A Chinese dissident died suddenly in B.C. This ex-spy who snooped on him says it may not have been an accident
A man who spent a decade and a half working as a Chinese spy has shared details of some of his missions with Radio-Canada, including what he knows about a Chinese dissident who died in B.C. in 2022.
"From 2008 to 2023, my real job was to work for China's secret police. It's a means for political repression," said "Eric," who was interviewed in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. "Its main targets are dissidents who criticize the Chinese Communist Party."
Eric shared a variety of documents — including financial records, secret money transfers and the names of spies — with journalists from the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, of which CBC/Radio-Canada is a partner.
For example, while on assignment in Cambodia, his cover was with the Prince Group, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate with interests in real estate and financial and consumer services. (The company did not reply to messages from Radio-Canada.)
In 2020, Eric said he was tasked with snooping on a dissident named Hua Yong, an artist and hardcore opponent of China's Communist Party who eventually ended up on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast.
(The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa did not reply to multiple messages about the details of this story, including an interview request.)
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Amnesty says India's review of location-tracking plan 'deeply concerning'
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/54563207
Amnesty says India's review of location-tracking plan 'deeply concerning'
Japan's JERA signs first long-term LNG export deal with India's Torrent Power
Japan's JERA signs first long-term LNG export deal with India's Torrent Power
NEW DELHI, Dec 8 : Japan's top power generator JERA has signed its first long-term liquefied natural gas export deal with India's Torrent Power to deliver 4 LNG cargoes annually for 10 years from 2027, the Japanese company said on Monday.CNA (Channel NewsAsia)
Japan's JERA signs first long-term LNG export deal with India's Torrent Power
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/54562953
Japan's JERA signs first long-term LNG export deal with India's Torrent Power
Japan's JERA signs first long-term LNG export deal with India's Torrent Power
NEW DELHI, Dec 8 : Japan's top power generator JERA has signed its first long-term liquefied natural gas export deal with India's Torrent Power to deliver 4 LNG cargoes annually for 10 years from 2027, the Japanese company said on Monday.CNA (Channel NewsAsia)
Japan pulls out of Vietnam nuclear project, complicating Hanoi's power plans
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/54562583
Japan pulls out of Vietnam nuclear project, complicating Hanoi's power plans
Cruise ship departure delayed by a day after bananas fall overboard
Cruise ship departure delayed by a day after bananas fall overboard
Eight of the containers were reported as carrying bananas, two as carrying plantain, one as carrying avocadosDan Haygarth (The Independent)
Watch out Europe, Trump is coming for your elections next
MAGA’s mission to meddle in European politics should terrify Starmer, Macron and Merz. Will any of them fight back?
Donald Trump has launched a crusade to convert European politics to his cause, mobilizing the full force of American diplomacy to promote “patriotic” parties, stamp on migration, destroy “censorship” and save “civilization” from decay.
The question is whether Europe’s embattled centrists have the power, or the will, to stop him.
In its newly released National Security Strategy document, the White House set out for the first time in a comprehensive form its approach to the geopolitical challenges facing the U.S. and the world.
While bringing peace to Ukraine gets a mention, when it comes to Europe, America’s official stance is now that its security depends on shifting the continent’s politics decisively to the right.
Watch out Europe, Trump is coming for your elections next
MAGA’s mission to meddle in European politics should terrify Starmer, Macron and Merz. Will any of them fight back?Tim Ross (POLITICO)
Still relevant, hasnt changed much after 2 years
Lemmy Needs to Fix Its Community Separation Problem
For the unaware, is a alternative to platforms such as Reddit and Tildes. I've been using Lemmy as one of my main social platforms for the past 6 months...Popcar's Blog
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To be honest that's a problem that can't be solved by tooling, it's a human issue.
I know why there is
- !buyeuropean@feddit.uk
- !buyfromeu@feddit.org
- !buyfromeu@europe.pub
If people don't want to consolidate similar communities and just keep them existing next to each other then users have to figure out the differences (sometimes there are almost none) between two communities.
You have comments from different communities under the same URL post. "Multicommunities" but without user intervention.
It does have some drawbacks. For example, under this post, I can see comments from an earlier post (referring to the same URL) from over a year ago.
Piefed is also a platform, in addition to Piefed servers being instances and clients.
I would just try a piefed.social account.
The support docs don't really look comprehensive.
Mlem is an iOS client.
Crosspost comments consolidation has to happen in the default UI for everyone to be able to use it
Crosspost comments consolidation example: piefed.zip/c/fedibridge/p/7948…
r/buyfromeu asking for a reddit alternative
https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1pglkyl/is_there_a_european_alternative_to_reddit_this/
You can see the comments of both the post on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !buyeuropean@feddit.uk
When you scroll down at some point it switches to the other post
Tbh, and I plan to do this for piefed.social soon (and rimu has given me the go-ahead) - abandoned discarded communities with literally zero posts need to be purged by instances. It's just clutter.
If a community was active and then isn't, that's fine, but a lot of communities are made and then never used.
Tbh, and I plan to do this for piefed.social soon (and rimu has given me the go-ahead) - abandoned discarded communities with literally zero posts need to be purged by instances. It’s just clutter.
Cool, it's a good idea. But there are also other instances.
Then there is the issue of communities with a large number of subs but where the last post was 7 months ago and they have 0 MAUs. While a community with a lot less subs can have several posts per week and at least some MAUs (couple of hundred).
It would force you to write a more descriptive name. Maybe we want to hide by community title and not the handle though.
Say you want to have a community for memes. It is terrible UX if you just see seven different "memes@domainname.ending" in the result. So with an opinionated search, you instead name your community Sopuli Memes, Solarpunk Memes, Programming Memes etc., or just Funny Memes Archive, and they would not be hidden.
I'm not sure if the centralization is worse than the large portion of users on the large servers who joining copies of established communities on their own instances. Also, from my other reply:
It would force you to write a more descriptive name. Maybe we want to hide by community title and not the handle though.Say you want to have a community for memes. It is terrible UX if you just see seven different “memes@domainname.ending” in the result. So with an opinionated search, you instead name your community Sopuli Memes, Solarpunk Memes, Programming Memes etc., or just Funny Memes Archive, and they would not be hidden.
Technically yes. The problem would be how to decide which community put in spotlight and which in grey (or any other meaningful distinction). Would it be automatic (if yes, how to decide the algorithm), or manual (if yes, how to decide how to left them). These things can be discussed out and solved, but we should be aware that these questions are here.
And it would work only for real duplicates of communities, not healthy separated communities based on actual, conscious and cherished differences.
"Separate conversations are splintering discourse, we should all just shout over each other in one massive wall of text!"
The separate communities across instances is a benefit of federation just like separate posts are a benefit over a single thread for everythjngs. Yes, features that allow them to be combined for those that want that way of interacting is great, but we don't need a single news community between all instances when there are can be massive differences between instances.
Proposed solution 3: Communities following communitiesThe ability for communities to "subscribe" to other communities is an idea that comes from this Github comment. This is, in my opinion, the best proposed solution by far. Community a can follow community b, making posts from b also appear on a.
What this means is that community moderators can choose to have posts from other communities to show up on theirs. That means if all the pancake communities are following each other, I can post on pancake@a.com and it would show up on the other pancake communities as well, and the comments would simply be grouped into just one post!
The main proposed solution doesn't force merging on anyone. Mods can decide whether or not they want content from other communities to show up in their space. No two news instances have to merge if they serve different audiences.
It isn't explicitly called out in the proposal but I could easily see there being an option for mods to unlink individual posts from other communities if they get too spicy.
The article does a good job breaking it down, but a short example is if you want to post about technology, you have to choose one of those communities to post to.
You can cross post or repost in the other communities but then any discussion gets fragmented, people see the same thing multiple times in their feed, only engage with one, and likely not the same one as somebody else.
On the other hand only posting in one community could significantly reduce engagement if you choose poorly.
do you know any client that supports this?
edit: found it piefed.social/post/1258559
PieFed : Front-end and Apps
[Client apps for PieFed](https://piefed.social/post/1258559)piefed.social
Technically, I agree.
Practically, I myself have experienced several fragmented communities about the same topic with similar ethos. This was not a healthy separation based on different norms. It was simple, ineffective fragmentation. Or, at least the ethos and norms differences wasn't clear.
I feel like it is just a matter of time before either:
- The fragmented communities develop more and become distinct, so that they are more unique and shouldn't merge.
- One of the communities becomes the more popular "default" option, and the other becomes less active as people gather in the more popular one.
Even if that doesn't happen, redundancy isn't bad. We've seen how hard it is to migrate when there's only 1 real option and that option disappears or goes bad for some reason (i.e. reddit). If there was another fairly active community with the same focus, that would make it easier to keep going. That's part of why decentralization is good.
Russia increases recruitment of foreign fighters through targeted social media campaigns - drawing foreigners into front-line combat roles in Ukraine despite promises of 'safe service'
cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/43232410
...Russia has ramped up its recruitment of foreign fighters through a targeted social media campaign, offering citizenship and money to those who join its fight.
...
The promise of roles away from the front line are aimed at enticing people to sign up, but experts [like] Sascha Bachmann, a professor in law and security at the University of Canberra, said the promise of safe service was "not true".
"Russia is trying to close a manpower gap. They sign people up for a promised non-combat role but they then end up as part of Moscow's meat grinder," he said.
"It is deception."
Data sourced by OpenMinds, a defence tech company, shows that by mid-2025, one in three contract announcements posted by Russian government pages was aimed at foreigners.
In total, the number of these posts has risen to more than 4,500 a month from less than 100 in early 2024.
...
Dr Bachmann believed the main reason Russia had increased recruitment efforts abroad was because it "has real problems recruiting from within its population".
Dr Bachmann called it "cognitive domain propaganda", which he said refers to military activities that are designed to affect the attitude of the public.
"Russia is very interested in having more foreign volunteers … because then they can say they have common power, more boots on the ground. It helps them form a fresh narrative," he said.
...
In one of the social media posts, a phone number is provided and people in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, Africa, India and others are encouraged to call.
However, residents of other countries have been targeted too, including China, India, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Bangladesh and others in Asia, and the Middle East.
...
ABC News
ABC News provides the latest news and headlines in Australia and around the world.Lewis Wiseman (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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Putin arrest warrant will stand even if US-led peace talks agree Ukraine amnesty, ICC prosecutors say
cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/43231856
International Criminal Court [ICC] arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and five other Russians accused of war crimes in Ukraine will stay in place even if a blanket amnesty is approved during U.S.-led peace talks, ICC prosecutors said on Friday.Deputy prosecutors Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal and Nazhat Shameem Khan of Fiji, who have been responsible for investigations at the court since the chief prosecutor went on leave, said a United Nations Security Council resolution would be required to suspend court-issued warrants.
...
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin and the other five over their alleged roles in atrocities during the war that began with Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin and Russian Child Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova face allegations of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.
...
Among other high-profile Russian suspects sought by the International Criminal Court are Sergei Shoigu, the former defence minister, and Russian general Valery Gerasimov, who are wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity for attacks on civilians.
...
"If there is a peace deal which then leads the Security Council to ask us to defer an investigation, then that's a matter - that's a political process for the Security Council. But as far as we're concerned...at the end of the day, it does not stop the way that justice is delivered," Deputy Prosecutor Khan said, citing the court's founding Rome Statute.
...
Deputy Prosecutor Niang said that "apart from the bracket we mentioned in respect of the Security Council route, we are obligated to observe our statute, which does not give weight to some of those political arrangements".
...
Ukraine's ambassador to the Netherlands, Andriy Kostin, who previously served as its prosecutor general, dismissed the idea of a blanket amnesty. "...With such mass atrocities committed in the course of these years, it's impossible to grant impunity for all those responsible, all those who committed these crimes and who ordered the commission of these crimes," he [said].
...
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What are Ukrainian children doing in North Korea? -- [Opinion]
cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/43231602
Web archive linkThe regime of North Korea has continued to exploit the war in Ukraine to spread its propaganda. This week we learnt that Ukrainian children, abducted by Russia, are being sent to an infamous North Korean summer camp. The children have reportedly been taught to ‘destroy Japanese imperialists’ and heard from North Korean soldiers who destroyed the USS Pueblo, a spy ship captured and sank by North Korea in 1968.
This Ukrainian children have been at the Songdowon International Children’s Camp, located near the port city of Wonsan on the country’s east coast. Well known as a popular tourist hotspot for North Korean elites, Wonsan has recently gained infamy for the newly-opened Wonsan-Kalma tourist resort, which has been not-so-affectionately nicknamed ‘North Korea’s Benidorm’. Wonsan, too, has a significant place in North Korean history. It was where Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un spent much of his childhood.
The children’s camp is hardly a new creation. Established in 1960 amid the backdrop of the Cold War, the camp became one additional facet of North Korean cultural diplomacy, as Pyongyang sought to develop ties with communist and communist-friendly countries. Whether from North Korea’s Cold War patrons of Russia and China or communist-sympathising states further afield, such as Laos, Tanzania and even Syria, children would be sent to the camp to engage in a range of activities, including cooking, swimming, rock climbing, or marathon running. For the North Korean regime, the goal was simple: spread the virtues of socialism, North Korea-style, and become friends with like-minded states.
...
Although little is known about the Ukrainian abductees sent to North Korea, cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow in areas beyond security looks to continue to grow, especially as peace in Ukraine looks evermore elusive. North Korea and Russia signed a mutual defence pact in June 2024, but these renewed ties were not limited to the domain of security. It was no coincidence that only a week after the ink was dry, Grigory Gurov, Head of the Russian Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, announced that around 250 Russian children, mainly from the Russian Far East, would visit Songdowon, making them one of the first groups to visit the camp following North Korea’s draconian three-year border closure, owing to coronavirus, in January 2021.
...
Russia and North Korea are yet to respond to the reports that Ukrainian abductees are being sent to Songdowon. Pyongyang will probably just say the children were participating in a cultural exchange – helping out an ally. We need only go back to February this year when Russia’s ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora, announced that how ‘hundreds of wounded [Russian] soldiers’ fighting against Ukraine were being treated in North Korean hospitals, epitomising the ‘brotherly attitude’ between the two Cold War allies.
What are Ukrainian children doing in North Korea?
The regime of North Korea has continued to exploit the war in Ukraine to spread its propaganda. This week we…Edward Howell (The Spectator Australia)
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Israel’s biggest defence company suspended by NATO amid corruption probe
Israel’s largest defence company, Elbit Systems, has been suspended by NATO’s procurement agency amid a major corruption probe, Follow the Money and its media partners La Lettre, Le Soir, and Knack can reveal.
The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) is at the centre of a wide-ranging graft scandal, with current and former staff under investigation for bribery. Several suspects were arrested in May in police raids across seven nations, including Belgium and the U.S.
FTM has also learned that a key figure associated with Elbit – an Italian citizen identified as Eliau E. – is wanted internationally for his alleged role in bribing NSPA staff.
Elbit is Israel’s biggest arms manufacturer, with a turnover of almost 7 billion dollars in 2024. The Haifa-based company – which makes drones, tanks and ammunition, among other military equipment – ranks 25th on the list of the world’s 100 largest defence companies compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
https://www.ftm.eu/articles/israel-defence-elbit-systems-suspended-nato-corruption-investigation
Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau make their relationship Instagram official
Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau make their relationship Instagram official
The singer posted a photo of the pair smiling cheek to cheek and a video of them eating sushi together while in JapanJessica O'Bryan (The Guardian)
Not sure if this is newsworthy, reported twice, figuring on letting the downvotes decide this one.
If Trudeau were CURRENTLY Prime Minister, 100% yes. But does anyone really care who a former Prime Minister is shacking up with?
Went from dating the lead singer of an emo/rap band that was a Fall Out Boy side project to former Prime Minister of Canada.
Hey I kinda liked Gym Class Heroes.
Don’t use ‘admin’: UK’s top 20 most-used passwords revealed as scams soar
It is a hacker’s dream. Even in the face of repeated warnings to protect online accounts, a new study reveals that “admin” is the most commonly used password in the UK.
The second most popular, “123456”, is also unlikely to keep hackers at bay.
It’s not just a problem here – Australians, Americans and Germans also use “admin” more than any other password when accessing websites, apps and logging in to their computers. Around the world, “123456” emerges as the most popular.
Don’t use ‘admin’: UK’s top 20 most-used passwords revealed as scams soar
Easy-to-guess words and figures still dominate, alarming cysbersecurity experts and delighting hackersShane Hickey (The Guardian)
The second most popular, “123456”, is also unlikely to keep hackers at bay.
That's what I use on my luggage
You know you say that more than likely in jest....
But that's honestly not a terrible idea.
Invent your own hashing algorithm. It’s easy, fool-proof, secure, and reusable without compromising security.
Here’s a few examples:
ebay.com password is moc.y4b3-saltyboi69
lemmy.world password is dlr0w.ymm3l-saltyboi69
(These aren’t real btw)
Association attacks exist in the wild.
Let's say that this is their ebay account. In that case the reward for unlocking each account is very high, so attackers (even in mass attacks) have incentive to put in more work as long as the work cost per account hacked is less than the average reward and there is a net profit.
I assume in this day and age it's probably also viable to use LLMs for password guessing, as long as it's for a high value account. That unlocks a whole another can of worms and if it was me I'd never use low entropy passwords like "moc.y4b3-saltyboi69"
Perhaps this kind of password is viable if it's for an online service that implements rate limiting, but you also have to consider the case that a site gets hacked and their encrypted database (encrypted by each user's password) makes it onto the web. This has happened a lot recently and makes it ridiculously easy for people to throw their GPUs at the task.
I reuse passwords on sites where I don't care if my account gets breached.
On sites where it matters, I store them in a password manager.
On sites where money is managed, I keep the passwords only in my mind.
Australian government prepares social media ban amid opposition to privacy and free speech violation
Australian government prepares social media ban amid opposition to privacy and free speech violation
The ban is not a child welfare measure but a direct intervention by the state to dictate how ordinary people will be allowed to use the internet.World Socialist Web Site
They did well with this one
- YouTube
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.www.youtube.com
But at least we’re doing something. Just not the things that would start to fix all that
Gold
Why is this bad? What is the upside of anyone under 16 using social media?
EDIT: the last 20 years have been an experiment in online anonymity, and the result is a dead internet infested by AI bots and foreign disinformation. At this point, I think civilized nations with free-speech protections should experiment with this sort of thing.
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The problem isnt the idea of preventing people under 16 from getting on social media, but how you enforce that.
The only real way is to make every user submit a government ID, which becomes a massive privacy AND security issue with how often every online service gets compromised or leaks user data
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If a banks suddenly and frequently lost data on all their users people wouldn't be screaming that banks should be completely anonymous. The banks would have fines and need to meet high standards to keep doing business
We have lots of societal issues that are made worse with the internet being a wild west and founding logical arguments on the premise that it is insecure also has issues. If a website is so questionable it might leak, it probably shouldn't be in common use
Cybersecurity: where defenders have to win every day and attackers only have to win once.
Anything like age verification should probably be handled with absolute minimum identifiable information (i.e. you're older than X true / false) from an authoritative source like say the people who give out IDs (because if they're broken into everyone's screwed anyway). Instead OzGov has dumped it in the laps of the corpos, who will hoover up pictures of IDs or faces instead. As of a couple of days beforehand there's still no actual information on these age verification protocols to my knowledge, very untransparent, very disturbing. Corpos being required to moderate their platforms would be good, this is not that.
Yeah, agreed that every government that makes decisions like this (I think porn restrictions and UK age verification has come up) should be offering a government API to tie into. Governments need to have this data to function and have the resources to handle this (but not a great track record).
I just don't think essentially making the argument "there are all these problems but that's the way it's always been" gets us to a better future. And I think most improvements are iterative and need to start somewhere. I'm also not expecting this to be a slam dunk but I do think some countries need to try this and other tech company restrictions to find out what will make a better future.
Anything like age verification should probably be handled with absolute minimum identifiable information (i.e. you're older than X true / false)
Ahh... thats not age verification. And yes verification is one of the hard parts with problems but this isn't even an attempt at age verification
Centralisation introduces its own weaknesses. Additionally, at some point, we could address this by just having parents accountable in this specific use case.
Wtf do we need a technological solution to address parenting? This small subset thereof.
If a website is so questionable it might leak, it probably shouldn’t be in common use
Tell me you know nothing about software without telling me you know nothing about software.
Yeah, it was a bit ill thought out but I'd argue its more idealistically unrealistic
We could live in a world something along the lines of websites sending HTTPS certs based on users location with the cert granted by those governments and if you sell or store customers data then you need a security audit for the code.
That would obviously need tweaking and is a long way away from where the world is today, but a world where any website could be malicious is about as necessary as a country where walking into any restaurant has a probable chance of you being shot. A nice part of that analogy is that the main thing holding both together is strong trustworthy institutions. But the web is that way more from history rather than a deep technical issue that forces the internet to be that way. Also probably time, that sort of audit is probably prohibitively expensive, but that could be considered part of the true cost to society that we're ignoring
I've got a bit of an ignorant question and I think all the downvotes here make this a good place for someone to set me straight.
One of my pet peeves in the last few years has been booking an Airbnb and the host pushing you to their system where you need to fill in all the same information Airbnb has and this includes uploading some form of ID. Around the same time period, airport checkins have also required uploads of your passport.
Are these two examples that different from the changes that a lot of people are saying will be terrible and risky, or am I just missing something? Agreed it's increasing the attack surface but I'm also a bit curious why there isn't public pushback on these systems if that is genuinely a large concern
Edit: Most of these are international so that probably explains the lack of pushback on these systems
the verification process. you could be 42 and never signed up for social media and now you decide you want to post comments on tiktok. Welp now you gotta verify that you're not a teenager. So provide your ID, provide a photo of yourself holding your ID, and hope some company that is obtaining that information either doesn't sell it or doesn't have a security breach. and a bonus to all that is the potential to further track all activities you do online. they can now easily build a profile of you via the social networks you sign up for.
that's the problem.
Tying all your previously anonymous activities to a real life photo, ID, and address.
Good luck trying to criticize an oppressive government again. Or just having an "unapproved" opinion online in general.
I would argue that the internet has died partly as a result of removing anonymity from the internet, not because of it. The massive centralization of the internet into corporate walled gardens where they can control the narrative is what made your criticisms possible. The early internet was a wild west where you could find anything and everything, for better and worse.
The big issue I have with this is that it isolates queer kids from any sense of community. Trans kids can't avoid permanent damage from the wrong puberty if they don't have access to the knowledge that they could be taking puberty blockers. Without access to that community, I didn't even learn that trans people existed and I could put a word to that existential distress until I was in college.
The corporate walled gardens are certainly a huge issue (with a fairly easy fix). But you can’t argue that anonymity “protects” queer kids who need online spaces to find acceptance when these exact spaces are now infested with bots and AI slop and ceding control to fascists. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit. What do you think happens when Ellison fully takes over TikTok? What is the upside of a teenager watching that pointless garbage instead of, say, reading a book?
These websites need to be inaccessible to anyone other than a human over the age of 21 who is verifiably who they say they are, or they need to cease to exist.
Also, I work with teenagers. They can’t read. Every year standardized tests get easier. The average ACT score in Florida is now 18. That’s almost the same as answering at random, and these kids pay for the exam in an effort to go to college. Why the fuck do they have smart phones? Why do they have access to YouTube or TikTok? Seriously what is the upside here? 54% of the population reads at a 6th grade level. What the fuck are we doing?
Drugs are way less harmful than ANY of this shit and we ban them until people are at least 18~21. Honestly, anyone who hasn’t interacted with the next generation let me paint you a picture: boomers, but proudly illiterate. It’s sad.
I somehow managed to delete my long-winded reply while I was typing it, so I'm gonna try to condense it down into something semi coherent.
In short, it's not the anonymity that I'm arguing for (though I think there's a very important debate to be had about the erosion of privacy through removing anonymity on the net), but the strengths of social platforms on the internet that are being abused by bots and AI slop. I think that a blanket ban is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We need to regulate the bad actors somehow and moderate the amount of social media that kids use, but to effectively ban kids from being able to interact with people outside of their local communities is a bad precedent.
The big strength of the internet (and why it's so important in empowering oppressed groups like the queer community) is in the ability to connect people and rapidly spread information regardless of distance. They want to take over TikTok because it's been credited as a major platform in dispelling the Israeli funded myths about the genocide of the Palestinians. Protests of college students broke out on campuses all over the US over colleges getting funding from Israel and the production and sale of weaponry. That didn't just appear out of nowhere, that information was spread through social media in real time. You can't get that from a book at the local library (you should still support your local library though, they do so much for a community beyond being a source of knowledge). But this rapid spread of information is exactly what makes the AI slop and all the other garbage (ads, misinformation, the list goes on and on) such a problem, because the bad stuff makes money for the big corporations who run the social media platforms we use. But that doesn't mean we should ban a tool because people use it maliciously or excessively to the point of harm. Nobody is calling for a ban on TV for kids under 16 despite it having a negative effect on our attention span and being filled with channels like Fox News.
Plus, I am always wary of these "protect the children" campaigns because they are often a false flag to actually restrict minorities' rights - often queer people. You see this most prominently with porn bans, but stuff like this that allows a government/group to better censor information and control the narrative come up time and time again. There was an attempt not long ago to get rid of Massachusetts' multi-grade standardized test program called the MCAS. Standardized testing has its issues, but the groups pushing for the removal had no plans to replace it with any form of statewide teaching standards or anything, they just wanted to be able to teach kids that evolution is fake and gay kids go to Hell.
Also, I work with teenagers. They can’t read. Every year standardized tests get easier. The average ACT score in Florida is now 18. That’s almost the same as answering at random, and these kids pay for the exam in an effort to go to college.
I hate to tell you this, but I think this is a Florida issue. Florida is one of the worst states in a country that has been fighting against intelligence for decades now. Boomers but proudly illiterate is exactly what those in power - especially people like DeSantis - want. But the same internet that allows this to happen can also be used to give these kids a better chance. I go on YouTube and see videos of people making a fully working jet engine out of a can of Coke or a hobbyist launching a 3d printed rocket that breaks the sound barrier. I see kids learning about orbital mechanics and reentry heating through Kerbal Space Program and simple circuitry through Red Stone Minecraft tutorials. I see trans elders supporting trans kids who may otherwise never make it to adulthood - sometimes even to the point of telling them their legal rights and helping them get out of abusive households. I see up to the minute medical research news coming from furries who worked on the COVID vaccines on Bluesky. I see so much art, music, and support for passion projects that introduce people to interests that they never knew they had. And I would never want to take all that from kids.
Not a single government today is beholden to its citizens.
We are all cattle and donkeys so people richer than us can live like gods.
Ironically, if age estimation was done via usage history algorithms, it'd be a much more privacy preserving technique than literally scanning your face or ID into a website that then hands it off to a barely known biometrics company so you can keep using your account...
It's so strange how this legislation apparently is supposed to safeguard the safety of kids on the internet, but hands tremendous risk to adults who verify, or parents who's kids sneakily took their ID to verify their accounts, since it seems that we may be the cyberattack victim capital of the world; see Qantas, Lattitude Financial, Optus, Medibank, and so on until the end of time.
Bosch Rexroth workers in Scotland to strike for a week against pay cuts
Bosch Rexroth workers in Scotland to strike for a week against pay cuts
Over 280 workers at Bosch Rexroth's plant in Glenrothes, Scotland, are to strike for a week from Monday against a cut in pay and working hours. The Bosch parent company is planning to sack 22,000 workers as the European car industry faces collapse.World Socialist Web Site
Tankie / red fash source!
If workers went on strike in China, Russia or Venezuela they would be calling it a CIA op!
New US security strategy aligns with Russia's vision, Moscow says
New US security strategy aligns with Russia's vision, Moscow says
The Kremlin welcomes the starkly worded document, which does not cast Russia as a threat to the US.Rachel Muller-Heyndyk (BBC News)
LastYearsIrritant
in reply to fne8w2ah • • •Wow, that's a terrible article. They just repeated three times that stuff fell into the sea, and the cruise ship is stuck for at least a day.
They implied the stuff fell off the cruise ship, but they don't actually say it.
They implied that the stuff was undeclared, but don't actually say it.
They don't actually say why the cruise ship is stuck. Are the containers blocking the ship from leaving? Are they stuck cause they had undeclared fruit and they need to be held for paperwork/questions? Are they held cause they're not sure if something else will fall from the ship?
I wouldn't be surprised if this article was entirely written by AI with no editing.
like this
qupada likes this.
idiomaddict
in reply to LastYearsIrritant • • •They didn’t fall off the cruise ship, but off of a container ship nearby.
The cruise ship is stuck because the container ship needs to recover the containers to protect the environment (and they don’t explicitly say, but moving a cruise ship through the harbor will kick up sediment and might damage the containers).
ShellMonkey
in reply to fne8w2ah • • •