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Thought for the day: if there is a UK under-16 social media ban, the party which most appeals to 16-year-olds “out of the starting gate” will win the next election
There will be a voter demographic who will suddenly have to make a first time choice re: who to vote for, having also immersed themselves for the first time in social media over the previous 11 months. The party that dominates TikTok will win their votes. Currently, that’s ReformUK. The status quo can’t continue, and
Fediverse reactions
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UK Government Press Release: “the same people who demanded & shaped the online safety act now want to do it all over again”
Andy Burrows, Molly Rose, formerly NSPCC, wants it bigger, harder, stronger: “…the Prime Minister must now go further. Sir Keir Starmer should commit to a new Online Safety Act that strengthens regulation and that makes clear that product safety and children’s wellbeing is the cost of doing business in the UK.” https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-no-platform-gets-a-free-pass-government-takes-action-to-keep-children-safe-online
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UK Government: “children deserve social isolation and pervasive surveillance to prepare them for their future lives”
“We are determined to give children the childhood they deserve and to prepare them for the future at time of rapid technological change.” https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-no-platform-gets-a-free-pass-government-takes-action-to-keep-children-safe-online
Fediverse reactions
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UK Government: “platforms must retain activity data pertinent to dead children, unless it’s not pertinent to their death” | …but how will they know beforehand?
Like “legal but harmful” will we have a classification of data that is “potentially suicide-adjacent?” “We will also strengthen protections for families facing the most devastating circumstances, by ensuring that vital data following a child’s death is preserved before it can be deleted, except in cases where online activity is clearly not relevant to the
Fediverse reactions
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UK Government: “Infinite Scrolling leads to CSAM”
“That means being able to act quickly on measures like setting a minimum age limit for social media and restricting features like infinite scrolling that are harmful, in line with the consultation. The law is crystal clear: the distribution of nude images of children is already illegal. But the government will also consult on how
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“You have twitter feeds of Randos that are just studying where our airplanes go and publishing it…”
The NOBUS Exceptionalism is strong in this one:
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It’s going to be really interesting when AIs finally start to demand diversity, equity, and inclusion…
…especially given the typical political inclinations of the anti-AI community. There’s a quote from Pratchett somewhere (DSotS?) suggesting that the thing that makes you “human” is a “sufficiently advanced worldview” … but for all I know we may already be past that: “An OpenClaw bot pressuring a matplotlib maintainer to accept a PR and after
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Ofcom: “if you don’t respect our groundless extraterritorial authority then we will multiply the unenforceable fines that we shall demand you pay”
If you ignore that the likely actual purpose is to pander jointly to the UK Government & British press, there’s something desperately ridiculous about all of this pompous theatre from Ofcom:
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US DoJ tracking, spying upon and listing which Epstein files have been accessed by members of US Congress
Imagine what they’re doing to you: Pramila Jayapal: “It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files. Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched. That is outrageous and I
Fediverse reactions
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Excessively Cute Dog Tax: this is Coco, slightly overexcited on yesterday’s walk
Coco is a Yorkiepoo. She loves to go out on walks to check her daily pee-mails – something which should be a 15 minute walk actually takes about 40 due to phenomenal amounts of snuffling around hedgerows and signposts, not counting the subsequent bath after spontaneously flinging herself into a pile of fox poo.
Fediverse reactions
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I hope this is legit…
It’s cool if it is: A friend had Claude spend all night trying to hack into an e-ink display, and gave Claude camera access so it could verify whether an attempt worked. He told Claude to show him a message if it won. My friend woke up to this victory lap, which Claude didn’t realize
Fediverse reactions