technocrit

Utah cannot stifle young people’s First Amendment rights to use social media to speak about politics, create art, discuss religion, or to hear from other users discussing those topics, EFF argued in a brief filed this week.

archive: https://archive.is/9bDI4

YouTube pulled a popular tutorial video from tech creator Jeff Geerling this week, claiming his guide to installing LibreELEC on a Raspberry Pi 5 violated policies against "harmful content." The video, which showed viewers how to set up their own home media servers, had been live for over a year and racked up more than 500,000 views. YouTube's automated systems flagged the content for allegedly teaching people "how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content."

Geerling says his tutorial covered only legal self-hosting of media people already own -- no piracy tools or copyright workarounds. He said he goes out of his way to avoid mentioning popular piracy software in his videos. It's the second time YouTube has pulled a self-hosting content video from Geerling. Last October, YouTube removed his Jellyfin tutorial, though that decision was quickly reversed after appeal. This time, his appeal was denied.

Like many American Jews, I was brought up to see Israel as infallible. Living among Palestinians taught me vital truths about the reality of the occupation.

I finished that year [his "year in Israel"] with little understanding of Israel’s occupation. While I noticed more “Arabs” (the word “Palestinians” never crossed our lips) around my settlement than in Israel proper, I remained oblivious to their reality of living under foreign military rule, with no citizenship or voting rights.

A growing segment of millennials and Gen Z are forming “anti-hierarchal” relationships with multiple partners and friends, according to a new study by the dating app Feeld.

Archive: https://archive.is/Y36Uk

In a sweeping escalation of the attack on public education, the Trump administration has embedded a nationwide private school voucher scheme in its new federal budget proposal. If passed, it will establish a universal voucher program for the first time in US history, bankrolled by an unprecedented $5 billion annual tax credit giveaway to wealthy donors.

School vouchers are schemes by which public tax dollars designed for public schools are repackaged into “scholarships” and reallocated to families for private school. They originated in the US in the 1950s as “tuition grants” to circumvent racial integration mandated following the landmark Civil Rights ruling Brown v. Board of Education.

The ramifications of Trump’s measure are no less reactionary. Public resources would be transferred from chronically underfunded schools serving the working class and poor into private, religious-based and elite institutions.

The initiative follows decades of billionaire-funded campaigns to open up the “education market.” Political Action Committees, such as the Koch brothers’ School Freedom Fund and the American Federation for Children, supported by the family of Betsy DeVos, invested hundreds of millions of dollars into backing failed ballot initiatives to enact statewide vouchers or to target the election campaigns of legislators in opposition.

The big lie is that these are grassroots parental campaigns for “choice”; they are not. Polls consistently show that voters reject vouchers when given the chance. In fact, since 1970, voters have never approved a statewide ballot measure to create or expand private school vouchers, according to the National Coalition for Public Education.

Over the last several decades, the Food and Drug Administration has allowed pharma companies to sell hundreds of drugs to patients without adequate evidence that they work and, in many cases, with clear signs that they pose a risk of serious harm.

did you know the copernican revolution actually happened bc vibes

A federal judge ruled today that Florida cannot enforce a law that requires social media platforms to block kids from using their platforms. The state law "is likely unconstitutional," US Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida ruled while granting the tech industry's request for a preliminary injunction...

For years, a powerful ‘Big Ag’ trade group served up information on activists to the FBI. Records reveal a decade-long effort to see the animal rights movement labeled a “bioterrorism” threat.

Live-animal markets are a natural laboratory for viruses to evolve and spark deadly outbreaks, yet scientists lack support to study the risks they pose.

Could the unthinkable be true? In the aftermath of the Bosnian War — a conflict marked by atrocities and genocide — rumors swirled of wealthy outsiders flying into war-torn Sarajevo to pay for a gruesome and forbidden thrill: hunting humans for sport.

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/6-9nZkdaNrQ