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Olivia Solon

@oliviasolon.bsky.social
12K followers 489 following 123 posts

Covering tech at Bloomberg from London Signal: @oliviasolon.13 Email: osolon2@bloomberg.net

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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Remember Phia? Well, it looks like the cookie stuffing was going on for a lot longer than previously disclosed. And co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni knew about and encouraged the development of the software features that enabled it. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
Phoebe Gates Knew Phia Shopping App Took Credit for Sales It Didn’t Drive
Phia co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni pushed for features in the e-commerce startup’s software that took credit for sales it didn’t drive, according to internal communications and people wit...
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Jeff Horwitz @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
This @oliviasolon.bsky.social story is deeply funny. Bill Gates’ daughter appears to have been built her startup around cookie stuffing, a form of ad fraud. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
Phoebe Gates Knew Phia Shopping App Took Credit for Sales It Didn’t Drive
Phia co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni pushed for features in the e-commerce startup’s software that took credit for sales it didn’t drive, according to internal communications and people wit...
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Come and work with me at Bloomberg! We're looking for a brilliant editor to join the EMEA Technology, Media & Telecom team in Londo bloomberg.avature.net/careers/JobD...
bloomberg.avature.net
Tech, Media and Telecom Editor - London
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 03/06/2026
I feel like I'm going mad: Henry Nowak's killer has been sentenced to life in prison with a 21-year minimum. The whole process took less than six months. There were grave errors on the night. But how does this possibly evidence two-tier justice? www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-o...
This is not what happened in the Henry Nowak case. Nowak was killed in December 2025. Once police realised they had been deceived on the scene, they rapidly investigated, properly. 

They secretly recorded Digwa and his brother talking to one another, in Punjabi, about how they planned to mislead officers about the attack. Police quickly amassed more than enough evidence for prosecutors to use.

Less than six months after his killing, Nowak’s attacker has been convicted of murder and sentenced to at least 21 years in prison. Police failed Nowak in his final moments alive, but the justice system delivered exactly as it was supposed to do so for his family. Showing truly admirable restraint and forbearance, Nowak’s father said, clearly, that “we do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension”.
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Misidentified by LLMs - Former police officer in hiding after being falsely linked to Henry Nowak arrest www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Former police officer in hiding after being falsely linked to Henry Nowak arrest
Christi Hill and male officer misidentified in Vickrum Digwa murder case on AI platforms including Grok
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Summer cycling in London is kinda scary. I'm riding to work a little later than usual at the moment (~7:45 a.m. vs ~6:30 a.m.) and I've already seen two nasty collisions -- both, I'm afraid, because a cyclist didn't stop at a light or crossing.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 24/04/2026
When DOGE arrived at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the operatives had no real background in nuclear issues. They boxed out experienced hands, forcing resignations and massive exodus of talent. Over 400 people have since left or been forced out. Our full story: propub.li/3OBQMwk
Graphic displaying how hundreds of staff who do work related to nuclear reactors and their safety have left and not been replaced. The data is categorized into six sections: Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Nuclear Regulatory Research, Nuclear Security and Incident Response, Regional offices, and Other offices. Each orange square underneath a category represents a loss in staff, while each gray square represents an addition of staff. The graphic shows that there have been 443 losses and 57 arrivals across all six of these categories. Note: The data is from the week ending Jan. 24, 2025, through Feb. 13, 2026. Source: Weekly Information Reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
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Shona Ghosh @shona.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Leonid Radvinsky, the reclusive billionaire behind OnlyFans, is dead at 43, reports @oliviasolon.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
Leonid Radvinsky, Who Changed Porn With OnlyFans, Is Dead at 43
Leonid Radvinsky, the reclusive billionaire owner of adult content platform OnlyFans, has died of cancer, the London-based company confirmed on Monday. He was 43.
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
“We value your privacy”
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
I wrote about everything happening too much in 2026 and the rise of ‘monitoring the situation. How total bombardment is partly a surrender to the internet and its logic and algorithms—a kind of attentional death
theatlantic.com
One Situation After Another
Doomscrolling is over. Now, everyone is “monitoring the situation.”
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 13/03/2026
Meta spent seven years telling us they were working on true end-to-end encryption across all their various messaging apps... and finally rolled it out in 2024. And then less than three years later, they're shutting it off for Instagram? What? www.androidpolice.com/instagram-is...
androidpolice.com
Instagram to discontinue end-to-end encryption for DMs [Update: Meta's statement]
Pulling the plug on privacy?
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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Palantir CEO promises that his technology will reduce educated women's economic and political power newrepublic.com/post/207693/...
newrepublic.com
Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power
They’re saying the quiet part out loud now.
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Akshat Rathi @akshatrathi.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
It's going from bad to worse. www.bloomberg.com/news/live-bl...
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Mobius Stripper @mobiusstripper.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Dogs are great if you have money and want that to no longer be the case.
An all-white dog laying miserably on the floor with a cone on. Half of her face is shaved because she had to get stitches to close a gash.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
It’s Ukraine’s turn to ask if we even said “thank you”.
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Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
eyeson-ai.org eyeson-ai.org eyeson-ai.org eyeson-ai.org eyeson-ai.org eyeson-ai.org eyeson-ai.org eyeson-ai.org
eyeson-ai.org
Eyes on AI
Eyes on AI is a game that helps you understand how AI-powered surveillance impacts your life and community.
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Nothing quite like the shame of having to explain to a radiographer why you got a microchip implanted in your hand so you could buy a KitKat from a vending machine in Wisconsin for a story 10 years go
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 03/03/2026
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....
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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 28/02/2026
Airborne leaflet propaganda in 2026: hacked push alerts from a prayer timing app www.wired.me/story/hacked...
Shortly after the first set of explosions, Iranians received bursts of notifications on their phones, not from the government advising caution, but from a prayer timing app called ‘BadeSaba Calendar’ which has been downloaded 5 million times from the Google Play Store.

The messages arrived in quick succession over a period of 30 minutes, starting with the phrase ‘Help Has Arrived’ at 9:52 am Tehran time. No party has claimed responsibility for the hacks.

Screenshots shared with WIRED Middle East show messages urging Iranian military personnel to surrender their weapons with the promise of amnesty. It also urged army personnel to join “the forces of liberation” and to “defend your brothers.”
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 01/03/2026
February, truly the asshole of months, is vanquished for another year.
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 01/03/2026
OpenAI posted the terms of the deal. Reveals that it absolutely does allow for domestic surveillance. EO 12333 is how the NSA hides its domestic surveillance by capturing communications by tapping into lines *outside the US* even if it contains info from/on US persons. openai.com/index/our-ag...
2. Our contract. Here is the relevant language:

The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols. The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control, nor will it be used to assume other high-stakes decisions that require approval by a human decisionmaker under the same authorities. Per DoD Directive 3000.09 (dtd 25 January 2023), any use of AI in autonomous and semi-autonomous systems must undergo rigorous verification, validation, and testing to ensure they perform as intended in realistic environments before deployment.

For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, Executive Order 12333, and applicable DoD directives requiring a defined foreign intelligence purpose. The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with these authorities. The system shall also not be used for domestic law-enforcement activities except as permitted by the Posse Comitatus Act and other applicable law.
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Leon Yin @leonyin.org · 27/02/2026
NEW @bloomberg.com feature on Stake: the world's largest crypto casino. Our year-long piece dives into Stake employing superstar influencers such as Drake and Adin Ross to livestream gambling. By @cecianasta.bsky.social @oliviasolon.bsky.social and myself: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...
bloomberg.com
Unlikely Wins and Comped Spins: Inside Stake’s Empire
Crypto casino Stake pays Drake and other stars to bet, spreading clips of big wins to impressionable gamblers. The numbers show unusual luck is at work.
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Cecilia D'Anastasio @cecianasta.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Stake says influencers like Drake and Adin Ross don’t win more than the average gambler. We ran the numbers, and guess what :) Here's our year-long data investigation into Stake and Kick's influencer empire, with @oliviasolon.bsky.social and @leonyin.bsky.social: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...
bloomberg.com
Unlikely Wins and Comped Spins: Inside Stake’s Empire
Crypto casino Stake pays Drake and other stars to bet, spreading clips of big wins to impressionable gamblers. The numbers show unusual luck is at work.
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Shona Ghosh @shona.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
There is a lot to find darkly comic in the Epstein files. What struck me in this @oliviasolon.bsky.social piece was the way he accesses the top intellectual echelons, pioneers in AI, physics. Yet spends so much time grubbing around with "SEO experts" and grifters. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
Epstein Paid Reputation Firms to Suppress Child Sex Offenses Online
Jeffrey Epstein tapped online reputation management firms to bury negative coverage of his 2008 sex offense conviction and flood the internet with favorable content in a years-long effort to rehabilit...
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Doug Madory @eldomador.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Iran's shutdown is now 15 days and counting. Small amounts of service have been restored in recent days. #DigitalBlackoutIran #IranRevoIution2026 State telecom TIC (A49666) re-established many of its lost connections with outside providers, such as GBI (AS200612) at 22:02 UTC on Jan-22.
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
It’s depressing to see women try to claw back control of their images by imploring a chatbot not to misuse their photos. Posts like these are reminiscent of the copyright declarations you used to see on Facebook. Totally understandable but unlikely to have the desired effect.
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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
So much interesting in this (and good work on @caseynewton.bsky.social documenting it). One thing to note though, Google's watermarking identified the image of the badge as created by its AI tool. Other image generators haven't bothered implementing anything similar, why? (Looking at you, Sora.)
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Great work from @caseynewton.bsky.social and an illuminating case study in how journalists authenticate allegations/sources in an age of generative AI www.platformer.news/fake-uber-ea...
platformer.news
Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit
A “whistleblower” tried to corroborate his viral post with AI-generated evidence. This is how I caught him. PLUS: Grok's image-generation crisis, and the rapture over Claude Opus 4.5
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Nudify apps have been around for ages, but it's wild to see a mainstream platform like X effectively become a revenge porn machine, generating AND publishing non-consensual intimate images of women
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Katelyn Jetelina @kkjetelina.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
For the first time in my career, I can’t tell people to trust what the CDC website says. And that is an incredibly sad and devastating place for this country to be.
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Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 19/11/2025
This thread chimes with my experience on so many fronts. Whether it's conspiracy theorists, freelancers pitching stories, or people applying for jobs it's so hard to filter based on writing quality. Weirdly I end up trusting the typo-strewn, clearly-dashed-out-by-a-human-in-a-hurry emails more now.
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Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 18/11/2025
The brutal reality of life as an Android owner in London: First you’re shocked as you’re mugged. Then you’re humiliated as the thief returns the device. www.londoncentric.media/p/london-pho...
londoncentric.media
"Don't want no Samsung"
Plus: Scroll down to see what might be the strangest new artwork in the capital and read more on our investigations into the capital's landlords.
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Houthi missile attacks on vessels in the Red Sea has created huge delays to several subsea cable projects, throttling the supply of internet capacity. It's forcing companies like Meta and Google to rethink how they route internet traffic globally www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
Google, Meta Delay Red Sea Cables as Security Risks Rattle Plans
Multiple subsea internet cables slated to run through the Red Sea are yet to complete as planned, as political tensions and heightened security threats have made the route more dangerous and complicat...
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
The new poop emoji
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
AppLovin has shut down a product linked to user and short-seller allegations that apps were being downloaded to mobile phones without consent. The product, called Array, was offered to device-makers and carriers to promote or preload apps on phones. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
AppLovin Axes Product Tied to Unwanted App Download Allegations
AppLovin Corp. said it has shut down a product linked to user and short-seller allegations that apps were being downloaded to mobile phones without consent.
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
The SEC has been probing AppLovin over its data-collection practices, according to people familiar with the matter My latest for @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
AppLovin Has Been Probed By SEC Over Data-Collection Practices
The Securities and Exchange Commission has been probing the data-collection practices of the mobile advertising tech company AppLovin Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. The company’s...
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Kari Haakana @karihaakana.net · 18/09/2025
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
AI infrastructure ouroboros: Microsoft funds OpenAI, which pays for Microsoft & other cloud/data center companies for compute, and those cloud companies buy Nvidia GPUs, and Nvidia props those companies up with investment and guarantees to buy unused compute capacity.
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
In 2021, a report alleged that Evolution’s casino games could be played in sanctioned markets. The company denied the allegations, saying this wasn’t possible without “sophisticated technical manipulation.” It also sued the law firm that submitted the report to a regulator.
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Devastated to learn that the Ibiza club Bezos and Sanchez went to was DC10. Stick to Ushuaia!
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Maaike @maaikeverbruggen.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Big Parma is watching you www.theguardian.com/food/2023/au...
theguardian.com
Cheese and chips: parmesan producers fight fakes with microtransponders
Counterfeits are the bane of the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, which is now trialling tech in the rind
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
A series of short-seller reports about AppLovin have exposed the ugly underbelly of mobile ad tech www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...
bloomberg.com
AppLovin Short Sellers Discover Mobile Ad Tech’s Ugly Underbelly
Welcome to Tech In Depth, our daily newsletter about the business of tech from Bloomberg’s journalists around the world. Today, Olivia Solon addresses the spate of reports alleging one of Google and M...
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
I like how hyperscalers shifted from using shell companies to develop data centers as quietly as possible to avoid community pitchforks to calling them things like Gigazilla and bragging about how they will consume all of Spain’s power and water
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Antonella Napolitano @svaroschi.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
New by @oliviasolon.bsky.social ( @bloomberg.com) and @tomasstatius.bsky.social ( @lighthousereports.com): a EU border control system - with biometric info on 1.7 million people - has extremely serious cybersecurity issues. www.bloomberg.com/news/article... This is why these stories are important:
bloomberg.com
Cybersecurity Flaws Plagued EU Border Control System, Audit Shows
An information-sharing system used by EU border forces to flag illegal immigrants and suspected criminals in real time was rife with software and security vulnerabilities, according to emails and conf...
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Lighthouse Reports @lighthousereports.com · 02/07/2025
This reporting by @tomasstatius.bsky.social @oliviasolon.bsky.social follows our previous exposé of a related EU biometric border system fiasco involving French industrial group Atos bsky.app/profile/ligh...
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
An information-sharing system used by EU border forces to flag illegal immigrants and suspected criminals in real time was rife with software & security vulnerabilities, according to confidential documents seen by @bloomberg.com and @lighthousereports.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
EU Border Software Vulnerable to Hacks, Confidential Reports Warn
An information-sharing system used by EU border forces to flag illegal immigrants and suspected criminals in real time was rife with software and security vulnerabilities, according to emails and conf...
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Journalists in movies are usually depicted as highly unethical -- sleeping with sources, making covert recordings, breaking into places to steal documents. But really we're spending 6 hours trawling LinkedIn for current and former employees.
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
The absolute entitlement with which my kids demand water. They cannot wait 5 minutes for their thirst to be quenched. In the 80s we never had access to water. No water bottles. We survived as desiccated husks, lucky to get the occasional cup of orange squash.
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Olivia Solon @oliviasolon.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
What's with these natalist/god complex billionaires? Telegram founder Pavel Durov says he has fathered 6 kids with three partners as well as more than 100 other kids via his sperm donations. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
Telegram’s Durov to Leave Fortune to 100 Children He’s Fathered
Telegram billionaire founder and Chief Executive Officer Pavel Durov plans to leave his vast fortune to the more than 100 children he’s fathered, according to an interview with France’s Le Point magaz...
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