🧵 Thread ahead.

For over a decade, the evidence shows that social media platforms, especially Meta and Google, have profited financially from spreading misinformation because they sell highly engaging content to advertisers.

Below are some examples of how they profit from spreading misinformation.

NEW: updated long-run gap in voting between young men and women in Germany:

Gender divide continues to widen, but contrary to what is often assumed, young men continue to vote roughly in line with the overall population, while young women have swung sharply left.

www.ft.com/content/29fd...

Extremely Polarized Democracies Often See Democracy Erode
Of 52 cases where democracies became severely polarized, half experienced democratic backsliding.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

That point in the history of the world when self proclaimed guardians of free speech and information integrity are the likes of Meta and Delhi police. m.thewire.in/article/gove...

Great perspective from my former colleagues at OGP - the lack of oversight over Low Earth Satellites and AI can do significant (and ongoing) harm, but with the essential safeguards, the potential to tackle corruption

Sen Ted Cruz requests documents from the Dept of Justice on whether "foreign entities are directly or indirectly engaging in
political activities in an attempt to influence U.S. AI policy." 😶 The letter makes for an interesting read. www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...

Must read!
"We highlight three main affordances of ‘open’ AI - transparency, reusability, & extensibility;[...]‘open’ AI allows some forms of oversight & experimentation...openness alone does not perturb the concentration of power in AI." @ainowinstitute.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great piece on freedom of expression in armed conflict. Proud of my friend Chantal Joris for this deep and valuable contribution to the debate on this topic.

www.article19.org/free-express...

In Dec, the UN General Assembly will adopt a new cybercrime convention, a massive blow to digital rights globally. Interestingly, both civil society & companies have criticised it. This great piece by @zaghdoudist.bsky.social highlights how cybercrime laws have been misused (in the Arab region).

"The discrimination perpetuated by UDK and ATP’s algorithms is happening in an environment of pre-existing inequalities...within Danish society,...embedded in the design of ATP’s algorithmic models, facilitating the categorization of individuals & communities based on difference or “othering”"

My sister is on hunger strike to free her son Alaa Abd el-Fattah from jail in Egypt. We don’t want her to die | Ahdaf Soueif

Brief update on our ongoing efforts to allow users to specify consent (or not) for AI training: 🧵

New to bsky! Talk to me about digital policy and open government (I can tell you what not to do when designing policy processes, especially if you're a government official). Always happy to exchange notes on food recommendations, Indian classical dance (or any dance really) and the sunday papers.