Mariel Garcia-Montes
marielgm.bsky.social
Mariel Garcia-Montes
@marielgm.bsky.social
40% thinker, 60% doer. 100% altermundista. Sociotechnical researcher on privacy and surveillance, trust and safety at MIT HASTS, Data + Feminism, Berkman Klein. I love creative uses of media and tech in the public interest. Cambridge, MA/Ciudad de México.
Pinned
Intro: My name is Mariel (she/her/señora). I'm a final year STS PhD @ MIT. I'm very invested in the sociotechnical study of tech + media for the public interest and social change, especially privacy & #surveillance, T&S in the global majority world. For fun, I #mutualaid, cook for friends, and read.
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
At least nine people in southern Ethiopia have been infected with the deadly Marburg virus, a clinically similar cousin to Ebola, according to the WHO.

There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved to treat the virus.
Ethiopia reports first outbreak of Marburg, Ebola cousin with no vaccine
At least nine cases of the rare viral hemorrhagic fever have been confirmed, the World Health Organization said Friday.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 14, 2025 at 11:30 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
Not now, carnivorous death ball
November 6, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
We have a great event coming up on Nov. 12 to discuss possibilities for and examples of Feminist AI —join us! bit.ly/DCFNOV2025
#DataAgainstFeminicide #FAIR @kanarinka.bsky.social @ladelentes.bsky.social @silvanavf.bsky.social
October 20, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
Take note, NSO Group.
Today the Supreme Court heard a very, very technical case about whether a government contractors (in this case, private prison company GEO Group) should get essentially qualified immunity for contractors (I'm oversimplifying). The answer, it seems, will be no.
news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-...
Justices Doubt Timing of Immunity Appeal in GEO Wage Case (1)
Several US Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of GEO Group Inc.’s argument that it can immediately appeal a lower court’s rejection of its immunity defense to escape forced labor claims from im...
news.bloomberglaw.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:07 AM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
Amigues en CDMX y más allá:
El 5 de noviembre a las 10am voy a charlar con David Pruneda sobre Binding Media para el CISAN, UNAM.
Yo estaré virtualmente pero la sede oficial es la Torre de Humanidades II en CU. También se va a transmitir en vivo vía el YouTube de CISAN www.youtube.com/cisanunamweb
October 29, 2025 at 8:38 PM
We watched How to Survive a Plague in class, and I cried from beginning to end. I thought I was moved because I was a '90s kid who lost 'uncles' to HIV, but many students were moved, too. A story of people who, as they were dying, found it in their heart to fight for their right to live, saving many
October 29, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
A reminder that we're collecting books, chapters, and journal articles by non-TT historians for publication in our year-end lists. Anything with a 2025 pub date is eligible and you can submit for your friends/colleagues! contingentmagazine.org/yearly-pub-l...
Publications by Non-Tenure-Track Historians
Since we began publishing in 2019, Contingent has published end-of-year lists of books and articles by non-tenure-track historians released in the past calendar year. To submit something for inclusion...
contingentmagazine.org
October 24, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
What makes the internet so special you ask? It was designed in the 1970s to create a system resilient to single points of.....oh.

Jokes aside, I'm grateful that so much infrastructure *did* keep running yesterday. Saying a general thanks to all the engineers whose work made that possible.
According to more than a dozen college and uni students, “the Canvas outage threw off their schedules, preventing them from not just submitting and viewing assignments but also from participating in-class activities, contacting professors, and accessing the textbooks and other materials…”
The AWS Outage Was a Nightmare for College Students
The outage impacted online learning platform Canvas, which is used by half of college students across the US, leaving many unable to access course materials or contact professors.
www.wired.com
October 21, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
I am being asked to tell my department which pieces of lab equipment should be supported with backup power because they expect rolling blackouts and brownouts in 2026 due to increased energy demands from AI. In case you're wondering how my day is going.
October 14, 2025 at 2:10 PM
I have learned *so much* from @msifry.bsky.social's nuanced, informed, realistically optimistic thinking on the biggest conflicts humanity has faced the past few years. He shares it all for free on his Substack, so his book is an immediate order for me: micahsifry.com/books/whendo...
When Doves Try: Israel’s Peace Now Movement 1978-1983
When Doves Try: Israel’s Peace Now Movement 1978-1983 tells the story of how a handful of young Israeli reserve officers helped ignite the country’s largest grassroots peace movement. In 1978, their o...
micahsifry.com
October 9, 2025 at 9:55 PM
This project is #goals for anyone working on AI, computing, and environment: insightful research on an urgent matter, extremely compelling choice of case studies in the global majority, and beautifulllllll grabado/print illustrations. The women behind it are a dream team. tramas.digital/es/
Início
Investigación-acción feminista descolonial que revela los impactos socioambientales del mundo digital en América Latina.
tramas.digital
October 8, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
In February, @404media.co did a piece on the overwhelming amount of AI Slop in public library vendor Hoopla Digital. They promised to clean up their platform, but just this morning I went looking and easily found a self-publishing house pushing shoddy health content by a fake author.
October 8, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Today in dream job alerts, the International Spy Museum is hiring a historian: www.spymuseum.org/about/career...
Historian
Job Opportunity: The International Spy Museum is searching for a Historian & Curator to join our Exhibitions and Collections team. Our new museum is located at L’Enfant Plaza.
www.spymuseum.org
October 6, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
Seven years ago today, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was tortured, murdered and then dismembered. And any so-called comedian who can't stand up tonight in Riyadh and do ten minutes on that kind of hijinx and horseplay just isn't worth the Saudi blood money he's being paid.
October 2, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Today I met someone. As I age, this feeling becomes more and more rare, but today I felt it strongly in my heart: it is the beginning of a long friendship. And I wish I could tell introvert teen me about it.
October 2, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Thanks to the miracle that is our elementary school special ed teacher, Fat Bear Week has been an important event in my family life, and the kids screamed when they saw the news they had been awaiting:

CHUNK WON! Or, as NYT reported it, "All of the Bears Were Fat, but Chunk Was the Fattest of All"
October 1, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
Here is the thing that all the US libs (and deluded libs-who-think-they're-leftists) who stan Claudia: you cannot support Morena and also the Zapatistas, or the Ayotzinapa families, or the searching mothers of the disappeared, because Morena is against them
October 1, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
My best advice for parents re: harmful content: show genuine interest in the stuff your kid is watching and doing online.

Let them talk your ear off about Minecraft and Roblox and the funny video they just watched. Make them feel excited to share with you, vs making them feel ashamed or judged
September 26, 2025 at 11:39 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
🫠
💰 México ha asegurado una gran inversión tecnológica. La empresa estadounidense CloudHQ, uno de los principales desarrolladores de centros de datos a nivel mundial, invertirá 4.800 millones en Querétaro
dozz.es/lla6l5
CloudHQ invierte 4.800 millones de dólares en un centro de datos en Querétaro
El proyecto prevé generar más de 8.000 empleos y meter a México en la economía basada en la inteligencia artificial
dozz.es
September 25, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
The UK Prime Minister has announced plans for a new mandatory digital ID scheme for anyone who wants to work in the UK.

The initiative is being pitched as a way to control borders - we fail to see how the two are linked.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cw...
September 26, 2025 at 11:23 AM
Insightful research on #surveillance in Peru by Hiperderecho documenting the legal framework, FOIA limitations, and especially a list of cases kept secret by the government (starts in p60). [In Spanish, pdf link]: hiperderecho.org/wp-content/u... Tagging @surveillancemw.bsky.social
hiperderecho.org
September 23, 2025 at 4:20 PM
This is some great public writing on #surveillance. The illustrations, the narrative. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Opinion | The N.Y.P.D. Is Teaching America How to Track Everyone Every Day Forever
New tools allow law enforcement agencies to track us at an unimaginable scale.
www.nytimes.com
September 22, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by Mariel Garcia-Montes
This week, I published with the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing on the History of Misinformation-at-Scale and Efforts to Mitigate it.

It’s very relevant to today’s discourse on media consolidation, academic freedom, and the power elite.

FREE TO READ!

drive.google.com/file/d/1Klg9...
donovan-2025-express-a-short-history-of-misinformation-at-scale-and-efforts-to-mitigate-it.pdf
drive.google.com
September 22, 2025 at 4:53 PM