2025-08-02


Horseshit


Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

  • How the admin is covertly reconfiguring online algorithms

    Quietly, subtly, and almost always with plausible deniability, the Trump administration appears to be executing a playbook of what can best be described as reverse algorithmic capture: a process through which government pressure reshapes the architecture of digital platforms, not by direct control, but by engineering incentives that guide algorithms to amplify preferred narratives and suppress dissent. Put differently, it’s the state using soft power to realign platforms’ invisible gates toward ideological conformity—but never giving up that element of distance and plausible deniability. This strategy does not need to issue censorship orders or serve warrants to Silicon Valley tycoons. It works by shifting the terrain on which digital gatekeeping occurs. In July 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government. It requires that all artificial intelligence systems used by federal agencies be scrubbed of “ideological bias,” including references to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory, and other progressive frameworks. Although the order ostensibly applies only to federally procured AI systems, its ripple effects stretch much farther. Any company hoping to win government contracts must now conform to these ideological guardrails—not just in internal memos and tools, but in the public-facing models they train and sell. That includes the algorithms that shape search results, feed curation, ad targeting, and content moderation on platforms like YouTube, Meta, and X. Essentially, these decisions determine what information and content – as well as content creators – you see or don’t see, and have a lasting effect by defining the parameters of acceptable discourse and content.

    • Like saying you had doubts about the 2020 election? ... This ain't new, its just that the Left objects when they don't hold the reins.
  • European Censorship Accelerates

    The Committee chaired by Ohio’s Jim Jordan began investigating Europe’s primary speech-control law, the Digital Services Act, after a bizarre incident last August. Europe’s Commissioner for Internal Markets, Thierry Breton, sent a letter to X CEO Elon Musk threatening an “extremely vigilant” response for “any negative effect of illegal content on X in the EU,” ahead of a planned live interview of Donald Trump by Musk. Though the interview was to be held in Washington — speech between two Americans in America, distributed by an American company — Breton was upset it would be “accessible to users in the EU,” and “spillovers” of “illegal content” might ensue. Though Breton resigned shortly after in a clash with President Ursula von der Leyen, questions about how serious Europe might or might not be about asserting jurisdiction over American speech remained. Nearly a year later, Jordan’s Committee has come back with unpleasant answers. On May 7th, European authorities held a “DSA MultiStakeholder Workshop” in Brussels, intended to help major platforms like Meta, X, and Google understand their obligations under the DSA. As Jordan notes, the seminar was closed to the public, unlike previous seminars about laws like the Digital Markets Act. Participants of the new event were specifically warned not to describe the seminar’s “exercise scenarios,” but Jordan’s committee got hold of key documents.

    Europe’s pattern is the inverse of Trump’s. It keeps trying to expand its subsidy of ideologically charged speech, and it’s using even broader and more powerful tools than Trump’s executive orders to try to eliminate criticism of its immigration policies. The recent workshop also clearly shows the EU expanding both the scope and the methodology of its censorship practices, going after humor, satire, anodyne political opinions, memes that “may” spread “discriminatory ideologies,” and other content its army of “trusted flaggers” might not have noted even a few years ago.

  • Bill would fine social media companies $5M a day for not fighting 'terrorism'

TechSuck / Geek Bait

  • HN Jobs:

  • Linus still uses an RX580 and ditches Apple Silicon for an Intel laptop

    • The 580 has been a reliable and available part for decades. We have 2 in use in the house and I've killed 2 more over the years.
  • The untold impact of cancellation

    Before my cancellation, I was an active and prominent software developer, conference organizer and frequent speaker in a vibrant community of software developers working with the Scala programming language. (In 2021) an “open letter” appeared online and was shared widely on social media throughout the community I had been part of since 2004. The letter was co-signed by 23 authoritative figures from that community, more than half of whom I had considered my friends until that moment. That instant cut my life into the time before, and the time after. I only found out about the publication of the two statements from a friend. Nobody had told me it was going to happen then; nobody had told me it was going to happen at all. Nobody had ever put any of the claims to me. It was an ambush, and I was blindsided.

    • HN comments

    • "Go along with the crowd" is the highest principle

  • The NNCPNET email network

    NNCPNET is, at the moment, fairly small. The quux nodelist contains 16 entries — two of which are for quux itself, one of which is for Goerzen's personal email host, and one of which I set up for testing. So the number of people actively using the network is likely to be somewhere around a dozen.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

Trump

Left Angst

g + DOGE Wasted Billions Chainsawing Government in Name of Efficiency

World

Israel

  • Hamas Wants Gaza to Starve - The Atlantic

    Israel has unnecessarily reengineered the distribution of aid, failing to achieve its goal of separating the civilian population from Hamas while further constricting its supply. And for these decisions, it has attracted the justified condemnation of the international community. Despite the surge of hundreds of trucks into Gaza over the past four days, very few supplies have made it into warehouses to be distributed to the population. Aid shipments are being seized by a combination of desperate civilians, lawless gangs, clan-affiliated thugs, and merchants of death. Chaos and apocalyptic scenery are the norm, not the exception. There is no denying the reality of the widespread malnutrition and hunger in the Gaza Strip.

    In recent days, I’ve spoken with dozens of Gazans who are furious about what is unfolding around them. They are angry, one told me, at the “hordes of selfish people who are attacking aid convoys to steal and collect aid in a horrific manner without caring for Gazans who chose not to participate in these humiliating and demeaning displays of inhumanity, no matter the level of hunger.” But their anger is directed primarily at Hamas, which they hold responsible for putting the people of Gaza in this position, and for its continued refusal to end the war that it started.

    Hamas actually wants a famine in Gaza. Producing mass death from hunger is the group’s final play, its last hope for ending the war in a way that advances its goals. Hamas has benefited from Israel’s decision to use food as a lever against the terror group, because the catastrophic conditions for civilians have generated an international outcry, which is worsening Israel’s global standing and forcing it to reverse course.

    • Recognizing this; you'd think they'd stop insisting that all aid flow through Hamas...
  • Lawyers warn that recognising a Palestinian state would breach international law