Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
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Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.
That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.
The same arguments are used to thwart public safety on guns. Disingenuous "People kill people, not guns".
AI is a net negative.
1. It wastes fossil fuel & worsens climate change. It pushes up gas prices, electricity & water rates.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/electricity-price-data-center-ai-inflation-goldman.htmlhttps://www.wired.com/story/trump-energy-industry-ai-fossil-fuels-pittsburgh-summit/
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-companies-data-centers-electricity-trump-administration-df665913
https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/
2. It's used to automate information pollution & cyberwarfare, like covid disinformation & election meddling by hostile foreign powers like Putin
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The same arguments are used to thwart public safety on guns. Disingenuous "People kill people, not guns".
AI is a net negative.
1. It wastes fossil fuel & worsens climate change. It pushes up gas prices, electricity & water rates.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/electricity-price-data-center-ai-inflation-goldman.htmlhttps://www.wired.com/story/trump-energy-industry-ai-fossil-fuels-pittsburgh-summit/
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-companies-data-centers-electricity-trump-administration-df665913
https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/
2. It's used to automate information pollution & cyberwarfare, like covid disinformation & election meddling by hostile foreign powers like Putin
1/
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https://www.ft.com/content/ceb33440-e0bd-46da-9be0-d4ac27d5a19a
https://archive.is/lpbdhAccusations are confessions
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-accuses-iran-using-ai-spread-disinformation-2026-03-16/3. It's funded by soulless people like Koch, Putin, #PrinceBonesaw, Elon Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel who want a technofascist aristocracy, not democracy
https://www.politico.com/video/2016/02/donald-trump-i-love-the-poorly-educated-044575https://unherd.com/newsroom/does-marc-andreessen-have-a-soul/?edition=us
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/16/europe/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-rome-intl
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https://www.ft.com/content/ceb33440-e0bd-46da-9be0-d4ac27d5a19a
https://archive.is/lpbdhAccusations are confessions
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-accuses-iran-using-ai-spread-disinformation-2026-03-16/3. It's funded by soulless people like Koch, Putin, #PrinceBonesaw, Elon Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel who want a technofascist aristocracy, not democracy
https://www.politico.com/video/2016/02/donald-trump-i-love-the-poorly-educated-044575https://unherd.com/newsroom/does-marc-andreessen-have-a-soul/?edition=us
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/16/europe/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-rome-intl
3/
4. It's used for mass layoffs, rent & price fixing, & wage suppression
https://theconversation.com/tech-companies-are-blaming-massive-layoffs-on-ai-whats-really-going-on-278314https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/16/meta-ai-costs-mass-layoffs-20percent-up-premarket.html
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/atlassian-ai-layoffs
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/08/block-ai-layoffs-jack-dorsey
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/02/26/ai-mass-layoffs/88888700007/
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-odd-settlement-on-rent-fixing
https://jacobin.com/2025/12/realpage-ai-rent-raising-lawsuit
https://www.levernews.com/tech-giant-says-ai-has-a-first-amendment-right-to-raise-your-rent/
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/washington-post-price-ai
https://globalnews.ca/video/11734019/meta-reportedly-planning-mass-layoffs-to-offset-ai-costs
https://futurism.com/freelancers-struggling-compete-ai
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/19/uber-lawsuit-ai-driven-pay-systems
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4. It's used for mass layoffs, rent & price fixing, & wage suppression
https://theconversation.com/tech-companies-are-blaming-massive-layoffs-on-ai-whats-really-going-on-278314https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/16/meta-ai-costs-mass-layoffs-20percent-up-premarket.html
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/atlassian-ai-layoffs
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/08/block-ai-layoffs-jack-dorsey
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/02/26/ai-mass-layoffs/88888700007/
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-odd-settlement-on-rent-fixing
https://jacobin.com/2025/12/realpage-ai-rent-raising-lawsuit
https://www.levernews.com/tech-giant-says-ai-has-a-first-amendment-right-to-raise-your-rent/
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/washington-post-price-ai
https://globalnews.ca/video/11734019/meta-reportedly-planning-mass-layoffs-to-offset-ai-costs
https://futurism.com/freelancers-struggling-compete-ai
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/19/uber-lawsuit-ai-driven-pay-systems
4/
5. It's used for fraud, scams, stock market manipulation, & war crimes
https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/ed-zitron-interview-big-tech-ai-criticism.html
https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-man-calling-bullshit-on-the-ai
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-beginning-of-history/
https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-are-we-still-doing-this/
https://newrepublic.com/article/207189/iran-war-ai-deciding-bombs-drop
6. It's used to destroy privacy, erode civil rights, & enact state surveillance
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/omnipresent-ai-cameras-will-ensure-good-behavior-says-larry-ellison/https://www.techpolicy.press/how-ice-uses-ai-to-automate-authoritarianism/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/viral-ai-ice-raid-videos_l_69163baee4b0df3e16be4163
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/02/07/ai-texas-ice-mn-tech
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4/
5. It's used for fraud, scams, stock market manipulation, & war crimes
https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/ed-zitron-interview-big-tech-ai-criticism.html
https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-man-calling-bullshit-on-the-ai
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-beginning-of-history/
https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-are-we-still-doing-this/
https://newrepublic.com/article/207189/iran-war-ai-deciding-bombs-drop
6. It's used to destroy privacy, erode civil rights, & enact state surveillance
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/omnipresent-ai-cameras-will-ensure-good-behavior-says-larry-ellison/https://www.techpolicy.press/how-ice-uses-ai-to-automate-authoritarianism/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/viral-ai-ice-raid-videos_l_69163baee4b0df3e16be4163
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/02/07/ai-texas-ice-mn-tech
5/
In any technology, power imbalances play an important role.
As Cory Doctorow points out, it's a form of brain damage to deny the role power plays in economics. Ditto for AI.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/14/ai-chatbots-psychosis
https://theweek.com/world-news/grok-eu-deepfake-porn-probe-elon-musk-ai
https://www.thefp.com/p/grok-is-making-porn-from-peoples-pictures
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2026/jan/13/governments-taking-action-on-grok-due-to-ai-genera/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/02/elon-musk-grok-porn-generator/
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Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.
That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.
@tante In the conflict between Lorde's quote and Ani Difranco's "Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right," Difranco's insight wins every time. If UX has taught nothing else throughout its history, it has taught that users always subvert tools in ways their developers could never expect. This goes double for digital tools given their abstraction: E.g. databases have a horrible, genocidal early history, but most liberatory projects use them today.
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Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.
That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.
Hi @tante
https://archive.org/details/illich-conviviality is what we need more. -
Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.
That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.
@tante I think that Lourde's central insight here is that tool use changes the user and to some degree determines what it's used for. We see this in the cognitive impact of LLM tools, in revolutionary violence leading to the reestablishment of similar structures of oppression it was originally meant to fight, etc etc.
As the old saying goes, if all you have is a hammer...
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Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.
That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.
thank you for that explanation. I kept thinking hammers and saws, and didn't get the metaphor at all.
Now this is much clearer.
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undefined oblomov@sociale.network shared this topic on
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@tante In the conflict between Lorde's quote and Ani Difranco's "Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right," Difranco's insight wins every time. If UX has taught nothing else throughout its history, it has taught that users always subvert tools in ways their developers could never expect. This goes double for digital tools given their abstraction: E.g. databases have a horrible, genocidal early history, but most liberatory projects use them today.
I'll bite. What was the original purpose of databases, though?
I mean, I guess Difranco's right but is the reverse really true? Can any weapon be a tool if I hold it right? Can I plant a lush, nourishing garden with a nuke? It's hard to picture. :/
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Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.
That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.
Your observation is brilliant.
In order to what you said, is that the social networks of the #bigtechs like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc., will never be a tool for the liberation of the peoples, of the opressed (us), as they structure social relations of domination and related to the interests of the oppressor. A tool creates a specific social relation.
It is pointless to open an account on twitter and shout "I will make the revolution from within!".
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@tante In the conflict between Lorde's quote and Ani Difranco's "Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right," Difranco's insight wins every time. If UX has taught nothing else throughout its history, it has taught that users always subvert tools in ways their developers could never expect. This goes double for digital tools given their abstraction: E.g. databases have a horrible, genocidal early history, but most liberatory projects use them today.
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@tante In the conflict between Lorde's quote and Ani Difranco's "Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right," Difranco's insight wins every time. If UX has taught nothing else throughout its history, it has taught that users always subvert tools in ways their developers could never expect. This goes double for digital tools given their abstraction: E.g. databases have a horrible, genocidal early history, but most liberatory projects use them today.
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@xenophora @tante See https://explaininghistory.org/2025/09/30/ibm-and-the-holocaust-technology-as-a-force-multiplier-for-genocide/ for a description of genocidal early database use. Lorde's assertion is also about destructive (house-dismantling) tool use. It's harder across the board to use tools constructively than destructively, but that's an eventuality of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, not any given political stance. Again, subversion will most often be unanticipated, not prescribe-able.
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@xenophora @tante See https://explaininghistory.org/2025/09/30/ibm-and-the-holocaust-technology-as-a-force-multiplier-for-genocide/ for a description of genocidal early database use. Lorde's assertion is also about destructive (house-dismantling) tool use. It's harder across the board to use tools constructively than destructively, but that's an eventuality of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, not any given political stance. Again, subversion will most often be unanticipated, not prescribe-able.
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@tante Yeah, I see people in the left who are quite happy to ignore that "AI" is literally trained without consent or compensation on generations' work...
I don't care how many hammer and sickle memes they generate, they're still exploiting the labour of others. Same tools, there's just another master behind them.
@haverholm @tante can copying be exploitation? -
@haverholm it was mostly sparked by a blog post I read but applies perfectly to those proposals, yes.
it was mostly sparked by a blog post I read …
Incidentally, the “Conclusion” chapter of the blog author’s famous book published in October 2025 repeats the point made in the blog post, about Audre Lorde being “manifestly wrong” in proclaiming that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”.
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@haverholm @tante can copying be exploitation?
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Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.
That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.
I see this is about ai and as llm/gen-ai has no positive cost/benefit outcome, *however it is used*, i agree ofc.
But Ai aside, what is more "master's tools" than guns and bombs? Yet if you want to oppose that, what do you need? Guns and bombs. Such "Tools of oppression" can be used to support evil or oppose evil. Such tools have no innate ideology. They only enable power. And power has no inherent ideology either.
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Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.
That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.
Ai, however, is a special case. It is more like nuclear weapons. These are the kind of "master's tools" that should never be used. Once brought into reality, the only course is containment.
Gen-ai and LLM-ai, tho, are more closely akin to another technology which should never be used and that is human cloning. Done digitally instead of physically. But in every essential way they are *the same* and so should be opposed on that basis and contained/banned on that same basis as well.
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Attacchi e ritorsioni nella guerra attuale
Nell’ultima settimana la sequenza è stata questa: l’Iran è stato colpito per primo in un grande sito energetico (il giacimento di gas South Pars), e solo dopo ha lanciato attacchi contro impianti energetici del Golfo, compreso il sito GNL del Qatar (che ospita la base USA da cui partono gli attacchi).
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Tick-tock, deadlines are closing in ⏳
🔹 Mar 23 — Community Track Proposal Deadline
Missed the info session? Check out the slides here 👉 https://s.coscup.org/26brief🔹 Mar 27 — Early Bird CfP Deadline
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Or email us at program@coscup.org
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@OriginalMarvX Ho preso Mahokenshi, grazie mille
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Gli USA attaccano l'Iran partendo da una grande base militare posta in Qatar.
Ma perché il Qatar non ferma gli attacchi militari USA che partono dal suo territorio?
Il Qatar non “ferma” le azioni USA che partono dal suo territorio perché il governo di Doha ha scelto volontariamente una stretta alleanza strategica con Washington, che bilancia rischi diplomatici e sicurezza economica.
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@giuglionasi resta la domanda più difficile: dove?...
