TracingVRL
@tracingvrl
By programmer-journalist A.J. Fish. TracingVRL is the software-journalism project tracing the antivaxx infodemic going ViRaL. TracingVRL.substack.com
4) This could be strategic on Google's part. Habituate younger generations to stopping after the #Google #AISummary . But a de-summarized report, with rough edges added back in, is often much richer & more informative. I have examples:
David DePape was radicalized and posted COVID conspiracies to Facebook. What's Issa doing on the Benny Johnson show!? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Te...
I'm slipping, when my willpower is less than 100%, and reading the #Google #AIOverview instead of the source links beneath them. Machine Learning "AI" summaries scramble the provenance of their claims. I consider them pollution. This may help me quit #Google searches in favor of #DuckDuckGo .
Investor liberal sees this as America's sole remaining virtue www.linkedin.com/posts/profga...
Copyright started in England in 1710 with the Statute of Anne. It grew in the late 1800s when writers like Mark Twain pointed out the disincentives for people to sweat out original works without international copyright agreements. Russia didn't buy in. www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...
3) The right-hand sidebar shows sources for the overall Google AI Overview, but it doesn't tie which sources go with which point in the AI-generated claim. (Also the sidebar is less visible to the phone user, appearing beneath the Overview text.) /fin
2) When user mouse-hovers "Reddit + 4" to see the sources in addition to Reddit, Google displays only a Reddit link in the popup, the four other sources remain invisible, undiscoverable. Clicking the popup takes you to the Reddit destination. #GoogleAI #AI #copyright #AIproblems
1) I don't use (or try not to scroll past) Google's AI overviews because they scramble the provenance of their claims and are less accurate. Here I asked "When did philistine become an insult" and it breaks down the claims making it appear like they're footnoting with five sources: "Reddit + 4".
8) After the war, before the Constitution, state legislatures took over creation *and* staffing of departments. That too proved to be corrupting. So the Constitution separated the *creation* of positions from the *staffing* between POTUS and Congress. www.law.cornell.edu/constitution... #USAID #DOGE
5) Buttressing the Appointments Clause, are restrictions on *dual officeholding*. #BillPulte right now is Senate-confirmed to be director of #FHFA but only interim, or non-Senate-confirmed, director of national intelligence or #DNI. archive.org/details/crea...
3) "However important these changes in magisterial authority may have been, they did not in Whig philosophy get to the heart of the matter and destroy the most insidious and powerful weapon of eighteenth-century despotism—the power of appointment to offices." archive.org/details/crea...
2) The president is barred per the Constitution from establishing, staffing, and/or demolishing departments unilaterally. #DOGE was a "backronym" or backwards-acronym of a meme coin, but was never a government department. The founders were emphatic about this. www.law.cornell.edu/constitution...
1) Re-do: the SCOTUS decision this week overturning "Humphrey's Executor" while technically aligned with the Constitution's Appointments Clause could be misunderstood by the public as granting POTUS more power than the Constitution provisioned constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay... #SCOTUS #USAID
Very weird. In WWII, Belgians & others tuned radios to Nazi-forbidden BBC which then crossed the English Channel to their radios equipped with long-wave receivers. The internet can be throttled in ways radio cannot be. Days ago, the #BBC dismantled those long-wave transmission towers.
The only customer service agent to resolve this billing dispute with #Movavi is an AI chatbot that promises to collect personally identifying information (PII) share it and merge it for inferences like dynamic pricing, per Movavi's #privacy policy. NO. #darkpatterns
What is up with the #darkpatterns this year in subscription economy? The latest experience I had was with Movavi video editor. Bold print says I won't be billed via auto-renew, then fine print contradicts it. Why won't the #FTC in Donald Trump's admin crack down on deceptive subscriptions?
Don't forget Discovery, which Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) CEO David Zazlov squeezed more profits from via cost cuts (From Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man" and "Globe Trekker" to "Jon & Kate Plus 8 and "Here Comes Honey Boo-boo"): www.newyorker.com/news/annals-... #Paramount
Elon Musk has taken to X to incite racial division preceding England Ireland German riots in 2023, 2024, and now 2025 and 2026. tracingvrl.substack.com/p/why-is-eng... #ElonMusk
This is worth a re-read. I forgot about this: newrepublic.com/article/1786...
Ugly yes but corporate donors are legal. A $100k payment to an instagram influencer from Texas without disclosure is not. The influencer told El Pais he was promised $400k from Steyer. And he's just one influencer www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/b...
Writer's Digest now makes us consume them via video!? This anti- #fixity scourge knows no bounds 🤬
This is a very good piece by Dan Hon. It calls to mind "Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office" a dramatic adaptation of the true story reported by ComputerWorld UK www.imdb.com/title/tt2786.... They still have not enacted recommended reforms to prevent recurrence, at least last I checked.
Yes, it's "data noise" or "data dust". And I've had this thought since I last attended a show at Thee Stork Club, I had to buy a ticket ahead of time, at which point I had to agree to a data-sharing notification :( ... We go to shows to let it all hang out. Not to be stalked
"People don't care about privacy" and "surveillance is terrible, everybody agrees" spoken by the same person is something I've encountered often over the last 15 years ...
They already bust the 39% cap in Norfolk Virginia www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-state...
Plays at the end of every episode of Phil Ittner's Ukraine show on YouTube. Ittner worked for CBS, VOA in Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc and was my childhood classmate www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zp8...
Even the private National Association of Broadcasters endorses AM radio in every car. Have they responded to the removal of FM #radio in every car, as Tesla is doing? www.nab.org/advocacy/iss...
I had this exchange with a colleague now working in video games. She was defending Roblox on LinkedIn, shifting blame to parents ... I sent her the article showing their negligence and "let's not be Albert Speer" to which she took religious offense SMH www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/o... #antisemitism