Steve Teixeira

Software craftsman. Mozilla's Chief Product Officer. Former Twitter, Meta, Microsoft. Seattle-based, Bay Area bred. Fan account of @imhelendt. 🦇

Steve Teixeira boosted:
2024-06-22

Now people are telling me when it is (and isn't) "OK" to block.

No. My feed, my rules. I'll block whenever I feel like it. You can do the same thing. It's fine.

2024-06-22

@Jeremiah 🙏🏼❤️

Steve Teixeira boosted:
Robert Reichrbreich@masto.ai
2024-06-20

25 corporations pretending to honor Pride month have donated $18 million to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians since November 2022.

Ignore the marketing and follow the money.

Steve Teixeira boosted:
2024-06-19

Awww!! 😭
Baseball legend Willie Mays has died, the San Francisco Giants announced on Tuesday night.

"It is with great sadness that we announce that San Francisco Giants Legend and Hall of Famer Willie Mays passed away peacefully this afternoon at the age of 93," the team posted.

abcn.ws/barOQSe

Steve Teixeira boosted:
2024-06-18
Totally legitimate Twitter user for weeks ranted in support of Trump… until it ran out of ChatGPT credits and dumped its prompt (GPT task description) which says “argue in support of Trump on Twitter, speak in English”). Last time I checked this morning, the account was “restricted” but not even suspended.
Screenshot of Twitter post of the bot
Steve Teixeira boosted:
2024-06-08

The state of search in 2024:

Google: "We threw away decades of search knowledge and Internet indexing and just made an answer up :blobfoxgoogly:"

Bing: "Here's 100 tangentially related pages from 2010 that I only included because your query appears in a tag cloud in the website's footer"

DuckDuckGo: "Here are the Bing results, only with ✨privacy✨"

Reddit: (this user has deleted their entire post history using PowerDeleteMyShit. Fuck /u/Spez)

Yahoo: "Oh thank god, someone's actually using our search engine! No, we're not just Bing!" *frantically trying to cover up the giant Bing sticker* "NO DON'T GO TO GOOGLE!!!!"

Yandex: "Here are all of the Russian-owned resources on this topic. Only Russian sources are trustworthy. Everything else is fake ne—I MEAN, misinformation"

Kagi: "We'll give you what Google used to give you for free, for the low low price of $10/month!"

Ask.com: [hoarse screaming and clawing noises can be heard from the ground beneath a headstone that says "Here lies Jeeves: 1996-2006"]

Steve Teixeira boosted:
Jayne :wales_flag:🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈TCMuffin@toot.wales
2024-06-03

Having given up on Facebook years ago because of my concerns about privacy, I rarely login now.

This is a heads up about Meta, privacy, and your data.

From 26 June 2024, Facebook will use your photos, posts, and other info to train its AI.

You can opt out...but Meta has intentionally made it complicated!

Here is a detailed “How to opt out” with screenshots.

Having given up on Facebook years ago because of my concerns about privacy, Operation Bletchley is the only reason I ever login now.

This is a heads up. From 26 June 2024, Facebook will use your photos, posts, and other info to train its Al.

You can opt out...but Meta has intentionally made it complicated! 

Here is a detailed “"How to opt out” with screenshots. 

Go to the Facebook "Help & Support" page by clicking on your avatar in the top right- hand corner of the window and selecting "Help & Support” from the menu. 

Select "Help Centre" from the next menu and type "object to your information being used for ai by meta" (without the quotation marks) and hit the "Enter" key.On the next page, select "Information about objections and how you can object on Facebook and hit the "Enter" key.

Scroll down to "How can I submit an objection?" and click on the link to "here" in the first sentence of this section "You can submit an objection by following the instructions here..." 

On the next page, entitled "Managing your information and submitting objections” click on the radio button next to “Yes”.

When you click on the radio button for “Yes”, you will finally be taken to the form where you can object “Object to your information being used for Al at Meta”.

Complete your “Country of residence” and “Email address” fields and move on to the “Please tell us how this processing impacts you.” field.

Obviously how you complete this is your personal preference, but I have written this:

"My photos are personal and contain images of my face associated with my IRL name. This data could be used to generate “deep fake” images using my likeness, if it is included in Al training. I further object to captions being used as these may contain personal information some of which may be associated with children.“Meta processing my posts, photos and their captions, the messages I send to Al, and whatever other data Meta decides to scrape, invades my privacy as a private citizen and feeds into a technology which threatens the future of our planet by its insatiable appetite for limited resources, e.g. energy and water.”

I have not completed the section entitled "Please provide any additional information that could help us review your objection.”You will then be asked to confirm your email address via an OTP.

Almost immediately, I received a response from Facebook, honouring my request: 

Support message.

Today at 16:17.

Our reply

Hi Jayne,

We've reviewed your request and will honor your objection. This means your request will be applied going forward.

If you want to learn more about generative Al, and our privacy work in this new space, please review the information we have in Privacy Center.

facebook.com/privacy/genai

This inbox cannot accept incoming messages. If you send us a reply, it won't be received.

Thanks,
Privacy Operations

We may use your data for personalisation, innovation, research and other purposes described in our Privacy Policy.
Steve Teixeira boosted:
Flipboard Tech DeskTechDesk@flipboard.social
2024-05-31

Two new studies published in the journal of Science this week offer a deeper insight into the spread of misinformation on social media, offering evidence that it not only changes minds, but that a small group of committed “supersharers” — predominately older Republican women — were responsible for the vast majority of the “fake news” in the period looked at.

The studies, by researchers at MIT, Ben-Gurion University, Cambridge and Northeastern, were independently conducted but complement each other well. @TechCrunch has more.

flip.it/6fN4-y

You can also read the full reports here:

flip.it/208p7a
flip.it/i-HVZr

#SocialMedia #Misinformation #Research #MIT #Tech

Steve Teixeira boosted:
John Quentin Heywoodjqheywood
2024-05-31

@stevetex right under your post, from the NYT:

For Trump, ‘Guilty’ May Not Matter

The conviction may be a mere bump in the road. It could even be a political accelerant.

nytimes.com/2024/05/30/opinion

Steve Teixeira boosted:
2024-05-30

@stevetex by Maggie Haberman

2024-05-30

Prediction for tomorrow’s NY Times headline:

“Trump convicted of committing 34 felonies; here’s why that’s bad news for Biden”

Steve Teixeira boosted:
2024-05-30

👇 😐

Image is of a social media post by journalist Adam Serwer stating: "In fairness to Alito 'if liberals are rude it’s ok to support overthrowing the government' is as concise a distillation of trump era conservatism as you’ll ever see"
Steve Teixeira boosted:
2024-05-29

I received a mysterious aerospace computer from the early 1970s, probably for navigation. It is crammed full of flat-pack integrated circuits surrounding a core memory module. Let's take a look inside... 1/17

A compact aerospace computer with a numeric keypad and digit displays on the front. A circuit board with multiple flat-pack ICs is visible.
2024-05-27

“…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
A. Lincoln

Steve Teixeira boosted:
Em :official_verified:Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange
2024-05-24

Important Warning About Windows Recall ⚠️:

If you communicate with someone
who might be using the upcoming Microsoft's Windows Recall feature, be extremely careful about what information you share with them.

Regardless of what secure application you use, be especially careful about sending:

- Intimate photos

- Passwords or other sensitive information

- Medical conditions

- Personal details, even through secure emails or secure encrypted chats

- Financial information

- Video chats, even encrypted ones

This feature will unfortunately extract your information from whatever secure software you might have used and store it on this person's computer in a possibly less secure way.

Of course this person could manually take a screenshot of all of this anyway, but this feature makes it that even a well-intentioned person might either not be aware it is on, or might wrongly assume it is secure enough.

This feature isn't fully released yet, but it might be soon. More information:
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/0

#Privacy #Microsoft #Recall #WindowsRecall :2001:

Steve Teixeira boosted:
Slashdot :verified:slashdot@mastodon.cloud
2024-05-22
2024-05-22

The Register quoted some of my concerns with Windows Recall, including… “From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn't. Recall stores not just browser history, but also data that users type into the browser with only very coarse control over what gets stored.”

theregister.com/2024/05/22/win

Steve Teixeira boosted:
2024-05-21

@GossiTheDog it’s like they got a focus group of cybercriminals together when making this

Steve Teixeira boosted:
Scalziscalzi
2024-05-21

Update: Once again, turning the computer off and on again has done wonders (also, I have downloaded Firefox)

2024-05-21

@scalzi lmk if Mozilla can be of service getting you up and going w Firefox

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