Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/25/the-warhol-decision-how-scotus-forgot-the-first-amendment-turned-copyright-into-a-liability-time-bomb/
Here's a far more critical take where Cathy talks about how the Supreme Court trampled all over the most beloved First Amendment.

I'm liking the Delete & Redraft feature.

On Twitter, you'd probably create a second post instead. The original post would get a thousand views.

The second which might contain a crucial bit of information / context might get ten views.

The character limit (which I understand differs between instances) is also helpful, because otherwise you end up with a Twitter scenario where it's easy for people to look at individual tweets out of context.

An alternative might be that some companies just don't bother setting up a physical presence in the E.U. (and it's not clear they couldn't go down that route), because why bother with people constantly trying to pit them for political reasons?

Under the CLOUD Act, U.S. companies are *required* to turn over data to U.S. legal process *regardless* of the location of the data.

If it resides in another country, and there are conflicting laws, they *must* violate those laws, or face liability under U.S. Law.

But, even if the CLOUD Act didn't come into play, it would still be troublesome, because it establishes the norm of storing data in your own country, and that country might not be as kind as the U.S. one.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/25/the-massive-fine-the-eu-hit-meta-with-is-really-about-the-nsa-not-meta/
I'm getting real tired of this "good intentions" trade union creating problems because they think they're the center of the universe and can just tell companies to violate U.S. Law.

https://www.thefire.org/news/defunding-indiana-universitys-kinsey-institute-legislators-force-academic-freedom-back-closet FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) are an interesting bunch.

Basically, they fight for academic freedom, and they've recently expanded to general free expression as well.

Oh boy, DeSantis. This one is far worse than Trump (and makes him look very charismatic). He's an opportunistic sewer rat.

He appears to have learned how to conduct politics from George Orwell's 1984, even mimicking the slogans like "facts over fear" (the opposite of what he'd do).

He is also doing the utmost to make a fool of himself.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/24/heritage-foundation-says-that-of-course-gop-will-use-kosa-to-censor-lgbtq-content/ I'm not surprised.

For the past couple of years, the Heritage Foundation (a big conservative thinktank) has been trying to frame such things as saving the children and pushing things like this.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/congress-must-exercise-caution-ai-regulation

My worry is any "regulation" would give a middle finger to open source projects and would entrench rich billionaires like Sam Altman and Google. Rich billionaires grift over fanciful notions of algorithms becoming "sentient" or "destroying the world".

Google's grift is if someone sees an algorithm generate something "offensive", then that's not good, and this billion dollar company needs to come in to "save you". It's not them spending billions of dollars to send those GPUs whirring for a questionable gain.

Politicians worry an algorithm might destroy "democracy". Something which has as of yet not happened over five years with an endless ensemble of algorithms. And it ignores how far older technologies could be used in the same hypothetical manner.

Propaganda operates the same way it always has. With dumb messaging stirring up fear towards minorities. Othering has always been a far more effective tool for authoritarians than hypothetical applications of AI. Just ask the Nazi Party.

There are real problems though, and ones which get glossed over.

This might be "predictive policing". A way to hide existing police practices, such as racial profiling behind a black box.

Worse, someone might presume flawed determinations by an algorithm are less biased. These systems are frequently accused of just regurgitating the same biases that cops often have.

This might be face recognition.

This might be an algorithm deciding who to hire or micro-managing someone working in a very unpleasant manner. The idea of monitoring children to make sure they're always "fully alert" during classes was floated in China.

In the near future, an algorithm might be involved in an "assessment" to decide who gets parole. Or a myriad of restrictions, after coming out of prison. Some restrictions are already said to be so burdensome it is equivalent to setting someone up for failure, and to be re-imprisoned.

In some countries, algorithms chase people for outstanding debts owed to the government, and many turned out to not have outstanding debts. These threatening debt collection notices were very bad for their mental health.

Moderation algorithms are notoriously imprecise:

"NSFW filters" tend to hit LGBT content (and use of such features are usually lobbied for by anti-LGBT religious groups).

Copyright filters have had great difficulty distinguishing ambient noise from music. They're also trivial to circumvent.

Worse still when a moderation algorithm might report someone to the police. That might ruin someone's life.

These are all nasty consequences of algorithms which are far more realistic (and scary to me) than these fanciful "Skynet is coming!" scenarios.

Many of these scenarios don't even need a fancy neural network. A simple traditional algorithm could perpetuate the same harms.

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/en-gb/takeaction/959/553/635/
Here's a petition to oppose the anti-E2EE parts of this bill (the U.K. OSB), although you should sign the other one too.