brisk

If you’ve been around, you might’ve noticed that our relationships with programs have changed.

Older programs were all about what you need: you can do this, that, whatever you want, just let me know. You were in control, you were giving orders, and programs obeyed.

But recently (a decade, more or less), this relationship has subtly changed. Newer programs (which are called apps now, yes, I know) started to want things from you.

There is an ongoing trend in the industry to move people away from username and password towards passkeys. The intentions here are good, and I would assume that this has a significant net benefit for the average consumer. At the same time, the underlying standard has some peculiarities. These enable behaviors by large corporations, employers, and governments that are worth thinking about.

Source

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at the helm of the surveillance doorbell company, and with him is the surveillance-first-privacy-last approach that made Ring one of the most maligned tech devices. Not only is the company reintroducing new versions of old features which would allow police to request footage directly from Ring users, it is also introducing a new feature that would allow police to request live-stream access to people’s home security devices.

The GSM Association announced that the latest RCS standard includes E2EE based on the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, enabling interoperable encryption between different platform providers for the first time.

Highlights:

Krishnan told Ars that "Meta is trying to have it both ways, but its assertion that Unfollow Everything 2.0 would violate its terms effectively concedes that Zuckerman faces what the company says he does not—a real threat of legal action."

For users wanting to take a break from endless scrolling, it could potentially meaningfully impact mental health—eliminating temptation to scroll content they did not choose to see, while allowing them to remain connected to their networks and still able to visit individual pages to access content they want to see.

According to Meta, its terms of use prohibit automated access to users' personal information not just by third parties but by individual users, as a means of protecting user privacy. Meta urged the court to reject Zuckerman's claim that Meta's terms violate California privacy laws by making it hard for users to control their data. Instead, Meta said the court should agree with a prior court that "rejected the argument that California law 'espous[es] a principle of user control of data sufficient to invalidate' Facebook’s prohibition on automated access."

Much more in article

Verge editor laments the perverse incentives of SEO rankings.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/14224306