Mastodawn

Aline Blankertz

What are good examples of concrete acts of resistance against "AI"? I am putting together an overview and am surely missing great stuff!

I have:
Data centre opposition (thx to @gerrymcgovern )
Examples of sabotage from @asrg
Some ideas about practical refusal from @danmcquillan

Also everyday acts are great (such as not following orders to use "AI") if they are documented somewhere, somehow. Most references tend to be rather vague (e.g. in this otherwise great article
https://restofworld.org/2026/techno-negative-thomas-dekeyser-fighting-ai/)

Why refusing AI is a fight for the soul

Author Thomas Dekeyser explains why modern resistance to Big Tech is a deeply sane response to a narrow vision of humanity.

Rest of World

Kim Crawley 😷 (she/her)23h ago

Check out https://stopgenai.com

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan

Stop Gen AI – Mutual Aid and Political Activism

Aline Blankertz 22h ago

@kimcrawley Thank you!

Resist AI 23h ago

@alineblankertz Please share your findings if possible. Would like to create a resist AI movement in Denmark and would love to hear more about concrete acts.

Aline Blankertz 22h ago

@resistAI Will do! This is related to a book and other things I am writing/talking about, it is in my direct interest to share everything that can be shared :)

Resist AI 22h ago

@alineblankertz Thanks 💚 and all the best with your book.

Corinna Balkow 23h ago

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan

This movement @tunubesecamirio

Tu nube seca mi río 🐌16h ago

@coba @alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan
Thanks!!!

Daniel Fisher(lennybacon)23h ago

@alineblankertz @cryptgoat @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan https://theinternet.review/2025/08/15/the-anti-ai-protests-are-here/

The Anti-AI Protests Have Arrived in Portland, and This is Only the Beginning

It's scary whenever online culture wars spill out into the streets. But don't say I never warned you.

The Internet Review

Aline Blankertz 22h ago

@lennybacon
Thank you!

Daniel Fisher(lennybacon)21h ago

@alineblankertz
@jaredwhite is also here

Anne Pasek 22h ago

@alineblankertz @asrg @danmcquillan

Getting limits on the use of AI put into one's union contract!

Limiting the collection of data that can be used in training/the legal access of such data for training/the legal commercialization or copyright of model outputs.

Tarrif structures that ensure that data centers have to pay their full share of grid infrastructure costs.

Synthetic text limitation policies at work/in journals.

Scorn and shame :)

Anne Pasek 22h ago

@alineblankertz @asrg @danmcquillan Most of these are from my little commentary on a discard studies approach to AI. Basically, it's helpful to also attack the enabling conditions rather than (just) regulate consumer use.

Paywalled (☹️): https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00138_1

Preprint: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gg9PclZewhipEOknbCHHN1VI9Hpt27SI/view?usp=sharing

AI is trash | Intellect

This commentary discusses the rise of generative machine learning tools (so-called artificial intelligence [AI]) and their joint informational and environmental harms. It takes the argumentative stance that most AI today can be usefully described as a kind of trash, both in terms of the quality of its outputs and its proliferating social and ecological costs. Extending the analogy further, it explores how the AI trash problem is best approached like other discard problems, namely by pursuing policy solutions that address the preconditions for waste rather than relying on individual awareness or moral judgements about consumer behaviours to fix injustices. It concludes with a few directions to this end as well as a call for coalition-making on the part of environmentalists and tech critics.

Aline Blankertz 22h ago

@Aepasek
Thank you!

Hadokowa 22h ago

@alineblankertz

I install this ublock list on every machine, it (among many things) removes ai results from search engines, which are often the entry door for people..

https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist

GitHub - laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist: A huge blocklist of manually curated sites that contain AI generated imagery for uBlock Origin & uBlacklist.

A huge blocklist of manually curated sites that contain AI generated imagery for uBlock Origin & uBlacklist. - laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist

GitHub

Penguin Rebellion 16h ago

An excellent list that sadly seems to become outdated (maintenance has stalled, for unknown reasons).

While waiting for an update, you might consider using this fork:

https://codeberg.org/just_a_husk/uBlockOrigin-AI-Blocklist/

@alineblankertz @Aepasek

uBlockOrigin-AI-Blocklist

Fork and expansion of laylavish' AI blocklist on github. Manually curated blocklist for uBlock Origin and uBlacklist aiming to remove ai results from search engine results. Currently supports DDG, Bing, Google, Startpage and Brave.

Codeberg.org

MrGrumpyMonkey 13h ago

@penguinrebellion @hadokowa @alineblankertz @Aepasek Just added this to my Pi-Hole. Thanks.

Dźwiedziu 3h ago

@mrgrumpymonkey
There is a downside if you're using voice transcription tools. As it seems many of the devs of those have been bitten by the “AI” zombie and many models are hosted on face hugger (hugginface).

(Ask me how I know \s)

@penguinrebellion @hadokowa @alineblankertz @Aepasek

Miss Megaphon 22h ago

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan

Refusal.

For example, people have sent me documents with the comment "hey please look over this text for this work thing we're doing together. The first attachment is my draft, the second is what chatgpt did with it".
I flat out email back "thanks for your draft, here are my comments. I refuse to read the other one."

(Probably easier for me than others; I'm a freelance traditional artist – people expect me to be weird anyway.)

@alineblankertz small but fun, tumblr users had a sort of spam campaign to get ai overview to suggest to Tesla owner to wash their cars with lemon and britte

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan I'm already beyond that, with my thoughts.
My questions are: will we recognize in the future such a scam? Will we be able to sustain new technologies, or anything new is to be considered "rotten as the AI promise"?
It has serious consequences on the future, no matter how you take it - e.g. environmentally.

Miss Megaphon 22h ago

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan

I'm lowkey politically active. When I spot some government entity or office using AI illustration for brochures, handouts and the like, I call them out.

"Is that AI? Why did you use that? Are you aware of the implications regarding the environment? Isn't that against the policy of your department?"

I do this in a friendly way. Mostly, they admit they were in a hurry and didn't really think about it, since everyone is using AI, too.

Maria Mannone 17h ago

@megaphon @alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan Maybe they do not want to hire and pay artists to draw. Same happens with music. Very few people are interested in new artworks. Even less are willing to pay for them.

Miss Megaphon 14h ago

@mariamannone @alineblankertz

I know :')

Since you're Potsdam based, I assume 1. you know some German and 2. you might therefore enjoy this AI, art and cake themed take:
https://mastodon.social/@megaphon/114714833613291050

Maria Mannone 14h ago

@megaphon @alineblankertz Ausgezeichnet!

Human Brain Enthusiast 22h ago

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @[email protected] I know that some people make honeytraps for AI scrapers that specifically inject bullshit into training data; both for code and for prose.

Stefan Bohacek 21h ago

@alineblankertz Not sure if this fits what you're looking for, but sharing in case it might be relevant.

https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/people-powered-analogue-technology/

People-powered technology | Stefan Bohacek

People over (lying) machines.

@alineblankertz Ridicule, humour, memes against slop. Turning the culture against the delusional ideas being spread by the industry.

@alineblankertz Baiting data crawlers to poison the large language models with noise and nonsense. I've heard about some tricks to make the crawlers load the same page over and over again - not sure how.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)20h ago

@alineblankertz data poisoning (such as prompt attacks, Glaze & Nightshade), and resource thrashing (making it too expensive to run their LLMs).

@gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan

@[email protected]

I really liked @[email protected] 's suggestion to bring back the e-mail signatures highlighting the environmental impact of printing e-mails, only for "AI" instead. It's not much, but it's something. If I had the courage I'd use something like this at work:

Before using "AI" to summarize, respond to, or process this email or its attachments, please consider the environmental impact and the potential effects on your own cognitive abilities. "AI" consumes significant natural resources, and relying on it can diminish your own thinking skills.

CC: @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

Edit: spelling

Teun 🌏 ❤️ 🏳️‍🌈 🇺🇦 🇵🇸18h ago

@alineblankertz

I have a subquestion, perhaps the people in this thread will be able to help:

Surely there are ways to secure documents against being read by an 'AI' chatbot, right? I'm thinking invisible text that gives instructions, but less naive.

I found some examples in this paper [https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11113], but 1) the paper is written from the point of view of trying to overcome these attacks (yikes), and 2) all examples given involve rewriting the text itself.

I wonder if there's an easier way to either break the technology completely, or at least detect the 'AI' usage somehow.

Breaking the Reviewer: Assessing the Vulnerability of Large Language Models in Automated Peer Review Under Textual Adversarial Attacks

Peer review is essential for maintaining academic quality, but the increasing volume of submissions places a significant burden on reviewers. Large language models (LLMs) offer potential assistance in this process, yet their susceptibility to textual adversarial attacks raises reliability concerns. This paper investigates the robustness of LLMs used as automated reviewers in the presence of such attacks. We focus on three key questions: (1) The effectiveness of LLMs in generating reviews compared to human reviewers. (2) The impact of adversarial attacks on the reliability of LLM-generated reviews. (3) Challenges and potential mitigation strategies for LLM-based review. Our evaluation reveals significant vulnerabilities, as text manipulations can distort LLM assessments. We offer a comprehensive evaluation of LLM performance in automated peer reviewing and analyze its robustness against adversarial attacks. Our findings emphasize the importance of addressing adversarial risks to ensure AI strengthens, rather than compromises, the integrity of scholarly communication.

arXiv.org

Penguin Rebellion 17h ago

@alineblankertz

In addition to what others have said, you can resist as a human being:

Reply with an AI;DR to emails or messages containing #AIslop.
Change your email signature to something along the lines of:

Using so-called "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) is a waste of energy and exacerbates climate change. If you are short on time, there is no need to generate an reply to this. Raw bullet points are very acceptable. Stay human!

@gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan

Scavello 14h ago

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan Learn a skill that they make “obsolete” (drawing, writing, coding, etc) and post about it, even if you dont think its all that good.

I’ve been learning to draw for the last year now

Kinene⭐🐻14h ago

@scavello @alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan I do sewing alterations and repairs.

grrl_aex 14h ago

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan

AI is about as "cool" as a red MAGA hat.

Push that "uncool" AI image. because it is true and accurate and it hits. No one worth talking to is still MAGA. Anyone worth talking to, already hates them.

and educate. IRL and online, educate yourself, your friends, your co-workers,-- and, if you have kids, educate them, especially them.

Anti-AI talking points are not hard to find--use them.

Track, publicize and oppose new datacenters.

Wulfy—Speaker to the machines 3h ago

@kitkat_blue @alineblankertz @asrg @danmcquillan

BURN THE WITCH!!!

Wulfy—Speaker to the machines 13h ago

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan

The simplest act opposition against #Ai is to engage with politicians to lobby to #regulateAi

It's so effective, Thiel says it's an act of #Antichrist

Everything else is just window dressing.

Aline Blankertz 13h ago

@n_dimension
I strongly disagree. Wanting to “regulate AI” is to legitimise the existence of “AI”. That is not what I understand as refusal or resistance.

Wulfy—Speaker to the machines 13h ago

@alineblankertz

We legitimise the existence of carcinogenic cigarettes

We legitimise the existence of militaries

We legitimise the existence of usurious "banking" system that literally destroys lives

We legitimise the existence of industry that destroys earth life support systems

We legitimise the existence of an economic system based in exploitation of the workers

I could go on forever...

The alternative to prohibition is regulation.
And if for some freaky reason, #Ai dissapears, the only people who will have access to Ai will be billionaires and thats not the future you think you want.

The #AiBubble, if it happens will just mean consolidation of the industry into fewer hands.

Unlike most of the Luddites who are just going through their first #AiAnxiety, I've had 35 years to think about AI and humanity, #RegulateAi is the only rational way to mitigate the #Airisks

That's not just my opinion, it's what the international peak science and political class thinks (Bletchely and Seoul agreements)

Anyway, just how effective efforts to regulate Ai are is the fact that Peter Thiel thinks folks like me, who strive to regulate Ai are the literal #Antichrist

He doesn't care about the #resistance, they are not even on his radar.

Jenica Lake เหล็ถเลถ 7h ago

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan poison websites

Schall und Stille 7h ago

@alineblankertz

Dunno if it's resistance, but several people commented that they find it a brave thing to do, and @mixtape called it "Served with a big middle finger up to the digital world[…]".

https://strategies.schallundstille.de/

You can also read my open letter to Mikey Shulman (of Suno infamy), which I wrote long before all the influencers got the memo.

https://schallundstille.de/2025/01/14/open-letter-to-mikey-shulman/

@gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan

Strategies Against Algorithms – Schall und Stille

mags amond 1h ago

@alineblankertz @gerrymcgovern @asrg @danmcquillan
wearing an ai;dr tee or hat
signing emails with 'zero ai' declaration