iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

I heard of Palantir and Anduril before, but today I got a recommendation to apply for Valinor “a new kind of defence and government tech company”. What is it with the defence tech bros and Tolkien references?

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

As a white man in my thirties, I always contemplate starting a podcast or a newsletter. You are so far spared, but the thought is always there.

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Jurors in LA decided that Meta and Google intentionally designed addictive products, Meta will appeal. I am still not sure I believe the leadership of a company this important would knowingly endorse addiction. But again, I do watch Reels for 20 minutes after I wake up.

theguardian.com

Meta and YouTube designed addictive products that harmed young people, jury finds

Jury in Los Angeles awards plaintiff damages of $6m, with Meta to pay 70% and YouTube the remainder

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Yesterday's news about OpenAI, and not only literally — tech companies have been openly working on US and other defense contracts for years now, protests lead to people fired rather than projects abandoned. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

OpenAI wins $200m contract with US military for ‘warfighting’

Program with the defense department is first under the startup’s initiative to put AI to work in governments

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

It was only a matter of time before these two would see eye to eye on something other than competitive kid-making

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Nataliya Vasilyeva @nataliyavasilyeva.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

My piece on Kaskad, an obscure Russian army unit that offers officials, pro-Kremlin youth activists and various regime "Mitläufer"s a chance to get the badge of war veteran and come back home safe and sound after a short deployment in Ukraine: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/w...

nytimes.com

Selfies From the Front: Inside the ‘V.I.P.’ Brigade for Ambitious Russian Officials

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Only by p.50 I figured the book “The End. Germany in 1945-1955”, was not in fact the “Wolf Time - Germans 1945-1955”, the book that I actually wanted to read. Now adding not one, but two of these to the book about 1945 German suicide epidemic would be concerning, so I am considering -a library-.

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Great article by @alexfiniarel.bsky.social about how migrants and refugees are not really coming to your country to commit crimes and steal your jobs. Written by an immigrant who hasn't stolen anyone's job yet, too, so take note!

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

The decision to delete Instagram from my phone and just use the desktop version is undoubtedly the best thing I did for the quality of my mornings, evenings and commute. The reels were just too addictive, and I still get plenty from my friends to feel in the loop.

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Anton Shekhovtsov @shekhovtsov.substack.com · 26/03/2025

Dear Friend, I am Hon. Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense. I urgently seek your trust to assist in transferring $6,000,000 USD extracted from the European Union as a payment for a highly classified US military operation against Houthi forces in Yemen.

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Wow. Russian disinformation network "Pravda" succeeded in polluting outputs of 10 leading AI tools, including models by Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Over 3,6 million articles released by this network in 2024 are now contaminating their datasets. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

meduza.io

Russia flooding training data to influence chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude

A Russian disinformation network called Pravda (“Truth”) has influenced leading AI chatbots’ output by publishing numerous articles that made their way into the bots’ training data, a new report from ...

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Entertaining thoughts of an SPD-Linke-Green coalition this election day

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Reuters Institute @reutersinstitute.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

NEW on our site Our data shows that people are turning away from the news, with interest in news falling and news avoidance rising. A new piece by our researcher Craig T. Robertson explains why this is happening and what publishers can do about it reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/people-...

reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk

People are turning away from the news. Here’s why it may be happening

Our data shows a ten-year trend towards disengagement from online news, with interest in news falling and news avoidance rising.

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Sam Greene @samagreene.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Ok folks, deep breaths. There is very real reason to worry about the dynamic emerging between Washington and Moscow when it comes to Ukraine. But there is also very real reason to believe that Ukraine and Europe can create a better outcome. (A rather long 🧵, obviously) /1

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Ugh my feed is full of Superbowl

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Scott Rose @rprose.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

I mostly regret the years I spent watching Russian state TV for work, but 10 years ago today I had it on in the background when Putin landed in Egypt for this rendition of the Russian national anthem Still one of the single funniest minutes of video on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=IifS...

youtube.com

Военный оркестр Египта исполнил Гимн России/National Anthem of the Russian Federation

YouTube video by Alvaszaldatini

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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

This is interesting! Did not know that the 1914 Germany-Russia border was in the same spot as the current Poland-Lithuania-Russia (Kaliningrad) border, but the side that was then Germany is now Russia and the side that was Russia is Lithuania

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Craving pryaniks all of a sudden

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Thinking about watching Twin Peaks for the first time in my life

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Kevin Rothrock @kevinrothrock.me · 22/01/2025

if you ever meet someone who watches every minute of Yury Dud interviews, you need to run for your life because you’ve come face-to-face with a psychotic maniac

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Интересная статься про то, как сирийские журналисты из пропагандистских медиа переобуваются в воздухе, чтобы сохранить работу www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

theguardian.com

‘Not a mouthpiece of the regime’: Syria’s state news agency enters new era

Journalists and broadcasters at Sana wait for ‘actions, not words’ but look to future after fall of Assad government

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Reposted by David Kharebov

Ever Josue Figueroa, Ph.D. @everfigueroa.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

We are not ready for the future political implications of that second paragraph.

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Wikipedia @wikipedia.org · 15/01/2025

🎉 It is our birthday! On this day in 2001, Wikipedia was launched. Over two decades later, it has become one of the largest and most trusted sources of knowledge on the internet, with 63+ million articles in 300+ languages. Read all about the history of Wikipedia ➡️ w.wiki/KYn

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antibot4navalny | bot blocker | блокировщик ботов @antibot4navalny.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

This is something from Matryoshka (Kremlin's disinfo network) that can become truly dangerous if used at scale amid the 𝕏 / Twitter>BlueSky exodus: They cloned a pre-existing legitimate account (bio, avatar, banner--but not name) from 𝕏 / Twitter↙️ to BlueSky↘️...

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Justin Rawlins @justinrawlins.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Jokes on you I've never made this mistake

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The Insider @theins.press · 08/01/2025

‼️ Afgantsy Redux: How Russian military intelligence used the Taliban to bleed U.S. forces at the end of America’s longest war The GRU funded Afghan attacks on U.S. troops via a gemstone trading company. The Insider was able to ID the network's key players.

theins.press

Afgantsy Redux: How Russian military intelligence used the Taliban to bleed U.S. forces at the end of America’s longest war

The GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, spent years financing terrorist groups in Afghanistan to target U.S. and coalition forces. An investigation by The Insider has not only confirmed the ex...

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

Lots to unpack here. I feel like some things are good — focused moderation, good riddance to fact-checkers, bringing back civic content. The political pandering to Republicans is too palpable tho — it's a troubling embracement of far-right frameworks by the largest social media

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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Charlie Warzel and Mike Caulfield explain that the Internet functions as a "justification machine" — providing ample "evidence" for people to use (with the help of political pundits and online influencers) to create and maintain their preferred realities: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

theatlantic.com

The Internet Is Worse Than a Brainwashing Machine

A rationale is always just a scroll or a click away.

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

The response of Liv, now retired Meta AI profile, is probably a hallucination. I do not see an LLM storing and retrieving data about racial characteristics of team members who worked on it as part of the dataset it was trained on.

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

Crime to eat it, crime to not eat it…

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Sykes and Georges-Picot when it became clear Turkey is losing WW1

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

The internet has made it so that you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand. For some, it looks like updating your LinkedIn connections; for others, it's asking customers to give you five stars on Google Reviews; for still more, it's crafting an engaging-but-authentic persona on Instagram.

vox.com

Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to.

So you want to be an artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

time to update this fairly simple diagram

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

I am at the point in my bluesky feed when I unfollow irrelevant people more often than I like the relevant ones. Starter packs worked great to kickstart Bluesky but now it seems a bit overwhelming.

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Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Brain rot is officially Oxford dictionary’s word of the year. Read about how the term emerged and gave birth to an entirely new online lexicon in my latest for @passionfruit4us.bsky.social passionfru.it/brain-rot-cr...

passionfru.it

How Brain Rot Became the Internet’s Newest Language

The term brain rot has evolved from a basic synonym for being chronically online, to a fully fledged meme and ironic slang language,

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Okay this is cool tool that can help you (as a journalist or activist) find a right path to a resolve a whatever digital or platform security issue that you are having, step-by-step. digitalfirstaid.org

digitalfirstaid.org

the Digital First Aid Kit!

A kit designed to get you to the right CiviCERT team

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antibot4navalny | bot blocker | блокировщик ботов @antibot4navalny.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

🧵 Common misconceptions that I'm hearing lately from 𝕏 users migrated to 🦋BlueSky: 🫢 "Engagement levels are insane here, we all were throttled on the other site" 🫢 "It took me N years to build up my audience on 𝕏. It took M days to regain K% of it on Bluesky": Hate to disappoint, but:

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Kevin Rothrock @kevinrothrock.me · 23/11/2024

hard to exaggerate how nuts the engagement is on Bluesky compared to 𝕏. a vastly smaller user base (at least officially), but just look at these stats for one of the biggest newspapers on Earth. Musk has absolutely trashed the platform. folks, you are not locked in on 𝕏. not even a little.

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I wonder if the niche media (I guess the first to thrive from migrating to Bluesky as they do not need "general public") have already found the way to measure the impact compared to Twitter. Bluesky does not seem to have any analytics yet, and likes/reposts are trivial ways to measure engagement)

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

I can barely gorge out two posts per day, how is he able to run three companies and influence politics with a schedule like that

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David Kharebov @dharebov.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

One of RU's leading opposition groups, Navalny's FBK, started a campaign to pressure Apple into non-compliance with Russian censorship ... through Norway's sovereign wealth fund, Apple's shareholder, who has a policy against investing in companies with bad human rights record t.me/teamnavalny/...

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