The AI Slopaganda Proxy War
Plus: What Meta’s Moment Means
Dear Citizens,
Hope you had a nice holiday! We took last week off for Easter/Passover Spring but are back at it, clearing our calendars for the New Yorker’s deep dive into the world of Sam Altman. Existential threats to humanity! Global domination! Peter Thiel’s hot tub! It’s got it all.
Here’s what else to know, watch and do this week.
⚖️ ONE READ: TWO READS: The Meaning of Meta’s Moment ⚖️
Let’s not move on too fast from last month’s social media addiction trial, which many are calling Meta’s “big tobacco moment.” What did it mean, and how did it happen? Yaël Eisenstat, an important part of the Citizens community and Policy Director at Cybersecurity for Democracy, writes that the mask is now off. Meta Knowingly harmed children.
This is the type of evidence social media companies have fought tooth and nail to prevent from ever entering a courtroom, while simultaneously lying to the public by touting their safety efforts. And as these two verdicts proved: once laid out in plain view, the companies’ own products and business decisions are enough for a jury to recognize their negligence.
She looks at what comes next in the push for accountability.
👉 Read the whole piece here.
Our next edition of Citizens Understand lands Sunday, where we cut through the chaos to explain the unchecked power of Big Tech.
For the Nerve, Citizen’s stalwart and co-Founder of Design It For Us Zamaan Qureshi writes for the Nerve that now, “That collateral damage has a face. These harms aren’t abstract, and young people have been sounding the alarm – if they are still alive to tell their stories.”
It’s a massive turn of the tide. American families are seeing social media companies for what they are.
A secular amen!
👉 Read Z’s piece in full here.
👉 Bonus read: Seven months out from a midterm, and against the backdrop of war, Timothy Snyder warns these are the conditions where a coup attempt can emerge in plain sight. With Donald Trump operating in a familiar logic of escalation, read here to grasp what’s unfolding.
🗂️ ONE LISTEN: War, Slop and … LEGO? 🗂️
Who is winning the AI slop war over the war in Iran? Unbelievably enough, the winner is… Lego, or the latest lego-themed slop poured out by Iran. This great conversation at the 404 dissects the AI slopaganda proxy war playing out, and its surprising winner so far.
👉 Listen to the full episode here.
✊ ONE ACTION: Palantir Out ✊
Like any good evil villain, Peter Thiel doesn’t just walk away from hundreds of millions of pounds. Outcry is growing over Palantir’s unholy alliance with the UK’s National Health Service, but we’re not quite there yet.
Amnesty UK, though, has built one of the most comprehensive toolkits to date - their No Palantir in Our NHS Campaign Pack.
This toolkit has it all, for online and offline action… and even ways to engage from outside the UK. Your one action this week? Click through and download here.
Every week we surface practical ways to turn concern into action. Subscribe to get it in your inbox.
👉 Bonus action: Help keep Palantir’s spytech firm out of the EU, here.
That’s all for this week,
Team Citizens
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