News Roundup - Jan 26
A roundup of the tech and privacy news we read last month. Fuel your anti-Big Tech rage!
The Big Tech cesspit
WhatsApp encryption is a mirage
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lawsuit-claims-meta-see-whatsapp-013745124.html Meta are being sued for being able to access peoples' message content. That's right - the encrypted content. "But it is E2EE!" you say. Yeah, and who holds your encryption keys? Meta. Do you think they, an advertising company, would look at your stuff to boost their profits? Of course they would. Move to Signal, they can't do that.
Grok the porn assistant
X's grok AI digitally undresses people without their consent. The UK gov is considering how to stop it. Musk says it is free speech. We don't want government censorship, but allowing an easy way to undress people and share the pictures is not free speech. The press attention lead to:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clye99wg0y8o EU investigating X under DSA - about Grok deepfakes.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7y10xm4x2o Malaysia and Indonesia governments banning grok due to its creepy undressing feature.
Visualising the harms of AI
https://thebulletin.org/2026/01/what-experts-can-learn-by-tracking-ai-harms/ This organisation has been tracking AI's harms - the site shows great visual ways to see what's going on behind the hype, e.g:
The key to the chart above is: Orange=hallucinations/bullshit, Red=autonomous vehicles, Purple=bias, Dark Blue=inappropriate content generation or algorithmic moderation, Light Blue=fraud, Green=privacy violations and surveillance, LightGreen=Disinformation, Grey=other.
Notice how fraud, privacy/surveillance, and disinformation are rising sharply. AI might be able to do some cool stuff, but the dark side is brutal due to the speed, scope and scale it affords.
Deathtech and facial wreck
Palantir
It is very important for people to know about Palantir - they are spreading like a cancer and need to be stopped.
The Nerve team
👆🏼 This article reveals the full extent to which Palantir has infiltrated the UK government. It is shocking, if you know how destructive Palantir are to democracy. Please read this article - it contains excellent info on who Palantir are.
Juan Sebastián Pinto
👆🏼 A Palantir whistleblower tells all - revealing how Epstein was a connector between US politicians and deathtech companies and their Israeli counterparts. This is a great source of insider info on Palantir.
https://www.politico.eu/article/palantir-lands-biggest-ever-uk-defense-deal/#:~:text=Under the partnership%2C the MoD,over the next five years.” Palantir gets large UK defence contract with no tender process. Thankfully The Nerve have revealed the amount of backhand contract awards that has been happening (see above), but it's depressing to see another one go ahead.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/report-ice-using-palantir-tool-feeds-medicaid-data ICE are using Palantir tech to find deportees. Their tech draws from US Dept of Health data. Coupled with facial recognition software this is the foundation for a surveillance police state.
https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-ice-dhs-alex-pretti-killing-workers-slack-minneapolis/ another person is shot by ICE, following Renee Good on 7th Jan, and Palantir staff are waking up to the fact that they might be working for a shitty company.
Paedotech
The Epstein files are showing us that Big Tech leaders and top politicians were all in the tangled web weaved by Epstein. It's a thread that runs through the evolution of Big Tech as they now turn to children as their latest 'market'.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/grok-says-safeguard-lapses-led-images-minors-minimal-clothing-x-2026-01-02/ X's Grok can make CSAM - Big Tech will do anything for more "engagement".
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/02/meta-trial-new-mexico-social-media or https://archive.is/HbA6h Meta continue their 'pivot to paedophilia'. They are in the dock again for matching predators with children.
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:
Big Tech vs democracy
Politechs
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/12/meta-dina-powell-mccormick-trump.html Meta and Trump administration revolving door. This is no surprise but here's more proof that the Broligarchy runs all the way to the top.
And that's just the latest. From this excellent site https://www.authoritarian-stack.info/ we see that in 2025 four tech execs went to work at the military:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-exec-becomes-top-trump-230342268.html OpenAI top exec Greg Brockman donates $25m to Trump. We knew that Big Tech paid big money to get Trump elected (and for the ballroom) but it doesn't stop there. More money more favours. Don't regulate me, bro!
https://newrepublic.com/article/205102/oligarchs-pushing-conquest-greenland-trump?ref=thenerdreich.com Learn about the Big Tech oligarchs behind Trump's move on Greenland.
FBI and the police
Joe Mullin
👆🏼 The FBI are searching individual journalist's homes now.
Beryl Lipton
👆🏼 January saw the first US police force to deploy a military drone. The docu-film 2073 is coming true more and more in the US.
AI bubble
https://www.gema.de/de/w/grundsatzurteil-gema-gegen-openai A Munich regional court finds that OpenAI is stealing stuff - violating copyright - when training and operating its models. We have always suspected that, so its great that a court has set a precedent ruling that proves it.
👆🏼 OpenAI pulls 4o model after lawsuits prove it deceives and helps kill people. The 4'o' model was rushed to market and is characteristic for its overly sycophantic responses. This is the model implicated in cases where people have been drawn down conspiracy or self harm rabbit holes.
Emanuel Maiberg
👆🏼 The combination of Instagram - a cesspit of influencer idiots - and AI is never going to end well. This article reveals that 'porn image' influencers use AI to show themselves with fake bodies, fake sleeping with real celebrities. Click bait for porn sites, juicing the Instagram algorithm.
https://www.404media.co/project-matador-datacenter-amarillo-texas/ Billionaire planning an 18 million sq foot data center in Texas. That's the size of a very large town and it will consume about as much energy and water as one. To make matters worse it is linked to Palantir, the US's most aggressive deathtech and surveillance company.
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!
Matthew Broersma
👆🏼 Foxglove's campaign to challenge the UK government's fast-track rollout of data centers worked!
https://www.computerwoche.de/article/4118546/souveranitat-sana-kliniken-wagen-digitalen-befreiungsschlag.html This German company is building a sovereign cloud - great news for less reliance on US Big Tech cloud services.
https://tweakers.net/nieuws/243746/radboud-universiteit-geeft-werknemers-fairphone-smartphones-als-werktelefoon.html This Dutch university stops buying Big Tech smart phones for staff, and switches to Fairphone. Everyone could make this switch, and it's great to see some public examples.
Cory Doctorow
👆🏼 In the "Post-American internet" tariffs mean we can circumvent anti-circumvention laws. This is a point made in perhaps a better way in this Brazilian article by the same author: https://www.intercept.com.br/2026/01/19/trump-big-techs-cory-doctorow/ It's an interesting theory and, if countries pick up on it, great news for #RightToRepair because we can un-enshittify US tech products to make them work for us, not them.
https://www.digitalhealth.net/2026/01/concerns-mount-over-major-nhs-software-suppliers-links-with-ice/ The medical profession (and one politician) in the UK are waking up to the threat of Palantir. Better late than never.
https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-microsoft-ordered-stop-tracking-school-children NOYB win: Microsoft's M365 Education edtech is caught tracking children. It illegally installs cookies on the student's device, which track their behaviour to be monetised via advertising. When will schools wake up to the fact that monetising children was supposed to have been phased out in the 20th Century!
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:
Summary
In January we saw that WhatsApp's encryption is weak, Grok and Musk are pushing porn and CSAM on the public, and those tracking the harms of AI can demonstrate a huge uptick of incidents since 2024. Both X and Meta continue their 'pivot-to-porn' and 'pivot-to-paedo' trajectory, joining OpenAI in that endeavour.
Palantir have been in the news a LOT and the articles we've picked out give you a great overview of their corrosive reach.
We've seen how the Big Tech-Government revolving door continues to infect politics with tech bros, and how law enforcement are becoming more distopian, fueled with Palantir's surveillance tech.
The AI hype bubble continues to spew out reports of copyright theft, unsafe models and porn influencers. And vast data center projects, of course.
But we've also seen that some campaigns are listened to by governments, and some pockets of the world are seeing sense by moving away from Big Tech products.
Tech tip of the month
Your mobile keyboard is snitching on you - sending what you type to Big Tech. Cut that out by installing one that respects your privacy.
We recommend FUTO keyboard, especially as it has an excellent local speech-to-text function. We also recommend Heliboard.
Check out our site for other Big Tech alternatives: https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/stopusingbigtech.html
Book recommendation
The Circle (Dave Eggers, 2014) - this book brilliantly captures the absurdity of the Silicon Valley approach. Very funny, but you'll find the dystopian undertones all too familiar, as many of them have played out in the years since this was written.
Blog recommendation
For a full on take-down of the AI hype, and a great explanation of why it's a bubble, follow Ed Zitron's blog Where's Your Ed At.
Film recommendation
Don't Look Up (2021) - watch (or re-watch) this via the lens of Big Tech and the broligarchy for a funny take on the current state of AI hype. The way a bunch of non-serious muppets in the White House try to spin things is very well depicted.
Rebel Tech Alliance is a non-profit dedicated to getting as many people off big tech products as possible. Why? Because that reduces the surveillance economy, and reducing that is good for individuals and society.
