Quite fascinating. It feels like an emancipation, and will change some dynamics…

Illiberalism Is Not Inevitable If Viktor Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.

How did Magyar win? A long running grassroots campaign in rural and small town Hungary; a refusal to be distracted by government propaganda; a focus on economic issues and corruption; a central promise to bring back democracy and the rule of law

Peter Magyar confirmed that Szijjarto, Orbán's FM, has barricaded himself with some of his closest colleagues and is shredding documents related to the sanctions on Russia any other evidence of treason.

Trump’s clash with podcasters puts Fox News on notice As younger voices break from Fox News, the right’s media ecosystem turns on itself

Legacy television power is being put against a decentralized, digital-first influencer class that helped build Trumpism. That means that as younger voices break from Fox, the right’s media ecosystem turns on itself.

I knew it was bad but really didn’t appreciate it was quite this bad

as.ft.com/r/db911dd6-f...

If you know… you know.
Berlin HBf

Anthropic Says That Claude Contains Its Own Kind of Emotions Researchers at the company found representations inside of Claude that perform functions similar to human feelings.

Researchers at the company found representations inside of Claude that perform functions similar to human feelings.

The DSA Showed Teeth Against X but the EU Is Afraid to Call It a Win If civil society can show courage with little support, why is the European Commission afraid to claim its own DSA wins, writes Alexandre Alaphilippe.

If civil society is showing courage with so little protection and support, why is the European Commission so afraid to capitalize on its own Digital Services Act wins, writes Alexandre Alaphilippe.

Engagement Politics…
based on the underlying design of algorithms, this basically means the more outrageous the politician the high the ranking within party.

This is what happens when politics turns from ideology to attention, and that's not good for a functioning democracy.

…

Russia is providing Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say The targeting information has included the locations of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East, the officials said.

‚Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to 3 officials familiar with the intelligence.‘
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Sovereignty isn’t just about borders / military power, it increasingly runs through who controls critical infrastructure. When a state “sanctions” personalized energy solutions, it’s potentially delegating decisions about a strategic resource to actors whose interests don’t align with public welfare

State-sanctioned personalized energy solutions are something I’ve been tracking since last summer. My core concern: they risk undermining energy infrastructure as a public good and with it, state sovereignty.

‘We don’t have infantry’: Ukraine’s war machine evolves into machine war Outmanned by a nuclear power in the largest land war in Europe since 1945, Ukraine’s front line is increasingly held by machines.

"Ukraine is no longer just supplementing its infantry with tech — it is replacing infantry in many cases with drones, ground robots, sensor networks, minefields and artillery cued by unmanned systems." (h/t @christianthiels.bsky.social)

This App Warns You if Someone Is Wearing Smart Glasses Nearby The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. “I consider it to ...

NEW: A hobbyist has created Nearby Glasses, an app that warns you if someone close by is wearing smart glasses. 404 Media spoke to the creator who said he was inspired by our coverage that uncovers how men are wearing Meta's Ray-Bans to covertly film massage parlor workers.

Loxxmaxxing as a natural but extreme extension of whatvststred off as optimizing your day(5AM, cold plunges,) now it is meth, bone crushing and peptides…

served to you by an increasing cohort of influencers.

Shocking…?

40 countries on track to limit or ban children from social media…

@proton.me is killing it with their content…

From Davos to New Delhi, Rupture of Global Order Tests AI Governance The old order is unravelling, writes Alison Gillwald, but efforts to build a more equitable system remain constrained by the interests of dominant powers.

The global order is fracturing, writes Alison Gillwald. But turning geopolitical and technological disruption into justice for the Majority World will take more than restating values. It will require reform of multilateral institutions—and confronting how technology entrenches power imbalances.

How tech turned against women As AI-generated sexualised images proliferate and app-facilitated abuse spreads, we are sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality. It is time to regulate properly

Not only women, but once AI is introduced as Infrastructure, Training data biss will become locked in…

www.ft.com/content/60e2...

Ist auch einer der Szenarien gewesen, wenn es darum ging die twin transition erfolgreich durchzusetzen :)

This just doesn’t feel right….

Exclusive: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere The portal could potentially put Washington in the unfamiliar position of appearing to encourage citizens to flout local laws.

"The U.S. State Department is developing an online portal that will enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned by their governments including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda, a move Washington views as a way to counter censorship."

www.reuters.com/world/us-pla...

Article: The political effects of X’s feed algorithm Abstract: Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects1. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk’s platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users’ feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X’s algorithm has persistent effects on users’ current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

Figure 2. ITT estimates of feed-setting changes on engagement and political attitudes. ITT effect estimates of switching the algorithm on and off (in s.d.). Left, effect of moving from the chronological to the algorithmic feed for users initially on the chronological feed. Right, effect of moving in the opposite direction for users initially on the algorithmic feed. For each outcome, the results of two specifications are reported. Blue, unconditional estimates with robust s.e., controlling only for the initial feed setting and, where applicable, pre-treatment outcome levels. Orange: conditional estimates, controlling for pre-treatment covariates using GRFs; 90% and 95% CIs are reported. Numerical effect sizes and P values correspond to the conditional estimates (all tests are two-sided). The unit of observation is respondent. From top to bottom, sample sizes are n = 4,965, n = 3,337, n = 4,965, n = 4,965, n = 4,596, n = 4,596 and n = 4,850. Tests are described in Methods. Supplementary Information Table 2.16 reports the exact numerical point estimates, s.e., CIs and sample sizes for every specification. All outcomes are standardized. Additional results are presented in Supplementary Information section 2. PCA, first principal component from principal component analysis.

X's algorithm is in fact doing what you think it's doing. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

😅

Germany plans to give spies vast new powers in rollback of postwar restraints Berlin is preparing its foreign intelligence service for a world where the U.S. halts intelligence sharing.

Germany is moving to fortify its foreign intelligence agency with sweeping new powers in preparation for a potential divorce from the U.S.

Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes!

"Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

Wie Russland die Epstein-Files für Propaganda nutzt Besonders im Fokus der Desinformation: Frankreichs Präsident Macron und der ukrainische Präsident Selenskyj.

Wie Russland die Epstein-Files für Propaganda nutzt #Selenskyj #Epstein-Affäre #Russland