Notices by Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al), page 42

Anyone know exactly how many people work on the Firefox team at Mozilla?

@stefan @rolle The only way Mozilla can change course is if they somehow find $500,000,000 a year from some other source. (And no, they don’t need all that. If all they were doing was making a browser, one tenth would be more than enough. Heck, you could likely eke by on 1/100th.)

They didn’t veer off course. They’re “just another Silicon Valley tech company” as their head of public policy told me once (in the context of “I don’t understand why you’re holding us to such a higher standard…”)

@stefan @rolle This.

Sadly, we must fund such an organisation differently. Can’t be a startup. Can’t be part of this toxic system. Or we’ll just get more of the same; perhaps with better marketing.

@stefan @rolle Source: https://www.bemyeyes.com/privacy#accessible-cx

The choice shouldn’t be “either don’t see or have us see what you’re seeing also.” This is surveillance capitalism and people farming through and through. Only worse, because it is directly exploiting disabled people under the guise of helping them.

@stefan @rolle “We collect and store the video streams, photos, audio that pass through our Service as part of the normal functioning of the Services”

“If you do not want Be My Eyes to share your videos with third parties as described in the section above titled Video Streams, you can opt out of video sharing by emailing legal@bemyeyes.com and providing your name, account email address, and opt-out request.”

Disabled people deserve better than this.

Middle East latest: Spain and Ireland urge EU countries to suspend free trade with Israel - after deadly night across conflict

https://news.sky.com/story/middle-east-latest-spain-and-ireland-urge-eu-countries-to-suspend-free-trade-with-israel-dozens-burned-in-israeli-strike-on-gaza-hospital-tent-camp-12978800

#israel #gaza #genocide

@gwen @a11yMel @svenja @EUCommission Please feel free to fork, revise, and/or provide your own suggestion. I feel this would be light years ahead of what we have today and yes, people will try to find loopholes in everything but *intent* matters under the law.

Regardless, this is all academic anyway as there is zero (if not negative) political will to implement anything that would harm the EU’s own VC-funded startups.

@alanferrier The neoliberalism to fascism pipeline, did you say? Well, I never!

“The most moral army in the world.”

#israel #settlerColonialism #colonialism #apartheid #warCrimes #ethnicCleansing #genocide #gaza #palestine #lebanon #middleEast https://spore.social/@ayoub/113304991029030735

@a11yMel @svenja And here’s how you make it illegal:

https://ar.al/2018/11/29/gdmr-this-one-simple-regulation-could-end-surveillance-capitalism-in-the-eu/

In case you feel like it, you could fix this tomorrow, @EUCommission … However, given the crickets after my talk at the EU Parliament, I won’t hold my breath. (https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/)

@HeavenlyPossum @LeelaTorres Germans have made the Holocaust about *them* instead of about the people they exterminated. That’s why they’re so keen to remind everyone that they feel guilty, as if that’s supposed to be impressive.

And again, this is not new. German Jews/Jews living in Germany have been complaining about that. They just don’t matter to this self-serving discourse. https://granta.com/once-again-germany-defines-who-is-a-jew-part-i/

@ayoub
What is happening in Gaza is not good. But anyone who even begins to compare it with the Holocaust and the genocide carried out by the Nazis is not to be taken seriously.
Holocaust denial garnished with German Nazi terms is 🤮

@RadicalAnthro Of course not. Just not the kind of folks @EUCommission would care about unless they were at our borders and thus needed to be kept out.

It’s only enshittification if it comes from the Palo Alto region of Silicon Valley, otherwise it’s just capitalism, working as designed.

(With apologies to @berrakbiz)

#enshittification #capitalism

@avoidthehack @_L1vY_ I’m shocked. What are these people, capitalists or something?

#surveillance #capitalism #peopleFarming

@bibliolater @science @histodon @histodons Excellent. Will they be installing a latrine on top of them?

@ImakeIcecream Why not both? :)

(The sad truth being that certain corporations would not exist – and thus should not exist – if you factored in the cost of what we call “externalities” today.)

@PeterF Interesting idea yet we shouldn’t have to work (especially for faceless corporations) in order to have our basic needs met. At least not in a modern, civilised society. Employment isn’t the goal.

@peterbrown @gerrymcgovern @jgkoomey Hard to see a system that celebrates the acceleration of the destruction of our own habitat as anything but a death cult.

@john ;)