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.
@rgbunny They brought stones, they expect they'll make them magic at some point so they can go into the avian intelligence units but they pre-bought so many there's now a scarcity of stones and magic stones now command a pretty price.
@rgbunny and before someone very smart comes along and pretends that soon we'll just have more 3nm clean rooms to produce enough wafers for everyone... that stuff takes like 5 years and that's if you can actually buy the tooling and have the money, so it's more like a decades.
@rgbunny The data centers are being built with electricty access and public opposition as the bottlenecks. But construction is happening and manybare finished already.
A friend writes "Well I don't know the details. You would think some one would ensure they are actually building stuff." (Artificial shortage of Western Digital drives & East German 4th generation male sheep).
I feel like an extra panel for this would be her asking if she can just get an AI for cheaper and just take one of its gems, and the shop keep being like “sorry, we grind those gems different for Avian Intelligence, they’re useless for wands.”
− 👩 "...and how much for a AI Parrot?" − 👴 "Oh, take it, and take these 100 gold coins too. That's the AI industry paying you to inflate their total number of users. They desperately need a growth curve to keep investors on board."
@ooignignoktoo @mangeurdenuage Et oui, tout est misé sur le "To big to fail" et sous-tiré de l'argent publique pour perfuser l'industrie qui ferait trop mal si elle s'écroulerait...
@BigShellEvent Hey, thanks for joining! No, MiniFantasyTheater (MFT) is a weekly series a bit new, not part of Pepper&Carrot, but I'm keeping this series in my fantasy world (named Hereva, a parody of a serious world building).
Maybe I'll have a look later this spring at offering PDF/Epub/cbz of MFT and a print on demand version too. I have to study if DriveThrewComics POD have a square format. I'll keep news about it here and on the blog.
Official homepage of Pepper&Carrot, a free(libre) and open-source webcomic about Pepper, a young witch and her cat, Carrot. They live in a fantasy universe of potions, magic, and creatures.
oh no me again. Tried to buy the set via OpenBookShelf, and after extensive back and forth with both my bank and the vendor, I think they will never be able to charge my cards as there seem to be some vague technical issues (per 2026 all technical issues are "oops something went wrong" so I can't even target and solve it).
Do you sell your printed books via any other vendors?
@BigShellEvent Oh no, I had no idea it could happen. It was with DriveThruComics, right? (I know they have multiple name, same company). There is this Italian Publisher "Silly Comics" that run a Kickstarter right now and prints also the English version. I wrote a bit about it on the blog davidrevoy.com/article1118/wel… ; except that, I don't have anything else.
@ToonLink Yes, My defective RAM gave me inspiration 🥲
A good news: G.Skill accepted the warranty return, and sending new ones. The bad news: they wanted the 'couple' of RAM stick I bought at that time, so I'm returning 16GB, and run right now with only 16GB. For real; it's ok: with a little RAM monitor on my systray bar, it's to start to close things when consumption is too high.
Oh yes, the cauldrons use way more resources 😺 I need to show this as well. 😊
Ohhh, that's good to hear! I was worried that they would decide your sticks were too old and maybe only offer a discount on new ones. >__> Though I suppose that would still be better than paying full price.
Hehehe, yes, I know what you mean. There's a flaw in my motherboard that only lets me use two sticks out of four, so I'm stuck with 16 GB, too It's doable, but when my client wants me to do huge formats, it's impossible.
Not sure if I'll include this new Krita brush I created specifically for this episode in my upcoming brush pack, but it's fun to play with 😅🖌️🦜🦜🦜
While I'm here, check out the timelapse: peppercarrot.com/0_sources/min… This time, I took a more traditional approach: sketch, inking, painting the background, and then characters. Along the way, I think I found a good preset for inking.
trop mal a qui, vraiment? La plulart des gens autour de moi ont déjà perdus leurs boulots dans les deux dernières années. Ils se reorientent dans des secteurs hors de la tech, qui n'engage plus autant. C'est une arnaque de ponzi qui ne sert qu'à extraire encore plus de ressources de la majorité de la population pour les réinjecter dans les mêmes poches déjà trop pleines.
This entry was edited (Thursday, February 19, 2026, 12:14 AM)
@fredurb1 @gub Tiens d'ailleurs, je trouve rigolo "une IA qui se dit compétente" et je me disais qu'a mes oreilles 'une IA compétente' sonne comme un oxymore. 😆
Aussi, le thème du remplacement du travailleur par l'IA est difficile à aborder. Ce que j'ai retenu dernièrement de certaines lecture de papiers, d'articles et de stats, c'est que ce n'est pas le cas: mais que l'idée est utilisé comme prétexte pour virer des effectifs.
Je fais une vraie différence entre "compétent" et "capable". Une IAg est très capable de faire des images, des textes… et très rapidement car c'est fait par un ordinateur. Mais c'est un travail sans compétence : avec les erreurs qui montrent qu'il n'y a aucune compréhension, que c'est juste du contenu recraché après une bouillie statistique, que c'est non fiable. @fredurb1
The demand is going to skyrocket any day now. That's why it's so crucial that they stop producing consumer-oriented magic stones altogether to free up resources.
this is a bad analogy, the datacenters these companies are hoarding all of this RAM for haven't even been built yet (and for that matter, I don't think the RAM has even been produced, either) At least the Avian Intelligences are already actually made, even if they're going to just end up a total waste
This entry was edited (Thursday, February 19, 2026, 6:12 AM)
It's either very funny or very depressing to watch executives trip over themselves to prove who has the worst understanding of what software development actually entails.
More classically for software engineering, per Fred Brooks (1975): "one woman can produce a baby in nine months but nine women cannot produce a baby in one month".
The #FDroid website has a new banner on top to remind visitors that #Google did not change course and #Android will be locked-down in under 200 days.
If you care about the freedom to control your devices and care about the privacy of you data, please contact your representative and make your voice heard.
@_RyekDarkener_ It's not only about "your" phone, but of your friends and family too. Note that Google knows PR really well, people already relaxed and forgot about this, as media just repeated the Google texts verbatim.
Jep. And to my understanding this is officially a crime in an area where law already exists. I’m no lawyer. But I’m quite confident the case will come to court. I’m very much struggling with the idea that our politicians do not know what happens.
That's actually seriously unhelpful. Cool though. I'll just focus on helping anyone that wants install lineage or something. Screaming directly into a trash can is pointless anyway but if there was actually something I could say that would like suggest a step to take or law that's being broken or something I might have bothered. Clearly there's just bitching about how shit's being ruined and they don't give a shit.
I agree. So – as I said – waiting for politics may be much as waiting for godot. I would like to have an operating system for my current – and any other – smartphone to be easy installed via otg stick. Like any other computer. A lot of this is already in place. And frankly spoken I don’t think that 95% of the current users care if they can use F-Droid or not. I like F-Droid. But sadly it is elitist currently and not mainstream.
@alandvalonline I also wish for this. Linux drivers for legacy phone hardware, a Chromebook level of simplicity for installing or running variant UX's, maybe from a removable card or USB stick... A secure OS like Tails... Siloed apps... I don't want corporate access to any data. ..
google is an integral part of the security/surveillance state. they're not susceptible to public opinion. hopefully the tech crowd will continue to develop alternatives.
@Alonely0 @tehstu @cy8aer Note that Obtainium, Aurora and other app stores will have the same issues on 99.9999% of devices if Google goes ahead. Regarding "secure", do read f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_How… too.
This page documents how a new application gets included in the main F-Droid repository. It includes the technical details that a submitter should be aware of...
@tehstu @cy8aer yeah, it's a technical discussion, sorry I assumed more than I should have (it's an xkcd 2501 situation, look it up lol). However, I have to say that relying on GitHub releases is not that bad of a deal with an app store like Obtainium, which streamlines app updates. It's actually a quite secure model since it comes as straight from the developer as it possibly can.
@tehstu @Alonely0 @cy8aer even with sideloading, apk's needs to be installed using adb. using normal user interface enforces google's totalitarianism .... control.
Got a quick answer from EU's DMA Team, they might have a standard response due to high demand :
> Dear citizen, > > Thank you for contacting us and sharing your concerns regarding the impact of Google’s plans to introduce a developer verification process on Android. We appreciate that you have chosen to contact us, as we welcome feedback from interested parties. ... 1/N
> As you may be aware, the Digital Markets Act (‘DMA’) obliges gatekeepers like Google to effectively allow the distribution of apps on their operating system through third party app stores or the web. At the same time, the DMA also permits Google to introduce strictly necessary and proportionate measures to ensure that third-party software apps or app stores do not endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system or to enable end users to effectively protect security. ... 2/3
> We have taken note of your concerns and, while we cannot comment on ongoing dialogue with gatekeepers, these considerations will form part of our assessment of the justifications for the verification process provided by Google. > > Kind regards, > The DMA Team ... 3/3
Yes, standard text. Maybe we should encourage people to mention that not being able to install software on a device can't be a necessary and proportionate measure to begin with.
I still have problems to understand what happens with apps like those of fossify, or DuckDuckGo for example, that i downloaded and maintain over F-Droid, but that are also available on Playstore and thus should be under the "verified" category.
These should still work but not the F-Droid Store App itself so i need to update via a website manually???
I am not an IT person. I genuelly have problems understanding this, despite having read the infos i found so far.
This entry was edited (Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 11:14 AM)
I had hoped that if Apps and their developers took it on them to do the verification shit, loading and maintaining at least such apps from other places than PlayStore would be possible in Android.
The users are trapped: Banking Apps and some others don' t work with Custom Roms. Open Source from free places will no longer work on G-Android.
The only solution is havingntwo devices which is expensive af.
My phone runs Android, my parents' too. Google is going to prevent us from installing what we want on devices where we had been able to until now. Devices that we bought and that will still be perfectly functioning 5 years from now. Hence why this is a fight worth fighting. @fdroidorg @marcprux
@TTFKA_Tay0 To be fair, they are not alternatives, they use the same code, and are at the mercy of Google when it comes to releasing such code. Otherwise, once installed, Lineage and other Android distributions can give the freedom back to their users to install what they want.
Si china puede hacer un clon de Android, ¿Acaso no puede hacerlo Europa? ¿Para cuando un Linux para dispositivos móviles? ¿hasta cuando seguiremos siendo vasallos de las multinacionales norteamericanas? ¿Para cuando nuestra delcaración de Soberania Digital?
¡Sin Soberania Digital no hay libertad, independencia ni democrácia!
@Alonely0 @cy8aer Older apps were added when reproducibility wasn't achievable. For this reason today only about 22% of apps that we host are signed by their developer. This number will increase with time as we push for reproducibility at inclusion time. Also, switching from one signer to another is an annoying process that users need to take manually, for security reasons.
Per https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Inclusion_Policy/ The software must not download additional executable binary files (e.g. addons, auto-updates, etc.) without explicit user consent....
@apicultor If you have questions why not drop by and ask directly? f-droid.org/about/#contact Posts from 2021 and half-truths on forums won't give you the information you need.
F-Droid is the FOSS app distribution ecosystem for Android where your user freedom comes first. Discover our app store to explore the world of free and open source (FOSS) apps and [learn](https://f-droid.
We don't have representatives, we live in capitalism. All those elected to run government represent multinational industries and their federation, banks and financial institutions. We are their enemy, they are not going to listen.
Does anyone know how this affects phones that already have F-Droid and apps from there installed?
Will some Android/Google Update make them stop working all of a sudden? Or not let me update them anymore? Or will this affect only future Android versions?
How does it affect degoogled Android? Will F-Droid Work on Custom ROMs? Will someone tech-savvy still be able to degoogle android and make F-Droid work? Will it be possible to flash an existing android with a custom ROM?
Or: Do I need to buy a phone with a custom ROM preinstalled? Will someone else fork AOSP and save it for custom ROMs?
So many questions. I hate the direction Google is heading to. Which Chance do have surveillance conscious people to get out of it?
its a good thing actually as the main thing it affects is intimate partner violence stalking and really low hanging fruit malware. you can literally still sideload, you just cant distribute apks anonymously. you can still modify a phone to remove the restriction, just not without the owner noticing, which is the actual point. this is completely out of touch with the reality of the android malware ecosystem, the harm it causes and why they are actually doing this.
This entry was edited (Tuesday, February 17, 2026, 5:22 PM)
@techlore techlore you are so handsome and smart, how can we contact representatives in Europe? Is there another action other than sending emails? I feel I am putting a target on me for sending emails to politicians. If the email ever goes through because tuta or proton are banned by some.
I live in China. We don't have representatives to contact. Even Google doesn't provide service to users here directly. Please do NOT show the useless header to users from China. I love F-Droid and FOSS in general but the header would be useless and annoying.
i just want big brother not watching everyone's every move, holy hell. i only use ggle services because of how popular they are, while minimizing what ggle i use
@Framasoft est- ce que çà concerne uniquement l'Os Android "Google"? Ou est-ce que ce sera valable pour toures les version Android " degoogleisées" comme lineageOs ou /e/os par exemple ?
@Fynn Android has lost its appeal to me as a target for development. I also may order a Jolla Phone at home point, but I need to be sure that my banking apps work with it.
This entry was edited (Tuesday, February 17, 2026, 9:10 PM)
@Alonely0 @cy8aer Since you brought up the signature model, Google Play requires devs keep the signing keys with them, F-Droid just offers it as an option. F-Droid offers using only the upstream signature if the app is reproducible. f-droid.org/docs/Reproducible_…
Also, how the APK signing keys are managed has nothing to do with Android Developer Verification or Keep Android Open.
Introduction F-Droid works to spread reproducible builds across the free software Android ecosystem. The goal is to enable software build processes that anyo...
@cy8aer please reach out to them, we're all in this fight together to keep Android open, including the AOSP source code, device trees, etc. Google is grabbing all the power it can these days, given all the anti-trust enforcement against them these days. The competition lawyers are in charge there now.
@zetabeta I'm optimistic because competition authorities around the world are paying close attention and trying a wide range of strategies to open up the mobile ecosystems.
This is the reason why i removed some of my apps from Play Store and i only develop with frameworks that allow creating apps that work with linux-first phones like Pinephone
Yes, standard text. Maybe we should encourage people to mention that not being able to install software on a device can't be a necessary and proportionate measure to begin with.
@fdroidorg @marcprux I've really appreciated F-Droid lately. I'm setting up a new Lenovo Tab3 running 5.0.1 - 99% of my apps have been sideloaded APKs. Google doesn't support it, so no updates but they don't keep trying to "improve" my experience either.
This entry was edited (Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 8:24 PM)
@fisk @liquidparasyte Maybe we were lost in translation? Google did not back down, they appear to double down and continue on track... The "advanced flow" was never shown to anyone, also even if that will exist it will not be by September 2026 but at a later unannounced date.
What @crazyeddie is trying to say: standing up for openness, freedom, and the right to choose your own tools only makes sense in a society where openness, freedom, rights or even rational discourse still have any meaning at all. The US is probably no longer such a society.
something for the @EUCommission. I'd be surprised if this did not violate the DSA/DMA. Can we maybe get a _quick_ solution, not some hardly sufficient fines which will only get paid after years in the courts while the harm continues?
Hi Hello what it means : « Clippy would never block your application freedom and claim it's to protect you from malware. » at the end of the petition ?
No one *wanted* to see what Google was up to. I.e. autoredirects in G Maps, Youtube playback failures were ramped up to unusability. This is no surprise.
Who actually didn‘t see that was already living inside G-defined boundaries, i.E. having a G account, using Youtube via G-controlled browser, using Maps via G app, …
Remains a mystery to me why people use a OS/browser made by the major advertising predator, known mainly for working against humans.
Thanks for sharing the guidance. I've written to UK and EU Govs with my arguments.✊🏼 My device is a bit old to install a libre OS alternative without complicated steps. I have yet managed to remove Google services with ADB, and I strongly rely on Aurora and F-Droid to install apps I need. This act would be a hard hit.
Do I understand correctly, that Google free Android is not directly affected by this policy?
But the majority of the userbase is affected, so an app developer would loose nearly the complete userbase and this would result in many developers giving up, destroying the app market.
And this in turn will affect Google free Android.
Please elaborate, if I misunderstood!
This entry was edited (Monday, February 23, 2026, 8:14 PM)
At this point it would be crazy to develop any Free/Libre application for Android. Don't care what Google says tomorrow, we can NOT trust Big Tech. We need to be in control of our computing resources, both at software and hardware level. PS: @EUCommission please take note. #Google #Android #Freedom #GNU
I hate to disagree here, but as an admin who deals with *many* users with phones in the wild, this is a *good* move by Google. They're *NOT* stopping you from side-loading apps. They're doing the same thing banks have started doing when people try to withdraw cash -- verifying that you're not being coached or hacked and that you *REALLY* want to do what you said. This is annoying to a very small subset of people, and *VERY* useful to a larger group. #Android #security #scams
Misuse Case
in reply to evacide • • •David Penfold
in reply to evacide • • •Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to evacide • • •Demosthenes 🛶🐈🐈☕️
in reply to evacide • • •evacide
in reply to Demosthenes 🛶🐈🐈☕️ • • •ℂ𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕖@world: /#
in reply to evacide • • •🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)
in reply to evacide • • •"""
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 😮💨
reshared this
Quixoticgeek, aliceice, KB, diana 🏳️⚧️🦋🌱 and Hex reshared this.
Momo
in reply to 🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) • • •...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
Zappes
in reply to 🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) • • •Wuzzy
in reply to evacide • • •Ah yes, "let us protect children by scanning their faces". What could possibly be wrong??? 🤡
“the software ‘flags you as a “suspicious entity” based on your face alone’ …”
Yay! Phrenology 2.0!
Nonya Bidniss
in reply to evacide • • •Scott Williams 🐧
in reply to evacide • • •Ollie Boermans
in reply to 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.
Gerard
in reply to Ollie Boermans • • •@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.
Erin Church 🏳️⚧️
in reply to evacide • • •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.
Claudius Link
in reply to evacide • • •mastodon.social/@bsletten/1161…
Brian Sletten (@bsletten@mastodon.social)
Brian Sletten (Mastodon)Don Urcu
in reply to evacide • • •me·ta·phil, der
in reply to evacide • • •Katika Kühnreich
in reply to evacide • • •One of the many reasons to be against #ageverification software
It gives the wrong people & companies tons of data, often #biometric ones
Therefore we transfers #power exactly the wrong people & #corporations
And as we can know latest since #Edwardsnowden companies do share data with governments
The cornerstone of the #chinese #surveillance #state is #realnameregistration
Don't give #biometrics to #evilcorp, especially not for cheap thrills
Do not hand data to #fascists
#resist
F3715H
in reply to evacide • • •just don't use #discord and refuse to #ID as a matter of principle!
infosec.space/@kkarhan/1161142…
Kevin Karhan :verified: (@kkarhan@infosec.space)
Kevin Karhan :verified: (Infosec.Space)diana 🏳️⚧️🦋🌱
in reply to evacide • • •Bastian
in reply to evacide • • •Travis F W
in reply to evacide • • •