nothing like voting day in your home town to really put life into perspective. :))
happy to see that, at this point in time, more people voted in both the local elections and the elections for the EU parliament, in #romania, than in the previous elections. really hope we set a new maximum in both.
Proud of this one: published an article on #security threats to digital rights, and mythbusting around #antivirus software and #vpns
I got a lil' ambitious with this one! :)) Wanted to make it clear that the threats to our human rights hinge just as much on technology as on the political context at any given moment.
i caught myself thinking, this weekend, that there was a interesting idea i wanted to express over here. and then, i caught myself thinking "oh, nobody reads this in the weekend". as though i was doing some sort of outreach / social media work / as though the "numbers" mattered. i wish i could scrub this "intuition" from my brain entirely. this is how the focus mindset poisons our minds and our interactions. :( sometimes i am in awe of just how much stuff i disagree with lives under my skin
"Whenever a work calls attention to itself as are that means that the fact that it is being observed is part of the work which makes the viewer an explicit participant in the art.
[...]
When advertisers break the fourth wall, instead of asking us to disengage and think more critically, instead since meta-textuality makes the observer part of the art this actually reinforces our role as passive subjects who contribute purely through consumption."
Pro-Palestinian protests in Romania have been met with hostility and control from the police forces.
From banning banners with slogans that do not infringe on rights, and neither do they incite to violence, to harassing protesters, to summoning people who intended to protest to the police station for "friendly advice", we see Ro police taking sides. The side of genocide.
My rabbit-hole of the day: I was taking about Neon Genesis Evangelion and someone introduced me to an April Fool's video on Philosophy Tube (<3) about anime: https://youtu.be/e8MbwOfS6kA?si=lh_XVGpqkOQYf0V0 .
The Romanian Ministry of Digitalization released a form that people can use to report malicious #deepfake materials. What counts as malicious? Fraud, propaganda, disinformation.
The Ministry doesn't have any competence to decide what propaganda & disinformation is. The end result may be that legitimate speech gets classified as malicious, or that truly harmful speech gets classified as legit. Both are dangerous.
There could be a collaboration (and knowledge sharing) between Gov. & civic society & academia, under the #DSA. But the Ro #DSC is adamant in not reaching out and involving these sectors. We also don't know which ones the competent authorities are. 3/4
Last but not least, there is no transparency, nor feedback.
A user doesn't find out whether the content they reported was forwarded to the adequate VLOP. We don't even get to know how many reports the Ministry processed, who they forwarded the reports to and whether action was taken to remove the content.
The form asks citizens to provide an e-mail address, but doesn't mention why, doesn't indicate what it will be used for (hello, #GDPR).
Google announced client-side scanning for Android. I don't think there's any point in calling it otherwise, or discussing the alleged "usefulness" of this technical implementation.
@Mer__edith very aptly reminded, in her reaction, that the AI-powered scanning is proprietary and it's within Google's discretion what type of communication is flagged as problematic. Scams, today. What next? Reproductive rights? Labour organizing?
"Georgian MPs approved controversial plans to brand hundreds of NGOs and media outlets as foreign agents on Tuesday, paving the way for the bill to become law despite growing domestic dissent and condemnation from the U.S. and EU."
Reminder: this law mandates that newsrooms & NGOs with more than 20% of their funding coming from outside the country declare themselves "foreign agents".
There have been constant protests, police brutality and intimidation.
i'm learning to sew using a sewing machine. i have two second-hand sewing machines.
stuff breaks and threads jam and half the time i don't know if i did something wrong or the machine did something wrong.
it's tempting to quit. it's also tempting to think a new machine will fix all the problems. the "parent" in my head is trying to soothe me into being patient with the machines and with my learning process.
and then the catgirl in my head just wants to make a mess.
Journalists and activists are being intimidated, as are their families. They see their own faces on posters under the message "no place for agents in Georgia". And it's not just them who are treated with such brutality - protesters have also seen their faces on such posters.
Here's the part where it gets really dystopian (I'm quoting from the OCCRP article):
Speaker of the Georgian Parliament Shalva Papuashvili announced that the Political Council of Georgian Dream has decided to create a database containing information on all individuals “who are involved in violence, blackmail, threats and other illegal acts,” or “who publicly endorse these actions,” referring to the protesters.
This is what we will all get if we tolerate intolerance.
"Google has removed two websites providing “DIY” hormone replacement therapy used in gender-affirming care from search results at the request of the UK government, according to legal letters viewed by 404 Media."
"Both sites were temporarily offline after their domain registrar received letters [...] asking them to suspend their domain names". The registrars are Namecheap and NiceNIC.
OpenAI has partnered with StackOverflow to use the content on the site to train ChatGPT. Some users who have posted highly-rated answers have tried to either delete or edit them. But they noticed that the moderators changed their edits back and their old answers re-appeared. Then the moderators banned them for 7 days.
Oh and while we're on the subject, Valve also removed the ban on AI-generated art on Steam.
Anything we put up in these walled gardens will be monetized.
@catileptic@Paxxi this has been their MO since day 1. Years ago I tried to delete all my content and they ended up restoring it and banning me. SO deserves what they get.
It's especially important since the only other time I hear people defending cash is when they fear a take-over from a shady, world-wide organization. And it's not that they want freedom, but they want another shady, world-wide organization to not lose its foothold.
@zdl There are a ton of different ways people regularly use non-digital payment systems.
Cash is just the only one you can use in lieu of trust, because physically handing over those coins or notes finalizes the transaction.
Which, given the size and diversity of the population we tend to interact with on a regular basis, seems to be the only way we can go about our ways without worrying too deeply about whether we'll get screwed over.
@zdl So, yes, I mean... fix society. Fix the financial system. Find me a cash-free payment system that isn't going to require trust in a third party with the power to screw me.
All great things, but also not in immediate reach.