09 Nov 2025 Search

Ever notice how every product and service is getting a shitty regular version and a decent version for insiders? (Managers and developers for the most God-awful surveillance companies show up at tech conferences with tricked-out laptops complete with ad blockers)

Lawsuit Accuses a16z of Turning Roblox Into a School Shooter’s Playground by Matthew Gault. (How much time do the children of Roblox execs and investors spend on Roblox? That’s what I thought) Related: Character.AI bans users under 18 after being sued over child’s suicide by Johana Bhuiyan.

Pluralistic: Facebook’s fraud files (08 Nov 2025) by Cory Doctorow. Internally, Meta has made plans to reduce the fraud on the platform, but the effort is being slow-walked because the company estimates that the most it will ultimately pay in fines worldwide ads up to $1 billion, while it currently books $7 billion/year in revenue from fraud. (Fraud’s revenue impact is probably much greater, because extra bidders in the internal auction tend to drive up the ad rates and CACs for the non-scam advertisers) More on this story: Facebook plays role in one-third of all scams — and earns 10% of its revenue that way by Bob Sullivan. Related: Andrew Forrest featured on 230,000 Facebook scam ads - and a US court is forcing Meta to reveal how it happened by Simon Thomsen. Meta had been trying to immunity in the civil case by citing Section 230, a 30-year-old US law that shields tech platforms from liability for user-generated content. Forrest’s legal team will now be able to review Meta’s software and artificial intelligence programs for signs that they contributed to spreading the fraudulent ads.

Google removes Gemma models from AI Studio after GOP senator’s complaint by Ryan Whitwam. (So that’s how you get support from one of the big surveillance companies, just get elected to the US Senate)

Samsung Officially Rolls Out Update To Annoy You With Ads On Smart Fridges by Timothy Geigner. (Do the people who work on these not have them at home, run them behind a Pi-Hole or something, or did they do an ad-free software build for themselves?)

Phone location data of top EU officials for sale, report finds by Zack Whittaker. The dataset also included the granular location histories of Europe’s top officials, including those who work directly for the European Commission, which has its headquarters in Brussels. (Will they do an EU Daniel’s Law while allowing business as usual in the Crime is Legal Now zone in Ireland?)

Loss of Trust in U.S. Prompts International Criminal Court to Ditch Microsoft 365 for Open Source Alternative by Ellen Jennings-Trace. The move protects the ICC from further targeted sanctions by the US government for transgressions against the United States and Israel - in which judges and prosecutors for the court have been threatened with travel bans and asset freezes.

Previously: Links for 4 Jan 2025: news from the low-trust society