Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7mzpj/pornhub-content-deleted-verification

"Before the purge that disappeared more than 75 percent of content on the platform, Pornhub hosted a lot of videos and photos that weren’t humans having sex. There were full-length movies, memes, and video game playthroughs that you might see on a non-adult site like Twitch, but there was also a ton of animation, 3D renderings, audio erotica, music videos, fanfic from furries and bronies, and stop-motion animation like LEGO minifigs fucking."

From 2020.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3mx8j/imgur-is-about-to-wipe-a-ton-of-porn-from-the-internet
Maybe, I need to come up with reminders. Here's one.

While I agree with him on so-called censorship from the government being harmful, it feels a lot like he is in this Silicon Valley bubble where he doesn't seem to notice how aggravating Big Tech over-moderation has been for a lot of people over the past five years.

*Not recently at least.

If you go back over a decade, you might see him going "woah, too far" to Paypal over... Yup. Porn related censorship.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/26/substack-turns-on-its-nazis-welcome-sign/ I honestly find posts like this quite fascinating, as Mike didn't always bend over backwards like this to excuse people attacking sites over their moderation policies supposedly being too permissive.

https://reason.com/2023/12/21/substackers-battle-over-banning-nazis/ For instance, here is a more principled take. It's not anything particularly shocking, it's just a pretty traditional take on free speech. She's also not someone who is a fan of the "War on Porn" and has written a fair bit about that.

Of the two, Elizabeth is naturally the one who is far more correct, and Mike is the one who doesn't understand how any of this works. Perhaps, Substack is not the best example, as they're more selective, but it isn't as if there haven't been examples which had porn on them.

Once a site gets to a certain scale, and they're chasing vague conceptions of "harm" in Silicon Valley, it seems that it leads to a whole bunch of nonsense, and ignoring that is simply to ignore the majority of what is going on in the world. Mike keeps losing sight of that and that is his problem. He doesn't even attempt to address this, and that is why his arguments come off as so hollow.

It's worth mentioning that whether it's sexual expression being removed by a platform, or anything else for that matter, I don't think I have ever seen a case where Mike has gone "woah there, too far". Not. One. Case. Not recently at least.

If Mike at least showed up occasionally to be like, "Alright, you have gone too far in this area", then I might have given him more of the benefit of the doubt, however, Elizabeth looks like the adult in the room here.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231226070713/https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/cpt-urges-romania-to-take-urgent-action-to-improve-living-conditions-and-treatment-for-patients-in-psychiatric-establishments

"CPT urges Romania to take urgent action to improve living conditions and treatment for patients in psychiatric establishments "

"The most dramatic situation was found at the Pădureni-Grajduri Psychiatric and Safety Measures Hospital, where 104 patients had to share a bed with another patient. Patients were crammed into dormitories with almost all the floor space taken up by their beds; for example, in the admission ward, a room of 24m² was accommodating 18 patients in nine beds. For the CPT, the warehousing conditions of persons with mental disorders and intellectual disabilities found in this hospital may well be considered as amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment."

Also, from the report:

"The delegation visited the civil psychiatric hospitals of Bălăceanca, Botoșani, Obregia (Bucharest) and Socola (Iaşi). In all the hospitals visited, patients spoke positively about the staff, particularly nursing staff. However, instances of alleged ill treatment and verbal abuse by staff were received in all the hospitals visited apart from Obregia. In particular, on the male acute ward of Botoșani Psychiatric Clinic the delegation received numerous allegations of patients being ill-treated (punched, slapped, pushed, and shouted at) by auxiliary staff."

#HumanRights

https://hackernoon.com/how-to-use-an-uncensored-ai-model-and-train-it-with-your-data Using and training an uncensored LLM with your own data.

"ECPAT USA" have renamed themselves to "PACT", it seems.

So, if some org with that name shows up supporting some censorious "save the children" bill in the future, then you know it's them.

People keep learning that putting internet connected "smart cameras" in their bedrooms is a bad idea...

https://walledculture.org/how-copyright-hinders-the-preservation-of-modern-digital-culture/ A take on copyright and the preservation of culture.

https://nichegamer.com/westerners-celebrate-christmas-2023-with-their-waifus-once-more/ :)

Complaining about someone generating something "offensive" using a "copyrighted character" fundamentally misunderstands what copyright was even intended for...

It's worth remembering that C3P's definition of "child porn" is very broad to the point of being useless. So, if someone is sitting in a room fully clothed, that can be "child porn" in their eyes (yes, there have been recorded cases like that). Whatever their reasoning is there, it is silly to scream at someone for not removing a particular item like that from a site on the spot.

In one case, they appeared to be uploading the images themselves to a search engine, then reporting them to get them taken down (even though they were only transiently cached in the search thing for minutes at a time). This is extremely problematic as it creates room for scandal over nothing.

https://boingboing.net/2023/12/18/if-you-have-testes-should-you-ejaculate-more-often-yes-yes-you-should.html

"One study showed that high frequency of ejaculation (21+ times/month) correlated with a 20% reduction in prostate cancer risk compared to lower frequency of ejaculation (4-7 times/month)."

https://nichegamer.com/indie-srpg-little-hearts-gets-english-localization-thanks-to-ai-translation/ Machine translations making more games accessible to the West.

It's also worth mentioning that "cartoon porn" was mentioned as one of the top searches on one of these sites, and I particularly have free expression concerns there from would-be censors. #DSA #WarOnPorn

I've always found those location tracking apps to be creepy, even when it has an apparent legitimate use to it.

The best cases I can think of is like Google Maps (and I don't know how privacy friendly Google is) and like Pokémon Go which is a gimmick game (which loves microtransactions).