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Hey, wow, fake Mastodon moderators attempting to steal accounts, badly
I mean, it was kind of inevitable, but it’s also a mark of progress that there are scammers on Mastodon nowadays.
Fediverse reactions
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Section 230 is one of the only things preventing foreign countries from censoring Americans online … Proposing to repeal it, now, is completely insane
It seems like the regulators of all major nations are intent on killing the things which created their success
Fediverse reactions
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EU Court of Justice determines that data anonymisation “might work, but then again it might not”
It follows from the provisions of that regulation as interpreted in case-law that pseudonymisation may, depending on the circumstances of the case, effectively prevent persons other than the controller from identifying the data subject in such a way that, for them, the data subject is not or is no longer identifiable. In that context, the
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2023: Reminder: the FDA permits 9x as much rat faeces in food than there is likely abusive imagery in an AI image training set
A lesson in scale and what “one in a million” really means:
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“Somewhere only we know” plays on the car stereo, and for some reason I’m mentally dragged back…
…back to a green screen static Bourne shell running over a lashed-up null modem cable into an old Sun box serial port, trying to fsck enough of the filesystem to mount /usr so I can get the system to ping the network. Damn, I’m getting old. And this even predates the song.
Fediverse reactions
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“CAUTION: THIS CONTENT MAY CONTAIN NUTS” — Age Verification, Threat Models, Content Labelling, use of “NSFW” labels & Overblocking
I’ve spent weeks if not months attempting to explain to civil society organisations why the Online Safety Act victimises platforms — even large commercial platforms — and how the OSA makes it hard if not impossible for them to adopt age verification without massive negative consequences for their user. I think I have finally nailed
age verification allergies censorship nsfw ofcom online safety online safety act Porn reddit surveillance VPNFediverse reactions
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The OSA has created a market for information about circumventing state safety controls, just like in Iran, China, etc… except that we have free speech. The result will be a government war on information:
Age verification advocates in government warned they would be severely punishing any “platforms” that hinted using VPNs to circumvent age verification controls. They did not understand that third party publications would begin aggregating “Which”-style lists of “top 10 age verification circumvention-hassle tools”, advertising those lists everywhere as a resource/for clicks. So what are they going
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Update – We are in the process of restoring the matrix.org database from a backup | …REMEMBER, KIDS, JUST BECAUSE IT SAYS IT’S DECENTRALISED DOESN’T MEAN IT’S DISTRIBUTED
All forms of federated protocol are the worst bits of centralisation combined with the worst bits of distribution. https://status.matrix.org/
Fediverse reactions
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An age verification provider is potentially leaking information about people visiting pornographic websites
We observed that, despite claiming to offer “double anonymity” options (intended to hide user traffic), AgeGO collects the URL of the video the user attempts to watch … when users select the “Selfie” verification method, their webcam stream is transmitted directly to Amazon Web Services. Finally, through an unskippable page, AgeGO forces users to disclose
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Say these things sequentially: 1/ we want to protect users 2/ we want to force user data to proliferate amongst more companies
The Online Safety Act is bonkers. Forcing a sell-off of Chrome would be bonkers. Anupam Chandler:
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Age verification legislation is tanking traffic to sites that comply, and rewarding those that don’t | PC Gamer
Quelle: The Washington Post looked at the 90 most visited porn sites based on UK visitor data from Similarweb. Of the 90 total sites, 14 hadn’t yet deployed ‘scan your face’ age checks. The publication found that while traffic from British IP addresses to sites requiring age verification had cratered, the 14 sites without age
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House of Lords Business, 15 September @ 1430h : “WHY WON’T THE BRITISH PEOPLE LET US KEEP THEM SAFE FROM BAD THINGS ONLINE?” | @TimClementJone1
Lord Clement-Jones to ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the increased use of virtual private networks since the implementation of age verification requirements for access to primary priority content under the Online Safety Act 2023. https://lordsbusiness.parliament.uk/Documents/Download?documentId=6375&filename=HLBIZ%2020250901%28rev%29.pdf
age verification censorship free speech online safety online safety act surveillance totalitarianism VPNFediverse reactions