Notices by Nate Bartram (nateb@mastodon.thenewoil.org)

Europe: "Damn this Epstein shit is so bad, it just might collapse the British monarchy after 1,000 years."

America: "The Dow is over 50,000 right now."

"Parents should just parent" as a response to ID verification laws is the privacy version of telling people to stop using plastic straws to fix the microplastics problem. It shifts blame away from the real culprits who are doing the overwhelming majority of the damage by a wide margin and instead vilifies the individuals who - while maybe not perfect - are generally trying their best and already overwhelmed, stretched thin on resources, and out of their league.

Passing this story around today and everyone's going "what the actual fuck?" and it's making it so hard not to be that guy going "damn, I guess I wasn't just being a wet blanket when I've been telling y'all for years that Meta is straight-up cartoon-villain-style fucking evil and we should do something about it."

In an internal document reviewed by The Times, Meta says it will launch the feature “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

https://www.theverge.com/tech/878725/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses-name-tag-privacy-advoates

mfers out here talking big game about toppling capitalism and they're not even willing to find a new bar once the Nazis take over.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/22/pews-latest-social-media-report-shows-xs-staying-power-in-the-u-s-despite-competition/

@djsumdog Respectfully, can we as a community stop calling everything "spyware"? It's really dramatic and it takes out the level of concern people should have when we talk about ACTUAL spyware like Pegasus or those spouse-stalkerware apps.

I shit on Mozilla as much as the next person who has a brain, but this level of teenage melodrama really isn't doing us any favors.

Here's a better way to disable it:

1. Switch to Brave or Firefox (w/uBlock Origin)
2. Switch to a different search engine (The New Oil lists several great choices)

I mean, I appreciate the harm reduction, but honestly there's literally no reason to keep using Chrome or Google Search at this point. Zero. All the upsides can be replicated elsewhere.

https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/115089902374383721

After many, many years, I've added a second wish to my list of things I'd like to happen when I die.

I want my tombstone to read

"Here lies Nate.

He hated Samsung. Like, a lot."

I'm not joking.

@warmbeverageenjoyer @picofarad "Worse"? Not really. "Easy to pick on"? Loads.

I'm planning a loose blog post in the coming weeks, but the general gist:
- Phones get hacked in the exact same way multiple years in a row
- Shoddy cybersecurity
- Phones are made to break (worse than most companies)

@tek I mean, fair. Sometimes it truly is a "fallacy." I would LOVE for you to be right. But I personally would prefer not to put ourselves in a position to find out. We're fucking around, as the saying goes.

@drakenblackknight @tek Schumer's daughter is the least of my worries. Big Tech outlobbies Big Pharma even. They might even be the worst offender. Nothing useful is getting past until we oust those fuckers, nepotism be damned.

@tek It's called a slippery slope for a reason. You and I both agree that the incoming administration is a threat to freedom. Why stop at banning adversarial apps? Why not apps that can be used to access adversarial apps? Why not apps that "go dark" and inhibit proper dispensing of "justice" and "rule of law"?

@tek Valid points, and worthy of action for sure. I'm still worried about this for the fact that it sets a dangerous precedent. I worry this was killing a fly with a sledge hammer (as the quote loosely goes) and I especially worry about the precedent it sets. What other apps can we ban? Notesnook is Iranian. Cryptee is Estonian. Tuta is German, Proton is Swiss, Mullvad is Swedish.

Dangerous shit we're wading into. This wasn't the right solution, IMO.

@tek This isn't a botnet. This is a social media app that doesn't do anything more invasive than Meta or Amazon, who are not only allowed to operate freely, but were actually carved out in the law to provide exceptions for them. Meta & Amazon (and others) do EXACTLY the same level of privacy invasion. The issue isn't the app, it's our lack of privacy regulations. Salt Typhoon proved this: it doesn't matter where the company is from, the data is vulnerable. (1/2)

@tek Furthermore, much of the US is already banning porn. There is a clear trend toward censorship in this country. What's next? Banning VPNs cause they can be used to access porn (and theoretically TikTok, though I've been unable to prove that)? It's a slippery slope. Plus there's legal precedent: code is speech. PGP. We can't ban code.

I agree TikTok presents legitimate threats worth discussion. I don't think this was the right solution.

@tek This might be the first thing you and I disagree on, sir. While I agree TikTok does have legitimate concerns, I fear for the slippery slope precedent this sets.

@tek When I lived in Cali my friends and family would text me every time there was an earthquake anywhere. "You okay?" "That was literally 3 hours away from me. But thank you for the concern."

@tim @evacide It's not sarcasm. Just saying, I know there's a difference, and the fact that expert witnesses get paid is alarming. I mean, I guess there's an argument to be made that someone is taking time out of their day and you're compensating them accordingly but... I dunno. That same argument could be made for the jury (I got $20 for a whole day last time, that's definitely not my going rate) or the defendant or anybody, really.

@tim @evacide Oh I know the difference.

@evacide Witnesses get paid? This seems like an ethical conflict...