kotamagic

[kotamagic]

Well would you look at that

I've been commenting a PSA I made telling people to boycott Youtube on the 13th and they just disabled my ability to comment. They really are going all in on censorship, aren't they?

Comment PSA that got me banned under the cut btw. If you have a YouTube account and want to spread it around, that would be awesome.

ATTENTION TO ANYONE SCROLLING THIS COMMENT SECTION: Youtube is rolling out a new policy where they will use AI to determine whether you are underage or not and if they determine that you are under 18, you will be forced to submit your ID, your credit card, or other sensitive info in order to prove that you are an adult. Should you comply with this and should there be an information leak, your personal information will be available for anyone to exploit.

They claim that this policy is to protect children, but it is not. This is a censorship and surveillance policy that is being rolled out across the globe by the US, The UK, Australia, and even Canada. This policy impedes your freedom of speech and will erase internet anonymity.

Here is what you can do to combat this:

Call your representatives in government and tell them not to support OSA, KOSA, Bill-S-209, or whatever this censorship bill is called in your country and send them letters and emails explaining why this will backfire.

Blackout Boycott Youtube on the 13th to preferably until they roll back their age verification policies. If you have someone you want to watch during that time, then download all of your favorite videos to watch before the 13th(To do this type YouTube to mp4 in the search bar and use whichever result works the best for you). Do not use Youtube until they roll back their policies.

If any website such as Youtube, Spotify, Reddit, Discord, Facebook, TicTok, ECT. Asks for your ID, Credit card, or other personal information in order to use it, do not provide it. They are trying to compile and sell your personal information. Do not let them.

You are not a bad person if you don't do any of the things mentioned above, but I urge you to rise up and fight against internet Censorship, whoever you are behind the screen. This will impact everyone who uses the internet and it's time to stand against it. This policy will not stand if we don't let it, so let's fight against it!

(PS: Please Copy and paste this message and spread it around for awareness)

[kotamagic]

Many people like to (correctly) point out the hypocrisy of religious extremists claiming to "protect the children" by restricting their access to information. As has been proven time and again, knowledge protects children from harm, helps them to identify abuse, and teaches them ways to protect themselves proactively. An "innocent, pure" child is a euphemism for a child that is ignorant, kept in the dark about things that could harm them. No amount of distress brought on by learning disturbing information could endanger a child the way that information control can.

The issue with this criticism is that it misunderstands what conservatives mean by "protecting" children. They don't think of children as independent beings who deserve dignity and respect. They think of them as future investments, cultural tokens, and blank slates to pour their dogma into. A church wants to "protect" children from information that might make them leave the faith, even if that information could improve the child's life. A conservative parent wants to "protect" children from information about abuse, religious coercion, bodily autonomy... anything that could loosen the parent's power and control over the child. What these groups are really "protecting" is their investment. They see children as property that they are entitled to groom and manipulate to whatever purposes they see fit, and they attack anyone and anything that suggests otherwise.

[kotamagic]

This dude is behind the recent push to make it more and more difficult to propose games that deal with difficult subject matters and NSFW themes to the public.

He pressured Steam and GAVE THE ORDERS to Visa, and Mastercard.

Try and get his ass in whichever way you can. Talk about him. Download this vid, safekeep it, it could be taken down at any moment.

His name is Russ Vought. He wants to dismantle Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This would make it legal to pressure and threaten online communities for what their users post. Censorship of games regarding NSFW, horror and queer content follows.

Beware.

[kotamagic]

So in addition to KOSA making a return (CALL YOUR CONGRESS PERSON AND TELL THEM TO VOTE AGAINST IT BTW!!!) the Senate has just introduced TWO internet censorship bills!

The Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors Act (Block BEARD Act)

And the equally ridiculous and ineffective Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act

Both of these acts seek to force Internet Service Providers to block access to foreign piracy websites. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has said this is ridiculous and ineffective, that site-blocking bills only serve to censor the internet and make it more unsafe for everyone. AND THE'YRE RIGHT!!!

Piracy has existed until the dawn of time. And pirates will find ways around bills like these with no issue. But these bills are still dangerous and essentially pave the way for your ISP to block whatever our government thinks is "Objectionable". These DINOSAURS who dont understand the internet have no BUSINESS creating legislation around it. This is a bald faced attempt to block the internet for users for corporate gain. Wanna know how I know that?

The people that have endorsed the bill

Are all

People

Who

Would benefit from a bill like this. CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES!! TELL THEM YOU DO NOT SUPPORT EITHER OF THESE BILLS! OR KOSA WHILE YOURE AT IT! TELL THEM YOU OPPOSE INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN ALL FORMS!

We will not sit idly by while these GHOULS try and block and censor a free Internet!

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES! - Here's a link to find and call your representatives!

[kotamagic]

Inaturalist staff and forum moderators really, really can't help themselves from censoring people and completely contradicting each other on the forums... thankfully, more and more people are noticing....

[kotamagic]

Phallus Rugulosus aka Wrinkly Stinkhorn

[kotamagic]

Have an Inaturalist account and a inaturalist forum account?

Please click the above link and heart MeltedMottle's comment, and voice your support for Inaturalist to abandon the partnership with Google's generative AI program!

Within minutes of this thread being posted, the OP's comment has been hidden, and the thread has been de-listed, which means you can only find this if you have the direct link, posted above!

The OP's original comment is as follows, copied before it vanished:

I took a deep dive into the iNaturalist threads on gen ai and I have some thoughts. I get why many people are so alarmed: this is screaming red flag for this company and the associated naturalist community. Google is one of the most ecologically destructive companies on the planet. What they are trying to do here is classic greenwashing. This is no different than iNaturalist partnering with BP or Wikipedia partnering with Google. It defeats the purpose of the entire enterprise, by undermining all credibility as a public-service-driven organization. It was built by volunteers, not computer scientists, and they seem to be forgetting that. Big Tech’s business model is to trap the market by offering unsustainable discounts or ‘free money’. Who better to greenwash their destructive tech than an ecological research community. Importantly, other critics bring up the reputation hit that this should result in. Partnering with Google should be a death blow to the integrity of this mission. The way they claim to operate, their cultural mantra, is as a public good. This community was created by volunteers with a commitment to conservation. You don’t get to have it both ways: either you are a tech company with no morals or a scientific-conservation resource, with morals. Based on reading other critiques and iNaturalist’s responses (or lack thereof) to them, I think the area where they really show their weakness and lack of forethought is the supposed numbers they cite on energy usage. They clearly are hiding something here. First, those energy numbers are straight propaganda from Google’s PR group. Accurate numbers don’t exist because Google is intentionally lying about their energy use. More importantly though, is that its not about the energy use of a single LLM retrieval: you are buying into the training model, that was built by crawling the entire internet from stolen data, with exponential energy expenditures. These custom models do not exist in a silo. That means that you are supporting the entire ecologically destructive nonsense-generator. The lack of honesty from iNaturalist in their forum responses is extremely alarming. It reads like they have already cashed a check from Google and that they are just putting on a performative show of openness. I’m someone who teaches plant identification for a living and at this point I would not recommend someone join a community that so blatantly disregards the principles of environmentalism. I hope they start taking these criticisms from many of their community members more seriously.

The Inaturalist staff are once again engaging in censorship and shutting down any conversations that aren't in full-throated support for greenwashing Google's enviornmental destruction, so please let your voice be heard if you still have an inaturalist account and an inaturalist forum account!

If nothing else, please try to leave a heart on the hidden comment :)

[kotamagic]

USA, UK, AUS

America, the UK and Australia are all attempting to implement draconian censorship laws around the internet at the same time. If you did not know of this before now i can hardly blame you. All 3 have been drowned out in other news, quietly slipping past.

Details are irrelevant for the purposes of this blog, i exist to funnel you, the reader to find others who can better help you find the resources and information you need.

But for the brief explanation:

The USA, UK and Australia are attempting to implement some variation of a social media impacting legislation all at once, each of them is intentionally written vaguely, and is ‘justified’ through the all too familiar excuse of child protection.

Make no mistake, world governments do not care about children.

This is about mass surveillance, it is always about mass surveillance.

You will be asked to hand over your government ID. You will be asked to scan your face.

There’s still time to stop the key from turning, however. But action must be taken quickly by a large amount of informed individuals.

Contact your local representatives. Put pressure on those in power, look for organised protests near you, get digital safeguards like VPNs, adblockers and the like.

And read everything you need to to properly understand what is happening right now.

Here’s someone who knows far more than i.

I reccomend their posts, as they are far more informative than mine. Check tags for others to learn from

@its-spelt-censorship

I am no one to them, nor will i ever be. Nor should you be

Remain anonymous, do not capitulate

[kotamagic]

I Feel Like These are all Connected

They are outright censoring parts of the constitution in service of Fascist Autocracy.

Republicans prefer to honor traitors instead of people who tried to make the country or the world better, so, of course.

[kotamagic]

What the actual indescribable fuck....

good lord wtf

[kotamagic]

[kotamagic]

Repost from @analystnews_

Universities are said to be bastions of free speech, but not when it comes to Palestine.

#university #freespeech #palestine #propalestine #americanuniversity #israel #genocide #studentlife

[kotamagic]

Okay so bad news for everyone on YouTube right now

Starting the 13th, we will have an AI determine if we are children or not and if you are a child, than you are forced to send your ID, send a selfie or a credit card

This has the obvious cons of having your privacy being revoked from you and and in case there is a security breach, major identity thefts.

So what do we do in this scenario?

Well right now I have real idea as this is relativity new to me, but I do have two plans

Plan 1. Bug the shit out of them, send letters and send emails about how much of bad idea this is.

Include why the AI will mess up and target adults who watch cartoons, include privacy issues, censorship issues, anything you can think of that relates to this. I want you guys to bug the hell out of YouTube until they reverse this idea

Here their address for letters

Send a mass amount of letters on the 5th of August and than another mass amount on the 8th

Plan 2. Blackout.

Since the thing is coming out on the 13th.

The plan will be to completely avoid YouTube at all cost for that day (and beyond), no watching, no sharing, no uploading, no nothing.

Download videos before things go down, watch Netflix. Whatever you do, don’t touch YouTube.

That’s all I can say right now, I also want you guys to let YouTubers know of this situation cause if it’s important for everyone on the website to talk about this immediately

Spread this stuff around, let people know of YouTube’s upcoming policy and how it’ll hurt everyone

Edit: I have taken into consideration and I am going to agree that the blackout should be until the decision is reversed, this is so we are not out at risk as users and so YouTube doesn’t just ignore the original black out

I might have a more detailed plan posted later today, but it depends on everything goes

Another edit: just to remind yall to send in letters and emails about this to google to force their hands to reverse this decision

There is also the law itself, though I can’t speak much on it other than finding lawing bodies that can force YouTube to reverse this decision. If anyone can find a place to file or call for this, that will be greatly appreciated! (I heard maybe the FTC and or the California Consumer privacy right can be considered, but that needs more research)

BIGGER UPDATE: we have a new plan in motion, here is the updated plan for you all to see

and also here's a petition to stop the law that would help support this into becoming a thing

and also a tumblr post about it and how you can help further prevent this from being allowed in office

Don’t forget to send this fellow people outside of tumblr

YouTubers, Twitter users, send it through out and make sure you are heard

[kotamagic]

Note to everyone planning on using VPN’s to avoid the ID policy

They have started going after VPN’s

Source:

[kotamagic]

Okay, so, here's some info of the info I've put together for those interested: one of the big groups moving propaganda against porn and sex right now is Collective Shout. They're Australian based, largely conservative (white) ladies.

Their website is run on a charity/non-profit thing and you can report them (It might only work if you're in Australia, I'm not sure), for violating the rules of a charity/non-profit here! You just need their ABN, which is 30162159097!

(This is a guide here!) (You can also report their website directly to the charity website they used here and request the charity website make a statement against them or take them out or ask why they support them! They won't take them down but making any kind of response would be valuable!)

(Their group is also on youtube, tiktok, twitter and more, if you're interested in reporting them there too.)

This is also a list of their Team, their board members and their ambassadors, all largely Australian. If there's anyone specific you want to be reporting, contacting, etc, it's the ambassadors.

In particular, people like Susan McLean (website here) and Andrew Lines (website here) explicitly because they have companies, books, associates and strong online presences outside of Collective Shout and you want to make it clear associating with and giving support to this group will have significant backlash.

You want to make them back out or at least make their associates back out. You want to create continuous noise. Not just for a couple days but sustainable noise that builds on itself.

For example, if you push them into making a statement (whether that statement supports Collective Shout or not), it gives you press. You want this to stay in the news cycle and press is good.

Frankly, contact the press! Write your local news, especially if you're in Australia! Tell them what this group is doing.

The longer it's in the news cycle, the more companies like mastercard lose. So make your noise strategic.