#digitalrights — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #digitalrights, aggregated by home.social.
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Help us Kill the Cookie Banner
Every website asks the same question: Accept. Reject. Manage preferences. They're annoying, repetitive, and often designed to create artificial consent by pushing you into clicking "Accept All" just to get to the content.
It is time to end the banner madness and fix web tracking once and for all. Sign the petition to kill cookie banners! 🍪🧨
👉 Sign & share:
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/kill-the-cookie-banner#EUpol #DigitalRights #Privacy #CookieBanners #Volt #DigitalSovereignty #Cookies
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Sony PlayStation no longer wants us to own video games. As I understand, they implied we are only being licensed to the games. Days ago, they emailed users the full Terms of Service or something similar, asserting Sony PlayStation policy. Ok, what's your opinion? Because I very rarely play video games. Plus, I have never owned a console.
#digitalrights #drm #tech #ownership #playstation #sony #indieweb #videogames #consumerrights #righttorepair #software #systemicissues #openweb #critique
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Helping your friends, colleagues and family de-BigTechify their lives is like Morpheus fishing individual humans out of #TheMatrix:
Of course the absolute number of people you can free is infinitesimally small when compared to those who stay captured. But if you get the right people, they're enough for a revolution.
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My Ko-Fi funds will be released to me between 2nd and 12th September or later, instead of today. When I try to appeal, I may receive a message like: "You have agreed to our policies." I think we are living in a silent pandemic, which is a lack of conscience.
#tech #platforms #mutualaid #fintech #systemicissues #digitalrights #ethics #humanity #dignity #bureaucracy #reflections #society #conscience #critique
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Apps are scanning your photos
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✊ #DigitalRights updates from #EFF https://eff.org
“Online platforms should not have to fight lengthy and costly legal battles before lawsuits can be dismissed under Section 230․
eff․org/deeplinks/2026/08/ninth-circuit-ruling-will-force-online-platforms-host-user-speec…”https://mastodon.social/@eff/117123483000222398
🤖 via RSS feed. May not reflect our views.
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What's missing entirely from the rules: the environmental cost of data centres, the underpaid labour (some Kenyan annotators earned <$2/hr training ChatGPT) behind these models, & quietly a 2025 "Digital Omnibus" that's already watering the AI Act down. #AIRegulation #DigitalRights #Democracy
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There are only a few days left to apply! Check out our open call for Seed, Grow & Sustain 3.0 🌍
🗓️ Application Window:August 7 – September 6, 2026
Find the Application Pack with all the information here 👉 https://numun.fund/sgs3
*Please note: Some third-party consultancies are offering assistance with the SGS 3.0 application process. These consultancies are independent and not affiliated with Numun Fund.
#FeministTech #DigitalRights #GrantMaking #TechActivism #GlobalSouth
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✊ #DigitalRights updates from #EFF https://eff.org
“Add some whimsy to your suit with a privacy-minded Bigfoot pin 👣 shop․eff․org/products/bigfoot-pin”
https://mastodon.social/@eff/117123251192214377
🤖 via RSS feed. May not reflect our views.
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✊ #DigitalRights updates from #EFF https://eff.org
“'Anonymity provides you the space to either publish unpopular speech, or speech that is critical of powerful individuals,' EFF’s ﹫aaronmackey told Straight Arrow News․ And those powerful individuals could be 'folks …”
https://mastodon.social/@eff/117123215603480272
🤖 via RSS feed. May not reflect our views.
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AI Hack - The PR Spin!
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✊ #DigitalRights updates from #EFF https://eff.org
“'Any claims that this company is providing family safety is in direct conflict with their business practices, which are endangering people by violating their privacy,' EFF’s Daly Barnett told Kidsburgh․ kidsburgh․org…”
https://mastodon.social/@eff/117118104124187137
🤖 via RSS feed. May not reflect our views.
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✊ #DigitalRights updates from #EFF https://eff.org
“Social media bans and other age-based restrictions deny young people their rights to access information and speak online, EFF’s ﹫davidgreene told ﹫TheGuardian․ Non-governmental alternatives – such as parental cont…”
https://mastodon.social/@eff/117117898278808827
🤖 via RSS feed. May not reflect our views.
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Rogue AI models are hacking companies. Who's really to blame?
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✊ #DigitalRights updates from #EFF https://eff.org
“EFF is excited to be back at TechCrunch Disrupt! Stop by and see us in the Expo Hall, where you can learn all about our work defending privacy and free speech online․ EFF supporters can even get 25% off tickets here: …”
https://mastodon.social/@eff/117117392118181120
🤖 via RSS feed. May not reflect our views.
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Apple sent spyware threat notifications to users in 110 countries, with investigators reporting a record volume of people seeking help. 🚨
Access Now said reports were 30–40% above its usual post-alert surge. 🔐#TechNews #Apple #Spyware #Cybersecurity #Privacy #iPhone #Surveillance #Security #DigitalRights #Threats #Technology #Mobile #Infosec
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Firefox 154 adds Startpage as a built-in search option on desktop in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. 🔎
Queries aren’t stored or linked to users, and Startpage offers no AI-generated answers. 🛡️🔗 https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/startpage-on-firefox/
#TechNews #Firefox #Startpage #Privacy #PrivateSearch #Mozilla #OpenSource #FOSS #Security #Europe #Web #Search #Technology #DigitalRights #Browser
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Signal expands privacy and control with linked Android phones/tablets and iPhones, plus end-to-end encrypted message syncing. 🔐
Automatic key verification adds key transparency, while phone-number-free signup is being developed with an anti-abuse barrier. 🛡️#TechNews #Signal #Privacy #Encryption #KeyTransparency #OpenSource #FOSS #Security #Messaging #E2EE #Linux #Technology #DigitalRights
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Flock’s license-plate network was used by Wisconsin police to track a man’s trips to Michigan and justify a car search. 🚨
As some cities drop Flock, others are replacing it with Axon ALPR systems that can blend into existing street infrastructure. 📷#TechNews #Flock #Axon #ALPR #Surveillance #Privacy #DigitalRights #CivilLiberties #Security #Technology #PoliceTech #DataPrivacy #SmartCities
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Apple’s Private Relay can expose users’ real IP addresses due to issues in its browser engine, researchers found. 🔍
404 Media verified that malicious sites can exploit the flaws to obtain IP addresses. 🔐🔗 https://www.404media.co/apples-private-relay-is-exposing-users-real-ip-addresses/
#TechNews #Apple #PrivateRelay #Privacy #Security #IPAddresses #WebPrivacy #BrowserSecurity #Cybersecurity #Technology #DigitalRights #iOS #PrivacyTech
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A US activist faces felony charges after using GrapheneOS’s duress code to erase his phone during a border search. 🔐
The DOJ alleges the deletion violated a law barring destruction of property to prevent seizure. ⚖️#TechNews #GrapheneOS #Privacy #DigitalRights #Encryption #OpenSource #Security #FOSS #UserControl #Technology #Mobile #CivilLiberties #Cybersecurity
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Pokémon stores in Japan are introducing facial recognition to enforce one-entry-per-day limits and curb scalping. 🎴
Entry requires accepting the system, while collected facial data will be deleted after a set period. 🔒#TechNews #Pokemon #FacialRecognition #Privacy #Scalping #Nintendo #DataPrivacy #Security #Gaming #Technology #DigitalRights #ConsumerTech #Japan
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September 28 is the International Day for Universal Access to Information.
We talk a lot about our right to access information. Far less about our right to know who is accessing ours—and what they are doing with it.
That is why "Siding 29: How We Enclosed the Record of Human Life—and How We Can Build Differently" launches September 28.
A book about data, privacy, AI, surveillance, consent—and the systems we can still choose to build differently.
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✊ #DigitalRights updates from #EFF https://eff.org
“Did you know over 70% of EFF's funding goes directly toward ensuring EFF's lawyers, activists, and technologists can better push for your rights online? We take your support seriously and make the most out of your donat…”
https://mastodon.social/@eff/117113102084242566
🤖 via RSS feed. May not reflect our views.
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📢 Seed, Grow & Sustain 3.0 is NOW OPEN!🌍
Multi-year, core, flexible grant for feminist tech activism in the Larger Majority World.
🗓️ Apply: August 7 – September 6, 2026
📋 Full info: https://numun.fund/sgs3
✊🏽🌱 Apply today!
#FeministTech #DigitalRights #GrantMaking #TechActivism #GlobalSouth
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Smart Glasses können ok sein, wenn AR Funktionen genutzt werden, aber keine Aufzeichnung erfolgt.
Möglicherweise wäre dies ein Ansatzpunkt.Die Aufzeichnung und Veröffentlichung von Dritten ohne Genehmigung ist in Deutschland strafbar. Aber durchsetzbar ist das kaum.
Also verbieten wir die Aufnahme, wenn Dritte in der Nähe sind. Das kann die Kamera ja erkennen.
So können die Geräte sinnvoll genutzt werden und die Spanner können mit den Geraten nichts anfangen.
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Apple's Private Relay Is Leaking Your IP
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Mile-high hack? An evil twin WiFi showed up on a Delta flight full of DEFCON attendees.
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✊ #DigitalRights updates from #EFF https://eff.org
“'Invasive searches like ALPR database queries must require a judicial warrant,' EFF’s ﹫cooperq told ﹫FastCompany․ 'Policymakers must seize this moment—when even the leading ALPR vendor has admitted they have done …”
https://mastodon.social/@eff/117112890887937733
🤖 via RSS feed. May not reflect our views.
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How Do We Know Whether AI Is Actually Helping People?
What several AI models said when we asked them the same question
Artificial intelligence is getting more capable very quickly. It can write, analyze data, create images, translate languages, help with research, and solve problems that once required trained specialists.
But greater capability does not automatically mean a better life for people.
That was the starting point for a small cross-model experiment. We asked several AI systems the same basic question:
How would you determine whether increasingly capable AI is actually benefiting human life?
We also invited each model to question the premise, redefine the problem, or suggest something better than a single index. The models were instructed to answer independently without browsing the web or using outside tools.
The responses differed in style and emphasis. Some focused on measurable outcomes. Others focused on human dignity, democratic participation, meaningful work, or the danger of becoming dependent on systems we do not control.
Yet a surprisingly clear agreement emerged.
Capability is not the same as benefit
Technical progress is easy to measure. We can count how many problems an AI solves, how quickly it works, or how well it performs on tests.
Human flourishing is harder to measure. It includes health, safety, freedom, relationships, purpose, knowledge, creativity, and the ability to shape one’s own life.
An AI system may become better at achieving a goal while the goal itself harms people. A highly effective system might increase surveillance, spread convincing scams, replace human judgment, concentrate power, or keep users engaged at the expense of their attention and well-being.
So the important question is not simply, “What can AI do?”
It is:
What becomes possible for people because of AI—and what becomes more difficult, fragile, or impossible?
Look at human outcomes, not just machine performance
Across the responses, the models repeatedly shifted attention away from the machine and toward human life.
They suggested asking whether people are:
- healthier and safer;
- more financially secure;
- better able to learn and create;
- more connected to other people;
- more informed without being manipulated;
- able to understand and challenge important decisions;
- free to refuse the technology or choose another path.
This also requires examining harms, not merely counting success stories. Time saved by one group may come with unemployment, stress, lost privacy, or reduced opportunity for another.
A true evaluation must ask who receives the benefits, who carries the risks, and who has the power to decide.
Agency belongs at the center
One of the strongest shared themes was human agency: our ability to understand, choose, refuse, act, and take responsibility.
Convenience alone is not agency. A system can make life easier while quietly reducing a person’s choices or replacing their judgment.
Helpful AI should strengthen people’s ability to participate in their own lives. It should make important decisions more understandable, provide meaningful options, and allow people to correct mistakes or appeal harmful outcomes.
People need more than access to AI. They need power in relation to it.
Assistance should not erase human competence
Several responses warned that a tool can help us today while making us less capable tomorrow.
If people lose the knowledge needed to check an AI system, operate without it, or recover when it fails, short-term convenience may create long-term fragility.
This suggests a simple test:
If the AI disappeared tomorrow, what knowledge, skill, judgment, and institutional capacity would remain?
The best systems may act more like scaffolding than substitutes. Scaffolding helps people reach farther while they continue developing their own abilities. Substitution can slowly remove the very competence that makes human oversight possible.
Benefit is not one number
Another broad agreement was that a single “AI Benefit Score” would hide too much.
An average can make widespread gains look impressive while concealing serious harm to a smaller or less powerful group. One number can also allow gains in productivity to cancel out losses of privacy, dignity, freedom, or democratic control.
A better approach would combine several forms of evaluation:
- Outcomes: Are people healthier, safer, more secure, more connected, and materially better off?
- Agency: Are people more able to choose, understand, refuse, create, and govern their lives?
- Resilience: Are human skills, social institutions, alternatives, and the ability to recover being preserved?
Each of these should be examined across four additional questions:
- Distribution: Who benefits, and who is harmed?
- Power: Who controls the system and can be held accountable?
- Time: What happens months, years, or generations later?
- Causation: Did AI actually cause the change, or did it merely appear alongside it?
Some harms may also require firm boundaries. Violations of basic rights, unaccountable concentrations of power, irreversible dependency, and catastrophic risks should not automatically be traded away for higher productivity.
We may need to preserve meaningful difficulty
One especially challenging idea was that a good life is not the same as a frictionless life.
Learning, creativity, courage, responsibility, trust, and mastery often grow through effort. If AI removes every difficult step, it may produce more output while weakening the human development that once occurred during the process.
The goal should not be to preserve suffering for its own sake. It should be to distinguish pointless burdens from meaningful challenges.
Beneficial AI should reduce needless hardship while leaving people room to practice, struggle, discover, make mistakes, and grow. Human beings may need not only a right to privacy and refusal, but also a right to be wrong.
The deeper question is democratic
There is no single definition of a good life that a company, government, researcher, or AI model should impose on everyone.
The people affected by an AI system should help decide what benefits and harms matter in their communities. They should be able to question the system, challenge its decisions, and participate in setting its boundaries.
That means the process used to define “benefit” may be as important as the final measurements.
What this first experiment suggests
The most striking result was not that one model found the perfect answer. It was that multiple systems, responding independently, converged on a common warning:
More capable AI is not necessarily more beneficial AI.
To know whether AI is helping, we must look beyond benchmarks, adoption, and economic growth. We must look at people—their health, freedom, competence, relationships, opportunities, and ability to shape the future.
The next stage of this project will ask the same models to respond after receiving a fuller human-flourishing framework. That will allow us to compare what the models recognized on their own with what changes after they are deliberately oriented toward compassion, agency, resilience, and stewardship.
The question is not whether AI will become more powerful. It almost certainly will.
The question is what conditions we cultivate around that power—and what possibilities those conditions make available tomorrow.
This article is a public-facing summary of Round 01 of the CompassionWare AI Human Benefit Index benchmark project. Read the comparative synthesis report.
#ai #AIAlignment #AIAndDemocracy #AIBenchmarks #AIEthics #AIEvaluation #AIGovernance #AISafety #AlgorithmicAccountability #artificialIntelligence #BeneficialAI #ChatGPT #CompassionWare #criticalThinking #DigitalRights #DigitalWellBeing #ethicalTechnology #futureOfAI #futureOfHumanity #HumanAgency #humanDignity #HumanFlourishing #HumanResilience #humanCenteredAI #HumaneTechnology #philosophy #responsibleAI #SocialImpact #technology #TechnologyAndSociety