The Common Crawl Foundation is little known outside of Silicon Valley. For more than a decade, the nonprofit has been scraping billions of webpages to build a massive archive of the internet. This database—large enough to be measured in petabytes—is made freely available for research. In recent years, however, this archive has been put to a controversial purpose: AI companies including OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Nvidia, Meta, and Amazon have used it to train large language models. In the process, my reporting has found, Common Crawl has opened a back door for AI companies to train their models with paywalled articles from major news websites. And the foundation appears to be lying to publishers about this—as well as masking the actual contents of its archives.

Common Crawl has not said much publicly about its support of LLM development. Since the early 2010s, researchers have used Common Crawl’s collections for a variety of purposes: to build machine-translation systems, to track unconventional uses of medicines by analyzing discussions in online forums, and to study book banning in various countries, among other things. In a 2012 interview, Gil Elbaz, the founder of Common Crawl, said of its archive that “we just have to make sure that people use it in the right way. Fair use says you can do certain things with the world’s data, and as long as people honor that and respect the copyright of this data, then everything’s great.”

Common Crawl’s website states that it scrapes the internet for “freely available content” without “going behind any ‘paywalls.’” Yet the organization has taken articles from major news websites that people normally have to pay for—allowing AI companies to train their LLMs on high-quality journalism for free. Meanwhile, Common Crawl’s executive director, Rich Skrenta, has publicly made the case that AI models should be able to access anything on the internet. “The robots are people too,” he told me, and should therefore be allowed to “read the books” for free. Multiple news publishers have requested that Common Crawl remove their articles to prevent exactly this use. Common Crawl says it complies with these requests. But my research shows that it does not.

The Nonprofit Feeding the Entire Internet to AI Companies

Common Crawl claims to provide a public benefit, but it lies to publishers about its activities.

^{Alex Reisner (The Atlantic)}

Since its founding, Facebook has described itself as a kind of public service that fosters relationships. In 2005, not long after the site’s launch, its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg described the network as an “icebreaker” that would help you make friends. Facebook has since become Meta, with more grandiose ambitions, but its current mission statement is broadly similar: “Build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible.”

More than 3 billion people use Meta products such as Facebook and Instagram every day, and more still use rival platforms that likewise promise connection and community. But a new era of deeper, better human fellowship has yet to arrive. Just ask Zuckerberg himself. “There’s a stat that I always think is crazy,” he said in April, during an interview with the podcaster Dwarkesh Patel. “The average American, I think, has fewer than three friends. And the average person has demand for meaningfully more; I think it’s like 15 friends or something, right?”

Zuckerberg was wrong about the details—the majority of American adults say they have at least three close friends, according to recent surveys—but he was getting at something real. There’s no question that we are becoming less and less social. People have sunk into their phones, enticed into endless, mindless “engagement” on social media. Over the past 15 years, face-to-face socialization has declined precipitously. The 921 friends I’ve accumulated on Facebook, I’ve always known, are not really friends at all; now the man who put this little scorecard in my life was essentially agreeing.

Zuckerberg, however, was not admitting a failure. He was pointing toward a new opportunity. In Marc Andreessen’s influential 2023 treatise, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” the venture capitalist wrote, “We believe that there is no material problem—whether created by nature or by technology—that cannot be solved with more technology.” In this same spirit, Zuckerberg began to suggest the idea that AI chatbots could fill in some of the socialization that people are missing.

AI Is Not Your Friend

The social-media era is over. What’s coming will be much worse.

^{Damon Beres (The Atlantic)}

Labour are set to abandon the term 'Islamophobia' in favour of 'anti-Muslim hate' - a disgraceful watering down of horrific racism

Starmer further entrenches Islamophobia in Labour

^{Joe Glenton (The Canary)}

A 2019 statute signed into law by Trump himself requires furloughed workers to be compensated when shutdowns end.

Trump Admin Signals It May Not Pay Furloughed Workers After Shutdown Ends

^{Chris Walker (Truthout)}

Maine voters rejected a GOP voter suppression bill, protecting absentee voting rights—a development cheered by Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner, who campaigned against it.

Backed by Platner Campaign, Maine Voters Reject GOP-Led Attack on Absentee Voting

"This victory belongs to the thousands of volunteers, many of them with our campaign, who left it all on the field to save absentee voting in Maine," said the US Senate candidate.

^{jessica-corbett (Common Dreams)}

ICE thugs have killed, kidnapped, and terrorised — Now even the FBI admits the America’s fascist stormtroopers are out of control

ICE: America’s favourite death cult with a badge

^{Joe Glenton (The Canary)}

The faux “party of free speech” strikes again. For years, the MAGA GOP has insisted that it is the true “party of free” speech even as all evidence suggests this administration is the most censorial and the most dismissive of the First Amendment in modern history. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over again we see the Trump administration engaging in blatant and obvious speech suppression.

NC GOP Threatens ProPublica: Drop This Story Or We’ll Call Trump To Punish You

The faux “party of free speech” strikes again. For years, the MAGA GOP has insisted that it is the true “party of free” speech even as all evidence suggests this administration is the most censoria…

^Techdirt

Chief Judge John McConnell for the US District Court of Rhode Island ruled Tuesday that the Department of Transportation (DOT) cannot require states to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in order to receive federal transportation funding. The case was brought by twenty Democratic state attorneys general against the DOT in May, claiming that the DOT and other federal agencies were unlawfully withholding billions of dollars in funding.

Case file: storage.courtlistener.com/reca…

US federal judge vacates immigration condition for federal transportation funding

Chief Judge John McConnell for the US District Court of Rhode Island ruled Tuesday that the Department of Transportation (DOT) cannot require states to cooperate with federal immigration authorities i...

^{Paul Leech | Georgetown U. Law Center, US (- JURIST - News)}

i don't usually, but i did just now cough up a lengthier comment with a nugget of inside perspective.

i rarely see nordic perspectives written out in english speaking spaces (only american, english, sometimes australian) so i thought to make this post pointing to it. i would look forward to any motivation that others wanting to know more brings to my writing and compiling nordic sources - alot of misrepresentation of our politics abroad

blorpblorp.xyz/inbox/c/showert…

please don't be inflammatory with me, idc for drama and fingerpointing.

Excess funds from the school meals program would be redirected toward the state-managed SNAP program.

Colorado Passes Measures to Feed All Public School Kids by Taxing the Wealthy

^{Chris Walker (Truthout)}

Billionaire hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman dumped nearly $2 million into stopping Zohran Mamdani from becoming NYC's next mayor, portraying him as a "dangerous" supporter of "terrorism." Hours after Mamdani's win, Ackman offered his congratulations and help.

Pro-Israel Billionaire Who Led Mamdani Scaremongering Now Offers to Help NYC's Next Mayor

One social media user wrote that the hedge fund executive Bill Ackman "went from acting like Mamdani was going to import ISIS to extending a friendly handshake… in like six hours."

^{stephen-prager (Common Dreams)}

“They may have won this race, but we have changed the narrative about what kind of city Minneapolis can be,” Omar Fateh said.

Frey Defeats Democratic Socialist Fateh to Win Third Term as Minneapolis Mayor

^{brett-wilkins (Common Dreams)}

Unite members across the Manchester transport strike for fair wages and safety. TfGM’s 3.2% offer is a pay cut, not a rise

Manchester transport strike — TfGM workers reject pay insult

^{Alex/Rose Cocker (The Canary)}

The new law conflates criticism of Zionism with antisemitism and punishes educators for teaching truthful information.

Case file: drive.google.com/file/d/1gkbQN…

Lawsuit Charges That California Law Illegally Muzzles Students and Teachers on Palestine | Truthout

^{britney (Truthout)}

The tragedy occurred yesterday.

How You Can Help: KY Governor Declares State Of Emergency Following UPS MD-11 Crash

^{Alexander Mitchell (Simple Flying)}

How a 34-year-old became the next mayor of New York City

Mamdani's Magic

^{Ken Klippenstein}

Background Mozilla launched Tab Grouping in early 2025, allowing tabs to be arranged and grouped with persistent labels. It was the most requested feature in the history of Mozilla Connect.

Under the hood: How Firefox suggests tab groups with local AI

Mozilla’s tab grouping feature uses AI to automatically organize and label browser tabs, making it easier to manage and find open pages.

^{Vasish Baungally (The Mozilla Blog)}

ZKPs are often advanced as a technical remedy, promising privacy-preserving attestations of age or eligibility. Yet their deployment in practice exposes both conceptual and practical limits.

The limits of zero-knowledge for age-verification | Brave

^Brave

The University of Pennsylvania has confirmed that a hacker breached numerous internal systems related to the university's development and alumni activities and stole data in a cyberattack.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/university-of-pennsylvania-confirms-data-stolen-in-cyberattack/

Over the past few days, we’ve seen a number of reports about Breaches preventing monsters from spawning.

We’ve been actively testing this issue, as this behaviour isn’t what we would expect. Our investigation has identified a problem with two specific methods of adding monsters to maps, Shrines and the Essence Scarab of Calcification.

For Shrines, packs of monsters were not spawning if the Shrine was located within a Breach Hive.

For Essence Scarab of Calcification we found that there were 30% less essences found in maps with Breach Hives than those with Unstable Breaches or on Standard.

We’re currently working on fixes for both of these cases.

Our testing with Divination Scarab of The Cloister and Ambush Scarab of Containment shows a consistent number of the monsters/strongboxes added by these scarabs whether a Hive spawns in a map affected by them or not.

It’s worth noting that monsters which would normally be placed within the area of a Hive encounter are not removed entirely. Instead, they’re compensated for by placing monsters elsewhere in the map. We’ll continue to monitor this situation closely and share updates if we discover anything further.

Announcements - Breach Encounters and Monsters in Maps - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

Obama said ‘the future looks a little bit brighter’ while the House speaker lied about New York mayor-elect’s policies

Left-leaning Americans awoke to a rare recent moment of political celebration with Democratic victories in several elections across the country, led by the election of Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor of New York, while Republicans breathlessly predicted the end of the country.

“The future looks a little bit brighter,” Barack Obama wrote on X about Democratic victories on Tuesday. “It’s a reminder that when we come together around strong, forward-looking leaders who care about the issues that matter, we can win.”

Democrats celebrate while Republicans stew over Mamdani’s historic win and others

^{George Chidi (The Guardian)}

A Spanish-language immersion daycare in a leafy residential neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago was raided by federal immigration agents on Wednesday and a teacher was taken away, panicking school administrators and parents of infants, toddlers and pre-kindergarten children at the center, a staff worker at the daycare told Reuters.

Footage obtained by local WGN-TV showed two men, one in a balaclava, dragging a woman out of the colorfully decorated front doors of Rayito de Sol daycare center as she screamed. The men wore vests that said "Police" but no other agency markings were visible.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/chicago-immigration-crackdown-agents-raid-daycare-senior-living-center-2025-11-05/

https://time.com/7331119/zohran-mamdani-billionaires-ackman-bloomberg/

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bans-foreign-ai-chips-state-funded-data-centres-sources-say-2025-11-05/

But, but, but ... that's my ball. You can't play with my ball!

Republicans in California on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a high-stakes redistricting measure that could help flip up to five congressional seats for Democrats.

The suit, filed by David Tangipa, a Republican assembly member, 18 California voters and the state Republican party in the US district court for the central district of California, argues that the new maps are unconstitutional because they were drawn to increase the voting power of a particular racial group. It asks the court to block the new maps from taking effect, at least temporarily.

The measure, Proposition 50, was approved by voters on Tuesday evening, in a decisive victory for Democrats. The plan temporarily gives the power to draw congressional districts to the California legislature, allowing it to adopt maps that will help Democrats pick up five seats in the US House of Representatives.

Obviously, if you represent the people, you can't let them vote on anything themselves.

Republicans file lawsuit challenging California’s redistricting measure

Prop 50, passed by voters yesterday, allows legislature to redraw congressional maps to benefit Democrats in House

^{Lauren Gambino (The Guardian)}

Drought is set to pose a greater risk to the $4 trillion municipal bond market than floods, hurricanes, and wildfires combined.

Drought is quietly pushing American cities toward a fiscal cliff

^{Tik Root (Grist)}

"White House press briefings engage the American people on important issues affecting their daily lives — in recent months, war, the economy, and healthcare, and in recent years, a global pandemic," U.S. District Judge Amir Ali wrote in issuing a preliminary injunction on Tuesday. "The exclusion of deaf Americans from that programming, in addition to likely violating the Rehabilitation Act, is clear and present harm that the court cannot meaningfully remedy after the fact."

The White House stopped using live ASL interpreters at briefings and other public events when President Trump began his second term in January.

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and two deaf men filed the lawsuit against Trump and Leavitt in May. The suit also names White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, along with the offices for president and vice president. It alleges the White House's failure to provide ASL violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The law prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in programs conducted by the federal government. The suit also claims the White House is in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments, which protect free speech and provide for due process, respectively.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/