Olives @olives@qoto.org

U.S. Supreme Court rules that affirmative action in college admissions violates the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

1) They shouldn't sell them to under 18s. I'm surprised that would be a thing in Ireland.
2) Meh. I don't have a strong opinion on this.
3) I don't agree with banning flavoured vape liquids.

Apparently, Reddit is breaking privacy laws by restoring deleted posts after someone deletes them.

https://reason.com/2023/06/29/florida-cop-jails-toddler-son-for-poopy-pants/

1) Uhhh.... I'm not sure it's appropriate to use jails for family discipline.

2) Well, yeah, Snapchat shouldn't be held liable for simply providing a "disappearing message" function.

If someone abuses it, as this teacher did to send a "sexually explicit image" to a student, she is responsible for doing so.

Apparently, Google is going to block all links to Canadian news sites.

I just saw a supremely dumb civil rights take from an infamous Australian academic.

Don't worry about being oppressed or the government abusing it's power, or building safeguards to prevent that.

Just vote for someone else.

Ughhhhh.

Even though they might feel very similar, there are important differences between a religious ministry and a government ministry.

One of those "won't anyone please think of the children?" people pointed to a hundred people getting arrested on Discord for apparently being part of child porn rings and said "See! See! This shows the abuse there is completely out of control".

Completely ignoring that Discord is a platform with tens of millions of people or more.

Sigh.

https://edri.org/our-work/the-eus-internal-market-committee-votes-for-protecting-encryption-in-the-csa-regulation/
"As stipulated by the Court of Justice, IMCO MEPs say that tools must be able to distinguish between lawful and unlawful content without the need for independent human assessment."
This encourages firms to stop doing independent human assessments and to exaggerate the accuracy rate of their algorithms...

Also, any algorithm may fall over at scale. It is also still a violation of privacy.

Noting that sinister language like grooming obscures what they're really doing, which is probably looking for someone behaving inappropriately with minors.

They had one statistic where adults simply talking to minors was treated as a potential grooming event x.x

Instead of saying any of that though, they decided to self-immolate by making it appear as if they didn't care about child abuse.

I still remember when the British Police said that investigating grooming is not their problem. It's Facebook's problem.

...

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/28/social-media-was-useful-for-me-as-an-ill-nerdy-teenager/ Social media restrictions might be harmful to minors with health conditions.

"The question presented is whether the First Amendment still requires proof that the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements. We hold that it does, but that a mental state of recklessness is sufficient. The State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence."

The U.S. Supreme Court appears to have decided that for something to qualify as a "true threat", it has to involve a certain degree of recklessness that it would be interpreted as a threat by a neutral bystander, or involve intent.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/28/australian-government-apparently-willing-to-follow-in-uk-governments-client-side-scanning-footsteps/
"There are even examples of how content that appears to be CSAM material in a vacuum has legitimate purposes. For example, a father was automatically flagged, banned and reported to police by Google after it detected medical images taken of his child’s groin under orders of a doctor"
I'm not entirely sure at least one court in the U.S. wouldn't rule this as child porn and imprison him (which is bad). Not in California though.

Inman Grant is a nasty one. She was appointed by a very right wing government led by a conspiracy theorist.

I hadn't heard much out of her in a while, and there she is again. The Minister of Communications really needs to rein her in.

"they have a sexual interest in children" I'm noticing a strange emphasis on this in a couple of articles.

It's really strange to specifically make a point out of it, especially when it overshadows what crime it is someone is actually carrying out.

Is this some new Q dog-whistle...?

From a psychological standpoint, it is also not that which is the problem per say... And I think it just makes people paranoid...

It's also just plain distracting...

https://www.xbiz.com/news/275152/maryland-legalizes-oral-anal-sex It is about time.

This still applies. It does not matter what a cop thinks. #onlinesafetybill

https://edri.org/our-work/charities-protest-capita-agm-over-controversial-government-gps-tracking-contract/ Surveillance of migrants described as being akin to psychological torture.