Olives @olives@qoto.org

E.U. Council is still deadlocked on chat control which might have it's upsides, although it's still a disturbing proposal.

I never thought I'd read about someone complaining about a "feline moral panic" over how house cats might interact with the native species.

Somewhere out there, the spirit of Sheila (actually, I think she is still alive) is likely eyeing a quote for using the word "pedophile" incorrectly and insinuating that someone is a criminal when they're not.

Anyway, you know what they mean by the other content there...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse Here's a classic.

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/the-federal-trade-commission-must-investigate-meta-and-x-for-complicity-with-government-surveillance

"When you created your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account, did you think you were signing up to have the government spy on you? That your personal information — who you are, what you say, what you do, your friends, and your political views — could be tapped by surveillance companies and sold to police, deportation agencies, and other local, state, and federal forces?"

#privacy

While the "eBay cookie" ("ebayadservices.com") seems "consent based" (no "legitimate interest" checkbox), if you look at the details of what it does, it still stores something via a "legitimate interest" for a few years?

https://9to5google.com/2023/12/12/google-location-history-timeline-device/

"Google is making a big change to how it stores Location History data on Android and iOS. Instead of that data being stored in the cloud, Google will be locally saving Location History to your device with end-to-end encrypted cloud backups for “Your Timeline” in Maps also offered.

Location History today is stored on Google servers, but that data will soon “be saved right on your device.” This applies to both Android and iOS. The change will be communicated to end users via the Google Maps app and its “Your Timeline” feature that provides a UI to browse and edit Location History."

"Another change coming to Location History, which you still have to manually enable, is how auto-delete will now default to three months instead of 18.

Meanwhile, in the coming weeks, Google Maps will let you delete place-related activity on Android and iOS"

Ironically, this website (talking about privacy) forces you to manually opt out of hundreds of trackers one by one.

For an example of the sort of things it is using a "legitimate interest" for (picking out a random "vendor"):

"Data collected and processed

Device identifiers: A device identifier is a unique string of characters assigned to your device or browser by means of a cookie or other storage technologies. It may be created or accessed to recognise your device e.g. across web pages from the same site or across multiple sites or apps.

Device characteristics: Technical characteristics about the device you are using that are not unique to you, such as the language, the time zone or the operating system.

Privacy choices: Your preferences regarding the processing of your data, based on the information you have received.

Precise location data: Your precise location within a radius of less than 500 meters based on your GPS coordinates. It may be used only with your acceptance."

There's even a random eBay tracker. What eBay has to do with this site is beyond me.

#privacy

In this case, I saw a post from an activist, and it didn't contain the relevant context. I'm not in the loop that much for that particular bill.

I mean... Were the anti-LGBT dog-whistles and puritanism not enough of a sign that #Patreon is problematic?

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17958784/ai-recruiting-tool-bias-amazon-report

"Bias in machine learning can be a problem even for companies with plenty of experience with AI, like Amazon. According to a report from Reuters, the e-commerce giant scrapped an internal project that was trying to use AI to vet job applications after the software consistently downgraded female candidates."

This is an old one but a reminder.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/toyota-warns-customers-of-data-breach-exposing-personal-financial-info/

"Toyota Financial Services (TFS) is warning customers it suffered a data breach, stating that sensitive personal and financial data was exposed in the attack.

Toyota Financial Services, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, is a global entity with a presence in 90% of the markets where Toyota sells its cars, providing auto financing to its customers."

"German news outlet Heise received a sample of the notices sent by Toyota to German customers, informing that the following data has been compromised:

Full name
Residence address
Contract information
Lease-purchase details
IBAN (International Bank Account Number)

This type of data can be used in phishing, social engineering, scams, financial fraud, and even identity theft attempts."

#privacy

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/12/12/your-smart-tv-knows-what-youre-watching "smart" TVs spying on people to serve advertisements, and instructions on how apparently to stop that. #privacy

"virtual" is a synonym for "fictional" (not to be confused with "virtual" as in "online"). It can be indicative of someone trying to manipulate you.

The term "virtual" is a less common trick (direct conflation seems more common in recent months) but not unheard of with someone trying to be "smart". It originates from a court case from twenty years ago.

It is also used in a scientific paper from 2008 which came to the conclusion that porn is not linked to abuse.

However, more recently, it is primarily used in apologia for censorship in a non-scholarly setting... So, there it can be used in a tricky manner, where you don't recognize what it truly means.

It's tempting for me to comment on a few "generative AI" cases but I think that the generalized rules of sorts (thousands of words in a post) that I wrote before speak for themselves.

Nice to see more people challenging bad "generative AI" takes (i.e. "someone might generate something offensive" takes).

It's certainly tempting to offer up opinions on a lot of things, lol.