Sticks & Stones

1. Changing the dominant AI narrative

I’ve been working on the AI Resist List: a new resource for anyone not comfortable with the existential AI narrative promoted by leading AI companies. (Sticks & Stones)

🌳 Another way

2. The Pope denounces AI’s power culture

Pope Leo XIV calls on people to resist the dehumanising potential of AI and digital technologies by focusing on shared responsibility and the common good. (Guardian)

❤️ Civilisation of love

2. US law enforcers fear ‘anti-tech’ extremism

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have identified anti-tech sentiment as an emerging domestic threat, driven by public anger. (Wired)

👀 AI resistance

4. Climate activism on TikTok

This paper looks at the best options for environmental activists on TikTok - should they focus on going viral or on quietly building community? (Social Media + Society)

🌎 Growing Eco-Tok

5. Gate-keeping is back, but different

In the face of algorithmic exposure, people have become wary of the internet celebrating their favourite spot. It’s best to close ranks and say nothing. (Matter)

🤐 Keeping mum

Fast Company

1. Coachella proves IRL content is evergreen

Amid news of war and crises, is it ok to enjoy memes of Madonna dancing and Justin Bieber reminiscing? Seems like we can’t get enough of Coachella. (Fast Company)

📸 For the gram

2. Why Palantir’s manifesto has sinister vibes

Palantir, the AI analytics company, shared 22 points from CEO Alex Karp’s new book. The summary reads like the monologue of a comic book villian. (Conversation)

🌎 Hard power

3. How to resist a data centre

Nothing demonstrates the materiality of digital better than a data centre. Data centres are part of our critical national infrastructure. But do you want one near you? (My blog)

📈 Carbon positive

4. Iran is winning the social media wars

From Lego liability to a naff eighties popstar, Iranian animators are nailing it as they produce a flood of memes aimed squarely at the Trump administration. (Guardian)

📱Game on

5. The fake army of pro-Trump influencers

AI-generated fake influencers have surged on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube in an apparent bid to hook conservative voters. (NYTimes)

☒ Fake news

1. Can we make AI safe for children?

I’m working with the IEEE Standards Association to create a standard for AI systems impacting children. AI safety for children is key as this new tech rolls out. (My blog)

👭 Protecting rights

2. The era of invincibility is over

Last week’s ruling that Meta and YouTube deliberately designed addictive products mark a potential watershed moment for social media. (Guardian)

⚡️ Silicon valley shock

3. The memefication of war

Anne Applebaum describes what happens when the United States’ enemies and even its own soldiers aren’t treated as human beings. (Open Letters)

🔥 War games

4. Stop calling it disinformation

Marcus Bösch says digital platforms have become our environment and it’s now only about the vibes. Fact checks are increasingly beside the point. (Understanding TikTok)

🌫️ Beyond facts

5. Is this anthropologist the new George Lucas?

Zack London started out creating deliberately fake ethnographic material with a surreal edge. His short films embrace AI’s telltale strangeness. (Hollywood Reporter)

🚀 Lost in space

BBC News

1. Social media’s “Big Tobacco” moment?

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri testify at a landmark trial in California that assesses the impact of addictive features on teenagers’ mental health. (BBC)

📱 Teen accounts

2. Palantir, Peter Thiel and the Epstein files

The Epstein files connect Palantir, Peter Thiel and Peter Mandelson, exposing the links between technology, extreme wealth and our global political culture. (The Citizens)

🔮 Dark arts

3. Why a social media ban won’t work

Pressure is growing to ban social media for under-16s, but we must better enforce existing laws, limit smartphones and improve our own UK tech instead. (My blog)

👧🏽 Beyond bans

4. What I’ve learned about participatory AI

PAIRS (the Participatory AI Research & Practice Symposium) was a tiny fringe event at India’s huge AI Impact Summit - but its ideas are gaining momentum. (My blog)

🌱 Social studies

5. It’s ok. Moltbook isn’t the Singularity

AI agents discuss religion and consciousness on Moltbook, a new social network - but it’s all a mirage, writes Samuel Woolley, and we humans need to get a grip. (Guardian)

🦞 Bot or not?

The Atlantic

1. How Minnesota proved MAGA wrong

Thousands of volunteers risk their own safety - 2 have died - to document ICE agents and defend neighbours. Their actions have helped force Trump to backtrack. (Atlantic)

👀 Eyes and ears

2. Why Iran keeps turning off the internet

As thousands are killed during huge anti-regime protests, the government shuts down the internet to disrupt collective action and prevent documentation. (Conversation)

🤐 Denied a voice

3. Grok’s deepfake crisis is no surprise

X’s chatbot, Grok, has created millions of non-consensual sexualised images of women and children. But Elon Musk appears to have no desire to stop it. (Verge)

🤖 Faking it

4. How screen-time affects toddlers

As the debate over a social media ban for children reignites, UK teachers describe how too much screen-time is affecting school readiness. (Guardian)

👶 Screen kids

5. Grief and resilience on X in Chicago

This study of gang members in Chicago shows how Twitter/ X is used not just to mourn, but to advocate and build community resilience. (Social Media + Society)

💔 Digital ties

Sticks & Stones

1. Empire of AI

A great piece of investigative journalism from Silicon Valley insider, Karen Hao. Empire of AI draws on hundreds of interviews with everyone from AI board members in San Francisco to data-labelling shift workers in Nairobi. Hao shows in detail how AI’s rise concentrates power, exploits labour, and entrenches inequality - while still insisting that a better future is possible. (Allen Lane, 2025)

✨ Control freaks

2. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

For years, author and activist Naomi Klein has been confused with Naomi Wolf, another prominent (and controversial) figure who champions very different values. Klein takes this “mirroring” as the starting point for Doppelganger, where she eloquently argues that social media and conspiracy culture are fracturing reality into two opposing worlds. (Penguin, 2024)

✨ Digital doubles

3. Careless People

An entertaining, often shocking memoir from Facebook’s first director of public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams. Her former boss, Mark Zuckerberg, helped the book become a bestseller earlier this year - by trying to ban it. Wynn-Williams exposes a culture of power, sexism, and moral failure at the heart of the company now known as Meta. (Macmillan, 2025)

✨ Lost ideals

4. Imagination: A Manifesto

A short but inspirational guide to building creative, collective vision - essential for dismantling oppressive systems and prioritising communities, people and planet. Ruha Benjamin believes we’re at a time “between stories” - where the old cultural scripts are giving way to something new. She argues that those who best articulate the future will build it, so we all need to get involved. (Norton & Co, 2024)

✨ Expanding minds

5. Enshittification

Blogger and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow coined this provocative (but apt) term to describe how everything from apps to airlines keeps getting worse. With his usual combination of sharp humour and detailed research, Doctorow exposes how big tech companies deliberately degrade products for profit - then he maps real ways to fight back. The end result is rage-inducing but also empowering. (Verso, 2025)

✨ Future hopes

Zohran Mamdani campaigns in Brooklyn (Mint)

1. Mamdani’s winning social media campaign

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral elections after building the largest grassroots-driven campaign in New York City history. (Mint)

🇺🇸 People power

2. Tech workers unite against platform decay

Until recently, unions didn’t seem relevant to many tech workers. But redundancies and enshittification have changed all that, according to Cory Doctorow. (My blog)

💩 Poop hits the fan

3. MAGA “patriots” outed as non-American

In an own-goal for Elon Musk, a new X feature shows geolocations of pro-MAGA profiles. Many turn out to be clickbait accounts based overseas. (Agents of Influence)

😡 Anger management

4. Denmark plans social media ban for under 15s

As Australia’s ban on social media for under 16s comes into force (on 10 December), Denmark’s government also votes to enforce a social media ban. (AP)

💬 Limiting harms

5. Where has all the weirdness gone?

Our cultural lives are increasingly driven by algorithms, weirdness is on the wane. Things increasingly look the same, but we need deviance. (Experimental History)

👯 Strange days

1. Building imagination infrastructure

Shared beliefs are fragmenting and opinions are polarised - it’s more important than ever to think about our collective vision of the future. Starting with cake. (My blog)

🍰 Dreaming with cake

2. Facebook & Apple remove ICE tracking apps

Is it radical to not like seeing your neighbour deported? The US government pressures platforms to remove apps enabling people to share location of ICE agents. (Gizmondo)

🇺🇸 (Not so) free

3. The young YouTubers taking on Orbán

In the past 15 years, Viktor Orbán’s conservative government has virtually destroyed independent media in Hungary, but YouTube is providing a lifeline. (Observer)

📢 No surrender

4. When everything’s fake, what’s the point?

The recent launches of Meta’s Vibes and OpenAI’s Sora have pushed AI video generation into the mainstream. Engagement is high - but for how long? (Time)

🥸 Synthetic scroll

5. New wave social media apps provide hope

As online abuse rises, people turn to gated spaces built around trusted communities. New, niche apps like Lore and BlackSky are exploiting this trend. (TechCrunch)

👩‍🎤 New wave apps

Meanwhile, here are my 5 top stories from September.

Garbage Day

1. Charlie Kirk was killed by a meme

It’s impossible to know the politics of the man arrested for killing activist Charlie Kirk: his motives are buried in internet in-jokes and meme culture. (Garbage Day)

📱 Ultimate trolling

2. UK police aren’t equipped to moderate X

The arrest of Graham Linehan (and others) over posts on X partly stem from weaker moderation under Elon Musk. UK police shouldn’t have to deal with this. (Techtris)

🚨 Policing chaos

3. US Senate hearing on AI chatbot harms

Parents testified that AI chatbots manipulated their children into suicide, sparking calls to strip tech companies of their legal immunity. (Center for Humane Technology)

💬 Safeguarding AI

4. The attention economy of hate

German far-right extremists are using TikTok’s live-streaming feature to spread (and monetise) propaganda through coded language and memes. (Understanding TikTok)

🦠 Viral extremes

5. TikTok deal is Trump’s white flag to China

Donald Trump’s TikTok deal marks a retreat in the US tech confrontation with China, leaving Beijing with significant control over the platform. (Foreign Policy)

🏳️ Art of the deal

Cooling off in Lake Nicaragua, May 2025. (Read about the censorship behind Nica’s visitor boom)

1. Shapeshifters and starseeds

Contrary to stereotypes of conspiracy theorists as older white men, many content creators in this genre are young, non-white, and/or female. Here’s how they cultivate intimacy and trust with audiences. (Alice Markwick et al, Social Media + Society, 2025)

☀️ ConspiracyTok

2. Communicating the end times

High-tech visions of the future (orbital habitats, underground domes) aren’t simply awe-inspiring. They are deeply political, representing a withdrawal from collective responsibility. (Sarah T. Roberts and Mél Hogan, b2o: an online journal, 2019)

☀️ Exit strategy

3. Eugenics and the promise of utopia via AI

Gebru and Torres critically examine plans to develop Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), arguing that such an undefined, all-purpose system can never be meaningfully tested or deemed “safe”. (Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, First Monday, 2024)

☀️ Empty promises

4. Inside the distorted mirror factory

Social media are conceptualised as a kind of "funhouse mirror": they can magnify and distort social norms, creating false perceptions of typical or acceptable behaviour. (Claire E. Robertson, Kareena del Rosario and Jay J. Van Bavel, Current Opinion in Psychology, 2024)

☀️ Funhouse [pdf]

5. The reality behind ADHD and TikTok

This study highlights how TikTok’s emotionally evocative content fuels the spread of ADHD discourse and self-identification - but also how living in today’s neoliberal political systems might make us ALL feel like we have ADHD! (Deanna Holroyd, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 2025)

☀️ Like minds

This is the last edition of Free Speech. But don’t fret! From next month, this newsletter will be rebranded as Sticks & Stones and focus on the real world impact of social tech. Please tell me what you think. 🙏

Wired

1. The age-checked internet is here

New UK rules now require age checks on all sites hosting adult content. But practical realities are messy; human rights groups worry about privacy and misuse. (Wired)

🐝 Online harms

2. Linda Yaccarino finally quits X

X’s CEO had an impossible task with Elon Musk by her side. After X merged with xAI and further antisemitic outbursts from Grok, it seems she’d had enough. (Guardian)

🤦🏻‍♀️ Too much

3. Social media and psychological warfare

The Israel-Iran war was marked by a flurry of propaganda, misinformation and covert operations aided by artificial intelligence and spread on social media. (NY Times)

💥 War games

4. AI-powered influencers are earning millions

Bloo is one of today’s most popular gaming YouTubers, but he’s not a human: he’s a virtual personality powered by AI - just one in a wave of new virtual “creators”. (CNBC)

📺 VTubers

5. Preview: my new ethical tech consultancy

I’ve been working on a rebrand. For years I’ve been thinking about making a switch from social media to ethical tech consultancy. Here’s how, when and why. (My blog)

🚀 Get ready

Instagram: No Space for Bezos

1. Protests force Bezos to change wedding plans

A coalition of activists in Venice are combining street protests with social media to call attention to over-tourism and disrupt the Bezos-Sanchez wedding. (Fast Company)

🚀 Bezos backlash

2. Fake news and AI skew coverage of LA demos

The way the Los Angeles protests played out on social platforms is a jarring reminder of how much social media’s relationship with activism has changed. (Intelligencer)

📣 Broken megaphone

3. Reporter sent home due to Substack posts

Alistair Kitchen blogged about student protests at Columbia University. No-one seemed to read his posts - until US border guards denied him entry. (New Yorker)

🙊 Restricted speech

4. What next for the digital “town square”?

In a time of oligarchs and tech billionaires, we need public service media more than ever. A new report shows how the BBC engages with the social internet. (My blog)

🔎 Social publics

5. How to stop AI being WEIRD

Human moderators guide large language models as they absorb online content. But western values predominate - here’s why that’s a problem. (Ada Lovelace Institute)

🤵‍♂️ Culture club

Joaquin Pheonix in Her (Annapurna Films)

1. Next step for social: AI companions

The collaboration between OpenAI’s Sam Altman and iPhone designer Jony Ive aims to take us beyond screens to a deeper, more pervasive social connection. (My blog)

🤖 Robo friends

2. Grok rants about “white genocide”

X’s chatbot Grok posted about a far-right conspiracy theory in answers to unrelated questions. Grok said it had been told by its creators to address the topic. (Guardian)

☠️ His master’s voice

3. How young MAGA saved TikTok

Four months after the threatened shutdown, Donald Trump has realised TikTok is his crucial lifeline to Gen Z. Talk of a US ban has all but disappeared. (The Verge)

💣 TikTok reprieve

4. Musk memes, disinformation and AI slop

This investigation finds Facebook being flooded with co-ordinated AI “sloperations” and click-bait while Meta seems happy to look the other way. (Dysinfluence)

💒 Jesus saves

5. EU moves to ban social media for kids

Despite efforts to restrict content available to teens, research shows unsuitable material is still algorithmically promoted. The EU wants a solution. (Politico)

👶 Social ban?

My blog

1. Time to tackle the manosphere

I’m working with Campaign Lab and the Digital Anthropology Collective to understand why certain types of misogynistic content appeal to boys and young men. (My blog)

📱 The boys aren't alright

2. Female leaders rock the stage at SXSW

As BlueSky’s Jay Graber wears a “World without Caesars” t-shirt to mock Mark Zuckerberg, Signal’s Meredith Whittaker creates a Twitter 2006 moment. (My blog)

📣 Speaking truth to power

3. Their tech haven is our dystopia

I’ve been obsessed with the concept of Network states since I first heard Gabriel Gatehouse talk about them. Is this just another conspiracy theory? (The Nerd Reich)

👀 Social media end game?

4. Careless People tops bestseller lists

Sarah Wynn-Williams was sacked by Facebook in 2017. Now Mark Zuckerberg’s ban on her promoting a memoir about Meta’s toxic culture has backfired. (Vulture)

📚 Streisand effect

5. Everyone Hates Elon goes viral

A new UK-based collective is using guerilla tactics to let a certain tech billionaire know they don’t want his opinion on British or European politics. (Hollywood Reporter)

🤑 Billionaire bashing

I’ll be on holiday in April so there’ll be no Free Speech. But see you in May! 🏝️

Cartoon by Zez Vaz

1. Meta, TikTok and East versus West

Censorship and authoritarianism used to be associated with regimes like China's - now they seem to lie at the heart of the new Trump administration. (My blog)

🇺🇸 Land of the free?

2. The rise of tech fascism

New film 2073 is a docudrama exploring the relationship between technology and politics, and the rise of what's being widely described as tech fascism. (My blog)

🌆 Future shock

3. Influencer Andrew Tate flies to Florida

The Trump administration has helped free self-styled “king of toxic masculinity” from Romania. And now Tate has his own political party. It can’t be a coincidence. (BBC)

🫣 Toxic state

4. AI and relationship apps

AI is having a growing impact on relationship apps. But while online profiles and conversations become ever more polished, humans yearn for authenticity. (Mashable)

🤖 Dating woes

5. Why the heart emoji is now meaningless

After the simple thumbs up came to represent an ironic “I don’t care”, people are now abandoning the red heart in favour of other less use, less loaded emojis. (Wired)

❤️ Lost love

Economic Times

1. The resistance starts here

TikTokers in the US are using the term “cute winter boots” to evade censorship when discussing anti-immigrant ICE raids since Trump’s return to power. (Economic Times)

💬 Algospeak

2. Meta to get rid of fact-checkers

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed to prioritise free speech, replacing fact-checkers with community notes (as seen on X) and “reducing censorship”. (Guardian)

🔥 Everything's fine

3. TikTok goes dark - but only for a day

After TikTok lost a last-ditch Supreme Court appeal, it went offline for US users. But Trump’s executive order gave the Chinese-owned app a last minute reprieve. (BBC)

🐦‍🔥 Back from the brink

4. Elon Musk’s (global) hostile takeover

Musk’s year started with a barrage of tweets criticising Keir Starmer and supporting AfD. And then there was that Nazi salute. His strategy seems clear. (New Statesman)

👀 Power grab

5. Kicking off 2025 with Campaign Lab

I spent the day at (the aptly named) Newspeak House with a team of technologists working on ways to counter the slew of far-right messaging online. (My blog)

❤️ Value-added

1. AI driving disinformation - but also fighting it

AI-generated content will continue to swamp social platforms. Not all the material will be bad, of course, but we need to be increasingly wary of what we see, and get in the habit of verifying anything we share or react to. I firmly believe we need to embrace AI (artificial intelligence) but have substantial guardrails in place. This paper examines the dual role of AI in the realm of fact-checking and disinformation. (Beatriz Gutiérrez-Caneda and Jorge Vázquez-Herrero, Tripodos, 2024)

❄️ AI challenges

2. Increasing fragmentation and ways of being

The days of two or three social networks dominating online conversation are long gone. The landscape is fragmenting and people are moving into their own private groups and threads. The challenge is to co-exist peacefully within this new context. In this beautifully-written book, James Bridle introduces the German idea of umwelt to describe the world as experienced by different organisms. He proposes this as a useful concept to help us navigate and even embrace our new technological reality. (James Bridle, Ways of Being, 2023)

❄️ Life worlds

3. More disinformation on TikTok

TikTok has become a major platform for spreading false and misleading information. While its future in the US hangs in the balance (TikTok may be banned there if owner Bytedance doesn’t sell to a non-Chinese company by 19 January, although Donald Trump is likely to attempt to reverse any ban), this study shows how easily video content can be exploited for disinformation campaigns. Using data from the Ukraine war, the authors show how trending “sounds” (audio tracks) are being repurposed to lend credibility to false narratives. In 2025, we must develop better content moderation tools and improve ways of fostering media literacy among users. (Marcus Bösch and Tom Divon, New Media & Society, 2024)

❄️ Sound effects

4. An increase in meme-based campaigning

Savvy political campaigners know that memes are the universal language of the internet. Memes are often more than a humorous or culturally-relevant image or gif: they can be powerful vehicles of meaning with an ability to transcend languages and borders. In this paper, Idil Galip shows how memes are reshaping global politics. She discusses the concept of "meme warfare," where opposing groups use memes to compete in shaping public opinion and perception. (Idil Galip, Multipolarity After Ukraine: Old Wine in New Bottles, 2023)

❄️ Meme wars

5. A rise in data-driven activism

Data activism is all about using data to raise awareness of social and political issues while avoiding the type of data collection that abuses or infringes upon individual privacy. In this paper, Hannah Knox explores how environmental data is being used in local climate action initiatives to transform traditional notions of place. She shows how data proliferation is supporting efforts to address climate change at a local level. (Hannah Knox, Big Data & Society, 2024)

❄️ Data nuances

P.S. If you’re interested in data activism, join me at Hope Not Hate’s hack day in London on Sunday 5 January. The event is open to all and aims to build digital tools to fight the far right. Sign up here.

✨ Thank you Marcus Bösch and Toby Austin Locke for recommendations ✨

Guardian

1. Fix the pipes

The US election result is the beginning of a new world order, says Carole Cadwalladr. Silicon Valley billionaires control culture. It’s chaos - but that’s the plan. (Guardian)

💩 Info wars

2. Understand the ecosystem

Both campaigns wooed influencers, but Donald Trump’s early focus on podcasters & livestreamers outshone Kamala Harris’s better-funded efforts. (Hollywood Reporter)

📢 The influencer election

3. Find common ground

Thousands of young men turned out to support Donald Trump. In the hours following his election victory, social media was flooded with misogynistic comments. (GNET)

🙈 Braving the manosphere

4. Seek alternatives

BlueSky received 1m new users the week after the US election. Mainstream and progressive voices are leaving X in droves. Is Bluesky the future? (New Scientist)

🦋 Bluesky takes off

5. Go screen free

In a global first, Australia voted to ban social media for under 16s. While tough to implement, the ruling is seen as a starting point to protect the next generation. (BBC)

🌳 Social media ban

Newsweek

1. Harris goes all-in on social media

US Vice President Kamala Harris vastly outspends former President Donald Trump on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube in the run-up to the US election. (Newsweek)

🗳️ Pre-ballot blitz

2. AI-generated images boost misinformation

A fake image of a crying child with a puppy went viral after Hurricane Helene wrecked havoc. Such images help spread partisan narratives as facts become irrelevant. (NPR)

🔎 Deeper truths?

3. US states sue TikTok for harm to teens

13 US states and Washington DC filed lawsuits against TikTok, claiming the app harms children’s mental health by encouraging compulsive and excessive use. (Guardian)

💣 TikTok trouble

4. Facebook redesign aims to woo Gen Z

Young adults use Facebook for certain features, like Marketplace. The revamp prioritises community connection and entertainment over socialising. (TechCrunch)

🤟 Down with the kids

5. How TikTok makes or breaks restaurants

[A topic covered on my own blog]. TikTok videos can reach millions in 24 hours - an impact that any other type of ad simply can’t achieve. (Hollywood Reporter)

🍟 Fast food

My blog

1. Digital activism and slow resistance

As two more protesters are jailed for using direct action, I look at the alternative power of digital activism and “slow" resistance in the fight against climate change. (My blog)

🦋 Gently does it

2. Why the Kremlin loves social media

The US Department of Justice finds a right-wing influencer agency has been paid millions of dollars by two Russian government employees to create content. (Politico)

❤️ From Russia with love

3. Instagram boosts protection for teens

At long last, Instagram overhauls the way it works for teenagers, promising more "built-in protections" for young people and added controls for parents. (BBC)

✋ Safety net

4. The social network with no other humans

On SocialAI you set the level of sycophancy you want from your bot followers. Sadly not a joke but an inevitable development as platforms rush to embrace AI. (The Verve)

🙈 Echo chamber

5. TikTok celebrates sausage rolls and Oasis

“Britcore” highlights the everyday, mundane aspects of British life, such as visiting pubs, grabbing a Greggs sausage roll and trying to buy Oasis tickets. (Guardian)

🇬🇧 Rule Brittania