💌 Newsletter #015 - "Watermarks" in Chatbot Output; Meta settles; "It's Just a Tool?"

30 Aug, 2026

✨ In This Edition ✨

📟 Short-Form Content: Random word choice watermarks in chatbot output; Getting "opted in" to Google scanning your stuff; Meta settles; Books are destroyed to feed the chatbots; EU mandates driver-facing cameras.
🌞 Good News!: More transparency in online shopping; Mastodon 5.0; AI-free, digitally sovereign document editing; Your old phone as a NAS.
📯 The Post-Script: Reading There's no such thing as Just a Tool by Iris Meredith.

Original image by Natalia Y. on Unsplash, glitched and edited.

📟 Short-Form Content

Chatbots ("AI")

OpenAI's Head of Ethics has left the company, after less than a year in the role. "There currently is no replacement lined up, suggesting shifting priorities at the company." That's probably a good sign of what's to come. Right?
Google now scans your emails and attachments. Apparently, if you use Gmail, you were "opted in" automatically. Here's some tips on how to opt out. Reminder that there are email services available that aren't google.
Anthropic is going to start "watermarking" its chatbot output. How will it do this? By "subtly altering the word choices" such that the watermarking will be "indistinguishable to readers."
- This only sounds like a reasonable and normal thing to do if you assume that synonyms are exchangeable in all contexts and senses, which is, unfortunately, not how language works. Or writing. Or words. Not that the tech dudebros care about any of that if Line Go Up.
NVIDIA is buying Hugging Face. Certainly not the case that the "AI economy" is the same $5Tn or whatever many trillions of dollars going round and round.
What at first was just a hunch that booksellers had when strange bulk orders came in has now been confirmed: Yes, AI firms are buying up tons of rare books - only to train their chatbots on them. Destructively. Destroying knowledge to train a chatbot that makes people cognitively dumber. You can't make this up.
- McSweeney's article on this, by Jack Loftus, is once again solid gold:

The older books are my favorite because they arrive with such rich history. Thick leather covers, gold inset lettering, the musty smell of age, and sometimes a handwritten note from 1894 that I don’t bother to read, and the scanners largely skip since it’s not integral to our performance KPIs.

A medical transcription chatbot claimed that a patient was doing drugs (of the illegal kind) - when she wasn't. A serious error with potentially grave consequences, not only in terms of the medical diagnosis and treatment patients receive. This quote by the patient, Ms Green, stuck with me - AI involvement, such as AI transcription, is presented to us as the "default" (despite it being horrendously inaccurate), and opting out feels like being difficult or "annoying":

"I don't want to be in her bad books or be that annoying patient who takes up more of her time," she said.

Microsoft's Copilot was asked about its protective mechanisms - and "eventually revealed undocumented URL parameters and protective measures," which enabled the researchers to build manipulative URL's.
The province of Alberta, Canada, is hosting multiple Town Halls around AI data centres, which could make power in Alberta even more expensive than it already is. The company, of course, disputes that.
- Anyways, Albertans have shown up and they have been very clear, via jeers and boos and comments and heated questions, that they're not interested in seeing AI data centres in their province.
- There is also this handy Alberta Data Centre Watch website, where users can explore planned projects.
Very unsurprisingly to anyone that's been paying attention even slightly, and has a passing understanding of how capitalism works, AI is not getting us closer to that shorter work week. Gasp!
So this is one way that your data can end up somewhere completely different from where you thought it might end up: Google buys crashed airline Spirit's data at auction, because AI. This includes "over 100 million emails, 30 million recorded phone calls, reams of stuff from Teams, Oracle, and SAP."
On Bank Robbing Robots, by user @lproven@vivaldi.net:

I invented a robot that can rob a bank. Of course, it robs these banks on its own, so I can't be held legally responsible when it robs a bank. I mean, all I did was invent it, it's not my fault if it works exactly the way I intended. Also, I get to keep all the money from the banks it robs. Sorry if any of that money was yours, but now that l've invented the Bank Robbing Robot, the Bank Robbing Robot is inevitable.

Non-Chatbots

The big thing this week is of course the settlement in Meta's trial revolving around harms to its young users. You're probably wondering why, when Meta is going to pay up to $18bn, as well as going to implement restrictions that, for example, allow only two hours of Instagram and Facebook per day, this isnt found in the Good News section. It is partially good news, but: The amount of settlement money is a drop in the bucket given Meta's earnings - and the settlement means that months of evidence will not be heard. Meta has also denied wrongdoing.
In times of natural disasters, when people are trying to exchange valuable (and at times life-saving) information with each other, turning to a "walled garden" may not be the way to go.
Google is introducing its "extended sideloading flow," essentially adding hurdles to "sideloading" apps. "Sideloading" meaning "installing apps from anywhere that isn't Google's store." Which is kind of wild, actually, when you think of desktop computing. Really, it's just "installing software" - except there's now this added layer of some corporation getting a say in what you install on a device that you own? It's all in the name of avoiding risk and danger, of course.
- Somehow we're also supposed to rejoice that they walked back their original plans and we now "only" have to deal with a one-time 24hr waiting period. Uh-huh. Talk about anchoring. Here's an earlier article on the original plans.
As part of the EU's General Safety Regulation, every new car and van sold in the EU is now mandated to have a cabin-facing camera - as in, a camera that watches the driver. Primarily, these are meant to ensure the driver is not engaging in distracted driving, for example by emitting warning sounds or buzzes if the driver glances away for too long. That is probably a good thing, seeing the epidemic of drivers focused on the phone in their crotch instead of the road, or what is going on around them. That said, any recording of this kind carries privacy risks (and, to a certain extent, "normalizes" surveillance) - there are strict rules around what this camera is allowed to do, as per Reclaim The Net:

"The system cannot use facial recognition or any biometric identification of the people inside the car. The data it generates is not allowed to leave the vehicle, and it cannot be passed to third parties."

Let's hope that this will remain true.

🌞 Good News!

A German court has ruled that online shopping platforms need to be more transparent in regards to their recommendation systems - such as which factors significantly determine the selection - as well as to make it easier for users to de-personalize their feeds.
Mastodon 5.0 will have a host of great new features, such as a redesigned composer, a reworked visibility/discovery settings section, and DM's being distinguished better from regular posts. If you're not on Mastodon yet, give it a try - unlike BlueSky, which claims to be decentralized but actually kind of isn't?, Mastodon definitely is.
LibreOffice is still around, doesn't use any generative AI, and is a very decent office suite. I use it for all my local document writing and spreadsheeting needs. The difference between, say, Word and Writer feels like this little meme.
- Also, reminder that "The Cloud" is "someone else's computer," and if that computer happens to be under the purveyance of someone who isn't completely rational, that could be a problem. File under: Digital sovereignty.
- ... especially since also, someone can, in fact, just turn off your cloud, leaving you without your data.
- On a completely unrelated note, getting off of US tech, especially of the cloud persuasion, is probably a good idea, now more than ever. Fore more ideas on that, check this excellent article by Paris Marx.
This is a neat idea, especially in light of the skyrocketing RAM and storage prices, which are of course necessary to keep Line Going Up and so that upper management can have emails summarized that someone else used a chatbot to write: Your old phone as a NAS! (Note that I have not tried this myself; as always, use caution when installing new apps/features on your devices, both in terms of security but also your saved data.)
The Fairphone 6+ is now available in Europe and the USA! Fairphones are cool because they are highly modular and repairable - the camera breaks, you can just replace the camera module. By yourself. By only purchasing the new camera module. Repairability and sustainability, heck yeah.

📯 The Post-Script

Reading There's no such thing as Just a Tool by Iris Meredith (@iris_meredith@mastodon.social). It has it all: Philosophy, urbanism, software development, AI. Something for everyone. You should probably read it.

It's quite possible for a tool to be used for good things, and in fact for it to be necessary, but for the viewpoint that it fosters to nonetheless be one that we shouldn't encourage.

[W]hen I hear a tech person say that something's "just a tool", I can't help but read it as an unwillingness to take responsibility.

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