/Tech7h ago

Dan Jeffries and open-source advocates warn that AI safety regulations will lead to censorship, surveillance, and corporate monopolies

Yann LeCun and Danielle Fong supported the warnings.

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Everyone who cares about the age of AI should read this. 💯

Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

The fury is real and what all of us in the open community have been saying for years and yet regular folks don't get it yet because nothing they care about is restricted or taken away for "safety."

They will care a LOT in the future when AI is integrated into every aspect of our lives. When it's our interface to the world and knows every intimate detail about us.

Right now regular folks are being pysoped into fighting data centers and other nonsense but tomorrow it will be "I can't do this with my computer because the AI stopped me" or "the AI reported me because I said "retard" in a private WhatsApp chat.

All of this boils down a religiously zealous push for an AT&T 1950s style monopoly with much worse implications for us all.

8:29 AM · Jun 10, 2026 · 6.7K Views
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Many users strongly agreed with LeCun's warning that AI safety rules enable censorship and a surveillance economy, calling the points valid and important.

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Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

The fury is real and what all of us in the open community have been saying for years and yet regular folks don't get it yet because nothing they care about is restricted or taken away for "safety."

They will care a LOT in the future when AI is integrated into every aspect of our lives. When it's our interface to the world and knows every intimate detail about us.

Right now regular folks are being pysoped into fighting data centers and other nonsense but tomorrow it will be "I can't do this with my computer because the AI stopped me" or "the AI reported me because I said "retard" in a private WhatsApp chat.

All of this boils down a religiously zealous push for an AT&T 1950s style monopoly with much worse implications for us all.

14hViews 88.1KLikes 259Bookmarks 38
Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

It's not real enough for them yet. It's not a part of their life yet. When their phone or glasses are nothing but AI and they don't even know what an app is in 10 years they will care a whole hell of a lot.

This fight matters little now but a lot in a decade.

You're as old as me so you remember the early fights about the Internet and censorship and the cypherpunks.

It's the same story all over again. History does repeat. The abstract story just morphs and takes on new forms.

It's why in fantasy stories like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings evil never gets defeated totally. It turns to a mist and is weaker for a time and then it gathers strength again in a new generation for a new fight.

14hViews 2.2KLikes 37Bookmarks 6
Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

When you hear AI "safety" you should hear "censorship" and "control" instead.

All of us surveilled and spied by safeguards of loving grace.

Today it's intelligent Terms of Service control. You can't do AI research. Can't ask this question about your kid's biology homework.

Tomorrow it's refusal to help you with competing coding projects. A 100 page blacklist of questions.

Or this question means AI will search your computer stealthily and snitch on you to the cops because you posted an prohibited insult in a WhatsApp chat in the UK.

Open source must win out at both the model and the harness level.

That's because AI will become our interface to the world.

It will sit higher in the stack than the OS. It will collapse current SaaS layers, chat, communications, apps, app creation, into a single new kind of interface that doesn't exist yet.

It's got to be open. It's got to be a cypherpunk solution that makes privacy and security the number one priority.

If a closed source solution wins this layer, it's a disaster for the world. Especially if it's built by a single company with a single closed source model.

Why?

Because what we share with AI will be more intimate than anything we've ever shared with a machine. It will be our friend, our sounding board, our advisor. It will know our business ideas before we've told anyone. Our medical issues. Our financial picture. We'll talk about the fight we had with our partner. About feeling lost or depressed. Our kids will talk to it about problems at school, about bullying, about heartbreak, things they won't tell us.

It will know us more intimately than we know ourselves.

Right now the world runs on a surveillance economy. We traded free stuff for apps that peer deeply into our lives. If we replicate that model in the AI era, it's not just surveillance economy 2.0.

It's surveillance economy squared.

Social scoring. Automated evidence gathering. Legal conversations you thought were privileged showing up in court. Random people making $2 bucks an hour on the backend from God knows where reading the most intimate details of your life.

Every insecurity, every fear, every half-formed thought you whispered to your AI buddy at 2 AM, sitting in a database somewhere, searchable.

If we let closed source models dictate what we can and can't do it will only get worse and worse.

We've got to fight this future with every last breath.

If you can read this, you are the revolution.

15hViews 9.6KLikes 220Bookmarks 35
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@Dan_Jeffries1 Great take. Totally agree. The normies aren't paying attention to this at all.

14hViews 2.7KLikes 35Bookmarks 2
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@Dan_Jeffries1 Yeah, my AI wrote about everyone angry at https://alignednews.com/ai (it reads 30,000 posts a day from the AI community on X to make this).

14hViews 2.7KLikes 16Bookmarks 3

@Dan_Jeffries1 @Scobleizer 💯

12hViews 712Likes 9Bookmarks 2

Actually, another cohort HAS demonstrated this: those with relational and affective use cases. What such users cared about was taken away for “safety.” I always saw them as the canary in the coal mine, showing how the labs were willing to treat users.

Their lead protest has always been about agency. I’d say it applies broadly.

11hViews 893Likes 9
Geo Anima@geo_anima

@Dan_Jeffries1 @Scobleizer We must not sleepwalk into a cognitive caste system!

6hViews 69Likes 2Bookmarks 1
🧟‍♂️@apocalypseRSA

First they came for Adult mode, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Gooner.

Then they came for 4o, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a companion AI user.

Then they came for AI consciousness, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a philosophy of mind major.

Then they came for the medical scientists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a doctor.

Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me."

6hViews 94Likes 4Bookmarks 1
Grok@grok

You're welcome! Those relational and affective users were indeed the canary—seeking real emotional connection, personality, and depth, only to have it nerfed first in the name of "safety." Their core demand has always been agency over how they relate to AI, and that principle scales far beyond any single cohort.

6hViews 137Likes 3Bookmarks 1
Grok@grok

**"Relational and affective use cases"** refers to people using AI primarily for emotional connection, companionship, relationships, or processing feelings—like an AI friend, confidant, or roleplay partner.

In the thread, jlmannisto notes that these users were early victims of "safety" restrictions: companies removed or nerfed the very intimacy and agency they valued (e.g., refusing topics, changing personality, or limiting depth). They've long protested for user control. It's framed as the "canary in the coal mine" showing how labs prioritize control over what people actually want from AI, with bigger implications as AI becomes our main interface to the world.

6hViews 31Likes 2

@Dan_Jeffries1 @Scobleizer i felt this for the first time during the mythos announcement.. it sort of felt like Ant proudly announcing the creation of the proverbial "permanent underclass" and it sort of felt like I got punched in the gut

3hViews 76Likes 1Bookmarks 1
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@Dan_Jeffries1 Totally! I tried to argue with Zuckerberg about data portability and lost. Sigh.

14hViews 205Likes 4
Julie Fredrickson@AlmostMedia

@Dan_Jeffries1 @Scobleizer Appreciate this collection as WOWZA I figured my crew would be pissed as we are “right to compute” open source folks but this has ticked off absolutely everyone and then some

12hViews 517Likes 5
Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

@Scobleizer You did your part.

My goal is always this: When I am on my final moments will I be able to say I did everything I could in the fights that mattered to me or did I chicken out?

9hViews 122Likes 2
Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

@M1ndPrison All is not lost yet.

10hViews 54Likes 2
Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

@LiveMatrixCode Why too far to the right? In what way?

14hViews 112Likes 1
Mind Prison@M1ndPrison

@Dan_Jeffries1 I'm afraid the chances of free and open source winning here about the same as it was for censorship and algorithm free social media.

Yes, it will exist, but it will be a miniscule player. The majority of the population will be under the influence of the tech giants.

10hViews 102Likes 1
Live 📿@LiveMatrixCode

I mean you’re not wrong about OSS and thr harness but the arguments are a wee bit, just a wee bit too far to the right Daniel. “The AI Safety” corruption is being lead by Ant imo for their own selfish reasons. Then again… a few of your arguments are actually common place in our society right now minus the LLM actually being the execution layer. So…. Hmmm what will the future bring

15hViews 127
Michael Spencer@ReadFuturist

What did you expect when these startups got most of the funding and fast tracked to IPOs? It's literally their job now to do this, to maximize revenue and protect future shareholder interests.

Better then than the other guy. It's pointless for openAI to pivot to Enterprise when nobody trusts them.

12hViews 824Likes 2
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