An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Facebook and Instagram are under formal investigation in the European Union over child protection concerns, the Commission announced Thursday. The proceedings follow a raft of requests for information to parent entity Meta since the bloc's online governance regime, the Digital Services Act (DSA), started applying last August. The development could be significant as the formal proceedings unlock additional investigatory powers for EU enforcers, such as the ability to conduct office inspections or apply interim measures. Penalties for any confirmed breaches of the DSA could reach up to 6% of Meta's global annual turnover.

Meta's two social networks are designated as very large online platforms (VLOPs) under the DSA. This means the company faces an extra set of rules -- overseen by the EU directly -- requiring it to assess and mitigate systemic risks on Facebook and Instagram, including in areas like minors' mental health. In a briefing with journalists, senior Commission officials said they suspect Meta of failing to properly assess and mitigate risks affecting children. They particularly highlighted concerns about addictive design on its social networks, and what they referred to as a "rabbit hole effect," where a minor watching one video may be pushed to view more similar content as a result of the platforms' algorithmic content recommendation engines.

Commission officials gave examples of depression content, or content that promotes an unhealthy body image, as types of content that could have negative impacts on minors' mental health. They are also concerned that the age assurance methods Meta uses may be too easy for kids to circumvent. "One of the underlying questions of all of these grievances is how can we be sure who accesses the service and how effective are the age gates -- particularly for avoiding that underage users access the service," said a senior Commission official briefing press today on background. "This is part of our investigation now to check the effectiveness of the measures that Meta has put in place in this regard as well." In all, the EU suspects Meta of infringing DSA Articles 28, 34, and 35. The Commission will now carry out an in-depth investigation of the two platforms' approach to child protection.

In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone Jr (D-N.J.) made their case for why Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has "outlived its usefulness." Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from liability for user-generated content, allowing them to moderate content without being treated as publishers.

"Unfortunately, Section 230 is now poisoning the healthy online ecosystem it once fostered. Big Tech companies are exploiting the law to shield them from any responsibility or accountability as their platforms inflict immense harm on Americans, especially children. Congress's failure to revisit this law is irresponsible and untenable," the lawmakers wrote. The Hill reports: Rodgers and Pallone argued that rolling back the protections on Big Tech companies would hold them accountable for the material posted on their platforms. "These blanket protections have resulted in tech firms operating without transparency or accountability for how they manage their platforms. This means that a social-media company, for example, can't easily be held responsible if it promotes, amplifies or makes money from posts selling drugs, illegal weapons or other illicit content," they wrote.

The lawmakers said they were unveiling legislation (PDF) to sunset Section 230. It would require Big Tech companies to work with Congress for 18 months to "evaluate and enact a new legal framework that will allow for free speech and innovation while also encouraging these companies to be good stewards of their platforms." "Our bill gives Big Tech a choice: Work with Congress to ensure the internet is a safe, healthy place for good, or lose Section 230 protections entirely," the lawmakers wrote.

Meta is shutting down Workplace, the tool it sold to businesses that combined social and productivity features, according to messages to customers obtained by Axios and confirmed by Meta. From the report:Meta has been cutting jobs and winnowing its product line for the last few years while investing billions first in the metaverse and now in AI. Micah Collins, Meta's senior director of product management, sent a message to customers alerting them of the shutdown.

Collins said customers can use Workplace through September 2025, when it will become available only to download or read existing data. The service will shut down completely in 2026. Workplace was formerly Facebook at Work, and launched in its current form in 2016. In 2021 the company reported it had 7 million paid subscribers.

The developers of team-based shooter Marvel Rivals have apologized for a contract clause that made creators promise not to provide "subjective negative reviews of the game" in exchange for early access to a closed alpha test. From a report: The controversial early access contract gained widespread attention over the weekend when streamer Brandon Larned shared a portion on social media. In the "non-disparagement" clause shared by Larned, creators who are provided with an early download code are asked not to "make any public statements or engage in discussions that are detrimental to the reputation of the game." In addition to the "subjective negative review" example above, the clause also specifically prohibits "making disparaging or satirical comments about any game-related material" and "engaging in malicious comparisons with competitors or belittling the gameplay or differences of Marvel Rivals."

According to a new study published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior, researchers found that internet use is associated with greater wellbeing in people around the world. "Our analysis is the first to test whether or not internet access, mobile internet access and regular use of the internet relates to wellbeing on a global level," said Prof Andrew Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, who co-authored the work. The Guardian reports: [T]he study describes how Przybylski and Dr Matti Vuorre, of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, analysed data collected through interviews involving about 1,000 people each year from 168 countries as part of the Gallup World Poll. Participants were asked about their internet access and use as well as eight different measures of wellbeing, such as life satisfaction, social life, purpose in life and feelings of community wellbeing.

The team analyzed data from 2006 to 2021, encompassing about 2.4 million participants aged 15 and above. The researchers employed more than 33,000 statistical models, allowing them to explore various possible associations while taking into account factors that could influence them, such as income, education, health problems and relationship status. The results reveal that internet access, mobile internet access and use generally predicted higher measures of the different aspects of wellbeing, with 84.9% of associations between internet connectivity and wellbeing positive, 0.4% negative and 14.7% not statistically significant.

The study was not able to prove cause and effect, but the team found measures of life satisfaction were 8.5% higher for those who had internet access. Nor did the study look at the length of time people spent using the internet or what they used it for, while some factors that could explain associations may not have be considered. Przybylski said it was important that policy on technology was evidence-based and that the impact of any interventions was tracked.

GameStop shares surged over 72% on Monday after Keith Gill, also known as "Roaring Kitty," returned to social media following a three-year hiatus. Gill gained notoriety for his role in the 2020 meme stock frenzy, where he encouraged amateur investors to buy GameStop shares, significantly driving up the stock price and challenging hedge funds. From a report: He resurfaced on X, Sunday night, with an image of a sketched man leaning forward in a chair, marking the end of a roughly three-year hiatus. He followed that post with several others featuring various comeback-themed videos featuring movie clips and charged music.

GameStop had experienced declining sales amid an industrywide pivot from game cartridges to video game streaming and digital downloads, but with the help from meme stock investors, last March the company turned its first profit in two years. Before then, the company had posted seven straight quarterly losses. This January, GameStop reported its first annual profit since 2018. Roaring Kitty's post helped bump GameStop's share price to $28.25 on Monday. GameStop's all-time high stock price is $120.75 in January 2021.

Reddit reported its first results since going public in late March. Yahoo Finance reports: Daily active users increased 37% year over year to 82.7 million. Weekly active unique users rose 40% from the prior year. Total revenue improved 48% to $243 million, nearly doubling the growth rate from the prior quarter, due to strength in advertising. The company delivered adjusted operating profits of $10 million, versus a $50.2 million loss a year ago. [Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman declined to say when the company would be profitable on a net income basis, noting it's a focus for the management team. Other areas of focus include rolling out a new user interface this year, introducing shopping capabilities, and searching for another artificial intelligence content licensing deal like the one with Google.
Bloomberg notes that already Reddit "has signed licensing agreements worth $203 million in total, with terms ranging from two to three years. The company generated about $20 million from AI content deals last quarter, and expects to bring in more than $60 million by the end of the year."

And elsewhere Bloomberg writes that Reddit "plans to expand its revenue streams outside of advertising into what Huffman calls the 'user economy' — users making money from others on the platform... " In the coming months Reddit plans to launch new versions of awards, which are digital gifts users can give to each other, along with other products... Reddit also plans to continue striking data licensing deals with artificial intelligence companies, expanding into international markets and evaluating potential acquisition targets in areas such as search, he said.
Meanwhile, ZDNet notes that this week a Reddit announcement "introduced a new public content policy that lays out a framework for how partners and third parties can access user-posted content on its site." The post explains that more and more companies are using unsavory means to access user data in bulk, including Reddit posts. Once a company gets this data, there's no limit to what it can do with it. Reddit will continue to block "bad actors" that use unauthorized methods to get data, the company says, but it's taking additional steps to keep users safe from the site's partners.... Reddit still supports using its data for research: It's creating a new subreddit — r/reddit4researchers — to support these initiatives, and partnering with OpenMined to help improve research. Private data is, however, going to stay private.

If a company wants to use Reddit data for commercial purposes, including advertising or training AI, it will have to pay. Reddit made this clear by saying, "If you're interested in using Reddit data to power, augment, or enhance your product or service for any commercial purposes, we require a contract." To be clear, Reddit is still selling users' data — it's just making sure that unscrupulous actors have a tougher time accessing that data for free and researchers have an easier time finding what they need.
And finally, there's some court action, according to the Register. Reddit "was sued by an unhappy advertiser who claims that internet giga-forum sold ads but provided no way to verify that real people were responsible for clicking on them." The complaint [PDF] was filed this week in a U.S. federal court in northern California on behalf of LevelFields, a Virginia-based investment research platform that relies on AI. It says the biz booked pay-per-click ads on the discussion site starting September 2022... That arrangement called for Reddit to use reasonable means to ensure that LevelField's ads were delivered to and clicked on by actual people rather than bots and the like. But according to the complaint, Reddit broke that contract...

LevelFields argues that Reddit is in a particularly good position to track click fraud because it's serving ads on its own site, as opposed to third-party properties where it may have less visibility into network traffic... Nonetheless, LevelFields's effort to obtain IP address data to verify the ads it was billed for went unfulfilled. The social media site "provided click logs without IP addresses," the complaint says. "Reddit represented that it was not able to provide IP addresses."
"The plaintiffs aspire to have their claim certified as a class action," the article adds — along with an interesting statistic.

"According to Juniper Research, 22 percent of ad spending last year was lost to click fraud, amounting to $84 billion."

The Royal Institution of Australia is a national non-profit hub for science communication, publishing the science magazine Cosmos four times a year.

This month they argued that small modular nuclear reactors "don't add up as a viable energy source." Proponents assert that SMRs would cost less to build and thus be more affordable. However, when evaluated on the basis of cost per unit of power capacity, SMRs will actually be more expensive than large reactors. This 'diseconomy of scale' was demonstrated by the now-terminated proposal to build six NuScale Power SMRs (77 megawatts each) in Idaho in the United States. The final cost estimate of the project per megawatt was around 250 percent more than the initial per megawatt cost for the 2,200 megawatts Vogtle nuclear power plant being built in Georgia, US. Previous small reactors built in various parts of America also shut down because they were uneconomical.
The cost was four to six times the cost of the same electricity from wind and solar photovoltaic plants, according to estimates from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Energy Market Operator. "The money invested in nuclear energy would save far more carbon dioxide if it were instead invested in renewables," the article agues: Small reactors also raise all of the usual concerns associated with nuclear power, including the risk of severe accidents, the linkage to nuclear weapons proliferation, and the production of radioactive waste that has no demonstrated solution because of technical and social challenges. One 2022 study calculated that various radioactive waste streams from SMRs would be larger than the corresponding waste streams from existing light water reactors...

Nuclear energy itself has been declining in importance as a source of power: the fraction of the world's electricity supplied by nuclear reactors has declined from a maximum of 17.5 percent in 1996 down to 9.2 percent in 2022. All indications suggest that the trend will continue if not accelerate. The decline in the global share of nuclear power is driven by poor economics: generating power with nuclear reactors is costly compared to other low-carbon, renewable sources of energy and the difference between these costs is widening.
Thanks to Slashdot reader ZipNada for sharing the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Maryland legislature passed two bills over the weekend limiting tech platforms' ability to collect and use consumers' data. Maryland Governor Wes Moore is expected to sign one of those bills, the Maryland Kids Code, on Thursday, MoCo360 reports. If signed into law, the other bill, the Maryland Online Privacy Act, will go into effect in October 2025. The legislation would limit platforms' ability to collect user data and let users opt out of having their data used for targeted advertising and other purposes. Together, the bills would significantly limit social media and other platforms' ability to track their users -- but tech companies, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, have opposed similar legislation. Lawmakers say the goal is to protect children, but tech companies say the bills are a threat to free speech.

Part of the Maryland Kids Code -- the Maryland Age-Appropriate Design Code Act -- will go into effect much sooner, on October 1st. It bans platforms from using "system design features to increase, sustain, or extend the use of the online product," including autoplaying media, rewarding users for spending more time on the platform, and spamming users with notifications. Another part of the legislation prohibits certain video game, social media, and other platforms from tracking users who are younger than 18. "It's meant to rein in some of the worst practices with sensible regulation that allows companies to do what's right and what is wonderful about the internet and tech innovation, while at the same time saying, 'You can't take advantage of our kids,'" Maryland state Delegate Jared Solomon, one of the bill's sponsors, said in a press conference Wednesday.

"We are technically the second state to pass a kids code," Solomon told The New York Times. "But we are hoping to be the first state to withstand the inevitable court challenge that we know is coming."

Technology giant Dell notified customers on Thursday that it experienced a data breach involving customers' names and physical addresses. TechCrunch: In an email seen by TechCrunch and shared by several people on social media, the computer maker wrote that it was investigating "an incident involving a Dell portal, which contains a database with limited types of customer information related to purchases from Dell."

Dell wrote that the information accessed in the breach included customer names, physical addresses, and "Dell hardware and order information, including service tag, item description, date of order and related warranty information." Dell did not say if the incident was caused by malicious outsiders or inadvertent error. The breached data did not include email addresses, telephone numbers, financial or payment information, or "any highly sensitive customer information," according to the company. The company downplayed the impact of the breach in the message.

Less than two weeks after President Biden signed a bill that will force TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular social media app or face a ban in the United States, TikTok said it sued the federal government on Tuesday, arguing the law was unconstitutional. From a report: TikTok said that the law violated the First Amendment by effectively removing an app that millions of Americans use to share their views and communicate freely. It also argued that a divestiture was "simply not possible," especially within the law's 270-day timeline, pointing to difficulties such as Beijing's refusal to sell a key feature that powers TikTok in the United States.

"For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than one billion people worldwide," the company said in the 67-page petition it provided, which initiates the lawsuit. "There is no question: The act will force a shutdown of TikTok by Jan. 19, 2025." TikTok is battling for its survival in the United States, with the fight set to play out primarily in courts over the next few months. While lawmakers who passed the bill have said the app is a national security threat because of its ties to China, the courts must now weigh those concerns against TikTok's argument that a sale or ban would violate the First Amendment free-speech rights of its users and hurt small businesses that owe their livelihood to the platform.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: In April, Apple sent notifications to iPhone users in 92 countries, warning them they'd been targeted with spyware. "Apple detected that you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID," the notification reads. Users quickly took to social media sites including X, trying to work out what the notification meant. Many of those targeted were based inIndia, but others in Europe also reported receiving Apple's warning. Weeks later, little is still known about the latest iPhone attacks. Former smartphone giant Blackberry, now a security firm, has released research indicating they are linked to a Chinese spyware campaign dubbed "LightSpy," but Apple spokesperson Shane Bauer says this is inaccurate.

While Apple says the latest spyware notifications aren't linked to LightSpy, the spyware remains a growing threat, particularly to people who may be targeted in Southern Asia, according to Blackberry's researchers. Described as a "sophisticated iOS implant," LightSpy first emerged targeting Hong Kong protesters in 2020. However, the latest iteration is much more capable than the first. "It is a fully-featured modular surveillance toolset that primarily focuses on exfiltrating victims' private information, including hyper-specific location data and sound recording during voice over IP calls," the researchers wrote. April's warnings were not the first time Apple has issued notifications of this kind. The iPhone maker has sent out alerts to people in over 150 countries since 2021 as spyware continues to target high-profile figures across the globe.

Spyware can be weaponized by nation-state adversaries -- but this is relatively rare and expensive. Its deployment is typically highly targeted against a very specific group of people, including journalists, political dissidents, government workers, and businesses in certain sectors. "Such attacks are vastly more complex than regular cybercriminal activity and consumer malware, as mercenary spyware attackers apply exceptional resources to target a very small number of specific individuals and their devices," Apple wrote in an advisory in April. "Mercenary spyware attacks cost millions of dollars and often have a short shelf life, making them much harder to detect and prevent. The vast majority of users will never be targeted by such attacks." Plus, Apple says its Lockdown Mode feature can successfully protect against attacks. "As we have said before, we are not aware of anyone using Lockdown Mode being successfully attacked with mercenary spyware," Bauer says. Still, for those who are targeted and caught unaware, spyware is extremely dangerous. There are a number of ways to protect yourself against spyware and zero-click exploits in particular:

1. Regularly Update Devices: Keep your devices updated to the latest software to protect against known vulnerabilities.
2. Restart Devices Daily: Regularly restarting your device can help disrupt persistent spyware infections by forcing attackers to reinfect the device, potentially increasing their chances of detection.
3. Disable Vulnerable Features: Consider disabling features prone to exploits, such as iMessage and FaceTime, especially if you suspect you're a target for spyware.
4. Use Multifactor Authentication and Secure Sources: Employ multifactor authentication and only install apps from verified sources to prevent unauthorized access and downloads.
5. Monitor for Indicators: Be vigilant for signs of infection such as battery drain, unexpected shutdowns, and high data usage, though these may not always be present with more sophisticated spyware.
6. Seek Professional Help: If you suspect a spyware infection, consider professional assistance or helplines like Access Now's Digital Security Helpline for guidance on removal.
7. Utilize Advanced Security Features: Activate security features like Apple's Lockdown Mode, which limits device functionality to reduce vulnerabilities, thus safeguarding against infections.

Jack Dorsey is no longer on the board of Bluesky, the Twitter alternative he helped start. The announcement comes shortly after Dorsey unfollowed all but three accounts on X and referred to Elon Musk's platform as "freedom technology." The Verge reports: In two posts today, Bluesky thanked Dorsey while confirming his departure and adding that it's searching for a new board member "who shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience." [...] Neither Bluesky nor Dorsey himself seem to have said how or why he left the board. For now, two board members remain: CEO, Jay Graeber, and Jabber / XMPP inventor Jeremie Miller. Dorsey originally backed Bluesky in 2019 as a project to develop an open-source social media standard that he wanted Twitter to move to. He later joined its board of directors when it split from Twitter in 2022.

An anonymous reader shares an essay: Software designers refer to "the good enough principle." It means, simply put, that sometimes you should prioritise functionality over perfection. As a relentless imperfectionist, I'm inclined to embrace this idea. I gave this newsletter its name to encourage myself to post rough versions of my pieces rather than not to write them at all. When it comes to parenting, I'm a Winnicottian: I believe you shouldn't try to be the perfect mum or dad because there's no such thing. At work and in life, it's often true that the optimal strategy is not to strive for the optimal result, but to aim for what works and hope for the best.

The good enough can be a staging post to the perfect. The iPhone's camera was a "good enough" substitute for a compact camera. It did the job, but it wasn't as good as a Kodak or a Fuji. Until it was. Technological innovation often works like this, but the improvement curve isn't always as steep as with the smartphone camera. Sometimes we allow ourselves to get stuck with a product which is good enough to displace the competition, without fulfilling the same range of needs. The psychological and social ramifications can be profound.

Let's say you're a student and you use ChatGPT to write your essays for you. Give it the right prompts and it will produce pieces that are good enough to get the grade you need. That seems like a win: it saves you time and effort, presuming your tutors don't notice or don't care. Maybe you get through the whole of university this way. But be wary of this equilibrium. Over the longer term, you will be stunting the growth of your own mind. The struggle of turning inchoate thought into readable sentences and paragraphs is a powerful exercise for the brain. It's how you get better at thinking. It is thinking.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Mint: Elon Musk-owned social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has launched a new Grok AI-powered feature called 'Stories', which allows users to read summaries of a trending post on the social media platform. The feature is currently only available to X Premium subscribers on the iOS and web versions, and hasn't found its way to the Android application just yet... instead of reading the whole post, they'll have Grok AI summarise it to get the gist of those big news stories. However, since Grok, like other AI chatbots on the market, is prone to hallucination (making things up), X provides a warning at the end of these stories that says: "Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs."
"Access to xAI's chatbot Grok is meant to be a selling point to push users to buy premium subscriptions," reports TechCrunch: A snarky and "rebellious" AI, Grok's differentiator from other AI chatbots like ChatGPT is its exclusive and real-time access to X data. A post published to X on Friday by tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz lays out Elon Musk's further plan for AI-powered news on X, based on an email conversation with the X owner. Kantrowitz says that conversations on X will make up the core of Grok's summaries. Grok won't look at the article text, in other words, even if that's what people are discussing on the platform.
The article notes that some AI companies have been striking expensive licensing deals with news publishers. But in X's case, "it's able to get at the news by way of the conversation around it — and without having to partner to access the news content itself."

"What if the big tech companies achieved their ultimate business goal — maximizing engagement on their platforms — in a way that has undermined our ability to function as an open society?"

That's the question being asked by Chuck Todd, chief political analyst for NBC News: What if they realized that when folks agree on a solution to a problem, they are most likely to log off a site or move on? It sure looks like the people at these major data-hoarding companies have optimized their algorithms to do just that. As a new book argues, Big Tech appears to have perfected a model that has created rhetorical paralysis. Using our own data against us to create dopamine triggers, tech platforms have created "a state of perpetual disagreement across the divide and a concurrent state of perpetual agreement within each side," authors Frank McCourt and Michael Casey write, adding: "Once this uneasy state of divisive 'equilibrium' is established, it creates profit-making opportunities for the platforms to generate revenue from advertisers who prize the sticky highly engaged audiences it generates."

In their new book, "Our Biggest Fight," McCourt (a longtime businessman and onetime owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Casey are attempting a call to action akin to Thomas Paine's 18th century-era "Common Sense." The book argues that "we must act now to embed the core values of a free, democratic society in the internet of tomorrow." The authors believe many of the current ills in society can be traced to how the internet works. "Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our three-decade-old digital system for distributing it is fatally corrupt at its heart," they write. "It has failed to function as a trusted, neutral exchange of facts and ideas and has therefore catastrophically hindered our ability to gather respectfully to debate, to compromise and to hash out solutions.... Everything, ultimately, comes down to our ability to communicate openly and truthfully with one another. We have lost that ability — thanks to how the internet has evolved away from its open, decentralized ideals...."

Ultimately, what the authors are imagining is a new internet that essentially flips the user agreement 180 degrees, so that a tech company has to agree to your terms and conditions to use your data and has to seek your permission (perhaps with compensation) to access your entire social map of whom and what you engage with on the internet. Most important, under such an arrangement, these companies couldn't prevent you from using their services if you refused to let them have your data... Unlike most anti-Big Tech books, this one isn't calling for the breakup of companies like Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft or Apple. Instead, it's calling for a new set of laws that protect data so none of those companies gets to own it, either specifically or in the aggregate...

The authors seem mindful that this Congress or a new one isn't going to act unless the public demands action. And people may not demand this change in our relationship with tech if they don't have an alternative to point to. That's why McCourt, through an organization he founded called Project Liberty, is trying to build our new internet with new protocols that make individual data management a lot easier and second nature. (If you want to understand the tech behind this new internet more, read the book!)
Wait, there's more. The article adds that the authors "envision an internet where all apps and the algorithms that power them are open source and can be audited at will. They believe that simply preventing these private companies from owning and mapping our data will deprive them of the manipulative marketing and behavioral tactics they've used to derive their own power and fortunes at the expense of democracy."

And the NBC News analyst seems to agree. "For whatever reason, despite our societal fear of government databases and government surveillance, we've basically handed our entire personas to the techies of Silicon Valley."

The blog Its FOSS has 15,000 followers for its Mastodon account — which they think is causing problems: When you share a link on Mastodon, a link preview is generated for it, right? With Mastodon being a federated platform (a part of the Fediverse), the request to generate a link preview is not generated by just one Mastodon instance. There are many instances connected to it who also initiate requests for the content almost immediately. And, this "fediverse effect" increases the load on the website's server in a big way.

Sure, some websites may not get overwhelmed with the requests, but Mastodon does generate numerous hits, increasing the load on the server. Especially, if the link reaches a profile with more followers (and a broader network of instances)... We tried it on our Mastodon profile, and every time we shared a link, we were able to successfully make our website unresponsive or slow to load.
Slashdot reader nunojsilva is skeptical that "blurbs with a thumbnail and description" could create the issue (rather than, say, poorly-optimized web content). But the It's Foss blog says they found three GitHub issues about the same problem — one from 2017, and two more from 2023. And other blogs also reported the same issue over a year ago — including software developer Michael Nordmeyer and legendary Netscape programmer Jamie Zawinski.

And back in 2022, security engineer Chris Partridge wrote: [A] single roughly ~3KB POST to Mastodon caused servers to pull a bit of HTML and... an image. In total, 114.7 MB of data was requested from my site in just under five minutes — making for a traffic amplification of 36704:1. [Not counting the image.]
Its Foss reports Mastodon's official position that the issue has been "moved as a milestone for a future 4.4.0 release. As things stand now, the 4.4.0 release could take a year or more (who knows?)."

They also state their opinion that the issue "should have been prioritized for a faster fix... Don't you think as a community-powered, open-source project, it should be possible to attend to a long-standing bug, as serious as this one?"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Join your localMilitia or III% Patriot Group," a post urged the more than 650 members of a Facebook group called the Free American Army. Accompanied by the logo for the Three Percenters militia network and an image of a man in tactical gear holding a long rifle, the post continues: "Now more than ever. Support the American militia page." Other content and messaging in the group is similar. And despite the fact that Facebook bans paramilitary organizing and deemed the Three Percenters an "armed militia group" on its 2021 Dangerous Individuals and Organizations List, the post and group remained up until WIRED contacted Meta for comment about its existence.

Free American Army is just one of around 200 similar Facebook groups and profiles, most of which are still live, that anti-government and far-right extremists are using to coordinate local militia activity around the country. After lying low for several years in the aftermath of the US Capitol riot on January 6, militia extremists have been quietly reorganizing, ramping up recruitment and rhetoric on Facebook -- with apparently little concern that Meta will enforce its ban against them, according to new research by the Tech Transparency Project, shared exclusively with WIRED.

Individuals across the US with long-standing ties to militia groups are creating networks of Facebook pages, urging others to recruit "active patriots" and attend meetups, and openly associating themselves with known militia-related sub-ideologies like that of the anti-government Three Percenter movement. They're also advertising combat training and telling their followers to be "prepared" for whatever lies ahead. These groups are trying to facilitate local organizing, state by state and county by county. Their goals are vague, but many of their posts convey a general sense of urgency about the need to prepare for "war" or to "stand up" against many supposed enemies, including drag queens, immigrants, pro-Palestine college students, communists -- and the US government. These groups are also rebuilding at a moment when anti-government rhetoric has continued to surge in mainstream political discourse ahead of a contentious, high-stakes presidential election. And by doing all of this on Facebook, they're hoping to reach a broader pool of prospective recruits than they would on a comparatively fringe platform like Telegram. "Many of these groups are no longer fractured sets of localized militia but coalitions formed between multiple militia groups, many with Three Percenters at the helm," said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project. "Facebook remains the largest gathering place for extremists and militia movements to cast a wide net and funnel users to more private chats, including on the platform, where they can plan and coordinate with impunity."

Paul has been monitoring "hundreds" of these groups and profiles since 2021 and found that they have been growing "increasingly emboldened with more serious and coordinated organizing" in the past year.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Relations between Russia and Germany were already tense, with Germany providing military support to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Russian state hackers were behind a cyberattack last year that targeted the Social Democrats, the leading party in the governing coalition. "Russian state hackers attacked Germany in cyberspace," she said at a news conference in the Australian city of Adelaide. "We can attribute this attack to the group called APT28, which is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia."

"This is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences," she said. The Russian Embassy in Germany on Friday denied Moscow was involved in a 2023 cyberattack. In a statement the embassy said its envoy "categorically rejected the accusations that Russian state structures were involved in the given incident ... as unsubstantiated and groundless." The Council of the EU later said that Czechia's institutions have also been a target of the cyber campaign. In a statement by the EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, the bloc's nations said they "strongly condemn the malicious cyber campaign conducted by the Russia-controlled Advanced Persistent Threat Actor 28 (APT28) against Germany and Czechia." Further reading: EU and NATO Condemn Russian Cyber Attacks Against Germany and Czechia.

When given the choice, pet parrots prefer to video-call each other instead of watch pre-recorded videos of other birds. Those are the findings from a new paper (PDF) set to appear next week at a conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Hawaii. Phys.Org reports: The study, led by animal-computer interaction specialists at the University of Glasgow, gave tablet devices to nine parrots and their owners to explore the potential of the video chats to expand the birds' social lives. Their results suggest that the clever birds, who often suffer from loneliness in captivity, may be able to tell the difference between live and pre-recorded content on digital devices, and strongly prefer interacting with other birds in real time.

Over the course of the six-month study, the parrots chose to initiate calls to other birds significantly more often than they opted to watch pre-recorded footage. They also seemed more engaged in the live chats, spending much longer on calls with other birds than they did watching videos from a library of options. The findings could help steer the future course of the emerging "animal internet," which uses digital technology to empower animals to interact with humans and each other in new ways.