Think the roughly $18 Billion Meta has settled for over child safety is a slap on the wrist?

Wait until you see the actual details: 😀 Paid in annual installments over a 10-year period

😜 States receive the money, not the victims

🤑 30% will only be paid if YouTube & TikTok:

"...pay an amount matching the 30% figure "...implement a one-hour Daily Limit, Night Mode, and age assurance measures"

https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/agreement-with-state-attorneys-general-supporting-teens/

Meta even wrote a wonderfully open letter to their competitors!

Sadly now everyone will have to verify themselves, too bad for Meta, now they will have to collect even more data - which we know they totally oppose and hate ;)

researchers and browser maker Brave reported finding silent Web Audio processing on the site that could help fingerprint visitors’ devices.

on top of that, the traditional fingerprinting signals are used too,

The scripts also gathered information tied to canvas rendering, WebGL, display settings, hardware configuration, WebRTC behavior and user interactions. Together, those signals can create a more detailed profile of a device than any one signal would provide on its own.

My take from this Cybernews article about an Android toolkit to trick KYC verification significantly differs from theirs!

Them: "...the existence of such tools puts users and organizations at imminent risk." "Not a tool for the masses"

Me: "Where can I find this amazing Privacy tool?" "A tool the masses everywhere need access to ASAP"

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1358432/nitter-project-received-cease-and-desist

Cease and desist

On 24 August 2026 cease and desist letters have been sent by X Corp. demanding a permanent takedown of Nitter instances and the project's repository.

nitter.net is offline and development has stopped for the time being. I'm seeking legal advice and won't be commenting further on the specifics for now.

Thank you to everyone who used, hosted, packaged, donated and contributed to Nitter over the past seven years.

— zedeus, 25 August 2026

Photo source: Official website/instance— Archive.

More info: GitHub issue 1442.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1358182/survey-56-of-ai-enthusiasts-and-a-third-of-all-users-tell-chatbots-things-they-keep-from

A hot potato: As cookies become a less reliable way to track people online, AliExpress may be showing how far companies will go to fill that gap. Researchers found code on the site's homepage that ran silent audio processes in the browser. Tied to Alibaba's security systems, the scripts tap a device's own audio hardware to generate a signal and measure the tiny, device-specific ways it comes back – producing something close to a fingerprint that doesn't need a single cookie to work. It's the kind of tracking a user would likely never notice.

The issue only surfaced after a developer had trouble using multipoint Bluetooth headphones while an AliExpress tab was open: the headphones wouldn't switch properly from the computer to a phone. Once the tab was closed, the problem disappeared.

Digging into the site's code, the developer found it was using the Web Audio API to build audio-processing graphs set to zero volume. The process produced no audible sound, but it still connected to the computer's audio system, keeping the audio path active in the background, which appears to be what interfered with the headphones' ability to switch devices.

This wasn't the kind of audio activity tied to a normal media player. Because the processing graph ran at zero gain and connected directly to the system's audio output, muting the browser tab did nothing to stop it: the browser kept processing the signal even though there was nothing to hear

But the actions against Discord are particularly concerning because of how quickly the case is moving towards demanding that the company either breaks its encryption or builds tools to bypass it, and provides a way to identify its users – ostensibly to check their age.

The incident that started with the death of the 13-year-old girl and the subsequent order to stop live video features has now escalated to a full-blown "war" on Discord's encryption and privacy.

Imagine with all the data that discord collects its still not enough and they're going after voice and video e2ee

I've been hearing that Reddit is requiring an account now. But there's still a workaround. Use old.reddit.com + Tor Browser in the "Safest" security setting (aka Javascript disabled). This is the most private way to browse Reddit, and somehow, it still works. If it's not working, try clicking the menu and click "New Tor circuit for this site".

Unfortunately, as of just a few days ago, all the Stack Exchange sites now needs Javascript to view, because they use Cloudflare (and the workaround I was using stopped working). So I have to keep switching between Javascript enabled or disabled, depending on if I want to view a Reddit or StackExchange post. Annoying.

Edit: Redlib is also a great way to access Reddit anonymously. And even if Reddit ends up blocking the Tor workaround, I'm confident that Redlib will continue to work.

Edit2: ok looks like old.reddit.com isn't working anymore, you have to use the onion link. Still working as of 2026-08-22 8:00 UTC. Or just use RedLib.

So, his team set up a bunch of tech to interfere with the company’s event and even managed to capture Flock attendee chatter on microphones they forgot to switch off.

Jordan then flew his drone and captured images of politicians, police, and senators in attendance.

Apparently "grand juries declining an indictment is extremely rare... The grand jury only hears from the prosecution, there is no defense involved. Only a majority of the grand jury has to sign off, not unanimous like in an actual trial."

Interesting channel I found. Reads privacy policies of various popular services and then visualizes what info they collect, share, sell.

Oddly entertaining and useful lol

Highlight timestamp in this particular video : 12:13

The post isn't directly on the privacy but touches on the tangent of the topic. The focus is on the meaning of communities, what the walled gardens usually means and what we as individual could do to improve it. In a general sense it's a birds eye view on the topic.

Maybe can be worth a reading.

All feedback is welcomed.

Edit: Edited to also include the topics of discussion on the post.