Sunday 20th of April 2025

Techo-authoritarianism is scary. AI is threatening to slurp up all data ever made and the US in particular looks OK with it. AI defenses seem all the more important, what can be done? Agents will be taught to bypass simple restrictions such as user-agent sniffing, IP range blocking, and rate limiting. To close off the internet to non-robots is almost impossible, and contrarian to founding principles of the open web. We have enough walled gardens with traditional social media. Honeypots will be bypassed too. It seems inexorable, and this means that even writing this is a silly idea. It elicits a helplessness.

What then are the dangers? Mass surveillance will yield government and megacorps unsurpassed knowledge of your life. Your purchases, your free-time, your work, your personal life, your relationships. Profiling you ala secret services of old

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

>

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

>

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

>

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

>

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

And so, what can we do? First of all, we can write. We can share. We can refuse to engage with these supernational forces. Today I watched Carole Cadwalladr's excellent talk on the digital coup. I'm not a big TED watcher, but this one was different: a women who is clearly scared. Worried for our future, not just her own. I can only hope more see it, share it, and that governments heed it.

And remember that history doesn't have to be repeated