alyaza

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Developing nations are challenging Big Tech’s decades-long hold on global data by demanding that their citizens’ information be stored locally. The move is driven by the realization that countries have been giving away their most valuable resource for tech giants to build a trillion-dollar market capitalization.

In April, Nigeria asked Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to set concrete deadlines for opening data centers in the country. Nigeria has been making this demand for about four years, but the companies have so far failed to fulfill their promises. Now, Nigeria has set up a working group with the companies to ensure that data is stored within its shores.

“We told them no more waivers — that we need a road map for when they are coming to Nigeria,” Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, director-general of Nigeria’s technology regulator, the National Information Technology Development Agency, told Rest of World.

Other developing countries, including India, South Africa, and Vietnam, have also implemented similar rules demanding that companies store data locally. India’s central bank requires payment companies to host financial data within the country, while Vietnam mandates that foreign telecommunications, e-commerce, and online payments providers establish local offices and keep user data within its shores for at least 24 months.

 

A friend messaged me the other day. I saw it. I didn’t reply. A week later, I finally responded with the classic: Sorry for the late reply, just got to this.

She called me out. You didn’t just get to this, she said. I saw the double ticks.

Damn. She was right. I’d opened it. I’d registered it. But I’d also shelved it. It needed a proper reply, and at that moment, I wasn’t equipped.

Maybe it got lost between revisiting pictures from 2016 and the reminder I set to cancel my Nibble app 7-day trial on day 6. Maybe I got a call? Perhaps I’d wanted to sink back into that Substack article about reclaiming attention, ironically while still on social media. Maybe I was working one of the four jobs I need to survive under capitalism’s boot heel. Maybe I was doing nothing?

Does free time now equal availability?

I get a ping from the family group chat, which doubles as an IT helpdesk for my mum. My best friend just FaceTimed me about a White Lotus episode, and another left a voice note crying about a possible diagnosis. All this, lodged between videos of cats and genocide.

The boundaries between reception and response have collapsed.

 

Every design choice that social media platforms make nudges users toward certain actions, values, and emotional states.

It is a design choice to offer a news feed that combines verified news sources with conspiracy blogs — interspersed with photos of a family picnic — with no distinction between these very different types of information. It is a design choice to use algorithms that find the most emotional or outrageous content to show users, hoping it keeps them online. And it is a design choice to send bright red notifications, keeping people in a state of expectation for the next photo or juicy piece of gossip.

Platform design is a silent pilot steering human behavior.

Social media platforms are bringing massive changes to how people get their news and how they communicate and behave. For example, the “endless scroll” is a design feature that aims to keep users scrolling and never reaching the bottom of a page where they might decide to pause.

I’m a political scientist who researches aspects of technology that support democracy and social cohesion, and I’ve observed how the design of social media platforms affects them.

Democracy is in crisis globally, and technology is playing a role. Most large platforms optimize their designs for profit, not community or democracy. Increasingly, Big Tech is siding with autocrats, and the platforms’ designs help keep society under control.

There are alternatives, however. Some companies design online platforms to defend democratic values.

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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

In my free time, I help run a small Mastodon server for roughly six hundred queer leatherfolk. When a new member signs up, we require them to write a short application—just a sentence or two. There’s a small text box in the signup form which says:

Please tell us a bit about yourself and your connection to queer leather/kink/BDSM. What kind of play or gear gets you going?

This serves a few purposes. First, it maintains community focus. Before this question, we were flooded with signups from straight, vanilla people who wandered in to the bar (so to speak), and that made things a little awkward. Second, the application establishes a baseline for people willing and able to read text. This helps in getting people to follow server policy and talk to moderators when needed. Finally, it is remarkably effective at keeping out spammers. In almost six years of operation, we’ve had only a handful of spam accounts.

I was talking about this with Erin Kissane last year, as she and Darius Kazemi conducted research for their report on Fediverse governance. We shared a fear that Large Language Models (LLMs) would lower the cost of sophisticated, automated spam and harassment campaigns against small servers like ours in ways we simply couldn’t defend against.

 

An estimated 68% of internet activity starts on search engines and about 90% of searches happen on Google. If the internet is a garden, Google is the Sun that lets the flowers grow.

This arrangement held strong for decades, but a seemingly minor change has some convinced that the system is crumbling. You'll soon see a new AI tool on Google Search. You may find it very useful. But if critics' predictions come true, it will also have seismic consequences for the internet. They paint a picture where quality information could grow scarcer online and large numbers of people might lose their jobs. Optimists say instead this could improve the web's business model and expand opportunities to find great content. But, for better or worse, your digital experiences may never be the same again.

On 20 May 2025, Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai walked on stage at the company's annual developer conference. It's been a year since the launch of AI Overviews, the AI-generated responses you've probably seen at the top of Google Search results. Now, Pichai said, Google is going further. "For those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience, we are introducing an all-new AI Mode," he said. "It's a total reimagining of Search."

You might be sceptical after years of AI hype, but this, for once, is the real deal.

People use Google Search five trillion times a year – it defines the shape of the internet. AI Mode is a radical departure. Unlike AI Overviews, AI Mode replaces traditional search results altogether. Instead, a chatbot effectively creates a miniature article to answer your question. As you read this, AI Mode is rolling out to users in the US, appearing as a button on the search engine and the company's app. It's optional for now, but Google's head of Search, Liz Reid, said it plainly when launching the tool: "This is the future of Google Search."

 

This funding will expand Lambda Legal’s capacity, helping the organization fight against immediate threats to LGBTQ+ people in the courts, win new rights and protections, and prepare a defense for the future. By the end of 2026, the organization will build up its legal team by 42%, growing from 36 to 51 members, effectively expanding the organization’s case docket capacity by 86%.


Lambda Legal is stretching its dollars to the maximum to meet the moment, and continued support will go toward critical strategic and expanded legal action. Already, the organization is in court fighting back, litigating for the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ communities all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.

This includes:

  • Arguing in front of the Supreme Court to force an end to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including the United States v. Skrmetti case.
  • Litigating six separate cases against the current Trump administration for its anti-LGBTQ+ policies and executive orders targeting transgender rights and inclusion in the military, access to HIV medication and gender-affirming care, and DEI.
  • Maintaining an impressive 86% success rate against the last Trump administration.

Of the $285 million raised by Lambda as part of the Unstoppable Future campaign, 30 percent — roughly $80 million — is available as current-use cash to support strategic growth. The remaining 70 percent are long-term legacy commitments from donors that will help ensure the organization’s continued growth and protect the future rights of the LGBTQ+ community

 

archive.is link

A highly significant Supreme Court decision is approaching, and the lives of trans teens and their families hang in the balance. United States vs Skrmetti will decide, once and for all, whether state bans on gender-affirming treatments are constitutional. If the court sides with Tennessee, its ban and other similar laws will remain in place. Nationally, access to gender affirming care has also been threatened by a presidential executive order and the Republican-dominated congress, but these efforts thus far have fallen short of a full ban.

At stake in Skrmetti, advocates say, is safety and stability for trans youth and their families. If the conservative-leaning court upholds state care bans, loving families fear the prospect that their children could be removed by state child protective services. (Due to the seriousness of these potential legal threats, this piece uses pseudonyms for trans youth and their families in states with bans.)

Why have some families decided to risk everything for these treatments? The answer, families say, is as simple as love. Those Teen Vogue spoke to describe how decisions to seek gender-affirming treatments sprang from the trust trans youth placed in their parents, and parents’ drive to do what’s best for the health of their children.

 

Across the U.S., a dangerous movement is brewing, one that seeks to silence trans folks and push them into the shadows. One of its leaders is the Alliance Defending Freedom.

On May 20, the right-wing organization ADF sued Minnesota over its advocacy for trans rights. ADF argues that allowing trans girls and women in women’s sports discriminates against cis girls and women. ADF, a Project 2025 adviser, has been at the helm of several anti-trans initiatives, its lawyers authoring model bathroom bills that would force trans people into the bathrooms of their assigned sex at birth. In 2025, lawmakers have already passed more than 100 anti-trans bills across the U.S., including 13 bathroom bills.

But where is ADF getting money for its anti-trans advocacy? These days, it's almost impossible to tell due to regulations that allow nonprofits to hide their donors, but one verifiable source is the fossil fuel industry. Between 2013 and 2022, Shell USA Company Foundation donated $58,002 to ADF, per an investigation by the Guardian. Phil Anschutz, a billionaire who built his wealth on fossil fuels and now owns Anschutz Entertainment Group, Inc., which puts on live entertainment events like Coachella, also donated $110,000 to ADF between 2011 and 2013.

ADF isn’t the only anti-trans organization with financial ties to the fossil fuel sector. An independent analysis of 45 right-wing groups advocating against trans rights found that 80% have received donations from fossil fuel companies or billionaires. The analysis, conducted by two independent researchers in 2023 and not peer-reviewed, was shared exclusively with Atmos and HEATED. Through a qualitative search, the researchers identified 45 groups advancing anti-trans lobbying, events, and publications and checked reports about their donor disclosures for fossil fuel funding.

 

We’ve invited a host of LGBTQIA+ talent to reflect on how they came into their identity, reflecting on all the joy, confusion and breakthroughs which led them to a place of self-love and radical acceptance.

For three years, Garnier has proudly partnered with Just Like Us, a UK charity which works to support schools and empower younger people within the LGTBQIA+ community nationwide.

Below, Bel Priestley, Vanity Milan, Mitchell Halliday, Jason Kwan, Way of Yaw and Charley Marlowe share heartfelt pieces of advice to their younger selves.

 

Hack Latino is an artificial intelligence-powered app for Latinos in the U.S., made by the Georgia-based entrepreneur Adrian Lozano Jr. It offers restaurant suggestions and consular information to more than 30,000 users, along with a key feature to keep them safe: a map of ICE sightings, launched in April.

It is one of a slew of mobile platforms created by nonprofit organizations, independent developers, and foreign governments, which have cropped up amid a surge in immigration raids in the U.S. The Donald Trump administration has vowed to enact mass deportations from the U.S., home to some 13.7 million undocumented individuals. The digital tools provide services such as “Know Your Rights” guides, legal information, and emergency resources to help the community prepare for potential encounters with immigration authorities.

Apps such as Hack Latino or digital tools like Stop ICE Alerts function much like the community patrols of the 1990s, when neighbors and activists in neighborhoods with a large Hispanic presence would warn others about the arrival of authorities — except these apps have the added benefit of real-time technology, said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that supports migrants and refugees.

 

Google wasn't around for the advent of the World Wide Web, but it successfully remade the web on its own terms. Today, any website that wants to be findable has to play by Google's rules, and after years of search dominance, the company has lost a major antitrust case that could reshape both it and the web.

The closing arguments in the case just wrapped up last week, and Google could be facing serious consequences when the ruling comes down in August. Losing Chrome would certainly change things for Google, but the Department of Justice is pursuing other remedies that could have even more lasting impacts. During his testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai seemed genuinely alarmed at the prospect of being forced to license Google's search index and algorithm, the so-called data remedies in the case. He claimed this would be no better than a spinoff of Google Search. The company's statements have sometimes derisively referred to this process as "white labeling" Google Search.

But does a white label Google Search sound so bad? Google has built an unrivaled index of the web, but the way it shows results has become increasingly frustrating. A handful of smaller players in search have tried to offer alternatives to Google's search tools. They all have different approaches to retrieving information for you, but they agree that spinning off Google Search could change the web again. Whether or not those changes are positive depends on who you ask.

 

The phrase “Be Gay, Do Crime” is such a current mood that there are actually two books with that title coming out this year. One of these, published by PM Press, is Be Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Queer Resistance and Rebellion. It offers a historical and sociological overview of queer rebellion and uprising, from the life and work of anarchist revolutionary Emma Goldman to Stonewall to the first Toronto Trans March in 2009, and beyond. Meanwhile, Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley’s anthology, Be Gay, Do Crime: Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos, is a collection of fiction rather than a historical summing up, and is more concerned with individual acts of gay transgression than with political disobedience and resistance.

Though political disobedience is not the focus of most of these stories of queer criminality, the material conditions that lead to political dissent are present across many of these tales. The characters in these pieces are often living in subpar housing situations, feeling stressed and anxious about crumbling buildings and neglectful landlords, fighting with their roommates and partners in cramped quarters, and weathering the constraints of lockdowns and economic crises. They work dead-end jobs and despair at saving up enough money to access gender-affirming surgeries or start families or make down payments on houses. They bear the rejection of queerphobic and transphobic families and covet the seemingly easy lives of richer, more normative people than themselves. They grit their teeth through racism, institutional and interpersonal, and long for “fuck you money”—a term used in ekwuyasi’s story of the same name to describe an amount of funds impressive enough that it will shut up the racists and haters around you.

The stories in Be Gay, Do Crime bring us from London to Los Angeles; Vancouver to Washington, D.C.; Miami to the Arizona desert. The crimes chronicled in these pages include the mild (weed-dealing, pickpocketing, shoplifting, voyeurism), the more serious (blackmail, stealing a dog, stealing a baby, bank robbery, political assassination) and the zany (impersonating a child in order to win children’s drawing contests, pelting MAGA protestors with rotten beer hops, stealing a billionaire’s experimental anti-dysphoria drug). In Blackburn’s masterful piece of microfiction, “Black Jesus,” the main character’s transgression is spiritual rather than material. A young girl uses Wite-Out to erase the ten commandments in her grandmother’s Bible in order to write in her own, which are more relevant to her life, such as “Thou shalt not drip milk on the carpet.”

The crimes featured in these stories are often born of frustration or resentment, and don’t, with some exceptions, actively harm other people. We aren’t in the realms of Dennis Cooper or Gary Indiana here—there are no snuff films featuring underage characters (real or imagined) or gay serial killers within these pages, or even much that could be deemed smutty. However, many of the characters in Be Gay, Do Crime do get horny when they transgress, with crime becoming an erotic act in and of itself.[...]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

better fit for the World News or Environmental sections, nothing more

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

When I see a comm called ‘Socialism’ I wouldn’t expext an analysis on the Haji in Saudi Arabia.

i mean, no offense but: virtually all contemporary subjects are shaped by class conflict or capitalist hegemony and it seems like it'd be a much better use of time for socialists to explicitly and plainly make those connections, than endlessly theorypost or relitigate the anarchist/communist or social democrat/socialist or Trotskyist/ML splits

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)

The solution here is to just provide enough cooling methods I would say. I feel putting this in a wider ‘capitalist and climate’ frame is a bit overdone.

in what way? Saudi Arabia is already so hot (and at times humid) that going outside at all is potentially lethal--in no small part because it is a capitalist petrostate whose existence is predicated on cheap oil warming the planet--which also renders much of the Hajj literally impossible to do in any safe manner since it must be done outside. the climactic and capitalistic ties are fairly obvious here to me.

also, it's worth noting, the article explicitly notes one problem (of several) with your proposed solution:

Technological adaptations such as air-conditioning do work. But they are not available to all. Nor are they fail-safe. During a heat wave, many of us turn on the aircon at the same time, using lots of power and raising the chance of blackouts. Blackouts during heat waves can have deadly consequences.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Kind of annoying to have to click the damned link if the text can just be in the body of the post. What, do you work for PC gamer?

no offense but why are you on a link aggregator (and a clone of Reddit in particular) if you're averse to clicking links? that's literally the point of this form of social media: emphasis on sharing interesting links from other places, with the expectation that you'll follow them.

in any case we strongly discourage the practice of copying the entire article because it's technically copyright infringement, we generally expect people to actually engage with what's posted instead of drive-by commenting, and it's just generally bad form to rob writers of attention and click-throughs for their work.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

no offense but: i can't believe that a statist society, which gives the state a monopoly on violence, gets to decide who lives or dies

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

you've been having a minor meltdown throughout this thread to anybody who asks you basic follow-up questions. take three days off and stop it

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

we have a big list of them on our resource page; i haven't gone through and pruned recently, but there are a lot of orgs worthy of the time and money on the list

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Now, we have actual data about the impact of the law. The Shift Project took a comprehensive look at the impact that the new law had on California's fast food industry between April 2024, when the law went into effect, and June 2024. The Shift Project specializes in surveying hourly workers working for large firms. As a result, it has "large samples of covered fast food workers in California as well as comparison workers in other states and in similar industries; and of having detailed measurement of wages, hours, staffing, and other channels of adjustment."

Despite the dire warnings from the restaurant industry and some media reports, the Shift Project's study did "not find evidence that employers turned to understaffing or reduced scheduled work hours to offset the increased labor costs." Instead, "weekly work hours stayed about the same for California fast food workers, and levels of understaffing appeared to ease." Further, there was "no evidence that wage increases were accompanied by a reduction in fringe benefits… such as health or dental insurance, paid sick time, or retirement benefits."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Also, this post says we can discuss it, but you’re already deleting comments you don’t like!

i'm removing your comments because you don't know what you're talking about--and your reply here, which is similarly nonsensical, does not make me less likely to continue doing this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

it would be unfortunate if this were true, but luckily the moratorium started four days after the election result happened so you're just making up a guy to get mad about.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

The Yurok Tribe has released 18 condors into the wild so far, over four rounds of releases. They're doing great, says Williams. "It's been really exciting to watch the flock expand and change in their dynamics." The first couple of cohorts stayed close to home, only exploring within a 30-mile (48km) radius. Now the birds wander as far as 95 miles (152km) away, she adds.

"It's awesome to see these young birds who've literally never flown in their life because they were reared in facilities with limited flight space, starting to learn the ropes and how to use the landscape to their advantage," says Williams.


The tribe has a release and management facility to monitor the birds for the foreseeable future – many challenges remain before they become a fully self-sustaining population. The birds are brought back into the facility twice a year for check-ups to ensure they are doing well, and to check the transmitters they're fitted with.


West believes the key to a true, sustainable condor recovery is education. "The only way to combat a lack of information is to reach out to these communities and empower them with that information," he says. "If [the public] all make the transition to non-lead ammunition, our intensive management efforts could virtually stop overnight."

Remedying this single issue should allow condors to "again have a meaningful place in modern ecosystems", says West.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

By necessity, Maryam’s reporting process is far from typical—she takes great pains to keep the authorities from knowing who she is, and has to work with a male family member to secure interviews. Sometimes, the process of scheduling an in-person meeting can resemble a game of telephone: she asks her brother to call a male relative of the potential subject to make the arrangements. When she wants to meet with a source in person, she must bring along a man to chaperone. She’ll also ask around to assess if the person she’s supposed to meet can be trusted to keep her identity a secret. “It’s really hard for me,” she said.

Once the piece is ready to be published, Maryam removes all traces of her reporting from her devices, including deleting every email and call log, except for contacts with her immediate family. “If the Taliban checks my phone [and finds something], it will not be good for me. So, I delete everything,” she said. She only publishes the article after she has confirmed again that her subjects are comfortable with everything they’re quoted as saying. “It’s my job to keep her safe,” she said.

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