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There are technical solutions without mass surveillance.
But I am not optimistic enough to believe those will be demanded.
Specifically because of the lack of surveillance, and the lack of monopoly protection for big tech.
Pretty sure big tech lobbyists are making sure the worst approaches possible get put into law. Not because they are evil per se, but because it strengthens their monopolies.
@divVerent No there are not. This is a fundamental fact of mathematical logic. Given a proposed age verification system you can prove that it's either trivially bypassed (doesn't actually verify age) or violates key privacy properties.
Em's point is spot-on. If you think of this as a problem to be solved, you are going to be wrong and you are going to be a useful fool for fascists.
@dalias @divVerent Knowing how old someone is does not limit their speech nor their ability to vote (we verify age for that already, and for many other reasons). Age verification isn’t state censorship. I suppose it could be a way to limit anonymous speech. That isn’t a Right where I am from (nor is ‘free’ speech). I doubt anonymous speech is a Right anywhere.
I have no doubt it’s absolutely technically feasible in a way that infringes on no one’s privacy. Ultimately though, yes, it could be abused by bad actors. Like everything else in civilisation we need some balance of enforcement to deal with those people.
@edwiebe @divVerent There is no way to know how old someone is without attestation by some authority who knows their identity. This precludes participation by anyone not known to such an authority (undocumented, outside of jurisdiction, etc.) or for whom it is not safe to let that authority know they are participating. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
You are dangerously wrong, and you should stop advocating about things you're dangerously wrong about.
@dalias @edwiebe @divVerent while that's true, it is possible to make such an attestation without destroying privacy (see soatok.blog/2025/07/31/age-ver…). however, even if you do that, it'll still be morally wrong in most cases.
and also, corporations are deliberately not going for the private solution, and governments are shifting the blame to users. the Czech government recently admitted social media is already illegal for teens (due to privacy laws), but they want new laws anyway.
“Won’t someone think of the poor children?” they say, clutching their pearls as they enact another stupid law that will harm the privacy of every adult on Earth and create Prior R…
@Yuvalne @edwiebe @divVerent No, it is not possible. The ZPK bs is privacy-washing designed to bamboozle policy makers and privacy activists who don't understand math. Either it doesn't actually verify age (I can setup a proxy to hand out age proof verification tokens to anyone who wants them using my identity; I would absolutely do that if it were cryptographically safe) or something exposes to the token providing authority that I'm doing this and allows detection that someone else used my identity (thereby violating my privacy).
The one way around that would be storing the secret for the ZKP in a TPM.
Yeah, right, with that you can still run your own proxy and provide the ZKP for someone else.
But it is possible to then also use some forms of remote attestation so this doesn't work. Like, yeah, you can forward the ZKP, but then only you can decrypt the connection and not your "customer", as the decryption key is in your TPM and can't get out.
Despite all that, in worst case you can run a web browser in a VNC session for others to use, with your age claim. Nothing can prevent that - other than the ZKP not being actually ZK.
And that, indeed, is why ZKP aren't gonna happen for this. Even if they're cryptographically ZK, they'll end up signing more than just the age - at which point it's a privacy violation again and also no stronger than merely claiming your age in the first place.
@dalias @divVerent If you're suggesting every jurisdiction should allow unrestricted access to everything because some jurisdictions are authoritarian then I disagree.
In theory one could do this with a "trusted" third party and blind signatures.
Let every country on the world run a CA for age verification. CA generates a certificate for your age that reveals nothing about your identity.
Present these certificates. Extra cryptography to be used so the certificate cannot be used as an user ID (i.e. each time you present it, the data sent has to be different). E.g. a "zero knowledge protocol". Not even the government that ran the CA should be able to find out which person is presenting their certificate.
All this is solvable, but:
- Nothing stops you from copying someone else's certificate. Even if this were TPM-backed and it were actually secure, nothing stops you from using someone else's computer.
- Websites need to trust _every single country's_ CA. Even if this were feasible, it'd quickly run into issues like "which CA to use for people in Taiwan", and e.g. recognizing one could get you into trouble with the other.
- If only one country hands out certificates for people who haven't reached the
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In theory one could do this with a "trusted" third party and blind signatures.
Let every country on the world run a CA for age verification. CA generates a certificate for your age that reveals nothing about your identity.
Present these certificates. Extra cryptography to be used so the certificate cannot be used as an user ID (i.e. each time you present it, the data sent has to be different). E.g. a "zero knowledge protocol". Not even the government that ran the CA should be able to find out which person is presenting their certificate.
All this is solvable, but:
- Nothing stops you from copying someone else's certificate. Even if this were TPM-backed and it were actually secure, nothing stops you from using someone else's computer.
- Websites need to trust _every single country's_ CA. Even if this were feasible, it'd quickly run into issues like "which CA to use for people in Taiwan", and e.g. recognizing one could get you into trouble with the other.
- If only one country hands out certificates for people who haven't reached the proper age yet, the entire system breaks down. And some country sure will do that - at least for people paying enough.
- None of the major companies would ever implement a privacy protecting scheme anyway, if they can instead do mass surveillance.
At that point, it basically gains nothing vs my approach of the ban simply implemented client-side and voluntarily. Parents either block social media for their children, or they don't (and supervision necessarily ends once children can afford their own phone and internet connection). I have ideas to simplify that, but solutions for that already exist right now.
From what I understand, active verification does necessarily invade privacy.
But active verification is not necessary.
A mere social media ban under age X, if necessary, could simply be passed as a law, making the parents responsible for ensuring their children follow it. There already are existing laws of this kind for other areas of life. And as parents are responsible for supervising their children, they definitively can also be responsible here.
The opposite is true as well - while the child is supervised by their parents, such restrictions should not apply.
To support the ban, I still think it'd be useful to have an (optional at parents' discretion) software solution. Sure one could go all allowlist using e.g. Google Family Link, but I'd prefer if sites specified their purpose (and also some other properties, e.g. the severity of various kinds of NSFW content, potentially even at multiple levels of which the client can then pick one and specify in a header) for such software to use. That's trivial to do, it's just one file to be placed in the we
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From what I understand, active verification does necessarily invade privacy.
But active verification is not necessary.
A mere social media ban under age X, if necessary, could simply be passed as a law, making the parents responsible for ensuring their children follow it. There already are existing laws of this kind for other areas of life. And as parents are responsible for supervising their children, they definitively can also be responsible here.
The opposite is true as well - while the child is supervised by their parents, such restrictions should not apply.
To support the ban, I still think it'd be useful to have an (optional at parents' discretion) software solution. Sure one could go all allowlist using e.g. Google Family Link, but I'd prefer if sites specified their purpose (and also some other properties, e.g. the severity of various kinds of NSFW content, potentially even at multiple levels of which the client can then pick one and specify in a header) for such software to use. That's trivial to do, it's just one file to be placed in the web server's root and it'll work. Could store it in DNS instead, whatever, don't care.
Furthermore, while at it, we could combine this with a technical solution for COPPA and other regulations that ban tracking and surveilling children online. Namely, revive Do-Not-Track, and have aforementioned software automatically set the header for minors.
But, I hear Big Tech say, then what if adults set the header too?
@0x4d6165 How is it bad faith? I am genuinely confused at why it's ok to have age checks in person but not online. The Internet might not be physical, but it's still real life with real people.
because showing a bouncer your ID is very obviously different from sending a picture of your ID to some random company's database where it can be stolen or used by authoritarian governments???
This entry was edited (Sunday, February 22, 2026, 4:04 PM)
@0x4d6165 The methods they use are terrible but it can be done safely, look at EU's proposed app which would make the government check your age, not random private companies. And the government would simply tell the website "yes" or "no", without any identifiable information. So the problem would not persist. It's also open source.
you're assuming the government wouldn't use that data to link your social media posts (especially ones critical of Frontex and other authoritarian aspects of the EU) and use it against you. are you truly this naive?
@0x4d6165 It means people can check the code and see what it really does. It's supposed to simply give a yes or no, nothing else. Or do you think this is still corruptable?
do you want me to wipe your ass for you too? you gotta think about shit and not just ask me to explain the basics of authoritarianism and how it works to you
@0x4d6165 There already are digital ID systems like EU's proposal that are implemented by governments around the world. For instance, Sweden has it ( y'know, one of the most progressive countries in the world ), so does Denmark, Canada, etc. I don't see how they affected negatively anyone in particular.
I don't see "basics of authoritarianism" anywhere in here like USA is doing, where they censor queerness and spread disinformation to control people.
is right that there are age verification mechanisms that fully protect privacy and prevent sites requiring age verification from knowing the real-world identity of the user. They can even be designed to prevent the authority providing the age verification from knowing what sites it's requested for. More about this here: newamerica.org/oti/briefs/expl… I'm not a fan of online age verification, but if governments are going to require it, we should be demanding that it be done this way. @0x4d6165@transfem.social
let me walk you through this: if hungary wants to and if the EU passes this asinine verification system into law, all they would need to do to censor queer information is require it be behind this EU verification law. now they have a list of everyone who looked up queer information. hungary is fascist and hates queer people. they will use this to hurt people. do you just not care? or are you so naive you can't fathom how a fascist government could abuse this EU "open source" verification system?
Sadly, capitalism is trying to make them the same. They used to look at your ID in clubs. Now they scan them, and no you don't get a disclosure of where that data goes and how it will be used.Is it kept by the club just to figure out if you have been banned or suspended from the club? Do they sell the data? Do they use a 3rd party app and have no idea what happens next?
Having a proper dialogue and clear rules for all technology usage, whether TV, Tablets, Games or Social media isn't a goal to aspire to, it's the minimum bar required for responsible usage.
This entry was edited (Sunday, February 22, 2026, 8:05 AM)
@serfdeweb People need to contact their representatives and complain loudly about it.
These legislations need to be repealed and prevented.
The political class needs to hear that citizens reject surveillance firmly, and the focus should be instead on creating platforms that are less addictive, more privacy-respectful, and safer for everyone, including adults.
And it's also a workaround for governments that are too coward to face platform owners and demand them not to use addictive and exploitative algorithms as their main business model.
It is big tech that's pushing for age verification, not governments. It already knows everything about the adult population, all of the time. But digital IDs will allow it to harvest all of our children's data too, from birth. The digital safety of our children is the responsibility of their parents, not big tech or government. Parents need look up from their own phones occasionally and look deeply at what their children are doing.
UK has Online Safety Act in place and was one the majority reason why there's a massive conversation about Age Verification so I don't where you got it from that the government wasn't responsible for this mess.
@matty Governments are run for, by, and as corporations now. The interests of business have become the priority of government, and so we are groomed to Obey. vimeo.com/59002146
This is a film based on the book "Death of the Liberal Class" by journalist and Pulitzer prize winner, Chris Hedges. It charts the rise of the Corporate…
@ben this. Parents have to check what their Kid do and not someone else. Of course you can miss something but for this you can teach your Kid how to use the Internet right. We all had to learn this too.
I'm so tired of everyone like it's normal to upload official identification to every app and website. Without any proper background checks on those services!
This is literally how you get your identity stolen. So the exploitation isn't just happening at the panopticon level, these policies leave us all more vulnerable.
Even people who know better have to comply to function in this society. It's horrendous.
@paulbrzeski @sunflowerinrain I’ve been pushing back on even handing over a phone number and that its becoming nigh on impossible. But for now I am holding out handing anything else over.
Hey parents, your kids are in danger! But don't worry about it. We'll take care of it for you.
All we need to do is just check their ages. It'll be just like getting ID'd in a shop. You remember that don't you? Nothing to worry about.
[quietly]We'll just take a photo of your children and their ID, put them in a database, track their every movement, record who their friends are, what they think, their every hope, dream and aspiration.
[back to normal volume]
So don't you worry, your children are safe with us and our billionaire backers, whoops, I mean with us, just us. We'll take care of everything. You can get back to feeding your own dopamine addictions, we'll claim your children are safer now, and big tech will have their giant, totally not sinister databases of real world identities that surely aren't going to come back to bite us later. Anyway that'll be for a different government to deal with.
But keep in mind as well, the proposed technical implementations are key to understanding and explaining how far from 'age verification' the goal is; how far down the surveillance road this all goes.
Age verification is a 'boolean' message to the relying party (or maybe a number of years old), not identity based at all.
If the requirement is 'you have to identify yourself (whispers "for age verification purposes") then the proposal is a requirement to remove privacy, not age verification.
@john_philip_bell The message being boolean is irrelevant. Fools are acting like revealing yourself to the party that boolean message is sent to is the threat. It's revealing yourself to the *sender* of that message that's the threat.
Yivi is de privacyvriendelijke ID-app waarmee je veilig inlogt, gegevens deelt en bewijst wie je bent. Wachtwoordloos, veilig en altijd in controle. All You. All yours.
the first person project could solve a lot of these things in a privacy preserving way - but it is a hard technical, social problem to solve. firstperson.network/ - I think we need the trust layer of the internet - but in a way that also solves privacy.
How to convince people of this though? My mother thinks that it's good to keep the children safe and we're not important enough for any authoritarian government to notice us. And that anyone who likes pornograpy is sick in the head. I can tell her "Uh, no," but that doesn't really accomplish anything...
It is all about surveillance. Protecting children from serious harm on the Internet involves stopped malicious adults accessing child services, not stopping children accessing adult services.
What i hate about age checks in social media is that they say it's to protect children from the toxicity of social media.
How about governments try to actually regulate social media instead of outright banning children? Social media can be a good source of social integration and information ( being a queer child that lives with queerphobe parents, for instance, may only get queer support from people on the internet :/ ). 1/2
Correct, it's throwing the onus on the end user, whereas governments should be controlling the extremeties of social media, as in political bias, miss information and child porn
I agree with most of your concerns, but I find it necessary to point out the problematic nature of your insisting that something is impossible while at the same time refusing to take the time to read an article from a reputable source explaining how it is, in fact, possible. Zero Knowledge Proof age verification doesn't solve all of the problems you mentioned, but it solves most of them, in provably, cryptographically secure ways. (1/2)
Well, today is the day. I'm finally "sorta happy enough to pull the trigger" on publishing the book I've been working on for a very long time. It's a technical history book: by a techie, for techies (although I think that between all the code samples, there is plenty of meat for "tech-adjacent" and "tech-interested" people). It tells the story of the Lisp programming language, invented by a genius called John McCarthy in 1958 and today still going strong (to the extent that many people see it as the most powerful programming language in existence).
And this is a time for shameless self promotion, even if you don't plan on buying the book, please repost . Self-publishing is self-marketing, so there we go.
If you do buy and read it, please let me know how you liked it!
The book landing page, berksoft.ca/gol, has links to all outlets where you can buy the book,
Looks like a fascinating read! They have provided chapter 8 as a PDF file downloadable gratis as a sneak-peek into the rest of the book, guess what it’s about:
Chapter 8: Sussman and Steel make Scheme
Awesome! I can’t wait to read that chapter, and then the rest of the book!
Looks like a fascinating read! They have provided chapter 8 as a PDF file downloadable gratis as a sneak-peek into the rest of the book, guess what it’s about:
Chapter 8: Sussman and Steel make Scheme
Awesome! I can’t wait to read that chapter, and then the rest of the book!
Well, today is the day. I'm finally "sorta happy enough to pull the trigger" on publishing the book I've been working on for a very long time. It's a technical history book: by a techie, for techies (although I think that between all the code samples, there is plenty of meat for "tech-adjacent" and "tech-interested" people). It tells the story of the Lisp programming language, invented by a genius called John McCarthy in 1958 and today still going strong (to the extent that many people see it as the most powerful programming language in existence).
And this is a time for shameless self promotion, even if you don't plan on buying the book, please repost :-). Self-publishing is self-marketing, so there we go.
If you do buy and read it, please let me know how you liked it!
The book landing page, berksoft.ca/gol, has links to all outlets where you can buy the book,
@ramin_hal9001 ping! Thanks for the PDF option 👍 I figured it was about time I actually tried to understand the context for LISP, not merely the syntax 😊
Congratulations and thanks! I’m enjoying the epub edition from Lulu:
“People writing Lisp code to do old-style AI are engaged in a creative act of discovery, an attempt to understand… To discover requires a different sort of language, and it requires a different approach, captured well by the writer Joan Didion:
I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. –Joan Didion, “Why I Write”
@Roundtrip This is much the same as the way Michel de Montaigne wrote his famous essays in 16th century France: to try out his thoughts, from the French word essayer, "to try".
Thus was born the literary form of the essay, much to the chagrin of secondary school students everywhere.
But he was the ur-blogger, and is one of my heroes.
“Those who cannot remember the past are destined to repeat it”
I’m not sure we should enshrine LISP into Claude Code, even though I once wrote LISP that flew in a cruise missile, and several “expert systems” for critical applications, it seems likely the “AI”s might choose LISP to enable the singularity.
The Kobo EPUB version makes it very difficult to see the formulas in the first few chapter. It's very blurry. The following images is a X2 magnification.
@gemlog The book steps through the general history of computing (which lisp orbits) with notes on replicating simple cases of what they were doing, doable in a web browser console in many cases @cdegroot
I am looking for to reading your book, The Genius of #Lisp.
Sorry to ask a trivial question here (but maybe others would like to know), I'm on the Kobo site to buy the ePub version of your book, but I'd like to confirm I can read it without their poor Kobo Reader app.
Otherwise, I'd love to send you the money directly...
@howard It's DRM free, you can read it wherever. You can also buy it through Lulu.com if you don't like Kobo, but to me it doesn't make much difference.
The most direct way is to buy the PDF on Shopify (all the various options are linked from the book site, by the way, berksoft.ca/gol). I personally much prefer reading technical books in PDF format, but then I have the accordingly-sized large format color e-Reader for it :).
@mgrinder I'm not sure why, but as far as I can tell Lulu doesn't do hardcovers on the 7x10 format I picked. Sigh. It's on my todo list to ask them though, I hope it's just a mistake.
Hmm. The Amazon blurb mutters about ELIZA, but ELIZA wasn't written in Lisp, it was written in MAD_SLIP. My reading of the original paper was that Joe W. essentially reinvented Lisp.
By the time I arrived at MIT (1972), Joel Moses' introductory CS/programming course was taught in Lisp (and was so good, I got a gig in the Mathlab group by passing a Lisp test), and the AI Lab's PDP-6 had a version of Eliza that was probably rewritten in Lisp.
SLIP was interesting because it used bidirectional links—a list can be traversed upwards as well as downwards. It was invented before Lisp had won the AI language wars.
The time, 1987. The place: the 5th generation group in NEC's research lab in Tokyo. We (me and the locals) were frantically programming Common Lisp, me using GLSteele's manual, the locals using the Japanese translation. Every time there'd be a GLS-style joke (which said manual is seriously dense of), I'd check the Japanese translation, and every time, the translation completely missed the point and was complete gibberish.
I love the book so far! I got an email from Pendora about the updated PDF, but the page it takes me to fails to download the new version. Do you have any insight into their process?
@rjray yes, the insight is that I apparently fatfingered the update. I'm working with Pendora support, they are super helpful, but they also are in India, so first I had to wait out the weekend (teaches me to do updates on Saturday morning) and now it's a back-and-forth with 10.5 hours time difference...
I'm going to mail out everybody an updated PDF later today, it's easier 🙂
@rjray Try it again, support just pinged me that the broken download issue should have been fixed. If not, private message me with your order number and we'll work something out.
Also promotion and sales is a noble task. You've created something important, sell it with pride! I am in business and even there, so many people avoid sales. It's not as difficult as people think. Take the bold step of making first contact (I don't know exactly what distribution looks like in books, but presumably conferences, media etc.) And then persist. It's not one and done. Keep trying to get through to your target. Be creative.
Good luck.
This entry was edited (Thursday, February 26, 2026, 12:58 PM)
@jawarajabbi I was lucky in the sense that my "tech career" started with a u-turn through business school, so I'm less inclined to think of sales and marketing as "dirty" activities. Still, I would have preferred the book not to be self-published because it's hardly the sort of stuff I like to volunteer for . Regardless, a plan is in place and will be executed.
@binder You always need "just one more book". I thought years ago I was done, because my bookcases were full. Then I decided that, after 40 years, it was time to get rid of most of my uni textbooks, and voila! New space! More books!
I urge all developers of #Android apps to NOT pre-emptively obey the new terms of #Google requiring you to sign up for the Android Developer Console.
It looks like Google is attempting a power grab and wants to prevent ALL installations of Android apps without official Google approval; even those installed outside Google Play.
This is an attack on both developer and user freedom and unacceptable.
Hacktivists tried to find a workaround to Discord’s age-verification software, Persona. Instead, they found its frontend exposed to the open internet, and that was just the beginning.
Discord is carrying on like their previous age verification vendor didn’t leak a bunch of users’ sensitive data (because they were retaining said data which Discord claimed they weren’t going to do).
""" Persona’s exposed code compares your selfie to watchlist photos using facial recognition, screens you against 14 categories of adverse media from mentions of terrorism to espionage, and tags reports with codenames from active intelligence programs consisting of public-private partnerships to combat online child exploitative material, cannabis trafficking, fentanyl trafficking, romance fraud, money laundering, and illegal wildlife trade.
Once a user verifies their identity with Persona, the software performs 269 distinct verification checks and scours the internet and government sources for potential matches... """
So to keep kids safe from online predators, we're willing to *horribly* invade their privacy and sell all their data to predators? I see the system is working as intended 😮💨
@alice ...and I'm pretty sure, if your name and picture is on the right list, your location will be hit by a hellfire missile fired from a reaper drone after you performed mandatory age verification. America! Fuck, yeah! @evacide
and meanwhile the Australian government is claiming credit for protecting children by standing up to social media companies to force them to use this kind of tech.
I’m sure the pressure is in the opposite direction.
@ollicle Yep. It's brilliant from a certain perspective. Horrifying, sinister, but with a certain genius.
The tech firms get to say "Oh, no, the horrible government is making us do this. Oh well. Now give us your identity documents."
The governments get to give the appearance of responding to (genuinely) grieving parents, and say "we're protecting the children" which is game over for any alternative voice. All the while receiving funding (directly or indirectly) from the tech firms that created the problem or the supposed solution, or their fellow travellers.
And parents get to believe their children's safety is taken care of.
This level of centralisation of data is so so dangerous. Putting all our eggs in one basket digitally makes for a very inviting target, but this sort of infrastructure also concentrates power.
Knowledge is power, and this level of control can easily calcify our political systems and eat away at democracy.
Hey, maybe don’t verify yourself on LinkedIn. What an absolute shitshow:
#privacy #linkedin #surveillancecapitalism
https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/
@deborahh@cosocial.ca @evacide@hachyderm.io That's why *"#KYC IS THE ILLICIT ACTIVITY!"*
- I mean, there's a [*trivial bypass*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LsF4FF6gO4) but #Discord itself is garbage!
We are now in the last 48 hours of the campaign, and if you are on the fence, we just published a full breakdown video (13 minutes) of the progress so far :)
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
This Week in F-Droid TWIF curated on Friday, 20 Feb 2026, Week 8 F-Droid core During out talks with F-Droid users at FOSDEM26 we were baffled to learn most w...
#ImageToolbox gets #AI is correct. It is local and works if the phone is not providing compute, this new feature is not fun to use. However, #DeJPEG, #upscale, #colorization, #enhancement is now available. Background removing offers also more models for the #FLOSS version.
Speaking of Android being locked down by Google, two weeks ago I saw a post on your forum about a Free Android SDK project that could be a drop-in replacement for the standard SDK (that creates a legally binding contract with Google on current ToS). Sadly, the last message is from October. Is there any progress on this front, or Google already managed to lock down this part of Android?
By trusting the US, we handed Trump a kill switch. Yet Europe’s digital sovereignty is an achievable goal, says civil liberties campaigner, Johnny Ryan
Our Friendica has been more stable for the past days. This is good. Maybe leftover database tasks from the recent update made our CPU work so hard. So far all is looking good.
Google announced that as of September 2026, it will no longer be possible to develop apps for the Android platform without first registering centrally with Google. This registration will involve:
- Paying a fee to Google - Agreeing to Google’s Terms and Conditions - Providing government identification - Uploading evidence of the developer’s private signing key - Listing all current and future application identifiers
Getting a monopoly to be less shitty is nice, but wouldn't building an alternative be much better?
There is already the french /e/ OS that exists. I wish european countries would start building on it and improving it. Thereby breaking the shitty monopoly.
Europe seems to have suddenly awaken and started actively looking for alternatives to american big tech.
@MichelPatrice @gael There is already true European alternative, #SailfishOS. Unfortunately /e/OS isn't true alternative as it is just android fork. It can mitigate the Google data mining and offer short term user privacy but won't bring European tech independence. Supporting #Jolla can lead to much brighter future IMO as phones with Sailfish are already google free phones.
@Antti98 @MichelPatrice "it is just android fork" 🙄 100% open source, and yes based on Linux kernel etc. This is really a small consideration of what /e/OS and all the features we are adding.
@gael @MichelPatrice I don't meant to downplay your work! It is great way in short term to mitigate the Google data mining as I said. Great work in that front! And maybe easier for people to transfer. But isn't truth that it is fork of android and relies completely on AOSP? Which is fully controlled by Google and works as long as Google allows? Surely technically based on Linux kernel, but not really a linux distro, right?
@gael @Antti98 @MichelPatrice but still based on ASOP/Lineage --> Android --> Google. If Google decides to close it more and more? Sure you are adding features, but see what Google is doing with Android (developer verification) and where does this ends?
@MichelPatrice @Antti98 that is exactly how a strategy can work and end up into a hard and fully independent fork. If you look at it closely you will notice that it is on its way.
@gael @MichelPatrice If Murena is able to make e/OS completely independent from android, I salute you! Then you would be truly own operating system, which would be great :) But if it requires native apps outside of "standard" android I think there could be challenges in the ecosystem. On other hand if there isn't native app builds, then reliance with Google stays on. But time will tell, I definitely will keep my eyes open with /e/OS development
J’ai acheté un cellulaire seconde main* fonctionnant avec /e/ pour en faire l’essai. Et c’est franchement très bien.
Parce que toute la procédure d’installation était franchement intimidante et le risque de transformer mon cellulaire en brique ne m’excitait pas. C’est sans doute un des grands obstacle à une adoption plus généralisée de la patente.
(* D’un fournisseur anglais pour ne pas acheter aux États-Unis. Ici, on est pas mal à être franchement remontés contre les É.-U...)
@Antti98 @MichelPatrice @gael I'm on /e/os now with my fairphone 5, but I tried #sailfishos and I loved it. I would happily pay for the android compatibility layer to get it work on my phone, but I've just bought my device before they announced their new phone, so won't like buy another one. 😅
It’s a great time to develop more Linux‑based mobile apps to replace Android, which is becoming increasingly closed. Linux phones are improving every day, but they still lack sufficient developer support. I’ve seen several Android apps recently ported to Linux, and I hope more people will start buying these phones—especially in Europe, where digital sovereignty remains insufficient.
You can follow Linux‑mobile accounts such as @furilabs, and @postmarketOS to stay updated!
The FLX1s from Furi Labs runs a fully optimized Linux system called FuriOS, packing a lightning fast user interface, 3 hardware switches for microphone, camera and modem/GPS, and a privacy centric approach like no other.
@Dubikan @clero @furilabs @postmarketOS Highly recommend to check commerce.jolla.com/products/jo…. It runs with SailfishOS which is according to my research most mature linux alternative. And as I have used it myself, I must say it runs super smoothly. It even has android container running separately off the main system which allows you run most of android apps during transition period. For me it was one day of setting it up and super smooth transition
I just paid $250 (USD) for a BOLD N4 phone. If only there were a Linux phone half as good for twice the price! (5G, 3D AMOLED 6.78" 120Hz display, 1200x2652. NPU 655, Ovta core CPU, 512GB storage, 32GB ram. 50MP camera. Big battery, fast charging.)
All talking about switching to a Linux-phone but Linux is much unsafer than Android. Android has sandboxes, app based permissions and nearly no root access for a reason.
@gay_garstly Today, with Flatpak, apps are containerized with app‑based permissions. With Waydroid you can even run Android apps in containers. It’s true the OS isn’t as optimized for a phone as Android or iOS, but if more people start using it, especially in the EU, developers could boost performance and build a safe and truly de‑Googled OS.
@gay_garstly Well for example #SailfishOS has sandboxing, app based permission already. Is it as good as with android? Surely not, but it isn't that far away that it wouldn't suit wide masses IMO
@thehiddenlayer How so that GOS isn't mature enough? I personally think Sailfish is mature enough for wide masses, but didn't expect to hear that GOS wouldn't be
This increasing platform friction and centralization is precisely why Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are a better path forward. They bypass this kind of gatekeeping entirely. Unless a feature absolutely requires native integration - which is increasingly uncommon - the open web is the superior platform. #PWA #Apps
Sometimes the smartphone world makes me really want to wipe the thing and figure out a way to install Windows 98.
(No, really, the way I see it, there are way too many things - at least in Android - that are a step backwards compared to Windows 98, and I'm aware that system is far from flawless (and that a non-locked-down UNIX-like system would be much better)... but at least you could install what you wanted to, you could access the whole filesystem, and you didn't need system changes to access application data).)
Android is shifting from an open platform to a Google-controlled walled garden. Demanding private keys and government ID is a direct attack on developer privacy and independent innovation. Open source is dying under the weight of monopoly.
I'm not sure how I'll be responding to this because I'm not currently an Android app developer and not likely to be.
In principle I'd like to deGoogle, but it's not really an option for many, and it is the many that will be needed in order for developers to retain a user base.
I'd love to see this boost Android and iOS alternatives, and might switch as a way of supporting that. But which?
I looked at #GOS recently and it looked promising, but don't think it avoids this.
@happyborg Check #SailfishOS from #Jolla. When I have tried to do research about real alternatives, Sailfish seems to be most mature one. And it even has android container integrated which works beautifully in transition period. Works super smoothly. I don't personally think it is degoogling if you transfer to other android, but that is subjective opinion. Of course with that you can quite Google data mining, which is great step already
Google/Samsung and Apple have a monopoly on phones. These are required for civic participation. Apple has a closed ecosystem for developers. Android does not. I as an app developer picked android years ago to support it's freedom. It is about to do a bait and switch and require me to register and pay them to use my own phone with apps I write myself. This is very scary. This must be stopped to prevent techno-lobbiest control of our government and fascist control of us the people.
This is not just a number. It is 9,000 people who chose privacy, independence, and a different kind of phone. People who decided that their data is theirs. People who believe something better is possible.
Secure your Jolla Phone at the special batch price before February ends. If you have been considering it, this is the moment.
I personally think the mandatory #Android app developer registration that #Google wants to enforce starting in September 2026 and that will prevent the installation of apps of non-registered developers is in breach of Article 5 (5) of the EU Digital Markets Act.
I therefore just sent a complaint to the European Commission and asked them to enforce the requirements of the EU DMA.
@weizenspreu Did they answer saying that not being able to install software on a device you paid and own is "a necessary and proportionate measure" that the DMA allows?
Here I am hoping Google goes through with this... I would love to see wide masses to move towards real alternatives to duopoly. I have moved to use #SailfishOS as my main device, as it seems to be most mature Linux option. And finally after long time #Jolla is bringing on the market Linux phone with decent specs!
Since 2024, Israel has been quietly flying out delegations of journalists, influencers, politicians, even religious figures from different African states. The carefully curated trips take African visitors to tourist and religious sites, the Knesset, and Oct 7 attack sites.
Nothing that shines a light on the suffering of pesky Palestinians of course!
There have been trips with delegations from Morocco, Cameroon, Senegal, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa and more going so far.
The trips have led to mixed results: in some African countries, strong backlash has occurred, as was the case with Morocco and Kenya. So, Israeli authorities have been selective: it is now selecting journalists from countries run by dictatorships, where there are no press freedoms. i.e Ethiopia.
For Kenya, where there is a strong media culture, there were no journalists willing to go, so Israel recruited influencers and gospel music singers.
I'm ashamed to say this, but Ethiopian journalists have proven the most "effective" of all the Africans to be flown out to Israel. The Ethiopian airwaves and newspapers have been flooded with content that dehumanizes Palestinians, depicts Israel's genocide as a self defense move, or polishes Israel's reputation by highlighting advances in technology, agriculture or various religious heritage sites at a time when media focus should be on mass slaughter in Gaza.
Israel appears to be studying the results, country by country. For instance, following intense backlash from Moroccan journalists against colleagues who traveled to Israel, this year, Israel could not find journalists from Morocco. It sent a cultural troupe to instead.
All in all, our weakness as Africans? Too many dictatorships. A robust press culture would have us better resist efforts by not only Israel, but China and Russia as well, to sell us questionable narratives that violate humanity.
Tomorrow, we shine a light on Israel's African psy-op, and hold our fellow African journalists, responsible for coverage that dehumanizes Palestinians and downplays their suffering...to account.
I feel like one of the best things you can do to make the world a better place is to educate others and spread knowledge, seeing people make videos like this gives me hope 🙂
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
If you would like to help financially support the development of a new Wayland compositor for Xfce, you can do so by contributing funds via our #OpenCollective accounts.
These contributions will help pay for the funding of longtime Xfce core developer Brian Tarricone to create xfwl4, a brand-new Wayland compositor for Xfce.
Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly.
Xfce is the first DE I ever used when I started to use Linux, as my first distro was XUbuntu at the university back in 2014. I had the pleasure to install it on my laptop a few months ago, after years of using GNOME, and I was glad to be able to use it again! I sure hope this desktop environment continues its life ☺️
Once you realize it’s not “age verification”, but actually “identity verification”, then it’s easy to understand that the real goal is “papers, please” for the entire internet.
This entry was edited (Friday, February 20, 2026, 12:47 AM)
Identity verification isn't so unattractive in 2026 — social media is destroying democracies via anonymous armies of bot people steered by aggressive foreign actors like Putin and Musk.
The libertarian model that the Internet was built on is failing societies.
@txtx Rightfully unpopular. This is not a libertarian position but an anarchist and antifascist one. It's not Ayn Rand bros who are harmed by needing to show ID to participate in public life. It's queer youth, undocumented folks, unhoused folks, dissidents, ppl living under regimes that don't want them having international contacts, etc. who this shit harms.
@txtx some people will accounts there are, and so are people with accounts in other places, because social media it's not just those places, and because the requeriments for id verification are way broader than social media.
@DiogoConstantino So? What's wrong with trying harder? Is laziness an excuse?
I want more fellow tech people to step away from the libertarian ideals of the current Internet, and start coming up with ways to help save democracy from aggressive states and their disinformation campaigns.
@txtx @DiogoConstantino @dalias Stepping away from the libertarian ideals of the internet is just an indirect way of saying you want the internet to step towards authoritarian ideals.
And you can take that evil shit and shove it. Have you not noticed what authoritarians do with power yet??
Are you aware that all of our social security information and most of our medical records have already been compromised? You REALLY want to fork over more personal information to some cloud where hackers and data brokers and fascist regimes can just play around with it? Once that data is getting hacked and spoofed, they'll just keep demanding more invasive data to prove ID-- right down to our retinal scans and fucking DNA.
None of this shit is about protecting kids, no matter what pretty claims they put on the tin. NONE OF IT.
That's the list of regulations you need to adhere to, as motor vehicle manufacturer, to make sure that the thing you build is safe for people to drive, at what speeds and under what conditions.
By carefully restricting vehicle manufacture to prevent specific kinds of harm under specific sets of conditions, the people _in_ those vehicles are free _from_ all sorts of risks, and more free _to_ travel in them safely.
Enacted by a hard-fought effort from folks like Ralph Nader, yes. In the 60s and 70s.
That's an example everybody loves citing, because it worked. And the stuff that fixed the hole in the ozone. Thing is, nothing anywhere near as comprehensive or effective has been acheived in other industries since, because the corporations vowed to never let it happen like that again.
So. In a world where the regulating mechanisms have already been CAPTURED by immense money, how exactly do you expect regulation to be achieved now?
Tons of awful things are already thoroughly against all kinds of laws, but continue happening anyway. The "international rules-based order" is proving to be a hollow fantasy. Genocides continue unabated, no justice in sigh
Enacted by a hard-fought effort from folks like Ralph Nader, yes. In the 60s and 70s.
That's an example everybody loves citing, because it worked. And the stuff that fixed the hole in the ozone. Thing is, nothing anywhere near as comprehensive or effective has been acheived in other industries since, because the corporations vowed to never let it happen like that again.
So. In a world where the regulating mechanisms have already been CAPTURED by immense money, how exactly do you expect regulation to be achieved now?
Tons of awful things are already thoroughly against all kinds of laws, but continue happening anyway. The "international rules-based order" is proving to be a hollow fantasy. Genocides continue unabated, no justice in sight.
Laws are the pieces of paper that formalize power structures with official documentation-- but they're just paper. Labels. Where exactly is the power going to come from, to make billionaires pay taxes or make genocidal war profiteers stop killing people?
How do you regulate the internet without simply lining up to put your own leash into the hands of these technofascist monsters whose corporate feudalism is turning the whole idea of national sovereignty into an obsolete joke?
"How do you regulate the internet [...] How does that actually work??
These are excellent questions, exactly the kind we should be asking IMO. Some ideas: ban oligarch social platforms completely. Ban foreign platforms when they go over a certain market share. Ban platforms that don't adhere to local law.
I thought this was a niche idea but it turns out that, according to recent polls, some of these are very popular positions here in Europe — including age restrictions.
This entry was edited (Saturday, February 21, 2026, 2:01 AM)
@violetmadder @txtx @DiogoConstantino "Libertarian ideals" aren't the answer here. We absolutely need to regulate the billionaire platforms, either out of existence or at least into behaving half decently. What we must reject is regulating ordinary ppl into surveillance hell as a faux substitute for that.
Libertarian just means you're not the boss of me and selfish now. We've done that experiment and now we have the evidence. The libertarian ethos and its loudest adherents hasn't protected us from totalitarianism at all. It and they have endorsed and supported it.
Regulation isn't oppression. The fact that you don't need to worry what's in the water when you turn the tap doesn't give you less freedom, it gives you far more.
I am talking about small l libertarianism here, not American Libertarian party crap.
And I truly don't understand how the hell anyone thinks regulation is going to magically fix the fact that oligarchs have already bought control of the courts.
@txtx I didn't say Facebook & birdchan are anarchist/anti fascist. I said that the demand that they don't have a hold on our public spaces that only allows people able and willing to dox themselves to participate in public life is anarchist and antifascist.
@dalias @txtx 100%. We can’t control how the billionaire class use the media they own to spread crappy propaganda. But the right to anonymity is also about safety and the ability to organise away from hostile surveillance.
@bencourtice I think we need a more sophisticated approach. I'll give an example:
Twitter users generally appreciated the blue checkmark that verified official accounts.
I think that, in working democracies, an opt-in verification for citizens could be an answer. This may mean being an ID to a post office, but we can still make it anonymous so that neither the govt nor the server owner knows which ID was used to verify which account.
@txtx @bencourtice And what would be the point of that? You've constructed a system where an admin process exists to enable a website to state "This account belongs to someone. We don't know who."
@plock @bencourtice I would know that A) it's a real person and B) that person is in the EU. The rest I can ignore or treat with caution, which would be especially easy if X/Facebook/TikTok are banned.
This is a massive improvement over the current situation where every other person is a scam artist botperson.
@txtx I'm not against that kind of verification existing in principle. But the problem with "functioning democracies" is that sometimes they turn into something else.
On the other hand, I think we have a somewhat false sense of security with internet anonymity.
What I mean is, when the state decides to go after people, they have the means. In Iran, they shut down the Internet and start mass killings. In the US, people snitch to ICE. And so on.
Maybe social media isn't the place where we should be seeking safety or freedom.
@txtx Honestly most of the worst people on the internet are unashamed to go by their actual names and faces.
This is obviously true on Facebook and LinkedIn, but if you ever go to fascist Telegram groups, a lot of them are full of people with real names, and profile pics of them with sunglasses and baseball caps sitting in their cars. They aren't ashamed of who they are or what they do, and they aren't afraid of consequences.
@passenger Those worst people are mostly bots or fake. Rarely are they using their real names. ICE wear masks.
The ones who go public: they should be in court facing anti hate laws. But instead they're protected because they don't even live in my country. X and Facebook need to be banned where I am to fix this.
@txtx I speak as a somewhat experienced antifascist who started doing infiltrations around 2013-2014, in the start of what was later called the alt-Right; and who has done more than his share of street actions.
There's a myth that these sorts of accounts are mostly bots, and I really don't think that's true. Like yes, some of them are impostors, that is certainly the case. But if you look at the polls, Reform is at 28.6% in the UK and RN is at 35% in France. That means a quarter of Brits and a third of French hold fascist views, and so if you see a quarter to a third of social media accounts being openly fascist, that's about what you'd expect. That's just who Europeans are.
In my infiltration work, one thing I notice is that the hyperonline gommos tend to have anime avatars and stuff like that, but the more scary people, those with jobs and houses and families and blood-and-soil politics, those tend to be the same person online as they are in real life. In antifascist commu
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@txtx I speak as a somewhat experienced antifascist who started doing infiltrations around 2013-2014, in the start of what was later called the alt-Right; and who has done more than his share of street actions.
There's a myth that these sorts of accounts are mostly bots, and I really don't think that's true. Like yes, some of them are impostors, that is certainly the case. But if you look at the polls, Reform is at 28.6% in the UK and RN is at 35% in France. That means a quarter of Brits and a third of French hold fascist views, and so if you see a quarter to a third of social media accounts being openly fascist, that's about what you'd expect. That's just who Europeans are.
In my infiltration work, one thing I notice is that the hyperonline gommos tend to have anime avatars and stuff like that, but the more scary people, those with jobs and houses and families and blood-and-soil politics, those tend to be the same person online as they are in real life. In antifascist communities we are deeply security-conscious, but these people really tend not to be. If you wear a mask around them they'll get suspicious and, in my experience, will lecture you about how covid is fake. Their security doesn't come from anonymity but from tight social conformity and from knowing that the cops agree with them.
They are the people who try to propel Jordan Bardella and Nigel Farage into office, will queue up to work at Frontex, and who have scary domestic violence records. They are not bots, they are worse than that.
@passenger The UK/Brexit are perfect examples of foreign dictators influencing citizens via social media disinformation campaigns, anonymous & bot accounts etc.
This is not something I want to see further replicated anywhere in the EU.
Being an 'anti-facist' on X is a contradiction. It's like hating on Mickey Mouse at Disneyland.
@txtx Where they go, we go. If you want to know what Mickey Mouse is up to, rather than just hate him and want to avoid him, Disneyland is the place to be.
(I don't monitor twitter though, it's just a garbage hellsite, and most of the real fash are elsewhere. British hard fash mostly use Telegram, soft fash mostly use Whatsapp, and it's worth monitoring both.)
@passenger I seriously question if following around fascists/racists has done any good for society in the last decade or so.
On the contrary it seems like a bad addiction, and it's only getting worse because we're just injecting more of it into our daily lives. Why do we need to listen to them? Are we their lackeys?
@txtx We listen to them so we know what they're up to and can oppose it.
To give an example the media knows about: in early 2023 there was a group of fascists who intended on storming a Drag Queen Story Hour in South London. When the fascists arrived they found that we were there ahead of time and we had big sticks.
Bonk.
If we weren't in their chats monitoring their planning, how would we have been able to bonk?
Yes. The cops often monitor these chats so they can turn up and protect the fascists in question. Sometimes they don't and then we have fun.
An example is UKIP's planned attack on mosques in Birmingham this very weekend. You are welcome to come to Birmingham to oppose them if you want. There will probably be a lot of cops there to keep the fascists safe.
It's important to understand that violent fascist thuggery gets organised regularly in the UK by people with their real names and real faces, under the full knowledge of the police, and said police do nothing. At worst they might briefly hold a few high-profile people, but it's not serious: is Danny Tommo behind bars? Is Tommy Robinson, or Mark Collett, or Nick Tenconi?
If the concept of the rule of law has been abandoned by the state, you should probably consider your fallback option. Because mine was to get a mask and hoodie.
@passenger This just solidifies my opinion that I absolutely do not want to replicate UK politics in the EU. Everything about it sounds like a failure, from using social media to organize crime to having stick fights with thugs.
Be careful, a lot of EU states are basically the same. Some (Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Italy, Hungary) have already gone further and let the fascists into power. Others (France, Hungary) have banned organised antifascist groups.
You have chosen not to tell me where you live. That's fine! Privacy is everyone's right. Your country of residence may not have openly embraced fascism yet. But it creeps in, and by the time it reveals itself it's already too late. You should consider what, apart from voting, you're going to do.
The core is cruelty. The core is the enclosure of the commons; the backbone of how capitalism oppresses millions. All rooted in abuse culture and kyriarchy. The cultural premise that some people are superior and thus entitled to control those they deem inferior through coercion. All of this flows from that.
Troll farms are just ONE tool in the toolbox of corruption.
If you're determined to proceed via electoral channels, then a good starting point might be to refuse to vote for any party which restricts antifascist organising or uses the power of the law against antifascists. France's banning of Jeune Garde, for example, is unacceptable.
You could also press for the cessation of EU policies which fascists love, for example Frontex or the support of Israel's ongoing campaign of genocide.
As ever, it is tempting to see the enemy as an external threat, but this misses the point. Vladimir Putin is not the main threat to Finland, for example. Riika Purra is the main threat to Finland, and she doesn't have to hide her face for safety.
@txtx @passenger You are seemingly unaware of the huge amounts of organizing that have occurred on social media for positive reasons. I'll grant that social media run by corporate predators is of course warped and untrustworthy, but that is not the inherent nature of social media or the internet as a whole.
Likewise, I'm willing to bet you have NO CLUE what antifascist action even is or how it works, much less what it has accomplished. Even under regimes that are seriously unfriendly to antifa in general, their work has led to the criminal convictions of some truly despicable rings of bastards.
You're jumping to a lot of conclusions in your own brain, so fully confident in your smartness that your blind spots are yawning chasms.
@magnus That's not at all good enough because it doesn't stop botpeople from Russia and other dictatorships. There's more than enough of them to destroy this kind of simplistic solution — and disinformation factories are only growing.
having these centralized authorities to establish identity is indistinguishable from having these centralized authorities dictate identity
there are better models of steering people away from abuse that do not involve creating more systems that become more chokepoints for abusers to exploit once they find their way in (as they have now, and curiously just in time for these chokepoints to be promoted)
*EDIT: and also the "fication" part etymonline.com/word/verify > from Medieval Latin verificare "make true,"
it's not social media, its a network of elite child rapists and their sympathizers who coordinated a plot to push back the gains that marginalized groups made via the internet, especially trans people. there's also a lot of right wing freakouts like this that didn't involve the internet, the book "when the clock broke" goes into a lot of detail on this in the context of early 90s USA, in a similar vein the nazis used radio to score a lot of their political gains.
@foxbops The Nazis were defeated by countries that generally banned nazis and nazi propaganda in their own countries.
In western democracies, today, we're opening our doors to them. We're saying, please, flood us with the firehouse of nazi garbage information. It makes no sense.
@txtx if those democracies were working, people wouldn't just start believing what a random person on the internet says. it didn't use to be like this and it doesn't have to now, but it's affected by the same social issues as everything else. whereas the earlier internet contributed a lot to social progress and there's no telling that things wouldn't be even worse without it. also, if an open internet was fundamentally a threat to democracy, dictatorships wouldn't be working so hard to destroy it, and it wouldn't be people opposed to democracy as a concept pushing for tighter government control.
Precisely. And the age cutoff is irrelevant. They could pick any age they want, but *everyone* (above that age) still needs to provide their papers to prove they are above that age.
They already have all of your info. We know this because the FBI just inadvertently revealed it by producing video evidence publicly that wasn't supposed to exist.
They have your info and they are feeding it to your government freely and without a warrant.
ID verification is just a simple means of proving you confirmed someone isn't a child.
not defending the age verification at all or any of that shit... But at least they designed in Europe the upcoming EUDI Wallet (digital wallet) they now want to use for that in a way that you can for example just disclose "yup, I'm over 18" not more of your personal information
I'm not sure I completely agree. If you use a bank account as proof of age, the service provider should only receive a yes/no, and no other details whatsoever. There's no way I'd use facial recognition or age estimation, but other techniques (which may seem to be more risky at first sight, such as via your bank) may be pretty safe.
@dave The Swiss government e-ID is basically promising that: verify the age, but without leaving a data trace that can be linked (on either side) to anything. Despite being technically sound (open source and all), the law just barely passed the referendum. I guess the risk is that companies will use more "convenient" ways to verify age, and/or share any verified info they get with their whole ad network, where everything ends up linked with everything else. eid.admin.ch/en
If there was a real need for age verification, it should be implemented on alcohol selling website, bet websites, and so on. Age verification is just disguised censorship.
Once you realize it’s not “age verification”, but actually “identity verification”, then it’s easy to understand that the real goal is “papers, please” for the entire internet.
there are other technical ways to do only and just age veification that have been so carefully avoided that at this point it's fair to say it's entirely on purpose and that the goal is "papers, please".
@libramoon That sounds fine until you realize that some of the main ways that they hurt these kids is through doxxing, blackmailing, and other methods that are only made easier by de-anonymizing them. Also the fact that people - from the companies themselves to governments and hackers - are using the data in ways that are harmful to people.
This entry was edited (Friday, February 20, 2026, 7:23 PM)
#HolosSocial joined the (long) wishlist of #YunoHostapps.yunohost.org/wishlist This would really help to have many decentralized relays. Currently, our server is in Europe, which might create some discomfort for some users.
While I'm no longer active in many commercial #SocialMedia platforms, as a #science communicator I still keep an eye on them to see how people (mis)understand #astronomy, and incorporate those lessons to my job.
Today Facebook crushed my soul with this abomination.
A while ago I wrote this article explaining how to spot fake #astrophotography images using science:
The replies to that post are a rollercoaster of emotions:
1. people who think it's real (I genuinely don't fault them, if you've never seen a real one you're not expected to know this is fake) 2. people who say it's fake but then use it to justify some "flat Earth/physics is fake" b.s. 3. people who correctly explain why this is fake 4. people mad at (3) because they incorrectly think that (3) are science deniers like (2)
I like how you break down these interactions, group 2 and 4 tells me how there is little room for nuance on social media. Unfortunately misinformation campaigns and fake clickbaity posts like these have gotten more popular over the years 🙁
@gunchleoc @literally Exactly. Mentioning the lunar surface is ok here, because in a proper HDR image of a solar eclipse you can rescue details of the lunar surface illuminated by the earthshine. The caption, on its own, is correct (except for the first sentence claiming this pic is from the Feb 17 eclipse). It's the image that is problematic. But if one has never seen a real one before it's easy to fall for it.
@gunchleoc how embarrassing 😳😅 if i’d thought about it for another minute i would’ve put that together with my memory of how science works (probably… i hope lol)
@gunchleoc @literally We were in the path of totality in 2024 but were so socked in all we could see was everything getting dark. That said, I’ve seen enough eclipse images to know the corona doesn’t look like that, and solar flares don’t extend anything like that far. I used to do photo-compositing (photocomposition?) for a living, and an image like this would be simple to create. (1/2)
I was going to say... an annular "ring of fire" eclipse means the sun is visible during the entire event. The image would have had to been from a total eclipse.... if it were real
Before deleting, I only ever used facebook for meme groups.
I got tired of correcting physics, even in physics groups― some of which were sharing some psuedoscience spiritual dude. People were like "oh, so you do know!". Others, "you don't know anything!". Others still, "That's wrong. Explain it then!"
For Ads, I'd just report as harassment. Staying just within the meme groups meant I seen no ads. But my data was still taken.
This entry was edited (Thursday, February 19, 2026, 7:00 PM)
Those clickfarming "science" accounts are all over Facebook for years and years. I had a few headbutting incidents with one or another when I still used my FB account, and I've always failed to see what they get out of it.
Few weeks ago, a friend posted this pic on our WhatsApp group. Most of them have PhDs. Even after I pointed out that the image is fake, the reasons why it is fake and how to find out the actual locations of the planets in the night sky, they remained unconvinced.
There is an element of human psychology here where people simply like and share sensational stuff, science and logical thinking be damned.
Politicians and their enablers know how to exploit these tendencies, now with AI.
The first thing I noticed was that the image doesn't show any of the sun, but a "ring of fire" eclipse occurs when the moon is far enough away that it won't completely cover the sun. Also to see features on the moon, the exposure would probably be long enough that the corona would be washed out. Using the wrong image is unfortunately not unusual: I once saw an article about an automobile accident & the picture was of some police tape set up somewhere else.
When I was a kid, my parents drove about 6h so we could all enjoy the total solar eclipse over Germany. The city of Cologne turned off all lights. For a brief moment there was no light pollution at all. (Not that I knew about light pollution back then…) It was magical. One of the few natural phenomena I really hope to experience again.
This entry was edited (Thursday, February 19, 2026, 8:21 PM)
🚨 New research from ETH Zurich has found that popular password manager's zero-knowledge encryption claims don't fully hold up if their servers are compromised. ⚠️
🔑 LastPass, Dashlane & Bitwarden were identified as being affected, this is significant because cloud password managers commonly claim that their user's data would be unaffected if they were compromised. 👾
❌ LastPass did not issue a fix and stated: "our own assessment of these risks may not fully align with the severity ratings assigned by the ETH Zürich team."
💡In 2022, LastPass experienced a breach that impacted 1.6 million users due to inadequately strong technical and security measures within their infrastructure.
The best time to switch from LastPass was yesterday; the second best is today. 🗑️
all encryption fails eventually, so placing credentials and other critical personally identifiable information "in the cloud" cannot be made 'secure', *even when encrypted*.
Do you have another source for Bitwarden havin fixed the issues? If i am not mistaking, i can't see where they say something explicit about Bitwarden fixing these issues in the linked article.
This sounds like the kind of thing that cannot just be "fixed". As far as I can tell, *all three were lying* about their servers being dumb storage without access to your secrets. This is a problem of vendor integrity not a technical problem.
. Self-publishing is self-marketing, so there we go.
There is a security researcher called Celeste, just like meee! Weirdly enough, that makes me happy 
![[XYZ] ww 🩶](photo/contact/80/1418073?ts=1787407905)
Jeff Grigg
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in reply to Alex • • •this avali will trap ur plasma (shellbyte) likes this.