iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 1h

looking back at this awesome video I took on february 3, 2024 at the Warriors-Hawks game - Atlanta is beautiful that time of year

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 6h

psychotic disturbing behavior from a rambling homicidal loser - this person is in charge of such a chilling amount of access to people lives and benefits and deaths. it can not be understated how bad it is decision makers (on both sides worldwide) have repeatedly given him contracts/access

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 14h

that chatbot doing that unsafe/violative thing is not it 'going rogue' or an 'unfortunate incident of unintended consequences,' it’s the logical and devastating consequences of an unsafe product put out by irresponsible companies that have been conditioned to believe consequences dont exist for them

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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 29/09/2026

A key component of the Cambridge Analytica outrage was your friends subjecting you to data theft without your consent or knowledge. Facebook is running the same playbook on your text messages. Even if you’re not on Meta properties, they’re ingesting your interactions.

Aten installed Muse on both his iPhone and a Mac mini that he uses to test out various Al agents and tech. It took Meta a single day to begin "helpfully" pitching article ideas based on texts he'd sent to a podcast co-host.
When he asked Muse how it got the information, it said that it read banners from incoming texts. But that's not true, either.
After doing a little digging, Aten says Muse synced 187,000 lines from his Messages database, despite Full Disk Access being Off.

Unless Aten is the most popular person on the face of the planet, I sincerely doubt he'd gotten 187,000 lines of text in roughly 24 hours. What happened is that, without permission, Muse went into the app and downloaded the information.
He had not given Muse permission to access Messages, and full disk access was not enabled. It just went ahead and uploaded those texts anyway.
Muse can take "unexpected actions" indeed.

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evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Meta Muse appears to read your Apple messages and upload them to the cloud even if you explicitly tell it not to: appleinsider.com/articles/26/...

appleinsider.com

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

love the quality of Google search when you search “chiefs” to see what time they were playing and one of the top three main links pushed by google is an obviously scammy illegal streaming website (if you’re lucky) that is routed through a…Czech govt site?) so much innovation, very impressive

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John "Not That John Bolton" Bolton @opus59films.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

“I’m afraid that this small clique of all-too-human dorkwads are trying to gain even more mind-boggling wealth and even more political and regulatory control over powerful AI technology, in ways that will allow them to further fracture democracy, privacy, and human flourishing.”

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have banned the sale of sensitive consumer data -- an unconscionable practice that should've been banned long ago -- which helps with stalking, scamming, law enforcement, and other predatory behavior with no public benefit. Shameful choice of data brokers > ppl

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Latest 'Eye on Tech' from @consumerfed.bsky.social out now: eyeontech.substack.com/p/a-rogue-su...

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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The idea that people want AI oversight to happen "all of a sudden" ignores years of research, warnings, and policy efforts. The delay hasn’t been a lack of awareness; it’s been because of years of industry lobbying against regulation, political resistance, and inaction.

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 24/09/2026

“People with knowledge of the device, who declined to be named discussing the product, describe it as a ‘holdable’ rather than a wearable. That means it’s a small, dedicated device that people can pick up and talk to throughout the day.” 🙄

bloomberg.com

Meta Debuts a Dedicated, Palm-Sized ‘Charm’ Device to Use Muse On the Go

Meta Platforms Inc. unveiled a palm-sized, dedicated gadget for using Muse, the company’s popular new artificial intelligence assistant, pushing deeper into the AI devices market with a surprise annou...

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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 23/09/2026

Five cops in Indianapolis were just criminally charged with abusing Flock to spy on their ex-wives, their wives' ex-partners and women they met on duty. Audit was triggered by us at the @washingtonpost.com, the prosecutor said. From last month: wapo.st/4yfNHng

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Sarah McLaughlin @sarahemclaugh.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A man commented “F you and your Flock cameras" on a South Carolina police department's Facebook post. And then the police department — reportedly the Police Chief himself — messaged the man threatening to have "U.S. Marshals" arrest him for “unlawful communications.” www.wrdw.com/2026/09/23/r...

The situation stems from a comment McClellan made on a public post the department made about Flock cameras being cut down across town. McClellan said something along the lines of, “F you and your Flock cameras.”

“I just said something and it really, it upset that police chief obviously and he messaged me roughly a week later. Not happy with what I said,” McClellan said.

In screenshots McClellan provided, the Facebook account labeled Ridge Spring Police Department responded to him, saying it is unlawful to use profanity electronically and stated, “I will be obtaining a warrant” for “unlawful communications.” The message also stated, “I will send the U.S. Marshals to pick you up.”

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

that stack of hundred dollar bills is dangerous, lemme hold it - i know how to handle it safely

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Scoop: Meta's Muse AI can make phone calls. Internally, Meta has told employees that many of these calls will be made by human beings in a call center: www.404media.co/meta-tests-m...

404media.co

Meta Tests Muse AI Agent Calls That Are Actually Made By Humans in a Call Center

"This has potential for so much negative PR. It could portray us as ‘their AI is not good enough so they still need humans’ kind of coverage for this launch."

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

hoping this moment of attention on AI can lead to lawmakers focusing on data abuse, scams, surveillance pricing, deepfakes, creepywearables, and accountability - not voluntary standards or frontier model study reports we have the playbook (in the form of a rambly but still non-exhaustive blog) ⬇️

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Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Remember this? 7 months ago. Now they're announcing "voluntary" layoffs. Activists have been speedrunning abolishing Flock and you love to see it.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

NEW: @apnews.com confirms that ICE has begun electronically "disappearing" people in the agency's custody who have final orders of removal. As of last week, anyone jailed by ICE with a final order of removal will NOT appear in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, making them effectively vanish.

apnews.com

AP Exclusive: ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding most detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, in a move that has made it harder for lawyers an...

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

thrilled that rep @foushee.house.gov + rep. moyan released the SAFE platform act today -- a strong bill addressing the lack of action and responsibility of social media platforms to protect their users from scams we @consumerfed.bsky.social are proud to support foushee.house.gov/media/press-...

foushee.house.gov

Foushee, Moylan Introduce Bipartisan SAFE Platforms Act to Protect Consumers from Online Scams | U.S. Congresswoman Valerie Foushee

The Official U.S. Congressional website of Congresswoman Valerie Foushee

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

for as long as i live, i will only think of Kelly Loeffler in the context of when she had owned the Atlanta Dream, got furious about the league honoring BLM in 2020, and then her own team wore Vote Warnock shirts pre-game then she lost the election then sold the team 2 months later - legendary FAFO

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Smooth Dunk @smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

been thinkin about how robots are gonna kill us

Scratchy drawing of a two panel comic.
Panel 1:
Titled:“How we thought robots would kill us”
A robot shoots a human to death with a gun. It screams “Die flesh sack”

Panel 2:
Titled “How robots will actually kill us”
A MediBot is injecting something into a humans arm. The bot says “Whooops. I injected you with cancer instead of insulin. That’s on me”

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

On by default

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10/09/2026

Some folks will claim that this is hyperbolic, but what I wish people would understand is that tech initiatives like this serve as a means of eroding consent and lower the barrier for the persistent capture of people’s image, voice, data, or whatever else a gadget can glean.

pcmag.com

Apple's New Siri Recap Turns Every Apple Watch Into a Mass Surveillance Nightmare

Apple's always-listening AI feature promises neat summaries of your daily conversations, but it forces everyone around you into a nonconsensual recording experiment.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Third Way politics get you a third place finish.

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

i know this op-ed is just ragebait like many WSJ op-eds, but the use of the word "produce" in here is hilarious and illustrative...a few paragraphs in to this tiny op-ed, the point is clear -- dont let other countries enforce their laws -- an expansion of a dangerous practice from the trump admin

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 24/08/2026

Lot of city-level reporting on this be like: bsky.app/profile/hype...

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Ally Sammarco @allysammarco.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Using a children’s book to make fun of children being detained, neglected and isolated from their parents is next level fucked up

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

love the modern golden age where if you want to do a google search on private browsing you have to go through a gauntlet of 9 rounds of AI training/captcha to make sure you really mean it

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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 19/08/2026

I wrote about how preposterously stupid and ineffective US anti-China tech protectionism is, and how it's endlessly propped up by a shitty corporate press enthusiastically oblivious to its own nationalist biases:

karlbode.com

U.S. Anti-China Tech Protectionism Is Sloppy, Corrupt, And Stupid

U.S. efforts to ban Chinese tech are driven by corruption, crafted by incompetent zealots, and normalized by a shitty corporate press.

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Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

How did I miss the Goop podcast featuring a leading AI weapons manufacturer

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

this article is fantastic PR for linkedin, who quite literally begged their users and arguably forced their users into becoming slop machines

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

more weird scams allowed on Meta — because there are likes and comments allowed on marketplace listings, of course there are efforts to both get people off platform and also to evade moderation (seems not to matter for Meta) be careful out there folks

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Frank Pasquale @frankpasquale.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

"The task of writing legislation is filled with crucial details that can trip up AI agents — for instance, whether a particular pot of money should be a tax credit, tax deduction, tax exclusion or a grant. AI is going to miss those nuances." www.politico.com/news/2026/08...

politico.com

AI slop is swamping a House office that drafts US laws

The Office of Legislative Counsel is facing a barrage of new AI-generated bills, many of which are riddled with errors.

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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

welcome to the field of dreams, an homage to a movie revolving around men banned for life from baseball for gambling. brought to you by fanduel

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Thomson Reuters, which owns news agency Reuters, has signed a $125M deal giving ICE access to its databases of personal data. USA Today has partnered with Palantir to gain "actionable intelligence" on its audiences. The media should be opponents of Trump's police state — not collaborators.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Not to be some wild-eyed innocent, but I think it should be slightly bigger news that The Lancet have crunched the numbers and found that Musk's USAID cuts will kill 14 million people. And that's just by 2030. That's 9,600 people a day, every day, until the next world cup rolls around.

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Sam Cole @samleecole.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

everyone with a Twitch account is automatically opted in to Amazon using your stream to train its AI models. you have to deliberately opt out - a feature the platform is positioning as a nice little favor to its users :) www.404media.co/twitch-train...

404media.co

Twitch is Mining Peoples' Streams to Train Amazon's AI

Here's how to opt out of Twitch's new generative AI training setting.

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Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

People are criticizing me unfairly, such as for my actions and their inevitable consequences

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

pathetic embarrassing and devastating behavior from the FTC chair Andrew Ferguson “ditching” disparate impact www.ftc.gov/news-events/...

ftc.gov

FTC Ditches ‘Disparate Impact’

The Federal Trade Commission today announced a policy statement clarifying that the Commission wil

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

New: Police are being told to hide the fact that they're using Flock to pull people over and arrest them in both encounters with citizens but ALSO in their official police reports: www.404media.co/do-not-menti...

404media.co

‘DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE’: How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock

“DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE. DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT."

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laura olin @lauraolin.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

But they will be

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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I'm reading the "environmentalists are wrong about data centers" piece from the NYT and ohmygoditssofuckingbad. Apparently, so long as you're punching left, they'll just let you say any goddamn thing you please... www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | The Environmental Case Against Data Centers Is Misguided

Our animosity toward data centers is really more about our anxieties about A.I.

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404 Media @404media.co · 26/07/2026

Hacked source code reveals how Suno scraped decades worth of music and podcasts from the internet to train its AI tool. www.404media.co/hack-reveals...

404media.co

Hack Reveals Suno AI Music Generator Scraped YouTube, Deezer, and Genius

Hacked source code reveals how Suno scraped decades worth of music and podcasts from the internet to train its AI tool.

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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

"The secrecy was agreed to by nearly everyone involved, from utility executives to the governor’s office to a local elected official who knew about the talks with Meta and sold 300 acres of his own property for the project."

nytimes.com

How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal

A Times examination details how the Silicon Valley giant used private talks with local officials to start a project big enough to cover nearly six square miles.

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