phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

Personal data is power and Trump's DOGE is symphoning it all into a master data set.
https://techpolicy.press/the-new-surveillance-state-why-data-privacy-is-now-essential-to-democracy

June 21, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

AI’s benefits are overstated and underproven, from cancer cures to hypothetical economic growth – while some of its flaws are real, immediate, and growing.
AI Now Institute
https://ainowinstitute.org/publications/research/executive-summary-artificial-power

June 03, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

How 'banking the unbanked' drew millions of Africans into the thrall of vulture capitalism. Unregulated FinTech loans is a new form of digital exploitation: "a ticking time bomb" of chronic indebtedness. https://techcabal.com/2025/05/16/bnpl-startups-debt-crisis-kenya/

May 18, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

Diplomats said the US state department pressure on African governments to issie licences to Musk's Sarlink company were an alarming departure from standard practice — because of both the tactics used and the person who would benefit most from them. Corruption at the highest level.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-musk-starlink-state-department-gambia-africa-pressure?utm_campaign=propublica-sprout&utm_content=1747360803&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&s=09

May 17, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

Musk is programming white genocide disinformation into his AI bot Grok, once more proving genAI is neither artificial or intelligent, and that digital technologies reflect and reproduce the politics of their inventors/investors/programmers.
#TechnologyIsPolitics

May 15, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

Launching the new book 'Digital Surveillance in Africa' authored by members of the African Digital Rights Network (ADRN) a virtual network of 75+ African researchers from 30+ African countries. #DRIF25
https://www.africandigitalrightsnetwork.org/publications

May 01, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

A new dataset, visualized as maps, 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. https://restofworld.org/2025/big-tech-ai-labor-supply-chain-african-workers/

April 28, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

Meta is facing a second set of lawsuits in Africa over the psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media content including depictions of murders, extreme violence and child sexual abuse.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/27/meta-faces-ghana-lawsuits-over-impact-of-extreme-content-on-moderators

April 28, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

@soapdodger yep I am. Especially when the UK-DOGE chainsaw is used on the NHS and Farage starts sending people to El Salvador concentration camps.

April 22, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

Farage is a benefit-scrounging shirker. Three days a week he fails to do his job as MP. Why is Britain paying Farage to work as an MP when he fails to turn up for his shift? He has his nose in the trough working to serve other interests. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/apr/21/mps-second-jobs-parliament-guardian-analysis

April 21, 2025
phatcontroller
phatcontroller@mastodon.social

Latin American communities fear that Big Tech server centre “data colonialism” will consume water they desperately need for drinking and agriculture.
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/11/the-cloud-vs-drought-water-hog-data-centers-threaten-latin-america-critics-say/

April 18, 2025