The idea feels like sci-fi because you're so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.

The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn't been valid for decades.

Content Warning: Misphonia (Chewing, mouth sounds) - [13:24-13:33, 14:58-15:01] Emetophobia (Gagging, disgust) - [13:43-14:25]

Post from Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives (Darren Cullen)

The Mechanical Turk was a machine built in 1770, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, that supposedly beat Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin at chess. It toured for 84 years before being destroyed in a fire and, although many suspected it was a scam, it was only revealed to have been a hoax as late as 1834. It seems obvious now, but it was essentially a box with a person inside. Today, we call this the AI revolution.

AI is one of the most hyped technologies of my lifetime, and yet its real-world results either don't work, are inaccurate, annoying, and/or thoroughly depressing. Supposedly fully-automated AI-tech is frequently revealed to be no more than thousands of low-paid workers in a trench coat.

Amazon's online remote labour marketplace even takes the name "Mechanical Turk" for its business. Tens of thousands of remote workers doing "automated" tasks the AI can't. This "ghost work", from data labelling to content moderation, pays as little as £1.45 per hour.

Tech companies are using workers, often in the global south, to impersonate chat bots, drive automated cars and shepherd "autonomous" delivery bots. In 2017, the app Expensify admitted using human labour, outsourced through Amazon Mechanical Turk, to transcribe receipts it said were processed using “smartscan technology”.

This is all part of Big Tech's fake-it-til-you-make-it approach to technology. Where pretending to invent something first is more important than actually inventing anything. Elon Musk unveiled Tesla's humanoid Optimus robots last month, fully autonomous robo-servants!* (Remote-controlled by human workers)

Tech bros are the 18th century industrialists of our age, and their machines will increase profits while they maim and exploit workers like the cotton mills of the industrial revolution. But from an economic standpoint it barely matters that AI doesn't "work" in the ways it has been sold. If it works enough to depress wages, and allow more jobs to be shipped overseas, it will be seen by the people that matter as a roaring success.

From April 1st, water bills are rising … and so are we

Starmer and Reeves are siding with the private equity firms and hedge funds who own our water.

Together we’ll make the threat of mass, coordinated non-payment credible — and put this failed industry and government out of business.

31% price hike?

We pay ever-higher bills while water firms dump billions of litres of sewage in our rivers and seas – and hand billions of pounds to their shareholders.

But they are reliant on our compliance…

So what if we refuse to pay?

From the Poll Tax to Don’t Pay, refusing to pay en masse is a powerful act.

Right now, private water is vulnerable as the industry strains under a mountain of debt – if we act now, we can force the private profiteers out and take back our water.

Thousands have already joined

Starmer and Reeves are siding with the private equity firms and hedge funds who own our water, so we need many thousands more people to join us.

Through mass non-payment, we can protect each other from bill hikes, push back against greed of water bosses and put an end to this failing industry.

Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House

Police broke into a Quaker Meeting House last night (27 March) and arrested six young people holding a meeting over concerns for the climate and Gaza.

Quakers in Britain strongly condemned the violation of their place of worship which they say is a direct result of stricter protest laws removing virtually all routes to challenge the status quo.

Just before 7.15pm more than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with tasers, forced their way into Westminster Meeting House.

They broke open the front door without warning or ringing the bell first, searching the whole building and arresting six women attending the meeting in a hired room.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 have criminalised many forms of protest and allow police to halt actions deemed too disruptive.

Meanwhile, changes in judicial procedures limit protesters' ability to defend their actions in court. All this means that there are fewer and fewer ways to speak truth to power.

Quakers support the right to nonviolent public protest, acting themselves from a deep moral imperative to stand up against injustice and for our planet.

Many have taken nonviolent direct action over the centuries from the abolition of slavery to women's suffrage and prison reform.

Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said: “No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory.

“This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest.

“Freedom of speech, assembly, and fair trials are an essential part of free public debate which underpins democracy."