Mastodon Feed: Posts

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

But that doesn't mean there's no safe way to data-mine large data-sets. "Trusted research environments" (TREs) can allow researchers to run queries against multiple sensitive databases without ever seeing a copy of the data, and good procedural vetting as to the research questions processed by TREs can protect the privacy of the people in the data:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/01/the-palantir-will-see-you-now/#public-private-partnership

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pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Indeed, it appears that there may be *no* way to truly de-identify a data-set:

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/understanding-the-maths-is-crucial-for-protecting-privacy

Which is a serious bummer, given the potential insights to be gleaned from, say, population-scale health records:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/health/data-privacy-protection.html

It's clear that de-identification is not fit for purpose when it comes to these data-sets:

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/precautionary.pdf

6/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

But firms stubbornly refuse to learn this lesson. They would love it if they could "safely" sell the data they suck up from our everyday activities, so they declare that they *can* safely do so, and sell giant data-sets, and then bam, the next thing you know, a federal judge's porn-browsing habits are published for all the world to see:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/01/data-browsing-habits-brokers

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pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

It turns out that de-identification is *fucking hard*. Just a couple of datapoints associated with an "anonymous" identifier can be sufficent to de-anonymize the user in question:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1508081113

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pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

The AOL dump is notable for many reasons, not least because it jumpstarted the academic and technical discourse about the limits of "de-identifying" datasets by stripping out personally identifying information prior to releasing them for use by business partners, researchers, or the general public.

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pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

The AOL dump was a catastrophe. In an eyeblink, many of the users in the dataset were de-anonymized. The dump revealed personal, intimate and compromising facts about the lives of AOL search users.

2/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Back in 2006, AOL tried something incredibly bold and even more incredibly *stupid*: they dumped a data-set of 20,000,000 "anonymized" search queries from 650,000 users (yes, AOL had a search engine - there used to be *lots* of search engines!):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL%5Fsearch%5Flog%5Frelease

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/19/privacy-breach-by-design#bringing-home-the-beacon

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Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
nlarson830@techhub.social ("Nick 'The Viking' O'Pelican") wrote:

@pluralistic @Mastodon@mamot.fr

Thank you Cory for bringing this issue out into the light.

@Mastodon thanks for correcting your error.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
heydon@front-end.social ("Large Heydon Collider") wrote:

Been working on some monochrome #pride gear and this came to me out of nowhere. Thoughts?

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
antifaintl@kolektiva.social ("Antifa International") wrote:

#antifa, #nazis, #weimar #history, #WeimarRepublic

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
miriamboosh.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Miriam Boosh") wrote:

The NYT was cited in the Supreme Court ruling used to strip trans people of healthcare. This is EXACTLY WHY the “just asking questions” crowd of centrist edgelord journalists are dangerous. They launder transphobia through faux neutral “debate” and act like it’s intellectual curiosity

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Americans have become so used to the idea of slave-wage labor, that when we argue in favor of immigrants, it's always "well, who will pick our fruits?"

And that is terrible. #ICE

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
huxley@furry.engineer ("huxley(fur) 🔜 Prowl Pride 6/28") wrote:

Enshittification comes for open source:
Slack is kicking two large open source groups, Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Kubernetes, off of their donated enterprise tier, giving them one week notice to migrate multiple years of data to a new platform before it's all deleted: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2025/06/16/cncf-slack-workspace-changes-coming-on-friday-june-20/

Instead of learning from this experience and not trusting the good will of profit-motivated closed source companies, it looks like both projects will be moving to ... Discord. Because "people know it." Will we never learn?

@pluralistic

#enshittification

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
pteryx@dice.camp ("Pteryx the Puzzle Secretary") wrote:

@Myoldpiano @pluralistic
Seems the situation has just changed in any case due to public outcry:

https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

My current Honda is getting a bit old and unfashionable.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/19/not-in-the-market-right-now-but-id-consider-it/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0jjxqpC0aY&t=76s

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:

How about some light hearted stuff to start your day? A song about social media relationships, "NOT FRENZ":

https://rumblefrenz.bandcamp.com/track/not-frenz

Some quiet encouragement, "DON'T GIVE UP THE FIGHT":

https://rumblefrenz.bandcamp.com/track/dont-give-up-the-fight

The rest of the album from Rumblefrenz:

https://rumblefrenz.bandcamp.com/album/we-will-free-you-from-your-body-tonight

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

One dead, rotting rabbit can be transformed into an awesome, overwhelming number of happy squirming maggots, I have learned.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/19/my-purpose-in-life/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Good to see that @Mastodon has hit pause on the new ToS and are going to revisit the offending clauses.

https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

I’m so excited for the new Clipse project.— Their first album in over a decade, Let God Sort’em Out features wall-to-wall production by Pharrell Williams, with a Kendrick Lamar feature.

Long live Pusha T and No Malice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JayCuiHERUQ&pp=ygUTY2xpcHNlIGFjZSB0cnVtcGV0cw%3D%3D

lloydmeta ("Lloyd") wrote:

TIL "deepwiki"... I ran it on frunk and was quite impressed, at least by the diagrams that it was able to generate...

Makes me wonder why I went through the trouble of *writing* blog articles about this on beachape.com!

https://deepwiki.com/lloydmeta/frunk/3.2-labelledgeneric-and-structural-transformations for instance.

#GenAI

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:

@addressforbots @pluralistic I mean… yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
urixturing@mastodont.cat ("Urix Turing") wrote:

@pluralistic to pile up, in Spain this ToS also seem unenforceable under current consumers' rights law 1/2007:

- Article 57.4: arbitration agreements cannot be binding for consumers if agreed before a dispute arises.
- Article 58.1: acceptance of arbitration agreements must be explicit, written and voluntary.

Which begs the question as to why an European company would choose the most harming jurisdiction to users, which I predict to be unenforceable in most of the EU. https://boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2007-20555&p=20250103&tn=1#a57

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
angusm ("Angus McIntyre") wrote:

Hey, @pluralistic , I think they heard you ... ;-)
https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

@mattblaze "Bullshit" is among the milder terms I hear from academics discussing the current situation.

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

SpaceX provides great fireworks.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/19/boom-again/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcJoZdfbKQw&list=RDNSVcJoZdfbKQw&start%5Fradio=1

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
codeinabox@hachyderm.io ("Mathew Attlee") wrote:

@Edent the bit where you talk about generative AI making mistakes with OCR, reminded me of a great interview with @timnitGebru, and how she points out that LLM can be less accurate at text-to-speech than existing machine learning approaches https://techwontsave.us/episode/267%5Fai%5Fhype%5Fenters%5Fits%5Fgeopolitics%5Fera%5Fw%5Ftimnit%5Fgebru

Mastodon wrote:

We've heard your feedback on the Terms of Service updates for mastodon.social and mastodon.online, and we're pausing the implementation date (previously announced to users via email as 1st July 2025) so we can take further advice and make improvements.

It may take us a moment to consult with the right people, so please bear with us while we do so. As always, we appreciate your patience and support.

Boosted by jwz:
astra_underscore@wetdry.world ("Astra Underscore") wrote:

JSON implies the existence of JDÓTTIR

Boosted by jwz:
kaye@cathode.church ("Kaye") wrote:

Fun fact: If you see someone at a nerd event wearing a vim-themed shirt, it's because they put it on in 2003 and couldn't figure out how to take it off

Boosted by jwz:
jwz wrote:

@david_chisnall First assume a spherical cow with UBI and a frictionless liver.