“JAAI does not discriminate against human contributors — however, undisclosed human involvement constitutes a violation of our editorial integrity policy.”

What next for big tech after landmark social media addiction verdict? The ruling could be the beginning of the end of social media as we know it, writes the BBC's technology editor Zoe Kleinman.

Regulators and courts around the world increasingly acknowledge harms of social media. Will we see a big regulatory intervention in platform design?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I've been looking up the definition of an AI agent and ... it turns out I've been using AI agents for ~20 years without even realising it.

An AI agent to filter out spam emails.

An AI agent to respond to people when I'm out of office.

An AI agent to correct my spelling.

Why all the fuss?

Atlassian CEO: AI doesn't replace people here, but we're firing them anyway AI should not replace people at Atlassian, says CEO Cannon-Brookes. But they still have to lay off 1,600 people to have money for AI investments.

AI automation replacing human labour? Nah, but we can't afford humans anymore because we need to invest in AI. Interesting new narrative. www.heise.de/en/news/Atla...

A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator YouTube video by Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council

What do Big Tech companies do to raise their revenues? Enshittification, the thesis of @doctorow.pluralistic.net portrayed wonderfully by the Norwegian Consumer Council.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...

Trapped in MS Office Seeking IT independence, Europe wants to escape Microsoft Office. The question is: where to?

A witty write-up on the dependence on how deeply Microsoft Office is culturally ingrained in office work, attempts to move to FLOSS alternatives, and a plea for a paradigm shift towards plain text.

ia.net/topics/trapp...

Great to see startup funding go into interoperable platform projects: a @github.com alternative built on @atproto.com.

As someone sceptical of the loud AI hype train, I enjoyed reading this calm account by an indie developer on LLMs‘ capabilities in software development these days.

cc: possibly related to your work? @robertwgehl.org, @masnick.com, @laurenshof.online, @dustyweb.bsky.social, @ckatzenbach.bsky.social, @gorwa.ca, @ianbrown.tech, @wavesblog.bsky.social, @tkretschmer.bsky.social, @ntnsndr.in, @metagov.bsky.social

9/ This is the first paper of my PhD research at @oii.ox.ac.uk. Feedback very welcome! osf.io/preprints/so...

8/ TL;DR: Interoperability is necessary but insufficient. To deliver on its promises, my paper recommends complete implementation, full account portability, and greater modularity.

7/ This matters because: if we want to understand what interoperability actually does in practice, we need to look beyond the mere economics of network effects and into the messy social dynamics playing out *between* providers.

6/ My paper offers categories of reasons why users switch within the Mastodon network. Those are avenues of provider differentiation (and competition) under interoperability, and each can be the basis of more in-depth empirical research.

5/ Finding 3: Despite technical standardisation, providers are NOT homogeneous. They differentiate on service quality, governance values, operational models, and more. The theoretical fear of homogenisation? Not supported.

4/ Finding 2: Switching is possible but far from frictionless. Mastodon users reported decision paralysis, as all differentiating features are bundled on providers. When only one preference changes, a full switch is necessary, whereby users lose their history and handle.

3/ Finding 1: Interoperability *can* neutralise network effects, but ONLY if fully implemented. Even in Mastodon, ideologically designed for decentralisation, there are deliberate design choices and incomplete implementations that quietly reintroduce the very power dynamics it aims to abolish.

2/ My paper's idea: under interoperability, your social connections stay intact across providers. So, why do users switch providers when lock-in is supposedly gone? I collected a large dataset from one of the few cases where social media interoperability is already practised at scale: #Mastodon.

1/ Interoperability has been called a "supertool" for platform competition (@proffionasm.bsky.social) and "dangerous" by BigTech-funded think tanks. I evaluate three theoretical expectations (two promises, one concern) against empirical reality.

🚨New Preprint 📝👨‍🎓

Digital Platform #Interoperability – almost unanimously proposed in Economics and Policy literature to counter #BigTech platform power. The EU's Digital Markets Act already mandates it for messengers.

BUT: Empirical evidence so far? Scarce. Let's see what I found. 🧵👇

Starlink Shutdown: Musk Throws Russian Forces Into Chaos Russian forces relied heavily on Starlink for tactical communications, Now SpaceX has deactivated their terminals, causing chaos as units lose contact with commanders.

When a private company controls critical infrastructure and gets the power to influence the course of war: Elon Musk switches off Starlink for Russia.

www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...

Digital Economic Security Seminar – Winter 2026 Organisers/Hosts: Vili Lehdonvirta, Philipp Riederle Sessions: Tuesdays, 1–2pm (UK time), during Oxford term time, via Zoom Participation: Open to researchers and students from any university or resea...

We're ready for another term of our "Digital Economic Security Seminar" at @oii.ox.ac.uk and @aalto.fi. We've got 8 exciting sessions lined up around tech geopolitics. Warm invitation to join for fellow researchers! diesl.eu/digital-econ...

Very lucky to be working within such a brilliant community of fellow Internet scholars

This term, featuring @acalcara.bsky.social, @gbeaumier.bsky.social, @aboxiwu.bsky.social, and five more exciting presenters.

Digital Economic Security Seminar – Spring 2025 Programme Organisers/Hosts: Vili Lehdonvirta, Philipp Riederle Sessions: Tuesdays, 12pm–1pm (UK time), during Oxford term time, via Zoom Participation: Open to researchers and students from any university or re...

The next season of our “Digital Economic Security Seminar” is about to embark - organised by yours truly and Vili Lehdonvirta. Check out our schedule and sign up here: diesl.eu/digital-econ...

The new 🇩🇪German Coalition just made an explicit commitment to #EuroStack - the plan for digital strategic autonomy supported by European industry which doesn’t rely on a Brussels fund showering taxpayer money on projects w no commercial prospects, that no one wants - like #AI_factories. Big deal.

Framework agreement: MS-365 alternative OpenDesk to conquer the Bundeswehr The IT system house of the BWI has concluded a framework agreement with Zendis for "sovereign communication and collaboration solutions" such as OpenDesk.

German government's "Centre for Digital Sovereignty" (ZenDIS) develops open source collaboration suite "openDesk" by bundling multiple great OSS projects - and deploys into public administration. Exciting! @sovereign.tech

Thanks for having me, @rocher.lc!

ITK skifter til europæisk cloud-hosting leverandør ITK tager sammen med Kultur og Borgerservice i Aarhus Kommune konsekvensen af uroen mellem EU og USA og flytter cloud-hosting fra Azure til Hetzner.

The municipality of Aarhus in Denmark moved its cloud hosting from a US provider (Microsoft Azure) to German Hetzner. This brings data within EU borders, ensuring data protection and digital sovereignty. Most surprisingly, it even reduced costs by 2/3. itk.aarhus.dk/nyheder/proj...

Terrific news! Many congratulations and wishing you a great start!

I have never seen anything as disgusting as that. Genuinely no words.