LinkedIn is taking aim at the “AI slop” — low-quality, artificially generated content — filling its feed. On Thursday, the company announced that it’s adding a new feature to let users click a “seems like AI slop” button when someone’s post appears to have been written with AI.

The move reflects a broader shift across online publishing platforms to cut back on AI content, as people have grown frustrated with the computer-written, inauthentic posts filling the web.

Last week, for instance, newsletter platform Substack added a tool to help users identify when the content they’re reading on its site was written by AI, through a partnership with Pangram. Meanwhile, Pangram this week announced $9 million in new funding to tackle the problems of AI content flooding the internet. The problem is also impacting new startups, as Digg had to shut down its Reddit competitor in March, saying it couldn’t get a handle on the number of bots flooding its site.

Internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare says the problem is just getting worse, as there is now more bot traffic on the web than human-generated requests — a milestone that was reached faster than it had previously predicted.

In a post on LinkedIn, the company’s Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan admitted the Microsoft-owned social network is facing similar problems. “AI slop is a top priority for all of us. We really care about this. People come to LinkedIn to connect with real people and share their real perspectives, ideas, and expertise,” he said.

The exec explained that the new “Seems like AI slop” button is now one of several measures LinkedIn is using to reduce the amount of low-quality, AI-generated content on its platform. The company is also investing in automation defenses, where it now blocks “hundreds of thousands” of automated comment attempts daily, and millions of other automation attempts in just the past couple of months.

Srinivasan said LinkedIn is also introducing new classifiers to identify if a post is AI slop or other low-quality content, which would reduce the amount of slop you’d see in suggested content recommendations from outside your network. (The button ties into this measure as it will provide a source of signal that will allow LinkedIn to tune its AI models to better identify slop.)

Plus, LinkedIn will begin privately flagging in users’ dashboards when people believe their content is coming off as inauthentic due to heavy use of AI. The company believes that this will help posters improve their writing, in the case that they’re simply using AI technology to refine their own work, rather than when they’re posting what’s considered full-on “slop” content.

Notably, the company is pulling its own “enhance your post” feature that had used AI to help you write. It’s replacing it with a feature that proofreads your words, instead of changing your voice.

Other improvements include expanding access to profile and page verification tools, and adding an option to block comments from company pages you no longer want to see, Srinivasan said.

Logging and telemetry in remote controlled racing is a great thing, and not only does [jwachlin]’s Open RC Spotter do a fantastic job of that, it has quite a few clever tricks up its sleeve that make it extra special.

Open RC Spotter is an ESP32-based hardware platform for high performance RC car racing that reads from various sensors (including IMU, GPS, temperature, battery, and IR receiver for IR lap beacons) to create a filtered stream of readings that include position, velocity, lap time, battery voltage, and more.

This data gets logged to an SD card, but can also be broadcast wirelessly via ESP-NOW to a receiver that can in turn send it over serial USB, or do whatever else one wishes. There’s also a neat feature that fires up a temporary WiFi access point on demand so log files can be downloaded with a web browser, no need to hook up a cable.

So far, so cool. But there’s still another nifty feature. Open RC Spotter supports the Crew Chief telemetry protocol. Crew Chief is a piece of free Windows software that serves as a companion application for sim racing. It acts as a virtual race crew member, providing spoken information based on live telemetry read from supported racing sims.

Since Open RC Spotter supports the same telemetry format, one can use the virtual race engineer with RC car racing by simply feeding Open RC Spotter‘s serial data to the Crew Chief application. The RC telemetry data isn’t as rich as what comes from the racing sim APIs, but it’s more than enough to be useful.

People come up with all kinds of neat ideas when it comes to RC racing, and most of them depend on having access to good data. For example, a load cell in the steering mechanism can provides the data for force-feedback steering. We’ve even seen LiDAR and a depth camera used to automatically compute optimal racing lines.

Steven Bartlett has built one of the world’s biggest podcasts on the idea that the right people, obsessively managed, make the machine. Now four of those people have walked out the door. The star host of “The Diary of a CEO” has lost four core staffers in five months, Business Insider reported.

The exits are not junior. One is Jack Sylvester, who calls himself a co-founder of the show and built its YouTube presence to more than 18 million subscribers. Also gone: executive producer Jem Erith, trailers director Anthony Smith, and Grace Miller, whose job title was “head of failure and experimentation.”

Former colleagues did not undersell them. One described Sylvester and Erith as the “inner circle” behind the “heavy lifting” of the podcast. “They’re the reason it gets delivered twice a week,” another said of the four.

A friendly framing, and a bigger picture

Everyone is being nice about it. Bartlett’s company, FlightStory, said the departures were planned over almost a year and that the staff left on good terms. All four posted warm goodbyes. “I owe Steve more than I could ever put into words,” Sylvester wrote, while admitting he did not know what was next.

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Bartlett returned the compliment, saying nobody had a bigger impact on the show. Sylvester told Business Insider he was looking for his next move after the podcast left its early growth phase. Turnover is normal at fast-growing startups, and Bartlett’s previous company, Social Chain, spun off plenty of founders.

The empire is going west

The timing is the story. The nine-year-old show is pushing hard into the US just as its longtime team thins out. Bartlett has moved to Los Angeles and opened a studio there. He is closing on Joe Rogan in YouTube subscribers, and regularly beats him on views.

Around the podcast, he is building a media company. FlightStory has about 150 staff and took in roughly $47m last year, and recently raised an eight-figure round. It now runs a speakers arm and a distribution unit for other creators. It is also exploring a paid membership to squeeze more from its superfans.

Bartlett is also a self-styled operating guru. He is known for obsessing over details, down to the carbon-monoxide level in the studio. He also screens hires with a “Culture Test” that scores how they would handle workplace scenarios. Losing four people who aced that test, all at once, is a curious look for a leadership brand.

The part the goodbye posts skip

There is a harder edge to the DOAC story, too. A BBC World Service investigation found a problem, according to reporting on the probe. Many of the show’s health episodes carried claims that ran against the scientific evidence.

It examined 23 health-related episodes and flagged an average of 14 harmful claims across most of them.

Bartlett has since added fact-check labels to some YouTube episodes where guests make contentious claims. The tension is the interesting bit. He has moved from interviewing chief executives to platforming wellness and self-help voices, the format that drives the biggest numbers and the loudest criticism.

None of that is slowing the growth. Like the wider creator economy, DOAC is a business built on one person’s name, scaling faster than the team around it.

The departures raise a real question. Can a show defined by its inner circle keep its edge once that circle is gone? Like so many media empires before it, DOAC now has to prove the brand outlasts the moment.

When gaming chair maker Secretlab announced the release of its very first home office chair, I wasn’t shocked.

There’s been a gradual trend with office chair makers like Herman Miller teaming up with Logitech to create a gamer-focused version of the Embody, alongside brands like FlexiSpot and Eureka Ergonomic launching its own line of gaming chairs.

from the making-things-worse-at-scale dept

Flock Safety’s aggressive expansion into the law enforcement market has been coupled with nearly constant negative coverage of its tech and its practices. Multiple cities have paused or cancelled their agreements with Flock following public outcry over the surveillance tech.

Flock’s willingness to allow law enforcement agencies to search a nationwide network of cameras has generated plenty of negative headlines of their own, including the fact that Texas cops were using Flock to track someone (possibly) seeking an abortion after she’d already left the state.

Flock’s statements in its defense are, well, super-defensive. It claims it can’t control what cops do with its tech. That’s somewhat true, but it’s also true that Flock has made zero effort to limit abusive access until it’s been forced to by its government customers or outside pressure.

Flock also claims its tech has contributed to investigations and reducing crime. This is probably true but it doesn’t mean all that much when pretty much any extensive surveillance network is going to generate some additional arrests. It’s the trade-off that’s the problem and Flock doesn’t seem to care at all about the millions of people subjected to its surveillance. Martial law would likely lower crime rates, but that’s not a an acceptable justification for martial law.

The problem with ALPR tech being ubiquitous is that it isn’t really making police work better or smarter. Instead, it just seems to be allowing cops to be wrong faster and at scale. And police officials who love this tech will always remind us that there’s a price to be paid to live in a safe society. What they never admit is that they keep changing the price tag with each new rollout of surveillance tech.

Flock’s contribution to the problem means it’s just going to keep making headlines. And while Flock may not be a direct contributor to what’s discussed here, these things wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Flock.

First, there’s this story, which involves automotive journalist Joel Felder and the Range Rover he was test driving. His loaner from Range Rover kept getting flagged by Flock as stolen. That Felder is alive to tell his story is more due to his race and location than the so-called police work that resulted in him being ambushed by Minneapolis cops in mall parking lot.

On an otherwise normal Sunday afternoon in late June, I’d decided to take the $155,000 Range Rover I was testing that week out to run some errands with my wife. Little did I know that choice would complete a technological chain linking surveillance cameras, AI, and law enforcement that led to me and my wife being surrounded by police, hands on their guns, in a Kohl’s parking lot in suburban Minnesota.

After dropping off our Amazon returns, we’d just gotten back in the Range Rover and reversed maybe two feet out of the spot when four cop cars came flying out of nowhere and boxed us in. The officers jumped out and started shouting. It’s a situation that can quickly and frequently turn bad, so as unprepared as I was, I followed their orders, got out with my hands up, and tried to figure out what the hell was happening.

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It turns out cops in the area had been tracking the Range Rover for days, following alerts from Flock. But they kept losing the trail when Felder returned home. When he passed a Flock camera near his stop, Plymouth, MN police showed up to accost him.

The main problem was something either Flock or the PD could have taken a closer look at. The Range Rover loaner had New Jersey plates. And on NJ plates, two digits are printed smaller than the rest of them.

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

Which means this is also a nationwide problem, on top of being a specifically New Jersey problem. The automated plate readers are reading these plates wrong, meaning any plate starting with 34 and ending with DTM would automatically be flagged as stolen. Who knows how bad that’s going in New Jersey (we’ll wait for those headlines to roll in!), but it’s already a bit of problem in Minnesota, and not just for this particular The Drive contributor.

In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call.

And just to let you know how the cop problem possibly outweighs the Flock problem, I’ll let these Plymouth (a suburb of Minneapolis) cops speak for themselves:

“You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

Cool cool cool.

No doubt this also kept the gun-play to a minimum, according to the Plymouth PD report:

“I observed the driver, who was a white male wearing shorts and a green shirt, as he was putting something in the back seat of the car. I could also see a white female getting into the front passenger seat…”

But Flock’s contribution to public danger isn’t limited to stolen plates. Its system also tracks vehicles of people who are suspected to have stolen something other than the vehicle they’re riding in. Here’s what happened to an unlucky Colorado resident who found herself on the wrong side of this surveillance tech:

Chrisanna Elser got a summons from Columbine Valley police accusing her of stealing a package. The evidence? A license-plate-reader camera that placed her truck near the scene. The problem? She wasn’t there. According to Denverite, Elser had to dig up her own timestamped truck video and a neighbor’s doorbell camera footage to prove it. Nobody verified the camera’s implication before the summons landed. The camera spoke, and the system listened — no further questions asked.

Elser was forced to prove her own innocence as a cop stood in her doorway. Fortunately, she had the evidence on her phone. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened? Certainly not the officer who did nothing more than convert the faulty data into a summons.

When Elser tried to get the officer to watch the time-stamped video from her truck, the officer told her he simply wasn’t interested in anything she had to show him that might prove her innocence:

On her doorstep, the officer issued a summons, without ever looking at the surveillance video Elser had.

“We can show you exactly where we were,” she told him.

“I already know where you were,” he replied.

It took Elser five weeks to get the charges dropped and it took escalating it to the Chief of Police to get it done. While the chief didn’t go so far as to apologize, he did at least let her know she did a “great job” proving her innocence, when that’s not how it’s supposed to work in the first place.

While I understand the presumption of innocence only really applies once criminal proceedings are underway, law enforcement’s reliance on unreliable tech is now forcing people to document their own movements and actions just as thoroughly as Flock tracks theirs, just in case the cops have it wrong. That’s fucked up. We shouldn’t be obligated to constantly generate a history of our movements just to get bogus criminal charges dropped, especially when we know that doing so just means providing the government with additional ways to track our movements.

When cops are boxing you in as you’re trying to leave the mall, they’re the ones who should be as absolutely sure as possible that their actions are justified. The imbalance of power between citizens and law enforcement demands better from law enforcement, but every new tech tool that cops embrace just makes it easier to make more mistakes faster. There’s nothing out there that even slightly suggests pervasive surveillance is reducing crime, but cops treat everything an algorithm spits out as gospel because it means they won’t have to think for themselves. This is unacceptable. And just because no one got arrested or killed doesn’t mean these errors are harmless.

Filed Under: alprs, colorado, false positives, license plate readers, minnesota, surveillance

Companies: flock safety

Security

A lesson for aspiring vandals: Take out all the cameras, not just the ones that flout your ideals

Note to privacy-conscious vandals: If you’re going to destroy Flock license plate readers, make sure you also take out the other CCTV cameras in the area that could catch you in your crime. Otherwise, you’ll end up like one unlucky Californian.

Marcus Bee, 40, was arrested by the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday, accused of joining the ever-growing band of US citizens damaging the controversial cameras popping up across the country.

A police report filed this week stated that Bee, of Pismo Beach, was arrested on suspicion of attacking at least three Flock cameras in Lockwood and Bradley.

According to the deflock.org website, which maps Flock camera deployments, there are only three of the automated license plate readers (ALPRs) running in the two communities – one in Lockwood and two in Bradley, roughly 25 miles away.

Police allege Bee caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to “public safety infrastructure.”

Monterey County Sheriff’s Office added that Bee was caught after “his actions were captured by other surveillance cameras located nearby,” along with other investigative leads. 

“This arrest sends a clear message that anyone who intentionally damages public safety equipment will be identified, arrested, and held accountable,” said Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto. 

“These cameras have become an invaluable investigative resource that helps us solve crimes, recover stolen vehicles and ag equipment, locate missing persons, and protect our communities. Any attempts to disable these systems will not prevent us from doing our job. 

“In this case, the suspect’s own actions were captured on surveillance cameras, leading directly to his arrest. We will continue to aggressively investigate these crimes and seek prosecution against anyone who targets public safety infrastructure.”

Bee was jailed with bail set at $30,000.

The case follows a similar one in Georgia last week, although local police were unable to identify the suspect(s) behind the two attacks, which involved setting two ALPRs on fire.

The two attacks were timed fairly close together, although the phenomenon of inflicting criminal damage onto Flock cameras is something of a long-running trend.

Several US police forces have been tasked with arresting alleged Flock vandals, including Jeffrey Scott Sovern, 41, who authorities believe was behind a spate of attacks on ALPR cameras in North Suffolk, Virginia, between April and October 2025.

He said, at a hearing in June, that he believed the technology was unconstitutional.

Flock cameras: A problem or simply misunderstood?

Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said Flock’s cameras “are an important investigative tool” used to help solve various types of crimes, including missing persons cases, car thefts, and violent crimes such as shootings and homicides where suspect vehicles are involved.

Contrary to the opinions held by many, it went on to say that the cameras “are used exclusively to support legitimate criminal investigations,” and refuted the notion that they are used to support the US government’s anti-immigration efforts.

Likewise, Flock has repeatedly denied offering contracts to agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), although reports suggest police were instead carrying out searches on ICE’s behalf. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has also allegedly used Flock data in its own immigration investigations.

Other critiques of the technology used by thousands of police departments across the US include problematic abuses, such as police officers using it to stalk romantic interests.

The Institute of Justice is aware of at least 26 cases of this behavior, it reported earlier this month, with the majority taking place since 2024.

Additionally, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) takes issue with the scale of data gathering by ALPRs.

It claims that less than 1 percent of the cars scanned are connected to crime, yet they still have details added to a database, such as vehicle manufacturer, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and scratches.

Flock CEO Garrett Langley claimed this week in an interview with The Drive that the company’s cameras were used to solve around 1 million crimes across the US last year.

Responding to claims such as Sovern’s – that the cameras are unconstitutional, specifically that they violate Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights – Langley said there are no legal issues, and he doesn’t foresee any arising in the future.

Flock’s spokespeople have repeatedly condemned the cases of camera vandalism, highlighting the risk of losing evidence that could be crucial to solving ongoing criminal cases. ®