Olives @olives@qoto.org

I wonder if the E.U. even realizes that one reason the GDPR is probably popular is less because the E.U. can go into a country they have no jurisdiction (or power) over and more because "GDPR Compliant" is a good marketing strategy.

Different from Chat Stasi.

That is also not how the First Amendment works :)

If a company is ordered to do something by a government, or they run something like a company town acting in lieu of the government, it becomes a state actor.

https://edri.org/our-work/european-citizens-demand-router-freedom/ What do you think of router freedom?

Precedents don't apply because it's not a government entity, someone says.

Well, I'd rather they didn't have any excuses to justify whatever it is they do. If they're going to arbitrarily and unilaterally do something, that is on them.

Patreon is a hate group.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/ftc-approves-final-order-requiring-mastercard-stop-blocking-use-competing-debit-payment-networks Federal Trade Commission votes 3-0 to put Mastercard Inc under a consent decree to force them to stop blocking the use of competing payment networks.

Ashcroft worked for that other guy who lied about there being weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, who didn't even win the election but got seated by the Supreme Court, who had war crimes happen under his watch, and who opened Guantanamo Bay.

If you don't know, Attorney General John Ashcroft was an infamously puritanical man who used to cover up historic statues, because he reckoned their nudity to be vulgar.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/15/hawley-blumenthal-team-up-to-push-nonsensical-ai-230-bill/ These two are always looking to set the Internet on fire...

Patreon might want to read up on a case called "Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition" where the CPPA was deemed unconstitutional, because it had a ridiculously broad definition of "child porn", although given the sorts of things they're censoring, I suspect this is merely a conservative excuse to harass LGBT communities.

This is a great example of the E.U. trying to "help" with some problem and ending up opening a whole nasty can of worms.

https://edri.org/our-work/open-letter-make-vulnerability-disclosure-in-the-cyber-resilience-act-more-secure-not-less/ Disturbing.

It's almost akin to an exam question in "spot all the flaws in this survey's design".

When the "won't anyone please think of the children?" brigade try to run "surveys" to make it look as if some selection of people (likely their own supporters or staff) supports their censorship efforts, it is usually filled with leading questions.

Leading questions like "what if your own children were the ones being abused?", a strong frame about the status quo being equivalent to inaction (despite this being demonstrably false), and them otherwise trying really hard to try to influence someone's answer towards what they want them to answer.

They also lean heavily on "something must be done", although they're often vague and don't mention what that something is.

"Far more recently" is half a decade ago. It's not a week ago. It's not a month ago. It's not "2022". They're been doing all of these things for quite some time, and somehow, that has gone unnoticed by the EFF, and that is what drives me up the wall.

The problem is that the company has gotten annoyingly puritanical and corporate. Period.

It isn't the lack of "transparency".

It isn't the lack of "an accountability process".

It isn't an inability to attend round tables with the EFF and other stakeholders.

The latest middle finger is just icing on cake. Frankly, it's one which has been a long time in the making.

Ugh. The EFF is wildly off the mark on Reddit. Reddit might have been a great proponent of freedom a decade ago, but far more recently, it has become far more puritanical, far more "man in a suit", and as evidenced by the current strike, far less caring about their users.

They are clearly looking at the company in how it operated in the past. That company no longer exists.

Did you know the infamous chat control actually started as a proposal to *improve* privacy but got hijacked into a proposal to destroy everyone's basic human rights?