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VOICE ARCHIVE

Alec Muffett

@alecmuffett
80 posts
2026-02-16
UK Government: “Infinite Scrolling leads to CSAM” [image]
2026-02-16 View on X
Financial Times

Keir Starmer says “no platform gets a free pass”, as the UK moves to amend safety laws to include AI chatbots like Grok, which made sexualized deepfakes of kids

Keir Starmer to warn tech companies that ‘no platform gets a free pass’ after deepfake scandal involving Grok

2024-06-20
The EU commissioner for Justice finally says the quiet part out loud, that the goal of #ChatControl is to break encrypted messaging. Taken from https://www.youtube.com/...
2024-06-20 View on X
Politico

EU diplomats: an EU Council vote to amend a draft law that would have forced WhatsApp and Signal to scan images and links for CSAM was removed from the agenda

Countries clash over how to safeguard privacy when rooting out illegal pictures and grooming on private chat apps.

2024-05-13
How to protect our children: software should be hard to use and unpleasant, requiring lots of manual effort to drive it. This will prevent addiction. After all you don't see people addicted to Microsoft Excel, do you?
2024-05-13 View on X
Financial Times

Researcher Sonia Livingstone says constraining tech companies and empowering young people and parents are better alternatives to banning kids from social media

Henry Mance / Financial Times : X: @soph_butch , @henrymance , @mollyroseorg , @henrymance , @cooksimon , @katebevan , @henrymance , @alecmuffett , @ciesiolkiewicz , @henrymance ,...

2024-05-09
@jamesrbuk My take is that the forces of stupidity and repression are gearing up to get as much achieved during the pre-election wash-up as possible, so that they can get legislation pushed through on a nod of soon to expire MPs.
2024-05-09 View on X
BBC

Ofcom proposes new rules requiring tech companies to change their algorithms to hide “toxic” material from children, have more robust age checks, and more

It focuses on proposals for how internet services … Emma Martins : This draft Code is one of the first steps by Ofcom, UK independent communications regulator, in respect of its ne...

2024-04-23
I understand your criticism from a strategic benefit perspective but I don't think it's fair; in terms of contributions to open source, FB has a massive history of sharing engineering development in an open manner.  It gets underreported because of the perennial and reasonable criticism of other aspects of the company https://opensource.fb.com/
2024-04-23 View on X
CNET

Meta opens its VR OS, now called Horizon OS, to third parties, and says Asus and Lenovo plan Horizon OS-compatible headsets; Meta plans an Xbox branded Quest

Apple released the Vision Pro on February 2; 12 days later Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered his verdict: Ben Lang / Road to VR : Oculus Founder Reacts to Horizon OS News: “Hopefu...

2024-04-16
@jamesrbuk Can we call this the #helicopterparentscharter https://twitter.com/...
2024-04-16 View on X
Bloomberg

Sources: the UK plans talks this month with Apple, Meta, and others to push a voluntary charter granting parents more control of social media use by young teens

Ellen Milligan / Bloomberg : X: @arollingsloane , @jamesrbuk , @alecmuffett , and @webdevlaw X: @arollingsloane : they shouldn't agree too it bcos the ‘disturbing content’ is lite...

2023-12-28
iPhone Triangulation attack abused undocumented hardware feature | iPhones are “secure” except for the magic keys which are left underneath an undocumented doormat https://alecmuffett.com/...
2023-12-28 View on X
Ars Technica

Researchers detail a zero-click iMessage attack that for over four years used four zero-days to hack iPhones, including dozens belonging to Kaspersky employees

“Triangulation” infected dozens of iPhones belonging to employees of Moscow-based Kaspersky.  —  Researchers on Wednesday …

2023-11-16
Annoying.  Apart from anything else this implies a more complex API will be needed to denote tags to attach to posts, plus it also breaks expectations of Mastodon users & integration.  Hashtags are an infix source of truth.  That's what makes them good.  As a former Facebook engineer I know that Facebook is very allergic to free text search, but this is not really something to break expectations regarding.  Cc: @chris
2023-11-16 View on X
TechCrunch

Threads tests tags, which categorizes and links posts with a hashtag but without showing the # symbol, initially in Australia and “soon” in other countries

Instagram's Threads app has been duping Twitter/X in a number of ways and today it's adding one more feature that's …

2023-08-23
It is not an understatement that software companies which have an engineering base in the United Kingdom will henceforth have suspect code quality with delayed fixes for security vulnerabilities. Public bug bounties and holding corporations to account will be ever more critical.
2023-08-23 View on X
Just Security

A look at potential issues in the UK's plans to revise its Investigatory Powers Act, including blocking end-to-end encryption and slowing down security updates

Ioannis Kouvakas / Just Security : X: @sailingbikeruk , @rodolfor , @mer__edith , @misanthropegirl , @alecmuffett , @jjaron , @jsrailton , @jsrailton , @jsrailton , @jamesrbuk , a...

Props to the team! https://twitter.com/...
2023-08-23 View on X
The Verge

Meta says it remains committed to rolling out default E2EE for Messenger, which has opt-in E2EE, by the end of 2023, and shortly afterwards for Instagram DMs

Meta plans to roll out default end-to-end encryption for its Messenger product by the end of this year, the company confirmed in a blog post Tuesday.

This is unalloyed good news for global deployment of privacy and data security: > We remain on track to launch default E2EE for one-to-one friends and family chats on Messenger by the end of the year. https://messengernews.fb.com/ ... [image]
2023-08-23 View on X
The Verge

Meta says it remains committed to rolling out default E2EE for Messenger, which has opt-in E2EE, by the end of 2023, and shortly afterwards for Instagram DMs

Meta plans to roll out default end-to-end encryption for its Messenger product by the end of this year, the company confirmed in a blog post Tuesday.

2023-07-20
WOW: - No Signal - No WhatsApp - No iMessage - No Facetime @jamesrbuk called it #internexit; the UK will be extraordinarily isolated from the rest of the internet. https://www.bbc.com/...
2023-07-20 View on X
BBC

Apple threatens to remove FaceTime and iMessage from the UK rather than weaken security under a proposed security bill amendment, dubbed a “snooper's charter”

Apple says it will remove services such as FaceTime and iMessage from the UK rather than weaken security if new proposals are made law and acted upon.

When Signal and WhatsApp have fled the surveillance of the #OnlineSafetyBill, what app will still be around for politicans, journalists, and actual normal people to use, securely. The answer might be this: https://alecmuffett.com/...
2023-07-20 View on X
BBC

Apple threatens to remove FaceTime and iMessage from the UK rather than weaken security under a proposed security bill amendment, dubbed a “snooper's charter”

Apple says it will remove services such as FaceTime and iMessage from the UK rather than weaken security if new proposals are made law and acted upon.

2023-06-17
Oh dear. It sounds like the Reddit CEO has forgotten that he/they serve the communities which use the site, rather than vice versa. https://www.nbcnews.com/...
2023-06-17 View on X
NBC News

Steve Huffman praises Elon Musk's aggressive cost-cutting and layoffs at Twitter and says he saw Musk's handling of Twitter as an example for Reddit to follow

Steve Huffman said in an interview that Elon Musk's cost-cutting at Twitter was inspiring and that the two have chatted “a handful of times.”

Oh dear. It sounds like the Reddit CEO has forgotten that he/they serve the communities which use the site, rather than vice versa. https://www.nbcnews.com/...
2023-06-17 View on X
The Verge

Q&A with Steve Huffman: Reddit's API “was never designed to support third-party apps”, he didn't know how much they “were profiting off of our API”, and more

2023-06-16
Oh dear. It sounds like the Reddit CEO has forgotten that he/they serve the communities which use the site, rather than vice versa. https://www.nbcnews.com/...
2023-06-16 View on X
The Verge

Q&A: Steve Huffman says Reddit's API was “never designed to support third-party apps” and he didn't know how much the apps were “profiting off of our API”

Reddit is fighting for its soul. … Huffman has argued the changes are a business decision …

2023-05-12
Moral (i.e. Political) Campaigners blundering onto the Internet and telling people how to write code, basically. https://www.wired.co.uk/...
2023-05-12 View on X
Wired

A profile of Swedish politician and EU Home Affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson, who has become a divisive figure during the debate over CSAM and privacy

Ylva Johansson is on a personal mission to make the internet safer for children.  Her opponents say her plans would wreck online privacy. Tweets: @alecmuffett , @vrateau , @alecmuf...

Interesting to see @WIRED propagates @YlvaJohansson's misinformation: “[she] argues publicly that encrypted messengers like WhatsApp already scan their users' messages for suspicious links” There's a difference between “Fake URLs contain Umlauts” versus: “AI-Scanning for Nudity” https://twitter.com/...
2023-05-12 View on X
Wired

A profile of Swedish politician and EU Home Affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson, who has become a divisive figure during the debate over CSAM and privacy

Ylva Johansson is on a personal mission to make the internet safer for children.  Her opponents say her plans would wreck online privacy. Tweets: @alecmuffett , @vrateau , @alecmuf...

2023-03-10
Major props to @wcathcart and @whatsapp. Journalists covering this should take time and steps to explain that “weakening security” includes (e.g.) leaving the encryption unchanged and instead adding content-scanning software to the app. https://www.bbc.com/... https://twitter.com/...
2023-03-10 View on X
The Guardian

Meta's Head of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart, says the service would refuse to comply with the UK's Online Safety Bill requirements to remove end-to-end encryption

2023-03-08
Sad times: https://www.theverge.com/...
2023-03-08 View on X
The Verge

Twitter lets the certificate for its Tor onion site expire, effectively killing off the privacy-preserving and speech-protecting service after one year

Twitter has allowed the certificate for its Tor onion site to expire, effectively killing off a privacy- and speech-protecting service that it introduced last year.