"Thirty-three states have banded together to sue Meta, alleging that the company was exploiting its young users on Instagram and Facebook for profit, including by collecting data from children without parental consent."

The damages could be as high as $1.4 trillion, nearly the same as Meta's market capitalization at just above $1.5 trillion.

https://gizmodo.com/metas-teen-safety-case-just-became-a-1-4-trillion-existential-threat-2000782306

Via https://flipboard.com/@thenewsdesk/technology-shjum1jiz/-/a-CHwwNHlfS-GTffJivjlDbA%3Aa%3A43591897-%2F0

#news #technology #TechNews #meta #facebook #instagram #SocialMedia

A rough analogy:

Threads → Fox News
Bluesky → The Atlantic
The fediverse → zines stapled to a lamppost outside your favorite queer and/or communist bookstore

(N.B.: Fellow Badgers might recognize that point expressed as Sifting and Winnowing.)

The phrase "sifting and winnowing" refers to UW-Madison's historic tradition of defense of intellectual and academic freedom. The words are taken from an 1894 report of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and were originally used to explain the board's refusal to censure a professor accused of socialist and pro-union activity. The words are mounted on a plaque on the front of Bascom Hall:

WHATEVER MAY BE THE LIMITATIONS WHICH TRAMMEL INQUIRY ELSEWHERE, WE BELIEVE THAT THE GREAT STATE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SHOULD EVER ENCOURAGE THAT CONTINUAL AND FEARLESS SIFTING AND WINNOWING BY WHICH ALONE THE TRUTH CAN BE FOUND.

https://kb.wisc.edu/ls/21913

#Wisconsin #PublicEducation #SiftAndWinnow

'The ruling picked apart the state’s justification for the new law, arguing that when state attorneys could not find an existing case or doctrine that could support its speech ban in the university setting, it came up with the rule that “if the government pays a professor’s salary, it has total control over her classroom speech.”

'[The judge] called that “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the State’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry — classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”'
—from the article

#Florida #HigherEducation #SiftAndWinnow

“Florida seeks to strip public university professors—and by extension their students—of the ability to fully engage with ideas that are, for better or for worse, very popular in some academic circles,” said Judge Britt Grant, an appointee of President Donald Trump and author of the majority opinion. “The State asks us to consider its rules a means of targeting discrimination. But hearing an idea you disagree with is not discrimination; it is an opportunity to come up with a better idea, or maybe even change your mind.”

Federal court strikes down Florida’s Stop WOKE Act in higher ed
By Jeffrey Schweers
Orlando Sentinel
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/07/07/federal-court-strikes-down-floridas-stop-woke-act-in-higher-ed/

#Florida #HigherEducation #FirstAmendment

It could have, and should have, been literally ANYONE else. But Platner didn't win your support in SPITE of his Nazi past. That's a lie. He won it BECAUSE of his Nazi past - because you NEED TO BELIEVE crackers in Klan hoods can be saved.

They cannot be saved. They can fix themselves if they like but that STILL DOES NOT ENTITLE THEM TO A SENATE SEAT. We do not OWE the Graham Platners of the world a way back to society and we sure as shit don't OWE them a political career.

Like I told you months ago - you could throw a rock at a Bernie Sanders rally and hit literally a HUNDRED PEOPLE who would produce the EXACT same political platform as Platner did. So that isn't why you made him the candidate.

You NEED this. You NEED to believe we can convince these "working class" nazis to come around. And it's a glaring weakness that will never cease to ruin your plans going foward.

Get over your American-ness. This ain't no motion picture. Nazis get the wall, not hugs.

Again, I can't stress this enough:

Consider developing a politics that does not revolve entirely around appeasing and supporting, reactionary white men.

And you think I'm just talking to centrist Dems, but I'm not - this dreadfully American political disease is just as common on the left. And it's why you folks constantly get betrayed like this.

There ain't no coming back for fascists. And just because you're an "ex" nazi doesn't mean we owe you a platform and a ticker tape parade.

A January 2026 investigation by Texas Observer revealed that these four businesses have links to Patriot Front, the white supremacist group that marched in Washington, D.C. during the America 250 weekend. https://www.texasobserver.org/revealed-four-businesses-patriot-front-north-texas/

#racism #fascism #America250 #Trump #news #NorthTexas #Texas

glad to see Klein saying this.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:tuxs46rncpoq3z6eyvfmhfnc/post/3mq2xg3f6622f

Bold of you, organization, to receive my unsubscribe request and suggest I might like to get texts from you

I just published the first Faircamp 2.0 BETA builds! (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ

Packages for Debian (/Ubuntu/etc.) and Arch (/Manjaro/etc.) are now available.

Download: https://faircamp.org/download.html#beta

Documentation: https://faircamp.org/docs/2.0.0/

Very early release notes: https://faircamp.org/changes/2.0.0/

I will continually extend documentation around the changes in 2.0 over the coming weeks, so for now expect that some things might simply not be explained anywhere yet. You are very welcome to reach out to me and ask about things, this will in fact help me to figure out what people need to know the most! Thank you already!

Although things are fairly stable already, please make backups if you're using this on production data and/or in production environments.

And with that said, enjoy and let me know how it goes! :)

#faircamp

I get angry bc SCOTUS poses a very serious and direct threat to a modern well-functioning multi-racial democracy.

And we need the people who have big audiences to talk about that to … TALK ABOUT THAT.

But instead they paint Kav and ACB as moderates. Which … they aren’t! They just aren’t.

Again, how is it that our commentators on SCOTUS simply refuse to accept what SCOTUS is?

The answer to the first question is such a disaster that I don’t even know if I need to read more.

Why do we need commentary on SCOTUS from someone who thinks the birthright issue is over?? It’s just starting! Hell, the GOP is following Kav’s do-it-legislatively guidance THIS WEEK.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:tob7zx2zlwk35yivtllqa7wo/post/3mq2uautaz227

“It is afternoon. The moon is behind a rainbow. In the Hebrew calendar, what date of the month is it?”

And other solvable problems.

CNN and CNBC promote gambling to make a cheap buck

https://werd.io/cnn-and-cnbc-promote-gambling-to-make-a-cheap-buck/

i also said,

"i used to build software inside a government. imagine: if i told my boss, and the mayor, i'm going to do process automation on ALL resident data, and my automations will make arbitrary decisions! and no one can look into my black box to see how decisions were made! sometimes, my automations will leak PII!'

they would have told me to go to hell.

but now, public sector workers are being asked to do exactly that, for fear of being 'un-innovative'.

someone asked me why AI pilots fail in production and i said 'because most of these projects didn't need AI'

'building a tech project to use AI, instead of to solve a problem, is just like building a project 'to use postgres instead of mysql'

i wonder if i'll still be invited next year

“When you eat illusions you end up hungrier than before.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/hungrier-than-before