Notices by evacide (evacide@hachyderm.io)

If you hear a scream across the internet right now, it is the sound I am making while reading the Internet Archive v. Hachette Books appeal, which IA has lost: https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-books-case-appeal/

I am waiting on analysis from Brazilian lawyers before I weigh in on how legal Brazilian court's decision to block X is, but I can safely say that the fines for individual users accessing the site over a VPN are crazypants.

Signal is good, this interview is good, and this photographer is good because they made Meredith look like PJ Harvey.

https://www.wired.com/story/meredith-whittaker-signal/

Because we are talking about crypto import controls, someone on another one of the socials has decided that this is a good time to mansplain the Wassenaar Arrangement to me like I don't have a permanent Wassenaar-related eye twitch from 2013.

Reading through the French prosecutor's press release re: Pavel Durov and Telegram, it's still not clear what is going on, but the last three items are a big red flag.

My dudes, Telegram is not an e2e messaging app like Signal or WhatsApp. Telegram is more like Twitter. It is a social media app that is mostly public content that also happens to have DMs, where you can turn on e2e messaging with questionable cryptography that most people never even bother to use.

@petrillic I would absolutely fly to the other side of the planet to shriek profanities for 45 minutes, but if I'm doing that, I would like the people paying for me to speak to know what's coming.

I'm just a girl, standing in front of Mastodon, begging its users to stop giving me advice I have not explicitly asked for.

I have been invited to keynote an international conference and they have asked me to talk about AI. I have responded by asking them how much swearing is allowed in a keynote.

Full points to the survivors who do this because they feel that no one should have to suffer like they suffered. And full points to the (usually) guys bringing that Tim Walz "this is just wrong so I'm going to fight it" energy to this space.

Every woman I know who does tech support for survivors of domestic abuse does it because she is a survivor. Every man I know who does this work does it because they've seen someone abused and they were moved to do something about it.

This is your regular reminder that Google spent billions of dollars a year making their search engine the default while Google search results became increasingly tainted, nonsensical, and useless.

Court rules that Google illegally monopolized the online search and advertising markets for 10+ years.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/doj-states-win-google-search-191541412.html

@brettglass If Google has been controlling what I do and do not work on at EFF for the last 15 years, they are doing it via secret mind control. If I wanted to lobby for Google, I would do it by working for Google and making a much higher salary.

@brettglass Big if true. What percentage of EFF's budget would have to be made up of donations from Google to qualify us as "Google shills?"

If you see any issue and you're wondering why EFF hasn't spoken up about it:

1. It is not an EFF issue at all.

2. You just missed the blog post and/or press quotes.

3. We have had six meetings about it and now ten people are simultaneously working on a messy blog post trying to capture the nuance of our position.

@brettglass So, what percentage of EFF's budget would have to be donated by Google in order to turn the org into a Google shill? What much is "quite substantial?" Like, 60% of the budget? 50% of the budget? 30% of the budget? EFF's annual reports and financial statements are readily available on the website right here: https://www.eff.org/about/annual-reports-and-financials

One important thing to know about malignant narcissists and authoritarians (and there is so much overlap that the Venn diagram is practically one big circle) is that no amount of complicity will save you. They will always turn on you. It is only a matter of time.

Just in case you're wondering why we need regulation to control the data broker market ASAP, here's the FBI circumventing the courts by buying data from the commercial sector.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy3z9a/fbi-bought-netflow-data-team-cymru-contract

@bojanland If I thought that it wasn't worthwhile to fight authoritarianism just because abuses happen everywhere, I would have a different job.