Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/18/afd-ally-wins-mayoral-election-in-east-germany AfD gets control of another city.

https://simonwillison.net/2023/Dec/14/ai-trust-crisis/ About Dropbox. Even if OpenAI were not training their AI on these files, would you really trust a company which sends your private backed up files off to random third party companies? There's got to be a line somewhere. #privacy

Updated dive into bad faith conflations of reality and fiction, involves #AI and VR, although not limited to them.

The dive into conflating fiction and reality now has a new Part 2, as of December (originally written in November as a casual update).

Alright, updated part 2. Here's the original (from November I think it was the 10th or 11th?):

A month after I made that post, I reviewed the situation once again, and I have the following things to add:

While (11) is mentioned here, the rarity actually seems to be common knowledge in some circles, and those aren't the only possible examples (given the sensitive subject matter, I have avoided entirely going into that as it doesn't add much, we're not having a contest here). I've also seen no compelling evidence to the contrary. It's mainly advocates of censorship with vague "fear points". And once again, what they're typically gunning for is very broad censorship.

As a rule of thumb, people who just focus on apparent "fear points" are muddying the water, poisoning the well of useful discourse, giving bad actors an air of legitimacy, and undermining fundamental rights. Don't be that person.

There are a few people who make vague non-particularized arguments. These can be quite low quality (and are likely dealt with by an already answered point, even if it's not someone's preferred direction to solve that argument). These are more like mantras or slogans than actual arguments and aren't worth wasting a breath on. And at the end of the day, mantras have roots, and therein lies already made points.

One mantra appears to be inspired by QAnon type theories. Yet again, this goes back to the deviancy theory, nuance, and complex matters being over-simplified in a manner which is very discriminative and harmful. That's just not how the world works, and it's not helpful.

One seemed to have a rather rigid mentality (34), though I suspect it was more motivated "nit-picking". Honestly, this one probably falls under deviancy theory, that's why I didn't cover it here. It's the pseudo-scientific deviancy theory which conjures up ideas of "strange deviants I can't possibly understand".

In one case, someone made stronger claims in more public facing areas, and in more obscured areas, offered up far more dubious language, and even seemed to neutralize their own points. Strong claims are also seemingly supported by one-off opinions from randoms with no expertise or reference point. Cherry picking still seems very prevalent.

34 https://qoto.org/@olives/111192296198968801

Part 2 (updated as of December):

It is remarkable how obsessive someone can be about this content, that content, and the maybe, could be, type rhetoric, with arguments put forward thinner than a piece of paper.

In regards to (11), the rarity seems common knowledge in some circles, and those aren't the only possible examples (given sensitivities, I've avoided entirely going into that too much as it doesn't add much, we're not having a contest here). I've also seen no compelling evidence to the contrary. It's mainly advocates of censorship with vague "fear points". And once again, what they're typically gunning for is very broad censorship.

As a rule of thumb, people who just focus on apparent "fear points" are muddying the water, poisoning the well of useful discourse, giving bad actors an air of legitimacy, and undermining fundamental rights. Don't be that person.

There are a few who make vague non-particularized arguments. These can be low quality (and likely dealt with by an already answered point, even if not someone's preferred direction to solve that argument). These are more like mantras or slogans than actual arguments and aren't worth wasting a breath on. And at the end of the day, mantras have roots, and therein lies already made points.

One mantra appears inspired by QAnon type theories. Yet again, this returns to the deviancy theory (and some degree of othering rhetoric), nuance, and complex matters being over-simplified in a manner which is very discriminative and harmful. As well as trying to tap into perceived moral decay (35). That's not really how the world works, and it's not helpful to approach things that way.

One seemed to have a rather rigid mentality (34), though I suspect it is more deliberately motivated "nit-picking". Honestly, this one probably falls under deviancy theory, that's why I didn't cover it here. It's the pseudo-scientific deviancy theory which conjures up the "oohing and aahing" at small mundane things.

In one case, someone seemed absolutely fascinated by a *local troll*, from whom there is really nothing to gather. Would that happen elsewhere?

In one case, someone made stronger claims in more public facing areas, and in more obscured areas, offered up far more dubious language, even seeming to neutralize their own points. Strong claims were seemingly supported by one-off opinions from randoms with no expertise, or a decent reference point. Cherry picking still seemed prevalent.

In one case, someone tried to appeal to this tired trope, simply because they "don't like AI", due to some unrelated pet peeve of theirs with it, even though this is objectively harmful.

There also seemed to be a certain amount of conflation between SFW and NSFW, or even between some degree of "nudity" and it being "sexual" (whatever this means. For instance, quite a few images appear to not be provocative, yet they got censored by a few platforms (and again, this was not an actual person). I've even seen that happen myself on *Twitter* without even trying to look for it.

34 https://qoto.org/@olives/111192296198968801

35 https://qoto.org/@olives/110654739127846798

Oh, oh, a bad faith actor just produced some "good material" (well, it's awful, rancid, and nasty) which gives me inspiration on what to add to part 2. Will I be saved from writer's block?

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/93985-internet-archive-seeks-reversal-in-book-scanning-suit.html

"In a highly anticipated appeal brief, lawyers for the Internet Archive argue that district court judge John G. Koeltl misunderstood the facts and misapplied the law in finding the IA’s scanning and lending of print library books infringed publishers’ copyrights, telling the U.S. Court of Appeals for Second Circuit the decision should be reversed."

Obviously, the best Sheila is Sheila the Kangaroo from Spyro, lol, although I wonder if Insomniac knows that kangaroos can punch.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/law-enforcement/news/eu-countries-want-to-extend-temporary-child-sexual-abuse-regulation-to-2027/ For some reason, this process is reminding me of Section 702 renewals, are they going to try to attach minor reforms to it? #chatcontrol

There is just a point where you don't really want someone coming up with excuses to trawl through your private files and the latest incident with OpenAI especially has not served to inspire confidence in me.

I think that with Dropbox in particular, these are bound to be someone's private backed up files, and it really should be illegal to do so-called "chat control" on them.

I never thought I'd see a paper which takes the posts of random internet tough guys on social media as genuine views (they're probably not).

I'm drafting a new part 2 to that dive but it's delayed as I don't want to make a too minor change. I'll probably keep the old one around for comparison sake.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/25/priti-patel-record-human-rights-extreme-concern If you want an idea of the sort of people who've been running the U.K. Home Office who have been promoting the #chatcontrol. She was especially anti-E2EE. #HumanRights