Unreal Bird #12: Middle Way

Remember how I had to put an editor's note in my last issue after the Trump administration backed away from its "anti-weaponization" fund for paying out J6 rioters and others afflicted with fake aggrievements? The Atlantic reports it's an idea that just won't die.

In this issue: I took part in a Perry World House discussion on "Reclaiming Freedom of Expression" and published (with Sam Bradshaw) the intro essay to a series of essays on video game trust & safety published by the Center for Democracy & Technology.

I also spent a few days in Philadelphia for Netroots Nation, a convention for digital organizers, and wrote up my reflections on AI use in the progressive movement for Tech Policy Press.

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What I'm up to

In April, I attended an event at UPenn's Perry World House on the future of free expression. The summary of the discussion is out now. One of its most interesting questions is whether or not the right today has a coherent theory of free expression: too often, activity with which it agrees is protected speech while that of its opponents is mere "conduct."

I didn't expect scholars from outside the MAGA movement to identify a coherent MAGA theory of free expression, and—spoiler alert—we didn't. But from inside that movement's worldview, defined as it is by grievance and threat, perhaps things look coherent. People will sacrifice most of their principles if they believe their foundational right to self-determination is at stake. When conservative media tells viewers they are losing their country, they listen and take action accordingly. They are easily able to justify the repression of opponents they see as oppressors.

This dynamic is turbocharged by today's media. As the report also notes, "Any serious theory of free expression must reckon with the communications infrastructure through which speech is mediated." Today, that means social media platforms and AI interfaces owned by a handful of companies. As I've said before, reversing America's slide into authoritarianism will likely require a radical restructuring of our current media ecosystem.

In other news: I was co-editor of a series of essays on trust & safety in video games. If you are a reader with underage children, you may find these especially helpful as many of them center on the balance between online safety and the right to play. The contributors are all leaders in their fields and I'm proud we were able to unite their insights in this collection. Our intro essay is also a good read, if I do say so myself!

(This collection is distinct from the working paper I wrote about in my last issue, though both are with Sam Bradshaw and both came out of a symposium we held with NYU and CDT last fall.)

Middle way

Earlier this month I attended Netroots Nation, the largest convention for US progressive digital organizers. I spent most of the convention walking the expo floor talking to vendors about their AI use, when I wasn't attending panels about AI and political campaigns or data center opposition organizing. I wrote up my thoughts here.

In essence: the left is deeply divided on whether and how it should deploy artificial intelligence in the scorched earth/brass knuckle/no-holds-barred/[pick your favorite cliche] world of US political campaigns. Some progressives eschew AI use entirely. Others use it reluctantly or resentfully. Some are enthusiasts.

Overall, though, Democratic operatives are adopting AI more slowly than their Republican counterparts. Katie Harbath at AnchorChange has some good data on this, and so does the American Association of Political Consultants.

I also found fewer vendors offering tools for public-facing content creation than I would have expected in 2024, when Zelly Martin and I last did a deep dive into this topic. One vendor, Quiller, has a long write-up on their theory as to why (TLDR, it requires iterative cycles of customization and experimentation for which few campaigns have the time or patience.)

Quiller may be onto something. But I think the biggest issue isn't the learning curve, it's the political economy of AI and its ideological incompatibility with strands of the left.

Two other vendors I spoke with—Change Agent and Bobb.AI—described their offerings as bespoke LLMs capable of supporting a broad set of campaign activities. Their models are custom or open-source, not wrappers built on Claude or ChatGPT. No doubt they would say this is an advantage for their clients.

But that approach offers another advantage for the movement: escape from reliance on Big Tech, its bloated frontier models, and their ballooning environmental costs. If there is really a middle way out of the AI wilderness, more leftists should be talking about it.

Field notes

"Weaponising the Far Right: Foreign Influence in Europe Today," Anton Shekhovtsov, Substack.

• Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov lays out a theory of the US relationship with Europe's far right, names the actors and forces involved, and calls for Europe's tech independence from the US as a democratic imperative. Case in point: Former CBP leader Greg Bovino recently attended a conference with prominent US white supremacists in Portugal.

"Working class neighborhoods are resisting data centers at 5 times the rate of wealthy ones," Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine.

• The title says it all, as a reaction to those arguing that data center opposition is a symptom of affluent NIMBYism. Summarizing analysis from Geoff Holtzman at science & Power (sic), Brian Merchant shows that in a dataset of more than 1,400 data center projects, communities in the lowest income quartile were much more likely to resist. (The use of quartiles here accounts for the possibility that there might be more projects in low-income communities, so Merchant's argument holds.)

"The Canadians Tied to a Russian Influence Scandal Are Back," Jen St. Denis, The Tyee.

• In 2024, the DOJ indicted a company called Tenet Media for its involvement in a scheme by which Russian state media funneled money to prominent rightwing influencers as part of an effort to influence the US presidential election. "Today, the Tenet Media creators are more powerful than ever," reports The Tyee.

Snoot watch

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