The over-optimism is indeed a really important takeaway, and agreed that it's not tool-dependent.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41917881

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

> Why not move the needle in the right direction and then lobby for additional things?

Two reasons. Preemption not only weakens some existing laws, it keeps states from passing future stronger laws -- so it caps protections. And, politicially, no privacy law in the US has ever been strengthened by Congress (or state legislatures) ... so, it's very unlikely that the lobbying for additional things will have an affect.

I htink there were three key sections that got cut out:

1) "A covered entity or service provider may not collect, process, retain, or transfer covered data in a manner that discriminates in or otherwise makes unavailable the equal enjoyment of goods or services on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability." This was hugely important, it was sa major victory to get a bipartisan committee majority supporting similar language in APRA's predecessor ADPPA.

2) Requirements for algorithmic impact assessments by large companies (I forget the exact threshold).

3) A requirement to let people opt-out of consequencial automated decisions (with some exceptions), somewhat similar to California's CCPA.

Paul Graham, 2022: "Of 1277 students who graduated from Lambda School in 2020 and sought jobs, 950 got them, for a placement rate of 74.8%.

(Lambda's weirdly dedicated haters will be happy to hear that these numbers were audited by an accounting firm.)" [2]

[1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1254809755681525762

[2] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1254809755681525762

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39971808

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38724292

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

https://secure.rightsanddissent.org/a/protect-liberty-act

It asks legislators to vote

NO on the Intelligence Community's fake reform bill, the FISA “Reform” and Reauthorization Act (which as the OP points out is actually an expansion of warrantless wiretapping)

YES on the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act, which actually does include some significant reforms

Of course MHMD doesn't take effect until after the next legislative session, so I'm sure there will be attempts to weaken it. So I'm not counting any chickens quite yet!

It's true that California's legislation gets a lot of industry input, and they're not going to pass something puts the big tech companies out of business. On the other hand, there's a very effective coalition of privacy organizers there -- who are quite familiar with tech's tactics, and can be very effective at cutting through tech's spin with legislators. Plus, the California Privacy Protection Agency (which got established by a referendum, not through the legislature) has a lot of clout -- there isn't anything comparable in any other US state.

Washington state has similar dynamics, although with the CPPA equivalent. Microsoft and Amazon are hugely influential here; but, grassroots organizers had repeatedly stopped them from getting the very weak Bad Washington Privacy Act through the legislature. And this year, we passed My Health My Data -- stronger in some ways than California's privacy law.

Texas ... has been a disappointment. The privacy law they passed this year is based on the Bad Washington Privacy Act but significantly weaker.

In the US, it seems like it's mostly being driven by "child-safety" orgs, some of whom are well-intentioned but just don't understand the downsides, some of whom are anti-LGBTQ and appreciate the downsides. But others may well be active behind the scenes.

And, there's a committee vote on KOSA tomorrow, so if you're in the US please contact your Congresspeople -- https://www.stopkosa.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36762437

Points: 5

# Comments: 7

AcitivityPub's also meant to be extended, there are FEPs, and it's likely that the working group will come up with a new version as well. That said there certainly are differences between XMPP and ActivityPub, most people say the ActivityPub ecosystem is significantly farther along than XMPP was.

I could imagine Meta doing an open-source AP server (and with a fresh start it would be cleaner base than Mastodon). I also wouldn't be surprised if the release a app building toolkit / framework / whatever ... there isn't a good one now, they do that stuff well, and as they introduce proprietary AP extensions then they toolkit is a good way to get people to adopt them. But it's very hard to know at this point, it's also possible it's just PR spin and they won't really invest in it. We shall see.

Anyhow, good discussion, thanks much!