Olives @olives@qoto.org
Software Engineer. Psy / Tech / Sex Science Enthusiast. Controversial?
Free Expression. Human rights / Civil Liberties. Anime. Liberal.
Joined May 2023
I wonder how many times I am going to see sentences like this (with the ongoing end-to-end encryption discourse):
Most abuse happens in the home.
Most abuse is not on the Internet.
The other possible places to pull that number out of thin air aren't any better.
To be clear, exaggerated numbers don't make this anti privacy argument any more compelling.
I hope this insinuation of there being a million child predators is not based on the probably sampling biased survey with the "Would you have sex w...
I hope this insinuation of there being a million child predators is not based on the probably sampling biased survey with the "Would you have sex with a minor, if it wasn't some awful harmful thing and no one would care?" question.
These anti end-to-end encryption people... Always a tendency towards conflation, exaggeration, and misleading claims.
I removed a post (immediately prior to this one) as if even that number came from a questionable source prone to exaggeration. I don't want to circulate anything which might be misleading.
Is Facebook rolling out default end-to-end encryption here the beginning of the end for "technosolutionism"? The idea that somehow we can "solve" all social problems via technology.
Technosolutionism was always a really terrible ideology, although not a surprising one, given the marketability of it by tech firms (and one which tends to trend towards totalitarianism, human rights violations, and dubious interventions). #chatcontrol
Privacy activists are also taking responsibility for it.
Well, whoever is responsible for it, maybe everyone, it's a nice decision to make.
"Without any mass surveillance, Meta could make Facebook and Instagram secure by design for children if Zuckerberg was willing to compromise on profits. Why, for example, are young people not asked, regardless of their age, if they want their photos and profiles to be publicly visible to strangers?”"
If it's just that, then I don't think I mind.
The term "safe by design" has been tainted for me though, by someone who is very censorious.
Patrick Breyer MEP takes responsibility for forcing Facebook to adopt end-to-end encryption by default in Messenger, in part, due to his lawsuit. Lol.
https://mastodon.social/@Tutanota/111511725573852454
https://mastodon.social/@Tutanota/111528189445982011
Do you think Microsoft is getting their revenge for Tuta pointing out all the trackers on their email service?
Maybe not, but that is quite... the timing. Wow, quite the coincidence.
Olives
boosted
The #KOSA Bill threatens to censor online content under the guise of trying to "protect the children". 🤔
The bill's vague language opens the door to dangerous legal interpretations that will do more to push censorship on the American public than protect the nation's youth. 🚫
Contact your senators and make your voice heard against this attack on free speech! 👇 https://tuta.com/blog/kosa-threatens-free-speech
Olives
boosted
Let's see what tactic one "won't anyone please think of the children?" person is using in support of #KOSA.
None at all. He's shouting "Big Tech!" at the top of his lungs and hoping that is sufficient. This is a tactic which has... been invoked a number of times over the past few years to push for all kinds of human rights incursions.
Facebook has gotten too big. Too powerful. The executives are (or were) also a bit shifty. So, we got to do something about them. Something. Anything.
Then, the something ignores any human rights, such as privacy, free expression, or anything else. It also leaves the way Facebook does business completely intact (or close enough so).
Instead of the bad guy being Zuckerberg even, now the bad guy can be someone in the government. There is still a boot on your throat. The centralized power remains. Is everything all tidy and solved?
With KOSA, it has it's own particular brand of awfulness.
It has a number of vague terms which gives figures who have historically been known to over-reach and panic over all kinds of things, a license to panic over more things, then to find a legal text to try to intimidate platforms over that.
Moral panics are not uncommon. In fact, they cannot be any less common. We've seen plenty (in fact, if you look back thousands of years, you can find figures worried about things which would now look silly). There will likely be more to come.
You have to consider whether you really want to live in a sterile Disneyland. Someone could make any number of arguments about this or that potentially being bad. And even if something might be bad to a few people, it's questionable whether that would be proportionate.
This is all assuming that officials are not acting with ill intent. If they're acting with malicious or ideological intent (as a number of people have considered with this bill), it can only get worse.
Something I wrote about #KOSA before.
Let's see what tactic one "won't anyone please think of the children?" person is using in support of #KOSA. None at all. He's shouting "Big Tech!" ...
Olives
boosted
If you need an image in your mind, imagine Priti Patel ranting about end-to-end encryption, shipping migrants to Rwanda, and wanting to bring back the death penalty (after I think around century).
The U.K. Home Office is one of the most politicized parts of the British Government under the Conservative Party... Especially, the home secretarie...
The U.K. Home Office is one of the most politicized parts of the British Government under the Conservative Party... Especially, the home secretaries...
On closer review, Marija's org appears to be funded by the U.K. Home Office, the Oak Foundation (which is essentially the U.S. / U.K.), and an unkn...
On closer review, Marija's org appears to be funded by the U.K. Home Office, the Oak Foundation (which is essentially the U.S. / U.K.), and an unknown org called HDF. This is not highly visible on their site though, it's in one of the reports.
https://reason.com/2023/12/06/desantis-gets-sex-trafficking-wrong-at-gop-debate/
"At tonight's GOP debate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered up a Trumpesque word salad of border boogeymen, promising to build a wall along the United States' southern border to help stop fentanyl trafficking, human trafficking, and sex trafficking. Once again, we have a politician conflating very separate issues and spouting myths about their origins in order to score cheap debate-stage points."
https://nichegamer.com/twitch-is-shutting-down-in-south-korea-due-to-increasing-costs/
"This morning, I shared with our community in Korea that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down the Twitch business in Korea on February 27, 2024 KST. We understand that this is extremely disappointing news, and we want to explain why we made this decision and how we are planning to support those impacted.
Ultimately, the cost to operate Twitch in Korea is prohibitively expensive and we have spent significant effort working to reduce these costs so that we could find a way for the Twitch business to remain in Korea. First, we experimented with a peer-to-peer model for source quality. Then, we adjusted source quality to a maximum of 720p. While we have lowered costs from these efforts, our network fees in Korea are still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries. Twitch has been operating in Korea at a significant loss, and unfortunately there is no pathway forward for our business to run more sustainably in that country."
"Ohio, where legislators authorized medical use of marijuana in 2016, became the 24th state to legalize recreational use a month ago, when 57 percent of voters said yes to Issue 2. As of today, that ballot measure makes it legal for adults 21 or older to publicly possess 2.5 ounces or less of marijuana and grow up to six plants at home. Issue 2 also envisions a state-regulated cannabis industry with retail sales taxed at 10 percent."
https://nichegamer.com/prosecutors-seek-death-penalty-for-kyoto-animation-arsonist/
I'm not really keen on the existence of the death penalty, but that is a thing in Japan.
Software Engineer. Psy / Tech / Sex Science Enthusiast. Controversial?
Free Expression. Human rights / Civil Liberties. Anime. Liberal.
Joined May 2023
