Jay Peters, the Verge:
Venmo is starting to test a big redesign of its app, and as part of the changes, it will be implementing a major new privacy measure: the onboarding process for new users will set their posts to only be viewable by their friends by default instead of being public.
I remain too dumb to understand why you would want financial transactions to be visible to anyone but yourself.
Kelsey Piper, the Argument:
At some point, pretending that how people use AI is a complete mystery is just lying to your audience. And at some point, [Ed] Zitron’s “layers of skepticism” attitude — where he is skeptical that AI is a thing at all, that it has any uses, that those uses provide any economic value, that the revenue numbers are real, that adoption is a fad, that training costs are a meaningful R&D expense, that the capital build-out is going to happen at all, that the market could sustain the capital build-out if it happened — leaves one buried in too many impossibility assertions to actually sort them by plausibility.
It is radical skepticism, ultimately arriving at “perhaps nothing we see is real,” rather than principled skepticism about the relatively weakest links in the companies’ case for investment.
My main problem with this piece is that it acknowledge Zitron’s own framing as an A.I. skeptic when he is not one. A skeptic is someone who asks good-faith questions and uses the answers to build an evidence-based view of something. They can separate reasoning from a narrative, while understanding the role it plays. For example, I do not regularly read the Argument because I think it a pretty mediocre website with an Atlantic-lite viewpoint, but that does not mean this article is itself poor or making an unfair case. I think Piper’s frustration with Zitron is entirely earned. However, it is a mistake to think of any of this in terms of skepticism when Zitron’s understanding is, especially now, much closer to conspiracy thinking.
Each of Zitron’s articles is an impenetrable wall of text often reaching into the tens of thousands of words. This volume of material feels substantial — it can be substantial — to the extent Zitron explicitly markets his newsletter on the basis of its word count. Weird.1 He explores basically two major themes: A.I.’s economic case, and its usefulness. Zitron is zealously opposed to the possibility of either in real terms; while he will occasionally gesture at people or businesses doing something with A.I., his default position is more-or-less that it has little use.
There are real criticisms of what generative A.I. does: problems with its output, like its repetition of stereotypes or bugs in code. There are criticisms for what it does to our world, like its energy and water consumption, and what it does to society, like how easy it is to generate junk articles and videos. The societal pushback is also notable, and its unethical foundations continue to be a ripe source of pain. But, as Piper writes in the second footnote, Zitron’s articles are “a superficiality of analysis” despite the voluminous output. Like a lot of conspiracy thinking, they are rooted in fact but have a stricter adherence to supporting an existing narrative.
While I am writing about adequate skepticism, I am unsure of the apparent attention span crisis. We seem to be constantly circulating multi-thousand-word essays, barely-edited podcast episodes, and hours-long YouTube videos. People spend real time with media — a long time. Sometimes, a generous runtime is what it takes to make an argument; often, though, I think it becomes a filter for separating the committed from the not. And, then again, maybe extra-long takes the bubble I am in. ↥︎
Slow news week? Sure.
Here is a fun Bluesky thread from Annie Rauwerda — who runs Depths of Wikipedia — with different domains before they belonged to notable brands. Like, before Claude.com was an Anthropic thing, it used to belong to a Boston-area computer consultant. Stuff like that.
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Chris Iorfida, CBC News:
A Canadian is fighting back in U.S. federal court over what he says is an attempt by the Department of Homeland Security, through Google, to seek “vast swaths of information” about his personal life following social media posts critical of Donald Trump’s administration.
[…]
On Jan. 30, the Canadian X user disparaged ICE in a post that received nearly 96,000 views, according to this week’s complaint.
[…]
The complaint at hand, however, states that John Doe was not seeking entry to the U.S. and has not done so since 2015.
The only details we have of this case are as alleged in the complaint (PDF) and the partially redacted summons (PDF), and they are incomplete. The tweet in question is not quoted, the account is not named, and, though there are enough clues that I tried to track it down, X’s search feature sucks, so I have no idea what it said. Perhaps there is another reason the Department of Homeland Security is trying to obtain details of the Gmail account; perhaps, too, the government was not aware it was targeting a Canadian. (Though, if it were targeting a U.S. resident for their speech, is that any better? Probably not!)
One thing that remains unclear is how the government obtained this email address. Iorfida writes of a previous case:
In the first Trump administration, CBP issued a summons to Twitter in 2017 requesting information regarding the account of a user on Twitter, which the company objected to.
It would be unsurprising if X was entirely compliant with the government’s request.
What is shocking to me is that the U.S. government is apparently going after someone whose X posts, according to the complaint, “have received tens of thousands of views or more; collectively, his posts have received well over 100,000 views”, and this single tweet might represent around half that total. I do not intend to be mean, but those are not the numbers of a notable X account. Officials in the most powerful country in the world are apparently going after some random Canadian for an unmemorable and basically unpopular tweet.
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica:
The block seemed curious, given that Reddit began as a website, and websites generally want traffic. Few are in the practice of turning traffic away.
But some services, including X and Instagram, aggressively push users toward apps—or at least toward being logged in to them.
I reached out to the company to ask what was going on. According to a spokesperson, “We recently started running a test for a small subset of frequent logged-out mobile users that prompts them to download the app after visiting the site. These users are already familiar with Reddit and we’ve seen that the experience is much better for them in the app. The app offers a more personalized experience and users can more easily find communities that match their interests.”
Like other major social media platforms, this turns Reddit into a walled garden. Presumably, this is in part of the company’s aggressive strategy to license users’ posts for A.I. training, plus encouraging user growth. It sucks that the open web is getting torn apart because commercial websites are incentivized to direct people to apps where large-scale scraping is a bigger challenge. This whole thing used to feel so quaint.
Samantha Cole, 404 Media:
Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and other major porn sites, announced today that in the UK, iPhone and iPad users will be able to access its sites again, ending an over three month ban that Aylo initially enacted because of the region’s age verification law.
As of Tuesday, following the iOS 26.4 rollout in the UK, users on the new operating system can visit Pornhub and Aylo’s other sites from their iPhones.
Frustratingly, there is no explanation as to how Aylo’s websites are getting information from this iOS 26.4 API, the documentation for which is only for native apps. I may have missed something obvious, but the only mention I could find of this capability is in a February AppleInsider article. Also I could not find a way to trigger this verification step, even after changing my iPhone’s region, so I cannot test whether it is being passed through an HTTP header — which I presume it is — or another method.
Marie Woolf, the Globe and Mail:
In a letter to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree and Justice Minister Sean Fraser, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce says that, as currently drafted, Bill C-22 “presents considerable risks to Canadian businesses, investment and the integrity of data systems.”
[…]
But the letter expresses concern that, as currently worded, the bill could be used to “require companies to create a back door, which would place encrypted systems at risk.” It says Canada should embrace strong encryption to catalyze growth of the Canadian tech sector.
Under the previous parliamentary session, the Consumer Privacy Protection Act was halted after 136 committee meetings. The current Canadian government is still arguing for updates to the Privacy Act, even as it pushes this hostile bill, but it has not resumed efforts to pass the CPPA.
Dan Friesen, writing on the “Knowledge Fight” Patreon page:
As discussed in today’s podcast episode, Dan and Jordan have decided that they had reached what they felt was the end of the show.
Sometimes, periodical media is created with an elaborate plan or story arc. Often, though, there is no predetermined structure and, especially in the case of reactive or commentary media, the next entry feels almost inevitable. Until it stops. Then we get to feel what our world is like without it and, if it leaves a void, it is a sign it was valued. The end of “Knowledge Fight” leaves a big void.
I will miss this show deeply. Friesen has a particular knack for assessing the world of Alex Jones and other conspiracy broadcasters as what they are: performers. Horrible and dangerous people, to be sure, but acting primarily in service of a performance. Holmes, his co-host, was a good foil for this show in his pure reaction to the inherent horror in this media. If everything goes to plan, a recording of an upcoming live show will be out later this month, and then it is done. What a run.
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Lydia Moynihan, New York Post:
“You have this huge ecosystem pushing AI doomerism with zero regard for the consequences — the main one being that America will fall behind in the global AI race,” Nathan Leamer, executive director of Build American AI, told me. “And they genuinely don’t seem bothered by it.”
And according to a report released this week from the Bull Moose Project, doomers have been spending a fortune.
A tight network of donors, with former Facebook executive Dustin Moskovitz’s Coefficient Giving at the center, has already spent $5.9 billion and has $37.8 billion more publicly pledged, according to the report.
They have given out more than $611 million in donations to candidates (99.8% of whom are Democrats), dark money groups and so-called AI safety organizations such as Future of Life Institute, the report adds.
It is the Post, so you expect a degree of bad faith, but this is deceptive even for them.
The Bull Moose Project is one of several organizations sharing an address and financial connections with the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is overseen by the president’s former chief of staff, and to which the president gave $1 million. The Bull Moose Project’s website promotes a “plan to rejuvenate America” and, in the “American Revitalization” section, illustrates this with a lovely painting of a person launching a canoe beside a float plane. This is maybe only funny to me, but I had to track down that image — hotlinked from Pinterest — and it is a painting by Ross Buckland, who was born in Calgary and now lives in Ontario. I am pretty I recognize the mountain peaks as part of the Canadian Rockies.
Anyhow, its report largely concerns the political spending of Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei, and various other executives, board members, and associated parties. It is so all-consuming it begins to look like a red string board, and is similarly difficult to follow. But it sounds ominous. There is a page dedicated to “the China connection”, but it is pretty weak.
Also, you will note that, instead of citing academics or subject matter experts, Moynihan favourably quotes the executive director of Build America [sic] AI. But Moynihan does not note the group’s funding sources nor explain anything more about it.
Emily Wilkins, CNBC:
The [Leading the Future] PAC, which has said it would support both Democratic and Republican candidates, is also connected to advocacy group Build American AI, which launched a $10 million campaign to push a uniform national AI policy.
Contributors to Leading the Future include private equity firm Andreessen Horowitz, Open AI co-founder Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, SV Angel Founder Ron Conway and AI software company Perplexity.
Laura J. Nelson, Wall Street Journal:
While Congress hasn’t passed a comprehensive law for the fast-growing technology, some states have begun discussing or passing regulations rooted in concern about the need for more AI safeguards.
They include policies championed by nonprofit groups tied to the effective-altruism movement, a broad social and moral philosophy that has become divisive in Silicon Valley owing in part to its focus on potential worst-case scenarios in AI development. Pro-AI forces call them “doomers.”
An effort to punch back against Leading the Future went public Tuesday: an organization called Public First that plans to back candidates from both parties through two super PACs. The group, which is organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code and isn’t required to disclose its donors, is aiming to raise at least $50 million.
Anthropic gave $20 million to Public First.
Taylor Lorenz, Wired:
Marketing agencies are pitching influencers deals such as $5,000 per TikTok video to amplify Build American AI’s messaging about how China’s technological rise should be seen as a threat. The goal, according to a staffer from SM4, the influencer marketing agency running the campaign on behalf of Build American AI, is to subtly shift public debate by framing China’s AI advancement as a serious risk to the safety and well-being of Americans.
Lorenz learned about this because, she says, SM4 pitched her on the campaign. Leading the Future, which runs Build American AI, raised $125 million last year and it is spending it on this.
These influencers are being used to help settle an argument, among some of the world’s richest and least-likeable people, over whether OpenAI (its position backed by Build American AI and Bull Moose Project) or Anthropic (through Public First) should get to write A.I. policy and regulations. Apparently, “neither” is not an option. To its credit, that report from the Bull Moose Project correctly notes the ongoing “proxy war over A.I. policy”, though it stops short of admitting the part it plays.
What both sides appear to agree on is that they must treat A.I. from China as a threat. Those of us elsewhere, however, likely find both threatening, albeit for different reasons.