Friday links for June 5th 2026
The “working as intended” edition.
1. Bot traffic is now equal or greater than human traffic
Per Cloudflare, there are now more bots than humans on the internet. We did it, the zombie internet is a reality. There’s probably a bot somewhere forwarding this email to another bot.
2. Hackers Used Meta’s AI Support Bot to Seize Instagram Accounts
Hackers simply asked Meta’s AI chatbot to give them access to celebrity accounts, and it did. Turns out you can get Barack Obama’s instagram account if you just say please.
3. Meta Silently Added Face-Recognition Code for Its Smart Glasses to Millions of Phones
Meta’s pervert glasses already have the capacity to do facial recognition, they just haven’t activated it yet. I’m sure nothing bad will come of this, Meta have a great track record on privacy. (archived article here)
4. The EU tech sovereignty plan
The European Commission has published its new Tech Sovereignty Plan. Pretty good on the surface, but they’re ignoring the social layer, which is the glue for many of the other layers.
And, if you’re old enough to remember Geocities, here’s a lovingly-assembled collage of bits and pieces excavated from there. If you’re too young, this is what your parent’s corner of the internet probably looked like.
On rotation
This week’s soundtrack is Everywhere at the End of Time by The Caretaker.
See you on the flip side,
Colin