Friday links for March 20th 2026
It’s Friday, let’s do the link thing…
1. Naomi Klein & Karen Hao: The Empire of AI and the Fight for Our Future (video)
This is a great in-depth follow-up to what I wrote about generative AI this week. Naomi Klein talking with Karen Hao about her book Empire of AI (which I highly, highly, recommend). It’s not all doom and gloom though. They talk of smaller, fairer AI and other community projects. The video lasts over an hour but, trust me, it’s worth your time.
2. US Congress demands messages from European officials via Microsoft and Google
The US congress is pressing US tech companies to hand over messages from EU officials. The Belgian privacy and tech community has been warning about this for a long time: sending work emails via Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is basically serving European data on a platter to a foreign administration.
3. Meta is killing off the metaverse. It lost $80 billion
Remember when the Metaverse was the next big thing? Someone paid $450,000 to be Snoop Dogg’s neighbour in that digital ghost town. Fun times.
4. Europeans think Trump can shut down their internet
86% of people think a sudden U.S. move to restrict Europe’s access to digital services is "plausible" and "should not be ruled out”. 59% called it “already a real and concrete risk”. Time to bring those bytes back across the Atlantic before they need a visa.
If you like your music rare, this is fun: a streaming radio station that only plays tracks from before 2000 that have less than 30.000 views on YouTube.
Have a good one,
Colin