If the US were even slightly interested in democracy, this would have passed by now: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/s2261
I claim to know something about computers, and I approve this message: https://xkcd.com/2030/
Alex Jones vs. Facebook, and the question of free speech in privately owned public forums: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/08/size-matters.html
Glenn Greenwald tweeting about the #AlexJones banishment/#censorship from social media
(2018.08.08)
Β» https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1027184485870305282
Β» https://twitter.com/ggreenwald
Corey Doctorow has some important points on the Defense Distributed case: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/07/hard-cases-bad-law.html
And Mozilla continues their crusade to break the web: https://blog.ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2018/08/04/mozillas-new-dns-resolution-is-dangerous/
"You cannot base a public good on a normalised systemic violation of human rights." https://ar.al/2018/07/30/out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire/ by @aral
Alastair Reynolds "Revelation Space" series is proof that while scientific plausibility drastically improves science fiction, no amount of it can fix an incoherent plot driven by incompetent, irrational, and utterly insane characters.
"Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money"
is a headline definitely proving how platform capitalism has ruined society
Problems we are having with #Signal:
* It is and will remain centralized (clear strategy of *not* federating servers)
* It requires strong identifiers/selectors (phone#) to use
* Author disallows distribution by anyone but Google, although free/libre
* It keeps pushing away verification of fingerprint in interface
* It relies on Google+Amazon infrastructure
* Its funding is shady (OTF = Radio Free Asia = USG)
= clearly unethical choices, unjustifiable by accessibility or technological reasons.
Facebook has been omnipresent this week, and Zuckerberg asking forgiveness from wise old men of Congress is a distant memory.
These bits stand out:
- FB applies to patent a face recognition system that ranks you matching your social media activity with your buyer profile in shops.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/technology/facebook-facial-recognition-privacy.html
- FB prepares to launch its own satellites
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-confirms-its-working-on-new-internet-satellite/
- Zuckerberg says it's not for FB's to do anything about "Holocaust deniers" (euphemism for Nazis)
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44883743
@kristina This thing: https://www.maslowcnc.com/
Here's a talk discussing the weird, procedurally generated child-targeted content on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w
The speaker is almost certainly right that this content isn't especially good for kids. But, he seems to think this is a problem that can be solved through politics and setting social norms.
I doubt it. A better plan is to just avoid feeding your children's souls to the ad demon.
Here's an explorer for the Russian #facebook ads trying to promote US factionalism for the past couple years:
Computer voting machines are a horrible mistake even if the vendors are vaguely competent and honest. The vendors are both incompetent *and* malicious.
Interesting paper on people evaluating threats: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6396/1465
#facebook Marketers (and thus, anyone) get to access private group member lists. https://boingboing.net/2018/07/12/facebook-allowed-third-party-m.html
