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Andrew Wirzburger

@awirz.bsky.social
19 followers 22 following 13 posts

Communication PhD | Digital Culture, Platforms, Surveillance, Dissent, Democracy andrewwirzburger.wordpress.com

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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Flock CEO Langley says they need to balance safety vs privacy. This kind of surveillance rhetoric falsely implies safety can only come at the cost of privacy, as if they were opposites. But privacy is a key component of safety. These issues need to be in governance conversations.
apnews.com
Flock announces changes amid backlash over its license plate reader network
A company that operates a vast nationwide network of automated cameras that record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of all passing vehicles every day is making changes to its platfo...
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Reposted by Andrew Wirzburger
Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Andrew Wirzburger argues that by classifying review bombing as "inauthentic" or "manipulative" and threatening to ban users for engaging in it, platforms have broken up "digital channels of dissent to ensure smoother consumer experiences."
buff.ly
What Review Bombing Tells Us About the Future of Dissent in Everyday Life
Platforms and the public need to rethink what it means to be a consumer and what space we must make for dissent, writes Andrew Wirzburger.
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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
We talk as if we're pulling kids out of the water because the sharks are eating them. Sensible. Except, *we* designed the sharks. We built the sharks. We trained them to eat people for money. And when they don't eat people fast enough or profitably enough, we design, build, and train better ones.
npr.org
Britain will ban under-16s from social media apps, including TikTok and YouTube
The ban will apply to platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. The move makes the U.K. part of a growing global movement to tighten online safety for children.
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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
“No final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything.” At a scale never before seen, our everyday lives are testing grounds and laboratories for companies and products that are primarily concerned with extracting as much value as possible from our very humanity for their shareholders.
arstechnica.com
One day after discovery, Meta pulls facial recognition code from its smart glasses
Meta won't say why or whether it's coming back.
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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Fresh China-fear about surveillance and silencing dissent, this time using AI and social data to detect dissenters *before* they perform their dastardly deeds -- but "the West" has a positively BOOMing OSINT (open source intelligence) platform industry for which this is a dream.
nytimes.com
China Aims A.I. at Predicting Who Could Pose a Political Risk
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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
More evidence of pro-wealth, anti-consumer behavior by the Trump regime coming from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which have reportedly cost consumers $19 billion in financial relief. The CFPB has become another tool of power for protecting allies to the administration.
apnews.com
Trump administration's changes to the CFPB cost Americans $19B, a new report says
The Trump administration has significantly reduced the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's activities over the past year.
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Reposted by Andrew Wirzburger
Nick Couldry @couldrynick.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
theintercept.com/2026/01/13/d...
theintercept.com
DHS Used Neo-Nazi Anthem for Recruitment After Fatal Minneapolis ICE Shooting
The federal government is openly embracing white nationalist online content — including in a recent recruitment post.
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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Musk & Starlink are circumventing the Iranian govt's internet shutdown. Given Trump's vocal support for Iranian protesters, it's hard to imagine they are operating without tacit US approval. After similar involvement in Russia & Ukraine, this brand of state-platform intervention is here to stay.
apnews.com
Live updates: Some personnel at key US base in Qatar advised to evacuate
Some personnel at a key U.S. military base in Qatar have been advised to evacuate by Wednesday evening, a U.S. official said. The decision came as a senior official in Iran brought up an earlier Irani...
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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Governments are no strangers to opacity. But it's worth noting that the merging of platforms and the U.S. govt is playing out not only through the sharing of data and tech but also the black-boxing of policy and decision-making, as the Trump regime sheds Biden-era standards on the use of AI.
apnews.com
Pentagon is embracing Musk's Grok AI chatbot as it draws global outcry
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s AI engine inside the Pentagon network.
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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
Yet another knot of entanglement in the state-platform apparatus, as former Trump adviser Dina McCormick -- who pushed for AI development in her previous role at Meta -- is made president and vice chairman of Meta.
apnews.com
Meta names former Trump adviser Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chairman
Facebook owner Meta has named Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump administration adviser and longtime finance executive, as president and vice chairman of the tech giant.
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Reposted by Andrew Wirzburger
Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
New: Google has chosen a side in Trump's mass deportation campaign. Google is hosting a CBP facial recognition app to hunt immigrants; no indication Google will remove. At same time Google takes down apps for reporting ICE sightings “Big tech has made their choice” www.404media.co/google-has-c...
404media.co
Google Has Chosen a Side in Trump's Mass Deportation Effort
Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable gr...
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Reposted by Andrew Wirzburger
Prof Deborah Lupton, MPH PhD @dalupton.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Our position statement rejecting the use of GenAI for reflexive qualitative research can be found here papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
<span>We reject the use of generative artificial intelligence for reflexive qualitative research</span>
We write as 416 experienced qualitative researchers from 38 countries, to reject the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) applications for Big Q Qu
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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
This is already happening in research to an alarming degree: researchers, for various reasons, using gen AI to interpret results and write up studies, forcing assistants and coauthors to screen and correct "their" work or passing that labor debt to future researchers encountering their studies.
hbr.org
AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity
Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appea...
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Andrew Wirzburger @awirz.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Publicly-funded research and data continue to be deleted. What steps can we as researchers take to effectively communicate the findings, significance, and veracity of our research as datasets and reports are cut out from under us? As if effective communication was not already a challenge.
404media.co
DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing
Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the Trump administration’s promise to go after the “radical left” a study showing most domestic terrosim is far-right was disappeared.
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Reposted by Andrew Wirzburger
Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
The professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.
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Reposted by Andrew Wirzburger
Platforms & Society @platformsnsociety.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Paper alert: in one or our latest apers, #AndrewWirzburger writes about #reviewbombing on the game #platform #Steam, arguing that review bombing serves as a political tool while being problematized by Steam as social misconduct. Read more at journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
A screenshot of the first page of the paper
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