Monthly Mosh Pit - Aug 26
Big Tech news is horrifying, but don't be angry about it every day. Instead focus your rage in the mosh pit once a month 🤘🏼 with our news roundup, then get back to your life!
SUMMARY - click to expand
Here we go again, the monthly ritual where we pretend we're surprised that 'the companies we can't quit' continue to do shitty things.
The Neglect Factory Formerly Known As Facebook was fined $18 billion. Don’t cheer. That’s 3% of Meta’s annual revenue and those fines are built into their operating costs. It’s also reported that they ran AI generated ads that contained child sexual abuse material across Facebook. Content moderation failure or deliberate content strategy? Probably depends on which particular government official they require ownership of that day.
Amazon is destroying books to train AI and will soon build one of the largest data centres in the US. Until Musk realises this and one ups them. Bigger, faster, stronger, more, more etc.
But wait! Who cares about destroying books? We need our burgers to understand who we really are. McDonalds used AI to create a customer dossier that predicted he would never stop eating there. Your food now has psychological profiles of you and you’re feeding it with every McNugget. A microcosm of the data economy.
Apple is putting cameras into AirPods because the Neglect Factory Formerly Known As Facebook has a branding issue too problematic to make their glasses work. However, Apple being Apple understand that what you can’t see can’t hurt you. We are stocking up on cotton buds. One must always be seen at one’s best, darling. Even when it’s a picture of one’s ear drum.
As always, it’s never all bad. The EU forced Apple to play nice, a French court killed an under 15s social media ban, Gandalf told Peter Thiel to go forth and multiply outside his own mansion, and Darth Vader made a special guest appearance to lobby a city council for more surveillance cameras. That last one is a beautiful, ironic and satirical effort that is especially close to the hearts of your favourite Rebel Tech Alliance members.
We could go on, but that would be a thievery of the joy you will get from reading the next 3000+ words about the transgressions of Big Tech in the month of August 2026.
Once you’re done, go donate to the pervert glasses ad fund, read Beeban Kidron’s book and delete something. After all, you’re a rebel aren’t you?
In the Big Tech cesspit
Last month was once again busy for big tech horrors, so let's open up this pit, people!
General
Dara Kerr
👆🏼 A new trial against Meta brought by a collective of 29 US States has taken testimony from a former Meta employee who states that Mark Zuckerberg knew about harms to children but deliverable ignored it, and lied about it. (Read those links in Reading Mode to get past the "pay or ok" notice). Here's another WIRED article update on this trial. But, bad news, the States settled for only $18bn. A drop in toxic surveillance profits ocean at Meta. However, Florida rejected the deal and will take it to court 🥳
https://nypost.com/2026/08/04/tech/bmw-owners-outraged-by-spider-man-ads-on-their-dashboard-screens/ BMW forces Spiderman movie promotions via its in-car screens. Ad blockers for cars, are, indeed, required.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/06/business/meta-new-mexico-child-health Meta fined $567m for harming childrens' mental health, and compared to 'polluting factories'.
Frank Landymore
👆🏼 Meta paying Nazis to post on Facebook? Ffs
https://www.404media.co/meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-pov-instagram-pickup-artists/ study finds that Meta's pervert glasses are being used for "stalker accounts" in Instagram, turning harassed women into 'content'. 🤢 And now a lawsuit has been brought against Meta in Germany for selling spyware stalker glasses!
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-real-energy-use-of-agentic-ai Agentic AI usage requires 600x the amount of electricity per prompt, and agentic use is on the rise.
Reece Rogers
👆🏼 All companies profile you, not just Google and Meta. In this case, McDonald's. And of course it all goes into their predictive algorithm. Zoom out, people, zoom out.... the data economy feeds the surveillance state.
https://www.polygon.com/gta-6-leaks-microsoft-discord-subpoenas-rockstar-games/ Discord and Microsoft turned into a surveillance play pit, as a games developer gets court order to pillage any info there (to locate the person who leaked info on the upcoming GTA6 release).
https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/05/absentee-landlord/ Google search is a scammers paradise. They could verify the scam info they promote, but they can't be bothered. Too big to care. That's what you get when you allow a monopoly.
https://www.politico.eu/article/17th-century-ireland-law-shielding-big-tech-class-actions-europe/ Ireland have been protecting big tech for decades. This article explains how some of that is built into an old law there.
Paedotech
Matt Burgess
👆🏼 Researchers at the Tech Transparency Project showed that Meta are happy to run ads that contain AI generated child sexual abuse material. 🤮 This is 'automated callousness' and comes directly from the top: Mark Zuckerberg. Might this be the article that convinces your friends and family to finally boycott Meta?
Death tech, smart spies and facial recognition
Alex Skopic
👆🏼An overview of public camera spyware - specifically in New Orleans - reveals how much more pervasive it is then before. Weirdly the problem is being exacerbated by a private organisation, echoing what we warned about in our 'Backdoor surveillance state' article. The UK is headed the way of New Orleans, hence Big Brother Watch's campaign which shows that they're trying to normalise facial recognition cameras via supermarkets.
https://www.404media.co/meta-patents-ai-glasses-to-use-facial-recognition-to-identify-people-make-highlight-reels-of-your-dinner-party/ Meta files patent for facial recognition tech in its spy glasses (having removed dormant code due to outcry). Meta don't do consent (as per the rest of the Epstein class).
Matthew Gault
👆🏼 Meta have a patent for a creepy wearable that records your voice all day. Supposedly it's to help with workouts but it's clearly just for ads profiling and data exfiltrating.
https://www.skipthepaywall.com/read?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%2Fflock-safety-os-investigate%2F a Wired investigation reveals that Flock, the US company making automatic car licence plate recognition cameras, is now offering full 'predictive policing' surveillance tech using AI. And the police love it.
https://www.macobserver.com/news/apples-leaked-video-shows-new-camera-equipped-airpods-in-action/ Apple will soon start selling earbuds with cameras in them, to provide images for its AI. Almost as creepy as Meta's pervert glasses.
https://www.404media.co/darth-vader-spoke-in-support-of-flock-at-san-diego-city-council-meeting/ Vader addresses a council meeting in the US - about Flock surveillance cameras.
If you take part in The Big Tech Walkout then the issues in these newsletters will not affect you so badly. Start now, it's fun and easy, and can be done at your own pace:
Palantir
https://michaelwest.com.au/robodebt-on-steroids-palantir-infiltrates-ndis/ Palantir software has been secretly inserted into the disability decision making process in Australia 😒
Big Tech vs democracy
https://unwall.app/www.ft.com/content/2472ef5a-798d-4e7b-b4be-020855cf387e The threat to democracy from the broligarchy has gone mainstream - the FT now warns about it. We've been saying this for years.
https://www.404media.co/google-earths-new-ai-lets-anyone-fabricate-completely-bullshit-satellite-images/ Google Earth has an AI feature that lets you create fake satellite images. Remember: democracy cannot withstand too much disinformation.
In the AI bubble
Ruth Comerford
👆🏼 The governor of the Bank of England has warned G20 finance ministers that the AI bubble will cause a global financial downturn. Ouch. Things are getting real 😬
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/protesters-haul-a-guillotine-to-city-council-meeting-about-a-potential-ai-data-center-company-rep-cornered-by-protestors-it-no-longer-felt-safe-to-stay-developer-escorted-out-by-police now THAT is how to protest a data centre build out - bring a guillotine!
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/08/planned-amazon-data-center-could-become-the-biggest-climate-polluter-in-the-u-s/ Amazon blasting away with the CO2
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-impact-environment-horrifying-new-paper staying on the environmental theme, a study has found that AI and the fossil fuels industry are propping each other up. A lose-lose situation (unless you're a greedy oil or AI bro).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgx4yd1gl2o AI is not producing the time savings for workers that was predicted by AI bros. The opposite is true.
👆🏼 A good explanation of why the OpenAI 'autonomous Hugging Face hack' claims were not "AI models going rogue" - Cal Newport explains that they were just doing what they were requested to do, in an infinite loop - and the whole project had poor design. It's also why the Anthropic and Meta rogue AI hacking claims shouldn't be taken seriously.
https://www.404media.co/twitch-training-amazon-ai-models-how-to-opt-out-setting/ Twitch (gaming streaming platform owned by Amazon) will train Amazon's AI models on user content by default. Uses have to opt out manually. All part of big tech's fantasy of a world without people.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/amazon-data-center-largest-pollution-source-texas-usa Planned Amazon data centre will be so big it would be the largest single source of pollution in the US. Warning to the UK: we're next (our politicians love big tech). Tell them no: sign this petition.
AI’s volatile power demand is damaging its own data centers | Fortune Surges in power demand are another reason data centres are a problem. It damages their own equipment and requires additional sources of power to smooth out demand. And the surges are due to AI (not previous data centres uses like search or streaming).
https://www.techmeme.com/260817/p7#a260817p7 creative accounting is helping the AI bubble inflate. The big tech firms have MUCH more AI assets hidden off balance sheet. This hides the scale of how fucked the whole house of cards is.
Bruce Schneier
👆🏼 Never put any personal information into an AI chatbot - and always check if the app was vibe coded. This article contains the example of a vibe coded therapy app that allowed the underlying Claude conversations to be public 🤦♂️(We've shown how to use AI privately in this article).
https://www.404media.co/inside-the-warehouse-where-amazon-scans-and-destroys-books-for-ai-training/ an employee describes what's happening in Amazon's giant warehouse in Nevada. Tl;dr they're destroying books to train AI 😔
If you take part in The Big Tech Walkout then the issues in these newsletters will not affect you so badly. Start now, it's fun and easy, and can be done at your own pace:
It's not all bad!
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/using-claude-to-reclaim-privacy/ Some people are using AI to create privacy-respecting versions of apps 🥳 (If you didn't know, most apps are just websites + tracking).
👆🏼 https://youtu.be/kON2ZI2BNj8 another classic 'gov ad' from The Juice Media - this time about data centres. 🎯
https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260724-01.en.html Apple's bullying monopolistic walled garden behaviour has been dealt a blow by the EU, who have enforced the DMA to require Apple to implement interoperability 🥳
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vj433xqlo French court overrules ban on social media for under 15s 🥳
Samantha Cole
👆🏼 Someone pulled a stunt at a council meeting in the US, dressing as Darth Vader and demanding more Flock cameras 😂😂😂😂 The video in that link is priceless. 🥳
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OXeoH0ZD4FM protesters dressed as Gandalf protested Peter Thiel outside his new Argentinian mansion: "You shall not pass! 🥳
If you take part in The Big Tech Walkout then the issues in these newsletters will not affect you so badly. Start now, it's fun and easy, and can be done at your own pace:
Call to action!
👆🏼 donate to Everyone Hates Elon to fund more of their excellent "pervert glasses" ads. Possibly the most on point poster we've ever seen!
Tech tip of the month
Jitsi Meet - an alternative to Zoom. This online meeting software is non-big tech, works just in the browser and works well. To hold meetings the meeting organiser does have to sign in using one of their sign in methods, and GitHub is the least bad option. Other alts for video calls can be found here.
Book recommendation
Beeban Kidron
Users, by Baroness Beeban Kidron, is a recently released book that explains the capture of online life by big tech, and why that's a problem. It is very well written and, because she comes from the world outsite tech, it is written from a non-technical perspective.
Blog recommendation
Foxglove's newsletter is great - they campaign for digital rights (mostly in the UK) and the newsletter keeps you informed. They also send you their campaigns directly so you can get involved on day one.
Film recommendation
The Great Hack (link to Netflix) - a documentary about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This is the one that convinced Patrick that something was going on in the background, and that Facebook needed to go.
Rebel Tech Alliance is a non-profit dedicated to getting as many people off big tech products as possible. Why? Because that reduces screen addiction and the surveillance economy, which in turn reduces the surveillance state. And that's just good news all round.
