Oh shit you’re right
07.03.2026 02:44
👍 8
🔁 0
💬 1
📌 0
Oh shit you’re right
The intermission can be the 40 minute long “complaining about Adobe products” section you cut out.
A planned change to Amazon means that if people buy items on your wishlist, it could expose your address. Definitely a threat to people who have public wishlists.
www.404media.co/amazon-wishl...
And they probably won’t complain about the ability to collect ever more compromising data for advertising, moderation overreach, and other consumer-extracting activities.
I would love to as a big IRC fan, but it would be a logistical nightmare, but if we want to maintain a space for patrons, that would require us to migrate to Patreon chats entirely, which is still Persona-impacted. I think this will have to be an effort led by the community members!
I wouldn’t be surprised if the most aggressively invasive and ‘effective’ age verification vendor (by the arbitrary checks and standards of gov’t bodies) would also be the one that most comprehensively violates our right to privacy and builds the most all-consuming surveillance infrastructure!!
Discord wasn’t the uniquely evil one, here. I’m sure Persona seems like a good deal for platforms frantically trying not to get fined by multiple governments for not complying “enough.” But you’d hope they choose an age verification vendor not tied to Peter Thiel and the anti-democracy gang.
"Moderna's CEO announced the company will no longer invest in new Phase 3 vaccine trials for infectious diseases: 'You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market. Vaccines for Epstein-Barr virus, herpes, and shingles have been shelved.” 9:12 AM Feb 12, 2026 604.8K Views
In terms of what cures are being lost:
- Epstein-Barr virus is perhaps the major trigger for multiple sclerosis
- herpes simplex virus causes cold sores, genital herpes, infections in babies, deadly meningitis
- shingles virus causes an intensely painful disease
it's SOPA and KOSA all over again, but of course they're still weaponizing sensationalist language, in light of everything the DOJ is dropping, to irrelevantly come after LGBTQIA folk and disparage digital communications. They'll still attempt pivots like this.
Concentration camps:
“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick."
Rudy is out here very much living "we can just do things" with a "for each other" emphasis.
pg seems to have this kind of revelation every few months for... years? And then... does nothing and goes back to doing the same things he was doing before and hyping up the same people he was before.
I remember when he quit Twitter for Mastodon. For like a week.
I’m sorry about this capitalist dystopian nightmare, dude. You’re great though, I believe in you.
most of the 'wins' of the past year depended on people fighting for what's right. protest, litigate, organize, speak, write, argue, persuade. 2026 will be better than 2025 the more we do these things.
happy new year everyone. 🥂
In a world without Section 230:
😩 Big Tech companies everyone hates would win. Giants like Meta and Google have armies of lawyers to navigate compliance
😩 Alternative platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon would likely shut down, along with Wikipedia, review sites, how-to resources, small forums, etc
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.
Holy shit.
Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa.
www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
One thing we're vvv proud of: 404 Media independent + journalist-owned. Here's a rundown of some of our recent work:
After months of 404 Media reporting and pressure from lawmakers, US airlines will shut down a program that sold millions of YOUR flight records to the government.
This is, of course, a fascinating thread from Kate asking why Google is effectively cannibalizing its own market for both digital ads on third party properties and search ads, by effectively taking away the incentive to click through to third party sites. I have a theory as to why they're doing it.
After 404 Media's months-long reporting and pressure from lawmakers, the data broker owned by the U.S.’s major airlines will now shut down a program in which it sold access to hundreds of millions of flight records to the government and let agencies track peoples’ movements without a warrant.
The GUARD Act may look like a child-safety bill, but in practice it’s an age-gating mandate that could impose a mass censorship and surveillance regime on nearly every public-facing AI chatbot. Tell Congress to oppose the GUARD Act today. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
If women are underrepresented in STEM, it's at least partly because men like this offer mentoring, then embarrass themselves by assuming their mentees must be into them, then decide the best solution is to cut ties, which sends the signal to other faculty that the mentee must not be good enough.
We’re doing a showcase absolutely! I’m just saying we’re doing it primarily for the participants rather than an obligation to our audience, sorry if there was a miscommunication! I’m pretty excited about what weird stuff we have planned for it.
Thanks for the feedback, all feedback is useful. I don’t think I’ll be able to answer your questions to your satisfaction unfortunately, given the short format of Bluesky posts and possibly our different philosophies/expectations for how things should be done or perceptions of what people want!
I see, well as I said the priority of the program were the people who won the residency/scholarships positions. We will talk about them, but not out of a formal obligation to our audience. I cowrite and approve everything in the video so I don’t believe there is a split in communication.
I think I have that impression because people have pretty overwhelmingly reacted positively to these other projects and your complaint doesn’t seem to be the majority opinion as far as I know. If more people express some of the sentiments you’re sharing here, we’ll discuss changing things up.
Thanks for asking questions earnestly, despite your clear frustration with us. You’ve given me a few things to think about in terms of what we owe to our audience…
Oh also with funding, a few people threw addition funds for the Brainmind project in particular that increased the stipends we offered!
I imagine these answers might not be totally satisfying to you, but if we do another residency we probably will make it more public and break it down for people.
There has been a plan to showcase residents’ work in a fun weird way, but it has admittedly taken a very long time to get to this showcase. I hope that when we do celebrate these artists better that it will help their careers or happiness about their work.
Re 3: we’ve received updates from our residents and scholarship winners that make me believe we’ve had successes. We provided references for some and one resident was about to get a bigger grant opportunity bc of Brainmind. Not sure about what we owe the public, since the support was about them.
Re 2: the residency came from the ad revenue because we try to find excuses to support newer and diverse talent in creative industries. There’s a question there about if video production is solely what patrons want to support, and we’re definitely still thinking about that. Thx for the data point!