Olives

It is also worth considering whether what someone has a problem with is a particular form of content, or some other conduct which can be independently punished (and often, one doesn't presume the other, and consequently, could be bad for due process and lead to innocent people being punished for the behaviors of other people).

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Olives

I covered each point to get the gist of the law across (because I've seen quite a bit of nonsense in that area), not to make a point about the frequency of each particular point. Or relevance to any particular site / person.

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Olives

"fictional children"

If I've said this once, I've said it a thousand times. If it's porn involving someone who "doesn't exist" (i.e. a fictional character), then it is generally protected by the First Amendment (there is also no scientific basis for prohibitions as I establish there, * also applies).

Typically, the law here follows the doctrine of the "fruit of the poisonous tree", so one theory for prohibiting "actual child porn" involves an actual minor actually being abused to produce it.

There is also a privacy like theory where if something deliberately looks like an actual minor, then that is grounds for someone being held personally liable.

The doctrine of the "fruit of the poisonous fruit" also applies to searches under the Fourth Amendment where if evidence originates from an illegal search then the evidence itself is considered tainted.

Also, keep in mind, that concepts like "child-like" can be notoriously fuzzy, and it's not in anyone's best interests for such a subjective call to be made.

* qoto.org/@olives/1118889463563
QT: qoto.org/@olives/1115160112466

Olives  
Ugh... There's more puritanical nonsense, so it looks like I have to debunk that again... First off, even if online porn "might" be "problematic" t...
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Olives

I'm considering rewriting one of my threads, as the original was actually fairly impromptu (and involved a bit of pasting to deal with a particular situation, lol). I'm also seeing a very stupid argument which keeps coming up and I'd like to deal with it.

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Olives

I see Australian spies are apparently using that stabbing attack or something as an opportunity to attack encryption with vague threats of terrorism.

Breaking encryption would still be a bad idea though.

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Olives

A KYC scheme for using a cloud hosting service (as the U.S. Department of Commerce is proposing) is ridiculous.

1) In many cases, these "cloud hosting servers" will already take a credit card, or some other thing which can be tracked down to someone.

2) This creates another spot where someone might be breached.

3) It is bad for privacy (and by extension, probably free expression).

4) Even trials are affected, which is actually pretty bizarre, which makes it hard to evaluate a product without giving them your personal info.

5) In many cases, they probably already take someone's personal info.

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Olives

A KYC scheme for using a cloud hosting service is ridiculous.

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Olives

A few tell me that Elon's social network has suspended "WholesomeOrenji". Supposedly for edgy jokes, and for criticizing harassers. Or it could have been a really crappy moderation processes, likely involving algorithms.

When he said he would "err on the side of taking content down" (a using a weaksauce example), he really seems to have let himself go, hasn't he?

In general... No. Erring on the side of taking content down is not appropriate (particularly at scale and especially uncritically). It is far less appropriate than it already wasn't when someone goes absolutely crazy doing so for theatrics.

It is also far worse than even the previous ever was, and it is not as if we ever sang praises to their high regard for free expression. So much for being a absolutist".

I don't have a particular opinion on how much funding should, or shouldn't go towards any particular function of a social network. Not behaving like a clown site though, should be a absolute bare minimum. Thank you.

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Olives

netzpolitik.org/2024/mastodon- E.U. Institutions to exit the fediverse in May after pilot because no one wants to run the servers, lol.

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Olives

Fairly important Australian Government consultation. If you don't like censorship, you might be interested (i.e. of sexual expression, censorship of titles which contain "drugs").
QT: qoto.org/@olives/1122637219951

Olives  
https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/have-your-say/modernising-australias-national-classification-scheme-stage-2-reforms Ever been irritated by petty ...
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Olives boosted
Olives

infrastructure.gov.au/have-you
Ever been irritated by petty Australian Government censorship[1]? Well, the Australian Government is running a consultation on that. You have a chance to have a say on the matter.

If there are other areas of censorship which you'd like addressed, you can tackle those as well. I am simply covering in this post what comes to mind for me. The two main ones being the particular brand of puritanism which the government has sometimes had, and the irrational fear of games containing "drugs and alcohol" (even going as far as banning these entirely at times). There was also a game which was censored which appeared to allow players to perform drone strikes on tanks, perhaps due to fears of this seeming too similar to the situation in Ukraine (the precise classification appeared to be "criminal instructions" or something to that effect).

While what is happening to the folks from Ukraine is most despicable, and war more generally is tragic, I don't think there is any justification for this sort of censorship. There should be a strong presumption against censoring fictional content in general.

For violence, animated violence should probably be rated a bit to somewhat lower than more realistic violence. It doesn't make a lot of sense to treat these the same (unless the rating is low enough that it doesn't matter).

For sexual content, I have a couple of recommendations here:

1) If it involves a fictional character who doesn't exist (i.e. / manga), there shouldn't ever be a reason to issue a RC rating. At most, maybe a R18 rating. A lower degree of eroticism or nudity (not really porn) might be present in anime and I think any rating should avoid rating that highly. It doesn't matter what the fictional character looks like.

I feel that muddling reality and fiction here really diminishes the seriousness of things like abuse. There also isn't a scientific basis for that sort of censorship, [2] goes into that (and other related matters). Some sort of sex education (perhaps around respecting someone's boundaries) might be better than relying on crude censorship which does not appear to be effective (and has harmful drawbacks of it's own, including even a harmful "War on Drugs" type phenomena when taken to an extreme).

2) For content containing real human actors, as a rule of thumb, if the content is produced with the (obviously adult) actor's consent, it should be permitted. If there is to be any limitation, it should involve an objective standard of serious physical harm, rather than the remote possibility that someone might be offended by the content. You also have to be wary of the Board construing this far too broadly though by deciding that a very mundane activity might have a remote possibility of physical harm. They've done this in the past (as has the British one).

Neither of these two recommendations mean that every site has to carry every possible kind of content.

As a rule of thumb, you might want online content to be treated far more liberally than content to be broadcasted on TV. If you're not careful, they might try to impose stricter TV standards outside of that context, despite them being inappropriate. I don't think that is what people would expect. Online, in particular, tends to be more oriented around curating your own experience, than relying on a broad brush one-size-fits-all solution.

In regards to the government wanting higher classifications for "simulated gambling", I'd be wary of construing terms like simulated gambling very broadly and assuming any game which contains it is primarily focused on gambling (or contains things like loot boxes). As an example, classic Pokémon games had a building in one city which had gambling machines. These elements made up a tiny portion of the game and the vast majority of gameplay does not involve these.

1 refused-classification.com Many examples of petty censorship (even containing dramatic sounding excuses for what is essentially mundane everyday content).

2 qoto.org/@olives/1118889463563

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Olives

meta.com/experiences/787654322 Australia appears to have* banned this tag game. As for why, who knows.

* refused-classification.com/cen

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Olives

reason.com/volokh/2024/04/18/n A ridiculous and clearly unconstitutional idea.

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Olives

reason.com/2024/04/24/tennesse
"Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has quietly ended a fast-track clemency process for drug-free school zone offenders who were serving outdated sentences."

"The Tennessee Legislature passed a bill in 2020 reducing the size of these zones to 500 feet and requiring that the mandatory minimums be applied only if a defendant's conduct actually endangered children. But the new law was not retroactive, so hundreds of offenders were left to serve the remainder of their sentences."

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Olives

reason.com/2024/04/24/she-only Among very stupid ideas, there is this one from Florida... which probably makes crime worse.

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Olives

Interesting to see that NCMEC had to remove some clearly erroneous entries from their "child porn list". Unclear how many more there are.

They really should have some process for appealing appearing on this list.

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Olives

There really needs to be a channel for the admin to communicate through when the site is down. Maybe, an alt account. Maybe, a status page, even one on a different domain.

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Olives

play.google.com/store/apps/det Australia appears to have banned* this game about fruit. Presumably, that has something to do with it being rated as containing "sexual themes".

* refused-classification.com/cen

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Olives

Lots of instance errors.

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Olives

store.steampowered.com/app/205 Australia appears to have* banned a (deliberately provocative game) where you play as an evil doctor.

* refused-classification.com/cen

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