BlueSky wants you to trust them, but they raised $100 million from a crypto fund almost a YEAR AGO and didn't tell anyone.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/19/bluesky-announces-100m-series-b-after-ceo-transition/
Remote
Dan Gillmor
@dangillmor__dup_4171@mastodon.social
mastodon 5.0.0-nightly.2026-10-22Bio and disclosures: dangillmor.com/about/ Boosts mean I think you should see this -- usually but not always an endorsement.
Bay Area, Nara · dangillmor.com
0 Followers
0 Following
43 Posts
Joined October 21, 2022
Personal site:
My Pixelfed photos:
"Cornerstone of Democracy" Newsletter:
Contact me:
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
RE: https://mastodon.social/@eff/116178635828161083
This is why blocking ads and trackers is not just a suggestion. It should be a baseline of your online existence.
As the U.S. sinks into dictatorship -- malevolent rule by corrupt politicians and oligarchs -- the institution I know the best has almost completely failed to recognize, much less counter, the threat. Big Journalism will be remembered for its cowardice and capitulation. https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2026/mar/17/trump-is-aiming-for-dictatorship-thats-the-verdict-of-the-worlds-most-credible-democracy-watchdog
Boosted by @Gargron@mastodon.social
If you have a Ring (Amazon) camera, you are -- or will become -- a tool of the surveillance state. Is that really what you want to be?
Boosted by @Gargron@mastodon.social
Mozilla is asking for your opinion about what it's doing, and the survey appears to be aimed at getting you used to the idea that "AI" will become an integral focus area.
I told them that I want Mozilla to focus SOLELY on improving Firefox and Thunderbird, with zero AI in the product.
Google has become everything it once pretended to disdain -- an arrogant, sleazy, control-freak monopolist.
Its latest anti-user, anti-competition move will shut down the alternative app marketplaces that Google used to show off as "we're not like Apple" evidence. https://thenewstack.io/f-droid-says-googles-android-developer-verification-plan-is-an-existential-threat-to-alternative-app-stores/
Big Journalism carries water for Trump as usual, obligingly calling the Republicans' voter-suppression legislation by the name they cooked up to make it sound just fine. The bill would destroy what's left of our democracy. The only thing it would "SAVE" is white male supremacy.
Do better, media.
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
A reminder that Molly White (@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io@mastodon.social) is, by far, doing the best job of covering the endlessly corrupt cryptocurrency "industry" -- her latest newsletter post, replete with Epstein Class dot-connecting, should make you furious.
Looks from here like the Trump regime is hoping Iran will provide a Reichstag fire-type event (look it up) in the U.S. -- see those scary warnings of attacks on California.
Why? A pretext to escalate domestic fascism, such as even more direct interference with this year's elections.
It will surprise no one that American billionaires are having, ahem, second thoughts about the obviously empty promises they made to be serious philanthropists.
The U.K. accelerates toward police state status, by requiring the equivalent of a license to read and speak online. Worse, it drastically undermines your personal security.
The US is moving this way, too. Wake up, people, because it's almost too late.
I do hope that these videos have been archived elsewhere -- they sound like essential viewing to understand the ratfuckery that "DOGE" was doing.
Trump has so thoroughly brought Big Journalism to heel that NBC makes a transparently hollow denial that it covered up the Olympic audience's booing of JD Vance. The denial is a pathetic but telling lie. It tells us a lot about the network's disintegrating integrity.
Boosted by @flargh@mastodon.social
Trump, Musk, Rubio, and their henchmen destroyed USAID -- directly causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, mostly children. The apparatchiks celebrated while bosses lied about what they'd done.
I can't overstate my incandescent rage at these monstrous people.
https://www.propublica.org/article/usaid-cholera-deaths-trump-humanitarian-aid-cuts-south-sudan
#pitchforks
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
Trump regime wants to force ALL visitors to the U.S. to install government-controlled spyware on their phones, and submit detailed personal data -- even DNA, apparently -- to the authorities.
(If they're trying to wreck tourism, including the World Cup, this is the way.)
ICE/CBP are criminal agencies, staffed by violent criminals, and gleefully dispatched against Americans by a vicious president and his apparatchiks. It's far worse than most of us understand.
Garrett Graff has done the homework and lays it out here:
https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/accountability-for-ice-and-cbp?utm_source=www.doomsdayscenario.co&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=accountability-for-ice-and-cbp
Read and share it.
We all get periodic emails with subject lines like "We're updating our Terms of Service and Privacy Notice."
Question:
Has ANY update of this kind EVER been in favor of the customer?
Boosted by @mattblaze@federate.social
Dan Froomkin, one of America's top press critics, dissects what looks like a short-lived internal rebellion by New York Times reporters and editors who -- all too briefly -- told the simple truth about the Trump regime's murder of an American citizen in Minneapolis.
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
Replying to
I'm going to post a comprehensive list of the news sources I rely on. Working on it now.
It's worth remembering that the catastrophic Supreme Court Citizens United ruling -- giving billionaires the right to buy elections -- had the support of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU ignored the predictable consequences, and democracy may never recover.
We are governed by the stupidest criminals in the history of the U.S. federal government, as Josh Marshall makes clear. And their stupidity is causing incalculable harm at home and around the world.
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
Again, Molly White (@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io) is doing by far the best journalism about the massively corrupt cryptocurrency "industry" and how it's a threat to everyone's financial health. Her latest newsletter highlights ways the sleaze includes top politicians, especially (of course) Trump.
The United States is at war with Cuba, but our weapons are aimed at further impoverishing -- and starving -- the population. Destroying the electrical grid will have that effect. It's all blatantly illegal, not to mention immoral. Big Journalism has kind of, sort of noticed, but doesn't really care.
Boosted by @Gargron@mastodon.social
AI-generated "evidence" is infecting the legal system. Until judges come down HARD on the the lawyers doing this stuff -- and until some of the lawyers are disbarred -- these sleazebags will poison the system completely.
The Murdoch family's Fox "News" says sorry-not-sorry for its pure deceit in pretending Trump didn't insult the families of dead soldiers.
This almost certainty was not a "mistake" -- and this vile media company would have to improve to be merely dishonorable.
All corruption, all the time in Trump world, exhibit 64,549:
Big Journalism has done sporadic coverage of the beyond-epic corruption in Trump world. But occasional stories don't begin to show the breadth and depth of the sleaze. They could learn from this independent piece.
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
The Epstein files coverup could be the cause of a new -- and final -- world war.
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
"The reason it is important to identify the Court as corrupt is because it is in fact corrupt."
Essential commentary from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, one of the news sites that is doing the journalism we need right now.
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@evacide/116207648749663738
Grammarly would have to improve its ethics to be slimy.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@thejapantimes/116248832950638355
Here's one championship team Trump won't invite to the Oval Office.
He gave them the incentive they needed.
Boosted by @PhilipCJames@mas.to
Gallup polling organization joins the quislings, announcing it'll stop doing presidential approval surveys, not coincidentally just when Trump's negatives are super-high.
Chapter and verse of Big Journalism's epic failures in the Trump era -- and what's most disheartening is that our top "news" organizations have made it plain they have zero interest in even admitting, much less repairing, the damage they have caused to our nation.
"A.I. Isn't People"
Another brilliant newsletter post by Rusty Foster:
"I don’t need to know what mechanism underlies human intelligence to rule out the possibility that it’s the same as what a large language model does."
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
A reminder that the Trump regime lies about absolutely everything. https://theintercept.com/2026/01/23/mahmoud-khalil-palestine-protest-rubio/
When you see any statement from this corrupt government, you must ASSUME it is a lie.
And we need, collectively, to educate everyone -- especially people serving on juries -- of this reality.
Rewriting other people's original reporting and clickbait-wrapping the "new" story is not new. But a scumbag operation called "The Daily News Today" is doing it at AI-juiced scale.
Alexios Mantzarlis, one of journalism's expert observers of this stuff, explains here:
Please don't reward ripoff artists.
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
I'm not a fan of Apple, due to its greed, extreme control-freakery and hypocrisy about privacy, among other things.
But it's clear to me that Apple is going to sell huge, huge numbers of its new low-cost Mac laptops. The crap low-end Windows machines from companies like HP are toast.
Almost everything about Trump's "Board of Peace" smells of corruption, and Dave Troy's discovery of extremely weird trademarking of the name adds to the reek.
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
A reminder that the Trump regime and its supporters are racist to the core.
All corruption, all the time in Trump world.
The family of one of Trump's most vile apparatchiks -- Lutnick, who lied about his ties to Epstein -- stands to make hundreds of millions, or billions, on the likely refunds of the tariffs the regime illegally collected.
Yet another federal judge blasts Trump regime for lying and ignoring court orders -- and, as usual, does absolutely nothing about it.
Bottom line: Trump is winning his war on the judicial system.
Sigh, the New York Times gives a massive amount of op-ed space to an AI founder who (surprise!) loves-loves-loves the technology.
h/t @rdviii@rdviii@famichiki.jp@mastodon.social