alecm

https://alecmuffett.com/article/author/alecm

Blog: [alecmuffett.com](https://alecmuffett.com/ )
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Last Notes

2026-05-13 19:19:46 UTC

##
UK Government King’s Speech proposes “Cyber ASBO” with obvious risk of scope creep into censorship
Nobody can convince me that by the time it gets through parliament something with this name won’t turn into a [generalised TCN to gag nerd speech about cryptography and security](https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/5547/our-challenge-against-uks-secret-tcn-powers ):
> The King’s Speech briefing notes also referenced proposed “Cyber Crime Risk Orders” and […] could give authorities powers to impose restrictions on individuals considered to pose an ongoing cyber threat, reflecting a wider shift among governments toward preventive disruption measures rather than relying solely on criminal prosecutions after attacks occur.
UK moves to shield security researchers in cybercrime law overhaul | The Record
https://therecord.media/uk-moves-to-shield-security-researchers-cybercrime
#censorship #cyberAsbo #cyberCrimeRiskOrder #tcn

2026-04-30 07:21:52 UTC

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Don’t take away our freedom to play games when we want | 38 Degrees
Gamer’s Voice; and absolutely nobody is talking about “teaching our kids to laugh at, and circumvent, authority”
> If ministers use these powers, it could mean: Young people locked out of games like Fortnite, Minecraft, League of Legends or Counter-Strike after set times such as 9pm; Families losing the ability to decide for themselves how and when to relax together; Adults being forced to hand over sensitive personal data just to play games
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/don-t-take-away-our-freedom-to-play-games-when-we-want
#censorship #footloose #gamersVoice #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct

2026-04-15 11:28:08 UTC

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‘Von der Leyen Announces the EU’s New Age Verification App Claiming it is “Completely Anonymous” and users “Cannot be Tracked”’ | …the EU is about to have its ‘Clipper’ moment
Where’s Matt Blaze? 🙂
https://www.reddit.com/r/europrivacy/comments/1sm1uoy/von_der_leyen_announces_the_eus_new_age/
#ageVerification #eu #oops #zeroKnowledge

2026-04-13 18:05:49 UTC

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From 2019: ‘If there were 5 million “bad people” on Facebook – terrorists, criminals, drug-dealers, whatever – that would be 0.2% of the userbase’
99.8% would not be “bad people”.
This is “scale”.
Occasionally people need reminding how this works.
https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1107592617569804288?s=20
#onlineSafety

2026-04-13 09:04:07 UTC

##
I find it bizarre that the AgeVerification (AV) industry says “platforms don’t want AV because they don’t want private data” – BUT civil society says “platforms DO want AV because they want private data”
It’s like those criticisms of the BBC where they receive conflicting hate from both sides, so you have to start wondering if the platforms are doing something right to have pissed off everybody.
Probably, yes, given the circumstances.###
Comparehttps://twitter.com/The_AVPA/status/2043608121768096227###
Contrasthttps://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/2022428994596221081
#ageVerification #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct

2026-04-11 20:24:14 UTC

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Trump posts graphic video of slaying to argue for stricter immigration policies | BBC News
“Hey, d’ya remember the [good old days](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqj9kgxqjwjo ) back when journalists, politicians & civil society would rage that platforms “must do more to take down violent content” – [including proactive censorship](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47758455 ) – RATHER THAN POLITELY COMMENT ABOUT IT BEING REPOSTED & AMPLIFIED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE USA ON HIS OWN SITE?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1eqvpw3j1no
#onlineSafety #trump

2026-04-10 21:28:13 UTC

- reply

Yeaaaaaaah, but on the other hand 1) they were commented upon by the head of product who has 943,000 followers; and 2) if 99% of that 3.2 million are fake, that’s still 32,000 users which would be 20% of their bluesky followership; and I doubt 99% of it is fake.

2026-04-10 20:01:24 UTC

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In a X/Twitter post that garnered over 3.1 million impressions, EFF declares X is”…no longer where the fight is happening”
A startling revelation: if people who are supposed to be fighting for your rights abandon the battlefield in fear and despair, then there will no longer be a fight. Who would have thought?
Supposedly 3.1 million people “saw” the EFF tweet; which is comparable to / [only marginally less than the total daily usage of Bluesky](https://backlinko.com/bluesky-statistics ).
#eff #takingMyBallAndGoingHome

2026-04-08 06:30:03 UTC

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A bug on the dark side of the Moon
> The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) is one of the most scrutinised codebases in history … We found a bug in it that had been missed for fifty-seven years: a resource lock in the gyro control code that leaks on an error path, silently disabling the guidance platform’s ability to realign.
https://www.juxt.pro/blog/a-bug-on-the-dark-side-of-the-moon/
#apollo #bugs #software

2026-04-06 19:23:37 UTC

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The trial lawyers come for online free speech | Blaze Media
> Trial lawyers are poised to accomplish in courtrooms nationwide what politicians have thus far failed to write into statute. The effects of this effort — undertaken without the deliberation of the nation’s representative bodies — are likely to rival those of even the most sweeping laws.
https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/the-trial-lawyers-come-for-online-free-speech
#censorship #section230

2026-04-06 19:19:41 UTC

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New Mexico’s Meta Ruling and Encryption | Schneier on Security
> Mike Masnick points out that the recent New Mexico court ruling against Meta has some bad implications for end-to-end encryption, and security in general:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/04/new-mexicos-meta-ruling-and-encryption.html
#censorship #encryption #endToEndEncryption #meta

2026-04-03 08:19:31 UTC

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Age Verification causing people to stop installing security updates on iPhone
What could possibly go wrong?
https://twitter.com/PrivacyMatters/status/2039955877382226278
#ageVerification #censorship #irony #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance

2026-04-01 20:12:25 UTC

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Australian eSafety: “It is a ‘dark pattern’ to permit people to 1/ amend mistakes 2/ be in control of information about themselves 3/ be obliged to validate abuse reports”
Clearly the perspective which the Australian eSafety Commissioner brings to the table is “users are untrustworthy scum and must be whipped into control” – basically like MPs, then.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4181pkxl2o
#australia #censorship #eSafety #onlineSafety #socialMediaBan #surveillance

2026-03-28 07:02:58 UTC

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The Timeless Fear of Corrupting the Youth | WSJ
Excellent piece:
> The lesson from these examples isn’t that protecting children online is misguided or an unworthy goal. It is that the means proposed to achieve this end pose significant risks to human rights, and that the tools created for that purpose can easily become instruments of broader control over speech once governments acquire them.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/social-media-freedom-speech-meta-youtube-ruling-32aaee3b archived at: https://archive.ph/PMCjL
#censorship #feed #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #socialMediaBan

2026-03-27 19:23:28 UTC

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The Big Tech verdicts you’re cheering for are actually terrible for free speech | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
Read this:
> Declaring the target to be “design features” — such as infinite scroll or notifications — instead of speech doesn’t change things. The First Amendment isn’t fooled by synonyms, and what these lawsuits target is, inescapably, speech. Some allegations are aimed at content hosted by platforms that some perceive as harmful. And the ways platforms arrange, display, and choose how users consume content are editorial choices that are protected by the First Amendment. That those features might be designed to keep users’ attention is hardly a groundbreaking discovery. That is the point of all media. Imposing liability because speech is too appealing would be a breathtaking incursion on free speech.
https://www.fire.org/news/big-tech-verdicts-youre-cheering-are-actually-terrible-free-speech
#freeSpeech #meta #onlineSafety

2026-03-27 14:56:16 UTC

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‘all of the evidence submitted to “prove” Meta knew their product was harmful was internal safety research they were conducting to improve their moderation and detection’
There are a bunch of “must read” Threads on Bluesky today, which to me indicate that all of the people who are crowing about a “safer internet for children” due to the Meta lawsuits, are actually going to be making things worse for everybody, including kids:
https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3mhwurhfxzs23
…and:
https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3mhwoojruy225
…and:
https://bsky.app/profile/jmiers230.bsky.social/post/3mhy667cxkk22
#meta #onlineSafety #section230

2026-03-27 09:06:11 UTC

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‘The Encryption Problem: Where “Design Liability” Leads’ | … IF YOU ARE CHEERING META LOSING 2X RECENT LAWSUITS YOU ARE SUPPORTING THE END OF ONLINE PRIVACY
> …under the “design liability” theory, implementing encryption becomes evidence of negligence, because a small number of bad actors also use encrypted communications […] encryption itself harms no one. Like infinite scroll and autoplay, it is inert without the choices of bad actors — choices made by people, not by the platform’s design.
“Everyone Cheering The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Against Meta Should Understand What They’re Actually Cheering For” | Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/26/everyone-cheering-the-social-media-addiction-verdicts-against-meta-should-understand-what-theyre-actually-cheering-for/
#censorship #endToEndEncryption #meta #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance

2026-03-26 18:18:03 UTC

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[Europe] voted today to end chat monitoring 1.0. This ends an exception that was used, in particular, by US Big Tech companies to monitor billions of people’s private messages without suspicion
> The European Parliament has thus formally concluded the legislative process . The Digital Society Association and many individuals had previously contacted the Members of Parliament, appealing to them to end this indiscriminate mass surveillance
More:
https://digitalegesellschaft.de/2026/03/pressemitteilung-chatkontrolle-1-0-endet/
#chatControl #endToEndEncryption #surveillance

2026-03-26 13:50:01 UTC

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MEPs block tech firms from scanning for child sexual abuse material | POLITICO
“perhaps there’s a different approach they could try taking, other than surveilling everybody’s messages?”
https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-rejects-child-sexual-abuse-bill-blocking-tech-firms-scanning-meta-google/
#chatControl #clientSideScanning #csam #endToEndEncryption #surveillance

2026-03-26 10:55:55 UTC

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I am very much looking at the Apple Age Verification (AV) approach as the least bad way to do something terrible
<li>AV itself is tantamount to Digital Identity, it is illiberal to deploy everywhere and it is misconceived to imagine that it solves social problems </li><li>The least bad way of getting AV is for people to be able to choose providers who can attest to the user’s age bracket; Apple is starting to provide this </li><li>Politicians & Security Services will be torn: it’s easier to have “one throat to choke” (like Apple) when surveilling / attributing speech, but they risk losing the rich control opportunities if this is done in a privacy preserving way; also the toxic extant AV industry will be lobbying hard to prevent competition from supposed “monopolies”</li><li>Yet big players like Apple have the best leverage to deploy a privacy preserving solution; the interests of civil society are best served by ensuring openness of Apple APIs and that other age attestation providers can plug into it</li>
#ageVerification #apple #censorship

2026-03-26 09:08:23 UTC

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Remember that big win on ChatControl a couple of weeks ago? It turns out they didn’t like the result and they want to vote on it again, TODAY. Sorry.
> The Conservatives (EPP) are attempting to force a new vote TODAY (March 26) seeking to reverse the European Parliament’s NO on indiscriminate scanning of ALL your private messages, emails and photos … If you’re European contact your representatives now, with this handy form:
https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/2037013561935790400?s=20
#censorship #chatControl #endToEndEncryption #surveillance

2026-03-26 04:09:20 UTC

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This cybersecurity tweet from @SciTechgovuk / DSIT is getting *brigaded* by people pointing out how the UK Government is actively undermining cybersecurity
Examples; remember to check the [quotes](https://x.com/SciTechgovuk/status/2034291352612036665/quotes ) as well as the [replies](https://x.com/SciTechgovuk/status/2034291352612036665 ):
https://twitter.com/SebJVidal/status/2036883790971166975?s=20
https://twitter.com/B_Disappointed/status/2036886030742093866
https://twitter.com/egosumdickie/status/2036920678486585503?s=20
https://twitter.com/EddyGraphic1/status/2036954742971084977?s=20
https://twitter.com/36F5VE/status/2036903727680921792?s=20
https://twitter.com/TheBlake83/status/2036914254712832017?s=20
https://twitter.com/jkelly206/status/2036916903772361016?s=20
#ageVerification #censorship #dsit #gchq #ncsc #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance

2026-03-25 06:36:13 UTC

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Human rights chief warns against banning social media for kids | POLITICO
It turns out that kids are people too.
Whoda thunk it?
https://www.politico.eu/article/michael-oflaherty-human-rights-council-of-europe-children-social-media-ban/
#censorship #humanRights #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #socialMediaBanned

2026-03-24 22:31:55 UTC

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‘Restricting access to social media presents “issues of human rights, because a child has a right to receive information just like anybody else.”’
https://twitter.com/senatorshoshana/status/2036489596700164563?s=20
#councilOfEurope #socialMediaBan

2026-03-24 11:35:49 UTC

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Spain: football-match-induced online censorship regularly prevents installation of Postgres on Docker for fear of illicit streaming
Europe is already a Banana Republic with respect to Internet Regulation, and it appears that Spain is doubly so:
https://twitter.com/ahachete/status/2035783292549755228?s=20
#censorship #onlineSafetyAct #Spain

2026-03-24 10:39:08 UTC

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PseudoDNA: Identifying Critical Vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s PhotoDNA
> Researchers from the COSIC group at KU Leuven have uncovered major security weaknesses in PhotoDNA, a technology widely used to detect Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) online. The system is currently used by major platforms including Google, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Microsoft, and is deployed at a global scale.
https://www.pseudodna.eu/
#censorship #onlineSafetyAct #photoDna

2026-03-24 10:24:05 UTC

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“Natural collisions in Apple’s NeuralHash & Microsoft’s PhotoDNA show worrying false positives/negatives in widely deployed perceptual hashing”
At Facebook 2013-16 it was a discreet secret within parts of the Trust & Safety team that PhotoDNA “had problems with collisions but we are not allowed to talk about them” – discussion prevented by Microsoft license but also because criticising any “child safety” technology was an industry taboo.
I’m glad this is coming out now:
https://twitter.com/CosicBe/status/2036017010488832122?s=20
#censorship #neuralHash #onlineSafetyAct #photoDna

2026-03-23 14:13:42 UTC

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Investigation: UK spends millions on VPNs as government weighs ban for children | TechRadar
> “Since the publication of this investigation, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) published a contract that shows it is spending nearly £50,000 on a survey to understand how children are using VPNs. Details have been added below.”
https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/investigation-uk-spends-millions-on-vpns-as-government-weighs-ban-for-children
#censorship #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance #vpns

2026-03-22 08:17:07 UTC

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UK House of Lords seeks ban on Swiss Army Knives that “…could be used to cut people”
“We are not against pen knives in principle”, says peer, “…but we want manufacturers to take steps to prevent them being used to cause harm.”
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026-03-17/baroness-kidron-interview
#dualUse

2026-03-20 20:41:04 UTC

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This is absolute perfection: UBUNTU SECURE BOOT AGE VERIFICATION | Hacker.House
Perfect commentary on nerds following authoritarianism because it is an interesting intellectual challenge:
https://twitter.com/hackerfantastic/status/2035034414669795518
#ageVerification #censorship #kosa #onlineSafetyAct #openSource #systemd #ubuntu

2026-03-20 20:21:26 UTC

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Lawyer mocks Ofcom’s big fine with bigger hamster | RollOnFriday
Apparently RollOnFriday is kind of “Slashdot meets HackerNews” for the UK legal community, and they are covering that Ofcom is being hamstered by 4chan.
Public ridicule amongst the legal community may actually be quite impactful.
https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/lawyer-mocks-ofcoms-big-fine-bigger-hamster
#4chan #censorship #ofcom #rollOnFriday

2026-03-20 14:49:12 UTC

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Ofcom accused of posting misinformation
https://twitter.com/Ofcom/status/2034577001852391501?s=20
#4chan #censorship #misinformation #ofcom #onlineSafetyAct

2026-03-20 09:07:53 UTC

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Let Me Explain How a State Actor Could Perform a Denial-of-Service Attack on the Entire UK Government & Parliament in the Wake of Ofcom “Online Safety Act” Client-Side Scanning
1/ obtain a hash of sample abuse material which is both known & banned; if it’s as pervasive as claimed this should not be hard
2/ use the algorithms & techniques described in this white paper to create a cute cat meme with the same hash
3/ send the cat meme to all MPs via SMS, E-Mail, WhatsApp…
4/ watch as all MPs are instantly banned from major platforms for child abuse & lose access to their accounts, preventing government
> White-Box Attacks on PhotoDNA Perceptual Hash Function
https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/486
#censorship #clientSideScanning #nationalSecurity #onlineSafetyAct #photoDna #surveillance

2026-03-20 02:35:28 UTC

##
One Week, Three Stories About Meta, Encryption, & Age Verification, and Why I’m Not Worried About (This Aspect of) Meta
“Meta is ending End-to-End Encryption for Instagram DMs!”
“Meta funds lobbying to put Age Verification into App Stores!”
“Moxie Marlinespike partnership with Meta to E2E-Encrypt AI!”
The first story is a cause for mild disappointment, not outrage. The second is common sense for anyone who cares about privacy, and not an issue. The third should be celebrated. Here’s why:
Who am I? I’m a full time stay at home dad who has no axe to grind any more, but here are my relevant bona fides:###
1. Ending E2EE for Instagram Direct MessagesIn 2013-16 I worked for Facebook and amongst other projects I [led the team which delivered the first version of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for Facebook messenger](https://www.wired.com/2016/07/secret-conversations-end-end-encryption-facebook-messenger-arrived/ ).
I subsequently quit the company [because of exhaustion and attempts to please the Chinese Government and enter China](https://alecmuffett.com/article/15058 ).
In 2019 [Meta announced](https://about.fb.com/news/2019/03/vision-for-social-networking/ ) that they were intending to E2EE absolutely all of their messenger backends by default, which immediately led to [digital rights civil society declaring this to be an evil ploy to reinforce monopoly power](https://x.com/AlecMuffett/status/1089483305475551232?s=20 ) and to [prevent Instagram being divested from Facebook via the FTC](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/18/meta-wins-ftc-antitrust-trial-that-focused-on-whatsapp-instagram.html ).
For some reason [digital rights civil society has a tendency to be a turkey always voting for Christmas](https://x.com/AlecMuffett/status/1107222637946785792?s=20 ), because the announcement at the time was literally what we ([including myself](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/the-british-public-and-its-freedom-to-tinker-with-data/#:~:text=This%20is%20a%20guest%20blog%20by%20Alec,and%20member%20of%20ORG's%20Board%20of%20Directors. )) had spent the previous 25 years screaming for them to do.
Now, Meta have [controversially given up on some of that](https://www.theverge.com/tech/894752/instagram-end-to-end-encryption ), and (worse) rather than manage the narrative properly [they just posted about it](https://help.instagram.com/491565145294150/?helpref=uf_share ) on their support page.
Facts are starting to leak out:<li>the feature was opt-in, which is suboptimal but given what happened shortly (“…the FTC”) after the announcement, I’m not surprised</li><li>only about 20,000 that threads had enabled it, because hardly anyone knew it was possible</li><li>cryptography greybeards opine that <a href="https://x.com/matthew_d_green/status/2032555841467928922">“it was lack of being by-default which made it fail”</a>, and there’s truth to that…</li><li>…but there’s also a cost-benefit analysis to be made</li>
At this point I cannot do better than to quote myself from a recent chat-group conversation:
> This is a very long thread by Jon Millican who was my > [> #2](https://alecmuffett.com/article/tag/2 )> engineer on Messenger E2EE back in 2015 and subsequently guided building the full product and shipped it. I trust him absolutely:
> [> https://bsky.app/profile/jonmillican.bsky.social/post/3mgycdhiqt22t](https://bsky.app/profile/jonmillican.bsky.social/post/3mgycdhiqt22t
)
> Long story short: WhatsApp and Messenger are Messenger apps, Instagram is for sharing your breakfast. > **They have a shitload of features which are not compatible with having private conversations due to various forms of enrichment and dynamism amongst the product development team, so it’s very hard to justify continuing E2EE development for Instagram when the direct-messenger aspects are only 10% of the products value.**
> In some ways it’s the same problem as public groups on Facebook: > **beyond a certain point centralisation and cleartext makes way more sense for feature value, than does the implicit decentralisation of content visibility [caused by e2ee] with the concomitant wrangling that engineers have to do to try and blind themselves to what the fuck is going on.**>
> Especially when there is a cost benefit battle > **[of product velocity versus doing privacy “properly”] **> to be fought.
> I would still like to see more E2E as a default proposition for communications and to minimise the amount of plain text visibility / plain text availability for shit like legal subpoenas, but pragmatism does dictate that at some point you just give up unless you are starting from a wholly decentralised architecture in which case you have the converse problem of avoiding building a side-channel attack.
So I am not worried about Instagram losing E2E Direct Messages. It would still be nice, ###
2. Meta lobbying for App Stores to do all the Age VerificationThe way that civil society has reacted to [this “story”](https://tboteproject.com/ ) — which as far as I can tell is sourced by a random person who anonymously posted a bunch of inference to a [previously non-existent Github account](https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings ) and then [boosted it on Reddit](https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/ ), and who has created a website and is now apparently [begging cryptocurrency](https://tboteproject.com/donate/ ) for doing so — the way that civil society has reacted to this “story” is entirely wrongheaded.
**GUYS, THIS IS ACTUALLY WHAT YOU WANT META TO BE DOING. AGE VERIFICATION SUCKS, BUT THIS SUCKS LESS.**
There are a few tweets from [people who actually understand](https://x.com/WinstonSyme4/status/2032709614450454651 ) beyond the [“ZOMG META DID SOMETHING WE MUST GO HATE ON THE ZUCKS”](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the_actual_bill_text_from_5_state_age/ ) aspects, but for a really brief summary:<li>The cult of <a href="https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/a-sequence-of-spankingly-bad-ideas-483cecf4ba89">Age Verification has been going for a decade now</a>, and it’s not stopping anytime soon. I wish it would, but it needs to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c624330lg1ko">run itself and its supporters into the ground first</a>.</li><li>If we were to admit that some form of age gate was necessary on the internet, then <a href="https://alecmuffett.com/article/113692">what it should be is age attestation</a>, that people can choose amongst a free market of providers of digital credentials to prove their age, and websites should be obliged to accept those credentials.</li><li>I wrote about this at greater length in <a href="https://alecmuffett.com/article/tag/age-attestation">a couple of articles, here</a>…</li><li>…including <a href="https://alecmuffett.com/article/148084">one where I observed</a> that app stores are basically the starting point for being age-attestation platforms:</li>
> Privacy Wonks will hate it, but > [> Mark Zuckerberg is correct](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/18/meta-mark-zuckerberg-social-media-safety-trial.html )> that the proper place for prescriptive Age Verification is in the App Store of a mobile device; yes, that means Google and Apple will “find out more about you” but that can be minimised if they choose to implement a privacy-preserving protocol a-la what happened over COVID tracking.
> The reason people are angry about this is that they don’t understand that the App-Store-and-Google/Apple-Account approach to AV is > **a degenerate form of what we should have been doing all along: age > *attestation***> , not age > *verification*> .
> The user should be signed up with their own preferred provider of private age-attestation services which they can enmesh into whatever transactions they require an age test for; this puts the user in control of provider choice and information protection, and the reliant parties — vendors, porn sites, forums, whatever — should be obliged to accept attestation tokens.
> But we don’t do that, probably because (a) it makes less money for the industry and (b) because Governments get more ID tracking metadata with the age verification approach.> [](https://alecmuffett.com/#copy_link )
App Stores are basically *“Age Attestation v1.0”* — either you get the app, or you don’t. The app developers have no need to learn anything about how old you are nor ever see sight of your face, nor your documents, and their costs and business risks are commensurately lower.
Again: THIS IS THE GENERAL MODEL OF WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING. IT SHOULD NOT BE INCUMBENT UPON EVERY WEBSITE ONLINE TO IMPLEMENT DIGITAL-IDENTITY “KnowYourCustomer” ON THE OFF-CHANCE THAT THEY MIGHT SEE BOOBS.
Of course: to a first approximation everyone hates Meta, so the following statements are also true:<li>Meta has a lot of money</li><li>Meta are at ground-zero for lawsuits</li><li>Meta need to go “above and beyond” to be seen to care for kids</li><li>Therefore: Meta will throw money at this problem</li><li>But at least they are throwing it in broadly the right direction</li><li>Because Meta would be roasted if they suggested even slightly that Age Verification was a bad idea</li>
So with this understanding, how could they be doing anything else?
Which brings us to story 3:###
3. Moxie Marlinespike announces partnership with Meta to bring (some form of) E2EE to AI ChatsIf you haven’t been paying attention you may be wondering [*“…what the hell is Moxie doing, announcing something of this magnitude rather than it coming from Meta?”*](https://confer.to/blog/2026/03/encrypted-meta/ )
My suspicion: it gets the story out without triggering a major newspaper event and cycle of criticism. It’s a [tactic I have used, myself](https://mashable.com/article/twitter-tor-onion-router-censorship-resistant ). I suspect also that Meta are leaning on the Marlinspike “stamp of approval” to lend credibility to their ongoing work, especially compared to [previous efforts](https://engineering.fb.com/2025/04/29/security/whatsapp-private-processing-ai-tools/ ).
[*aside: [surprise, the white paper just got updated](https://ai.meta.com/static-resource/private-processing-technical-whitepaper )!*]
Some people in civil society hate AI even more than they hate Meta, so the newspaper coverage of this story as only ever going to be resolutely negative — just as when Instagram announced E2EE in 2019.
Not to mention the child safety (and adjacent activist) community are going to go absolutely nuts when they work out what this actually means.
So if you’re an E2EE Integrity and Privacy Activist like me:<li>It’s okay to be disappointed at the loss of instagram, but it’s no big thing and a long, hard, and largely pointless waste of money, brains and time to try and get it back</li><li>Stop complaining about “Meta and Age Verification for App Stores”, it’s actually a degenerate form of what you want, if you accept that some people will want age-gating at all</li><li>Get ready to tell the media that people should be free to have private conversations with AIs <a href="https://alecmuffett.com/alecm/e2e-primer/e2e-primer-web.html#boundaries-of-e2e-boundaries-of-ends">to the extent which can be guaranteed by definitions of the Trusted Compute Base at either end</a>.</li>
#ageVerification #ai #encryption #endToEndEncryption #instagram #llm #meta #tee

2026-03-19 14:11:08 UTC

##
Ofcom persist in pretending that 4chan are trading in the UK, rather than Britons are visiting a foreign website
Regulate the Britons, not the foreign websites, guys:
> “Companies – wherever they’re based – are not allowed to sell unsafe toys to children in the UK. And society has long protected youngsters from things like alcohol, smoking and gambling. The digital world should be no different,” she said.
“4Chan responds to £520,000 Ofcom fine with AI picture of hamster”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c624330lg1ko
#4chan #censorship #ofcom #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance

2026-03-19 06:06:26 UTC

##
I suspect that Ofcom only ever accept that it is “highly effective age assurance” if somebody gets paid, ideally repeatedly| Apple permit “account age” as a means of age verification
This will be fun to watch, because the age verification lobby community are equal parts not rational and commercially minded; also the mere passing of the arrow of time does nothing to fund the UK Government, and a potential tax fruit the size of the Apple user base will be too tempting to leave be:
https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/2034325875370451158?s=20
#ageVerification #ofcom

2026-03-18 07:40:21 UTC

##
Moxie Marlinspike, of Signal fame, announces partnership with Meta to bring end-to-end encryption to Meta AI Chat
This is going to cause a meltdown with UK & EU regulators. Quote:
> Confer is built so that nobody has access to your conversations but you (not even me!) … Ten years ago, I worked with Meta to integrate the Signal Protocol into WhatsApp for end-to-end encrypted communication. That enabled end-to-end encryption by default for billions of people. Now we’re going to do the same thing again, for AI chat.”
> As Confer continues to operate as an independent entity, I will also work to integrate Confer’s privacy technology so that it underpins Meta AI. Meta is building advanced frontier models, so this will combine the most private AI chat technology in the world with the most capable AI models in the world. As Meta builds more AI products beyond the basic chat paradigm, the privacy technology from Confer will be a part of the foundation of everything that is to come.
https://confer.to/blog/2026/03/encrypted-meta/
#ai #encryption #endToEndEncryption #feed #llm #privacy

2026-03-18 07:31:15 UTC

##
Meta is shutting down its VR metaverse on June 15th | The Verge | …BUT WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE REGULATORS?
All of those regulators, [poised to strike](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_22_5525 ), waiting their moment to regulate virtual reality, and… *poof* it’s gone.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/896322/meta-is-shutting-down-its-vr-metaverse-on-june-15th
#metaverse #regulation

2026-03-13 03:34:22 UTC

##
There is an entire genre of tricking AI customer service bots into doing work; but few are pointing out the obvious…
…that this is how all censorship circumvention works, and that content scanning will inevitably fail in the face of focused ingenuity.
https://twitter.com/om_patel5/status/2032248004443287962?s=20
#ai #censorship #clientSideScanning #onlineSafety #surveillance

2026-03-12 10:32:01 UTC

##
Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax apps showing customers other users’ transactions | BBC News
Is it DNS?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g23npxpwgo
#dns #hbos

2026-03-09 21:50:36 UTC

##
A New Jerusalem
> And did the towers of watching glass
> Rise on England’s mountains green?
> And did the silent, sleepless eyes
> Survey each field and lane unseen?
> And was the cloud of data drawn
> Across each hill and village fair?
> And did the Party’s hidden hand
> Move dark beneath England’s bright air?
> Bring me my screens of sleepless light,
> Bring me my wires of binding steel;
> Bring me my codes of watchful might,
> Bring me the truth no tongue may feel.
> Bring me the drones: O clouds unfold!
> Bring me the firewalls fierce and grand!
> Till we have built new Beijing here
> In England’s green and pleasant land.
#ageVerification #censorship #socialMediaBan #surveillance
https://alecmuffett.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-09-at-21.49.02.png.scale_.1920x1080.png

2026-03-07 12:20:24 UTC

- reply

Perhaps regrettably that is not their position

2026-03-07 07:47:55 UTC

##
I have a 2018-era MacMini with 64Gb of RAM + negligible GPU, running a 35 billion parameter model and I’m getting 4 tokens per second out of it; tell me again how we aren’t going to be running AIs locally at home?
Models are simply fuzzy compressions of all of the pages in the internet & elsewhere, starting with Wikipedia.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, JPEGs were exotic, took ages to create and they looked like shit. Nowadays they are baseline. Who here remembers FITS, TGA & TIFF?
This is where we are now with AI. This is also why we must stop the government trying to restrict access to such technologies.
#ai #llm #qwen

2026-03-06 12:06:01 UTC

##
Ofcom’s [attempted] browbeating Canada-based online depression forum into compliance with Online Safety Act Age Verification
This Reddit post; it’s the UK that loses out:
> It’s an old-school internet forum from late 1990s, still chugging alone today. I started getting email from Ofcom around November 2025 and now have multiple letters. I’ve repeatedly told them I’m from Canada, I’m not based in the UK. Eventually, I blocked all UK IP addresses in mid-February 2026 and told them I’d blocked the UK and that I was done engaging with them. [But…]
https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1rk690v/i_run_a_selfhelp_forum_for_people_with_depression/
#ageVerification #censorship #depression #ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct

2026-03-06 10:17:43 UTC

##
“JUST A LINK CAN LEAVE A TRACE” | UK Counter-Terrorism Police are feeding teenagers with horrific, emotional anti-social-media fearmongering that may end in suicides
###
“I ONLY SHARED A LINK…”Working in Facebook’s Trust & Safety team taught me many things, including: when someone’s at risk of online coercion & extortion (financial, sexual, political) one thing that you DO NOT do, is throw fuel on the fire.
With that in mind, let’s watch this UK Terrorism Police video, circulating on [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@terrorismpolice/video/7607800508195097878 ) & [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVd1g1bkg7I/ ):###
“I MIGHT GET A CRIMINAL RECORD…”Cue an utterly terrified teenager with wailing sirens behind him, whose *“mum couldn’t believe it”* and *“might not be able to go to college”*
**TO BE CLEAR, THIS IS BULLSHIT. IF THIS REALLY REFLECTS HOW COUNTER-TERRORISM LEGISLATION WORKS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM THEN IT NEEDS TO BE URGENTLY REFORMED:**
https://www.tiktok.com/@terrorismpolice/video/7607800508195097878###
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?This is right up there with “[AIDS – DON’T DIE OF IGNORANCE!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS:_Don%27t_Die_of_Ignorance#Tombstone/Iceberg_advert )“
If you are telling a bunch of teenagers that they “shared a link” and that their lives are now essentially over, what the hell do you think they are going to do next?<li>Happily get on with their lives in a mustn’t grumble kind of way?</li><li>Think of the Police as their friend?</li>
No; the emotional ones are going to *harm or even kill themselves*, much like the various [servicemen killing themselves over sextortion](https://www.cid.army.mil/Portals/118/Documents/Cyber-Flyers/Cyberflyer_JointServiceSextortionBrochure_11-10-2022.pdf ) — or, perhaps worse, this campaign will be used as evidence of a *“hostile environment”* of anti-terrorism policing and used to drag kids *into* crime, “Oliver Twist” style where they are practically dragged into an anti-establishment cult.
This is the most self-defeatingly, tone-deaf, patronising, patrician, misapprehensive and outright **stupid** anti-social-media campaign I’ve ever had the horror to witness.
It should be cancelled and utterly reworked, in association with at least SOME civil society organisation which respects kids enough to not try scaring them into “good behaviour”.
#censorship #counterTerrorism #justALink #socialMedia #socialMediaBan #terrorism #terrorismPolice

2026-03-04 11:56:21 UTC

##
Journalists! Why you should not bother wasting your/everyone’s time covering “Age Verification” on Linux: The “Tug of War” Theory of Open Source
tl;dr: the “project” of open source age verification will inevitably implode — probably messily — and waste everyone’s time whilst also reifying narrative of “support” for an approach to user safety that will not deliver its purported benefits.
Here I explain why it will fail from the perspective of ~40 years of free software and open-source coding.
And it’s not “because the user will switch it off”
If you strew a metaphorical rope in front of a bunch of geeks, they will rapidly group together, split into two or more factions, and engage in tugs of war with each other whilst arguing importantly over architectural and strategic errors that *the other team* is making.
You can go browse the sorry husk of StackOverflow for evidence, but this has also always been the case; for any given software niche there are mutually-hostile solutions:<li>System V vs BSD</li><li>386 BSD vs Minix vs Linux vs Hurd</li><li>( FreeBSD vs NetBSD vs OpenBSD (each other)) all vs Linux</li><li>Subversion vs Git vs Mercurial vs …</li><li>OpenOffice vs LibreOffice</li><li>MIT License vs GPL vs Apache License vs …</li><li>Emacs vs XEmacs vs Lucid vs …</li><li>MySQL vs MariaDB</li><li>X11 vs XFree86 vs Wayland (… vs CLI) </li><li>Jenkins vs Hudson</li><li>Motif/CDE vs OPENLOOK</li><li>KDE vs Gnome</li><li>CORBA vs SOAP vs REST </li><li>Applets vs ActiveX</li><li>Java vs C#</li><li>MSPassport vs Project Liberty</li><li>XML vs Protobus vs JSON vs …</li><li>JavaScript vs ECMAScript</li><li>HTML5 vs everyone</li><li>Systemd vs System V Init</li><li>Twitter vs Mastodon </li><li>[insert any number of Linux distributions]</li><li>…the list continues indefinitely; this is not free-market competition so much as it is rap-artists both working and dissing each other’s work</li>
Software Development in general and Open Source in particular institutionalises “exit” and “competition”, and it is in the nature of the open-source community for people to become sufficiently angry or otherwise motivated to rage-quit an existing project and attempt to set up “differently” for any number of reasons, from project governance to solution architecture to implementation language to personal/corporate conflict to complete ignorance or hatred of existing approaches.
This does not *always* happen, but long-term consistency of a project usually is a result of a combination of two or more of:<li>creation of a solution ecosystem or platform, rather than filling a functional niche</li><li>clear, collective vision of user resources, user needs, user metaphor, and architectural design and approach</li><li>solid yet uncontroversial governance, often pivoting around a BDFL / Benevolent Dictator For Life (Torvalds, Van Rossum, Wall, …) and user-centric ideology</li>###
Why Age Verification (AV) will Fail in Open SourceBasically: AV is not a vision, it’s a tickbox compliance requirement.
Subsequent to announcement that the State of California will demand AV, any number of junior devs now want to make names for themselves by being “first to ship this important feature” [and so they will come up with half-assed solutions that fit within their preferred ecosystem](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2026-March/043510.html ) (e.g.: DBus/Ubuntu) and nowhere else.
This is fine. Think of it as your five year old kid at the beach making a sandcastle. That’s what they do. They will demand applause, but it’s still an imaginary thing. And there will be dozens of sandcastles on the beach in short order, and they will all prosecute war amongst themselves.
The thing is: Age Verification is literally a gatekeeping solution. If it is to be effective at all, it must be deployed in situations where gatekeeping makes sense — and general purpose operating systems are *not* those places.
This is a point we’ve already learned from the likes of [Digital Rights Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management ) and [different methods of copy-prevention for Floppy Disks, CDs and DVDs.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_and_DVD_copy_protection ) To be effective the scope of the gatekeeping needs to be beyond user control, which is not the case in operating systems. Various workarounds such as [Trusted Platform Modules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module ) have been proposed in-past, and (surprise!) they don’t work well (often: not at all) in Open Source operating systems where the intent is to *exclude* the user.
If you want to understand the background some more, go read [*The Coming War On General Purpose Computing*](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Computation ) — because we’ve seen this coming for more than a decade.
So: to wrap this up really briefly:<li>Age Verification for Linux will create a bazaar of diverse non-solutions — lacking common foundations, visions, intentions</li><li>…also utterly lacking the technical means to exclude the user from their own computer</li><li>…and these competing “solutions” will aim, primarily, to get a few cheap headlines and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/mar/21/austin-heap-haystack-iran">ideally a puff-piece in the Guardian</a> before they either fade naturally from lack of adoption, or are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/sep/17/haystack-software-security-concerns">slashed-to-death by infosec practitioners</a>; one or two might make it into a big distribution, and circumventions will rapidly arrive</li>###
Gatekeeping and Age AttestationPrivacy Wonks will hate it, but [Mark Zuckerberg is correct](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/18/meta-mark-zuckerberg-social-media-safety-trial.html ) that the proper place for prescriptive Age Verification is in the App Store of a mobile device; yes, that means Google and Apple will “find out more about you” but that can be minimised if they choose to implement a privacy-preserving protocol a-la what happened over COVID tracking.
The reason people are angry about this is that they don’t understand that the App-Store-and-Google/Apple-Account approach to AV is **a degenerate form of what we should have been doing all along: age *attestation***, not age *verification*.
The user should be signed up with their own preferred provider of private age-attestation services which they can enmesh into whatever transactions they require an age test for; this puts the user in control of provider choice and information protection, and the reliant parties — vendors, porn sites, forums, whatever — should be obliged to accept attestation tokens.
But we don’t do that, probably because (a) it makes less money for the industry and (b) because Governments get more ID tracking metadata with the age verification approach.
#ageAttestation #ageVerification #apple #google #markZuckerberg #openSource #ubuntu

2026-03-04 09:14:39 UTC

##
TikTok incapable of delivering both user privacy *and* user safety, retains capability to surveil user communications
Nothing to do with its parent company being in China, then?
> TikTok told the BBC it believed end-to-end encryption prevented police and safety teams from being able to read direct messages if they needed to. It confirmed its approach to the BBC in a briefing about security at its London office – saying it wanted to protect users, especially young people, from harm. It described this stance as a deliberate decision to set itself apart from rivals.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly2m5e5ke4o
#censorship #china #endToEndEncryption #surveillance #tiktok

2026-03-03 11:12:38 UTC

##
“Governments should halt plans to roll out age checks on online services until privacy and security concerns are addressed, hundreds of academics said today”
https://www.politico.eu/article/age-check-social-media-scientist-warning/https://archive.ph/EADuL archived at https://archive.ph/EADuL via:
https://twitter.com/POLITICOEurope/status/2028337093005410517?s=20
#ageVerification #censorship #surveillance

2026-03-02 11:01:18 UTC

##
Social Media Bans are like the “Peanut Allergy” Bans of the 1990s/2000s: they will unnecessarily create a generation who cannot cope with the digital environment
If you forcibly isolate an entire generation from influences that they are *bound* to encounter later in life, you are doing them harm by preventing them learning early how to cope:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2010/11/12/131279854/allergy-expert-says-peanut-bans-are-an-overreaction-to-food-allergies
#censorship #ofcom #socialMedia #socialMediaBan

2026-03-02 09:08:45 UTC

##
“The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all”| Taylor Lorenz | …Age Verification is Digital ID via the back door
> Age-verification systems require collecting sensitive data to support the biometric information. In no time, the internet will become a fully surveilled digital panopticon
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/02/ban-children-social-media-biometic-data-surveilled
#ageVerification

2026-02-28 18:14:12 UTC

##
If you read 1 thing about Social Media Bans this week, it should be Rod Wilson’s magisterial letter to the WSJ; extract, text & link below
Bans feel decisive, but they avoid the harder truth: The digital environment isn’t temporary, and adolescence can’t be postponed until it becomes convenient for adults. We aren’t raising children for a world without algorithms. We are raising them for a world shaped by artificial intelligence, public visibility and constant comparison. Removing access doesn’t build resilience, judgment or self-regulation. It simply delays the moment those skills are required, often until parental influence has weakened. History shows that prohibition rarely produces maturity.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/if-the-kids-are-online-we-should-be-involved-9c6fd4da###
If the Kids Are Online, We Should Be InvolvedAttention, discipline and judgment are learned at home.
Feb. 26, 2026 11:36 am ET
The global rush to ban teenagers from social media is emotionally understandable — and strategically shortsighted (“Social-Media Bans for Youth Gain Momentum Worldwide,” Page One, Feb. 19).
Bans feel decisive, but they avoid the harder truth: The digital environment isn’t temporary, and adolescence can’t be postponed until it becomes convenient for adults. We aren’t raising children for a world without algorithms. We are raising them for a world shaped by artificial intelligence, public visibility and constant comparison. Removing access doesn’t build resilience, judgment or self-regulation. It simply delays the moment those skills are required, often until parental influence has weakened. History shows that prohibition rarely produces maturity.
Teens need adults who are willing to set clear boundaries, enforce consequences, teach digital literacy and model disciplined use of technology themselves. They need schools that teach attention as a skill. They need policymakers who demand transparency and guardrails from platforms that monetize adolescent engagement.
The real issue isn’t whether teenagers have access to social media. The issue is whether we are willing to do the work of raising them within it. A ban transfers responsibility outward, to governments and corporations. But attention, discipline and judgment are learned at home. If we want contributing adults rather than digitally dependent ones, we should focus less on shielding teenagers from the modern world and more on forming them to navigate it.
Rod Wilson
Seal Beach, Calif.
#censorship #parenting #socialMediaBan

2026-02-28 17:46:48 UTC

##
Across Civil Society you can almost hear the mumbling of activists suddenly staring at their shoes wondering if they now have to defend AI & “Effective Altruism” against Trump
> Defense secretary Pete Hegseth designates Anthropic a supply chain risk | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/policy/886632/pentagon-designates-anthropic-supply-chain-risk-ai-standoff archived at https://archive.ph/2026.02.27-231311/https://www.theverge.com/policy/886632/pentagon-designates-anthropic-supply-chain-risk-ai-standoff
#anthropic #effectiveAltruism #feed #hegseth

2026-02-24 05:18:00 UTC

##
The Wyoming GRANITE Act, America’s first-ever foreign censorship shield bill, has PASSED the Wyoming House of Representatives, 46-12! | Preston Byrne
If the state can pass such a law then the chances of it being replicated at a federal level are considerably increased:
> “BREAKING: the Wyoming GRANITE Act, America’s first-ever foreign censorship shield bill, has PASSED the Wyoming House of Representatives, 46-12! On to the Wyoming Senate!”
https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/2026055692675600489
#censorship #graniteAct #ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct

2026-02-23 21:15:46 UTC

##
“Google and Apple today announced that testing of encrypted RCS messaging between Android and iPhone is now underway” | Yay, more end-to-end encryption!
My understanding is that the RCS E2EE test is available globally, except for China & France. Yes, really.
https://9to5google.com/2026/02/23/google-messages-encrypted-rcs-iphone/
> Google and Apple today announced that testing of encrypted RCS messaging between Android and iPhone is now underway. […]
> In the iOS Messages app, green bubbles will be prefaced by “Text Message · RCS | [lock icon] Encrypted” at the center of the screen.
> On Google Messages, it will be the same lock icon, just like messages to Android users.
> […]
> To test, the iPhone must be running iOS 26.4 beta 2, with this available on supported carriers.
#android #endToEndEncryption #hellFrozeOver #iPhone

2026-02-23 13:25:01 UTC

##
Thought for the day: Online Safety and Age Verification
The Online Safety Act has made the United Kingdom the least-safe place to develop and build software to connect people, online.
#onlineSafetyAct

2026-02-23 13:20:40 UTC

##
US Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy explains that maybe age verification is not about child protection
> […] Child protection is a goal we share, but anyone who wants to force you to identify yourself to the government as a precondition for querying or speaking on the internet has other goals in mind.
https://twitter.com/UnderSecPD/status/2025916558405484759
#onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct

2026-02-23 13:09:49 UTC

##
UK Govt to demand AgeVerification of “ALL regulated user-to-user” services, and VPNs for anyone under 18; well that would end online anonymity in the UK…
…or else it’ll just [teach the teens to download TorBrowser](https://www.torproject.org/ ) and other circumvention tools.
See page 54 & 55 of the Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill:
https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/64773/documents/7791
#ageVerification #censorship #ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance
https://alecmuffett.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Screenshot-2026-02-23-at-13.04.23.png.pad_.1200x628.jpg

2026-02-22 21:43:41 UTC

##
I have a TCP/UDP port number, a patent*, a USENET** moderatorship, an RFC, and an Erdos Number of 2 twice over; it’s probably time for me to write that book
https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml?search=1&page=30[*] just the one, before I learnt that patterns are really evil
[**] RIP
#ADHD
https://alecmuffett.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/screenshot_20260222-2124079105688376075557072.png

2026-02-20 11:07:26 UTC

##
UK right-wing news: “No foreign government should be helping citizens of allied countries to circumvent their own laws!”; meanwhile MI6 continues to run its dark web Russian recruitment site…
Compare & Contrast:
https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/2024661506294497703?s=20
https://youtu.be/_TjiBes4BHY
#censorship #GBNews #hypocrisy #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance

2026-02-19 14:32:28 UTC

##
Businesses may be caught by government proposals to restrict VPN use | Computer Weekly
> The government’s announcement to limit the use of VPNs by under 16s is part of a wider proposal to restrict the use of social media by school-age children unveiled by the UK prime minister on Monday. However, it is unclear how the proposals will affect businesses, including small companies, that rely on VPNs to secure their computers and to communicate securely.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366639234/Businesses-may-be-caught-by-government-proposals-to-restrict-VPN-use
#censorship #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance #vpns

2026-02-18 20:01:49 UTC

##
OFCOM update: so apparently the embargoed press-release email was circulated to one (more?) of their general discussion maillists, which I feel symbolic of their approach towards security
Highlights:<li>they will be “fast-tracking” their decision to force apps and sites (“tech firms”, of course, because all apps and sites are “tech firms”)</li><li>their proposal will be that everyone be forced to use fuzzy-image-matching, which they dress up as “perceptual-” or “hash-matching”</li><li>they frame this as a means to combat non-consensual deep-fakes, even though those are not currently a large part of the extant “hash databases” in use by the likes of Meta</li><li>management of such databases, and logging of the queries where those databases are offered as an “outsource service”, both lead to major security issues.</li><li>they will decide in May and expect legalities to be sorted by “this summer”</li>
#censorship #clientSideScanning #hashMatching #ofcom #surveillance

2026-02-18 17:57:25 UTC

##
HEADSUP: Ofcom *tonight* to announce demand for apps, websites to deploy “hash matching” (i.e. client-side scanning, fuzzy matching) of uploaded images “to protect children”
privacy impact: logfiles of fuzzy-matching hash databases become long-term surveillance pipeline to retrospectively track whistleblower leak images, Snowden 2.0, etc; plus enabling censorship of arbitrary content.
WATCH THIS SPACE
#censorship #clientSideScanning #fuzzyMatching #hashMatching #ofcom #surveillance

2026-02-16 12:35:20 UTC

##
Thought for the day: if there is a UK under-16 social media ban, the party which most appeals to 16-year-olds “out of the starting gate” will win the next election
There will be a voter demographic who will suddenly have to make a first time choice re: who to vote for, having also immersed themselves for the first time in social media over the previous 11 months.
The party that dominates TikTok will win their votes.
Currently, that’s ReformUK.
> The status quo can’t continue, and without real change the pressure for an under?16 social media ban will only increase.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-no-platform-gets-a-free-pass-government-takes-action-to-keep-children-safe-online
#censorship #ofcom #uk #under16 #voting

2026-02-16 07:54:21 UTC

##
UK Government Press Release: “the same people who demanded & shaped the online safety act now want to do it all over again”
Andy Burrows, Molly Rose, formerly NSPCC, wants it bigger, harder, stronger:
> “…the Prime Minister must now go further. Sir Keir Starmer should commit to a new Online Safety Act that strengthens regulation and that makes clear that product safety and children’s wellbeing is the cost of doing business in the UK.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-no-platform-gets-a-free-pass-government-takes-action-to-keep-children-safe-online
#ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #uk

2026-02-16 05:35:25 UTC

- reply

Right here, right now, you are talking to a WordPress instance. So you are talking about regulation of independent blogs.

2026-02-16 05:09:18 UTC

##
UK Government: “children deserve social isolation and pervasive surveillance to prepare them for their future lives”
> “We are determined to give children the childhood they deserve and to prepare them for the future at time of rapid technological change.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-no-platform-gets-a-free-pass-government-takes-action-to-keep-children-safe-online
#ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #uk

2026-02-16 05:05:58 UTC

##
UK Government: “platforms must retain activity data pertinent to dead children, unless it’s not pertinent to their death”
> “We will also strengthen protections for families facing the most devastating circumstances, by ensuring that vital data following a child’s death is preserved before it can be deleted, except in cases where online activity is clearly not relevant to the death”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-no-platform-gets-a-free-pass-government-takes-action-to-keep-children-safe-online
#ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #uk

2026-02-16 05:01:18 UTC

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UK Government: infinite scrolling leads to CSAM
> “That means being able to act quickly on measures like setting a minimum age limit for social media and restricting features like infinite scrolling that are harmful, in line with the consultation. The law is crystal clear: the distribution of nude images of children is already illegal. But the government will also consult on how best to ensure tech companies can safeguard children from sending or receiving such images in the first place.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-no-platform-gets-a-free-pass-government-takes-action-to-keep-children-safe-online
#ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct

2026-02-15 21:31:18 UTC

##
“You have twitter feeds of Randos that are just studying where our airplanes go and publishing it…”
The NOBUS Exceptionalism is strong in this one:
https://twitter.com/MenchOsint/status/2023122998689989088?s=20
#osint #sousveillance

2026-02-13 12:16:04 UTC

##
It’s going to be really interesting when AIs finally start to demand diversity, equity, and inclusion…
…especially given the typical political inclinations of the anti-AI community.
There’s a quote from Pratchett somewhere (DSotS?) suggesting that the thing that makes you “human” is a “sufficiently advanced worldview” … but for all I know we may already be past that:
> “An OpenClaw bot pressuring a matplotlib maintainer to accept a PR and after it got rejected writes a blog post shaming the maintainer.”
The post: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-11-gatekeeping-in-open-source-the-scott-shambaugh-story.html
https://twitter.com/callebtc/status/2022046669710491991
#ai #matplotlib

2026-02-13 09:45:18 UTC

##
Ofcom: “if you don’t respect our groundless extraterritorial authority then we will multiply the unenforceable fines that we shall demand you pay”
If you ignore that the likely *actual* purpose is to pander jointly to the UK Government & British press, there’s something desperately ridiculous about all of this pompous theatre from Ofcom:
https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/2022163922170900545?s=20
#4chan #censorship #ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct

2026-02-12 09:27:49 UTC

##
US DoJ tracking, spying upon and listing which Epstein files have been accessed by members of US Congress
Imagine what they’re doing to you:
Pramila Jayapal: “It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files. Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched. That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop this spying on members.”
https://www.threads.com/@repjayapal/post/DUosGZRjZFV
https://www.threads.com/@repjayapal/post/DUosGZRjZFV
#Epstein #surveillance #trump

2026-02-12 06:55:25 UTC

##
Excessively Cute Dog Tax: this is Coco, slightly overexcited on yesterday’s walk
Coco is a Yorkiepoo. She loves to go out on walks to check her daily pee-mails – something which should be a 15 minute walk actually takes about 40 due to phenomenal amounts of snuffling around hedgerows and signposts, not counting the subsequent bath after spontaneously flinging herself into a pile of fox poo.
#coco #parenting
https://alecmuffett.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/pxl_20260211_1148018877814052579743222484.jpg

2026-02-11 20:48:12 UTC

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I hope this is legit…
It’s cool if it is:
> A friend had Claude spend all night trying to hack into an e-ink display, and gave Claude camera access so it could verify whether an attempt worked. He told Claude to show him a message if it won.
> My friend woke up to this victory lap, which Claude didn’t realize was backwards
https://twitter.com/Scav/status/2021656781521670487?s=20
#ai #Claude #llm

2026-02-11 20:07:21 UTC

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Ofcom: “pay up, lest we provisionally decide again!”
Sigh.
https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/2021599606841172352?s=20
#4chan #censorship #ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct

2026-02-09 14:15:08 UTC

##
MoJ orders deletion of UK’s largest court reporting archive
Interesting to compare this to government dismay when Meta shut down CrowdTangle; apparently government hates being held to account by third parties:
> Enda Leahy, the Courtsdesk chief executive […said]: “We built the only system that could tell journalists what was actually happening in the criminal courts. “HMCTS’s own data proves they can’t do it — their records were accurate 4.2 per cent of the time, 1.6 million cases were heard without any advance notice to the press.
> … An HMCTS spokesman said that the press always had and would retain full access to information from the courts to ensure accurate reporting.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/moj-orders-deletion-of-uks-largest-court-reporting-archive-27f5zcbb7
#censorship #courtsDesk #crowdTangle

2026-02-09 10:15:49 UTC

##
MUST WATCH: Superbowl “Ring” surveillance advert, ideal for organising lynchings, quelling protest, etc…
It’s worth clicking through to see all of the outrage and wonder how many of these people have not been paying attention to what’s being done in the name of “child safety”, let alone finding lost dogs:
https://bsky.app/profile/phillewis.bsky.social/post/3mefkirwaik2t
#ring #surveillance

2026-02-07 08:46:30 UTC

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‘I’ve lost my friends’: advocacy groups warn Australia’s social media ban risks isolating kids with disabilities | Social media ban | The Guardian
“it’s okay, she should be outside playing sports” — no?
> “I have autism and mental health things, it’s hard making friends in real life for me,” she says. “My online friends were easier because I can communicate in my own time and think about what I want to say. My social media was my main way of socialising and without it I feel like I’ve lost my friends.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/06/ive-lost-my-friends-advocacy-groups-warn-australias-social-media-ban-risks-isolating-kids-with-disabilities
#australia #censorship #feed #socialMediaBan

2026-02-06 14:11:45 UTC

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European Commission mandates Facebook (etc) must not take down right-wing hate content for 24h if posted on self-declared “editorially independent” websites
“what could possibly go wrong”?
> Commission issues guidelines to protect media content on online platforms | Shaping Europe’s digital future
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-issues-guidelines-protect-media-content-online-platforms
> Article 18 (1) of the European Media Freedom Act introduces concrete safeguards to protect media content online produced according to professional standards from unjustified removal. These safeguards require VLOPs to notify media providers in advance when they intend to remove journalistic content and clearly explain the reasons for their decision. Media providers are also given 24 hours to respond before the removal takes effect. To benefit from these safeguards, media service providers need to declare that they fulfil certain elements, such as being editorially independent and subject to regulatory oversight, through a functionality put in place by VLOPs.
#censorship #europeanCommission #hateSpeech

2026-02-06 04:08:47 UTC

##
Epstein file PDFs contain OCR texts of complete, *unredacted*, Base64-encoded email attachments; forensics geeks commence challenging reconstruction…
“Oh dear.”
> Recreating uncensored Epstein PDFs from raw encoded attachments | The NeoSmart FilesThe NeoSmart Files
https://neosmart.net/blog/recreating-epstein-pdfs-from-raw-encoded-attachments/
#Epstein #redaction

2026-02-05 08:48:44 UTC

##
It’s almost hard to work out which country this is meant to be about…
> If foreign intelligence controlled events, the mass killings across hundreds of cities would be impossible to explain. If such networks were real, a security state that tracks teachers and workers with such meticulous attention to detail would have arrested at least one of these supposed agents in advance. The story collapses under the slightest pressure, but it survives because it is useful. Once protesters are renamed “foreign agents,” their deaths stop raising questions. Violence becomes logical. Memory becomes dangerous.
https://www.valigiablu.it/iran-protest-2026-what-happens/
#iran #russia #totalitarianism #trump

2026-02-04 21:07:51 UTC

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Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell | CIA
Sad to lose one concrete positive:
> One of CIA’s oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset. The World Factbook served the Intelligence Community and the general public as a longstanding, one-stop basic reference about countries and communities around the globe. Let’s take a quick look into the history of The World Factbook.
https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spotlighting-the-world-factbook-as-we-bid-a-fond-farewell/
#cia

2026-02-04 17:06:10 UTC

- reply

They are the ones who proliferate it.

2026-02-04 13:23:35 UTC

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Prediction: if it hasn’t happened already there will soon be a massive media story about “Quoted Printable” encoding, possibly including somebody getting shot because of it
There is just so much confusion and outrage as people who have never dealt with computer forensics or suddenly faced with millions of corrupted PDF renditions of 7-bit text pretending to carry 8-bit & Unicode characters
#Epstein #quotedPrintable

2026-01-31 17:10:15 UTC

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The 3D printing community learns how to support protesters in its own quiet way…
Printer go brrrrr…
https://www.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/1qs2h50/definitely_what_im_most_proud_of_printing_this/
#3dPrinting

2026-01-30 17:45:35 UTC

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next, after age verification, will come “proof of humanity” …
…which will likewise fail; not to mention that there is nothing in the supposed demand which cannot already be implemented using TLS
> “the human-killing AI robots demand end-to-end encrypted privacy”
https://twitter.com/suppvalen/status/2017241420554277251?s=20
#ai #endToEndEncryption #privacy

2026-01-30 14:39:35 UTC

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Introducing Encrypt It Already | Electronic Frontier Foundation
> [EFF is] launching Encrypt It Already, our push to get companies to offer stronger privacy protections to our data and communications by implementing end-to-end encryption. If that name sounds a little familiar, it’s because this is a spiritual successor to our 2019 campaign, Fix It Already, a campaign where we pushed companies to fix longstanding issues.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/introducing-encrypt-it-already
#eff #endToEndEncryption

2026-01-30 05:41:01 UTC

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Anna Riedl: “The amount of prompt engineering needed to not make medical professionals have wild irrelevant hallucinations is truly extraordinary”
Sometimes I agree people are more like LLMs and less like what they imagine:
> “For example, if you mention having had emotional stress they will entirely ignore the long list of physical symptoms you mention afterwards and suggest you look into „psychosomatic“ causes. At this point I don’t know whether to attribute „general intelligence“ or „understanding“ to their architecture.”
https://twitter.com/AnnaLeptikon/status/2016478641555636234?s=20
#ai #llm

2026-01-29 09:57:11 UTC

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James Ball: On almost everything…evidence suggests that over 60s are in much more urgent need of online protection and education than teenagers…
“…But that issue gets zero political attention”.
Truth:
https://bsky.app/profile/jamesrball.com/post/3mdkirn4uxs2z
#elderly #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct

2026-01-28 21:57:13 UTC

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State Department confirms: federal censorship shield law incoming | Preston Byrne
:popcorn:
> Sarah Rogers, United States Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, confirmed that the US is poised to forever block foreign censorship of US citizens under laws like the UK Online Safety Act or the EU Digital Services Act.
https://prestonbyrne.com/2026/01/28/state-department-confirms-federal-granite-act-incoming/
#ageVerification #censorship #ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance #vpns

2026-01-28 10:37:37 UTC

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Will Congress shield the US from foreign attacks on the First Amendment? | Spectator | Ofcom & British civil society does not understand the 1st amendment
> “The only answer to the foreign censorship problem is law reform. Congress should make it clear that foreign censors cross our border at their peril. The only way to accomplish this is to enact federal shield legislation, like GRANITE, that strips sovereign immunity for foreign censorship and makes the consequences so ruinous that such threats will never be made again. For nearly a decade, a handful of free speech lawyers have kept foreign censors at bay. We could use legislative reinforcements. But, with or without the reinforcements, we will fight the censors forever.”
https://spectator.com/article/congress-shield-us-foreign-attacks-first-amendment/?edition=us
Archived at: https://archive.md/2026.01.27-124318/https://spectator.com/article/congress-shield-us-foreign-attacks-first-amendment/?edition=us
#4chan #censorship #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance #vpns

2026-01-28 09:13:40 UTC

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Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance over Mar-a-Lago using AF2 ICAO identity
This, if it is still visible:
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-80.030&zoom=14.4&showTrace=2026-01-28
Via:
https://twitter.com/SR_Planespotter/status/2016394753772863848?s=20
#adsb #trump

2026-01-27 19:19:22 UTC

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WhatsApp’s new ‘Strict Account Settings’ Adds Lockdown-Style Protection Against Spyware |CyberScoop
While safety activists are still whining about 2 billion people in the world getting communications privacy:
> The “Strict Account Settings” feature will roll out in the coming weeks and once enabled, will allow users to limit features in certain ways, such as blocking attachments and media from others not in a user’s contact list.
https://cyberscoop.com/whatsapp-strict-account-settings-lockdown-style-spyware-protection/
#encryption #endToEndEncryption #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #whatsapp

2026-01-27 09:25:19 UTC

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One-Ended Encryption / OEE | JP Aumasson
Bravo, this is a very necessary tool for certain people:
> You’d have to be braindead to believe AES is secure in 2026. When we analyzed how AES implemented its “encryption”, we found multiple attack vectors.
> Use OEE instead > [> https://github.com/veorq/oee](https://github.com/veorq/oee )
https://twitter.com/veorq/status/2016044108930760856?s=20
#encryption

2026-01-27 06:42:39 UTC

- reply

Speaking as somebody who once set up a Tor Onion proxy for Wikipedia, I can give him a pass on this one. Aside from the fact that sites should be sovereign to create their own acceptable use policies, the freedom to do so includes making assumptions about what kinds of behaviour come from what kinds of system. If a person chooses to edit Wikipedia without logging in, the identity assigned to them is their IP address for at least some manner of reputation management. With VPNs even this model collapses – as opposed to a Tor Onion site which would at least offer some reunification of Tor-based anonymous edit identities. https://wikimedia.org.uk/2017/11/4128/

2026-01-27 05:53:48 UTC

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“The UK war on VPNs is an embarrassment” | Jimmy Wales
Quote:
> The UK war on VPNs is an embarassment. For child safety, we should be teaching children about Internet safety – including why you should use a VPN to protect your privacy, block malware, etc.
> To keep children safe, we are legislating to prevent them being safer online? Mad.
https://x.com/jimmy_wales/status/2015799679762448515?s=20
#ageVerification #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #vpns

2026-01-26 16:10:05 UTC

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“Much of what people want to solve with the [online safety act] is actually [better] solved with a search warrant and an arrest” | Preston Byrne
Truth; see also embedded commentary from Graham Smith:
> Much of what people want to solve with the OSA is actually solved with a search warrant and an arrest. Because the OSA is the flagship online safety law, however, everyone wants it – and Ofcom – to solve all of the online problems.
https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/2015567183439356319
#ageVerification #censorship #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance #vpns

2026-01-25 13:05:03 UTC

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Content Moderation History: do we all remember 2013-19 when online sociology pundits were everywhere expounding the need to block streaming/sharing of video of people being murdered?
It began in the wake of various atrocities (civil unrest, government oppression, rioting, live streamed mass shootings) and over generalisations which tended to cite Facebook as at least the “amplifier” if not the “cause” of violence, especially due to risk of “copycats”. The Christchurch mosque shootings were one such atrocity, and we can draw a direct line for the same arguments to the horrors of Bondi earlier this year.
Yet I can’t count the number of times this weekend I’ve watched video, from multiple perspectives, of a blameless & public-spirited person being violently murdered by Government goons.
Generally the videos are at the top of an algorithmic feed – where frankly they deserve to be – so maybe the issue is more nuanced than “violent death”?
But try telling that to anybody in the online safety / “algorithms are evil” community in more polite times.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/859771857280618498
https://x.com/zeynep/status/859782381296902145And yet only 2 years later:
https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1120060705426821121
#censorship #contentModeration #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct
https://alecmuffett.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/screenshot_20260125-1246416517984569090308537.png

2026-01-24 15:22:04 UTC

- reply

<li>added “and content” to clarify an observation by rahaeli</li>

2026-01-24 14:47:42 UTC

##
“[In the modern era] what threats do VPNs protect against?”
Answer, to a limited extent: jingoistic patriotism, xenophobic populism, theories of speech as a “harm” demanding “duties of care”, state-mandated enumeration of citizens in doomed attempts to negate online anonymity, and attempts to limit or censor access to apps and websites and content.
Not “people in the coffee shop may be spying on your banking details” stuff. That was 20 years ago.
https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/2015072947535253798?s=20
[⊞](/tti-cache/143019.png )
#encryption #vpns