Few partnerships age as gracefully as the one between a forward-thinking brand and a reputable school. Universities, colleges, and even local technical institutes already sit on an online goldmine— credible domains, active research pages, and curious students eager to share discoveries.  When marketers approach these institutions with genuine respect and mutual value in mind, the […]

'Those are all from the interior'

Excerpts Young Adult Read an Excerpt From I, in the Shadows by Tori Bovalino Maybe this is possession; maybe this is truly what it is to be haunted… By Tori Bovalino | Published on December 11, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Cyrano de Bergerac meets Beetlejuice meets Bottoms in this bewitching, passionate tale of the unlikely alliance between a ghost and the girl who moves into a haunted house. We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from I, in the Shadows, a young adult horror novel by Tori Bovalino, out from Page Street YA on January 13, 2026. There’s a ghost haunting Drew Tarpin’s new room. Liam Orville has been dead for ten months and has no idea how to move on. But the longer he stays, the more likely it is he’ll degrade into an energy consuming husk—which Drew is more concerned about than her grades or her inability to make meaningful connections with other students.Drew is everything Liam never was when he was alive, but they do share some common ground: Drew finds herself hopelessly attracted to—and completely tongue-tied around—Hannah Sullivan, who happens to be Liam’s former best friend.After a run-in with a ghost-eating monster leaves Drew and Liam desperate for answers, they strike up a deal: In return for Drew investigating why Liam is still around, he’ll help her talk to Hannah. But Liam’s time is running out, and if Drew doesn’t help him move on, he risks becoming a monster himself. “The exorcism didn’t work,” I say into the phone, held not-so-securely between my cheek and shoulder as I fumble with my key with one hand and try not to drop the stack of library books teetering in the other. The stack is a mix of things: books on ghosts and ESP, a Bible, a Quran, a Torah, and a beat-up library copy of The Grapes of Wrath. I’m covering my bases here. And to be clear: The Steinbeck is for English class, not exorcisms. I don’t think this is a problem I can solve with breast milk. Finding the house key is a problem, but it’s a problem of my own making. My key ring is cluttered with keys to our old house (which probably no longer work): one to my best friend Andie’s house (definitely works, but is approximately eighty miles away); my car key (works, accessible, rarely used); Dad’s office (works, stolen); and Bee’s bakery (works, also stolen). On the other end of the line, Reece snorts. “I told you it wouldn’t,” they say. I hear a rustle of pages—they’re probably studying. I’m probably interrupting. The last thing they probably want to talk about is ghosts. “You’re the one who told me to handle it myself,” I grumble. “Bro, have you ever seen me do an exorcism?” I drop my keys, groan, and kneel to retrieve them, tipping over the stack of books in the process. At this point, I think it’s brave of me that I don’t curl up on the front porch and give up. It’s one of those days. “Oh,” Reece says, ignorant to my suffering. “How was the Stats test?” “NOPE!” I gather up my books, my keys, and finally find the right one. The door creaks ominously as it opens, but that’s not much of an omen when I already know the place is haunted. And possibly cursed. The sound would tip off Bee and Dad that I’m home, but neither of them are here. If they were, I would not be talking about exorcisms so openly. I would also, unfortunately for all involved, be answering way more questions about the Stats test. “But the ghost,” I say, redirecting with all my might as I drop my backpack and leave the stack of books on the table in the hall. “Do you know of anything else that will help? That will work?” “Not an exorcism.” “Thanks. Genius advice.” Buy the Book I, in the Shadows Tori Bovalino Buy Book I, in the Shadows Tori Bovalino Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Reece is quiet for a moment. Usually, they’re the one who… well, does anything about ghosts. We can both see them. We’ve both always been able to see them. But I prefer to ignore them, whereas Reece has always taken a more hands-on approach. Unfortunately, due to proximity, there’s no avoiding this particular ghost—and if he does degrade in the way ghosts do, it could lead to a dangerous situation for me if I leave him alone. It’s one of those moments where I feel Reece’s absence keenly. My sibling has a much stronger understanding of ghosts than I do, and also a much better moral code. Even after… well, my entire life, I’m not sure if I’ve mastered the compass points just yet. I hang my keys on the strip of hooks by the door and make my way to the kitchen, the wooden floorboards creaking with every step. The house itself is really not that old. Our last place was an early nineteenth-century farmhouse. This house is bright, airy, and open-concept downstairs with big rooms and good closets upstairs. It’s everything Bee and Dad always wanted.  We’ve only been here for about a month, so I’m in that weird phase in which everything about it is pseudo-familiar: the creaking of the floors in every room, worst on the stairs; the scratching of the trees against the windows at night; the far-off whistle of the trains as they pass through, headed for Ohio or across Pennsylvania. Oh, yeah. And the fucking ghost. He’s not here as I pull down a box of cereal, hop up on the counter, and eat it dry by the handful, as Reece still sighs and mutters on the line. The ghost tends to prefer my bedroom (it’s very inconvenient for both of us), which leads me to believe that it was once his bedroom. (You don’t have to tell me I’m a genius. When it comes to ghostbusting, I am a top student.) (I can’t say the same for real school.) But, back to the bedroom thing. To be clear, he’s not a creeper ghost, from what I can tell. He doesn’t watch me change, or leer, or do anything else that one would suspect of a semi-visible teenage boy now sharing a bedroom with a fully visible teenage girl. Who knows. Maybe he’s queer too. Maybe he likes running. Maybe he also is kind of bad at school. Maybe, if we were living in the same timeline, any of those things would be in the center of our little Venn diagram. Maybe, we would even be friends. Finally, Reece sighs. “I wouldn’t usually recommend this,” they say, their tone taking on a hint of the dubiousness, “but have you tried talking to him?” Now, it’s my turn to snort. Unfortunately, I do it around a mouthful of dry Cheerios, which leads to a lot of coughing and sputtering, which lessens the effect when I say, “Isn’t that breaking, like, Reece Tarpin’s Rule Number One of Ghost Management?” “Drew—” Reece starts. “Maybe Rule One is ‘do not bang a ghost,’” I speculate, this time with less choking on Cheerios. “Drew—” “Or ‘no kissing ghosts?’ But I’m pretty sure you broke that one with—” “ANDREA PENELOPE TARPIN,” Reece shouts. “DO YOU WANT MY HELP OR NOT?” I press my lips together. Stop swinging my feet. Set the cereal box down. “…Yes.” Reece sighs, and I can just imagine them pinching the bridge of their nose, eyes closed, trying to tamp down the frustration. I cause this expression a lot, so the image of it comes easily—along with that fierce ache of missing them. Reece is a freshman in college at Boston University, and they moved at the end of the summer, a couple of weeks before Dad and Bee and me relocated here. I’m still not used to the emptiness of my life without Reece’s constant presence—and Reece’s constant willingness to step in and take the lead on anything ghostly. But let’s get one thing straight: I am not asking for Reece’s help because I’m afraid of this ghost, okay? Fear has nothing to do with it. I just don’t like him, and I don’t want him in my room, and I am a growing girl, and I should be allowed my space and privacy. Plus, he’s very judgmental, which I can tell because he makes weird faces at me at night when I’m doing my ab routine. I find it very disruptive. And when Reece is in charge, they just… usually go away on their own. Or with gentle convincing from light rituals. They are not usually this persistent. Enter: Reece. “I’m video-calling you,” Reece says, resigned. “Switch over.” I pull the phone from my face and accept the video request. Reece’s face floats up, too close for a moment, their nose and septum piercing and top lip swimming on my screen before they back up. I scan over their freckles and shorn red hair—the shock of copper is the only thing we share between us that Dad does not also have—before focusing in on their brown eyes, still a bit tired. “Take me to the ghost.” “You won’t be able to—” “Just do it, mmkay? You’re the one who wanted my help.” I sigh, but I take Reece with me upstairs. I also nearly die on the way when I trip over my backpack, discarded on the first step, and I am annoyed to find that, for a brief moment, I understand why Dad is always getting on my case to hang it up or put it in my room. It’s the worst kind of self-betrayal to find that I agree with my parents’ nagging, even for a second. Reece doesn’t say anything until we’re in my room with the door shut behind us. Then, they shout, scaring me out of my skin: “HEY GHOSTIE. IT’S DREW’S BIG SIBLING. SQUARE UP.” “Reece,” I say, aghast. But something in it works. My eyes snap to a corner, where the bed is pushed against the wall: For the barest moment, the air shimmers, and then the boy appears. He’s sitting on the bed, back against the wall, one knee tented, arm thrown over it. He died wearing jeans and a short-sleeved top with three buttons at the throat, all open. He’s white, I think, with dark hair and brown eyes and a beaky nose keeping up his glasses. He looks a little nerdy but also kind of nice—not the sort of kid you’d think of dying at seventeen or eighteen or whatever age he was when he kicked it. He also looks mega bored. I would probably feel the same, if I were dead for an indeterminate amount of time and unable to communicate with the living. I turn the phone around. I’m not sure if Reece can see him over the video call, but it doesn’t much matter. Reece is good at playing things off, and they know the ghost is there. If I can see it, of course it’s there. The thing is, I did want to solve this on my own. All our lives, Reece has been the one who cared more about ghosts (see: when the going gets tough, I get avoiding) and knew how to deal with them. And when they lived with us, it was easy to let that be their thing, to let every little issue fall under Reece’s remit. But Reece is in Massachusetts, and I doubt they’ll be coming back—in the last few weeks, I’ve watched them talk about home less and less as they’ve made new friends and gotten used to Boston. I can’t even blame them. The world is a bit shit right now— I’m proud they’re finding what space they can, carving safety and protection into it. Either way, I thought that working through the ghost issue would make us closer. Bridge that gap that’s been building between us since Reece left. But they told me to figure it out, and I—well. I reached for the exorcism when I probably shouldn’t have. But in my defense, it’s actually very creepy to share space with a ghost. They don’t really knock when they want to come in— right now, the ghost and I can’t communicate at all, which means he spends his sentient hours staring at me from the corner like I kicked his puppy. Reece is good at making them go away, solving their problems and cutting their ties to the mortal world before sending them peacefully into the afterlife. Fixing the mess before wellmannered ghosts degrade into angry husks. I am patently not, and that’s what’s getting me into trouble. And yes, maybe I did go straight for an exorcism on purpose—because if I failed, I knew that Reece would have no choice but to help me. Selfish? Possibly. I just… I really miss them. This might be a shitty bonding experience, but it’s better than nothing. “Ready to do this, Dree?” Reece asks me. I press my lips together, glaring at the ghost so he doesn’t get any ideas. Reece is the only one who calls me Dree (and the only one who is allowed)—a shortening for Andrea, which annoys me. Everyone else calls me Drew, because my best friend, another Andrea, took Andie first. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I grumble. The ghost cocks an eyebrow. He doesn’t look pleased, either, but that might have something to do with the failed exorcism that happened last time I saw him. Yeah, I doubt he’s forgiven me for that yet. “Look,” I say, trying to soften my voice a bit. “I’m sorry about… the whole holy water thing. I am just trying to help you move on, okay?” He frowns, unconvinced. “Just do it,” Reece mutters on the line. I stick out a hand. If he comes forward, touches me, then I can bring him back into corporeality. Meld my spirit to his, even temporarily. And I’ll be able to hear him properly, to know what he wants. Reece is really good at it. They can listen to a ghost, figure out what they want, and get them moving on in record speed. It would never take my sibling three weeks to deal with a ghost. But I hate the squidginess of it, the vulnerability. Reece taught me how to do this when I was ten, and I’ve only done it a couple of times since then. When you open yourself to a ghost, you always take a bit of them, too—and I hate knowing those deaths, feeling the shattered fractals of their memories, and not being able to put them down. Not being able to forget them, when the ghosts do move on. Sure, they don’t become husks, the angry remnants of a soul left behind. But I keep the other half of memories no one else will ever share: the sweet bite of an apple in springtime eighty years ago, and the first kiss with someone’s wife, and the feeling of dirt in my hand as someone buried their mother, and the taste of blood in my mouth as someone wrecked a car. It’s all there, still mine, even though they were never really my memories to begin with. He regards the hand, then looks up at me. I know his name— when I moved in, small town that this is, everyone was stepping over themselves to tell me about the dead kid who lived here before—but I don’t want to think it now, when he could be in my brain soon. “It will help,” I say. “I’ll stop trying to get rid of you.” He tilts his head, a question there. He stopped trying to talk to me after the first week, when it was clear I couldn’t hear. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped talking at him. Small things— announcing my presence when I come in, or reminding him that I can’t hear him, or apologizing for failing at exorcisms. “And if she can’t,” Reece says, “I might be able to.” He looks doubtful, but he shifts forward. Gets off the bed. He doesn’t need to walk, one foot in front of the other, but he does. He could just float, or appear wherever he needs to go, but I learned early on that he’s not very good at being a ghost. “I won’t hurt you,” I say. He rolls his eyes. Takes my hand. I take a deep breath, reaching for not just his hand, but the shadow of his soul still here on this mortal plane. It’s like surfacing from underwater, bringing him back into being. Like tasting every second of his seventeen years, two months, twenty-two days, eight hours, seventeen minutes, and eight seconds on my tongue, all those vague reminders of who he is hitting all at once—and I can’t hold back his name anymore. “You can’t hurt me,” the ghost of Liam Orville says. “I’m already dead.” Excerpted from I, in the Shadows, copyright © 2025 by Tori Bovalino. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>I, in the Shadows</i> by Tori Bovalino appeared first on Reactor.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House is “definitely concerned” about the increase in attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement after New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani urged immigrants to “stand up to ICE.” “There’s a lot of talk by Democrat politicians in New York, but the Trump administration will continue to do our jobs in every state,” she said, “and that’s to remove illegal aliens and public safety threats from American communities.” Leavitt’s response to Mamdani’s video comes weeks after President Donald Trump held a friendly meeting with the mayor elect in his office, with Trump saying he is “very confident” Mamdani can “do a very good job.” I asked @PressSec what the White House will do about Mamdani's video encouraging New Yorkers to “stand up to ICE.”?"There's a lot of talk Democrat politicians in New York, but the Trump administration will continue to do our jobs in every state, and that's to remove illegal… pic.twitter.com/pawsIGRowu— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) December 11, 2025 Leavitt said the Trump administration is “definitely concerned about the rise in violence, in attacks and physical threats that we have seen against our brave men and women who wear the ICE uniform.” “These are agents who are just simply doing their jobs,” she said. “They’re enforcing our nation’s immigration laws, and we’ve seen more than a 1000% increase in violent attacks on them and their families.” ICE agents have been doxxed, harassed, and physically assaulted, Leavitt said. “We condemn that wholeheartedly,” she said. “I know the administration has done a lot to protect our ICE agents and the president stands firmly behind them in conducting these enforcement operations.” The post ‘Definitely Concerned’: Leavitt Responds to Mamdani Video Encouraging Resistance to ICE appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. PublicSquare, the technology company behind the fast-growing pro-freedom marketplace, is stepping into political fundraising with the launch of PSQ Impact, a direct challenge to WinRed’s dominance over Republican donations. The new platform promises a lower-cost, more transparent alternative for campaigns, committees, and nonprofits that have grown uneasy with centralized control and the risks of politically motivated de-platforming. PSQ Impact’s system will cut out intermediary processing layers through a model called allied fundraising, ensuring that contributions flow straight to the intended campaign rather than being handled by a central PAC. More: Florida Probes JPMorgan Over Truth Social Debanking The company says it will not solicit donor “tips” the way WinRed began doing in 2023. It will also feature analytics, crypto donation options, and US-based chat support for contributors. According to PublicSquare CEO Michael Seifert, this venture is less about political maneuvering and more about building infrastructure capable of standing up to the same technical and financial challenges that have plagued other right-of-center organizations. “We are a tech company that is entering the conservative political arena because we share the values and the principles of our party and of our movement. We are not politicos that decided to start a tech company,” Seifert said to Breitbart. He described PSQ Impact as a secure, scalable platform built with enterprise-grade technology refined in the private sector. Since its creation in 2021, PublicSquare has positioned itself as an answer to the corporate cultural conformity of large consumer brands. Its digital marketplace now lists over 75,000 participating businesses and counts more than 1.6 million members, based on the company’s latest figures. The firm says its new political platform grows out of the same mission to give people and organizations freedom to operate outside systems vulnerable to ideological filtering. For PublicSquare, the push into political tech is an extension of its broader argument for decentralized commerce and speech. “We are free market capitalists,” Seifert said. “We believe in competition, and ultimately, at the end of the day, we believe in a posture of humility that says, ‘May the best product win.’” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Pro-Freedom Marketplace Becomes the Next Player in Donation Tech appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. European and Canadian officials have expanded their cooperation on digital policy with new agreements that link digital identity infrastructure, artificial intelligence development, and management of online information. The partnership, presented as a joint effort to strengthen “trust” and “information integrity,” commits both sides to exploring systems that would connect citizens’ digital credentials across borders while sharing data for AI research. We obtained a copy of the joint statement for you here. Two memoranda of understanding were signed: one on Digital Credentials and Trust Services and another on Artificial Intelligence. The digital credentials agreement creates a working forum for joint experiments, technical coordination, and the testing of “digital identity wallets.” These wallets are software tools that store verified identity documents, allowing people to confirm their identity online or in person using standardized credentials backed by government trust frameworks. The artificial intelligence memorandum focuses on the infrastructure behind large AI systems. It establishes a “structured dialogue on data spaces,” a term referring to controlled environments where data can be exchanged among multiple organizations under a common governance framework. While the purpose is described as supporting innovation, such data-sharing arrangements could also increase the circulation of personal or behavioral data between jurisdictions, raising questions about oversight and consent. Beyond technical matters, the AI plan promises to “accelerate AI adoption in strategic sectors” and to develop “advanced AI models for the public good.” It sets out to align Europe’s and Canada’s approaches on infrastructure, standards, and regulation, drawing the two regions closer in how they design and control large AI ecosystems. Another section of the partnership turns to media and information control. The governments agreed to “cooperation on enhancing information integrity online” and pledged to fund efforts “strengthening independent media by supporting local journalism.” Officially, this is aimed at combating “foreign information manipulation” and addressing the challenges of generative AI. The phrase “information integrity” appears with growing frequency in international policy documents, and its use in the EU–Canada partnership lands in the middle of an already expanding global trend. The wording may sound neutral, but it often signals a preference for managed information flows rather than open public debate. A July 2025 development at the United Nations illustrates why the term can raise concerns. The UN’s first Global Risk Report placed what it called “mis- and disinformation” among the most severe global threats. Inside that same report, the organization announced a new task force whose purpose is to examine how unauthorized narratives might interfere with the UN’s operations, particularly the 2030 Agenda. The framing is presented as a matter of public welfare, yet the described mission is not about encouraging transparency or open discussion. It is about maintaining a communication environment that protects institutional priorities. According to the report, survey participants from governments, NGOs, companies, and other groups broadly supported coordinated government action and multistakeholder coalitions to confront the identified risks. What is missing is any call for more open communication or stronger protections for free expression. The dominant approach favors centralized management of public narratives, reinforcing the idea that the solution to contested information is tighter control rather than broader participation. The first meeting of the Canada–EU Digital Partnership Council was held in Montreal on December 8, co-chaired by Canada’s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon and European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen. This meeting put earlier commitments into action, following the EU–Canada Digital Partnership announced in late 2023 and the Strategic Partnership of the Future statement adopted at the June 2025 summit. For the European Union, this partnership supports its European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet initiative, which aims to give citizens a unified digital container for verified credentials usable across public and private services. Canada has been pursuing similar goals through its Pan-Canadian Trust Framework and several provincial pilots, but it has not yet introduced a single national wallet. The cross-border cooperation suggests that any federal system in Canada will be built with global standards such as W3C Verifiable Credentials and eIDAS in mind. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Digital IDs and AI Dreams: How Canada and Europe Plan to Sync the Future appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. European governments are preparing to revisit one of the EU’s most controversial surveillance ideas: forcing online services to retain vast amounts of user data for up to a year. A Council paper now circulating (via Netzpolitik) among member states outlines a plan that would apply not only to telecom operators but to nearly every major digital service, including cloud platforms, domain hosts, payment processors, and even end-to-end encrypted messengers such as WhatsApp and Signal. Officials insist they do not intend to compromise encryption or read private messages. What they want is the so-called metadata: who contacted whom, from where, at what time, and through which service. This form of tracking, while technically outside the message content, can still provide a detailed picture of someone’s social network, movements, and daily behavior. The push represents a sharp departure from existing limits. Previous EU and German laws, both struck down by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and national courts, had already been judged unlawful for collecting everyone’s data “without differentiation, restriction or exception.” Those rulings required that any retention be narrowly targeted and proportionate. Despite that, the new draft takes the opposite path, proposing to widen the net instead of narrowing it. Germany’s government has been exploring a shorter-term model, keeping IP addresses and port numbers for a few months, but the Council paper shows that most EU states are lobbying for a far more comprehensive scheme. More: Germany Turns Its Back on Decades‑Old Privacy Protections with Sweeping Surveillance Bill They are asking for “the widest possible coverage” across internet services, explicitly naming VPN providers, hosting companies, cryptocurrency traders, gaming and ridesharing platforms, and e-commerce intermediaries. In effect, any business that connects people online could become a state-mandated data warehouse. Although some officials claim the retention would focus on subscriber details like IP addresses, several states want to go much further. Their proposals call for recording the serial numbers of internet devices and collecting “communication connection data” that reveals who interacts with whom, when, and how. That language mirrors the now-defunct 2006 EU Data Retention Directive, which required telecom companies to log every phone call, email, and text message for potential use by investigators. The document also shows interest in location tracking. Mobile networks continuously record where a phone connects, which allows near-real-time mapping of a person’s movements. Proponents suggest using this data to locate missing persons, though the paper concedes that “not all cases of missing persons constitute a potential offense.” Even so, several states want the power to retain these records for everyone, not just for targeted investigations. Earlier EU and national frameworks limited storage to about six months. The current proposal nearly doubles that. Most governments are pressing for a one-year minimum, with some arguing that Brussels should only set the floor, not the ceiling, so national authorities can keep data even longer. Law enforcement agencies have previously said that data older than a few weeks rarely plays a critical role. Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, for example, has stated that “a storage commitment of two to three weeks would be sufficient on a regular basis.” The new plan disregards that assessment entirely. Each member state would be allowed to decide what counts as a “serious” crime, effectively opening the door for the same surveillance data to be used in routine investigations of online harassment or “hate speech,” and other pro-censorship buzzwords. That flexibility means a system built for exceptional threats could easily become the foundation for day-to-day policing. Once the data exists, the temptation to expand access is constant. The Council itself acknowledges that previous laws were struck down because they treated every person as a potential suspect. Yet the new plan offers no clear explanation of how it would comply with those rulings. Instead, some member states propose to “reassess the necessity and proportionality” of retention in light of “technological developments and changing ways of committing crimes.” In simpler terms, they want to reinterpret the legal boundaries rather than adapt their proposals to them. The European Commission has already completed preliminary surveys and a public consultation. An impact assessment is due in early 2026, followed by a legislative proposal expected “at the end of the first half of 2026.” If the plan moves forward, Europe could see the return of broad-scale data retention under a new label. For ordinary users, that would mean their online activities, emails sent, calls made, apps used, and locations visited could be quietly stored for a year or more, accessible to state authorities whenever an investigation demands it. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post EU Revives Plan for Year-Long Data Retention Across Digital Services, Including Encrypted Apps appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, freshly anointed TIME’s 2025 CEO of the Year, recently sat down with the magazine to deliver a masterclass in corporate optimism. With the enthusiasm of someone who’s never had one of their mundane videos flagged for “graphic content” for laughing too hard, Mohan described his company’s “North Star” as “giving everyone a voice.” Then, without even flinching, he explained how artificial intelligence will be supercharging YouTube’s already notorious censorship machine. “AI will create an entirely new class of creators that today can’t do it because they don’t have the skills or they don’t have the equipment,” he said. “But the same rule will apply, which is, there will be good content and bad content, and it will be up to YouTube and our investment in technology and the algorithms to bring that to the fore.” YouTube wants to fill the site with AI-generated content while simultaneously using other AI to judge what gets to stay up. The circle of platform life, run by code, shaped by code, cleaned up by more code. And when it comes to removing creators entirely? That’s also part of the plan. “AI will make our ability to detect and enforce on violative content better, more precise, and able to cope with scale,” Mohan claimed. “Every week, literally, the capabilities get better.” Mohan is talking about an AI system that has already wrongly nuked creators across the platform, with YouTube downplaying or outright contradicting its role depending on which press release you’re reading. For a company allegedly trying to “give everyone a voice,” it’s been spending a lot of time erasing them. Mohan’s interviews read like a sci-fi script where a benevolent overlord insists the machines are here to help. Meanwhile, in the real world, YouTubers are fighting for the digital equivalent of habeas corpus. Then there’s Enderman, a tech and malware-focused creator with over 350,000 subscribers. His channel was shut down after YouTube mistakenly tied him to another, unrelated channel that had been hit with copyright strikes. Same story for gaming channel Scrachit Gaming and animation creator 4096. All three were linked by YouTube’s moderation system to a phantom menace of a channel and terminated. After backlash, their channels were reinstated in November. YouTube insists these weren’t AI decisions. A spokesperson told Mashable that these terminations were “not determined by automated enforcement.” But in November, YouTube quietly updated its “Content Moderation & Appeals” FAQ and admitted that it uses “both automation and humans to detect and terminate related channels.” So which is it? Human error or robot sabotage? They won’t say. They’re hoping no one notices. Popular YouTuber MoistCr1TiKaL didn’t need a committee to reach a verdict on Mohan’s vision. “We haven’t seen anything positive on YouTube as a result of these AI tools that Neal speaks so highly of. They’re a fucking scourge right now,” he said. “AI should never be able to be the judge, jury, and executioner…Neal seems to have a different vision in mind.” He’s not wrong. YouTube’s AI hallucinated that a clip of horror gamer SpooknJukes laughing was “graphic content.” It demonetized the video, flagged it with an age restriction, and forced the creator to edit out the laughter to get monetization back. Yes, laughing. In October, tech YouTubers Britec09 and CyberCPU Tech had their videos removed for showing how to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft account. YouTube said the tutorials were “harmful or dangerous.” The videos were restored a month later, quietly, without apology. And for Pokémon creator SplashPlate? A “low-value” content strike wiped his channel off the map on December 9. It was reinstated the next day. Another hit-and-run enforcement from an AI system that’s “getting better every week,” according to Mohan. Mohan can say YouTube is about “giving everyone a voice,” but the numbers tell a different story. Channels are being terminated by mistake. Appeals take days or weeks if they’re reviewed at all. Public outrage has become the only reliable method of tech support. Lose your account? Better hope you’re trending on X. This isn’t some growing pain of a new moderation tool. It’s YouTube’s actual plan. Automate content creation, automate content policing, and automate user removal. The same platform that launched careers by letting amateurs speak freely is now making sure machines decide who gets to stay. And if you’re one of the unlucky few targeted by that system? Don’t worry. YouTube’s “North Star” is still to give you a voice. You’ll just need to make sure your voice sounds algorithmically compliant, inoffensive to bots, and indistinguishable from the kind of “new creators” YouTube’s AI will be manufacturing in bulk. AI is here to help. Just ask the people who it hasn’t flagged yet. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post AI Is YouTube’s New Gatekeeper appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

The Bizarro World of MTG, Tucker, Candace, and the Woke Right

Going to War With the Senate Over Taliban Funding