soonerdog

[soonerdog]

Can't be arsed to investigate GB News for clear hate speech but jump at the chance to fine any company who doesn't comply with the OSA.

Useless organisation in a useless country ran by a useless fucking government.

[soonerdog]

kozue and anthy are so silly what if the madonna and whore made out in a moving car and never spoke to each other again. what if

[soonerdog]

Ink and tide.

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Twitter / Bsky / Shop / INPRNT / Patreon

[soonerdog]

We live in the dumbest, lamest cyberpunk dystopia possible.

So LA has been — and continues to — protest against ICE. These protests haven’t gotten any smaller or lost any momentum, but social media wasn’t reflecting it.

TikTok users, realizing that the platform/other social media are censoring/deleting/shadowbanning these protest videos, decided to find a workaround.

They’re calling it the LA Music Festival. Ice detention centers and other protest locations are “stages.” The hottest band is Rage Against the Machine. “Here’s what gear you should be bringing to stay safe at the LA Music Festival.”

And it fucking worked.

TikTok has become a proving ground for a lot of new music, meaning lots of labels and organizations have lucrative deals with TikTok to promote their new artists and music festivals. So they absolutely cannot censor the words “music festival” or train the algorithm to ignore it, or they risk endangering that very important revenue.

So now protest videos are flooding feeds again, but it’s the LA 24/7 Music Festival. Truly an incredible timeline we’ve landed in.

[soonerdog]

Crazy how for so long everyone has been like "oh you're going to China? They censor everything though. You can't even just Google. They take all your data and your fingerprints and everything. You can't even search up tianmen square. They control the media there. You have to use special messaging apps because WhatsApp is blocked. Did you know minors can only play one hour of multiplayer games a day? Because the CCP controls everything."

And now we can't even go on twitter, discord, possibly even Wikipedia. Not only are we limited on how long we play, we can't even buy many anymore. Not even if you prove you're an adult. They've all been taken down. WhatsApp is threatening to remove services instead of remove it's encryption. One of the topics considered worthy of censorship was depiction of menstruation. You know, that thing that half of everyone goes through from an age much younger than 18.

And there are people defending this. The same people who hate on China. For its censorship. They are defending this.

[soonerdog]

layers of issues with UK online safety act

so. It's wrong. But it's not just bad. It's bad on so many layers, many of which individually are enough to say it shouldn't be kept in place (layers like if the one below doesn't work the ones atop don't matter as much roughly). A lot of this is just putting a lot of the arguments iv heard in 1 place because often every individual report is incomplete of the many issues with it.

1 - does it protect children - this is the best layers for the bill and still barly, young ppl are the best at finding loopholes and will find ways to break through it like iv seen for discord (also just vpns. They break the bill's implementation currently and banning them all would hurt). It also bans a lot more than just harmful stuff like say dating apps etc. The bill implies its a big problem that children constantly see horrifying stuff online which a large majority of the time isn't true. Also even if it worked and children couldn't see such online, on many topics young people would be curious anyway and would simply search for such stuff irl which I'd argue doesn't seem much safer.

2 - costs of it - for one Wikipedia and others will just (atleast for now) refuse to function which is terrible for ppl in the UK. For two no one even mentions AT ALL it feels like the costs of kids losing access to stuff even if they are under 18. Like that's bad. There's costs to it. Lgbtq+ being targeted often. How the hell doesn't just target porn but anything 18+ like police violence or irl wars (so what voting age 16 bur access to such important info 18?). Losing access to being able to learn about mature topics. If in a serous situation unable to casually look into it as its "mature" therefore kids couldn't possibly need access to it (think abusive situations or suicidie for examples). This will actively make life worse and that needs to be weighted by whatever benefits it gives. Also the time and effort of every adult needing to do this for every single website which is a pain. Also companies to comply will often rather be careful and delete more than needed to make sure they comply which hurts peoples access even more.

3 - hacks on given data/information - these companies that are 3rd party and used to collect the date and check if your over 18 and store it are not based in the UK and aren't part of the gov therefore aren't guaranteed to be safe and likely over your life multiple companies you use will get hacked at some point which will include these which is a big deal as it would mean hackers getting your most important info like full bank info or gov id which could lode you your savings or your identity which you then need to fight to clean if you hear of the leak. Also to the point of some mabye saying they won't keep your data: they will, and have historically. The tea app is a good example of a app both hacked recently and which (unsure truth exactly) had leaked data which they said they didn't store. Remember you also need to give data to each website each of which might choose their own provider meaning multiple companies each with important information of yours. Enjoy trying to protect your identity and life regularly now.

4 - goverment trust - even if you think the practical implementation of this and what's consencered wasn't badly executed: remember not only could Labour as they shift right change their views on things but in any future election if the new party like say reform UK doesn't remove it that would let such parties redefine "inappropriate" and "18+" which I personally wouldn't trust them to do In a way I'd aprove of. Allowing this bill to exist allows huge goverment control over what many ppl can see online. Iv almost never seen lgbtq+ irl only online and I'd hate for children to lose access to seeing that and finding out about such ppl existing, especially in less accepting areas.

5 - Data usage - as iv said above it is quite likely what data is given will be kept and transfered around. Its just profitable and companies love keeping every bit they can to make money. You give to the 3rd parties which then give it out to others and suddenly such important info can be combined with other info about you to get a much better profile to get even more targeted ads. Not to mention there's already small signs the goverment may align with companies to spy on citizens even better(I'm sure for more "safety").

6- monopoly - one other affect of requiring 3rd parties to process everyone's info and check if their over 18 is that smaller websites or ones already running on a very thin budget will likely not be able to compete as much under such costs and newer websites neither (like newgrounds), allowing even more centralization into the hands of a few huge companies which will increasingly own the Internet more(atleast in the uk, though other countries/unions looking to get simular bills out).

so ye it's a terrible bill which causes far more issues than it solves and comes at a huge cost which I think makes it not worth it and it should be removed.

there are separate arguments that can be made like those under 8 years old banned from most of the Internet by the government but that's seperate to this terribly implemented bill and also is likely currently better managed by parents doing their jobs and controlling to and talking to their children, deciding when they get their own device.

[soonerdog]

Artist Yudori musing on queer expression and queerness in fiction, diverging by cultural perception. [originally posted on instagram]

[soonerdog]

Japanese artist, Junichiro Sekino (1914-1988).

[soonerdog]

Strega by Pia Valentinis

[soonerdog]

Pia Valentinis is an award-winning Italian author and illustrator whose work has been published in a number of countries, including Japan, Taiwan, France, Korea, Switzerland, Finland, Greece, Mexico, Denmark, Russia, the UK, and the US. She was awarded the XXI Italian Andersen Prize for Best Illustrator, and her book Ferriera won Best Graphic Novel in 2015.

[soonerdog]

[soonerdog]

The Online Safety Act is fucking shit. The UK goverment is speedrunning into an orwellian nightmare. My MP will not respond to my emails. So I'm making my letter public. Enjoy it. Share it. Get Vocal. Be Heard.

[soonerdog]

[soonerdog]

[soonerdog]

they are barring wikipedia. they are barring spotify. they are barring important news - both national news and world news. they are barring mental health forums and LGBTQ related things and so much more. this is not about protecting children, it has never been about protecting children.

the online safety act is an insane privacy breach, and if that does not scare you then you need to think harder about it. it is going to end up in a massive data leak - all the information is getting collected by random third party systems. can we trust them? no. can we even hold them accountable? no. because the government couldn’t even make their own system to do these age checks.

and i hear you - it is important that kids don’t see porn. but even if all this was about protecting kids, it’s sloppy and useless. it’s easy (for now) to get around with a vpn and the only thing the act doing is censoring things that it shouldnt. if the government wanted to protect kids, they would do something concrete about it - they would be putting more funding into education, for example.

of course the policy isnt called “national surveillance”. they’re not going to call it that. everything will be hidden behind things that people want.

so email your MP, and tell other people that this is WAY more than blocking porn from children - this is the first step towards national surveillance.

[soonerdog]