@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialThe UK government withdraws a proposal to let AI companies train on copyrighted works, unless creators opt out, after a News Media Association-led campaign (Dominic Ponsford/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/uk-gove…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialTikTok launches an opt-in Local Feed in the app's US version, including content related to travel, news, events, shopping, and dining near the user's location (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/11/tikt
@cdarwin@c.imThe Opt-Out Project
This is a user-friendly guide to retrieving your digital life from the Tech Giants.
In a post per day over three weeks,
I'll walk you through a process for changing your digital habits and services to set you up for success in 2025 and beyond.
https://www.
@gwire@mastodon.socialIf you use OpenID Connect Generic Client on WordPress, you might want to make sure you're using an up-to-date version - and made some configuration updates.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/daggerhart-openid-connect-generic/
@thoralf@soc.umrath.net„Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out, According to an Independent Audit“
Nein? 🫢
https://www.404media.co/google-microsoft-meta-all-tracking-you-even-when-you-opt-out-according-to-an-indepe…
@nelson@tech.lgbtClosed my LinkedIn account. I never really used the site, and I'm long since retired. About once every 3 months I'd log in to look at someone's profile. In exchange they spammed my email several times a day. I finally noped out when I saw the dark pattern UI for making it hard to opt out of advertising surveillance. Screw that.
I had a simple one-click account delete button. I'm guessing not everyone gets that, but I do because I'm in California.
@MolemanPeter@neuromatch.social @Mediagazer@mstdn.socialTikTok launches an opt-in Local Feed in the app's US version, including content related to travel, news, events, shopping, and dining near the user's location (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/11/tikt
@jdrm@social.linux.pizzaPor si no teníamos suficientes motivos para usar uBlok origin y borrar cookies automšticamente para todas las webs en las que no tengamos confianza, aquí otro motivo https://www.404media.co/google-microsoft-meta-all-tracking-y…
@newsie@darktundra.xyzGoogle, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out, According to an Independent Audit https://www.404media.co/google-microsoft-meta-all-tracking-you-even-when-you-opt-out-according-to-an-independent-audit/…
@heiseonline@social.heise.de @Mediagazer@mstdn.socialSurvey: 64% of US adults read a print book in the past year, down from 72% in 2011; 31% read an e-book, vs. 17% in 2011, while 26% have listened to an audiobook (William Bishop/Pew Research Center)
https://www.pewresearch.org/shor…
@arXiv_csDS_bot@mastoxiv.pageNeighborhood-Aware Graph Labeling Problem
Mohammad Shahverdikondori, Sepehr Elahi, Patrick Thiran, Negar Kiyavash
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08098 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.08098 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.08098
arXiv:2602.08098v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Motivated by optimization oracles in bandits with network interference, we study the Neighborhood-Aware Graph Labeling (NAGL) problem. Given a graph $G = (V,E)$, a label set of size $L$, and local reward functions $f_v$ accessed via evaluation oracles, the objective is to assign labels to maximize $\sum_{v \in V} f_v(x_{N[v]})$, where each term depends on the closed neighborhood of $v$. Two vertices co-occur in some neighborhood term exactly when their distance in $G$ is at most $2$, so the dependency graph is the squared graph $G^2$ and $\mathrm{tw}(G^2)$ governs exact algorithms and matching fine-grained lower bounds. Accordingly, we show that this dependence is inherent: NAGL is NP-hard even on star graphs with binary labels and, assuming SETH, admits no $(L-\varepsilon)^{\mathrm{tw}(G^2)}\cdot n^{O(1)}$-time algorithm for any $\varepsilon>0$. We match this with an exact dynamic program on a tree decomposition of $G^2$ running in $O\!\left(n\cdot \mathrm{tw}(G^2)\cdot L^{\mathrm{tw}(G^2) 1}\right)$ time. For approximation, unless $\mathsf{P}=\mathsf{NP}$, for every $\varepsilon>0$ there is no polynomial-time $n^{1-\varepsilon}$-approximation on general graphs even under the promise $\mathrm{OPT}>0$; without the promise $\mathrm{OPT}>0$, no finite multiplicative approximation ratio is possible. In the nonnegative-reward regime, we give polynomial-time approximation algorithms for NAGL in two settings: (i) given a proper $q$-coloring of $G^2$, we obtain a $1/q$-approximation; and (ii) on planar graphs of bounded maximum degree, we develop a Baker-type polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS), which becomes an efficient PTAS (EPTAS) when $L$ is constant.
toXiv_bot_toot
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.ioRE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116035760465643672
"Different definitions of opt-in" is very "she means yes if she says no"-coded
@Techmeme@techhub.socialFollowing UK CMA's proposals, Google says it is exploring controls to let websites opt out of AI Overviews and AI Mode (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Roundtable)
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-opt-out-of-search-ai-features-40831.html
@grumpybozo@toad.socialRE LB: “Double Opt-In” isn’t really double. It’s 2-factor. Or mutual handshake, if you prefer. You ask to subscribe an address, and the sender emails you a request to confirm that before they send anything else.
There ARE other ways to handle subscriptions ethically, but they ALL include a mechanism confirmingin a reliable way that the user knows what they are asking for and is in control of the subscribed address.
@raiders@darktundra.xyzNFL teams opt for change over patience in offseason with record-tying 10 coaching changes https://www.foxsports.com/articles/nfl/nfl-teams-opt-for-change-over-patience-in-offseason-with-recordtying-10-coaching-changes<…
@michabbb@social.vivaldi.net🔐 3 auth strategies: interactive login, Yolo mode (existing Chrome sessions) or cookie steal from browser DBs
🔒 Mutation safety built-in: dry_run & confirm_unsafe opt-in required for POST/PUT/DELETE endpoints
🔄 Background verification every 6h auto-deprecates failing skills & detects schema drift
🧩 Works with #ClaudeCode,
@matthiasott@mastodon.socialQuick reminder, especially if you’re a freelancer or developer using Free/Pro/Pro plans for client work: Opt out of GitHub using your data for AI model training before April 24 (seriously, wtf that this isn’t opt-in!).
https://github.com/settings/copilot/features#copilo…
@jswright61@ruby.socialAnyone know anything about Class Action settlement in Lopez et al. v. Apple Inc.? I tend to opt in to class actions when notified, but I don’t remember the details of this one.
I received an email - they want bank account details in order to ACH 32.03 to me. I’d rather have $32 than not, but I don’t want to compromise my account.
The SSL cert is First Horizon Bank, TN, USA - looks legit. How does one know for sure?
Any help and / or boosts greatly appreciated!
@cdarwin@c.imTwo key things prompted previous U.S, presidents to opt for diplomacy over war with Iran:
the bloody violence certain to follow
and the stranglehold Iran has on the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps spent decades developing weapons and military capabilities aimed at halting commercial traffic in the strait in the time of crisis.
U.S. and Israeli warplanes have decimated Tehran’s ability to mass-produce weapons and menace neighbors’ capitals…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialIn the interests of starting a more productive dialogue than yesterday's main character was interested in, let's make a #brainstorm thread about design changes to ActivityPub and/or client UI that could actually help address drive-by (often racist) harassment on the fediverse.
Feel free to discuss pros/cons but don't feel an idea needs to be perfect to suggest it. Also since this is a brainstorm don't worry about complexity/implementation cost. If you have a great-but-hard-to-implement idea someone else may think of a way to simplify it.
Note that the underlying problem *is* a social one, do there won't be a technological fix! But tech changes can make social remedies easier/harder.
I've got some to start:
1. Have a "protected mode" that users can voluntarily turn on. Some servers might turn it on by default. In protected mode, users whose accounts are less than D days old and/or who have fewer than F followers can't reply to or DM you. F and D could have different values for same-sever vs. different-server accounts, and could be customized by each user. Obviously a dedicated harasser can get around this, but it ups the activation energy for block evasion and pile-ons a bit. Would be interesting to review moderation records to estimate how helpful this might or might not be. Could also have a setting to require "follows-from-my-server" although that might be too limiting on private servers. Restriction would be turned off for people you mention within that thread and could be set to unlimit anyone you've ever mentioned. Would this lock new users out of engagement entirely? If everyone had it on via a default, you'd have you post your own stuff until someone followed you (assuming F=1). One could add "R non-moderated replies" and/or "F favorites" options to soften things; those experiencing more harassment could set higher limits. When muting/blocking/reporting someone who replied to your post, protected mode could be suggested with settings that would have filtered the post you're reporting.
2. Enable some form of public moderation info to be displayed when both moderator and local server opt-in. Obviously each server would be able to ignore federated public tags. I'm imagining "banned from X server for R reason (optional link to evidence)" appearing on someone's profile & an icon on their PFP in each post viewed by someone on server Y *if* the mods of server X decide it's appropriate *and* server Y opts in to displaying such tags from server X specifically. Alliances of servers with similar moderation preferences could then have moderation action on one server result in clear warning propagation to others without the other mods needing to decide whether to also take action immediately. In some cases different moderation preferences would mean you wouldn't take action yourself but would keep the notice up for your users to consider. Obviously the "Scarlet Letter" vibe ain't great, but in some cases it's deserved, and when there's disagreement between servers about that, mods on server Y could either disable a specific tag or disable federation of mod tags from that server in general. Even better shared moderation tools are of course possible.
3. Different people/groups have different norms around boosting. Currently we only have a locked/public binary. Without any big protocol changes, adding a "prefers boosts/doesn't" setting which would warn in the UI before a viewer chooses to boost if the preference is "doesn't" could help. This could be set per-post, but could also have defaults and could have different values for same-server or not, or for particular servers. For example, I could say "default to prefer boosts from users on my server but not from users on other servers" or "default to prefer boosting on all servers except mastodon.social." Last option might be harder to implement I guess.
#ActivityPub #Meta #Harassment
@Kingu@sakurajima.moeFirst they added AI to the browser without asking anyone if they wanted this.
first backslash
So they said "but you can disable it through the change of boolean values of godzillion registry keys with absurd names in about:config".
another backslash ensue
So they said "We made it opt-out"
another backslash ensue
So they say "ok there will be a killswitch"
Ok. Not so bad this time.
But can we stop saying they "listen to their users". They don'…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialThe UK CMA proposes measures to let publishers opt out of content scraping for Google's AI Overviews and AI training without losing visibility in search results (Robert Booth/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan
@gadgetboy@gadgetboy.socialAre you like me and avoiding MacOS 26 Tahoe and iOS 26 like the plague?
Opt-in to the beta programs for each of the previous version in Settings > General. Your Mac and iPhone/iPad will stop asking you to upgrade to the latest versions and you'll automatically receive security updates for Sequoia and iOS 18, respectively. You're welcome.
#apple
@flberger@nerdculture.deUnd wieder herzlich willkommen im vielleicht größten #LARP der Welt, wo 450 Millionen Menschen ohne rationalen Grund ein halbes Jahr lang so tun, als sei es eine Stunde später. Kein opt-in, kein opt-out.
#Sommerzeit
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialFollowing UK CMA's proposals, Google says it is exploring controls to let websites opt out of AI Overviews and AI Mode (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Roundtable)
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-opt-out-of-search-ai-features-40831.html
@frankel@mastodon.topSemantic Conventions for #GenAI agent and framework #spans
https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/se
@arXiv_csLG_bot@mastoxiv.pageSki Rental with Distributional Predictions of Unknown Quality
Qiming Cui, Michael Dinitz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21104 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.21104 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.21104
arXiv:2602.21104v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We revisit the central online problem of ski rental in the "algorithms with predictions" framework from the point of view of distributional predictions. Ski rental was one of the first problems to be studied with predictions, where a natural prediction is simply the number of ski days. But it is both more natural and potentially more powerful to think of a prediction as a distribution p-hat over the ski days. If the true number of ski days is drawn from some true (but unknown) distribution p, then we show as our main result that there is an algorithm with expected cost at most OPT O(min(max({eta}, 1) * sqrt(b), b log b)), where OPT is the expected cost of the optimal policy for the true distribution p, b is the cost of buying, and {eta} is the Earth Mover's (Wasserstein-1) distance between p and p-hat. Note that when {eta} < o(sqrt(b)) this gives additive loss less than b (the trivial bound), and when {eta} is arbitrarily large (corresponding to an extremely inaccurate prediction) we still do not pay more than O(b log b) additive loss. An implication of these bounds is that our algorithm has consistency O(sqrt(b)) (additive loss when the prediction error is 0) and robustness O(b log b) (additive loss when the prediction error is arbitrarily large). Moreover, we do not need to assume that we know (or have any bound on) the prediction error {eta}, in contrast with previous work in robust optimization which assumes that we know this error.
We complement this upper bound with a variety of lower bounds showing that it is essentially tight: not only can the consistency/robustness tradeoff not be improved, but our particular loss function cannot be meaningfully improved.
toXiv_bot_toot
@bthalpin@mastodon.socialRE: https://sciences.social/@conradhackett/115958821243723405
More people asserting the obvious (often necessary!): opt-in panel web surveys are increasingly popular (cheap, easy, profitable) but provide poor information about the world.
Let&#…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialUS Congressional Joint Economic Committee report: US consumers lost $20.9B nominally to identity theft from four major data broker breaches over the past decade (Dell Cameron/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/data-broker-breaches-fueled-do…
@Kingu@sakurajima.moeThe peoples:
The tech companies:
You asked for it and we listened! We added powerful AI everywhere!!! There is no opt-in or opt-out as we know you LOVE AI and wants it everywhere!!
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialThe UK CMA proposes measures to let publishers opt out of content scraping for Google's AI Overviews and AI training without losing visibility in search results (Robert Booth/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan
@coreyjrowe@detmi.socialPSA: If you've been using a credit or debit card to pay your DTE bill, check your email/spam folder for a message. You'll be taken off autopay next month and will have to manually opt back in before they start charging the new credit processing fee
@cdarwin@c.imA new investment thesis has spread through global markets at the start of 2026, as trading strategies long built on the primacy of the United States now opt for a new approach:
Sell America.
The sentiment started to take hold in financial circles after the shock of sky-high tariffs sent stocks and bonds into a tailspin last April,
but it has taken off recently as the Trump administration has pursued policies like attacks on the Federal Reserve’s independence and threats of …
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialThe News/Media Alliance partners with AI startup Bria to let its 2,200 members opt into a non-exclusive licensing deal for RAG usage, giving them 50% of revenue (Sara Guaglione/Digiday)
https://digiday.com/media/news-media-a
@pre@boing.worldMozilla think that adding some controls to their settings to allow users to opt out of the AI features is good enough.
No sign of a separate build without them there at all, but at least a switch to disable them, in theory.
They say:
"Once configured, the AI preferences will persist across browser updates"
Though they do have a history of turning on telemetry over and over again even when you keep turning it off. Or inventing new telemetery for you to turn off each update.
One switch will turn off:
"AI-enhanced tab grouping with suggested names,"
Which sounds horrifying, but then I don't really like tab groups anyway.
They seem to be suggesting that this is all just for desktop though, and so the Android build will presumably continue to not even have a working about:config at all.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-will-let-you-turn-off-all-firefox-ai-features/
