In line with upcoming regulations, like the European Union’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), we will also be introducing a new age verification step over the next few months. As part of this process some European users may be asked to provide additional proof of age when attempting to watch mature content. If our systems are unable to establish that a viewer is above the age of 18, we will request that they provide a valid ID or credit card to verify their age.

A little bit of background on where this is coming from. ET gov is currently facing unprecedented tensions that can be generally classified under efforts at political centralization v political federation. Because of the opportunism of former cabal of corrupt and despotic individuals who ruled the country since early 1990s, armed conflict in the Tigray region sparked global information waves, especially in the diaspora. Ethiopian diaspora is huge, composed also of intellectuals who were forced out during major political moments like 1974 revolution, 1990s transition, and 2005 election purge. The current gov has been on the receiving end of this information battles, with digital spaces overrun by anti-centralization, anti-Abiy discourse. Feeling the heat, the government accuses digital platforms of supporting such ‘disinformation’ and failing to stick to ‘government facts’. This is why they are calling for their own platforms. Perhaps ones they can easily control and should they differ with American platforms like Facebook and Twitter, they will still have their followers drinking from their ‘facts’. Nigeria tiff with Twitter may have given them ideas…

To know that expenditure decisions (both big and petty) for billions of people are increasingly tied to your identity in a very dynamic way is quite a milestone in our society. While it feels like the dam is breaking and cash sticklers like me are just pushing back in a lost war, I also see a chance to amplify all those ideas people have been working on on distributed payment systems that are accepted by the corner store, digital, anonymous, and stable.

welcome to Lemmy! Look around and participate in shaping how the communities evolve. Frontend is decoupled from the backend so you can create whatever frontend works for you while losing nothing from the wider federated community.

building a large wall around the smaller walls

Interesting point. Never saw it from that perspective.

Most conventional wisdom on why networked people find it hard to exit said network is the network effects, which is amplified by being known by your real name and identity to the other network members/nodes. Seeing as Reddit has a pseudonymous identification system, I wonder to what extent that deflates the exit resistance force. Reputation (say karma or community level creds) may keep people in exploitative networks but I am not well versed in these things to make informed conclusions.

As noted, the share was for the comments on HN as a great way of listening to what people consider as Reddit’s pain points.

I wonder how long non-official apps will be free to access the API gratis, as they do now, seeign as the monitization drive is high. Re linking to the original article, my focus was on the comments folks on HN made regarding this specific issue. Thank you for linking to the article.

From reading that thread (more of getting pain points from people out there so I can help improve Lemmy), I got the feeling that a decent mobile experience is probably 60% what such folks are looking for. I think Lemmy has a great advantage on the backend, and a mobile experience would be a great way to keep user generated content and comments flowing. I use Apollo for Reddit and I would donate to get that kind of experience for Lemmy. Lemmur is actually really good and I think it can get better with more UI refinements.

An important caveat is " insofar as it is just a host, and not contributing to giving access." Content recommendation algorithms may be a clear way where YouTube would lose their intermediary liability protection. I also wonder if a creator can provide copies of their work to YouTube in advance as a condition of prewarned.

Same question I keep asking on why these governments that are so furious with Twitter for flagging and deleting some tweets from their presidents can’t initiate their instances for all official posts. Perhaps they fear there will be no traction. But either way, the pull force of these commercial and private platforms is very strong. Some don’t know alternatives exist.

As @miguel@lemmy.ml pointed, make sure you are generating the right rss link between subscribed, local, and All. For a specific community, you want the local option.

A digital collection of free African Gazettes. 34650 gazettes and growing daily, as at June 1 2021.

While I believe that based on context this move better than silence, I also believe Ethiopia is best served by local mechanism. The U.S. has no moral ground to order countries around on ‘cease hostilities’. Ethiopian activists have to take charge of their political process – US or others should come in as observers.

The biggest problem—and this isn’t limited to web development—is how it has baked exploitation into the core worldview of so many people. We use open-source software. We get paid to use open-source software. Our employers benefit, but the money never trickles down—money never trickles down. This is fine when the project in question is directly funded by a tech multinational. Less so when the project is something specialised, a little bit niche, or inventive, and therefore not financed by a gigantic corporation.

Ever wondered why management practices in web software are dominated by short term concerns that are self-destructive in the long term? Because managers know what they are supposed to do, even if they don’t exactly know why. Speed is of the essence because you aren’t doing anything unique. You aren’t creating tech of your own or building on a hard-earned understanding of the clientele. You are using your funding to race against others to see who manages to squeeze the most business out of the underlying OSS before the funding runs out.

I found that quite profound.

Obligatory xkcd

Yes indeed. Quoting their statement after the event:

The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.

Seems neo-lib publications are all over government backed digital currencies: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/the-rise-of-central-bank-digital-currencies/

As major polluters reframe the conversation and act as the guardians, it is likely they will come to places like Mbenje to show them how to protect the environment. Please keep documenting this.