Let’s say this is the official narrative. My argument:

1. Meta stands to consolidate power and revenue from further mapping devices to real people.
2. Meta was also originally backed by Peter Thiel, who trades in data mining for secret services, now much more energetically. Zuckerberg is a sexist idiot and his app had no more merit than MySpace. Thiel saw the potential of mapping real idenities to online behavior, and it is no accident Palantir was later implicated in Cambridge Analytica.
3. A redditor came up with concrete data that others have already posted, that show that Meta’s dark money are all over this case. As for the fine you say that completely explains this, is a very modest for Meta, who is used to pay such fines as a cost of doing business.
4. Amongst the orgs taking Meta’s money to push this are many conservative organizations, like Heritage but also others (anti-sex, anti-abortion, and anti-trans organizations), who know that these laws will effectively suppress speech. Much like the trans moral panics, the laws are not as stupid as they appear, but carefully designed to obliquely achieve their goals (e.g. police bodies with wombs, in line with the same orgs’ anti-abortion positions).
5. Governments watch closely as the new corporatist technofascism undoes regulations and checks and balances. They stand to gain from the turmoil and increase their surveillance capabilities even more. Alternatively, some EU goverments might be thinking that this is a way to stick it to US tech monopolies that brainwash their constituents, but they are wrong.
6. In fact, the approach and outcomes hints toward government contractors in cahoots with surveillance agencies, that it would be surprising if there is no adjacency to Analytica personnel and/or the benefits for state actors and spooks are just an unplanned side-effect.

Conclusion: There is sufficient basis to consider that the official narrative is not the whole story.

They’ve already decided so. It is all in Project 2025: queerness and sex-ed are considered pornographic. And platforms have been preemptively demonetizing and censoring info for similar topics (abortion and sex-workers resources also) for years.

This is a cool way to protect a belief, narrowing the scope so that the refuting data do not apply anymore. Perhaps I can write a fucking essay about it, but do you have data to support this narrowing move? There is like a ton of data that the West has been invasively spying of possible threats to the status quo (from Cointelpro to undercover UK cops like recently), not just people “acting on it”. Furthermore, actions can fall under protected free speech as well, like putting up a poster, demonstrating, and protesting. So your proposal is inherently undemocratic if you roll back freedom to only protect oral expression, quite similar to a “Don’t ask don’t tell” attitude towards gay people. What you just said is simply counter-factual. Blanket surveillance is a staple of Western societies in the 21st century, and it blows my mind that there are still people oblivious to what is more or less spelled out clearly in the Patriot Act and all laws modeled after it across the globe.

I’m going to bring it up.

Isn’t this the same asshole who posted the “Woke racist” meme as a response to Gemini generating images of Black SS officers? Of course we now know he was merely triggered by the suggestion because of his commitment to white supremacy and alignment with the SS ideals, which he could not stand to see, pun not intended, denigrated.

The Gemini ordeal was itself a result of a system prompt; a half-ass attempt to correct for white bias deeply learned by the algorithm, just a few short years after Google ousted their AI ethics researcher for bringing this type of stuff up.

Few were the outlets that did not lend credence to the “outrage” about “diversity bias” bullshit and actually covered that deep learning algorithms are indeed sexist and racist.

Now this nazi piece of shit goes ahead and does the exact same thing; he tweaks a system prompt causing the bot to bring up the self-serving and racially charged topic of apartheid racists being purportedly persecuted. He does the vary same thing he said was “uncivilizational”, the same concept he brought up just before he performed the two back-to-back Sieg Heil salutes during Trump’s inauguration.

He was clearly not concerned about historical accuracy, not the superficial attempt to brown-wash the horrible past of racism which translates to modern algorithms’ bias. His concern was clearly the representation of people of color, and the very ideal of diversity, so he effectively went on and implemented his supremacist seething into a brutal, misanthropic policy with his interference in the election and involvement in the criminal, fascist operation also known as DOGE.

Is there anyone at this point that is still sitting on the fence about Musk’s intellectual dishonesty and deeply held supremacist convictions? Quickest way to discover nazis nowadays really: (thinks that Musk is a misunderstood genius and the nazi shit is all fake).

This is such a good analysis. It sets the record straight on so many fundamental issues of American global politics.

This is some Gestapo/Stasi shit.

Like, all queer persons must go beyond Signal/Tor level.

This extends to the physical world: Plan ahead for escape routes and survival networks.

I will come back with this angle but, REMEMBER those mfers who always said “the NSA does not target you, so asking about anything more than Signal is paranoid/futile if ever the NSA targets you”?

REMEMBER that we said that some people have advanced threat models by default? Eg feminist activists, activists in third countries, queer people?

WHO is paranoid now, that being queer, pro-Palestine, and/or climate activists can have you on the watchlist?

This development only proves my previous points that the hordes of sock-puppets spamming the Privacy forum are fucking spooks. Pooping the conversation about advanced privacy and anonymity should qualify for permabans, IMHO.

either Signal fans have to donate more or Signal has to start finding other monetization which if we look at other companies means selling private data.

Lo and behold, after RiseUp now Signal is accused of selling data. Well, it is well known (and audited) that Signal keeps so little metadata it is not even useful to the authorities that have subpoeana-ed it.

This is an extra-ordinary claim you have to back with extra-ordinary evidence, in order to save face.

Clean cut kids do not find Lemmy very palatable.

The alternatives were suggested briefly in the segment, not the site. Oliver pointed to the site those people who can’t ditch Meta right now.

it’s going to hurt Meta’s bottom line eventually

Just hurting Meta’s bottom is good enough for me

sentence I never thought I’d write

🤣 🤣