Olives @olives@qoto.org

Germany might be getting rid of NetzDG in the end, although only because the E.U. pushed them to. I think the replacement also has a problem with censorship.

Germany is not and was never a progressive country.

From rebranding criminals to "crazy people" to violate their human rights in horrifying ways to politicians being treated as if they're rational, despite them being more than happy to jump onto "won't anyone please of the children?" ideas, even if clearly harmful to censorship regimes where 99% of the content removed is lawful to a weird bureaucrat deciding he hated porn and decided to censor that for a couple of years.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/sep/01/germany-economy-problem-analogue-industries When I think of Germany and technology, the first thing that comes to mind is bureaucracy and over-regulation.

You might have to contact your lawmakers again (in the E.U.) to tell them you don't approve of chat control.

https://www.soscisurvey.de/prostasia/
An immediate concern I have about this study is that they appear to be targeting a website which runs ads to dissuade people against abuse and related things (which could create a skew where criminals are over-represented in a sample).

Said website also has a strong clinical leaning, and is clearly targeted at people with mental health issues. This could also create a skew.

They don't appear to use images of real people.

https://nichegamer.com/cozy-camper-game-outbound-passes-all-stretch-goals-on-kickstarter/
"Outbound is a cozy camper-van exploration and crafting game. There is a focus on sustainability. The game takes place in the near future where humans have managed to defeat climate change and pollution. Everyone lives sustainably. Wind farms can be spotted in the released footage, and there is no coal or oil mining."
While I don't think that every game has to be like this, it is an interesting idea.

Contrary to what you might think, Sydney is not the capital of Australia, that would be Canberra.

A weirdo from New South Wales (it's the state in Australia where Sydney is located) was throwing a tantrum because his colleagues don't seem to like him dehumanizing broad groups of people.

Apart from going over science about how porn is not spooky, I also go into how stigma is harmful in this piece I'm working on. #auspol

Australian PM accused of being anti-LGBT for refusing to add questions related to that to the census (before going back on that decision).

I think that with questions like that, there should probably be an option for someone to leave it blank or something. I don't have other thoughts on that right now, it's also just a thought, maybe they already plan to do that.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20539517241252129
"Mandatory age verification for pornography access: Why it can't and won't ‘save the children’"
Interesting piece.

I'm not going to write a dedicated post just because a fringe (and increasingly fringe) weirdo from NSW has a weird dislike for porn.

Instead, I will point to my previous posts.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/28/taiwan-china-same-sex-gay-marriage-rules Also seems to require someone to carry out cross-strait marriages in mainland China where they might be arrested for things like arguing that Taiwan should be independent.

If you are in a conversation with me, please don't say really vague things to me, and expect me to figure out what you are talking about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States By the way, computer code is speech protected by the First Amendment.

It's fascinating seeing people writing about how moderators should not review hits for some (flaky) algorithm and to instead immediately report someone to the police. This is a bad idea which pops up quite a few times.

Remember that "safety by design" *does not mean anything*. Someone can't objectively point to something and say that that is the "right" or "wrong" thing to do, and it would probably be impossible to, because moderation and the like are inherently subjective.

It is more a form of political rhetoric. In fact, I think that things like this are a *distraction* and lower the quality of the discourse.

It operates a lot like a company (also, Ashton owns AI stock and they push a strong techno-solutionist view, even when it comes off as ridiculous / is irrelevant).

https://reason.com/2017/02/15/ashton-kutcher-plays-sex-worker-savior/ Remember that Thorn is a company which has a history of making things up to promote themselves (their "products" appear to be of questionable quality).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemisms_for_Internet_censorship_in_China "harmonizing" Ironically, one of the euphemisms which someone used when advocating for censorship was the very same euphemism which is used for censorship in China.