thenexusofprivacy

thenexusofprivacy OP , 4 months ago

They get to position themselves as looking out for the children.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 4 months ago

Totally agreed that it opens things up to censorship in general and doesn’t actually make kids safer. Charlie Jane Anders’ The Internet Is About to Get A Lot Worse sets it in the context of book banning. The LGBTQ part is in the headlines because one big focus of the advocacy against it is highlighting that Democrats who claim to be pro-LGBTQ should not be backing this bill. This has been effective enough that Senators Cantwell and Markey both mentioned it in the committee markup, although it’s certainly far from the only problem with the bill.

Sec. 11 (b): Enforcement By State Attorneys General covers this. It’s hard to find – the bill text starts out with all the text removed from the previous amendment, and if you click on the “enforcement” link in the new table of context it takes you to the old struck-out text. It’s almost like they want to make it as hard as possible for people to figure out what’s going on!

thenexusofprivacy OP , 4 months ago

Great point. Mike Masnick has said that he wouldn’t be surprised if Meta also comes out in support, for similar reasons.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 4 months ago

Yep. There’s money to be made here!

thenexusofprivacy OP , 4 months ago

In practice, when the AG threatens to sue and the law makes it clear that they’ll win (which KOSA currently does), companies will typically stop what they’re doing (or settle if the AG actually launches a suit)

thenexusofprivacy OP , 4 months ago

The law’s defintion of harm is extremely broad. Charlie Jane Anders has a good discussion of this in The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse:

“This clause is so vaguely defined that attorneys general can absolutely claim that queer content violates it — and they don’t even need to win these lawsuits in order to prevail. They might not even need to file a lawsuit, in fact. The mere threat of an expensive, grueling legal battle will be enough to make almost every Internet platform begin to scrub anything related to queer people.”

thenexusofprivacy OP , 4 months ago

Technically yes but judges get annoyed if there’s absolutely no case, so they rarely do – and if they threaten when there’s no case, larger companies will look at it and say the threat’s not real.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 4 months ago

Yes, exactly. For Senators who support LGBTQ+ rights and reproductice rights (or at least say that they do), focusing on the threat anti-trans AGs can be very effective; In Washington state, we put enough pressure on Cantwell last fall about the LGBTQ+ issues that she mentioned it in the hearing (as did Markey). 5calls and EFF’s scripts and emails are written to appeal to legislators from both parties (so just talk about the harms to kids and threats from state AGs in general terms), which makes sense for a one-size-fits-all form, but customizing it to your Senators’ priorities can make a lot of sense.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

As I say in the article:

Despite these problems, many people on well-moderated instances have very positive experiences in today’s fediverse. Especially for small-to-medium-size instances, for experienced moderators even Mastodon’s tools can be good enough.

However, many instances aren’t well-moderated. So many people have very negative experiences in today’s fediverse.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

I’ll get to that in a followon post, but one straightforward way to make progress is to change some of the defaults

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

From the article:

I’m using LGBTQIA2S+ as a shorthand for lesbian, gay, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, bi, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, agender, two-sprit, and others (including non-binary people) who are not straight, cis, and heteronormative. Julia Serrano’s trans, gender, sexuality, and activism glossary has definitions for most of terms, and discusses the tensions between ever-growing and always incomplete acronyms and more abstract terms like “gender and sexual minorities”. OACAS Library Guides’ Two-spirit identities page goes into more detail on this often-overlooked intersectional aspect of non-cis identity.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

If you read the article and follow the links you’ll find plenty of evidence. The Whiteness of Mastodon, A breaking point for the queer community, and Dogpiling, weaponized content warning discourse, and a fig leaf for mundane white supremacy are three places to start.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

I didn’t say the fediverse has come a long way. I said that many people on well-moderated instances have good experiences – which has been true since 2017. In general though I’d say there was a brief period of rapid progress on this front in the early days of Mastodon in 2016/2017, and since then progress has been minimal. Lemmy for example has much weak moderation functionality than Mastodon. Akkoma, Bonfire, Hubzilla etc are better but have minimal adoption.

And @originallucifer Ipeople have been complaining about this for years – it was an issue in 2011 with Diaspora, 2016 with Gnu social, 2017 with Mastodon, etc etc etc – so it’s not a matter of fediverse software as a whole being in its infancy. Even Lemmy’s been around for almost four years at this point. It’s just that the developers haven’t prioritized this.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

If you’re looking for more of a technical deep dive, check out Threat modeling Meta, the fediverse, and privacy

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

At some level you’re not missing anything: there are obvious solutions, and they’re largely ignored. Blocking is effective, and it’s a key part of why some instances actually do provide good experiences; and an allow-list approach works well. But, those aren’t the default; so new instances don’t start out blocking anybody. And, most instances only block the worst-of-the-worst; there’s a lot of stuff that comes from large open-registration instances like .social and .world that relatively few instances block or even limit.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

It’s tricky … many people do use “queer” as an umbrella term, but a lot of trans people don’t like being lumped under that, and some lesbian, gay, bi, and agender people don’t consider themselves queer. There aren’t great answers.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

Total bullshit response. Yes, there are a lot of LGBT people on the fediverse. There’s also a lot of homophobia and transphobia on the fediverse. And the instances run by nazis and terfs very much care if you’re trans and will harass you just as much on the fediverse as anywhere else.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

Thanks, glad you liked it. Agreed that blocklists (while currently necessary) have big problems, it would really be great if we had other good tools and they were much more of a last resort … I’ll talk more about that in a later installment.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 7 months ago

That’s great! And a lot of trans people I’ve talked with on Mastodon say similar things, which is also great. But a lot don’t. It depends a lot on the instance you wind up choosing. So the people who stay wind up as a self-selecting sample.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 9 months ago

That’s one of the concerns. Here’s more, from www.eff.org/issues/national-ids

Mandatory national ID cards violate essential civil liberties. They increase the power of authorities to reduce your freedoms to those granted by the card. If a national ID is required for employment, you could be fired and your employer fined if you fail to present your papers. People without ID cards can be denied the right to purchase property, open a bank account or receive government benefits. National identity systems present difficult choices about who can request to see an ID card and for what purpose. Mandatory IDs significantly expand police powers. Police with the authority to demand ID is invariably granted the power to detain people who cannot produce one. Many countries lack legal safeguards to prevent abuse of this power.

Historically, national ID systems have been used to discriminate against people on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion and political views. The use of national IDs to enforce immigration laws invites discrimination that targets minorities. There is little evidence to support the argument that national IDs reduce crime. Instead, these systems create incentives for identity theft and widespread use of false identities by criminals. National ID cards allow different types of identifying information stored in different databases to be linked and analyzed, creating extreme risks to data security. Administration of ID programs are often outsourced to unaccountable companies. Private sector security threat models assume that at any one time, one per cent of company employees are willing to sell or trade confidential information for personal gain.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 9 months ago

Within the privacy community, EFF’s viewed as pragmatists – far from absolutists or extremists. So I agree with @chakan2@lemmy.world, it only gets regarded as extreme because big tech and the surveillance-industrial complex have normalized not expecting privacy.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 9 months ago

This thread is talking about a US-based law, so I shared EFF’s perspectives on national IDs in the US. For a more international view, check out Why ID www.accessnow.org/campaign/whyid/ – which they’ve signed along with dozens of other civil society organizations.

It’s true that there are potential upsides of national ID systems as well as downsides. But as that Why ID letter says, “the scalability of digital identity programmes also makes their harms scalable. It is far from being proven that most digital identity programmes have brought additional benefits to users, without placing them at risk.” You’re right that private implementations have similar issues – data brokers and tech companies are as careless with data as government agencies are, and just as eager to abuse people’s privacy. But there are also some big differences: a national ID is mandatory, and the government has much more of an ability to put you in jail or deny you your rights.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 10 months ago

Agreed. At the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, both Cantwell and Markey said they had heard from a lot of consituents about the bill’s problems, especially for LGBTQ+ people, and that there’s work to do before going forward … so at least the pushback is getting noticed.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 10 months ago

here’s the list of cosponsors … if they’re there, then they’re certainly supporting it. It’s worth contacting them in any case; they’ll often send you a form reply saying their position on the bill.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 10 months ago

That’s disappointing … but, enough pressure can get them to change their position (or, almost as good, ask Schumer not to bring the bill to the floor so that they don’t have to take a politically costly vote). In the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, both Cantwell and Markey voted yes but said they had gotten a lot of calls and email from constituents who were concerned about the impact on LGBTQ+ teens so there was work to do before bringing the bill to the floor … so the pressure is definitely getting noticed!

thenexusofprivacy OP , 10 months ago

It’s just a list of Senators, I don’t think there’s an equivalent bill yet in the House.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 10 months ago

Great point about editing the letter – and calling is even better!

In terms of whether or not we’ll be able to change it … last year the broad pushback succeeded in stopping KOSA, and there’s certainly a decent chance to do the same this year. Who knows, but as you say, it’s always worth trying!

thenexusofprivacy OP , 10 months ago

Thanks for making the effort! On bills like this, enough pressure can make a difference – we stopped KOSA from passing last year, and have a good chance this year as well.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 10 months ago

!bad_internet_bills is tracking all the bad internet bills … right now KOSA’s where the most action is.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 9 months ago

WTF indeed. But, thanks for emailing them – they track how much email they get in each direction, and if there’s enough they may rethink their position.

thenexusofprivacy , 10 months ago

Plenty of Democrats support this anti-LGBTQ+ bill – here’s the list of cosponsors. It really does have bipartisan support!

thenexusofprivacy , 10 months ago

President Biden on KOSA: “Pass It, Pass It, Pass It”

thenexusofprivacy OP , 10 months ago

That’s true, and legislation that passes in the US also influences legislation elsewhere. However quite a few people from outside the US have repeatedly asked for discussions of this and other legislation to include something in the title that indicates that it relates to US legislation, so I went with US-specific on this post.

thenexusofprivacy OP , 11 months ago

It is very much a fraught topic, so thanks for the very good discussion! Many intersex and asexual people don’t think of themselves as joining the queer community; neither do some trans people, and for that matter some gay, lesbian, and bi people actively dislike the term “queer”. It’s complex! Sometimes it makes sense to highlight specific identities – which is what I did in the post I did on [A (partial) queer, trans, and non-binary history of Mastodon and the fediverse](A (partial) queer, trans, and non-binary history of Mastodon and the fediverse) – but sometimes an umbrella term is more useful, and there really aren’t any great options. It’s a fair point that non-binary, pansexual, and others aren’t included in the acronym … like I said in the post, I with with LGBTQIA2S+ for this one because there’s a Mastodon instance called lgbtqia.space, and Indigenous people are often overlooked in the fediverse so I thought it was important to call out the two-spirit aspect. That said if I had known that 75% of the comments on this post would be about the acronym I might have taken a different path!

thenexusofprivacy OP , 11 months ago

Yeah, I’ve been telling people “good news: 25 comments on the article! bad news: almost all of them were about the acronym”. Oh well, we learn by doing. And as you say, a lot of people saw the acronym for the first time, and at least one person learned that two-spirt doesn’t refer to furries, so there was some useful education … it wasn’t my primary goal here but that’s never a bad thing.

Different terminology makes sense in different contexts – and from different people. For a lot of what I write, I want the resonance of queer’s charged history; other times, it might not make as much sense.