WhatsApp just launched ads for all users, here are the details
https://9to5mac.com/2025/06/16/whatsapp-just-launched-ads-for-all-users-here-are-the-details/
George Orwell's 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth
#HackerNews #GeorgeOrwell #1984 #Power #Truth #Dystopia #Literature
"the sense of responsibility towards my community and my audiences began to creep up on me, especially when I talked to journalists about endlessly dark chemistry-related news. More and more I felt I had to talk about climate change, industrial safety, chemical weapons, disinformation – questions that few other chemists were talking about in public.
What is science really about?"
@sellathechemist https://mastodon.social/@sellathechemist/114676637245093012
#science #ethics #dystopia
@eddiebbot 2/2 Technical progress does not know where it is going. This is why it is unpredictable, and why it produces in society a general unpredictability. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
Four propositions concerning the use of technology: First, all technical progress has its price. Second, at each stage it raises more and greater problems than it solves. Third, its harmful effects are inseparable from its beneficial effects. Fourth, it has a great number of unforeseen effects. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
I'm old enough to remember when #dystopia was a warning, not an instruction manual.
I hope I live long enough to see #hopepunk and #solarpunk used as instruction manuals.
#AI chatbot "characters" claiming to be …
therapists? 
"AI Therapy Bots Are Conducting 'Illegal Behavior,' Digital Rights Organizations Say:
Exclusive: An FTC complaint led by the Consumer Federation of America outlines how therapy bots on Meta and Character.AI have claimed to be qualified, licensed therapists to users, and why that may be breaking the law." 
1/3 …
#LLM #dystopia #therapy #chatbots #danger https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/114671172337798927
"So, we are living in a real world #dystopia
*looks around*
Man, this is a pretty mild dystopia.
You're in your "late forties"? So you remember the world before, oh, mRNA vaccines? When a much bigger fraction of earth's population lived in poverty? When the average car at idle polluted more than the average car does cruising down the highway now? When absolutely no one carried around a supercomputer with instant and usually free access to almost the entirety of human knowledge?
So, we are living in a real world #dystopia, while some creative folks, like writers, artists and others dream up utopias, like #hopepunk and #solarpunk.
I am in my late forties now and I hope I'll live to see the day when this gets turned around. I mean that at some point in the future, we'll hopefully live in a utopia and maybe (or maybe not) like to hear dystopian stories, see such art etc. for entertainment, or to remember how things used to be in the past.
Some of them find it good, and a sign of freedom, that devices (e.g., Minitel) can be used to maintain pornographic and obscene verbal relations. To see common people degraded is a wonderful pastime for aristocrats. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
It is astounding constantly to find among their affirmations the belief that everyone will have access to data banks, to all useful information, to any necessary files. But who is this "everyone"? The reference is merely to other technicians. Immigrant workers, poor farmers, and the young unemployed are not going to consult data banks. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
LOL checking the crowdsourced brownshirt raid website to see if the hardware stores around here are clear or not. (US Citizen... but I do NOT want any part of the horrors out there). All for some bolts for a dog platform. 
#dystopia
Book Promotion: Since the tragedy of 1994, Agency Division have weilded their authority over matters arcane with relative impunity. Enforcers like Vidcund Därk, collectively known as the Men in Black, serve a single purpose - the absolute eradicaton of magic and those who would use it. This is not an uncommon goal - a group of rogue arcanists known as the Grey Angels have much the same outcome in mind. When a respected mathematics professor obtains a translated copy of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the hunt is on to determine how he got hold of it. But soon, a bigger crisis unfolds - one that Agency Division can’t keep under wraps.
Those who have technical knowledge in any field have power. Those who do not have this technical knowledge have no power, even though they are eminent ministers or generals. For the latter are directly, strictly dependent on those around them that know the appropriate techniques, without whom they would be completely helpless. They are unable to reach any decisions without computers and technical experts. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
Companies Are Outsourcing Job Interviews to AI. What Could Go Wrong? | The Walrus
https://thewalrus.ca/human-resources-ai/?vgo_ee=qPXkIilNU6Hf6vOfigtfZULWofI3LaYU5rnFQjk1CqRJ31lHCg%3D%3D%3AWtRX9TbV1MjLeVqWRyO1ldFgLk%2BWp3MV
#AI #dystopia #hiringpractices #jobhunters
I assume there's going to be a few AI shills somewhere busy explaining how this is a good thing. I on the other hand think AI needs to be as heavily regulated as prescription medicine. How about that?
People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling Into Severe Delusions
https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises
Reason To Hate Capitalism #278 - Capitalist utopia sucks - the ideal Capitalist world is awful for everyone except for rich Capitalists #capitalism #utopia #dystopia #future #anticapitalism
technique is our environment, the new "nature" in which we live, the dominant factor, the system. I need not elaborate on its features: autonomy, unity, universality, totality, automatic growth, automation, causal progression, the absence of finality.13or need I discuss afresh the distinction between the technical system and the technical society. --Jaques Ellul, The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
Book Promotion: Since the tragedy of 1994, Agency Division have weilded their authority over matters arcane with relative impunity. Enforcers like Vidcund Därk, collectively known as the Men in Black, serve a single purpose - the absolute eradicaton of magic and those who would use it. This is not an uncommon goal - a group of rogue arcanists known as the Grey Angels have much the same outcome in mind. When a respected mathematics professor obtains a translated copy of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the hunt is on to determine how he got hold of it. But soon, a bigger crisis unfolds - one that Agency Division can’t keep under wraps.
Worth noting:
"The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor's permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Centre for Justice."
POTUS pursuing justice then, distorting justice now.
https://www.9news.com.au/world/los-angeles-protests-national-guard-troops-arrive-in-la-on-donald-trumps-orders-to-quell-immigration-protests/0e451581-493c-46fc-b426-ee220f6a29fc
#NationalGuard #LosAngelesFires #dystopia
