I’ve also noticed YouTube has unbanned many channels that were previously banned for overt supremacist and racist content. They get amplified a lot more now. Between that and AI slop, I feel like Google is speed running the changes X made over the last few years.
When people say “our values” or “Western values”, it’s just a made up term that means European Christian values. When it should mean classically liberal values.
Always took it to be synonymous with "enlightenment values", created in Europe and by Christians. (Who I believe were at least somewhat secular). I am unsure if we are, at present, a bastion of said values.
That and the TSA circus is actively dissuading me from tourism in the US. I don’t need their bullshit in my life certainly not when trying to have a nice holiday
It is in my experience - easily the most unpleasant experience of all the countries I’ve visited.
Even places with intense security concerns like Israel was better. More intense than the US but less powertripping assholes (no doubt this comment will get me into trouble too given their invasive social media bullshit)
Okay, let me be even more clear then: it is required to fill out every social media handle and every phone number you've used for the past 5 years as a part of the DS-160 form (AKA online non-migratory visa application for countries not covered by ESTA).
That's been the case since 2019. Before that, asking to hand that info out even voluntarily was widely seen as an overreach. Now, it's required for countries not covered by ESTA and still voluntary for ESTA countries.
(I have family and lots of close friends in the US. I miss them all. But I don't intend to visit given the way things are over there these days. _Maybe_ after the next administration change? Depending on how things change? But I've come to accept I may never visit again.)
I already missed a funeral on account of all this bs. But it just doesn't seem worth the hassle any more to go there. It is frustrating because I have more friends on that side of the Atlantic than I do in the EU. But the last interaction with US border patrol was enough to sour me for the rest of my life.
I've been to the US multiple times this year and it's really not much different from how its been for the last decades. If you are choosing to to not go to events that you would want to attend over this you only have yourself to blame.
I only have bluesky with only work posts, nothing else. I've gotten a visa in last few months. Even though I never went because of the situation. Needed to get a visa for potential work related stuff which eventually could be worked around.
Manufacturer locked crash resets for BMS are a common theme amongst EVs, especially European ones. Exclusive to neither this model year nor BMW, although some other makes have less arcane procedures than the ISTA one.
The chaos seems a lot like the chaos of rapidly fluctuating prices in the stock market. It puts things out of reach of the everyday person, or if you participate, you will probably be losing something.
> Under this ruling, it appears that any website that hosts any user-generated content can be strictly liable if any of that content contains “sensitive personal data” about any person.
Could this lead to censorship as well? For example you could go to a website or community you don’t like, and share information that could be seen as “sensitive personal data” and then file an anonymous complaint so they get into legal trouble or get shut down?
I don’t really like the political nature of these decisions. It feels like political people often take over groups and institutions to implement their own political agendas through such policies.
On the other hand, Twitter/X has a problem of spam. I don’t even think it’s bots but actual humans. You see low effort and racist comments all over the place, poisoning the conversations. And it’s not just on political posts. If you’re Chinese or African or Indian, there will be vile comments spamming your posts.
Such a space isn’t welcoming to many people and I think groups like FSFE have legitimate reasons to want to avoid exposing their members to this stuff. It’s a hostile environment.
This article makes it look like this vetting is mainly of visa applicants’ employment history and family to protect free speech. But it’s actually just an attack on free speech. Why does it matter if someone worked on fact checking? Or compliance? What business is that of the government? See this quote from the article:
> The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on December 2, orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants - and family members who would be traveling with them - to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.
> To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for H-1B and their dependents (H-4), F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas are instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to “public.”
This is frankly just an unamerican and perhaps unconstitutional change. Forcing applicants to change all their social media to public for a deep review of their online presence? How authoritarian.
They also listed moderation, so compliance may mean compliance with a company’s policies or something like that. But they’ve defined all this so vaguely that it can basically punish and exclude people from entry for anything. Which is of course, what they intended.
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