Aliya Bhatia
LightNews LightNews
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
Aliya Bhatia
@aliyabhatia.bsky.social
330 followers 370 following 130 posts
Tech & human rights @cdt.org
Posts, thoughts, dreams my own.
Not Alia Bhatt
aliya-bhatia.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
alondra.bsky.social
"Any claims of AI solving for population scale problems must be matched against the reality of the Global South, in which young boys were applying enamel paint on the railings... with their bare hands to prepare for the arrival of Silicon Valley CEOs." www.techpolicy.press/indias-ai-im...
India’s ‘AI Impact Summit’ Promises Little More Than Spectacle
The fourth in a series of convenings that kicked off in Bletchley Park in 2023, the summit is the first held in the Global South, writes Apar Gupta.
www.techpolicy.press
February 16, 2026 at 4:10 AM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
theverge.com
ICE may have lost the battle for public opinion, and its operation may be hampered by local pushback, but it has succeeded in one respect: It has instilled terror in Minnesota’s immigrant communities, forcing them into the shadows.

Read more from @gabydvj.bsky.social: buff.ly/eSAhblK
Verge headline: ICE is pushing Minneapolis underground by Gaby Del Valle Photos by Jack Califano Photo depicts a white brick wall plastered with two recurring posters: One that says Alex Pretty ICU Nurse - Murdered by ICE, shows his photo with red highlights. Another is similar but reads Renee Nicole Good American Mom - Murdered by ICE
February 12, 2026 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
weratedogs.com
we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad
February 10, 2026 at 8:18 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
Will India truly forge a 'third way' at the #AIImpactSummit next week in Delhi or further entrench Big Tech actors' roles in the Global South at the expense of local alternatives? Great read by @ambakak.bsky.social and Astha Kapoor: restofworld.org/2026/india-a...
Can India be a “third way” AI alternative to the U.S. and China?
The AI Impact Summit in India, the first in a developing country, proposes an option that focuses on public good and development. But can it deliver without capitulating to Big Tech?
restofworld.org
February 11, 2026 at 3:35 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
Incredible piece about what we lose when AI systems aren't trained on natively-created representative datasets: Bad Bunny lyrics!

lausworld.substack.com/p/the-limita...
Bad Bunny, Spanish Dialects, and What to Do About the ChatGPTfication of Language
Your LLM is likely missing the actual soul behind the words you speak, read, and write.
lausworld.substack.com
February 10, 2026 at 10:15 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
Attacks on academic freedom and cutting of stable, accessible channels to immigrate to the US will have ripple effects for decades to come. The US knows little of the brain drain that's about to come and that other countries which too have faced shifts towards authoritarian power have experienced
jenlucpiquant.bsky.social Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 7d
Dozens of researchers will move to France from US following high-profile bid to lure talent. Large proportion worked at Columbia University, which had its grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Dozens of researchers will move to France from US following high-profile bid to lure talent
Large proportion worked at Columbia University, which had its grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
www.nature.com
February 10, 2026 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
rlevinsonwaldman.bsky.social
Alarming new revelations about ICE's use of administrative subpoenas to get information about people the administration wanted to detain and deport because of their protests against government policies. theintercept.com/2026/02/10/g...
Google Handed ICE Student Journalist’s Bank and Credit Card Numbers
Amandla Thomas-Johnson didn't know how much information ICE requested in a subpoena now. Google never gave him a chance to fight it.
theintercept.com
February 10, 2026 at 5:16 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
Great new piece by @kalikabali.bsky.social ahead of the #IndiaAIImpactSummit echoing a lot of what we've said: translated training and testing datasets are insufficient to build context-specific tools: www.indiatoday.in/magazine/fut...
Vernacular AI | An AI for Bharat
Moving past English-first systems, India is creating multilingual, context-aware ai to assist, protect and empower communities
www.indiatoday.in
February 10, 2026 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
iethics.bsky.social
"NLP experts articulated a need for #research that seeks to understand how #language evolves online, how users interact
with each other, and how network effects and digital affordances shape online activity." #ethics #internet #contentmoderation #tech #AI
cdt.org Center for Democracy & Technology @cdt.org · 8d
Automated Trust & Safety (T&S) tools too often perform poorly in widely spoken, low-resource languages. CDT convened four roundtables with AI experts & data annotators to dig into why — and how to build tools that work equitably for all users, not just English speakers. cdt.org/insights/bet...
White document on black background.
February 9, 2026 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
cdt.org
Automated Trust & Safety (T&S) tools too often perform poorly in widely spoken, low-resource languages. CDT convened four roundtables with AI experts & data annotators to dig into why — and how to build tools that work equitably for all users, not just English speakers. cdt.org/insights/bet...
White document on black background.
February 9, 2026 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social
The Sermon on the Mount, by Beryl Lewis, before 1965, 📸 by @ScottStrazzante
February 9, 2026 at 2:16 AM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
jonathanstegall.bsky.social
“The appeal of professionalizing reforms, then, lies in their seductive promise to get it right next time: to enact violence only under a predetermined and legitimate set of circumstances.”
inquest.org/the-ice-refo...
The ICE Reformation Trap - Spencer Piston - Inquest
Professionalization will not make immigration policing less violent. It will only increase its capacity, authority, and scope.
inquest.org
February 4, 2026 at 1:51 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
I'm at the online protection of minors conversation. Im at the digital sovereignty, boycott US tech products convo. I'm at the combination online protection of minors x digital sovereignty convo.

www.euronews.com/next/2026/02...
Spain to ban social media platforms for children under 16
"We will protect them from the digital Wild West," Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said.
www.euronews.com
February 3, 2026 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
Horrifying and unnerving. DHS sent an administrative subpoena to Google for this retiree's records and even sent armed agents out to his house for the "offense" of writing the following completely anodyne email to a federal prosecutor using an email address he found via Google.
He had decided that the America he believed in would not make it if people like him didn’t speak up, so on a cool, rainy morning in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Jon, 67 and recently retired, marched up to his study and began to type. He had just read about the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s case against an Afghan it was trying to deport. The immigrant, identified in The Washington Post’s Oct. 30 investigation as H, had begged federal officials to reconsider, telling them the Taliban would kill him if he was returned to Afghanistan. “Unconscionable,” Jon thought as he found an email address online for the lead prosecutor, Joseph Dernbach, who was named in the story. Peering through metal-rimmed glasses, Jon opened Gmail on his computer monitor. “Mr. Dernbach, don’t play Russian roulette with H’s life,” he wrote. “Err on the side of caution. There’s a reason the US government along with many other governments don’t recognise the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency.” That was it. In five minutes, Jon said, he finished the note, signed his first and last name, pressed send and hoped his plea would make a difference.
February 3, 2026 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
victorerikray.bsky.social
“You need only know this: Whatever is happening with your data, it is important enough to the most egregiously lawless administration in American history that it be collected and consolidated.” Always read @tressiemcphd.bsky.social (gift link)
Opinion | Democracy Dies by Database
www.nytimes.com
February 3, 2026 at 12:19 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
“I think that pointing out that AI is prone to giving ICE bad information is missing the entire point of ICE...they don’t care if the information they have is good." @evacide.bsky.social hitting the nail on the head

www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...
ICE's Use of AI Will Lead to Big Mistakes. Maybe That's the Point
Cybersecurity experts say that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seems to be indifferent to how their artificial intelligence tools work.
www.rollingstone.com
February 3, 2026 at 1:42 AM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
We've started! Tune in on YouTube: www.youtube.com/live/glO0_Sw...
January 29, 2026 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
bedoyausa.bsky.social
ICE isn’t just brutal. It’s also big business. From 2008 to 2021 ICE spent *$1.2 billion* on geolocation tracking, $561M on data analysis, $252M on government databases, and $97M on data brokers. Most of that went to companies who will lobby for this system to stay in place.
January 28, 2026 at 9:17 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
codi.global
Tomorrow: #CODI member @cdt.org is hosting a webinar on “Benchmarking Beyond Borders: Making AI Testing Truly Global,” in which experts and researchers will discuss how AI model developers can help make the evaluation process more multilingual.

🔗 cdt.org/event/benchm...
Benchmarking Beyond Borders: Making AI Testing Truly Global
Time: 9:00 – 10:30 am ET Date: Thursday, January 29, 2026 Current evaluation approaches used by AI model developers often fall short when tasked with assessing and improving model performance in non-E...
cdt.org
January 28, 2026 at 5:10 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
How *should* age verification technologies balance risks to rights and important child safety goals? Here's what we think: #AgeVerifyFTC
January 28, 2026 at 4:01 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
FTC Commissioner Meador notes that AI and ML can help online services estimate users' ages using their patterns of use. We've argued that that's experimental at best, and will restrict *many* users from accessing online services and their rights at worst #AgeVerifyFTC: cdt.org/insights/age...
Age Estimation Requires Verification for Many Users
Online services can now guess a user’s age with as little as a selfie or a phone number, according to leading age assurance providers. Age estimation providers in particular claim their processes are ...
cdt.org
January 28, 2026 at 3:57 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
Not the goal of this FTC Workshop on age verification #FTCAgeVerify, but putting the Cellphone exhibition at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum on my weekend to do list naturalhistory.si.edu/exhibits/cel...
Cellphone: Unseen Connections
naturalhistory.si.edu
January 28, 2026 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
rlevinsonwaldman.bsky.social
DHS has a history of buying surveillance tech & scooping up data with little oversight or accountability. As Congress considers handing DHS another blank check, it must take steps to halt the pipeline of easily abused surveillance tech flowing to ICE & CBP. 2/11 www.brennancenter.org/our-work/pol...
Holding Homeland Security Accountable
Reforms to focus DHS’s work and guard against overreach depend on strengthened internal oversight offices.
www.brennancenter.org
January 27, 2026 at 8:58 PM
aliyabhatia.bsky.social
The fake news being reporting on the company's existing, factual relationship with ICE, the agency's stated intentions of using the company's products, and its well-documented horrifying actions across the United States
seansilcoff.bsky.social Sean Silcoff @seansilcoff.bsky.social · 26d
Hootsuite CEO tells employees ICE contract will stand as long as agency honours terms &conditions. "We did nothing wrong here," Irina Novoselsky says during internal call Thursday while accusing media of "fake news". latest scoop in the @theglobeandmail.com
www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...
Hootsuite CEO says ICE contract will stand as long as agency honours terms and conditions
Leader of Vancouver social media management company addresses employee questions in internal call. “We did nothing wrong here,” CEO says
www.theglobeandmail.com
January 27, 2026 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by Aliya Bhatia
haleaziz.bsky.social
We profiled refugees who:

Arrived in the country legally.

Applied for green cards.

Were arrested by ICE and detained.

One refugee who was arrested found out they got their green card after being released.

This is an unprecedented operation.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/u...
They ‘Had Done Everything Right.’ ICE Detained Them Anyway.
www.nytimes.com
January 27, 2026 at 2:25 PM