Here's why Twitter/Facebook/other platforms are publishers. Neither electricity nor phone companies actively curate content, that, is, choose what content will go where and why (like a newspaper, that is, a publisher). Just cause algorithms are involved not really a difference.

Neither do electricity nor phone companies (usually) deliver advertising based on the curation of content and vice versa. Neither do they as companies foster discussion. Etc etc.

In fact, this goes back to a basic confusion. Not even the web is the same as the internet, and social media is certainly not the internet. Neither are apps or platforms. The utility, if there is one, is the internet, the rest is increasingly some equivalent to publishers.

this is before you get to 1 the over-fetishization of content/representations and 2 the out of date characterisation of both media in general and the divisions within it on all sides, based on a media "age" that's now perhaps passing

per McLuhan but also Whitehead, Langer maybe, a lot of media ecology, Lovelace, Deleuze, Hopper, Virilio, Harney, and many many more.

There has been speculation that changes to the way the internet is implemented will be rolled out to allow access only to authorized sites.

Some think this is impossible

I'm here to tell you it is not, and very likely.

Allowing access only to white listed IP addresses is easy.

The vast majority access the internet via their Internet Service Provider, and ISP's can easily block client access to any IP address they choose.

China has been doing this for years.

This is how firewalls work, and is much lower level than DNS blocking.

I would imagine this will be rolled out to 'Combat the ever growing threat of Cyber Attacks'.

Most people only use a few thousand services like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit etc, Walmart, Costco, Tesco, Morrisons etc. as it is.

It will be easy over time to require 'legal registration' for any and all other services and sites.

We already took a step toward this years ago anyway, so this is just the logical next step.

As 5G technology is rolled out in your city, more and more control is being introduced at the street level, using what are known as 'Edge Servers'.

While making services faster to access, it also allows an additional layer of security and access control at the local level.

@AWS hit @parler_app where it really hurts: in their backend.

This thread is to those claiming that this is a violation of the 1st Amendment and platforms shouldn't be taken down.

Free Speech has limits and it definitely ends with thousands of open calls for violence:
1/

As the United States deals with insurgent forces at home, security professionals should look to the Middle East for insight on how this threat may evolve:



There are a lot of parallels between right-wing US extremism, and post-colonial Islamic extremism.

The most prominent, I feel, is the one between the @newtgingrich era GOP and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood, like most early Islamic terrorism, was a reaction to European colonialism in the Middle East.

What starts as a political movement interested in social change becomes an insurgent group engaged in violent extremism.



The same radicalization factors can be identified. It’s disenfranchisement and cultural erosion all the way down.

Both groups want a return to “tradition” to strengthen a culture they feel they’ve lost because of modernity. Both groups feel they’ve been economically and culturally disenfranchised by a foreign oppressor. You can see roots of this same problem in the Confederacy.

In our case at home, this is because of the inherent cultural divide between conservatives and liberals. Many conservatives do not feel that liberals are real Americans. This is an important factor for later.

I’m going to riff on this for a bit about how this works in the real world.

—-Every Deleted Parler Post, Many With Users' Location Data, Has Been Archived

Law enforcement generally doesn’t use work by hackers i their investigations because 𝒉𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒍. And while it’s permissible for law enforcement to use evidence that was illegally obtained by a private citizen, the government doesn’t like to do it.

The first reason for this is because the government doesn’t want to be perceived as encouraging illegal activity. In fact, if the government goes over the line the court might and has in many cases said the private party was acting on behalf of the government.

If the evidence is thrown out then you risk losing the evidence and everything you leaned from that evidence.

The second reason is that LE doesn’t need somebody else to archive the data during an active investigation. Law enforcement does this all day everyday with the company

It’s called a preservation letter and it requires the company to keep all data it has at that moment for the length of time stated in the letter (usually 90 days).

Explanation of differences between corvettes, frigates, destroyers and cruisers (as recorded from a Quora discussion):

Minesweeper: it's job to to find and remove mines to clear a harbor or other restricted waters for maritime access and egress. There can also be minelayers which do the opposite.

Corvettes: They were smaller sailing vessels used for coastal commerce and and defense. They were fast and maneuverable. Today some navies use these in a similar way but they are not sail powered. The US Navy has similar vessels called Littoral Combat Ships.

Now to Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers. These range from smallest to largest in the same order. Cruisers tend to be picket ships specializing in air defense. They also have Tomahawk missiles that can be launched against land or sea targets.

Destoyers are smaller than Cruisers and used to be more for submarine warfare and then became a smaller version of a cruisers with much the same mission. Frigates were the smallest. They were primarlily anti-submarine platforms.

VOA has “leaked” the code of conduct for the intra Afghan talks. They have shared 1 page on their website but there 3. Offering details here from the 3 pages that I have seen, knowing that this is not in any way sabotaging the peace process that many of us wish to succeed.

Unofficial translation by me: The honor & Islamic identity of #Afghanistan depends on national unity. Our country will be saved from the direct or indirect interference of others when Islamic justice prevails. The Afghan negotiations that started on 12 Sept 2020 shall be based

on the following four principles:
A. The Doha agreement signed on 29 Feb 2020.
B. The desire of the people of Afghanistan for establishing sustainable peace.
C. The commitment of both sides of the negotiators to establishing sustainable/durable peace.

D. The expressed will of UN resolutions for establishing sustainable peace.

Parties to the negotiations agree on the following principles:

1. The first session will begin with the recitation of verses from the Holy Quran.
2. the other sessions will begin and end with prayer.

3. No subject against the sacred religion of Islam or the national high interests will be considered.
4. The negotiations will take place with the intention and faith of succeeding, with honesty and in good faith by both parties in a good/amicable atmosphere.

I was on @alexandermats show on ET Now yesterday, to discuss Facebook and Google vs Australia when it comes to News content, and how they've taken different approaches.

The key question: can this happen in India?

A thread 👇

1/

1. What's going on?
A proposed News Media Bargaining Code released by the Australian competition watchdog forces Google and Facebook to enter into arbitration with news publishers to decide a price for News on their platforms.

Price for Google to surface news. For users to share on FB.

2. Power imbalance: Australian competition commission believes there's a power imbalance between News publishers and social media platforms. This is true.

3. Google has done a deal with Rupert Murdoch's News corp

3/

and is now offering it “significant payments” for featuring it's publications in its News Showcase. This is a bad precedent in my opinion. Microsoft waded into this debate and supported what Australia was doing.

Why is this bad?
4/

4. There's no compulsion: Google doesn't need to index news. Users want news and Google prioritises news on search results anyway, but publishers can prevent Google from indexing using their robots.txt exclusions. No one is forcing publications from being indexed.

5/

A THREAD BY @Armyvetgrl1 Important read!!!
Mark Zuckerberg has been giving major Donations to Oregon for a long time. This is just one example:
From October of this

Today we have three major record labels, the meanest, most voracious gobblers-up of the competition, companies that clawed their way to global dominance through absolute ruthlessness, particularly to the musicians who did the work that brought in the money.

1/

For example: the Beatles earned $0.01/record.

Split four ways.

But 15% of that was creamed off by the label to account for "promotional copies" that they later admitted they sold at full price without giving the Beatles their ONE PENNY of royalties.

2/

When Napster and other digital distribution platforms appeared, many musicians were angry about them, but many were hopeful: was this - finally - a way to be free of the labels?

It was!

For a while.

3/

The subsequent record industry lawsuits combined with runaway mergers and acquisitions in BOTH tech (5 giants) AND entertainment (4 studios, 4ish publishers, 3 labels) killed the dream of a pluralistic, fair alternative to the content oligarchy.

4/

This was confirmed when Youtube launched its music service in the early part of the past decade. After hammering out a deal with the Big Four (now three) labels, YT told all the independent artists and labels that this would be their deal too - or they could leave Youtube.

5/

THREAD. AdTube, I mean YouTube, has gone full Lysenko. They are taking down videos and issuing Community Guidelines strikes against anyone who "explicitly disputes the efficacy of local health authority or WHO guidance." 1/n

2/n
YouTube has gone further than simply removing videos, however. By issuing strikes, it is deliberately creating a chilling effect on people who might be able to otherwise warn against legitimate danger.

3/n
If there is any way to determine if an idea is valid, it *must* tolerate dissent. Dissent is the lifeblood of good ideas. YouTube (and Twitter) are now blessing all content. If your content is not blessed, you will be punished. If you defy our blessing, you will be punished.

4/n
Whether you agree or disagree with an idea is for YOU to decide. YouTube's explicit "concern" that you may be persuaded by an idea is a direct insult to YOUR intelligence and powers of reason.

5/n
Even worse, YouTube is stating, explicitly, that it is now a propaganda arm of the World Health Organization.

Exaggeration? Not in the slightest. Here's that screenshot once more.

Hooray, my IPv6 parser is mostly working, and only missing the final cursed case.

It's done. By god, it's done.

I mean, parseIPv6 is also awful and embarassing and much worse than the stdlib implementation right now. But is it at least faster than the stdlib?

Ope never mind, other tests are failing still. Bah.

lol, fuck. Not only is it 50% slower than the stdlib's parser, it's also not alloc-free.

oh, it's because it's benchmarking parsing a zone, and we have to intern the zone... I think.