If you give an app access to your photos, it can do whatever it wants with them. Even if the normal operation is end-to-end encrypted, the app could still upload straight from your photo library to servers.
I'm not saying this is happening. In Meta's case, I simply assume that they at least collect meta information on your photos, such as GPS coordinates to build a better ad profile of you. I might be wrong, but maybe not. That's why I don't give WhatsApp access to my photo library.
Nah, this plan is outright evil. We all learned from the cookie banner madness that everybody just opts-in to everything all the time, just to make the thing go away. This proposal gives us a fake choice, because so many coordination of real life activities happen in WhatsApp in the EU that you have to opt-in to still participate in a meaningful way.
I'm not talking about sharing vacation photos with your friends, but stuff like:
- here is a link that explains how to do taxes for your nonprofit
- here is our new school logo
- this is a link to the soccer tournament schedule
You would think Europeans would have learned from the likes of the SS and Stasi where this stuff leads. It gives too much power to government and especially the police. It wasn’t that long ago since the SS and their ilk were putting people in ovens and nerve gas showers because they had unlimited power and you had to have your papers in order or off to prison. Why is it that Americans remember it better than the ones who suffered it (or their ancestors)
Usually consent is one click and decline is a lot of extra clicks, if at all available. I just consent to everything and employ a Firefox extension that clears all cookies and site data when a tab is closed.
You can also try Consent-O-Matic, a plugin that will tell cookie banners whatever you pre-define. I set it to refuse everything. Doesn't work for all sites, but most that have industry standard banner software installed work.
When someone says "everybody", they generally don't mean literally every single person, they usually mean "most people". In that light, I believe the GP's assertion is correct. Most people -- really the vast majority of people -- will just click on the default option, or whatever gets the annoying pop-up out of their way.
Is there any hard data on what you refer to as "the cookie banner madness"? Personally, I click 'refuse' on every banner that pops up. They're not all that annoying, so I'm not sure that "everybody" opts-in to "everything all the time"
Way to derail my argument. This is not about literally everybody accepting everything, but that the vast majority of people will accept the default option. This has been studied over and over. The cookie banner madness is that so many cookie options are implemented as dark patterns: consent is easy, rejection is not.
All you need to do is sit down for a while with people who aren't in our tech bubble and watch them use their stuff. I used to do on-site tech support for people, and I have seen tons and tons of people constantly click dialog boxes without reading them or knowing what they are clicking on. They just want to dismiss them because they are annoying.
I had a person who was having a printer problem close a dialog box telling exactly what was wrong with the printer. It came up every single time they tried to print. This is not abnormal behavior.
People regularly just click on the default boxes, and you know it's true otherwise there wouldn't be so many dark patterns on the internet. Dark patterns work because people don't read what's on their screen.
To counter your anecdote, I was doing something on my boss's computer and clicked refuse all on the google prompt. My boss was surprised and said she thought the site wouldn't work if you refused. We're software engineers.
They are extremely annoying in my estimation. That’s why I have 2 extensions running that automatically click opt out 95% of the time. I remember what it was like before that.
How is this supposed to work in reality? Do we really want to provide Meta, Apple and Google with a list of phone numbers of accounts of militarly and security personell in order to have their feature-flags for sharing links/photos enabled?
Apple and Google could provide devices or OS versions that disable these features, which could be issued as work phones to military and security personnel.
Not saying it’s a perfect solution, but they might consider it a “95% good enough” solution.
I mean “software feature” [1]. It is an “anti-feature” for sure, but I’d still call it a “feature” as well when someone has to write a new blob of code to perform a new task.
They already have those lists because those are US companies that famously assist US intelligence. Those flags will be used in multiple incompatible ways, depending on who's asking.
A company assisting the US intelligence will get assigned some contact. They will not get a list of the intelligence staff. That's not the way the information is expected to flow.
The cellular carriers very obviously already have a system like this for location tracking.
Their tower dumps contain enough metadata to determine all the people who spend most workdays at office buildings in McLean Virginia. And then, of course, where those people sleep (i.e. charge their phones) at night. It takes positive effort to erase that data, and believe me, it's being erased. The powerful people don't want it to exist.
So yeah, there is already a system for doing this kind of thing. It will be extended. Plebs like you and me don't get to use it.
The problem is that these towers and metadata are hackable by China and Russia, and now you understand how dangerous it is to run Huawei and ZTE etc in your critical infra.
Unless you have positive evidence, I'm gonna guess that the "powerful people" aren't that organized or that on top of things. But, sure, they'd like to be.
The hack was to scan ICQ numbers for their associated email addresses, filter by big providers like Hotmail and Yahoo and try to sign up for the same address. Some were abandoned and you could use the username again. Then password-reset in ICQ and voila, there’s your 6-digit ICQ number.
But yeah, I bought a 6 digit number on eBay for 5-10 bucks too ;)
> and refuse to disclose their home country, in which case imprisoning them until they agree to play ball doesn't seem unreasonable.
How would this work in practice? Person comes from country A, claims he is from country B. You send him to country B, they can't find records of him and simply don't take him back. Now what?
Same as before you send them? They're in detention and go back to it. Presumably now with fewer privileges as they've lied to you.
This form of detention may seem costly, but the deterrent effect makes it less expensive overall when people realise the UK isn't a soft touch.
I think though that the debate isn't really about "does this work". It's more about the question of whether the UK (or any country) is responsible for looking after anyone that turns up on our shores.
I don't think we are, the default position should be the equivalent of an iptables deny rule.
> I had passion as a kid, interest in weird things, but school and the social environment killed every little bit of it.
As a parent of an autistic kid: How would you cultivate that? Our son is autistic, he is 8 years old. He started to hate school. All he cares for is Minecraft and Magic: The Gathering. It's a bit sad to see that he seemingly drowns his curiosity by immersing himself mentally only in these two topics. I wonder if there's a way to guide him to develop interest in other topics. Any recommendations?
Best I can say is lean into it. Make everything those themes or adjacent to them in some way. You’re lucky because Minecraft is a gateway to computing in general. Find out what he specifically likes about it and then figure out how to use Minecraft to build a bridge toward real world skill that still include everything he likes about Minecraft.
Forcing him to do things he doesn’t want to will be next to impossible. RSD is real and irrational. You can trick him into wanting to do things though.
And by trick I don’t mean deceive but just to make him thinks he wants it. Give him a choice and let him choose, but make both options good. Don’t force him to do things your way or the correct way as you see it.
Autistic people like to build and use our own systems, so that’s probably what he likes out of Minecraft, a world he can shape to his liking. He rejects the real world because it forces him to be something he doesn’t want to be.
Thanks, coincidentally, I listened to a podcast episode about RSD (assuming you mean Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) this morning and yeah, it is absolutely real. He's extremely sensitive to criticism, which often results in a vicious cycle. Will try to work with Minecraft to give him more topics. So far, he didn't like the whole Redstone logic stuff, but maybe it'll come in a bit. His mathematical abilities are actually quite good (and so are his language capabilities).
I'm not saying this is happening. In Meta's case, I simply assume that they at least collect meta information on your photos, such as GPS coordinates to build a better ad profile of you. I might be wrong, but maybe not. That's why I don't give WhatsApp access to my photo library.