A note from Alix | Podcast Highlights | Highlights from the Collective All hail scale...what are we doing here? Hey everyone, In Brazil, someone stole a professor’s identity and tried to take $80,000 with it. In Rwanda, a finance minister was warned that funding from the Tony Blair Institute could disappear if Oracle was removed from the government tech stack. In India, a system glitch cut 2 million people off from food rations. What do these stories have in common? They’re all tied to...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
A note from Alix | Podcast Highlights | Highlights from the Collective What’s ahead in 2026 Hey everyone, It’s funny how we often treat the start of a new year like a magical clean slate. Lately, I’ve been thinking about why we reach for that feeling in the first place. Especially after a year like 2025, it’s natural to want a moment to imagine something new. But when I look ahead, I don’t see a break between 2025 and 2026. I see a through-line — one shaped by power and profit, yes, but also...
3 months ago • 8 min read
A note from Alix | Pod Highlights | Events & Opportunities | News from the Collective Who gets to scale? What we’re up to at MozFest Hey everyone, As I head to Barcelona for Mozilla Festival 2025, the biggest since pre-Covid days, I've been reflecting on the idea of scale. Maybe it’s the few thousand people convening. Maybe it’s the $2 billion a day spent on data center development. Maybe it’s the AI everywhere all at once, from places like schools to militaries to systems with extreme power...
4 months ago • 4 min read
A note from Alix | Podcast Highlights | News from the Collective AI’s public ‘benefit’ facade Hey everyone, We were in New York City last week for Climate Week, and it was full on — in the best way. In case you missed it, we hosted a live show on the data center boom with three incredible organizers from resistance efforts across the country, all fighting the AI-fueled land grab. Big thanks to everyone who came through in-person or tuned in from home. → Watch the show here → Listen to the...
5 months ago • 5 min read
🎧 DEI: The Season Finale Hey there readers and listeners, Earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg announced sweeping changes to Meta’s content policies and also made internal changes to their DEI teams — in that they completely got rid of them. Make no mistake: despite their ‘free speech’ claims, the content moderation will continue. They will still take down pro-Palestinian speech, they will still leave up hate speech. But in a complete reversal of some core content moderation policies — such as...
about 1 year ago • 1 min read
Our questions of the year Hey there— I know this is likely one of many year-end reflection emails in your inbox, so thanks for even opening! In our final newsletter of 2024 we wanted to center the questions we were most driven by this year, and we’ll wrap this up with our 2025 plans and opportunities to work with you. What’s been on our radar in 2024? The question: Who are the dominant voices in AI coverage, and how are they shaping the narrative? The action: We dug deep into this with our...
about 1 year ago • 2 min read
🎧 Technology’s role in the climate crisis Hello all — just a quick podcast update from us. We’ve recently wrapped up a miniseries called Net0++. We interviewed activists, researchers, a journalist, and even an expert in concrete (yep) — to help us explore how the tech industry’s business model is worsening the climate crisis. In Big Dirty Data Centres, we heard from Jenna Ruddock and Boxi Wu, who shared their work on data centre expansion — which has ramped up with the AI hype — and how local...
over 1 year ago • 2 min read
Breaking the wave of harmful AI Hi Reader, Since the US election, we’ve been reflecting a lot on the power of collaboration and coordination to address the complex, structural challenges we’re facing. One voice can make a difference, but many voices, working together, can effect real change. And when we consistently act in concert, incremental progress can snowball into something much bigger - a movement. This month (and beyond), we’re focusing on both amplifying the voices of experts and...
over 1 year ago • 3 min read
Trump just won the presidency — what do we do now? Hey there, Just before the election we had a drafted a normal newsletter about the impacts AI did or didn’t have on the election. But like many of the conversations about technology politics, it feels like we missed the forest for the trees. 🎧 Prathm and I sat down to reflect and discuss what this outcome might mean for the technology politics work we’re all doing. You can listen here. I also wanted to share my thinking at the personal,...
over 1 year ago • 4 min read