@atomicpoet They recently switched over to become more of a search engine if I recall.
Apparently, though, you are more well known than I am.
@majorlinux @atomicpoet It's got me. Accurate enough profile, so far as it goes.
It's a bit disturbing that it's apparently trawled everything I've ever posted, but I'm hardly surprised.
@ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet That's what I want it to do when I'm asking it a question right? Do the search for me (guessing it's using Bing because of the more accessible API), and summarize the results. LLMs are relatively good at such a task.
@Schouten_B @majorlinux @atomicpoet Lots of folks didn't give their explicit consent to be indexed by search engines, whether traditional or "AI"-powered. They just don't want that, full stop.
No-one is judging you for not caring. You do you! But there are potential safeguarding and consent issues here that are of concern to some other people.
@ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet If you want content to be private you would put it behind a login or some other kind of access control right? And if a service would then start digging that out and putting it in the public domain that should probably be a crime.
If you're putting up signs in your yard I'm not sure the service recording yard signs and indexing them is doing anything wrong. The service breaking into your home and indexing your letters is.
@ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet I.e. if you're putting a piece of information out in public exposed by a specific, unrestricted, URL, that information itself is now 'public', and indexing that data feels mostly like a convenience thing. Respecting the robots file is courtesy at that point mostly I would say.
I feel the problem is people don't understand the concept of privacy anymore and aren't willing to put any effort into preserving it in the first place.
@Schouten_B
I don't think I would personally subscribe to such a one-sided definition of privacy anymore. Yes, it is important to be aware of and reduce the amount of personal information one puts on the net thus making it 'public'.
But I do not believe that privacy ends there: there must be a social contract and respect for one's privacy limiting the use of what is 'public'.
E.g. even if I don't have curtains, I expect people not to stare and film.
@ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet
@Schouten_B
We have to be able to negotiate this contract when new technologies become available and affect our privacy in novel ways.
"Big data" type technologies such as LLMs can connect data traces and create profiles at scale. While scoring services have been doing this for a long time, the type of services we discuss now open opportunities for targeting and harassment.
We ought to decide what we want "public" to mean and what we consent to.
@ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet
@hanno Thank you.
You managed to say everything I wanted to say, but was too annoyed to articulate.
"Well, if people don't understand how to keep themselves safe, that's their problem" isn't the hot take this person believes it to be.
@ApostateEnglishman
I don't think that was the point @Schouten_B was trying to make.
I would say his argument is simply along the lines of the current contract on which the net is built which is largely technocratical: what is allowed is defined along the lines of what is technologically possible, leaving privacy to the individual actions.
Without tech giants and surveillance capitalism that might work.
With the power imbalance, I'd say we need (data protection) laws. @majorlinux @atomicpoet
That is exactly the point he was trying to make, and I was trying to make as well (albeit in disagreement).
Power dynamics matter. There are lots of people with good reasons to want and need for it not to be *quite* so easy for anyone to target them for harassment or coordinated campaigns of intimidation.
It doesn't matter to me: anyone turns up here and it's FAFO time. But it matters a lot to those who are already systemically disadvantaged.
@Schouten_B @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet
In America, if you are standing near a large window in your home that faces the street, I cannot legally film you, even though your living room is easily seen from the street.
This is because of the legal standard of "reasonable expectation of privacy." At one time I had a PI license and had to learn this stuff.
You have the expectation of privacy because you are in your home.
1/3
@Schouten_B @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet
On the other hand, if you strip naked and do jumping jacks by that same window, you lose the "reasonable expectation of privacy" because you are doing something outrageous guaranteed to draw attention.
A public gym is a public place, so you can clandestinely film people in the course of an investigation.
A church is also a public place, but you cannot film people there.
Again, the standard is "reasonable expectation of privacy."
2/3
@Schouten_B @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet
If someone has a waist-high picket fence around their back yard, I can't film them while conducting an investigation. Even though people can easily see everything going on in the back yard, the fence creates an "expectation of privacy."
The point is, just because someone or something is in public does not mean rules of privacy do not apply. The legal standard I've discussed was from way before the Internet.
3/3
@tofugolem @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet I'm not sure about other jurisdictions, here in the Netherlands you would be allowed to film someone in such a setting, but you would not be allowed to publish the images without permission. Anyway.
I would personally argue that public URLs are a public place. Not a private place. A reasonable expectation can exist on your conversations in signal, login-only forums, etc. Not, I would argue, for what you publish publically on social media.
@Schouten_B @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet
Again, my entire point is that even when something is in public, that doesn't mean anyone can do whatever with it.
@tofugolem @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet No, but I would argue indexing is something that is perfectly reasonable. But that is obviously a matter of opinion .
@Schouten_B @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet
Any amount of training for AI is unacceptable.
@tofugolem @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet In this case training is unlikely to be related. The model executed a search (presumably using Bing is my guess) and analyzed the results. This data is extremely unlikely to have been included in the training set. (if it had been the URL would have also not been referred to)
@Schouten_B @majorlinux @atomicpoet Stop at "If you want..."
It doesn't particularly bother me personally, because I share very little personally-identifying info, and have been salting my online footprint for years. Even those who thought they'd found my real name, were only following the breadcrumb trail I'd very consciously laid for them.
Others may not have realised to what extent "AI" can build up a picture of them, AFK.
@ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet Yeah. Digital literacy is important.
My approach is to make it very obvious who I am online, and do my best to act like a decent human being. And then we'll see where things go .
And keep private matters private of course rather than putting them out in public :-).
@Schouten_B @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet Why? You hate privacy. It's obvious.
@OdinVex @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet I have no idea what you are talking about. Sorry.
@Schouten_B @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet I was obviously talking about your anti-privacy simping for Google via enshitification of Firefox and your attempt to distract away from Firefox's direction towards becoming a tool for Google. Edit: For my replying that you hate privacy it was a response to the direction your Mozilla has taken but yet you comically post "And keep private matters private of course rather than putting them out in public :-)."
@OdinVex I literally have no idea how Firefox has compromised anyone's 'privacy'. Especially when it comes to private matters. (Even if we're going to assume tracking through TPC you would have to divulge private information to a third party that isn't to be trusted and placed the TPC in the first place)
And even Google doesn't generally compromise anyone's privacy at a level close to many other companies, or the majority of people themselves on social media, for that matter.
"Tech Lead with the Mozilla Performance team" You're flat out lying if you claim to be a part of Mozilla while saying you have now idea how Firefox compromises anyone's privacy. It is entirely unreasonable for you to not know. Everything about Firefox and "privacy" has gotten significantly worse since the early 30s versions from "DNS over HTTPS" trying to funnel everything to Cloudflare to "Safe Browsing" handing over info to Google to Pocket, Search Suggestions (keylogging in realtime, joy), allowing canvasing, fingerprinting, Firefox going out of its way to prevent people from controlling our own overrides for certs, suggestions for "email masks", push notifications, Mozilla's location geo...etc etc etc
"Google doesn't generally compromise anyone's privacy at a level close to many other companies" Again attempting to deflect and draw attention away from Google's spying. Doesn't matter if others do it, Google shouldn't either, and neither should Mozilla.
@OdinVex You do realize traditional DNS gives your DNS requests to everyone who can see your packets right? The point of DoH is that only a single party can see your requests and that you know who that party is and have a contractual relationship with them. (ISPs can supply their own TRRs)
Firefox also has the strictest restrictions on things like timer resolution and data exposure to limit fingerprinting.
Not sure that the 'handing info to Google to Pocket' thing is about.
@OdinVex For the other things I'm unsure what attack vectors you are referring to and how they are privacy related. E-mail masks are a suggestion for how you can limit the exposure of your e-mail address to the world. Not sure how that is compromising your privacy. It's also utterly opt-in (I don't even use it myself).
@Schouten_B @OdinVex I think he's mostly mistaken. Firefox is the best privacy browser afaik. Certainly gives more control than either Chrome or Windows.
@Dss @Schouten_B It was better pre v30, when the browser LISTENED to me and did what I asked, not when it defied settings and tried to get in my way. "Non-standard port, errrrrrr!!!!!!!!" "Oh you want http? Too bad, screw your non-https page in an air-gapped system." "Nope, no way we're letting uou the end user do what you want with your browser/PC, obey HSTS or gtfo." No, pre v30's decisions were so much better, *that's* when Firefox was best. It had glory, integrity, vision. The only thing it didn't have was speed, since it was plagued by the fact it's a web page masquerading as a desktop software. That too though was tolerable since it allowed quite a lot of customization to the UI. But then came the big-ass buttons and settings as web-pages and the removal of the status bar (I guess people realized there was more going on behind the scenes of web pages making them more concious of traffic and what was happening...can't have people questioning...)...
@Schouten_B @Dss Not at all if you can't disable HTTPS-only. Ever found it re-enable itself? Ever found it constantly bitch about "OMG you're entering details in a non-HTTPS, big ol' warning you can never disable/dismiss because we removed the about:config ability to do that", "DANGER, DANGER" It needs to STFU, I know what I'm doing and I know what I want. Firefox does not respect its user anymore. You can't even access SSL3 sites (by exception) without toggling a few things in about:config hidden away, such as accessing older IPMI interfaces for example, not that I'd rely on it, it's just that some older interfaces need information grabbed from them before upgrading to newer and the meanwhile sucks because Firefox just won't let you manage without so many work-arounds. I've been forced to carry around a portable proxy and implement a CA just to rewrite requests via localhost to circumvent this bullshit.
@OdinVex @Dss You may not like those warnings but they protect users. In -no way- do they compromise privacy. Even if they might annoy you.
Also the amount of 'I know what I'm doing' users I've seen that disable autoupdates, forget to update and then get screwed is laughably big so no product should ever 'trust its users' that much, noone should ever trust themselves that much.
@Schouten_B @Dss I do not want nor do I need protection from myself. Those were just "aside" issues, not directly relating to privacy sometimes but other times *yes* they are, such as Safe Browsing. Mozilla even admits that sends data to Google. No one should take the rights of others away, that includes Mozilla, and yes, I trust myself over Mozilla and I'll do so every time with further confidence from every update/feature from Mozilla that continues to undermine my own authority over my experience.
@Dss @Schouten_B For the record though I am not at all saying *anything* good about Chromium/Chrome/Edge/Windows. Just because Firefox "is better" (the line gets blurrier every update though) than them doesn't mean it's what we need. LibreWolf is about as close as I can get and even that I have to fork to fix stuff.
@Schouten_B Everyone can see DNS regardless. Whether it's you directing it for whatever deal you get or local cache via VPNs/DNS, it's all seen. It's the fact you make it so difficult to tell Firefox to slag off and just use system DNS without intervention or "helping" with typos, constantly in my way. Custom forks is the only way to get rid of all this. DoH a single party? Blow snow up someone else's ass, requests could easily be going to some TLS offloader and sent plaintext with EDNS made just as obvious and instead it's just a way to redirect ISP's typical spying for cash to who now, maybe whatever deal Mozilla has? Firefox attempting to prevent fingerprinting while trying to report back on ad effectiveness? Bologna.
@OdinVex There is no deal. Cloudflare's ToU are public and legally binding. You're seeing conspiracies that don't exist.
And with DoH noone can see your DNS requests. (It is not completely private though, since if the DoH request times out we fall back to your regular DNS provider)
@Schouten_B No, the fact you use any provider. I didn't ask for it and yet it's on by default, another provider getting data when it wasn't asked for. Off by default is fine, trust system DNS so we can control it. Bull on the DoH "noone can see your DNS requests". CAs installed and firewalls between that intercept and forge any request is very real, I'm forced to do that just to control DNS because of all the ads/malvertisement/JavaShit everywhere. Stripping HTML, CSS, JS, requests blocking, all just to make accessing the internet safer and more private because browsers have been stripping away little by little everything, enshittifying to appease is the only conclusion when "features" and changes just make things worse.
@OdinVex You can just configure Firefox to always use system DNS if you really have such a complicated setup to arrange secure and private DNS resolution that is a very minor effort... Fwiw, Chrome races your system DNS with alts for performance reasons. It's something we're discussing as well although haven't done out of privacy concerns.
@Schouten_B Unfortunately that's not entirely effective. Firefox has an initial delay on startup if you tell it to slag off and just use system DNS. Then there's the IPv4 vs IPv6 issues of preference and further "fallback". We're not talking about Chrome, we're talking about Firefox's issues. I literally don't want any "help" or "assistance" or "we know what's best for you" from Mozilla. Yes, I disable WebGL, WebAssembly, JavaScript usually unless it's GNU, 60+ extensions to bring back functionality removed from Firefox, page/url rewriting and proxying, everything to clean up the experience and make it usable (no ads, as little data tracking as literally possible even going so far as to spoof bs fed in return to sites). A dual-socket server with various proxies, firewalled off DNS and unknown-traffic blocked, I will not be a casualty of privacy/human-rights violation by any means necessary *from my end of configurability of software and choice*. It's inhuman and unjust.
@Schouten_B Additionally having to maintain a fork of a fork just to undo so much of Firefox's behavior to make it usable and respectful just further invigorates my calling out of Firefox's privacy issues and anti-features and such. Having to weed through commits, sometimes rewriting entire routines/removing/re-adding features, it's exhausting, though I'm sure that's an aim. -_- The worst offense I'd say of Mozilla is the fact it's not optional. None of the anti-features or privacy-violators are optional. The option to choose is gone, Mozilla is telling users how to experience/browse while funded by Google and handing off info to Meta. Dictatorial. Championing "privacy" while subverting it...dystopian.
@OdinVex Which of the things you call 'privacy violaters' isn't optional? DoH, Safe Browsing, Search Suggestions, Telemetry, all can be easily turned off.
And what info being handed to Meta are you talking about?
@Schouten_B Telemetry cannot be turned off on Nightly (hard-coded true in about:config too), at least it was when I last tried it. I used to be a Nightly and posted bug reports, then Telemetry came and I dumped it, no more bug reports.
@Schouten_B @OdinVex « The point of DoH is that only a single party can see your requests and that you know who that party is and have a contractual relationship with them. »
What contractual relationship do you imagine I have with Cloudflare, which is where Firefox apparently wants to send my DNS traffic?
@mathew @OdinVex Cloudflare's privacy policy is public in the ToU, which is legally binding.
But regardless, I would encourage your ISP to provide a TRR for you if you trust them more of course. As a matter of fact I would argue if your ISP -isn't- doing that you probably shouldn't trust them in the first place .
@Schouten_B I don't use Cloudflare and all of my DNS is over TLS to someone I do trust and use, thank you very much. It's not just the defaulting of DoH or the fact Firefox disables enterprise root certificates *every launch* on mobile to prevent users from using their own CAs to encrypt traffic/host their own DoH/CAs to rewrite pages via their own proxies, it's the sheer amount of bull to control our own browser against anti-feature/anti-user-control behavior Mozilla's been morphing Firefox into, a knock-off clone of Chrome.
@Schouten_B @majorlinux @atomicpoet I'm sick of emerging from the darkness to Explain Shit To People.
No-one Wants "AI". That's all these folks are trying to tell you, but you can't hear it, because your salary depends on not understanding.
@ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet I don't like the term AI. But I quite enjoy transformer models/LLM for a bunch of different applications.
I don't work on/with any "AI" features so my salary isn't really related to "AI" succeeding or failing.
Not sure what that had to do with this thread though .
@ApostateEnglishman @Schouten_B @majorlinux @atomicpoet
I judge them for not caring, it's exactly those kinds of people who just "shrugg" are what has made the surveillance states we live in possible (surveillance being an integral component to the rise of fascism). I judge them pretty harshly.
@contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet I would say it's more the very concept of social media itself that makes that possible. A channel through which anyone can spread any lie they want to a bunch of idiots. Who can meanwhile lock themselves into bubbles surviving on falsehood after falsehood.
This is a bad idea. Look at a random day of things trending on Mastodon and how much of it is factually wrong.
That's probably a bigger risk than privacy (but people should do better)
@Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet Your attempt to downplay the risk to privacy you pose and distract people by trying to point a finger and blame something else is pathetic. Stick a fork in it, Firefox is done. I wonder how much money you've made from Google to tank Firefox. Collaborator.
@OdinVex @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet Write your own system then? And stop attacking people doing good in the world.
@Dss @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @atomicpoet Doing good? Fake privacy and simping for Google isn't "doing good".
@OdinVex @Dss @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux Dude, you’re on universeodon – a server that got lots of blowback on the Fediverse because the admin met with Meta to discuss Fediverse integration with Threads.
So if you’re going to be all purist about this, perhaps use a different server.
Be that as it may, I’m politely asking you to be kind to others.
@atomicpoet @Dss @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux Source on the fediversing thing? Just curious if true, completely unaware of that. If they do that I'd bail anyway.
I am being polite though. The only one you might could think I'm not polite to is the one collaborator, the Moz team claiming to be all privacy-oriented when their browser is becoming exactly not. I'm simply calling that out. If that's not polite then it appears to me Universodon is no different than Xitter/Threads, "cool with bull."
@atomicpoet @Dss @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux I'm not aware of who you are though. I'm not dissing, I just literally don't know who you are. I don't even know who runs this instance, I don't usually bother to find out, I just look for a place that usually looks fitting without any disinformation, bigotry, etc.
As for "purity tests"...what are you talking about? Mozilla started out a great organization making a great browser. Around v30 they started making changes that upset a lot of people, now it's started making it repeatedly easier to gleam more info about users using the browser, specifically going out of its way to implement APIs to appease Meta...that's not privacy-oriented. So when one guy claims to be a moz teamer and starts spreading disinformation about how Moz cares about privacy...it's flat out disinformation. Called it out. Not him, the claim.
@atomicpoet @Dss @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux I'm still baffled by the whole "purity test" phrasing. I've not made any racist or sexist remarks of any kind, nothing about religion, nothing, just literally calling out disinformation (Mozilla claiming to care about privacy when they continue to introduce more and more anti-privacy features, from Pockets to search suggestions to DoH to APIs implemented to literally sell-out how well an advertisement performed...ugh.) So yeah, I don't understand this "purity test" thing you're talking about. Already disgressed from the conversations with those two anyway about Firefox. They're fanatic about protecting the state of Firefox despite everyone being able to see Firefox for what it is now so I don't think they'll listen to me anyway.
@atomicpoet @Dss @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux As for your claim of being personally affected, that's horrific, sorry that happened to you, it shouldn't have.
@atomicpoet @Dss @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @OdinVex I don't remember anything about Ryan Wild meeting with Meta. Even if he did, he's now participating in fediblock and limiting Threads.
https://universeodon.com/@wild1145@mastodonapp.uk/113788958867855420
@mathew @atomicpoet @Dss @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux If true I feel it's encouraging.
@atomicpoet @Dss @Schouten_B @contrasocial @ApostateEnglishman @majorlinux @OdinVex Ah, found it, Byron Miller.
Though it sounds like he'd also be defederating Threads at this point:
https://medium.com/@sn2006gy/universeodon-com-planning-for-the-future-2dd66a7d66ef