Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://reclaimthenet.org/two-democrats-want-to-ban-facial-scanning-in-public-housing Sounds reasonable.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/victory-new-jersey-court-rules-police-must-give-defendant-facial-recognition That is the only right thing to do, otherwise someone could convict someone on shoddy "evidence" without a chance to challenge it.

@mmasnick This isn't really to defend the Musk in particular, but if dodgy evidence becomes the "standard" for gauging sites, that is a pretty dark road to go down.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/07/research-shows-twitter-was-missing-known-child-sex-abuse-material/
Btw, this algorithm has an error rate (one advocate of it claims it works "99% of the time") and these people didn't check (to avoid being held legally liable).

This doesn't really tell me anything. A bit of a leap, @mmasnick?

It also appears one person cited in another article was appointed by the populist leader of what could be called Australia's right-wing and conspiracy ridden Jesus Party, and that she's made appearances on the podcast of an infamous Utah-based anti-porn group (which is staffed by lots of anti-LGBT figures and claimed being gay leads to mass murder).

One of her advisors is infamous for trying to misrepresent legitimate content as "CSAM" (he is also strangely fixated on "ritual abuse" and panders to populism). So, I'm going to say I'm sceptical of her too.

The former Prime Minister made an appearance before the Parliament to claim schools contain satanic ritual abuse (a long debunked conspiracy theory) and his best friend believes in the Q conspiracy theory.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/06/possible-reasons-why-youtube-has-given-up-trying-to-police-2020-election-misinfo/ Like Covid on another site (I don't know how they handle that), it's probably old and irrelevant, and enforcing a policy takes a certain toll.

https://reason.com/2023/06/02/he-spent-a-decade-in-jail-without-being-convicted-now-his-lawyer-says-his-case-should-be-dismissed/ Man spent a decade in jail awaiting trial and having not been convicted yet.

https://reason.com/2023/06/03/ugandas-new-anti-gay-law-could-undermine-aids-prevention/ This law is so crazy.

https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-fifth-circuit-protect-our-public-libraries FIRE gets involved in lawsuits against the book bans too. They filed a brief with the court.

Last year, they expanded what they did from just academic freedom to also become a principled defender of freedom of expression.

happy pride month

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings The Nazis also burnt books, censored porn, and went after sex researchers.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/03/1179990709/tennessee-drag-show-law-ruling Tennessee's drag show ban ruled unconstitutional.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/30/perhaps-gpt-is-not-ready-for-the-supreme-court/ Lawyer sanctioned for using ChatGPT to generate nonsense legal filings with non-existent citations.

I seriously doubt an "AI tool" could replace programmers. It might be able to create a toy, but it will fail very, very badly in the real world. Is the AI bubble finally getting to the point, again, where people are hyping it being able to do anything and everything?

This is not AI related, but there have been a number of failed "allow normies to code" type projects over the years and they have gone over about as well as you'd expect. The problem is more that "normies" cannot fundamentally grasp programming (even concepts like scoping), rather than lacking a "more powerful tool".

Also, ironically, the most powerful allow "normies" to "code" tool ever is Microsoft Excel.

Apparently, one of Elon's kids is trans, he fell out with his wife over that (presumably, Mr. Musk doesn't approve of that), split with her, and he adopted an anti-trans position. Is that accurate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89ZkydX0FPw If you're wondering what happened to Article 13 (renamed to Article 17), it is still slowly being rolled out.

A few countries like Finland outright decided not to implement it at all and the Commission got really mad at them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1efOs0BsE0g I wonder what has come of Julian Assange. Is he still sitting in Belmarsh Prison?

There is an interesting term called "safety by design" which I've seen going around among the usual suspects. It is essentially a very "clever" euphemism for censorship and an excuse for government / company over-reach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kecnSHmznic If you're wondering how it's going in Australia, they're only banning the right to protest.

https://reason.com/2023/05/31/childproofing-the-internet/ They are all awful bills which trample on human rights. They're also clearly unconstitutional and it's very unclear whether they would even meet their goals.

It would, however, expand government power, and that is always a temptation for authorities. You should contact representatives to oppose these kinds of bills.