Fair point and you may be joking because it’s a good question for that. If serious, I honestly don’t know what the odds are in a gamble like that. Was he “lucky” or do most people the police abuse like this get big payouts? Is it worth forgoing legal counsel in the hopes that the police screw up in a manner that can be prosecuted into a payout?

If I knew I was going to get 900k I’d likely be willing to go through such a rough day, but those are quite the dice to roll in the moment methinks. If I ever end up in a police station my plan is to get counsel.

Remember in many countries you have the right to legal counsel and to have them present during any questioning. Getting said counsel should be a priority if you find yourself in a police station. Be respectful but clear from the start that you aren’t discussing your day until the lawyer/attorney is present.

This story is exactly why people need to be educated about their rights. If this poor guy had asked for an attorney the cops would have had to stop the interview immediately until one was present. I imagine once they resumed the question it would have gone differently with a legal professional in the room.

Worked through my obsessions a bit and let go of them. In the following weeks I asked three women out and got shot down each time instead of thinking about doing so for a month and being a creep.

Unironically, good on you. That’s character progress and it takes a lot of courage and self-confidence to accept rejection in a mature way and keep trying regardless. For what it’s worth I as an Internet stranger think we should help more people do the same sort of things.

Her name is [kept to myself because I’m a gentleman who doesn’t kiss and tell]. I hope I, in turn, am not someone’s most alarming thing but it’s possible :P

I’d say it’s sometimes ok, sometimes necessary for brevity, and sometimes accurate. Accurate = “All people need oxygen, water, and calories to survive.” Brevity = “Generally speaking, people enjoy good food and good company so those situations work well for forming relationships.”

Consequences of generalizations have a lot to do with how tolerable they are. If I say, “most people like pizza” there’s not much harm if several million people don’t. If I say, “all or most people of this gender/ethnicity/religion/whatever have X problem” that’s a lot more problematic because it can easily lead to a consequence of harmful prejudice. When it comes to matters of ethics, beliefs, accusations etc. it becomes very important to handle cases individually as much as humanly possible.

I’m really hoping that’s an Office Space reference.

First measles, now rabies…these folks keep trying to resurrect diseases but I’m holding out for smallpox. Nothing less is going to satisfy my science denial hard-on.

To people who aren’t sure if this should be illegal or what the big deal is: according to Harvard clinical psychiatrist and instructor Dr. Alok Kanojia (aka Dr. K from HealthyGamerGG), once non-consensual pornography (which deepfakes are classified as) is made public over half of people involved will have the urge to kill themselves. There’s also extreme risk of feeling depressed, angry, anxiety, etc. The analogy given is it’s like watching video the next day of yourself undergoing sex without consent as if you’d been drugged.

I’ll admit I used to look at celeb deepfakes, but once I saw that video I stopped immediately and avoid it as much as I possibly can. I believe porn can be done correctly with participant protection and respect. Regarding deepfakes/revenge porn though that statistic about suicidal ideation puts it outside of healthy or ethical. Obviously I can’t make that decision for others or purge the internet, but the fact that there’s such regular and extreme harm for the (what I now know are) victims of non-consensual porn makes it personally immoral. Not because of religion or society but because I want my entertainment to be at minimum consensual and hopefully fun and exciting, not killing people or ruining their happiness.

I get that people say this is the new normal, but it’s already resulted in trauma and will almost certainly continue to do so. Maybe even get worse as the deepfakes get more realistic.

I still have a 13-year Reddit account but I went from posting several times a week last year to never in the last few months because of abusive moderation. I got banned for a comment saying the US should take the money it gives Israel and give it to Ukraine instead, in those words (no hate speech, no rules broken). When I appealed the only reply was an insult, and when I messaged the mod team I got a 3-day site wide ban from the Reddit moderation team for harassment (I wasn’t abusive at all, just asked why I had been banned and for more feedback than a 4-word insult). I never received any other communication than being insulted, not even clarification on what rule I’d broken, so they lost me.

For what it’s worth, about a month in Lemmy feels more like old Reddit where you can have disagreements with people without mods stepping in and banning the side they disagree with. I keep it civil even in disagreement and so far so good. I only go back to Reddit to check on specialty boards (like video game tips etc) and don’t interact.

That’s brutal because it’s so fitting. Well played.

I guess I’ll adjust my life goals to “hot cyberpunk partner in technological dystopia”, because that sounds like some Bladerunner/Cyberpunk 2077 stuff.

I had not read anything like that but a quick search pulled up this story from last September by Wired that supports your post: FBI Agents Are Using Face Recognition Without Proper Training. “Yet only 5 percent of the 200 agents with access to the technology have taken the bureau’s three-day training course on how to use it, a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) this month reveals.” So it sounds like you’re right, and also that they are probably inadequately trained even if they complete all 3 days on how to identify people with legal ramifications.

Israel is the type of control-heavy far-right state other dictators wish they could govern, and it’s made possible by Western money and technology (I was going to name just the US but my country of Canada, among others, is not blameless either). This news also sucks because there’s no way that tech is staying in Israel only. Citizens of the world better brace for convictions via AI facial recognition.

“Our computer model was able to reconstruct this image of the defendant nearly perfectly. It got the hands wrong and one eye is off-center, but otherwise that’s clearly them committing the crime.”

Reddit doesn’t function like a real business (i.e. most of the work is unpaid volunteers, users and especially mods). There’s no genuine site-wide code of ethics beyond what will actually get them criminal charges. The written rules don’t matter - many moderators are unpaid bullies who permaban if their feelings are hurt and ignore questionable content they agree with. That system of banning users based on opinion kills discussion of “unapproved” views and sorts people into forums where their favorite opinions (and often outright hatreds) are popular. Loathe a particular race/gender/political ideology etc? Just find a subreddit where the mods agree and you’ll be fine saying some truly terrible stuff. Read the bloodthirsty posts on r/worldnews and tell me if the site-wide rules on not promoting violence or racism apply. For these reasons and more I don’t think anyone should be buying into their IPO because they aren’t a reliable business.

I don’t know if Lemmy is different because I’ve been here for less than a month, but at least here it feels like you can have different opinions and the worst that happens is you eat downvotes. Plus a lot of the really unethical takes are usually checked pretty hard in my (limited) experience by the users, which doesn’t happen when the only other voices are basically guaranteed to agree with you (a la most of Reddit).

The rest of this is just my Reddit survivor tale so if you don’t care stop here. I got invited to the IPO on the same week I got a 3-day site-wide ban after appealing a subreddit permaban for a fairly popular comment that the US should stop funding Israel and give the money to Ukraine (on a post about how the US is having trouble finding money for Ukraine). In those words, no hate speech or racism etc. When I asked why I was banned I got a 4-word insult as the only communication back. I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, but it sure felt like I was being deliberately censored/punished for high-ish profile “dangerous” anti-Israeli opinion. May not be the case, but it was my first site-wide ban ever for a comment that broke no written rules.

My Reddit account is 13 years old and in 2023 I think I made about 100k karma, primarily with comments about history, education, and in one case a post about how awesome sperm whales are. My experience mirrors what I’ve read happens to others enough that Reddit has lost my participation (I’ve only posted 2x in the last 3 months, down from a few times daily) and my faith. I only go back to check on specialist communities (video game tips etc) and almost never participate anymore. Frankly I hope it either changes to allow for discussion or dies.

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Wow, I never knew about that and it’s not just a small fee either. This 2020 article has it at 9,500 Euro/10,300 USD. “Some observers worry Nature’s €9500 publishing fee is so high that it threatens to divide authors into two tiers—those at wealthy institutions or with access to funds to pay, and everyone else.”

It’s already hard enough getting funding in some fields of science without that kind of added expense to put your data out there. Definitely sounds like you’re right to call them out.

It’s interesting reading quotes from that article like: “If you can’t verify what someone else has said at some other point, you’re just trusting to blind faith for artefacts that you can no longer read yourself.” and “After you’ve been dead for 100 years, are people going to be able to get access to the things you’ve worked on?”

It reminds me of problems the US military is having with refitting/upgrading old ICBMs. From the 2021 article, “Minuteman III Missiles Are Too Old to Upgrade Anymore, STRATCOM Chief Says”: "Where the drawings do exist, “they’re like six generations behind the industry standard,” he said, adding that there are also no technicians who fully understand them. “They’re not alive anymore.”

It’s sounds like the danger is we’ll be able to access the science (or just trust it’s true) but in some cases we’ll be unable to retrace our steps.