Author | Lightnews

Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · 5d

Palantir's comms chief said she's concerned about its political shift toward the Trump admin, including embracing parts of Trump's agenda and inking a contract with ICE to build "ImmigrantOS"

"I think it's going to be challenging," she said.
via @jennelias.bsky.social: www.cnbc.com/2025/10/30/p...

Palantir communications chief calls the company's political shift 'concerning'

Palantir Head of Global Communications Lisa Gordon's comments come as CEO Alex Karp aligns himself further with the Trump administration.

www.cnbc.com

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Reposted by Annie Palmer

Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 6d

ICE and Border Patrol agents, while wearing face masks, randomly stop people on the street and demand they submit to facial-recognition technology for a citizenship check.

Via @josephcox.bsky.social

www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

ICE and CBP Agents Are Scanning Peoples’ Faces on the Street To Verify Citizenship

Videos on social media show officers from ICE and CBP using facial recognition technology on people in the field. One expert described the practice as “pure dystopian creep.”

www.404media.co

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NPR @npr.org · 7d

Three times in the past two weeks, editorials at the 'Washington Post' failed to disclose that they focused on matters in which owner Jeff Bezos had a material interest.

'Washington Post' editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

Three times in the past two weeks, editorials at the 'Washington Post' failed to disclose that they focused on matters in which owner Jeff Bezos had a material interest.

n.pr

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · 7d

Amazon confirmed this morning that it's laying off 14k corporate staffers.

The massive cuts are being blamed on AI and bureaucracy bloat. Amazon is also unwinding a pandemic era hiring spree which caused its corporate and warehouse staff to balloon

More details here:
www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/a...

Amazon laying off about 14,000 corporate workers as it invests more in AI

The company said it's cutting roles in order to help make the company leaner and less bureaucratic, while it looks to invest in generative AI.

www.cnbc.com

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · 8d

New: Amazon is preparing to announce sweeping layoffs beginning Tuesday that are expected to represent the largest cuts to its corporate workforce in its history.

Amazon has continued to shave its headcount after laying off 27,000+ staffers between 2022 and 2023. www.cnbc.com/2025/10/27/a...

Amazon to announce largest layoffs in company history, source says

The layoffs will amount to the largest cuts to Amazon's corporate workforce in the company's history, according to a person familiar with the matter.

www.cnbc.com

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Matt Day @mattmday.bsky.social · 11d

Amazon's cloud is under pressure (it's not just Monday's outage).
From newly serious competitors, from a homegrown bureaucracy, and from an artificial intelligence wave threatening to upend a market that Amazon Web Services invented.

On AWS in the AI era:
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Amazon’s AWS Shows Signs of Weakness as Competitors Charge Ahead

The company that basically invented the cloud business is widely perceived as trailing its rivals in artificial intelligence.

www.bloomberg.com

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · 12d

Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir and a handful of other major technology companies are among the high-profile donors who are helping to finance Trump's $300 million ballroom, via @spencerkimball.bsky.social
www.cnbc.com/2025/10/23/t...

Trump White House ballroom financed by Big Tech and these other corporate donors

Big Tech and other publicly traded companies are helping to finance the $300 million White House ballroom planned by President Donald Trump.

www.cnbc.com

Reposted by Annie Palmer

Sal Rodriguez 🕷️ @sal19.bsky.social · 13d

Just two days after Toronto denied the Mariners a World Series appearance, Seattle-based Amazon has announced a new robotics system called... Blue Jay www.cnbc.com/2025/10/22/a... by @anniepalmer.bsky.social

Amazon introduces 'Blue Jay' warehouse robot that performs multiple tasks at once

The robotics system is called Blue Jay, and Amazon said it's already being deployed in one of its South Carolina warehouses.

www.cnbc.com

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · 13d

On the heels of the NYT report yesterday, Amazon is out with a new warehouse robot today called "Blue Jay" that can pick, sort and consolidate packages in a single assembly line-style system.

www.cnbc.com/2025/10/22/a...

Amazon introduces 'Blue Jay' warehouse robot that performs multiple tasks at once

The robotics system is called Blue Jay, and Amazon said it's already being deployed in one of its South Carolina warehouses.

www.cnbc.com

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 14d

“.. internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.”

@nytimes.com $AMZN
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/t...

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Lora Kolodny @lorak.bsky.social · 22d

As Benioff softens his stance on sending the National Guard to SF - Musk calls to deploy federal troops to the "drug zombie apocalypse" [disclosure: that I call home]... www.cnbc.com/2025/10/13/m...

Musk calls for federal troops in San Francisco even as Benioff softens stance

With Dreamforce about to kick off in San Francisco, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff inserted himself into a national debate about crime in U.S. cities.

www.cnbc.com

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · 27d

Migrant laborers at Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia say the company hasn't followed through on its promise to reimburse them after extensive investigations found workers paid sham recruiting fees to secure contract jobs

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

‘We want justice’: workers at Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia still waiting on financial redress

Asian migrant laborers who paid predatory recruiting fees say global mega-corporation has not kept its promise to pay them restitution

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Annie Palmer

Techmeme @techmeme.com · Oct 6

A book excerpt details the "enshittification" of Amazon, and how its "flywheel" technique now enriches the company at the expense of merchants (Cory Doctorow/The Guardian)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · Oct 3

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

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Thomas Brewster @thomasbrewster.bsky.social · Oct 1

🚨NEW🚨 Amazon has been developing drone surveillance tech for American cops, from gun detection to repurposing Twitch's streaming code.

It's also pushing all manner of surveillance tools, including Flock car tracking and AI that constantly monitors all prison calls.

www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Inside Amazon’s Aggressive Push To Get Cops Using AI Surveillance

Inside Amazon’s Aggressive Push To Get Cops Using AI

www.forbes.com

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · Oct 2

"The rate of election appeals by companies in the time from Wilcox's firing to the end of August was more than double the rate filed during the same time frame last year when the NLRB was fully functional, the Reuters tally showed."
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Insight: Frozen feud: How Trump and the Supreme Court helped put historic Whole Foods union bid on ice

On January 27, workers at a Philadelphia Whole Foods voted to become the first store in the Amazon-owned grocery chain to unionize. When the result was announced that night, produce worker Ed Dupree, who helped organize the monthslong campaign, ran to the produce cooler with his coworkers.

www.reuters.com

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · Oct 2

Am curious what might be considered "high quality" AI slop: "Mr. Sahai, the OpenAI product leader, said a significant amount of content, across the quality spectrum, would be produced with Sora, but that the highest quality work would rise to the top."
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/t...

OpenAI’s New Video App Is Jaw-Dropping (for Better and Worse)

www.nytimes.com

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · Oct 2

New: Two Amazon delivery drones crashed into a construction crane midflight in Arizona yesterday, prompting the company to suspend the service.

The FAA and NTSB are probing the incident: www.cnbc.com/2025/10/02/a...

Amazon faces FAA, NTSB probe after two delivery drones crashed into crane in Arizona

The drones sustained "substantial" damage from the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a preliminary incident report.

www.cnbc.com

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niraliberalism @niral.bsky.social · Oct 1

the torch has officially passed from millenials to zoomers. enjoy your turn in the sun as the whipping boy and freak show of american media, anthropologized as if being visited by aliens www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/s...

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Jordan Novet @jordannovet.bsky.social · Sep 29

"Many of the laws don’t cover generic chatbots like ChatGPT, which are not explicitly marketed for therapy but are used by an untold number of people for it." apnews.com/article/ai-t...

Regulators struggle to keep up with the fast-moving and complicated landscape of AI therapy apps

As mental health chatbots driven by artificial intelligence proliferate, a small number of states are trying to regulate them.

apnews.com

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · Sep 30

New: I sat down with Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff, who returned to the Amazon-owned unit in April. He explained his decision to restore Ring's original mission to "make neighborhoods safer."

Of the scrutiny over tech and policing, he said he "backs the blue"
www.cnbc.com/2025/09/30/r...

Ring founder 'backs the blue,' says AI is helping Amazon-owned doorbell unit fight crime

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff returned to the company he founded in April to lead the business, which is part of Amazon's devices division.

www.cnbc.com

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Annie Palmer @anniepalmer.bsky.social · Sep 29

Really important story from @jonathanvanian.bsky.social on the burgeoning online market for AI "nudify" services that allow users to easily create nonconsensual, explicit deepfakes and the shockingly limited legal recourse for victims of this abuse

www.cnbc.com/2025/09/27/n...

How a 'nudify' site turned a group of friends into key figures in a fight against AI-generated porn

A group of friends in Minnesota last year learned that a man they knew had used their social media photos to create pornographic deepfakes.

www.cnbc.com

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Johana Bhuiyan @jmbooyah.bsky.social · Sep 22

Docs reveal how deeply embedded Palantir’s tools were in
ICE's investigative unit. For example, they used a Palantir app to plan a gang takedown & when a target was not at the expected location they used the same app to find the person at their family's address. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Documents offer rare insight on Ice’s close relationship with Palantir

For years, little was known about the multibillion-dollar company that handles data for the US immigration enforcement agency. Now, a cache of emails, training documents and reports sheds light on how...

www.theguardian.com

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Josh Sternberg @joshsternberg.com · Sep 26

Not doing a renovation because I don’t want the terrorists to win

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · Sep 25

OUR BATHROOM MIRRORS ARE VITAL TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY

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