Per CNN, police believe the Emory shooter targeted the CDC because he was sick or thought he was sick “and blamed the illness on the Covid-19 vaccine.”

And this is why we keep telling you that anti-vax conspiracy theories are dangerous.
www.cnn.com/us/live-news...

Algorithms are not inherently good or bad; they take on the properties of the code that humans write, but apply it at a scale that humans are not capable of.

We won’t win this game. And when we lose, the cost will be control over our own minds.

Algorithms serve up content you like b/c they know that’s how they can hook you and get you to keep clicking, keep scrolling, and keep making them more money. They’re like digital drug dealers — and I’d argue that the effects are more insidious and corrosive than actual drugs.

This is the first piece of advice I offer in the survival guide for resisting algorithmic tyranny. Until you learn the difference between entertainment and education vs covert psychological manipulation, you will remain a slave to the algorithm.

Learn the difference. Act on it.

Let’s be clear: Reverse algorithmic capture isn’t a policy debate about platform bias. It’s a strategy designed & rolled out by the Trump admin to realign the rules of information visibility in favor of those in power, using regulatory levers to reprogram epistemic systems.

We are witnessing the emergence of a privatized information infrastructure that serves public ideological aims without invoking the First Amendment—or admitting the state’s hand. It’s being done by rebranding algorithmic power as populist reform.

Hi, Bannon.

In the name of fighting censorship, the Trump administration is shaping digital ecosystems to favor its preferred narratives while chilling dissent. It is a form of soft epistemic authoritarianism—and we all (I hope) know what comes next.

Interestingly (to me at least), this set of tactics actually mirrors in some ways a Russian disinfo tactic called reflexive control. Though there are some key differences, what Trump is doing is basically forcing platform decisions by manipulating the choice architecture.

That’s not even close to all of it. We have also seen companies like YouTube & Facebook respond to the Trump admin’s false claims of censorship by scrapping their own content moderation practices, which almost always benefits right wing media outlets & commentators.

In a new EO, Trump codified this process of reverse algorithmic capture by forcing any company that wants to do business now or in the future with the federal government to implement standards to reduce “bias“ — which includes not mentioning things like diversity and equity.

These algorithms are essentially unseen curators of reality. They decide what content you see or don’t see; what creators you see or don’t see; what ads you get served; what your Google results look like when you search for anything from restaurants to personal health questions.

This practice of reverse algorithmic capture has already been written into policy and is affecting the algorithms that shape everything from search results to feed curation to ad targeting, to content moderation on platforms.

It’s affecting you. Probably more than you realize.

As I wrote, the revolution isn’t “coming.” It’s here. Your only options now are to start fighting now to maintain your cognitive freedom, or start fighting later to try to get back. If you can.

Full article is here: open.substack.com/pub/weaponiz...

If we don’t have control over the information we see; if we don’t even understand why we’re seeing it; if our institutions are in the pockets of the companies doing this to us; if we’re not even allowed to see our own data or what’s being done with it … then what rights do we have at all?

Tyranny today is packaged as convenience, security, protection, & connection. It’s ubiquitous & your consent is often required to gain access to even basic services — which is not really consent at all. It’s coercion.

The goal is to embed into so many systems that it’s impossible to get rid of.

Tyranny doesn’t look like it did in years past. Most of the time, it’s invisible until it’s too late. We have to become masters of adversarial tactics. And we have to become experts at identifying our own vulnerabilities — b/c if we don’t, then our adversaries will become experts at exploiting them.

Hello.

Generally, those who believe that getting vaccinated is a personal choice are also those who claim to value personal responsibility and abhor free-riding — yet by choosing not to get vaccinated, you are, indeed, free-riding off the rest of us.

When you tell people that vaccination is an individual choice, they don’t think about how their decision will impact the most vulnerable members of our society – the ones who can’t speak up and say how unfair it is that they have to suffer for someone else’s “individual choice“.