In covering the story of an AI agent apparently writing a hit piece blog post about someone who declined its GitHub merge request, Ars Technica posted a story that included fabricated quotes created by AI.

It's slop all the way down.

https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retraction-of-article-containing-fabricated-quotations/

#ArsTechnica #TechPress #TechReporting #TechMedia #AIslop #MJRathbun #AIagents #Journalism #AIcodingAgents #VibeCoding #VibeJournalism

🧵1of2 #SmartGlasses aren't just "not ready yet." They're #surveillance devices by design.

@Em0nM4stodon called Meta's Ray-Ban glasses exactly what they are: voyeurism tools.

The #TechPress keeps reviewing them like consumer gadgets instead of acknowledging the harm potential.

Here's what's actually happening when these become mainstream:
1. Recording people without clear consent indicators.
2. Facial recognition in public spaces.
3. Data harvesting from every interaction.
4. Stalkers and harassers getting military-grade surveillance capabilities.

The #Fediverse community understands something Big Tech pretends not to: Technology isn't neutral. Design choices reflect values.

When Meta builds glasses that can secretly record, they're not solving problems.

They're creating new ones for the most vulnerable people.

Women, trans folks, activists, and marginalized communities already navigate constant surveillance and harassment.

Smart glasses amplify existing power imbalances in dangerous ways.

Tech business writers really struggle to understand that a free protocol doesn't usually come from one company, and even when it does, it's not theirs. If it's a genuinely free protocol, it's a commons.

"Nostr’s protocol powers apps like Damus, Nostur, Nos and others."

#SarahPerez, 2024

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/21/the-vote-trump-spam-that-hit-bluesky-in-may-came-from-decentralized-rival-nostr/

This is like saying;

'ActivityPub's protocol powers Mastodon, Flipboard, Threads, and others'

Or;

'XMPP's protocol powers Snikket, Conversation, Jitsi Meet and others'

#TechPress

"Microsoft maintains Recall is an optional experience and that it has built privacy controls into the feature..."

Uh, does anyone in #TechPress remember that #Microsoft has ALWAYS claimed to be building secure systems? - or how that's been going so far?

Also, "Recall doesn't perform content moderation"? Yes, it does, against DRM content.

Do better, tech journalists. We need it now more than ever.
Sidebar, we might not have if you had been doing your job right.

https://mastodon.social/@verge/112553125529105140

“Mario Fusco, a great software developer, once said: ‘The code you write makes you a programmer. The code you delete makes you a good one. The code you don’t have to write makes you a great one.’ So maybe, for once, AI is on to something.”

https://www.inkl.com/a/nPvYapcJNlJ

Way to quote someone without understanding a word they’re saying.

Take a bow, John Naughton.

#ai #techPress #theGuardian #clueless

Also-also, the #TechPress is about three decades overdue for starting to do its actual job, which is warning the world against people like Prabhakar Ragahavan, instead of fondling their privates & pretending they're some sort of superheroes.

https://norrebro.space/@jwcph/112325023568364793

"If you talk to people about these projects [Mastodon and the #fediverse] and they respond with cynicism — “it won't scale”, “it's just a bunch of hobbyists”, “it can't compete” — what is really at work here is the default prejudice against bottom-up self-organization without a profit motive.

...they are “doomed to fail”, meaning that they will be unavoidably and repeatedly characterized through the distorted lens of a capitalist media ecosystem"

@eloquence

https://write.as/eloquence/why-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-are-doomed-to-fail

#TechPress