Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://reason.com/2024/01/10/let-elon-musk-enjoy-drugs/
Hmm... I think that just because he does something, it doesn't mean that drug prohibition policies are suddenly a good thing. Is it worth losing space capabilities over? Very likely not.

Also, it's quite probable that whatever leads to him being, let's say, provocative, is also what contributes to his drug use.

https://nichegamer.com/twitter-drops-support-for-nft-profile-pictures/ I honestly never understood why Twitter (under the previous management) added this feature to begin with.

https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-age-verification-for-porn-sites-makes-sense
An electrician (who might have some knowledge on algorithms) reckons that "age verification" for porn sites "makes sense". That's his entire point. He doesn't really bother to make a real one.

He focuses a fair bit on alleged things one particular company might have done over five years ago (in one case, women "sort of" consented to a film, but didn't understand how widely it would be shared, and they later filed a lawsuit that a third party company (not the platform), had misled them), but this is actually immaterial to the argument of whether porn is intrinsically "bad" (or "harmful" to someone viewing it).

Now, there could be a conversation about whether that case couldn't have been better handled (or other things), but it hardly warrants this framing of "porn being evil". He also talks about a sexual extortion case in the same breath as porn, and while of course, that is a dreadful crime, that case also has nothing to do with porn (or these platforms). It is just there to try to implicitly conflate these things together. The perpetrator has also since been convicted for this crime.

Then, again, he mentions a case of sextortion, even though it is not relevant. In one case, which does involve "Pornhub", the plaintiff admits that she "doesn't know if the content was removed". Also, while it is claimed that Mindgeek does "not do enough" in one particular lawsuit, this sounds like a bog statement someone would put in when trying to claim damages from a company, and it doesn't say much in and of itself. In any case, it only tells us what one particular company might have done in the past, and it is again, immaterial to the point being made here.

"Various options for age verification, such as ID documents and video selfies" The proposed methods in the article are clearly extremely intrusive. They're also likely to have a chilling effect, and could even fuel more sextortion by providing more blackmail material for a criminal to leverage. It's not clear to me what the proposed "tool" ("age verification") has to do with any of these points, and it seems they're inserted simply to try to rile people up.

#canada

Sounds like an interesting idea, what do you think? (Though, I don't necessarily agree with this particular implementation, still it's an interesting discussion).

It's interesting that Thorn almost portrays themselves as a NGO when it comes to defending themselves from accusations of being a tech company (or an awful lot like one, at the very least), but then, there are these (weak) "corporate interests" arguments to avoid basic scrutiny of a highly contentious proposal. #chatcontrol

Additional context from @maxim at https://chaos.social/@maxim/111721090626489090 #chatcontrol #privacy

https://web.archive.org/web/20240109090402/https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/recommendation/en/179395

"The case concerned a request for public access to exchanges the Commission had with Thorn, an organisation which describes itself as an NGO, in the context of drafting a proposal for a Regulation on preventing and combatting child sexual abuse. The organisation has developed and sells tools for detecting child sexual abuse material.

The Commission gave access to a number of documents but refused to disclose (parts of) some documents saying that disclosure would undermine the commercial interests of the organisation.

The Ombudsman inspected the documents and found that the extent to which the Commission had refused access was unreasonable. The Ombudsman also noted that the Commission does not seem to have considered all elements that are relevant to assess whether there is an overriding public interest in disclosure. In light of this, the Ombudsman found that the Commission’s refusal of access constituted maladministration. She recommended that the Commission reconsider its decision with a view to giving significantly increased, if not full, public access to the documents at issue. In light of the related ongoing legislative procedure and the resulting time-sensitivity of this case, the Ombudsman urged the Commission to implement her recommendation swiftly."

#chatcontrol #privacy

https://libertyinvestigates.org.uk/articles/police-secretly-conducting-facial-recognition-searches-of-passport-database/

"Police forces have been secretly conducting hundreds of facial recognition searches using the UK’s database of 46 million British passport holders, it can be revealed.

Policing minister Chris Philp sparked fresh alarm among privacy campaigners at the Conservative Party conference in October when he announced plans to instruct officers to use passport photos to identify suspects in all burglaries, thefts and shoplifting, as part of a Home Office drive to increase police use of facial recognition.

However, Liberty Investigates can reveal the practice has been secretly taking place since at least 2019, according to a freedom of information (FOI) request – with searches dramatically ramping up in the months prior to Philp’s speech.

Data obtained from the Home Office shows forces searched the UK passport database – which contains the images of all 46 million British passport holders – using facial recognition technology more than 300 times in the first nine months of 2023. Forces have also carried out searches of the UK immigration database, which holds information on foreign nationals."

#privacy

https://web.archive.org/web/20240108091404/https://rm.coe.int/0900001680ad5b97 A case about prisoners being granted leave to attend the funerals of relatives.

There also appears to be an ECHR case against Russia for the "mysterious set of deaths" which seem to be happening to people who criticize the president.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240107132330/https://rm.coe.int/0900001680ad98ff Apparently, the indefinite retention of biometrics by police violates the European Convention on Human Rights (#ECHR). Yes, a British case, lol. #privacy

Someone seems to think VR is a new idea.

VR is not a new idea. It's an idea from the 90s which has been warmed up more recently.

For another 2023 highlight, there was the "metaverse". A "platform" which next to no one uses.

For whatever reason, government officials have some wild fantasy of censoring and controlling things, so they started imagining it up as some bigger than life thing. We saw it mentioned at CoE. We saw it mentioned at World Government Summit 2023, where it was described as some world shaking technology which will revolutionize countless fields. We also saw a would-be censor in a country I won't mention for now chasing it, along with a bunch of other highly speculative technologies, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). What's up with that?

If you have any inkling about UX though, it's not hard to understand why it won't takeover the world...

Now, it is hard to say it is absolutely useless, there are a few novel games which use VR headsets, perhaps, that'll go somewhere, although it also may not. However, this dream of having everyone run conferences or their lives out of the #metaverse is assuredly nonsense. The worst one being Facebook's metaverse which removes many of the positive benefits which someone might actually get out of the technology. Hell, it took an eternity for people to even get a bottom half to their bodies, and as is often the case, Mark Zuckerberg was ridiculed for being scared of sex.

We also saw concerns about privacy being voiced, likely largely stemming from Facebook's long history of... Not really being kind when it comes to privacy. Right now, the subject appears to have gone quiet for quite a number of months, which I suppose is probably a good thing. I also went into how bad faith actors were trying to conflate fictional content with reality*.

* https://qoto.org/@olives/111191543236620885

Hah, there are any number of things I could write a dive about. It would be absolutely exhausting to chase all of them though.