Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/12/12/your-smart-tv-knows-what-youre-watching "smart" TVs spying on people to serve advertisements, and instructions on how apparently to stop that. #privacy

"virtual" is a synonym for "fictional" (not to be confused with "virtual" as in "online"). It can be indicative of someone trying to manipulate you.

The term "virtual" is a less common trick (direct conflation seems more common in recent months) but not unheard of with someone trying to be "smart". It originates from a court case from twenty years ago.

It is also used in a scientific paper from 2008 which came to the conclusion that porn is not linked to abuse.

However, more recently, it is primarily used in apologia for censorship in a non-scholarly setting... So, there it can be used in a tricky manner, where you don't recognize what it truly means.

It's tempting for me to comment on a few "generative AI" cases but I think that the generalized rules of sorts (thousands of words in a post) that I wrote before speak for themselves.

Nice to see more people challenging bad "generative AI" takes (i.e. "someone might generate something offensive" takes).

It's certainly tempting to offer up opinions on a lot of things, lol.

Opposing the expansion of the Patriot Act would be a good idea. Good grief. As if this thing wasn't privacy intrusive, not to mention, unconstitutional, enough, you have people looking to make it even worse.

https://reclaimthenet.org/epic-games-wins-lawsuit-against-googles-app-illegal-monopoly The Google Play App Store is ruled to be a monopoly.

https://reason.com/2023/12/10/how-a-law-no-one-understands-brought-down-florida-drug-kingpins/ Interesting story.

I'm not really fond of the idea of a "detection order" in the chat control, whatever the "scope", really.

If someone is clearly up to something evil, cops have an option to infiltrate, or to shut the place down, as they already do. Even providing evidence that is available (with the problems which come with it) seems less strange than a "detection order".

At least call him for what he really is, a "campaigner" with ties to the British Conservative Party. That said, even as a campaigner, he seems practically irrelevant.

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/12/06/an-online-safety-expert-argues-that-end-to-end-encryption-endangers-children

I don't know whether this is a British tendency towards "bothsidesism" but platforming this random person is really beneath the dignity of the Economist. It also leaves out this person's background, and his ties to the British Conservative Party. He is not a neutral "campaigner".

It also tries to suggest he is some sort of "expert". Yet, it seems that anyone can become an "expert" simply by turning up one day and saying whatever nonsense that it is that the Tory Party agrees with. There seems to be no requirements (not even a want for some veneer of expertise) for it. He makes a number of assertions, and which are almost certainly false, if not certainly so.

Indeed, this person likes to act as an internet troll, to make delusional and nonsensical rants, and here, he makes a myriad of silly excuses for totalitarianism, using the "won't anyone please think of the children?" cliché, making bare-faced lies, and working hard to downplay the negative implications of his ideology.

He also assumes that every negative externality of his ideology don't exist. The only problem is that they do.

I have two minds on FB expanding end-to-end encryption:

1) The people who say there are more private messengers are right, and there is a lot of value in pursuing more private technologies.

2) Facebook adopting better standards on privacy means that many people will have a better standard of privacy.

One of the usual surveillance shills too. Nothing says empowerment like subordinating yourself to the State.

I see random people on mainstream social media arguing over what constitutes "true feminism", is someone truly a feminist, if they don't want to live in George Orwell's 1984 with a camera in every room?

If you don't want to put your arm into a wasp nest, that means you don't care about children. #chatcontrol