ubiquitous and inevitable? new yorkers' ability to dunk on this dumb slop nygroove.nyc/ai-subway-ads/

Photos: Everyone hates those AI subway ads as much as you

Friend dot com? More like Enemy dot com!!

nygroove.nyc

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 7d

this is what we call “Trojan horse AI” when it just shows up in your existing devices / services

julian chokkattu @julianchokkattu.bsky.social · 7d

👀

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 7d

I can think of more now but these were fair to call out at the time

Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · Mar 14

I see two potential points of acceleration to the constitutional crisis.

1. The government shuts down and DOGE continues its own shutdown work with less civil servants present to resist it & some things never come back.
2. SCOTUS doesn't resist at all.

Ed Kilgore @edkilgore.bsky.social · Mar 13

"We officially have a one-party authoritarian government in Washington right now.... Perhaps at least five [Supreme Court] justices will find the backbone to resist Trump’s claims of a constitutional right to do whatever the hell he wants." nymag.com/intelligence...

Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 7d

DOGE is also excepted (even without Elon there)

Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 9d

New OPM guidance says OMB "has determined" agencies may do work on mass firings during shutdowns.

This seems like a blatant Antideficiency Act violation, which caries criminal penalties.

However, the Trump admin won't prosecute itself, so this is yet more broken budget laws from the Trump admin

🧵

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 8d

lovely (& tomorrow)

SASSI South @sassisouth.bsky.social · Sep 4

Join SASSI for a digital workshop on Wednesday, October 1st from 7-8:30pm ET to learn how to identify and map Flock Safety cameras in your community and city as a tactic in challenging the use of automated license plate readers in your city.

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 8d

have there been any deepfakes showing people committing crimes they’ve never committed yet & I was like great question

Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 8d

my students asked about this today 😔

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 8d

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

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Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 9d

is the full stack community of the future:

- a discord (w signal side quests/friendships),
- a ghost newsletter (w/ special collector paper zines)

& you'll just have to take my word for it if you were not there?

Rebecca Williams @rebeccawilliams.info · 9d

it feels possible that I become more of a Discord person by the end of the year

this (Bluesky) already feels like a secret thing I do, what will that feel like?

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