Digital Freedom

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, has been quick to dismiss reports of declining Twitter traffic, one reason to block links to a rival, asserting that the site’s usage has been on the rise. “Don’t want to leave you hanging by a thread…but Twitter, you really outdid yourselves! Last week we had our largest usage day since February,” Yaccarino tweeted. “There’s only ONE Twitter. You know it. I know it.” The censorship comes despite Elon Musk’s self-proclaimed status as a “free speech absolutist.”

A proposed law in Massachusetts promises to put a dent in the data brokerage industry by banning the sale of cellular location data. Suffice it to say, it would be really awesome if the bill passes.

The Meta platforms are examples of how your data is abused and stolen even if you have no account with these platforms. Though Meta is not the only one doing this, we will show in Zuck's own words, what they really do to create massive identify databases of people in the world, including those without an account. Fortunately, for their legal protection, Zuck states clearly what they do with your data when you're on their platforms.

So knowing this, some of you still flock to Meta platforms including the new Threads (Twitter clone)? Once you enter Zuck's domain, there will be no escape.

100% agree. Let FISA expire as a small step towards returning our digital freedom

Reforms will not prevent abuse.

FISA Section 702 should never be renewed.

Meanwhile, the decentralized platform Mastodon, which has been running since 2016, continues to challenge the status quo. Its open-source model enables user control over data and privacy, providing an alternative to mainstream social media monopolies. Mastodon saw a big surge in users last year as Elon Musk took control of Twitter—a move that was wildly unpopular with a subset of users.

Another decentralized contender is BlueSky, a brainchild of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Still in its nascent ‘invite-only’ stage, BlueSky already has a whopping 1.2 million potential users on its waitlist, a testament to its potential to disrupt the social media landscape.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/183014

“I know that all of the kids who are also being pushed to [take part in the transgender] trend definitely think they’re 100% right and that it wasn’t caused by TikTok, because that’s how I felt, too,” Eskridge acknowledged.

“But I’d say maybe 1% of the trans teens on TikTok are actually trans,” she claimed without evidence. “The rest, influenced.”

Her parents, Sean and Darcy, told SWNS that they were doubtful that Eskridge — a lifelong “girly-girl” — was, in fact, transgender. However, they supported her decision to live as a male.

“She told us she was trans. It was after COVID, and she was at home a lot,” said Darcy, a secretary. “She started spending too much time on TikTok, watching influencers who were saying how they went through the same thing [and] how they had transitioned and it made them happy.

“We questioned Ash and pushed back,” the mother continued. “We told her we would accept her for who she is but how we didn’t feel this was the right path for her.”

And while Eskridge understood her parents’ concerns, she elected to proceed with the gender swap.

“My family [was] very confused,” said the youth.

“My life had been really girly and I never showed any dislike of being a girl,” Eskridge admitted. “They were very supportive of me, but they never thought it was right for me, but they stood by me regardless.”

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/181211

The Unraveling of the Censorship Hegemon https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-unraveling-of-the-censorship-hegemon_5376001.html

Old habits die hard

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission and banking regulators are trying to dismantle this budding industry, brandishing lawsuits and an intimidating array of regulatory measures designed to make compliance impossible.

Crypto’s fighting chance is embedded within the very words and legal principles put forth by America’s founders in the Constitution. They designed the Constitution on the principle of the separation of powers inspired by the Enlightenment. Their vision was of a system with three separate but coequal branches of government, each acting as a safeguard against the potential abuse of power by the others.

The framers of the Constitution left us an arsenal of tools to wage a revolution for freedom within the design of the U.S. Constitution. Legal scholars and constitutionalists, including Gorsuch, are reviving the founders’ vision of a delicate balance of power among the three branches with the major questions doctrine.

Crypto defendants, such as Coinbase, Ripple and Binance, are pioneering a revolution of their own. They are at the forefront of a movement aiming to decentralize power, shifting it from centralized institutions to the hands of individuals. In their struggle, they are armed with the very same tools our founders used to shape this nation.

There’s a striking parallel between our founders’ fight for political freedom and the current struggle for financial freedom in the digital realm. The underpinnings of both these movements are deeply rooted in a quest for autonomy and liberty.

The bill allows the geolocation of crime suspects, covering other devices like laptops, cars and connected devices, just as it could be remotely activated to record sound and images of people suspected of terror offences, as well as delinquency and organised crime.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/180528

As a precautionary measure, Exploding Heads has added threads.net to its block list.

I like a lot of other users, was concerned about data harvesting and privacy implications of federating with Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp/Threads.

But actions taken yesterday by Threads convinced me there was no upside for Exploding Heads allowing threads.net to federate with us:

• censoring content - how much Exploding Heads content would they let Threads users see.
• discouraging users from following certain users - would Threads users really be allowed to follow Exploding Heads content or would it be a one way street where Threads pump propaganda into Exploding Heads.

As you know defederating runs against the grain here at Exploding Heads, but I think this is the best decision till Threads proves (and demonstrates by its actions) the above concerns are unfounded.

There are lots of Lemmy instances that will allow threads.net to federate, do you have a choice if that is important to you.

Thank you for your understanding.

When you want to watch videos on your phone, you're probably using an app whose dual role behind the scenes is to gather as much information about you as it can. It observes all of your actions, and adds all this information to a database about you that it shares with thousands of other companies.

Why not use a more private video-streaming app?

In this video we explore alternatives, and explain how each works

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/179328

Threads flashed a warning after users clicked on Utley and O’Hanley’s profiles. “Are you sure you want to follow…?” asked the Threads warning. “This account has repeatedly posted false information.”

The app, which requires an Instagram account for signup, has seen a rapid influx of users since its launch, boasting of 10 million users in about seven hours. However, the platform’s unique account deletion policy has raised eyebrows among its user base.

In a ‘Supplemental Privacy Policy,’ Facebook explains, “You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account.” The company further elaborates that a Threads profile is part of the user’s Instagram account, hence the linked deletion policy.

The discovery of this stipulation has surprised many users. One user, Emily Hughes, took to Twitter to express her surprise, saying, “I deactivated my threads account already but it turns out you can’t delete your threads account without also deleting your Instagram account so maybe just don’t sign up!”

“At no point did ChatGPT reproduce any of the copyright management information Plaintiffs included with their published works,”

I have zero sympathy for Big Tech.

They have behaved like tyrants at the expense of free people.

They need to be broken up.

Laws giving them special protections need to be removed.

Govt and Govt funded organizations should not be allowed to spend money with social media companies.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/176668

He showed me one example of an ad on TikTok, and within minutes of looking for myself, I found more than a dozen ads that were blatantly advertising smuggling jobs for the cartel. As I was engaging with these ads, I realized one had an information label from TikTok that read: “Participating in this activity could result in you or others getting hurt.

As Hansen writes, the video below is classic example of the human smuggling utilized by the cartels. It also shows how to smuggle illegal aliens past border patrol, chats between the smuggler and the organizer, and then the reward that comes after.

Screenshots of the app, which is available for pre-download on the App Store, shows it will collect data on users’ health & fitness, financial information, contact information, user content, browsing history, usage data, diagnostics, purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers, sensitive info, and more.

This ruling paves the way for Germany’s leading antitrust enforcer, the Bundeskartellamt, to restrict Meta from combining user data collected across its various platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, as well as from external websites and apps, without explicit user consent.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/tech/t/133049

An update to Google's privacy policy suggests that the entire public internet is fair game for it's AI projects. If Google can read your words, assume they belong to the company now, and expect that they’re nesting somewhere in the bowels of a chatbot.