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Heather Burns

@heatherburnstech.bsky.social
3.2K followers 208 following 2.8K posts

freelance UK tech policy x human rights / midlife MPhil student @ Strathclyde Law School, researching US tech policy x Christian Nationalism / IANAL / heatherburns.tech / 💬 on Signal / open to work, hire me pls / "bad ass Glaswegian" apparently

PostsRepliesMedia
Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 1h
Leave teenagers alone, ban boomers on facebook www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Man jailed for 15 years over Sidcup Ulez camera blast
Kevin Rees, 63, faces a tougher sentence because the offence had a "terrorism connection".
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 4h
Sooner or later society is going to need to start the conversation about how much “true crime” has completely rotted peoples’ brains, far more than any algorithm.
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Konstantinos Komaitis PhD @kkomaitis.bsky.social · 15h
Part 4 is out: This part looks beyond individual controversies to the changing environment itself and asks whether the assumptions that once made platforms successful still fit the digital world they helped create. www.techdirt.com/2026/10/01/t...
techdirt.com
The Metric Is Not The Mission: The Digital Climate
The Metric Is Not the Mission is a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy—from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions...
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stevelevitsky.bsky.social @stevelevitsky.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Lucan Way and I have been writing about competitive authoritarianism for more than 25 years. We never thought we'd write this piece. www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/com...
journalofdemocracy.org
Competitive Authoritarianism in America | Journal of Democracy
The United States has slid into competitive authoritarianism. The slide has been modest and remains reversible—but it is real. Even after Donald Trump, American democracy will remain fragile.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Enjoyed a very good German film called Babystar, about a self-obsessed influencer family whose content-child finally snaps after her parents decide to replace her with a new content-child for the marketing opportunities. Good for her.
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Bless.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
As per my previous blogging about real history being age-gated, a folk song merely about the 1966 Aberfan disaster now requires age verification. Which is a fairly awful irony. Chapeau @cjforms.bsky.social
YouTube screen cap showing “sign in to confirm your age. This video may be inappropriate for some users”. The song is about Aberfan.
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The Revealer @therevealer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
NEW podcast episode! "The Tech Industry and Conservative Christian Alliance" Why have wealthy tech executives aligned themselves with conservative Christians? @bradleyonishi.bsky.social, author of American Caesar, discusses their shared political goals. Listen on Apple Podcasts & Spotify.
podcasts.apple.com
The Tech Industry and Conservative Christian Alliance
Podcast Episode · The Revealer · September 29 · 45m
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Is there such a thing as a Firefox extension that lets you jot notes on tabs and then access/download those notes? The native extension in Firefox Labs is just a note on the tab in local storage and that’s it.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 30/09/2026
Friends, while they're trying to talk about fictional machine gods, don't lose sight into what they're all actually powering in real life. You can browse the the entities on the website and use the API, and learn more about it on the DAIR project site: dair-institute.org/projects/sur....
dair-institute.org
Surveillance Watch
This interactive map reveals the intricate connections between surveillance companies, their funding sources and affiliations.
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Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Bad drama with Meta over at GIFCT www.wired.com/story/indepe...
wired.com
Meta-Led Anti-Terrorism Group Faces Mass Resignation of Expert Advisers
Meta and other tech giants are pushing through structural changes at the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism that outside researchers allege will weaken oversight of an already embattled consor...
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Doctora Malka Older @older.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
people keep saying to me "the website as a destination [for humans] is over" "no one is going to read news on websites any more" "search is done". They are pushing for us to change how global voices works. I would love to hear what you all think of that and if you DO appreciate how we work now, why?
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Konstantinos Komaitis PhD @kkomaitis.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Part III is out: In Part II, the story focused on how measuring behaviour is not the same as understanding people. Part III takes that idea further, examining what happens when the platforms' representations of the world begin to substitute for the world www.techdirt.com/2026/09/28/t...
techdirt.com
The Metric Is Not The Mission: When The Maps Became The Territory
The Metric Is Not the Mission is a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy—from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions...
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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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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Does anyone know if Manchester's own Meatspace Press has given up? I was just flicking through their last superb publication, which was 2023, and they've published no updates or new work since then.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Well, yes; I blogged about how this company failed my sniff test back in *2019* after they showed up at a startup pitching event run by, & their product was duly effusively praised by ... the civilian who at the time was known as Prince Andrew. Do I know how to spot them or what.
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jon christian @jonchristian.net · 28/09/2026
NEW: After we published an investigation into Brown Brothers Media, a company that buys struggling news sites and turns them into AI-powered content mills, we got a tip that completely gobsmacked me: one of the brothers has extensive connections to Ghislaine Maxwell futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com
You Know Those Three Brothers Who Buy Struggling News Sites and Turn Them Into AI-Powered Content Farms? It Turns Out One of Them Has Extensive Connections to Ghislaine Maxwell
Ideapod, a cornerstone brand of Brown Brothers Media's AI empire, has deep ties to convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 28/09/2026
Almost all of Meta's PR about Muse was about how careful they had been to set it up not to do things like this, how they delayed the launch by months to carefully design it so it could be trusted. And then...
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
In an age where “free speech” is a culture war issue warped and won by how much US dark money a side has, I implore you to listen to literally anyone from Northern Ireland (or the west of Scotland) to understand what cultural “free speech” debates feel like marching in front of your actual house.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
hey @glasgowfilmtheatre.bsky.social make this happen
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
the BBC has had to publish advice for neurotic helicopter parents who can't stop cyberstalking their grown adult children www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
'It's a brutal adjustment': How to cope when your child goes to university
This new stage of parenthood is emotional - but learning how to let go can help.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 26/09/2026
Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure.
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 26/09/2026
Part II in @kkomaitis.bsky.social epic 10 part series about how and where big tech went wrong. I promise you, you're going to want to read the whole thing...
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TJ McIntyre @tjmcintyre.com · 24/09/2026
This is a wonderful little story about children’s creativity in getting around Internet bans.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
A good backgrounder on this: the declaration was pure MAGA culture war theatrics. www.politico.eu/article/trum...
politico.eu
Trump pushes UN ‘free speech’ declaration in veiled attack on EU tech regulation
The White House has repeatedly condemned EU rules that govern online platforms as censorship. Now they want the world to put the critique into writing.
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Adrian Daub @adriandaub.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
If you were to assemble a right wing science fiction canon (the kinds of books the Sad Puppies would have found congenial), what do you reckon would be part of it?
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This is fantastic work from KK, not just because it is written as beautiful prose rather than as a dry academic paper. Looking forward to the full series.
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This Is My Glasgow @thisismyglasgow.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
At a loss to explain what had happened, the aurhorities laid the blame squarely on American horror comics, and this led to parliament passing the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act in 1955, which specifically banned the sale of such horror comics to kids. Cont./
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This Is My Glasgow @thisismyglasgow.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
One of the weirdest episodes in Glasgow's history began 72 years ago today. On the 23rd of September 1954, rumours began circulating amongst local school children in the Gorbals area of the city that a seven foot tall vampire with iron teeth had kidnapped and eaten two local boys. Cont./ #glasgow
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I saw a really cool movie about this, it starred Paul Newman and Steve McQueen
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
blessed be the fruit jessica.substack.com/p/white-hous...
jessica.substack.com
White House Website Could Track Down Pregnant Women
9.22.26
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Martin Calladine @uglygame.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
ICYMI: In Jan 26, Jess Phillips and Peter Kyle, then ministers, filmed an endorsement for a phone running the child safety software of a company that's central to the government's plans to prevent kids being exposed to porn. A detailed review shows the phone doesn't work and is dangerously insecure.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
This saga just keeps getting better. Or worse. Same thing.
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
New Spinal Tap sequel.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Every time I make a sarcastic post pointing out the disparity in how young people’s internet use vs pensioners’ internet use is treated in the regulatory sphere, reply guy boomers with absolutely no sense of irony or insight jump in to prove the point I’ve been making in Parliament since 2019.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
So much this. Here’s a classic example. At no point in this piece from yesterday is anyone wringing their hands over what social media is doing to pensioners’ brains. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
‘Just cut the wires’: why UK conspiracy theorists are destroying traffic scanners
Sensors that monitor vehicle volume are said to be ‘electronic assault weapons’ by the ‘Blade Runners’ group
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
My ongoing joke demand for a smartphone and social media ban for the over-65s feels less like a joke by the month
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Quinn Slobodian @quinnslobodian.com · 20/09/2026
accelerationist realism
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This Is My Glasgow @thisismyglasgow.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Sunday morning in Glasgow, and ne'er a statue left unconed. #glasgow #sundaymorning #statue #conehead #cone
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Came across this essay/book review in my research, and it's actually a perfect explanation of the American cultural / commercial / theological mindset that has shaped the world we live in. lpeproject.org/blog/big-lit...
lpeproject.org
Big Little Lies – LPE Project
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Devastated. Loved everything he did but “Humming” was a neglected masterpiece and my personal soundtrack for some very carefree years. Sleep tight D.
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Martin Calladine @uglygame.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
🚨 Exclusive 🚨 The government's favourite child safety software provider, SafeToNet - which has never made a profit - has delayed filing its accounts for the sixth time in four years. theuglygame.wordpress.com/2026/09/18/x...
theuglygame.wordpress.com
X-rated accounts
The government’s favourite child safety software provider, SafeToNet – which has never made a profit – has delayed filing its accounts for the sixth time in four years.
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Jennifer Cobbe @jennifercobbe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Tom Watson of Tele2/Watson fame decides that mass surveillance is great, actually
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Bruce Gorrie @bsrg1.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Reading this at the moment, coincidentally. Uncomfortably prescient.
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
As expected, now public info: the legal contention re: the TCN which the Home Office issued to Apple under the Investigatory Powers Act, ordering Apple to disable end-to-end encryption/Advanced Data Protection for UK users is, as we suspected might happen, going to drag on well into 2027.
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jon christian @jonchristian.net · 17/09/2026
NEW: We spent months investigating a little-known media startup called Brown Brothers Media, which buys legit news sites and turns them into AI-powered zombie content farms What blew my mind was its traffic -- it appears to be getting more readers than NPR or CBS News futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com
How Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per Month
Brown Brothers Media is a media empire raking in millions of clicks with AI, fake writers, and plagiarism.
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
New from 404 Media: Georgia State has rescinded a job offer given to Samuel Tunick, the activist who allegedly wiped his GrapheneOS phone before DHS could search it. Tunick says the case is "textbook political repression". Now can't study or work at the university www.404media.co/university-r...
404media.co
University Rescinds Job Offer to Activist Who Allegedly Wiped Phone Before DHS Could Search It
Samuel Tunick allegedly wiped his GrapheneOS phone before CBP officials could search it, in what has become a high profile civil liberties case. Now Georgia State University has rescinded a job offer ...
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Like shooting fish in a barrel, with the barrel being in the boot of an exploding car full of hammers
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Novocastrum @novocastrianufc.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
bsky.app/profile/novo... Good recent article about it here
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Book BlueSky is the best BlueSky. 🩵
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