Ivan Mehta writes via TechCrunch: Reddit said Wednesday that the platform is revamping its privacy settings with an aim to make ad personalization and account visibility toggles consistent. Most notably though, it is removing the ability to opt out of ad personalization based on Reddit activity. The company said that it will still have opt-out controls in "select countries" without specifying which ones. It mentioned in a blog post that users won't see more ads but they will see better-targeted ads following this change.

The company is essentially removing the option to not track you based on whatever you do on Reddit. Additionally, Reddit is consolidating two toggles on showing ads based on activity and information from partners into one toggle. So there is no way to separate those two settings now. Reddit is seemingly removing toggles for getting post recommendations based on "general location" and activity on partner sites and apps. It's not clear if this means those parameters will be used for post suggestions by default and there is no way to turn them off.

The social network said it will also roll out controls to limit certain advertising categories such as alcohol, weight loss, dating, gambling pregnancy and parenting. The company noted that ad-limiting controls will possibly show you fewer ads from mentioned categories if the toggles are turned off, but won't possibly filter out all ads. Reddit justified this by saying it uses manual tagging and machine learning to label ads, so there is a chance that it is not 100% accurate. Reddit is also simplifying its location customization setting under a single menu, which will be easily accessible through settings on apps and on the web.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Japan Times: From Oct. 1, a new tax regulation decades in the making will go into effect -- and hundreds of thousands of workers in Japan are angry. The Qualified Invoicing System, which requires taxable businesses to issue invoices containing tax information for transactions, has generated a full-fledged movement against it. A petition on Change.org to halt the regulation has received nearly 450,000 signatures. The social movement [...] has held regular demonstrations and conferences advocating against the law, alongside significant protest from the world of pop culture: Animators, filmmakers, voice actors, manga artists and V-tubers of all stripes have joined together against it.

While the law is complex, the reason it's hated is not: It's effectively a tax increase. While the system was created to ensure that businesses will properly pay consumption tax, for many freelancers and small businesses the result will amount to a 10% increase in taxes -- a high enough jump to potentially devastate creatives who already make a living by the narrowest of margins. [...] Those who have already registered as taxable businesses or sole proprietors with sales of over 10 million yen are required to register for the system. Small freelancers and tax-exempt businesses, however, will need to consider carefully what to do. "Tax compliance will be the biggest issue for freelancers," [says Fumiko Mizoguchi, indirect tax service country leader at Deloitte]. "If freelancers agree to issue qualified invoices, they should offer the counter-suggestion that their prices will increase 10% as a result."

Meanwhile, the protest movement is steady on the ground in Tokyo. Voiction, which has been meeting with legislators to try to halt the law, plans on continuing to fight through the rest of the year and beyond. [Voice actress Yuhko Kaida] explains that the government could still decide to allow small businesses to not file 2023's consumption tax in March 2024, when taxes are due. "If we have the willpower, we can stop this law," Kaida says. "Then we can reduce the damage to people's lives."

The new iPhone 15 Pro may be too hot for some to handle. Literally. WSJ: Apple's priciest new iPhones are heating up in some scenarios, reaching high temperatures that make them difficult to touch at certain times, according to reviews, tests by The Wall Street Journal and social-media posts from buyers in China, the U.S. and Canada. Some iPhone 14 Pro owners have noticed similar hot temperatures over the past year. The high temperatures in Apple's newest 15 Pro models -- typically when charging and using intensive apps -- are prompting concerns that the company might need to address overheating in software updates that could impact performance. Premium iPhones have long been a critical cash cow for Apple as smartphone demand has slumped globally.

The company is hoping the iPhone 15, especially its Pro models, will return its business to growth. Thomas Galvin, a 23-year-old from Cleveland, says his iPhone 15 Pro Max has been "super hot" and that he is considering returning it. Apple customer support told him the heat was a result of setting up the new phone, but even a few days later, it is still "way worse than the iPhone 13 Pro Max," he said. Other users on X (formerly known as Twitter) and Reddit have had similar complaints about the heat, with some mentioning that the phone had become so warm it is difficult to hold. The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern noted in her review last week that the iPhone 15 Pro Max hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit while charging. In further testing, the phone reached temperatures up to 112 degrees when simultaneously charging and doing processor-intensive tasks, such as gaming.

Indonesia said it will bar social media companies from allowing transactions and doubling as e-commerce platforms -- all to prevent misuse of public data. "This means that users in Indonesia cannot buy or sell products and services on TikTok and Facebook," reports CNBC. From the report: In a media conference Monday, Minister of Trade Zulkifli Hasan said that "the connection [between social media and e-commerce] must be separated so that the algorithm is not all controlled" and this "prevents the use of personal data" for business purposes. Indonesia also said it would also regulate which overseas goods can be sold, adding these products would receive the same treatment as offline domestic goods. The move comes as foreign goods become increasingly available in Indonesia through social media platforms. "Social commerce was born to solve a real world problem for local traditional small sellers, by matching them with local creators who can help drive traffic to their online shops," a TikTok spokesperson said in response to the move.

"While we respect local laws and regulations, we hope that the regulations take into account its impact on the livelihoods of more than 6 million sellers and close to 7 million affiliate creators who use TikTok Shop."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Every week, the social media hype-train seems to find new ways to sensationalize generative AI tools. Most recently, a new technique that allows users to produce optical illusions went viral, with some describing the results as AI-generated images with "subliminal" messages. The technique, called ControlNet, essentially lets users have more control over the generated image by specifying additional inputs -- in this case, letting you create images or words within other images. Some users characterized this as a form of "hidden message" that could be used to implant suggestions in the form of subtle visual cues, like a McDonald's "M" logo appearing in the outlines of a movie poster.

ControlNet uses the AI image-generating tool Stable Diffusion, and one of its initial uses was generating fancy QR codes using the code as an input image. That idea was then taken further, with some users developing a workflow that lets them specify any image or text as a black-and-white mask that implants itself into the generated image -- kind of like an automated, generative version of the masking tool in Photoshop.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Burkey Belser, a graphic designer who created the ubiquitous nutrition facts label -- a stark rectangle listing calories, fat, sodium and other content information -- that adorns the packaging of nearly every digestible product in grocery stores, died Sept. 25 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 76. The cause was bladder cancer, said his wife Donna Greenfield, with whom he founded the Washington, D.C., design firm Greenfield/Belser.

Mr. Belser's nutrition facts label -- rendered in bold and light Helvetica type -- was celebrated as a triumph of public health and graphic design when it debuted in 1994 following passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. Although some products had previously included nutritional information, there was no set standard, and the information was of little public health value in helping consumers make better food choices. The new law, drafted as obesity and other diet-related illnesses were surging, required mandatory food labels with nutrients presented in the context of a healthy 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.

Writing in a journal published by the Professional Association for Design, Massimo Vignelli, the renowned Italian designer, called Mr. Belser's creation a "clean testimonial of civilization, a statement of social responsibility, and a masterpiece of graphic design." The Food and Drug Administration chose Mr. Belser to design the nutrition label following his success creating the black and yellow energy guide label for appliances. Once dubbed the "Steve Jobs of information design," Mr. Belser's fondness for exceedingly simple design perfectly suited him for a job that required stripping down nutritional facts to the bare essentials. The report proceeds to tell the tale of how Mr. Belser worked pro bono with his team to labor through three dozen iterations of the label, ultimately settling on "simplicity in itself."

"There's a harmony about it, and the presentation has no extraneous components to it," Belser told The Washington Post. "The words are left and right justified, which gave it a kind of balance. There was no grammatical punctuation like commas or periods or parentheses that would slow the reader down."

He compared the finished product -- which he later adapted to over-the-counter drugs -- to the Apple iPod. "The detail is so important that you wouldn't even notice it and if you didn't notice it's a sign that it succeeded," he said. "I don't know if anybody's heart beats faster when they see nutrition facts, but they sense a pleasure that they get the information they need."

Some early adopters of Apple's iPhone 15 have taken to social media to complain about overheating issues. Digital Trends' Bryan Wolfe writes: Over the past few days, various user complaints have popped up online by iPhone 15 owners saying their new devices are overheating. Some, for example, have taken to the Apple discussion groups to express their dismay, while others have left messages on Reddit and elsewhere. New smartphones commonly heat up more than usual during setup and in the first 24 hours of use, even those not manufactured by Apple. The issues being reported may have occurred during these instances. Speaking from personal experience, Android Authority's Aamir Siddiqui said he, too, has noticed his iPhone 15 Pro Max running very hot, even after the initial 24 hours of setup and settling in.

Korean YouTuber BullsLab also captured high temperatures using a thermal camera.

Reddit announced a contributor program on Monday, which awards users actual, real money for their fake internet points. From a report: Now, eligible users will be able to convert their Reddit gold and karma into fiat currency (no, not crypto), which is dispersed once per month. So far, the Reddit contributor program is limited to users in the United States (to start, at least) who are over the age of 18 and can verify their identity via Persona and Stripe. Accounts must have existed for over 30 days, and only safe for work posts can be monetized.

Six months ago Republican Senator Josh Hawley proposed legislation banning downloads of TikTok in the U.S. But this week he told the Wall Street Journal that "TikTok and its dark-money cronies are spending vast amounts of money to kill these bills."

The newspaper argues that TikTok's "friends" in the U.S. government — backed by billionaire financier Jeff Yass — "helped stall attempts to outlaw America's most-downloaded app." Yass's investment company, Susquehanna International Group, bet big on TikTok in 2012, buying a stake in parent company ByteDance now measured at about 15%. That translates into a personal stake for Yass of 7% in ByteDance. It is worth roughly $21 billion based on the company's recent valuation, or much of his $28 billion net worth as gauged by Bloomberg.

Yass is also one of the top donors to the Club for Growth, an influential conservative group that rallied Republican opposition to a TikTok ban. Yass has donated $61 million to the Club for Growth's political-spending arm since 2010, or about 24% of its total, according to federal records. Club for Growth made public its opposition to banning TikTok in March, in an opinion article by its president, at a time when sentiment against the platform among segments of both parties was running high on Capitol Hill... With many Democrats already skeptical of a ban, the whittling away of Republican support killed momentum for several bills, including the bipartisan Restrict Act backed by the Biden administration...

TikTok's own lobbying efforts in Washington have included hundreds of meetings and other contacts, according to a person familiar with the matter. One of its main arguments to Republicans has been that a majority of ByteDance's shareholders are Americans, and some are well-connected conservatives, this person said. The lobbying appears to have helped push House Republican lawmakers to back away from the idea of a ban on TikTok and focus instead on legislation that would put new legal protections in place for users' personal data...

The Biden administration hasn't indicated any change in its effort to ban the app or force its sale. It could still try to use executive powers to ban it, or force a sale to remove Chinese control. But without legislation, analysts say those orders could be overturned in court.

"As the sun rose on Friday over the lunar plateau where India's Vikram lander and Pragyan rover sit, the robotic explorers remained silent," writes the New York Times: The Indian Space Research Organization, India's equivalent of NASA, said on Friday that mission controllers on the ground had sent a wake-up message to Vikram. The lander, as expected, did not reply. Efforts will continue over the next few days, but this could well be the conclusion of Chandrayaan-3, India's first successful space mission to the surface of another world...

The hope was that when sunlight again warmed the solar panels, the spacecraft would recharge and revive. But that was wishful thinking. Neither Vikram nor Pragyan were designed to survive a long, frigid lunar night when temperatures plunge to more than a hundred degrees below zero, far colder than the electronic components were designed for. The spacecraft designers could have added heaters or used more resilient components, but that would have added cost, weight and complexity...

The mission's science observations included a temperature probe deployed from Vikram that pushed into the lunar soil. The probe recorded a sharp drop, from about 120 degrees Fahrenheit at the surface to 10 degrees just three inches down. Lunar soil is a poor conductor of heat. The poor heat conduction could be a boon for future astronauts; an underground outpost would be well-insulated from the enormous temperature swings at the surface. Another instrument on Vikram, a seismometer, detected on Aug. 26 what appeared to be a moonquake... The Pragyan measurement suggests that concentrations of sulfur might be higher in the polar regions. Sulfur is a useful element in technologies like solar cells and batteries, as well as in fertilizer and concrete.

Before it went to sleep earlier this month, Vikram made a small final move, firing its engines to rise about 16 inches above the surface before softly landing again. The hop shifted Vikram's position by 12 to 16 inches, ISRO said. "Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments!" ISRO posted on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, on Sept. 2. "Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador."
"Efforts to establish contact will continue," ISRO tweeted yesterday...

MGM Resorts brought to an end a 10-day computer shutdown prompted by efforts to shield from a cyberattack data including hotel reservations and credit card processing, the casino giant said Wednesday, as analysts and academics measured the effects of the event. From a report: "We are pleased that all of our hotels and casinos are operating normally," the Las Vegas-based company posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It reported last week that the attack was detected Sept. 10. Rival casino owner Caesars Entertainment also disclosed last week to federal regulators that it was hit by a cyberattack Sept. 7. It said that its casino and online operations were not disrupted but it could not guarantee that personal information about tens of millions of customers, including driver's licenses and Social Security numbers of loyalty rewards members, had not been compromised. Caesars, based in Reno, is widely reported to have paid $15 million of a $30 million ransom sought by a group called Scattered Spider for a promise to secure the data.

Yesterday's massive leaks from the Microsoft vs. FTC case have a large swath of the gaming world expecting that a more powerful, disc-free Xbox Series X refresh could be coming as soon as next year. But Xbox boss Phil Spencer is warning that players shouldn't put too much stock in what he called "old emails and documents." ArsTechnica adds: "It is hard to see our team's work shared in this way because so much has changed and there's so much to be excited about right now, and in the future," Spencer wrote on social media late Tuesday. "We will share the real plans when we are ready." Spencer followed up that post with a memo sent to the Xbox team, apologizing for the unintentional disclosure of internal plans. "I know this is disappointing, even if many of the documents are well over a year old and our plans have evolved," the memo reads, in part. "I also know we all take the confidentiality of our plans and our partners' information very seriously. This leak obviously is not us living up to that expectation... That said, there's so much more to be excited about, and when we're ready, we'll share the real plans with our players."

While Spencer's statements are vague about who was responsible for the "unintentional disclosure" of Microsoft's plans, a representative for the FTC was quick to push the blame on the company itself. "The FTC was not responsible for uploading Microsoft's plans for its games and consoles to the court website," FTC Director of the Office of Public Affairs Douglas Farrar wrote early Tuesday. In a follow-up post, Farrar pointed to a court order resealing the leaked information (too late for it to prevent the spread of the information, of course), which notes that "Microsoft provided the link on September 14 and the Court uploaded the exhibits to [the] internet page established for this case." Further reading: Microsoft's Phil Spencer Says Acquiring Nintendo Would Be 'a Career Moment'
Microsoft's Next Xbox, Coming 2028, Envisions Hybrid Computing.

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX is looking to claw back luxury property and "millions of dollars in fraudulently transferred and misappropriated funds" from the parents of Sam Bankman-Fried, the exchange's disgraced ex-CEO and founder. CNBC reports: In a Monday court filing, lawyers representing the bankruptcy estate of the failed exchange alleged that Allan Joseph Bankman and his wife, Barbara Fried, "exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars." The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, goes on to claim that "despite knowing or blatantly ignoring that the FTX Group was insolvent or on the brink of insolvency," Bankman and Fried discussed with their son the transfer of a $10 million cash gift and a $16.4 million luxury property in The Bahamas.

The suit alleges that as early as 2019, Sam's father also directly participated in efforts to cover up a whistleblower complaint which threatened to "expose the FTX Group as a house of cards." The filing also details emails written by Bankman in which he complained to the FTX US Head of Administration that his annual salary was $200,000, when he was "supposed to be getting $1M/yr." That grievance was ultimately elevated to his son in an email, according to the lawsuit: "Gee, Sam I don't know what to say here. This is the first [I] have heard of the 200K a year salary! Putting Barbara on this."

The filing characterizes the correspondence as Bankman lobbying his son to "massively increase his own salary." Within two weeks, the suit claims that Bankman-Fried had collectively gifted his parents $10 million in funds coming from Alameda, and within three months, the couple was deeded the $16.4 million property in The Bahamas. According to the partially-redacted filing, Bankman-Fried's parents also "pushed for tens of millions of dollars in political and charitable contributions, including to Stanford University, which were seemingly designed to boost Bankman's and Fried's professional and social status." Fried is also accused of encouraging her son and others within the company to avoid, if not violate, federal campaign finance disclosure rules by "engaging in straw donations or otherwise concealing the FTX Group as the source of the contributions."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Controversial UK legislation that brings in a new regime of content moderation rules for online platforms and services -- establishing the comms watchdog Ofcom as the main Internet regulator -- has been passed by parliament today, paving the way for Royal Assent and the Online Safety Bill becoming law in the coming days. Speaking during the bill's final stages in the House of Lords, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay reiterated that the government's intention for the legislation is "to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online, particularly for children." Following affirmative votes as peers considered some last stage amendments he added that attention now moves "very swiftly to Ofcom who stand ready to implement this -- and do so swiftly."

The legislation empowers Ofcom to levy fines of up to 10% (or up to 18 million pounds whichever is higher) of annual turnover for violations of the regime. The Online Safety (nee Harms) Bill has been years in the making as UK policymakers have grappled with how to response to a range of online safety concerns. In 2019 these efforts manifested as a white paper with a focus on rules for tackling illegal content (such as terrorism and CSAM) but also an ambition to address a broad sweep of online activity that might be considered harmful, such as violent content and the incitement of violence; encouraging suicide; disinformation; cyber bullying; and adult material being accessed by children. The effort then morphed into a bill that was finally published in May 2021. [...]

In a brief statement the UK's new web content sheriff gave no hint of the complex challenges that lie ahead -- merely welcoming the bill's passage through parliament and stating that it stands ready to implement the new rulebook. "Today is a major milestone in the mission to create a safer life online for children and adults in the UK. Everyone at Ofcom feels privileged to be entrusted with this important role, and we're ready to start implementing these new laws," said Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom's CEO. "Very soon after the Bill receives Royal Assent, we'll consult on the first set of standards that we'll expect tech firms to meet in tackling illegal online harms, including child sexual exploitation, fraud and terrorism." Beyond specific issues of concern, there is over-arching general worry over the scale of the regulatory burden the legislation will apply to the UK's digital economy -- since the rules apply not only to major social media platforms; scores of far smaller and less well resourced online services must also comply or risk big penalties.

U.S. News & World Report's 2024 college rankings features many of the usual prestigious institutions at the top of the list, but also vaults some schools much higher after the publisher revised its grading system to reward different criteria. From a report: U.S News' ranking algorithm now based more than 50% of an institution's score on what it describes as "success in enrolling and graduating students from all backgrounds with manageable debt and post-graduate success." The system also places greater emphasis on "social mobility," which generally refers to an individual making gains in education, income and other markers of socioeconomic status. Overall, more than a dozen public universities shot up 50 spots on the annual list of the U.S.' best colleges, while several elite private schools largely held their ground, the new report shows.

"The significant changes in this year's methodology are part of the ongoing evolution to make sure our rankings capture what is most important for students as they compare colleges and select the school that is right for them," U.S. News CEO Eric Gertler said in a statement. The change comes after a chorus of critics complained that the publication's rankings reinforce elitism and do little to help students find schools that suit their academic needs and financial circumstances. A growing number of schools, including elite institutions such as Columbia University and the Harvard and Yale law schools, also have stopped participating in the ranking and publicly criticized U.S. News' methodology.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro vowed to send "the first Venezuelan man or woman to the moon" in a Chinese spacecraft as part of a new strategic partnership between the two countries, he said Wednesday during a state visit to Beijing. Maduro and Chinese President Xi Jinping, meeting in person for the first time in five years, agreed to boost cooperation in several areas, Maduro said, including oil, trade, finance, mining -- and space exploration.

"Very soon, Venezuelan youth will come to prepare as astronauts, here in Chinese schools," Maduro said, as part of a "new era" of collaboration between China and Venezuela. After years of drifting away from Beijing, Maduro is strengthening ties with China as he seeks help reviving Venezuela's crumbling economy and oil industry. Venezuela is also in talks with the United States exploring the possibility of lifting some U.S. sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector in exchange for Maduro's promise to hold free and fair presidential elections next year. "Venezuela became the first outside nation to join the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, which was jointly announced by China and Russia in 2021," notes Space.com.

It may be some time before any Venezuelans visit the moon, however. The report notes that Venezuela owes over $15 billion to China at the moment, which will likely impact how much the country would be able to contribute to the China-led ILRS. Venezuela also faces severe economic, political and social crises that have fueled an exodus that has surpassed 7 million.

A group of publishers in the U.S. have filed a lawsuit against the "notorious" online database Library Genesis (Libgen), a website known for providing free access to scientific papers and books. The lawsuit accuses Libgen of facilitating the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted academic materials. The Register reports: The suit, filed in a New York federal court [PDF], asks for a legal order "requiring the transfer of the Libgen domain names to plaintiffs or, at plaintiffs' election, canceling or deleting the Libgen domain names," with the idea of frustrating visitors -- mostly students -- believed to number in their millions. The filing said that according to similarweb.com, the sites collectively were visited by 9 million people from the U.S. each month from March to May 2023. The suit alleges that several of the Libgen websites solicit "donations" from users. "These solicitations are in English and seek payments only in Bitcoin or [Monero]." It adds: "one Libgen Site reports that it has raised $182,540 from donations since January 1, 2023."

The publishers also claim the people who run LibGen -- named in the suit as Does 1-50 and whom it says "are believed to reside outside of the United States at unknown foreign locations" -- derive "revenue from interstate or international commerce, including through advertisements." It goes on to add: "Defendants compete directly with Plaintiffs by distributing infringing copies of their works for free, displacing legitimate sales. When a consumer obtains Plaintiffs' works from the Libgen Sites instead of through legitimate channels, no remuneration is provided to Plaintiffs or their authors for the substantial investments they have made to create and publish the works."

The textbook publishers claim that "through social media and from their peers, students are bombarded with messages to use the Libgen Sites instead of paying for legal copies of textbooks" -- thus depriving the publishers and the authors they represent of their income. The suit also asks for damages without detailing an amount, although it asks for "an accounting and disgorgement of Defendants' profits, gains, and advantages realized from their unlawful conduct." The complaint claims the ads are in English and for various "U.S. products, such as browser extensions and online games". The suit adds that some "also appear to be phishing attempts, which can result in users downloading a virus or other malicious program onto their computers."

The lawsuit also calls out Google and "other intermediaries," U.S. companies it claims help LibGen "conduct their unlawful operations" -- "NameCheap for domain registration services, Cloudflare for proxy services, and Google for search engine services." It goes on to include a screenshot of Google's "knowledge panel," which it says "describes Libgen as a site [that] enables free access to content that is otherwise paywalled or not digitized elsewhere."

The United States' military is on the hunt for an F-35 fighter jet that has gone missing following an incident that forced the pilot to eject from the advanced stealth aircraft over South Carolina. Bloomberg News: Emergency response teams are trying to find what's left of the F-35B Lightning II jet, which suffered what the military called a "mishap" on Sunday afternoon, according to social media posts by Joint Base Charleston, an air base in South Carolina. The unidentified pilot ejected safely and was taken to a local hospital in a stable condition. Joint Base Charleston called on the public to cooperate with military and civilian authorities as the search for the F-35 jet continues. The air base said it was working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to search for the plane north of North Charleston around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion, based on its last-known location.

Lockheed Martin is the manufacturer behind the F-35, a single-seat fighter craft used by militaries around the world. The aircraft was a vertical take-off version used by in the US Marine Corps, and the jet is popular for its stealth qualities that make it difficult to detect by radar. The F-35 program, the most expensive US weapons program ever, is projected to cost $400 billion in development and acquisition, plus an additional $1.2 trillion to operate and maintain the fleet over more than 60 years. Each jet can cost more than $160 million, depending on the variant.

An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch: In March, WordPress.com owner Automattic made a commitment to the fediverse — the decentralized social networks that include the Twitter rival Mastodon and others — with the acquisition of an ActivityPub plug-in that allows WordPress blogs to reach readers on other federated platforms. Now, the company is announcing ActivityPub 1.0.0 for WordPress has been released allowing WordPress blogs to be followed by others on apps like Mastodon and others in the fediverse and then receive replies back as comments on their own sites.

Since the acquisition, the company has improved on the original software in a number of ways, including by now allowing the ability to add blog-wide catchall accounts instead of only per-author. It also introduced the ability to add a "follow me" block to help visitors follow your profile and a "followers" block to show off your followers, noted Automattic design engineer Matt Wiebe, in a post on X... For the time being, the software supports self-hosted WordPress blogs, but Wiebe teased that support for WordPress.com blogs was "coming soon."
Last year Automattic's CEO Matt Mullenweg announced Tumblr would add support for ActivityPub, the article adds. "But more recently, Mullenweg told us he's been investigating not only ActivityPub, but also other protocols like Nostr and Bluesky's AT Protocol."

For over 30 years the EFF has presented awards recognizing those "advancing innovation and championing digital rights," according to its web site, celebrating "the accomplishments of people working toward a better future... both in the public eye and behind the scenes."

This year's ceremony — hosted by Cory Doctorow — didn't just recognize Sci-Hub's founder. The EFF also gave its award for "Communications Policy" to the Signal Foundation — and its "Information Democracy" award to the Library Freedom Project.

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation web site: Since 2013, with the release of the unified app and the game-changing Signal Protocol, Signal has set the bar for private digital communications. With its flagship product, Signal Messenger, Signal provides real communications privacy, offering easy-to-use technology that refuses the surveillance business model on which the tech industry is built. To ensure that the public doesn't have to take Signal's word for it, Signal publishes their code and documentation openly, and licenses their core privacy technology to allow others to add privacy to their own products. Signal is also a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, ensuring that investors and market pressure never provides an incentive to weaken privacy in the name of money and growth. This allows Signal to stand firm against growing international legislative pressure to weaken online privacy, making it clear that end-to-end encryption either works for everyone or is broken for everyone — there is no half measure.

The Library Freedom Project (LFP) is radically rethinking the library professional organization by creating a network of values-driven librarian-activists taking action together to build information democracy. LFP offers trainings, resources, and community building for librarians on issues of privacy, surveillance, intellectual freedom, labor rights, power, technology, and more — helping create safer, more private spaces for library patrons to feed their minds and express themselves. Their work is informed by a social justice, feminist, anti-racist approach, and they believe in the combined power of long-term collective organizing and short-term, immediate harm reduction.