Chargeback time! I would 1000% make them take this to court, and they’d lose.

Realistically, it’s all about who has jurisdiction over you, and who will assist the people with jurisdiction over you. I use countries that are less than chummy with the US for my VPN exit nodes, because they’re far less likely to issue any subpoenas or comply with data requests from US companies.

Just as I suspect that e.g. Canada may be less likely to assist China in unmasking internet users, and thus be safer for Chinese users as a VPN exit node, the inverse is also true.

Most concerts don’t have jumbotrons, though, and a jumbotron at a sporting event that is highlighting fans who are dressed in team colors is very different than just focusing on random people. There’s a lot of ink that’s been spilled on the creepiness of “kiss cams”.

It can be both wrong to cheat, and also wrong for us as a society to act as though being outside your home is consent for people to take videos of you as a subject. We should all have the right to exist without being someone else’s entertainment or content.

Was it dumb for them to be there together? Yeah, though mostly because it’s dumb to cheat.

I am not sure how much this incident has to do with facial recognition or media surveillance.

I think this situation is a horrifying lens into just how much surveillance and social media sharing of strangers people are accepting of.

You say, “you can reasonably expect hundreds of cameras owned by both individuals and the venue” as though there’s nothing wrong with just recording everyone that is in public. Incidentally catching someone in a crowd is one thing, but zooming in on and singling people out is another. I don’t think it’s a particularly long leap to get from your quote to, “it’s reasonable for police cameras to see you and know where you are if you’re out in public”.

I fully expect that just as citizens in China have had to VPN into other countries and use those countries’ services to avoid their government’s censorship, we’re going to start seeing the US and UK users doing this as well.

I’m glad someone is saying this, because frankly this whole situation is nasty.

Are cheaters bad? Yes. Should people have informed the spouses? Yes. But that’s not why people are posting memes about this non-stop, this is just schadenfreude.

There are reasons beyond cheating why 2 people may not want to be broadcast to the world as a couple. If this was 2 men, we’d all understand the problems with this, but social media is not going to allow us the nuance to differentiate; social media’s desire to play righteous sleuth for its own entertainment and ego is not a good thing, and we can’t make it only do good.

Is no one even considering whether their spouses want this level of attention, rather than the entire Internet deciding to make it national news for a week?

My Spidey sense is tingling hard with this one.

Is this a criticism of the quote, or a response to it?

Once again, you’re not actually just stating your issue, and your responses are ambiguous enough that they could be interpreted either as an objection to people treating Hunter Schafer in a way that you perceive as negative, or an objection to Hunter Schafer.

How so? What exactly about people proposing this actress do you have a problem with?

I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt that your intentions are good, but you’re being awfully evasive about what your actual objection is.

Again, the issue is this is an American company setting American content policy internationally.

That is not the issue. That may be the subset of the issue that you have a problem with, but the actual issue is a payment provider setting purchase restrictions period. That it is happening in the US is not uniquely bad; it would be equally bad happening anywhere else.

Interpreting the international impact to be “the issue” would mean that if this were only affecting Americans, this would be fine, which is absolutely not the case.

Storefronts and brands can set up local branches and sell through those using the local digital payment provider without getting in trouble with their headquarter’d country.

To set up and sell in that country, they then have to comply with the local payment providers. Which shouldn’t be deciding whether people can purchase something, just as Visa shouldn’t be.

Every company is headquartered somewhere, or has some market that it cannot afford to withdraw from, and that makes them all ultimately subject to said governments. No business decision is made free from pressure when it comes to governments.

Just more scientifically unsound forensic “evidence” for prosecutors to bamboozle juries with.

This will definitely also be one of those “only works to convict” forms of evidence like fingerprints, where the presence of a non-match will be played off as inconclusive, but a “match” will be treated as 100% definitive.

We’d be in the same place. It’s not any better or worse for a private versus a public entity to do harm.

Also, the government is already part of this. If the DOJ told Visa, “hey, stop fucking around with that, you don’t need to be trying to control legal agreements between parties, that’s our purview” (or if they even thought the DOJ might), they’d drop this behavior in an instant. They are doing this in large part because they believe it is in line with the government’s ideology. Preemptive compliance.

Yeah, that’s the sane take, but America is decades deep in Red Scare culture and anti-Latino rhetoric, and Cuba combines the two.

I’m simply seeing the article’s point in asking people to stop following the top, say, 2% most divisive voices.

I would perhaps believe this if the article (or the study) actually listed those accounts. As it is, all they’re doing is leaving it up to readers’ perceptions who the “divisive” accounts are, and insinuating that those are likely misinformation. It’s just pushing people towards the political center.

there were a good number of Bernie backers at Trump rallies

In 2016, 12% of people who voted Sanders in the primary voted for Trump in the general. By the 2020 election, that demo was gone. In 2016 Trump was a rebellion vote against the rigged democratic primary, but after Trump’s first term, they’d all seen what a monster he was, and begrudgingly voted Biden.

I honestly doubt that anyone but moneyed think tanks have much bad to say about him

I don’t think you’ve spoken with many Trumpers (or centrist dems, but that’s another story) if you think they don’t have bad things to say about Sanders. I discussed him extensively with conservatives in my sphere. The conversation usually goes something along the lines of, “yeah, it’s great he’s pro-union and wants to fix healthcare, but he’s also pro illegal immigration and wants to raise taxes through the roof! You know he’s a socialist, right?” The better-informed/ indoctrinated ones will even bring up things like him (correctly) lauding the literacy gains in Cuba under Castro.

P.S. Do we agree that Bernie Sanders is NOT divisive? That the majority of actual people agree with most of what Bernie says, and it is only a few rich interests that object?

I think we probably agree that Bernie Sanders is correct, and that most people want for themselves what he says we should all have, but I don’t think he would necessarily be considered “non-divisive” by these standards if his social media account were more prolific.

I think perhaps where you and I may also disagree, is that I don’t think political animosity is intrinsically bad, only misplaced political animosity. We should have animosity towards people intentionally causing harm.

I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re seeing yet another source telling people that now is the time to defuse and become less polarized to politics, right when Trump is in the process of deporting thousands of people and setting up concentration camps.

Yes, the real war is the class war, but even if the foot soldiers of the oligarchy shouldn’t be working class people, they are. It’s not billionaires out there in ICE uniforms, or getting deputized or joining bounty hunter groups to arrest brown people, or reporting brown people to ICE. That’s also where the “for themselves” bit that I emphasized comes in, because the truth is that there are a LOT of working class people who are opposed to helping others (especially along racial or religious lines), and helping others is the core of solidarity. Not all problems can be solved solely with class consciousness.

Mis/disinformation is not the same as “divisive political content”. Political content can be both true, and divisive (e.g. Trump being a pedophile). Conversely, something that is accepted by the majority may still be misinformation, while not be divisive.

Truthfulness determines whether something is misinformation. How much something matches a group’s beliefs determines whether it is divisive: if everyone agreed that the world was flat, that would not be divisive to state, but it would be misinformation.

Conflating them entrenches the perception that the most widely-held, non-“divisive” viewpoint must not be misinformation.

Go check out Truth Social if you want to see what a space where only “non-divisive” (to them) but near-total misinformation looks like.

How to fix youtube:

the sense that the entire world is on fire

Leaving aside the massive literal heatwave and multi-state wildfires and global-warming-accelerated flooding happening just this month and all… we’re literally seeing a campaign of race-based kidnappings and trafficking by the government, the deployment of active duty military personnel in the streets, and a DOJ arguing that the President is not bound by law or court orders.

If you don’t think the world is on at very least metaphorical fire, I don’t know what to tell you, Guardian author. “I can get my coffee in peace without thinking about that stuff” is not some brag.

I didn’t check Kinetic, but Larian’s is good. This is the full termination section of the EULA:

13. TERMINATION

This Pact shall remain in effect for as long as you use, operate or run the Game.

You may terminate the Pact at any time and for any reason by notifying Larian Studios that you intend to terminate the agreement. Upon termination all licenses granted to you in this Pact shall immediately terminate and you must immediately and permanently remove the Game from your device and destroy all copies of the Game in your possession.

You understand and agree that certain Services connected to the Game, and the support and access to such Services are provided by Larian Studios at its discretion and may be terminated or otherwise discontinued by Larian Studios at any time, for any reason or no reason, in its sole and absolute discretion.

The first block is termination by the user, and specifies removal of the game if the user chooses to terminate the agreement.

The second block is termination by Larian, and only covers “certain Services”… “provided by Larian Studios” (so likely multiplayer matchmaking), not termination of the full agreement, and no game removal.

The places in the EULA where Larian lays out their prerogative to terminate your license to the game is based on behavior (i.e. banning you).

the same clause can be found in the EULAs for various games on Steam, including Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Oblivion Remastered.

Squeenix, Sega/ Atlus, and Microsoft. Exactly who you’d expect.