Notices by Alex Ștefănescu (catileptic@chaos.social)

"TLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike in solidarity. The Foundation is sitting on $296 million in reserves and a freshly profitable AI revenue stream. This is a confrontation with global implications"

https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/wikipedia-is-doing-the-capitalist-thing-56a393232943

"What many countries around the world are about to experience... is a period of rapid and involuntary decarbonisation. And that will necessarily mean rapid and involuntary degrowth.

Degrowth is a highly divisive term – and many will reject it. The main shortcoming of degrowth is the assumption that it will be in some way up to us to decide – a kind of lifestyle choice.

It won’t be; whether you like degrowth or hate it, the war on Iran makes it all but unavoidable"
https://open.substack.com/pub/reclaimedsystems/p/how-to-lose-an-empire-in-less-than

i put alot of work and love into simple, straight-to-the-point public posts about digital rights, working with @apti in Romania

our longform articles are on our site: https://apti.ro/

news & announcements & advocacy efforts on our telegram channel: https://t.me/aptiromania

may all fascists be weighed down by self-doubt this year

yesterday, the fascists in #Romania seemed to have itched for something more grandiose than just going to Tâncăbești, the site of the execution of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (a fascist criminal) and reciting hateful poetry

they re-created the destroyed fascist cross, using candles, in Bucharest. they picked Piața Victoriei, a spot known for its revolutionary meaning, for being the site of anti-corruption and anti-authoritarian protests

no reaction from the authorities, it's not even in the news

@edri has published their position on the now-published, no-long-a-leak Digital Omnibus proposal: https://edri.org/our-work/commissions-digital-omnibus-is-a-major-rollback-of-eu-digital-protections/

i wrote up the stance we take at @apti in #Romanian: https://apti.ro/content/GDPR-facut-ferfenita-sub-numele-digital-omnibus

whichever you read and share, the message is the same: the Digital Omnibus amounts to deregulation and a love letter addressed to Big Tech. it risks dismantling the hard-won system that kept our personal data safe, in the EU.

Ursula von der Leyen said: "I want the future of AI to be made in Europe. [...] We will drive this ‘AI first' mindset across all our key sectors, from robotics to healthcare, energy and automotive."

If this "AI" is generative AI, this statement is a threat.

It's the threat of mass precarization and erosion of social protection and labour laws.

The threat of further eroding social cohesion.

I'd rather Europe lead in burning genAI down here, first.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2299

"The AI bubble is the only thing keeping the US economy together, Deutsche Bank warns.

According to a research note recently sent to clients by Deutsche Bank, the AI boom is currently helping the US economy avoid a recession but it cannot continue indefinitely. George Saravelos, Global Head of FX Research at Deutsche Bank, said the US would be close to a recession this year if Big Tech were not spending so heavily on building new AI data centers."

https://www.techspot.com/news/109626-ai-bubble-only-thing-keeping-us-economy-together.html

A new investigation, “Big Tech’s Invisible Hand”, exposes the tactics of these corporations in over 20 articles published between 9 and 24 September by a global consortium of 17 media outlets across 13 countries.

The project reveals the worldwide efforts to rewrite or block legislation intended to protect user data, children, and journalism itself.

https://rsf.org/en/big-tech-s-attempts-weaken-information-space-regulations-worldwide-exposed-new-cross-country

@aral thank you for writing, nonetheless

Whether the genAI bubble with burst or fizzle, we are be left with precarious folx, deprofessionalized workers and data centers that gobble up unreasonable amounts of energy and natural resources.

Instead of waxing philosophical and quoting Wittgenstein, debating whether LLMs "understand" the shitposts they generate, we must address these burning issues.

Ameliorate the precariat. Practice social solidarity. Refuse & oppose the data centers.

https://www.structural-integrity.eu/crashing-hard-why-talking-about-bubbles-obscures-the-real-social-cost-of-overinvesting-into-artificial-intelligence/

I appreciate the academic and rigorous effort to measure the bullshit that LLMs generate: https://machine-bullshit.github.io/

I just wish we would do away with the rhetoric that we're just aiming to make these models better.

How about no? How about admitting that the premise is poisoned from the start?

How about saying that holding everyone's labor, creativity and expression hostage for the sake of deskilling people and making them precarious is a horrible idea?

#AI #antifascism #antiAI

Google is removing the fact-checking metadata (ClaimReview) that allowed a debunking article to be tagged prominently, in the results you got when searching for an already-known false claim.

Google claims, in their blog post, that this feature wasn't really used all that much: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/06/simplifying-search-results .

Beyond how despicable this is, beyond the clear authoritarian edge to this very political move, it also shows that technology doesn't just reflect society. It shapes what we see, and how.

I want to expand my connections in The Netherlands. I'm looking for communities collectives, affinity groups that center human rights, digital rights, queerness. Maybe political hacking, since hacking is political. ^^

I'm based nearby the Hague.

My dream is to join or start or nurture a co-working / co-thinking space.

Feel free to DM me or reply publicly if you're in the area and would like to chat. Or if you have any recommendations.

Boosting for outreach is also appreciated.

Loved reading @_elena's "This is what resistance to the digital coup looks like"

https://news.elenarossini.com/this-is-what-resistance-to-the-digital-coup-looks-like/

"The mere act of posting on the Fediverse sends a clear message: another way is possible"

This is also one of the reasons why I bring Romanian-centric news to my Fediverse profile. If this is to be a nurturing garden for diversity, I want to contribute to a diversity of politics, grounded in lived experience and grassroots activism.

The Romanian fascist candidate shared a post on his blog, where he addresses those who will not vote for him directly. He tells them that he will "deal with each one of them", individually, after he becomes president.

https://georgesimion.ro/ce-ma-fac-cu-voi/ (at the bottom of the post)

Believe would-be dictators when they tell you what they will do. And vote against them.

I wrote about algorithmic repression.

https://www.misreport.ro/p/editia-252

GenAI is used in the USA to monitor online activity and mark people as "problematic". It's used by the IDF in Israel, to surveil the Palestinian population, mark people as targets and determine when to strike. Oh, and, by the way, the error rate of Lavender, the AI algo. used by the IDF was 10% at the end of 2023.

Before this, it was China using machine vision. Iran, Rusia and Egipt, flooding social media with propaganda.

#AI

@giocomai thanks for mentioning the little story explicitly :)

Update: The OPM has now scrubbed the PDF metadata. However, the archived copies linked from my website contain the original metadata if you wish to verify.

sir, a second, even better and FOSS Deepseek AI model has hit our 7 trillion dollar proprietary ChatGPT crap