More good writing from Masnick on scary stuff coming out of DC.

Lots of bad things are happening right now, but this one stands out. There’s no good reason for this except to make Musk happy.

I always appreciate Sam’s writing and especially here. I’m waiting to see what—if anything—my current church has to say about the current mess, but I have a deep fondness for the church I grew up in, and it’s deeply disappointing for a rich church that is willing to throw those resources behind its interests to decide that combatting the present cruelty is not one of those interests.

I’m grateful for The Onion right now.

Bookmarking this because with the sheer quantity of nonsense that’s happened in just the last couple of weeks, I feel like I will eventually need reminders of just how dumb some of it has been.

Masnick pulls no punches.

Government overreach is scary, but it can also be really, really petty.

Oh, he really is doing this like he did Twitter. That was a nightmare by itself.

Anyone who hasn’t should read one of two excellent books—Extremely Hardcore or Character Limit—on Musk’s takeover of Twitter, because I’m getting similar vibes here. Remember when Musk just refused to pay money Twitter owed because he didn’t feel like it?

What a mess.

This headline would be hilarious if it weren’t so infuriating.

Yeah, it’s really hard to have any sympathy here at all.

Saw someone link to this and remembered I should probably read the whole thing instead of just the first few paragraphs. I fall somewhere between Doctorow and Masnick on Bluesky optimism, but I really appreciate their dialogue on it.

Reading all this recent coverage on Musk’s “gaming” has made me want to reread Cory Doctorow’s stories about gold farming—which is all the more fitting given that Doctorow uses gold farming to talk about exploited labor. gift link

This was one of the dumbest parts of all Meta’s announcements and now it’s… basically nothing, too?

Yes to all of this.

Digital labor issues abound in the context of generative AI, but fan labor issues make me particularly angry.

Darkly hilarious.

Not the headline I would have chosen, but very interesting argument here.

Directly out of Musk’s playbook. All the more reason to ditch Meta for the fediverse.

The headline doesn’t really make the point, but the article is interesting; of course Amazon drivers would be sent into areas evacuated for fire.

Meta’s cynicism and groveling is pretty appalling.

Some more good writing on a bad situation.

Chilling read.

I especially appreciate this article in the wake of Meta’s recent announcements. There are cases in which content moderation is inconsistent or overreaching, and there are cases in which less moderation fixes the problem. However, it’s the arbitrary distinctions and self-serving nature of the changes that make the “free expression” argument so flimsy.