🚨 Google is now asking you to grant camera access and show your hands to prove you're a human?!
--> I am not a robot tests have officially gone to far.
Just when you think the Big Tech can't get more privacy-invading, it does! 🫣
“My fear is that W Social is just another for-profit Big Tech startup that happens to be based in the EU. We don’t need that. We don’t need more European surveillance capitalists and people farmers. We need ethical alternatives working for the common good.”
– Yours truly, in @_elena’s excellent exposé on W Social.
Do read the article to the end, especially noting the bit about the composition of their board of advisors, which includes an ex-Google AI lead and an ex-Paypal Chief [Violate Your] Privacy Officer who now works at Tools for Humanity (Sam Altman’s “Sci-fi dystopia? Hold my beer…” identity farming startup that wants to scan your eyeballs).
#WSocial #EuropeWashing #PrivacyWashing #BigTech #peopleFarming #surveillance #capitalism #EU #ATProto #fediverse
I have this nagging fear that we're really close to a "walled web" coming to full fruition, where people who refuse to verify their identity are just locked out of the web, like with the vaccination pass during the height of the covid pandemic. Trying to browse any site if Cloudflare is down or their captcha service isn't working is probably a good indication of what it's going to be like. Also just trying to access information on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram without an account, or any paywalled news site. I can't really see any other endgame with all of the OS level age verification laws being proposed everywhere and similar discussions going on in the EU and UK, and now the W Social promotion where "verified humans" is the selling point. Protecting the kids from the evils of the internet and you from the bots. Aaaaah, I miss the 90s.
CC: @_elena@mastodon.social
#privacy
#WSocial will open up their beta program today… and I have a SCOOP for you: it appears that they have quietly gone closed-source!
This is ironic, considering that the @EUCommission just unveiled their Tech Sovereignty Package, emphasizing the importance of #OpenSource. And yet they have migrated their main ATproto accounts to W Social - whose code can no longer be inspected!
My full article - with a great analysis by @aral:
Elena Rossini
W Social, Public Institutions and the Theater of European Digital Sovereignty
European public institutions are betting big on digital sovereignty and open source software. And yet they recently moved their Bluesky accounts to W Social, a private, for profit network owned by Swedish entrepreneurs that has quietly gone closed-source.
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More from
Elena Rossini
This was definitely NOT on my bingo card for this year:
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen taking a moment between G7 meetings to promote the launch of the closed-source, for-profit network #WSocial.
I fear this may be a harbinger of things to come: MANDATORY AGE VERIFICATION for social media across Europe. I hope I'm wrong on this.
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Finish the sentence:
Privacy is …..
Happy Sunday everyone! ☀️🫶🏻
@Tutanota #Privacy is like #freebeer… it is better without #SurveillanceCapitalism.
