Which in practice will simply drive up the price: like refundable deposits

Deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” tech businesses and nonprofits, including its own

I mean, how else can you deplete a non-profit’s reserves?

E2EE isn’t really relevant, when the “ends” have the functionality, to share data with Meta directly: as “reports”, “customer support”, “assistance” (Meta AI); where a UI element is the separation.

Edit: it turns out cloud backups aren’t E2E encrypted by default… meaning: any backup data, which passes through Meta’s servers, to the cloud providers (like iCloud or Google Account), is unobscured to Meta; unless E2EE is explicitly enabled. And even then, WhatsApp’s privacy policy states: “if you use a data backup service integrated with our Services (like iCloud or Google Account), they will receive information you share with them, such as your WhatsApp messages.” So the encryption happens on the server side, meaning: Apple and Google still have full access to the content. It doesn’t matter if you, personally, refuse to use the “feature”: if the other end does, your interactions will be included in their backups.

Cross-posting my comment from the cross-posted post

Yeah, I guess if you want users to keep sharing “confessions, [] difficult debates, or silly inside jokes” through a platform you’ve acquired, E2EE might give the WhatsApp user the false sense of privacy required.

One would almost start to think the lawyers were out for the settlement money…

E2EE isn’t really relevant, when the “ends” have the functionality, to share data with Meta directly: as “reports”, “customer support”, “assistance” (Meta AI); where a UI element is the separation.

Edit: it turns out cloud backups aren’t E2E encrypted by default… meaning: any backup data, which passes through Meta’s servers, to the cloud providers (like iCloud or Google Account), is unobscured to Meta; unless E2EE is explicitly enabled. And even then, WhatsApp’s privacy policy states: “if you use a data backup service integrated with our Services (like iCloud or Google Account), they will receive information you share with them, such as your WhatsApp messages.” So the encryption happens on the server side, meaning: Apple and Google still have full access to the content. It doesn’t matter if you, personally, refuse to use the “feature”: if the other end does, your interactions will be included in their backups.

Hmm, maybe it also monitors for changes to the DOM: cosmetic filtering done by uBlock (to hide/remove containers for these elements)? Something which network filtering by itself cannot do?

Checking the network traffic, it does a series of “s_a_f_e…Overflow” (indicating safe buffer overflows?), replacing them with filter-list-specific domains after the overflow (the address after the long string of characters); triggering uBlock to block these requests?

So multiple, nickel-titanium alloy tubes, are stretched and released within the refrigerator, causing a temperature change in the alloy, the heat of which (pulled from the interior) transferred to the calcium chloride fluid, being pumped around through the tubes; to be transferred to the outdoor climate, by use of an exterior heat exchanger. Something along those lines?

Reliance wouldn’t be my primary concern, but rather the privacy implication. It seems like Google has to step up its surveillance game /s. Fun project though

So the amend alleges, Nvidia having used/stored/copied/obtained/distributed copyrighted works (including plaintiffs’), both through databases available on Hugging Face (‘Books3’ featured in both ‘The Pile’ and ‘SlimPajama’), or pirating from shadow libraries (like Anna’s Archive), to train multiple LLMs (primarily their ‘NeMo Megatron’ series), and distributing the copyrighted data through the ‘NeMo Megatron Framework’; data which was ultimately sourced from shadow libraries.

It’s quite an interesting read actually, especially the link to this Anna’s Archive blog post. Which it grossly pulls out of context, as plaintiffs clearly despise the shadow libraries too: as they have ultimately provided access to their copyrighted material.

Especially the part: “Most (but not all!) US-based companies reconsidered once they realized the illegal nature of our work. By contrast, Chinese firms have enthusiastically embraced our collection, apparently untroubled by its legality.” makes me wonder if that’s the reason why models like Deepseek, initially blew Western models out of the water.

So a Mastodon ripoff, but its instances hosted by a single entity (effectively centralized): ensuring all instances residing within the European jurisdiction (allowing for full control over it). I don’t see how they genuinely believe, to have humans do the photo validation, when competing at the scale of X; especially when you run all the instances. Perhaps they could recruit volunteers to socialize the losses, as the platform privatizes the profits. Nothing but a privacy-centric approach however: said the privacy expert…

Zeiter emphasized that systemic disinformation is eroding public trust and weakening democratic decision-making … W will be legally the subsidiary of “We Don’t Have Time,” a media platform for climate action … A group of 54 members of the European Parliament [primarily Greens/EFA, Renew, The Left] called for European alternatives

If that doesn’t sound like a recipe, for swinging the pendulum to the other extreme (once more), I don’t know what does… Because can you imagine, a modern social media platform, not being a political echo chamber: not promoting extremism by use of filter bubbles, and instead allowing for deescalation through counter argumentation. One would almost start to think, for it all to be intentional: as a deeply divided population will never stand united, against their common oppressor.

Great, more hoops to jump thr… I mean… an “advanced flow”, for gaining the privilege of installing apps of your choosing

innovation COURAGE

With “deletion” you’re simply advancing the moment, they’re supposedly “deleting” your data; something I refuse to believe, they actually do. Instead, I suspect they “anonymize”, or effectively “pseudonymize” the data (as cross-referencing is trivial, when showing equal patterns on a new account; would the need arise). Stagnation wouldn’t require services to take such steps, and any personal data remains connected to you, personally.

For the Gmail account, I would recommend: not deleting the account, opening an account at a privacy-respecting service (using Disroot as an example), connect the Gmail account to an email-client (like Thunderbird), copy all its contents (including ‘sent’ or other specific folders) to a local folder (making sure to back these up periodically), delete all contents from the Gmail server, and simply wait for incoming messages, at the now empty Gmail account.

If a worthy email comes in: copy it over to the local folder, and delete it from the Gmail server. For used services, you could change the contact address to the Disroot account, and for others you could delete them, or simply mark them as spam (and periodically emptying the spam-folder). You may not want to wait for privacy-sensitive services, to finally make an appearance, and change these over to the Disroot address right away.

I’ve been doing this for years now, and my big-tech accounts remain empty most of the time. Do make sure to transfer every folder, and make regular backups!

Maybe the best ad is to not have AI

THIS is how you do it, looking at you Brave: requiring me to (re)type my queries in the URL bar (appending ‘&summary=0’ to it), so I’m not required to store a persistent cookie, keeping the damn setting off…

My emails forced me to, locking me out of accounts I needed to access.

Microsoft had me fill this form, to “prove” I was the rightful owner of the account, after some suspicious login-attempts from an African country. The form included fields like: name (I don’t think I supplied at creation, or a false one), other email addresses, previous passwords (which potentially yield completely unrelated passwords), etc.; only for the application to be rejected and locking me out of my primary email for a full month. After that outright violation, I immediately switched to Disroot, and haven’t had any of said problems ever since. I backup all its contents locally using Thunderbird, and delete the origins from the server afterwards.

Many platforms have this messed up dark pattern, of revoking one’s access to a real-world dependencies, unless giving in to the service’s demands. Enforcement of 2FA is another one of those “excuses” for this type of misbehavior, and so is bot-detection.

Yeah, I think they employ a pretty sophisticated bot detection algorithm. I vaguely remember there being this ‘make 5 friends’ objective, or something along those lines, which I had no intention of fulfilling. If a new account, having triggered the manual reviewing process, doesn’t adhere to common usage patterns, simply have them supply additional information. Any collateral damage simply means additional data, to be appended to Facebook’s self-profiling platform… I mean, what else would one expect when Facebook’s first outside investor was Palentir’s Peter Thiel?

It’s been like that for quite a while. I remember deleting all big-tech accounts in 2019, and shortly after, Facebook started requiring login for full public page access. Therefore I created a burner account using a ‘this person does not exist’ picture, which provided me short-lived access after manual review. For account recovery, I was required to supply additional selfies (or even video-selfies?), but at that point I gave up.