Ok this is interesting.

The desktop app has no such restrictions, only mobile.

Valve: “We need a credit card on file to prove you’re 18”

Me: “My account is 23 years old”

Valve: “That just proves your account is old”

Me: “A credit card just proves you know someone with a credit card”

@jerry just thinking through the inevitable nightmares inbound from UK, EU, and US age verification requirements for social media, where does this land us on Infosec.exchange?

Early days I know, but curious on your thoughts.

Welllllll this isn't great.

Google Just Patented The End Of Your Website

"...a system that evaluates your company’s landing page in real time and, if it decides the page won’t perform well enough for a specific user, replaces it with an AI-generated version assembled on the fly. The user never sees what your team built, they see what Google's machine learning model thinks they should see instead."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2026/03/06/google-just-patented-the-end-of-your-website

#SEO #Google #AI #enshittification

I won’t be verifying that I’m over 18 on iOS 26.4, and as of yet, I haven’t seen any downside to not doing so.

I do think this is going to backfire though. If it’s age restricted apps I can’t download, surely I’d just use the website instead.

I hear that the intent is to utilise some sort of age verification flag, but I can’t see it being implemented at all.

Put it this way… from 2016 to 2026, following GDPR mandates for handling visitors to websites only around 15% of public facing websites are GDPR ‘compliant’.

Good luck getting age verification uptake. You can’t block by default, the internet would implode.

“Friday’s press gaggle, barely exaggerated…” 🤷🏼 open.substack.com/pub/no01/p/m...

I always try to be courteous and understand of those doing customer support. I've been in the trenches in that role in a past life. It's a hard, gruelling job if you have a conscience.

At this point, though, after being given the pre-treatment by their AI powered rage-fluffers, I'm fully prepared to go fucking nuclear on a hair trigger.

ESPECIALLY if you don't make a distinction between AI and human interaction.

How is this a good customer experience?

oh we really are in good hands.

Oh. Hold on. The agent is typing.

"The Best Conversational AI Platform for Business"

We're in good hands.

We're in good hands.

it's this dogshit - https://www.liveperson.com

I've been 'transferred' three times now. I am not entirely sure these people are actually people.

Stranger, still. I've not provided any identification information. So there's nothing the bot will be able to do anyway.

Very odd interaction with Nationwide Building Society today:

Almost like the support staff have accidentally sent the message direct to me, instead of their AI agent.

I hate this timeline.

When I first watched War Games (1983) I thought "wow, so weird, not only they had terrible password management, but their test 'AI' system was directly linked to the prod".

Ha-ha. :blobcat_thisisfine:

Um. Does the iOS Mastodon app no longer let you save videos?

That’s weird.

Yes, @catsalad I was trying to steal your fishy video.

My biggest problem with the concept of LLMs, even if they weren’t a giant plagiarism laundering machine and disaster for the environment, is that they introduce so much unpredictability into computing. I became a professional computer toucher because they do exactly what you tell them to. Not always what you wanted, but exactly what you asked for.

LLMs turn that upside down. They turn a very autistic do-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean commmunication style with the machine into a neurotypical conversation talking around the issue, but never directly addressing the substance of problem.

In any conversation I have with a person, I’m modeling their understanding of the topic at hand, trying to tailor my communication style to their needs. The same applies to programming languages and frameworks. If you work with a language the way its author intended it goes a lot easier.

But LLMs don’t have an understanding of the conversation. There is no intent. It’s just a mostly-likely-next-word generator on steroids. You’re trying to give directions to a lossily compressed copy of the entire works of human writing. There is no mind to model, and no predictability to the output.

If I wanted to spend my time communicating in a superficial, neurotypical style my autistic ass certainly wouldn’t have gone into computering. LLMs are the final act of the finance bros and capitalists wrestling modern technology away from the technically literate proletariat who built it.

“While I’ve got you…”

There’s probably a reason I logged on early, and it wasn’t so you could call me for a ‘quick catchup’.