• 2 Posts
  • 15 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
Cake day: August 28th, 2026
  • SharkBait@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPtoFediverse@lemmy.world•When No ID Means No Internet: Age Verification and the Right to Access InformationEnglish
    3·
    22 days ago

    Read the fucking article. The EFF is not talking about tax laws but freedom of association without government identification. I was merely using the UK’s tax law definition of “social media” to demonstrate how easy it is to establish an overly broad definition of something either accidentally or maliciously.

    Do you want a free internet where people can associate without the government’s permission? Or are you privileged enough that you’ve never had to worry about your rights and privileges?

    EFF has long warned against age-gating the internet. Age verification technology itself is often inaccurate and privacy-invasive, and as more countries considering implementing ID-based checks, the risks move beyond censorship and surveillance toward excluding some people entirely.

    From the fucking article, since you won’t read it, you philistine.

  • SharkBait@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPtoFediverse@lemmy.world•When No ID Means No Internet: Age Verification and the Right to Access InformationEnglish
    3·
    22 days ago

    This is the EFF. These people know what they’re doing and talking about.

    But sure, I’m painting a strawman. Let’s take a look at how the UK defines “social media service” in one of their tax laws!

    (3)“Social media service” means an online service that meets the following conditions—

    (a)the main purpose, or one of the main purposes, of the service is to promote interaction between users (including interaction between users and user-generated content), and

    (b)making content generated by users available to other users is a significant feature of the service.

    source

    The internet is much larger, until that part gets thrown down the slippery slope too.

  • SharkBait@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoWorld News@lemmy.world•Germany blames Russia for drone incursion, announces retaliatory measuresEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    I’m basing this all on reports from the Institute for the Study of War (which is a Washington based organization, mind you). I’m just a layman who likes reading the ISW. So take it with a grain of salt.

    The ISW has repeatedly said (bullet points ISW, comments are mine):

    • Russia uses hybrid warfare to accomplish objectives it might not otherwise be able to reach in a traditional conflict. Psyops reinforce real battlefield conditions by, for example, discouraging the west from providing meaningful support such as equipment

    A good example of this is over a year ago when there were discussions in The Netherlands against providing Ukraine with F-16’s which were an “offensive weapon”. (Is there such a thing as a ‘defensive’ weapon I ask you?)

    • Russia is clearly not interested in coming to the negotiation table and they believe they are still able to make meaningful gains on the battlefield.
    • The Kremlin might be smoking too much of it’s own disinformation and is acting on false or misleading information.

    They will keep the pressure on since a loss on a battlefield is a sure way for Putin and his ‘strongman’ image to go to shit. Russia needs a victory to sell itself. Nearly everything they do including the disinformation in their papers, the bullshit on TV and the diplomatic signaling to other nations is in service of that. The state controls everything because authoritarianism is a fact and a way of life over there.

    I think Putin and his cronies feel existentially threatened because they can’t sell a victory to the people. They’re forced to sell god knows how many of KIA/MIA/WIA/POW. The ISW also reported that an immediate return of Russian combat veterans into society might lead to some nasty stuff and that would have to be dealt with either by Russia or in negotiations with Russia.

    Back to what ISW said:

    • Russia is in ‘phase zero’ and the ‘information setting stage’ of a conflict with NATO.
    • Russia is banking on NATO somehow ‘giving up’ with the war when the going gets tough.
    • These drone attacks (or any border/airspace incidents) are part of probing how the west responds and gauging capabilities of the west.

    I think there might also a little bit of some soldier somewhere “accidentally” misprogramming a drone’s path to fuck with the west a little? It doensn’t all have to come from higher up. Drone attacks and border incidents can just as easily be one angry vatnik and now you have a diplomatic incident that Putin himself probably believes as “European warmongering”. Who knows?

    If Russia can’t win this war? It’s all the fault of the Nazi imperialist west, since the “expansion of NATO” threatens the “traditional” heteronormative values of Russian society. So we’re the cause of this war, even though Russia annexed Crimea, shot down MH17, genocides the Ukrainians, indoctrinates Ukrainian children and kills people in the street and prisoners of war in cold blood.

    ‘Just war’ theory says something about when entering and continuing a war is ‘just’ or not. I have no idea where nuclear weapons fit into this but I don’t want to find out.