Pluralistic: You can't fight enshittification (31 Jul 2025)

by Cory Doctorow

You, me and everyone we know have all been subjected to a 40-year blitz of anti-solidaristic propaganda, aimed at convincing us that we are only allowed to fight the system as individuals. Don't like your health care? Shop around! Don't like your boss? Quit your job! Under no circumstances should you advocate for either a union or socialized health-care. You're an individual, there is no such thing as society.

"There's no such thing as society" is what you say if you benefit from society (which absolutely exists) and don't want it to change.

Visit link

A Startup is Selling Data Hacked from Peoples’ Computers to Debt Collectors

by Joseph Cox

A private intelligence company run by a young founder is now taking that hacked data from what it says are more than 50 million computers, and reselling it for profit to a wide range of different industries, including debt collectors; couples in divorce proceedings; and even companies looking to poach their rivals’ customers.

Visit link

Republican Budget Bill Signals New Era in Federal Surveillance

by Dean Jackson

“The golden rule of privacy… is that information collected for one purpose can’t be repurposed without permission. We don’t have that rule.” Instead, Nojeim explained, the US has a “sectoral approach” which is weakest in areas related to law enforcement access. “We’re at a point in the march forward of technology,” he said, where ”more human thought than ever in the history of mankind is becoming available to the government without the need for a warrant or court permission. Where that goes depends entirely on the goodwill of professionals who enforce vague laws that have been designed intentionally to give them flexibility in emergencies. Unfortunately, those laws are being exploited by the Administration, which is making false claims about emergency [and] national security risk.”

Visit link

The New Surveillance State: Why Data Privacy Is Now Essential to Democracy

by Laura MacCleery

When the government can track where you go, whom you associate with, and what you spend your money on, it violates the Fourth Amendment. It also chills First Amendment freedom of expression, undermines your freedom to travel, and destroys what Justice Louis Brandeis famously called “the right to be left alone” — the fundamental privacy right that underlies American liberty.

Visit link

A Starter Guide to Protecting Your Data From Hackers and Corporations

by Matt Burgess, Sophie Johal, Michaela Neville

I think in a lot of cases when people claim they have nothing to hide, they often jump to thinking about illegal or malicious things. When in fact, privacy, for me, isn’t about “hiding” things at all. You should be able to have the space—both in the physical and digital world—to not be surveilled or have your actions tracked. People should be able to act without intrusion from others—that doesn’t mean you’re hiding anything, but you just don’t want to share everything you do with everyone (or anyone). And really that’s why privacy is considered a fundamental human right.

Visit link

Reports of LLMs mastering math have been greatly exaggerated

by Ernest Davis

The refusal of these kinds of AI to admit ignorance or incapacity and their obstinate preference for generating incorrect but plausible-looking answers instead are one of their most dangerous characteristics. It is extremely easy for a user to pose a question to an LLM, get what looks like a valid answer, and then trust to it, without doing the careful inspection necessary to check that it is actually right.

This is an area where human experts and LLMs diverge. Both are capable of making mistakes, but humans who have expertise in a certain area are generally more aware of the limits and gaps in their knowledge.

Visit link

When Your Threat Model Is Being a Moron

by Jason Koebler

If you're discussing upcoming war plans or otherwise have reason to believe your device is specifically being targeted for surveillance by a nation state, you need to take additional precautions beyond using Signal.

For everyone else, Signal is still a good bet for everyday privacy and security.

Visit link

How to Delete Your Data From 23andMe

by Emily Mullin, Lily Hay Newman

If you've used 23andMe, you should follow these steps to delete your data and (if applicable) destroy the original DNA sample before the company is sold. Otherwise, your genetic information will be subject to the whims of whatever company acquires the assets of 23andMe.

Visit link

Pluralistic: Gandersauce (08 Mar 2025)

by Cory Doctorow

Amazon is a paperclip-maximizing artificial intelligence, and the paperclip it wants to maximize is profits, and the path to maximum profits is to charge infinity dollars for things that cost you zero dollars. Infinite prices and nonexistent wages are Amazon's twin pole-stars. Amazon warehouse workers don't have to be injured at three times the industry average, but maiming workers is cheaper than keeping them in good health. Once Amazon vanquished its competitors and captured its the majority of US consumers, it raised prices, and used its market dominance to force everyone else to raise their prices, too. Call it "bezosflation"

Visit link

What You Should Do

by Mike Brock

The only resistance worth a damn is the one where you stop calculating the odds and start living your truth without reservation. What separates the merely clever from the genuinely courageous isn't tactical brilliance but moral clarity—the willingness to act as if your conscience matters more than your comfort.

Visit link