markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 22/08/2025Perplexity AI head describes the endpoint of cascading logics of automation (from automated data collection to sense making, to response). In a word, agentic AI: "Comet leads to a true personal assistant that can be an agent for you and take actions. It’s our transition from answers to actions." 000
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 22/06/2025In case anyone in Ljubljana might be interested, I'm doing a public talk Monday, 23 June at 11 am, in the library of the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. "“Granular Biopolitics: Biometrics, Surveillance and Automated Governance” Open to the public. 000
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 05/06/2025oligarch vs. despot. If it were Russia the winner would be clear. In neoliberal land where the government relies on Musk for core functions (low earth orbit satellite delivery, global comms, etc), maybe less so? 000
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 28/05/2025All of which leads, unsurprisingly, to the manipulation of Grok to parrot the political views of its owner. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...theguardian.comMusk’s AI bot Grok blames ‘programming error’ for its Holocaust denialGrok doubted 6 million death toll, days after peddling conspiracy theory of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa 010
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 14/05/2025Interesting twitter phenomenon: random MAGAs and pseudo-conspiracy theorists who don't trust the media are putting their faith in Grok and Perplexity for fact-checking. The old institutions for adjudicating rival accounts of reality are on the wane. But the new ones are simply scraping the old ones. 100
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 14/05/2025this is pretty amazing article: a deep dive into the workings of a dramatically reconfigured media environment... 000
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialMathieu O'Neil @mathieuon.bsky.social · 14/05/2025This French article is great not just because it interviews @timothyjgraham.bsky.social but also because the visualisations are really well done. Oh, and apart from tge deconstruction of his megaphoning RWNJ, it also provides a Deep Dive into the Muskian Projkek. 251
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 26/04/2025Keep an eye on the right-wing uptake of Gramsci. They are poor readers and interpreters, natch, but this is their version of trying to reconfigure/"secure" hegemony. They're going to try to do it by force, of course... 030
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 05/03/2025Looks like travel to the US will now require vaccination boosters. 040
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 26/02/2025"The right wing aesthetic project is to flood the zone – unsurprisingly, given their scatological bent, with bullshit – in order to erode the intellectual foundations for resisting political cruelty." AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism newsocialist.org.uk/transmission...newsocialist.org.ukAI: The New Aesthetics of FascismIt's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right. 030
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialRafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 14/02/2025You guys need to wise up, you’re not dealing with conservatives or libertarians trying to implement conservative or libertarian policies. You are dealing with fascists trying to destroy the idea of the truth and replace it with the exercise of power. 7828208
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 14/02/2025David Brooks in the NYTimes has a revelation. He is shocked, shocked to learn that gambling is taking place in this establishment... "The simplest answer is that Trump really seems not to give a crap about the working class" -- DB 030
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 11/02/2025When I was a kid in NYC, a family friend from Europe described to me what he thought was distinctive about Americans. "Most people see a glass on the table, and they know if they push it, it will fall off...Americans will just keep pushing until it falls off." The glass is falling. 010
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialmoniartist.bsky.social @moniartist.bsky.social · 10/02/2025Well the irony in that now, is Humanities will be the only programs universities will be able to afford to fund 🥴 361
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 11/02/2025Listening to these billionaire jokers treat the future of our information environment like it's their own personal monopoly game is really a "let them eat cake" moment. 000
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialDr. Elinor Carmi @elinorcarmi.bsky.social · 10/02/2025"AI then becomes a tool for replacing politics. The Trump administration frames generative AI as a remedy to 'government waste.' However, what it seeks to automate is not paperwork but democratic decision-making" Love @eryk.bsky.social's writing and this piece is no exception. 👏👌 076
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialMehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 07/02/2025There is a simple solution to the CBS/Trump lawsuit. The Harris campaign should sue Fox and insist Fox release the unedited versions of all their many edited interviews with Trump. 381148283320
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 05/02/2025I suppose it was bound to happen. Silicon valley feeling liberated by not having to pretend to live up to the hype about being the good capitalists, etc... Every company has got to find a way to live up to its P/E ratio. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...washingtonpost.comGoogle drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillanceGoogle changed its public AI policies to remove assertions that it would not develop AI applied to surveillance or weapons. 040
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 05/02/2025US response to robodebt: "hold my beer..." 000
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialAriadna Matamoros-Fernández @ariadnamf.bsky.social · 03/02/2025Our piece on Community Notes and its narrow understanding of the disinformation problem is now live on @techpolicypress.bsky.social. It is based on our paper on the topic, which can be found here: eprints.qut.edu.au/254907/1/Mat...eprints.qut.edu.au 01910
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 05/02/2025Yup -- platforms make money from these ads, and as long as there is no liability on their part for failing to detect them and enforce their own terms of service, they will continue to multiply and prey on people. 020
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 31/01/2025wow -- if any of these cases had gone to trial, Trump never would have prevailed. This is a pure shakedown. News organizations that capitulate are poisoning their own future. They have made themselves Trump mouthpieces without him having to install his own people. How readily they surrender. 010
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialNY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 30/01/2025Maybe it's better not to mess around with certain federal functions. It's not a game. 11076501483
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 10/01/2025Obvs, paying off politicians for political favors is longstanding practice -- it's the climate of fear that is new. This isn't tit-for-tat, this is an attempt to buy ones way off the hit list. 000
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 10/01/2025Zuck caving to Trump's penchant for alternative facts. Bezos paying off Melania, billionaires endlessly funding the inaugural. This level of corporate obeisance is new. Trump has threatened to use the justice dept. and regulatory apparatus against enemies, Putin-style, and they believe him. 100
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialDave Willner @dwillner.bsky.social · 09/01/2025Instead, these below-the-fold changes are very clearly designed to avoid having to penalize people like Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the increasingly dehumanizing language they use against these specific groups. You can tell because of the changes they *didn't* make. 🧵 9/11 61325210
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 10/01/2025Commercial social media doing their level best to generate support for AU's social media ban... 000
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialCasey Newton @caseynewton.bsky.social · 10/01/2025NEW: Platformer has obtained the dehumanizing new guidelines moderating what people can now say about trans people on Facebook and Instagram. Employees tell me these changes are likely to inspire more violence against LGBT people: www.platformer.news/meta-new-tra... 939136114060
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 10/01/2025The second death of the author.... Springer is publishing "machine-generated" literature "overviews" for 170 Euros (hardcover -- library edition, presumably?). link.springer.com/book/10.1007...link.springer.comAn Introduction to Civics and Citizenship EducationThis book examines the current state of educational and policy-level initiatives in civics and citizenship education. 000
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 10/01/2025This really drives the point home: government of the billionaires by the billionaires for the billionaires... www.theguardian.com/technology/2...theguardian.comMark Zuckerberg sports $900,000 watch as he calls time on Meta fact-checkingTech giant CEO wore Greubel Forsey ‘Hand Made 1’, which retails for $895,500, as he announced policy overhaul 073
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialEthan Zuckerman @ethanz.bsky.social · 09/01/2025There's lots of hot takes on Zuckerberg's content moderation decision, and then there's Julia Angwin's, who uses it to explain that Meta is no longer growing through innovation and is reduced to political groveling. buttondown.com/JuliaAngwin/...buttondown.comHeavy Lies Mark Zuckerberg’s CrownHi friends — The new year is upon us, and it has already been quite revealing. As Robert Caro wrote in his magnificent biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, “power... 410234
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 08/01/2025They understand that he will soon control the legal apparatus and that he has the will to use it to punish his perceived opponents. The oligarchs are falling into place one by one. 010
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 08/01/2025Through some quirk of fate, however, he has become politically powerful, and he wants to flip the script to match the Putin model: make the oligarchs submit to him. And so far it's working. 100
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 08/01/2025It's worth understanding Trump's reverence for Putin. In the US, until recently, the political class has been beholden to the economic one. In Putin's Russia, it's the other way around. Oligarchs are beholden to Putin. Trump was never able to join the ruling economic class. Went bankrupt too often. 100
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 08/01/2025Very interested in concrete plans/models for a public service media alternative to the dataveillance-driven economic model we have created. It was possible to come up with a viable alternative to commercial broadcasting, why not for interactive platforms? A possible contribution to Possible Futures 140
Reposted by @markandrejevic.bsky.socialBen Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 04/01/2025Who remembers AltSchool? What a great cautionary tale of edtech and data-driven schooling exuberance for our current AI moment. Funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Zuckerberg and Founders fund, it was a Silicon Valley experimental lab school for the kind of AI schooling hyped everywhere today ... 1/5 611834
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 04/01/2025From the annals of social recession (hint: capital was never really comfortable with ceding much control over content to users...AI provides a strategy for clawing it back): www.404media.co/zuckerberg-t...404media.coZuckerberg: The AI Slop Will Continue Until Morale Improves"I think we’re going to add a whole new category of content, which is AI generated." 000
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 02/01/2025"how did these technologies that are able to see us create the possibility of a media landscape in which not only are we being surveilled, but that surveillance is being used to create new kinds of visual culture for humans, in order to extract value from us?" 000
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 02/01/2025"These very rigid ways of seeing are a feature of the system, not a bug" 100
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 02/01/2025"What they want to be able to say is, “You ate the doughnut, your health insurance is going to go up.” So the quantification is part of the process of value extraction." 100
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 02/01/2025 "If a company wants to extract value by putting a computer vision system in your kitchen to watch what you eat, what they don’t want to do is say, “Oh, the meaning of that food is variable . . . it’s all contextual, it’s relational.” 110
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 02/01/2025Great interview with Trevor Paglen: "...literalness and the economics of extraction [of value from images] go hand in hand... 110
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 02/01/2025capitalism's weird complicities (#1,000,000): academic publishers contracting with AI companies need to push out more content faster to feed the training beast. Universities want academics to publish more publications faster to feed the rankings beast. 194
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 30/12/2024When someone like Thiel says democracy is incompatible with freedom, they are saying that they have amassed so much wealth they no longer feel bound by a social contract. 0121
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 30/12/2024The screenshot is from an AI generated profile. An entire faux history filled with folksy tales of family, grandkids, career, etc. This is a world in which we will have to cut through the clutter to try to find a human. We will feel like the only "real" people in our feeds. A paranoid fantasy. 030
markandrejevic.bsky.social @markandrejevic.bsky.social · 30/12/2024Social glut goes in hand-in-hand with social recession. This is a bid to regain more centralized control over content. Imagine trying to cut through the clutter of AI-generated profiles, all designed to manipulate you according to platform priorities. www.ft.com/content/9118... 120