Jono793 's BestNetTech Comments

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  • On the post: High School Responds To Student's Prank By Asking Local Law Enforcement To Step In And Investigate

    Jono793 ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2021 @ 01:09am

    Who are the educators again?

    They can't recognise a quote from Hitler. (Or at least pull a cursory Google)

    They don't know the names of the students in their school.

    They can't be bothered to vet the yearbook properly before publishing.

    So where are the adults again?

  • On the post: Twitch Takes Steps To Make It Even Easier To Issue DMCA Strikes Against Streamers

    Jono793 ( profile ), 12 May, 2021 @ 01:41pm

    Re: I was getting worried there for a second...

    Whaaat? It's fine. Nothing could possibly go wrong. I mean. Twitch's user base is notoriously chill, and highly respectful to one another. I mean it's not like anyone would, hypothetically, False DMCA all the streamers they don't like in order to drive them off the platform! That'd be just as absurd as, well, as users uploading footage of mass shootings to the platform. No, I think this tool is in responsible hands! At least so long as they keep it just to us 'real gamers'. Not those 'Just Chatting' attention seeking, hot-tub fake gamer girl THO....<Insert stream of mysoginistic abuse here>

  • On the post: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Google/Apple Criticized… For Seeking To Protect Privacy In UK Gov't Covid Contact Tracing

    Jono793 ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2021 @ 03:22am

    I deleted the contract tracing app shortly after it was rolled out. After the UK gov decided it would start sharing test and trace data with the police.

    I'm glad to see G&A sticking to their guns with this. You can talk about elected vs unelected. The fact remains the UK government has an atrocious track record il in terms of data privacy, cyber-security, and sacrificing everything to the altar of national security/law and order.

    This move, ironically makes me more likely to reinstall the app.

  • On the post: UK Child Welfare Charity Latest To Claim Encryption Does Nothing But Protect Criminals

    Jono793 ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2021 @ 03:19am

    I'm from the UK. The NSPCC was(and to an extent still is) a worthy charity, that helps exploited children.

    But these days, it's sounding more and more like the Paedofinder General. Railing against E2E encryption with no actual evidence, other than "concerns".

    I rely on an E2E platform in order to share photos of my children, securely, with my extended family. Especially important when we're under lockdown and not legally allowed to meet face to face?

    What does the NSPCC have to say about me? Should I send those photos via unsecured services where they're at increased risk of being stolen by hackers and paedofiles? Should I post them publicly to Facebook where they can be taken by anyone?(and I become that annoying 'Facebook dad' everyone hates?) Or should my parents just not experience their grandkids growing up?

    According to them, that's not for me to decide!

  • On the post: Oxford University Study Shows Small Correlation Between Playing Video Games And 'Well Being'

    Jono793 ( profile ), 21 Feb, 2021 @ 03:33am

    Re:

    Dark Souls, and it's various offshoots are good examples of that. Can't throw the cartridge against the wall, because it's installed via Steam!

  • On the post: North Dakota's New Anti-230 Bill Would Let Nazis Sue You For Reporting Their Content To Twitter

    Jono793 ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2021 @ 01:59pm

    Re: The Poland Bill

    According to the article, it would be up to the orwellian-named Free Speech Council. So god knows. Under their national dignity bill, it's probably considered a thought-crime to even insinuate that a Polish national is a Nazi!

  • On the post: Oxford University Study Shows Small Correlation Between Playing Video Games And 'Well Being'

    Jono793 ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2021 @ 10:58am

    Re:

    If only we could keep those communities from becoming toxic shitpits…
    Surely the answers to that are the same as moderating any other online service? Encourage publishers and developers to innovate. Share best practices accross the industry. And push more control out to your end-users. From an individual gamer standpoint, I'd add creating and curating smaller more managable (and directly moderatable) communities. Services like Discord are great for this. Not a perfect solution. But as we're constantly reminded on here, content moderation is impossible to do perfectly.

  • On the post: North Dakota's New Anti-230 Bill Would Let Nazis Sue You For Reporting Their Content To Twitter

    Jono793 ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2021 @ 10:24am

    You say that

    getting rid of all content moderation will enable far right voices to yell over everyone unchallenged and flood every outlet which allows user interaction with hatespeech.
    We'll see if their drivel can keep it's head above water, once every social media site gets deluged with free Ray-Bans, premium blue pills, and requests for money by Nigerian princes!

  • On the post: North Dakota's New Anti-230 Bill Would Let Nazis Sue You For Reporting Their Content To Twitter

    Jono793 ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2021 @ 10:37am

    Reminds me of Poland's proposed bill.

    Which would let Polish citizens sue if their social media accounts get shut down.

    An interesting take on freedom of speech to say the least. In which honest scholarship or free discussion around the holocaust should be banned. Meanwhile, Polish citizens should have their "right" to degrade and harass LGBT+ people online protected.

    Good to see the land of the free following a similar logic!

  • On the post: BestNetTech Podcast Episode 270: Regulating The Internet Won't Fix A Broken Government

    Jono793 ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2021 @ 06:34am

    Heather's comparison of the online harms framework to health and safety law makes a lot of sense. Health and safety has long been a vector for culture-warrioring here in the UK.

    Back when I was at university, there were various local controversies over licensing Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO). HMO laws were brought in in response to a fatal fire in 2000, in which two students were killed. The rules set a licensing regime, designed to set minimum standards for shared houses (fire alarms, safety checks on gas appliances, etc).

    Licenses were done by local councils. They were supposed to be granted based on "does this house meet the legal standards for a HMO?"

    instead, virtually every HMO licensing in my university town was bombarded by complaints of students playing loud music. Students vomiting in gardens. Students besmerching the community by their presence. etc. And then these licenses being refused for completely illegitimate reasons, completely undermining the policy objectives of the HMO law!

    I'm seeing the same dynamic play out when discussing online harms. No interested in coherent, workable policy objectives, addressing the overwhelming benefits of the free internet against measurable harms. Instead it's just a parade of horribles about teenage suicide, homophobic and racist bigotry, and paedophiles using Whatsapp. While having nothing to say about the vast, vast majority of law-abiding internet users, and how these restrictions would affect them!

  • On the post: Content Moderation Case Study: Twitter Removes Account Of Human Rights Activist (2018)

    Jono793 ( profile ), 31 Jan, 2021 @ 04:03am

    Ignore the trolls

    I for one appreciate these case studies. They're a great resource to demonstrate what Mike's been saying for ages about the impossibility of perfect content moderation.

    I hope you're going to cover the recent hoo-ha around GameStop shares. Including Robinhood (and other platforms) stopping trades. As well as Google suspending reviews over so-called "review bombing"

    Moderation, with a side of possible financial market manipulation.

  • On the post: Content Moderation Case Study: Dealing With Demands From Foreign Governments (January 2016)

    Jono793 ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2021 @ 10:18am

    Another consideration

    ... Does your service have critical infrastructure, or staff located in the country concerned? Hopefully this had been risk-assessed in advance, given the trend of censorious regimes holding both of these hostage as part of takedown disputes.

    Ultimately, you can't moderate to the lowest common denominator. And the Razak regime was particularly corrupt, thuggish and censorious.

    A service that cares at all about free expression of ideas, is never going to sit well with a government that believes in stealing from it's own people, and censoring all their critics!

  • On the post: Sheryl Sandberg Makes Disingenuous Push To Argue That Only Facebook Has The Power To Stop Bad People Online

    Jono793 ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2021 @ 05:10pm

    Re:

    I'm increasingly convinced that Sandberg and Zuckerberg's relationship is akin to the relationship between Homelander and Madelyn Stillwell, in Amazon Prime series 'The Boys'. (look it up. Also, NSFW)

  • On the post: Everything Pundits Are Getting Wrong About This Current Moment In Content Moderation

    Jono793 ( profile ), 11 Jan, 2021 @ 05:10pm

    Re:

    If the app can run in a web browser, which Parler can, it's not been locked off Android or iOS in any meaningful way. Heck, most browsers even allow you to place bookmarks on your phone's home page. So you can even pretend it's a real app

  • On the post: For All The Hype, Trump's Favorite 'News' Channel (OAN) Faces Shrinking Footprint

    Jono793 ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2020 @ 11:07pm

    I'll look forward to the inevitable "Big Cable' is censoring conservative viewpoints" talking points

    Perhaps Fox and Friends will run a feature?

  • On the post: Twitter Suspended Cory Doctorow For Putting Trolls On A List Called 'Colossal Assholes'

    Jono793 ( profile ), 20 Mar, 2020 @ 02:13pm

    Sunlight may be the best disinfectent

    ...but if you focus that sunlight through a magnifying glass it ends up burning anything under it's glare. To the point that everything looks like a rules violation.

    What probably happened is triggered assholes decided they didn't much care for being called colossal assholes . They encouraged their credulous asshole followers (either explicitly, or by implication) to bombard Twitter with reports.

    Twitter, seeing the scale of the reporting activity, starts looks overly closely at Cory's Tweets. They decide that the post technically violates the TOS in relation to "Harassment" "Trolling" or whatever other subjective buzzword appears in said TOS. The fact that a large volume of reports are coming in at the same time tends to back up this interpretation. Even though 99.9% of genuine users acting in good faith wouldn't view the post in this way.

    Thereby, the mendacious assholes weaponize the TOS and achieve their objective of getting a prominent critic banned!

    A similar thing happened last year to a British anti-racism activist I follow . They participated in a publicity stunt against prominent racist and football thug Tommy Robinson. The response was a mass flagging campaign against all his social media (along with trolling, death threats, and similar). His old tweets were trawled for anything that even vaguely violated Twitter's TOS. Each of which would never, on it's own, be worthy of being reported by most of his actual followers. But when all reported in such concentration, lead to a permanent twitter ban for the individual concerned!

    The people calling for more severe social media moderation of assholes, often fail to understand that moderation often ends up utilized by said assholes as a tool of their assholery!

  • On the post: No, Filing A Defamation Lawsuit Is Never The Only Way You Can Clear Your Name

    Jono793 ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2019 @ 01:57am

    By way of example

    Covington High School controversy. They followed two strategies in response to the cropped video of the "MAGA Hat boy"

    First strategy; they posted the full video of the incident. They told their side of the story online and on TV(Admittedly not something most ordinary people get to do). And while some commentators changed tack to whine about "white privilege" and various tangential complaints (like rich kids affording a PR firm), the original accusations were pretty thoroughly debunked.

    Second strategy: they sued the Washington Post for Defamation. Their complaint was dismissed straight away. The end.

    Now tell me. Which of those strategies was more effective?

  • On the post: UK Forum Hands Out Public Records Request-Dodging Guidance To Over 100 Government Agencies

    Jono793 ( profile ), 05 Feb, 2019 @ 04:18pm

    Re: Quick Question

    Contingencies to deal with the absolute shit-show of a no-deal Brexit. Which will happen if the Govt, Parliament, and the rest of the EU can't agree a deal before ... checks notes 54 DAYS from now. (I need to stock up on canned food). Among other things, we will have no legal framework under which to import or export goods to the rest of the EU. No legal framework to allow travel into our out of the rest of the EU. No legal framework to prevent Ireland from descending back into bloody violence when they try and impose a hard border. Etc. etc. But it's all good! Among contingency planning efforts revealed so far, the government gave £13 million to a company called Seaborn Freight to set up a ferry service. A company which incorporated less than a year ago. And owns no ships. Or any assets of any description. And whose website's terms of service was stolen from a pizza delivery company.... it'll all be fine, i'm sure!

  • On the post: Foreign Stream-Ripping Site Wins Against Music Labels Based On Jurisdiction

    Jono793 ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2019 @ 04:34pm

    A post-Machinima landscape.

    The rights industry would like us to believe that stream ripping is a tool for pirates. "Why would you need to download a stream?" They claim. " After all, you can watch the streams, on demand, any time you want."

    And for a while, we might have agreed. "Well, I guess I don't really need a local copy. My hard drive has limited space after all. And it's basically all there on demand." It was a covenant of convenience.

    Then this week, Machinima happened.

    Nearly a decade of influential, meaningful, trailblazing video content. All of it memory-holed on the whim of some corporation, who had no hand in its creation.

    So well done corporate America. Well done for transforming stream ripping from the bogeyman you claim it is, into the moral imperative to preserving internet culture!

  • On the post: UK Court: Guy Who Didn't Write Defamatory Tweet Needs To Pay $50,000 In Damages Because The Guy Who Did Doesn't Have Any Money

    Jono793 ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2019 @ 05:37am

    Re: Re: Re: How to get rich quick in the UK in four easy steps:

    If that employee posts "something bad about you" it from McDonald's Official social media accounts? Yes, clearly!

    In this context "something bad" read as "factually alleges that you're a paedophile, and a member of an organized child grooming gang"

    Which is *clearly     Defamatory under either US, or E&W standards!

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