In the omnibus, antitrust enforcement in rural America - oversight of Packers and Stockyards Act - got a boost of $5 million, which is a 25% bump from its budget of $24 million. https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Division%20A%20-%20Agriculture%20Statement%20FY23.pdf

While I'm at it, every now and then we've seen alliances between civil rights organizations and platform giants on certain issues. I think, this has become increasingly problematic, and moving forward there must be a much clearer distinction from the tech industry's interests.

Oh. my. god.

Madison Square Garden used facial recognition to identify and stop a mom from attending a Christmas show with her kid because she's an attorney at a firm who is engaged in litigation with them.

This is why it's not enough to just ban government and law enforcement use of #facialrecognition. There are so many ways private companies and even individuals can abuse #biometric #surveillance tech.

#BanFacialRecognition entirely. Yesterday.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/msgs-facial-recognition-stops-mom-from-attending-christmas-show-with-child/4004471/

@adamconover What about those of us who hate fun and healthy voyages of self-discovery?

A powerful statement by the Federal Trade Commission. Epic Games - the creator of Fortnite - was subject to a half a billion dollar fine and significant remedial action for helping predators exploit kids through their video game system. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations

My perfect woman has the brain of Marie Curie, the face of Audrey Hepburn & the body of Marilyn Monroe. This obsession with extreme memorabilia is perhaps her only flaw.

Seriously, the most fun I ever had online was in the years prior to 2008 - when instead of visiting just one or two huge sites over and over, I spent my days wandering from message board to personal site to proto-social network in search of cool people and cool stuff. If we move just 1% back in that direction - with people visiting Mastodon, AND Cohost, AND whatever the fuck other sites they like - I'll be very happy.

Musk just said Twitter was near bankrupt in May. It's hard to see how it is any closer to solvency now, considering Musk just added $13B in high cost debt to the firm. Sure he took out some of the cost structure by firing thousands of people, but added that back in and then some with the borrowings.

If you can't trust the Chinese Communist Party to tell the truth about Covid deaths, who can you trust? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-18/reports-of-beijing-covid-deaths-fuel-speculation-china-covering-up-data?srnd=premium

And Musk has already reversed the policy barring linking out to rivals.

So Musk has already abandoned his policy to bar links to rivals.

Life comes at you fast, @jack@twitter.com

Now that Musk has blocked linking to competing social media sites I think it's clear that he will do whatever he can to monetize the platform in predatory or extractive ways. I'm going to try a few other social networks for real.