Olives @olives@qoto.org

Both the government and Big Tech have a part to play in censorship. If someone is expecting either to necessarily save them, then well, they are very misguided.

Heavy pressure to censor "support for Hamas" just leads to them turning the filters all the way up without the sort of nuance these people are asking for.

It goes without saying that this could quite literally get people killed (in fact, I think people underestimate the potential for privacy violations to lead to such outcomes).

https://reclaimthenet.org/russia-rolls-out-vpn-ban-nationwide
"The Russian government is employing an increasingly strict approach to manage and rein in the digital freedom its citizens have enjoyed in recent years by introducing a ban on VPN services."
#privacy

https://reclaimthenet.org/bc-withholds-liquor-license-retaliation-restaurant-asked-for-a-warrant
"The authorities in Canada’s British Columbia (BC) province have changed a restaurant’s liquor license as a form of punishment after a row over its refusal to automatically surrender all surveillance footage to the police, in the wake of shooting incidents in a nearby parking lot."

"“For a local business to insist that the RCMP get a warrant for information that they might have that could lead to an arrest is outrageous,” Stewart is quoted as telling the Canadian media.

And the mayor shared that the restaurant wanting to go through what turns out to be proper legal procedure (the RCMP had to go and get a warrant) was something he was struggling to comprehend."
Well, if someone asks for a warrant, they've got to provide a warrant, that is how it works. Good grief.
#canada #privacy

Banning sex robots or whatever they want to do is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard, and you have to wonder why someone is fixated on it, of all things.

https://edri.org/our-work/meta-must-act-stop-the-systematic-censorship-of-palestinian-voices/ You can thank the #DigitalServicesAct for this.

What pundits think platform moderation is about: Hate speech, abuse.

What it is actually about: You cursed in this video, how dare you. I don't like this piece of art. You said the word "sex". You said the word "dead". Spam.

"transparency" about how a moderation decision was made (i.e. was it an algorithm?) is probably nice but it is no substitute for a platform not censoring you.

It's interesting how Ylva claimed the "interim regulation" would "expire", if they did not pass her awful one, and the moment her efforts faltered, they rushed to pass a new "interim regulation". #chatcontrol

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/03/04/indiana-u-abandons-plan-spin-part-kinsey-institute
"The Indiana University Board of Trustees unanimously agreed Friday to jettison a controversial proposal to spin off part of the #Kinsey Institute as a nonprofit.

The proposal came after the Republican-dominated Indiana General Assembly passed a state budget in spring 2023 banning the historic sex research institute from receiving state funds."

"But faculty members publicly expressed fears that such a change might mean losing their affiliations with the institute and could threaten, among other things, the institute’s extensive sex, gender and erotica collections, which span more than 2,000 years of history."

https://reason.com/2024/03/06/after-17-years-the-feds-stop-trying-to-imprison-a-licensed-medical-marijuana-provider/
"Seventeen years ago, the federal government raided Charlie Lynch's medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay, California, and charged him with five drug felonies. Lynch, whose business complied with state and local regulations, has been fighting to stay out of prison ever since, and last month he finally won that battle.

The Department of Justice (DOJ), which had been insisting since the first iPhone was released that Lynch should be incarcerated for at least five years, suddenly agreed to a deal that will spare him that punishment and erase his criminal record."

What Nintendo seems to miss is that things like emulators have historically been tools someone uses to make it easier to, say, record / upload video footage, so they might actually be harming themselves by depriving themselves of publicity.