Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/01/former-australian-pm-tony-abbott-says-climate-warnings-are-ahistorical-and-implausible That is one of the reasons that party lost the election.

The "standard features are scary" rhetoric probably comes from Kidron. The out of touch baroness.

She was appointed as a baroness by the British Conservative Party because she made a documentary where she was shrill and panicky about... Online porn.

I don't think she has any actual qualifications or expertise in anything. She appears to be a film maker?

Even on the more modest end, though it gets harsher, imagine the government running shrill fear campaigns about... Basically, the screen time moral panic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shBwf97O7zk Ironically, it wasn't that long ago when the Australian Government was like this.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20231023IPR08161/new-eu-rules-needed-to-make-digital-platforms-less-addictive

"infinite scroll" Forums (i.e. the forum software, Discourse), fediverse implementations, chats like Discord, and more have infinite scrolling (a feature where you scroll down and it automatically fills in more content for you, though in the case of a chat, it fills it in as you scroll up). It's a standard feature on sites.

"likes" This is a common feature on sites. Discord has it in the form of emoji reactions. Forums have it (i.e. Reddit, for something much smaller, Discourse?). Social networks have it (including just about every fediverse implementation). I imagine it's prevalent because it's a useful way of giving feedback.

Read receipts are useful to know when someone has read a message?

With notifications, I see they specifically mention *push notifications*. A broader category would encompass any feature which pools events relating to you into one easy to check place (which would be dreadfully inconvenient / less functional). Still, it is more convenient. I think depending on how it's implemented, it might be sub-optimal in terms of privacy. This one is one you have to opt into to enable in web browsers.

Auto-play... It can be an annoying feature when you have five tabs with five videos and they all play at once over each other. Or when it automatically plays another video when you're done with one. The rhetoric here seems kind of panicky though.

"warnings or automatic locks after a pre-set time use (in particular for minors); total screen time summaries." Please don't imitate China.

"greyscale mode" What is this...?

Feels kind of moral panicky.

https://reclaimthenet.org/australias-authoritarian-misinformation-low-protection-self-incrimination

"The very foundations of free speech in Australia are under threat, warn legal experts, as the country considers adopting a chilling law that aims to tackle online “misinformation.”"

"This development has stirred significant contention, as the bill seems to undermine the cherished “right to silence” principle, which shields Australians suspected of crimes.

Furthermore, the draft’s scope of what constitutes trigger-worthy content is alarmingly vast. It goes beyond just flagging hate speech, encompassing any content that could potentially jeopardize the health, economy, or even the democratic processes of Australia."

https://reason.com/2023/11/01/trick-or-treat-helicopter-parents-study-michigan/

"While parents believe it's crucial for elementary school kids to do things "away from direct adult supervision," there is "a sizable gap between parent attitudes and actions," the study found.

How sizable? Less than 25 percent of parents will let their kids, ages five to eight, prepare their own snacks. Only half the parents of kids ages nine to 11 were willing to let their children go fetch an item from another aisle at the store. The majority of those same parents were also unwilling to let them walk to a friend's home, or play in the park with one. Just 15 percent would let their kids trick or treat without adult supervision."

https://reason.com/2023/10/31/teenage-trick-or-treaters-are-too-scary-for-these-cities/

"According to a recent NPR story, kids over 14 in Chesapeake, Virginia, caught trick-or-treating can be charged with a misdemeanor. Until 2019, they apparently faced six months in jail.

In nearby Norfolk, Suffolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach, kids over 12 are barred from trick-or-treating. Rayne, Louisiana, and Jacksonville, Illinois, also ban teenage trick-or-treaters. In Belleville, Illinois, they can get slapped with a $1,000 fine."

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-supreme-court-dangerous-prior-restraint-ruling-upholding-fbi-gag-xs-surveillance

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the Supreme Court today to review and reverse a dangerous ruling allowing the Justice Department to censor X’s ability to publish information about government requests for the platform’s private user data, a decision that undermines at least a hundred years of First Amendment case law on when the government can bar private speech before it is published."

"The government has been fighting X, formerly known as Twitter, for nearly a decade to stop it from publishing a 2013 transparency report that would give its users a more complete picture of how many times the government—armed with orders from a secret court and the FBI—demanded customer information for national security surveillance."

Also, remember how YouTube used to collect very little data? I don't think it was much more than an email address.

Then, when it got integrated into Google+ one day to try to compete with Facebook, and they demanded the use of Google Accounts, that led to all that data which such accounts require (names, addresses, and so on) being collected as well.

But, they never needed all this data.

I think what really bugs me about Facebook in terms of privacy is how practically every part of it pulls out the maximum data possible.

There are fields on the profile for people to put all their personal into. It has a "real name" policy. There were those "like buttons" and such which winded up on countless websites. Tracking pixels for marketing. I'm sure there is more than that.

All that data is then pitched to advertisers as a product.

Drugs in candy is a strangely American moral panic (which literally no other country in the world has) over a problem which doesn't exist.

War on Drugs rhetoric...

https://www.woodhullfoundation.org/get-involved/stop-kosa/

"Instead, this bill poses a serious threat to our fundamental rights, including freedom of expression and access to information. The requirement for online platforms to censor content deemed “inappropriate” for minors will stifle the free exchange of ideas and information that is vital for our democracy."

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ald-jim-gardiner-fined-20000-retaliation/

"The Chicago Board of Ethics has fined Ald. Jim Gardiner (45th) $20,000, after finding probable cause he committed 10 ethics violations, by retaliating against a constituent who frequently criticized him.

In July, the Chicago Inspector General's office found Gardiner "directed City employees to issue unfounded citations for overgrown weeds and rodents to the home of a constituent who had been publicly critical of the alderperson."

Although Gardiner was not specifically named in the report, the inspector general's report said he went ahead with plans to have the constituent cited, even after being told the plants in his yard were legal.

Those citations could have cost his constituent $600, but they were ultimately thrown out by a judge."

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/31/court-tells-cops-that-a-driver-not-laughing-at-an-officers-terrible-joke-is-not-reasonable-suspicion/ Well, it's nice to see the court pushback against it.

We call this theft.

The government calls it "civil forfeiture".

Same thing. Different language.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/09/14/poland-abortion-witch-hunt-targets-women-doctors

"Additionally, since January 2021, at least six women are known to have died after doctors did not terminate their pregnancies despite complications that posed a danger to their health or lives, which remain legal grounds for abortion in Poland."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/01/love-bikes-hate-wild-parking-dutch-city-puts-rule-breakers-on-the-rack I don't really see the point of this tbh.