Olives @olives@qoto.org

It's as if an evil spirit took control of the bodies of politicians in 2017 / 2018, and now, we keep getting hideously authoritarian (and nasty) proposals...

https://nichegamer.com/peter-molyneuxs-blockchain-game-legacy-to-launch-next-month/

"While the game isn’t out yet, those interested can purchase “land” using Ethereum or GALA through OpenSea. The latter of which is Gala Games own type of cryptocurrency. In terms of USD, prices range from $47 to $11465."

Why...

"My assessment is these are the same folks who called the insurrection at the Capitol free speech."

Well... No... someone making a post mocking a dead cop is not really the same thing as someone physically trespassing (among other things) at the Capitol.

https://reason.com/2023/10/31/tennessee-to-pay-125000-to-settle-lawsuit-by-man-arrested-for-posting-meme-mocking-dead-cop/ What do you think?

https://reason.com/2023/10/31/overcrowding-causes-unsafe-and-unsanitary-conditions-for-youth-in-philadelphia-jail/

"One Philadelphia, Pennsylvania juvenile jail is keeping youth in overcrowded, filthy conditions. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the situation has grown so dire that the city has now requested that a judge hold the state in contempt of court for failure to address the crisis.

Legal documents claim that the facility, which is built to house 184 juveniles, reached a peak of 242 this June. As a result, at least 30 children were forced to sleep in "mattresses on the floor in the admissions area," or "in physically crowded cells with no windows." Violence in the facility also reportedly increased."

https://reason.com/2023/10/31/several-justices-express-dismay-at-long-delays-in-returning-seized-cars-to-innocent-owners/

"In February 2019, police in Satsuma, Alabama, pulled over Halima Culley's son and arrested him for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. They seized the car, which belonged to Culley, and tried to keep it under Alabama's civil forfeiture law. Although Culley ultimately got her car back as an "innocent owner," that process took 20 months."

"Like Culley, Sutton successfully invoked the "innocent owner" defense to get her car back after police seized it. But that did not happen for over a year. In the meantime, her lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, "she missed medical appointments, she wasn't able to keep a job, she wasn't able to pay a cell phone bill, and as a result" she "was not in a position to be able to communicate about the forfeiture proceedings.""

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/victory-california-department-justice-declares-out-state-sharing-license-plate

"California Attorney General Rob Bonta has issued a legal interpretation and guidance for law enforcement agencies around the state that confirms what privacy advocates have been saying for years: It is against the law for police to share data collected from license plate readers with out-of-state or federal agencies. This is an important victory for immigrants, abortion seekers, protesters, and everyone else who drives a car, as our movements expose intimate details about where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing."

I'd rather not use the euphemism "age appropriate access controls".

That's not necessarily a representative sample. Also, it's kind of the path of least resistance to nod along with fuzzy ideas... Right? In fact, if you talk to a few people, they suggest just banning minors from social media altogether, which is obviously harmful (and impractical).

Think of the children shills: We want you to adopt this measure which will never stand up in court and which has already been ruled to be unlawful in previous cases. If you don't, you are a bad person.

One time when I saw "parental controls" in action, it was by very controlling anti-LGBT helicopter parents harassing their LGBT child.

I'm actually still in favor of just entirely scrapping chat control. It creates an authoritarian state apparatus (which still wouldn't make the problem go away). For truly malicious sites, it seems that efforts to take them down have been ramping up for years. It is also all too easy for the censorship to expand or for there to be collateral censorship.

On another note, it's interesting how the shills in favor of it are interested in *literally no middle ground*. They take on the most extreme positions and argue hard that it is the only correct position.

So-called "zero tolerance" positions are not necessarily good. Even web proxies seem to have been hit in 2022.

"What has the AfD done to stop chat control? To the contrary: the negotiator of your ID group has always spoken out strongly IN FAVOUR of the proposal."

I've seen one AfD in the E.U. Parliament speaking out in opposition to it in public but then that is one person. She is also very conspiratorial.

Also, I don't think someone needs the AfD to get someone with that position.

There is also already quite an unpleasant stigma around mental disabilities... I'm not really happy when someone brings them up as a scapegoat...

This is honestly horrifying, though it isn't surprising as DeSantis was also calling for drug smugglers to be shot and killed...

Simply locking more people up is not the answer to mental health... It also seems that it wouldn't have the benefits that he expects.

I feel like I'm trapped in Hell with how these stupid authoritarian ideas keep getting advanced...

It's annoying when someone only talks about "reducing risk", even as such attempts have negative impacts on fairly good people.

I've covered this a couple of times, but I never went into how creepy and opportunistic it was for IJM (International Justice Mission) to show up during #chatcontrol. As you might expect from a religious group (accused of having a history of exaggerating rates of sex trafficking (1) and being anti sex work) trying to get a foot in the door, they tried to conflate legitimate content with abuse (2).

For instance, they wanted to treat things like "written text" as "child porn". In practice, this would mean censoring things like stories written by victims / survivors (preferred term varies), literature, roleplay, fantasy, and so on. It also appears to have therapeutic value.

They also pointed to a "terminology guideline", which seems to really be a puritanical propaganda doc (a hideously out of touch one) intended to encourage countries to adopt extreme and harmful definitions (i.e. child not meaning an actual real child), which would be harmful (3,4). It's one of the most sinister things I've seen.

1 https://www.engadget.com/2019-05-31-sex-lies-and-surveillance-fosta-privacy.html
2 https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12726-Fighting-child-sexual-abuse-detection-removal-and-reporting-of-illegal-content-online/F3337815_en
3 https://qoto.org/@olives/111083302650803082
4 https://qoto.org/@olives/111192296198968801

https://qoto.org/@olives/111321512784243641 The new paper linking a lack of independent activity without monitoring / control to depression / suicidal ideation might be of interest to the #chatcontrol crowd.