Journeys through online harms

X.AI – the company was-trillionaireElon Musk built in 2025 by smashing together X (the former Twitter) and xAI, which he founded in 2023 – is suing the state of Minnesota, claiming that its new law banning access to nudification technology violates the First Amendment. X.AI, which SpaceX swallowed early this year, argues that it’s already stopping this sort of thing and that the law is overbroad and will block constitutionally protected speech. At Techdirt, Mike Masnick argues the law is genuinely badly drafted. I saw this story while reading The Chatbot Trap: How Digital Friends Can Become Life-Threatening, by Geertrui Mieke De Ketelaere, Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World, by Adele Zeynep Walton, and Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back, by Beeban Kidron. In the first, a Belgian software engineer and AI expert discovers the suicide-inducing tendencies of chatbots, investigates how they work, and builds an organization to push for regulation. In the…