Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://reason.com/2024/02/15/big-brother-in-the-drivers-seat/ Big Motor Is Watching You.

Some motorists are even modifying their cars to evade the all-seeing eye of Big Motor. #privacy

https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2024-02-15-fight-for-the-future-statement-on-new-version-of-kosa-some-improvements-but-the-duty-of-care-still-enables-harmful-censorship

"However, by not clarifying that the Duty of Care only applies in a content neutral manner, as we have asked, it still invites the harms that we’ve warned about.

As we have said for months, the fundamental problem with KOSA is that its duty of care covers content specific aspects of content recommendation systems, and the new changes fail to address that. In fact, personalized recommendation systems are explicitly listed under the definition of a design feature covered by the duty of care. This means that a future Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could still use KOSA to pressure platforms into automated filtering of important but controversial topics like LGBTQ issues and abortion, by claiming that algorithmically recommending that content “causes” mental health outcomes that are covered by the duty of care like anxiety and depression."

"It’s important to remember that algorithmic recommendation includes, for example, showing a user a post from a friend that they follow, since most platforms do not show all users all posts, but curate them in some way."

#kosa

https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2024-02-15-fight-for-the-future-statement-on-new-version-of-kosa-some-improvements-but-the-duty-of-care-still-enables-harmful-censorship Fight for the Future still sceptical of the "new" #KOSA.

"“New bill text, same problems,” Adam Kovacevich, the head of tech trade group Chamber of Progress, said in a statement. “This bill still gives right-wing AGs extraordinary power to police online speech. And the bill still forces platforms to over-moderate and censor marginalized communities by creating sweeping liability. As federal courts have repeatedly held, the features of a platform are inextricably linked with its speech, and KOSA’s censorship of that speech runs headlong into the constitution.”"

Already seeing criticism of the "new" KOSA draft.

https://www.axios.com/2024/02/09/meta-political-content-moderation-threads From the looks of it, you can still opt into political recommendations, it's just not the default.

They're probably trying to avoid people getting mad at them.

Someone brought up that "China beats LGBT folks".

That is obviously not good, it also doesn't really surprise me. China is fairly traditionalist. The government is also known to censor some things related to "LGBT".

I honestly think Mozilla could have made a stronger case here, if they focused on the privacy angle, that one is pretty compelling.

I wouldn't say I go out of my way to delve into every nugget of knowledge about this, but I've seen quite a few people who like it. I don't think being judgemental is helpful here.

https://gizmodo.com/your-ai-girlfriend-is-a-data-harvesting-horror-show-1851253284 All the more reason to run things like this locally (and without the cloud service part).

"they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity"
I think that while they obviously have their #privacy issues (and that is a problem in it's own right), claims like this about technologies usually tend to wind up being wrong (or exaggerated). #ai

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng/?i=001-230854 Well, here's the ruling.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/13/mozilla-downsizes-as-it-refocuses-on-firefox-and-ai-read-the-memo/ Mozilla refocuses on the browser (although, they've jumped onto "AI", I suppose, because that is the hip thing to do nowadays) and winds down side projects.

https://ij.org/report/unaccountable/
https://ij.org/report/unaccountable/executive-summary/

"This study adds new evidence to the record using the largest ever collection of federal appellate cases, covering the 11-year period from 2010 through 2020. It is the first to use cutting-edge automated techniques to parse thousands of federal circuit court opinions and answer key questions about qualified immunity. The results suggest qualified immunity shields a much wider array of officials and conduct than commonly thought and add to a growing body of research finding the doctrine protects officials too much and our rights too little, all while failing to achieve its goals."

"Contrary to popular belief, qualified immunity is not just about police accused of excessive force. It shields a wide array of government officials and conduct.

While police were the most common defendants, fully half of appeals featured other types of government officials, either alongside or instead of police. Prison officials made up the next largest share, but in more than one in five of all appeals, or 21%, defendants were neither police nor prison officials. These other officials included mayors and city managers, university and school officials, prosecutors and judges, and child protective services workers.

Excessive force was alleged in just 27% of appeals, followed by false arrest at 25%; some alleged both. But the third largest category, alleged in 18% of appeals, encompassed violations of #FirstAmendment rights, including speech, association, and religious liberty.
Altogether, only 23% of appeals fit the popular conception of police accused of excessive force."

#HumanRights

It's funny how Facebook is really puritanical and "Meta's" logo looks like a pair of boobs.

Apparently, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) doesn't approve of weakening end-to-end encryption, so that's cool.