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Olives boosted

Someone brought up that "China beats LGBT folks".

That is obviously not good, it also doesn't really surprise me. China is fairly traditionalist. The government is also known to censor some things related to "LGBT".

I honestly think Mozilla could have made a stronger case here, if they focused on the privacy angle, that one is pretty compelling.

I wouldn't say I go out of my way to delve into every nugget of knowledge about this, but I've seen quite a few people who like it. I don't think being judgemental is helpful here.

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gizmodo.com/your-ai-girlfriend All the more reason to run things like this locally (and without the cloud service part).

"they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity"
I think that while they obviously have their issues (and that is a problem in it's own right), claims like this about technologies usually tend to wind up being wrong (or exaggerated).

@BeAware@social.beaware.live An issue someone specifically raised about the *bridge* (not Bluesky itself, although maybe, someone doesn't trust them either) was that it might be in a position to MITM private or semi-private content.

I think people should already be wary of the privacy of content, particularly when it's going out to so many servers, but that is another possible factor.

@BeAware@social.beaware.live I don't know about anyone else but the issue I have with Bluesky isn't that it's run by a company per se.

The issue I have with Bluesky is that it's another case of people parachuting in to try to "save everyone".

They're also so out of touch they think regurgitating QAnon language (without really thinking a whole lot about whether it makes sense) is "policy".

They also promise it will become decentralized at some point in the future. It isn't currently. Also, this sort of "behind closed doors" development is a red flag.

When marketing it, they throw a load of crypto jargon at you, although I suppose it's a Jack Dorsey production, so this makes sense.

@BeAware@social.beaware.live @sergeant @freemo @trinsec From what I've heard, he is going to add the feature in soon, but hasn't done so yet.

@Raccoon qoto.org/@olives/1118889463563 Well, it's not necessarily that porn is bad, but like, weirdos on the Internet. Some of whom seem to be trolls, shitposters, attention seekers. I imagine many people are fine.

I've considered creating an instance before with a high level of free expression, but without people stirring up trouble, then again, I haven't thought about that in quite some time. The reason for this was that, in quite a few cases, there seemed to be a sense of "this instance is less moderated, well, go there then" or "free speech" (which might be why you see quite a few wackos).

Then again, rather than it being a lack of instances, part of the problem might be poor signposting, where someone is only ever directed to over-moderated instances (or ones which otherwise don't really fit their needs).

Blocks honestly feel like a blunt instrument, and I think that while, yeah, sure, someone might want to moderate proper harassment, there comes a point where someone is trying to uphold an impossible standard of "never seeing anything upsetting" (the holiday resort mentality). When it comes to porn, I also wonder whether there are better options (perhaps, they don't currently exist, or aren't currently that great, but maybe they could), to avoid a splinternet where ever possible.

Also, from watching one tag, there is a noisy admin who gets pretty creepy, as they talk as if people are "subhumans" over some cartoon, and supposedly go full QAnon looking for things to complain about (which don't even have anything to do with porn, and also beyond advocacy for abuse). It all starts to look super creepy and obsessive. Even excluding that one, you still wind up with toxic admins, even a few with narcissistic tendencies.

This isn't really commenting on your moderation in particular, these are just observations I have on moderation on the fedi in general.

@polotek A lot of the time, it is less companies and more people parachuting in and thinking they run the place.

From crypto bros destroying instances previously run by local overseas companies.

From companies turning up one day, like that hachy instance, and suddenly thinking they're the center of "policy".

From Facebook trying to smear the place to promote their Threads crap.

techcrunch.com/2024/02/13/mozi Mozilla refocuses on the browser (although, they've jumped onto "AI", I suppose, because that is the hip thing to do nowadays) and winds down side projects.

ij.org/report/unaccountable/
ij.org/report/unaccountable/ex

"This study adds new evidence to the record using the largest ever collection of federal appellate cases, covering the 11-year period from 2010 through 2020. It is the first to use cutting-edge automated techniques to parse thousands of federal circuit court opinions and answer key questions about qualified immunity. The results suggest qualified immunity shields a much wider array of officials and conduct than commonly thought and add to a growing body of research finding the doctrine protects officials too much and our rights too little, all while failing to achieve its goals."

"Contrary to popular belief, qualified immunity is not just about police accused of excessive force. It shields a wide array of government officials and conduct.

While police were the most common defendants, fully half of appeals featured other types of government officials, either alongside or instead of police. Prison officials made up the next largest share, but in more than one in five of all appeals, or 21%, defendants were neither police nor prison officials. These other officials included mayors and city managers, university and school officials, prosecutors and judges, and child protective services workers.

Excessive force was alleged in just 27% of appeals, followed by false arrest at 25%; some alleged both. But the third largest category, alleged in 18% of appeals, encompassed violations of rights, including speech, association, and religious liberty.
Altogether, only 23% of appeals fit the popular conception of police accused of excessive force."

It's funny how Facebook is really puritanical and "Meta's" logo looks like a pair of boobs.

Apparently, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) doesn't approve of weakening end-to-end encryption, so that's cool.

theintercept.com/2024/02/08/fa

"Meta’s internal rules around the word “Zionist,” first reported by The Intercept in 2021, show that company moderators are only supposed to delete posts using the term if it’s determined to be a proxy for “Jewish” or “Israeli,” both protected classes under company speech rules. The policy change Meta is now considering would enable the platform’s moderators to more aggressively and expansively enforce this rule, a move that could dramatically increase deletions of posts critical of Israeli nationalism."

They point to the fact that this person also wanted to kill someone they accused of being a "nonce" as evidence that they're indiscriminate. To me though, that sounds a lot like elements of QAnon. Regular people don't typically go around accusing random ass people of that.

Transphobia and QAnon type nonsense often go hand in hand, so this actually makes an *even more* compelling case to me that it was transphobia.

Meanwhile, the government would rather blame "gore" on a "fringe site", presumably, so they have an excuse to seize more Internet censorship powers (if what I put here is speculative, then that, only more so).

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re: discussion, crimes, sexual abuse of minors, murder, rape, mental health 

@kkarhan @Clover Honestly, everyone should probably have access (even if they don't use / need it) to a strong mental health service. A useful by-product is that you'd probably have fewer crimes (although, I'm sure it's useful for reasons other than that). Better socioeconomic conditions would also probably help, including more people having housing...

It also doesn't involve violating human rights.

It's suspicious that someone who is trans gets murdered in the U.K. (which is known to be hostile against trans folks, that ain't a secret) and the government tries to put the blame entirely on someone watching "gore" on some fringe site (and it's supposed to have nothing to do with hostility for someone being trans).

Olives boosted

Also, quite a few things which get blamed on "the porn" are actually general mental health issues which could be treated more normally, and crucially, without conflating it with porn.

No, Olives, instead of doing that, we can violate people's human rights, so that, uhh... Something.

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