Experiments in AI, media and platform power. Run in the open.
Tanya Powell
I got tired of research happening behind closed doors, so mine doesn't. I build tools that examine how AI and media represent people and events, and I document the whole thing here. The methods, the dashboards, the findings, and the failures.
This is my corner of the internet. It's just more instrumented than most.
Have a look around.
Published Tokenmaxxing Changed Sides in Two Months 18 days ago
Active Investigations
Who Pays
Every layer of the AI economy comes with a bill. These are notes on who actually gets handed it.
11 notes →
Building in the Open
Building a Living Archive. Specifics over theory. Starting with the two data model rewrites.
17 notes →
8-week experiment that wouldn't stop
Forecasting Under Fire
There's a war. The oil markets are in freefall. I needed to do something with the helplessness that wasn't doom scrolling.
14 notes →
Who Gets Found
I went looking for myself in the machines that are quietly becoming everyone's front door to the internet. Turns out being findable, and staying sovereign, pull in opposite directions.
7 notes →
four-part investigation
Catching Meta Red-Handed
717 views, 1 like. My baseline engagement is 4-16%. So I built a tool to pull 90 days of Threads data and find out what Meta was actually doing. Then I open-sourced it.
4 notes →
Live Instruments
Meta Suppression Tracker
90 days of my Threads data, checking what Meta quietly buries. Open-sourced so you can check yours.
Have a poke around →
Forecasting Dashboard
Weekly Brent crude forecasts published before the fact, then scored against what actually happened.
Have a poke around →
Memory Crunch Price Tracker
A sourced board of who is raising prices as AI demand crunches the world's memory supply, and who's next.
Have a poke around →
About Me
I'm Tanya Powell. London-based, Jamaican heritage (St. Elizabeth and Clarendon, if you know you know 🇯🇲🇬🇧). Cat mum to , who contribute nothing to the household but are somehow in charge.
Everything above this section is the work. The throughline is always the same question. Who is the system built for, and who gets left out?
Four consecutive years on Computer Weekly's Most Influential Women in UK Tech longlist (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025). I mention it because it happened, not because it's the point.
I also run experiments. Garden experiments (28 plant varieties, food sovereignty infrastructure). Tech experiments (can Bayesian forecasting beat Goldman Sachs?). I document what happens because the process is where the interesting stuff lives.
BSc Media Production. MSc Software Engineering. Observer of humanity. Thinking across domains at once is just how my brain works. I stopped apologising for it.
