This is a mess of a post blending thoughts on tech policy with religious ideas and lacking the kind of obvious throughline or structure that I’d like it to have. It’s also been in my head for a couple of weeks, and it’s time to release it into the world rather than wait for it to be something better. So, here it is: I am frustrated with generative AI technology for many reasons, but one of the things at the top of that list is the knowledge that today’s kids are growing up in a world where it is possible—even likely—that their middle and high school experiences are going to involve someone using generative AI tools to produce deepfake nudes (or other non-consensual intimate imagery—NCII) of them.

For the past couple of years, my colleague Dr. Meghan Dowell and I have been working on a paper on students’ awareness of what data the Canvas learning management system collects (and subsequently makes available to certain stakeholders). I’m a fan of Nick Proferes’s paper [Information Flow Solipsism in an Exploratory Study of Beliefs About Twitter] and have long wanted to do something similar related to LMSs. This is even more Meghan’s area of specialty than mine, though, so I was grateful that she was also interested in the subject and took the lead in turning this idea into reality.

This is a question that everyone should ask—and then be infuriated by the answer.

This is cute, but also Ring doorbells are seriously the thing that scares me most on Halloween.

I wish that wearing an implicitly anti-surveillance EFF t-shirt through airport security this week had been a deliberate decision, but I just like wearing EFF shirts and it wound up being a happy coincidence.

This is a helpful EFF overview that I’m posting to bookmark for later.

I got skeptical of Section 230 for a while, but folks like Doctorow and Mike Masnick have brought me back around.

Cory Doctorow is one of my favorite authors, and I’ve also (mostly) appreciated the work of Humble Bundle over the past decade. When I learned this weekend that there’s an ongoing bundle of Doctorow’s fiction, I was ecstatic. The only thing that I was disappointed about is that I’ve already bought so many of these titles… however, that still wasn’t enough to stop me from buying all 18 items (it helps that while I own many of these already, most of the ones I own are in formats rather than epub, so now I’m a multimodal owner).

Look, it’s hard to oppose legislation that purports to be “for the kids,” but with the EFF, Mike Masnick, and other voices I respect still firmly against this, I’ll be calling my reps—and encouraging others to do the same.

There’s so much inane blathering about free speech on the internet that it’s easy to sometimes forget that it can be a real concern. Here’s one such example.

Student monitoring software is gross to begin with, but monitoring for LGBTQ+ content makes it even grosser. Love it when EFF tackles ed tech.

Can’t believe it’s been ten years; can’t believe we’re not collectively furious about this.

This sounds worrying to me. Surveillance can and will be abused, and we should be wary about embracing it on this scale.

I’ve enjoyed reading Alice Marwick’s work in the past, and I really enjoyed her appearance on the EFF’s podcast here.

I picked this up after hearing about it in the show notes of an EFF podcast the author appeared on. This is not the book that I expected to read, I’m not sure I entirely got it, and it even feels a bit like a shaggy dog story at the end. I still enjoyed it, though, in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s neat to read fiction from deliberately African perspectives, the shaggy dog-ness is probably the point, and the characters are compelling.

So this is the OGL kerfuffle I’ve heard a bit about recently. This would be a bad move by WotC, but I’m also intrigued by what the EFF has to say here.

Edtech professionals aren’t paying nearly enough attention to this sort of thing.

I picked this book up on a whim at a Nashville bookstore over the summer. It surprised me that I felt drawn to the book—I know who Wheaton is, but I’m not a super fan; the book was an expensive new hardback; and I usually am more hesitant about buying things than grabbing something on a whim. I did really feel drawn to the book, though. I had recently started reading Wheaton’s blog, I admire his EFF-style thinking, I know he’s been an advocate for mental health, and I was intrigued by the conceit of revisiting a 20-year-old memoir and annotating it with two decades of further growth and hindsight.

I am very near the end of Wil Wheaton’s updated/annotated memoir Still Just a Geek, which I bought over the summer on a short family trip. I have lots of thoughts—most of them positive—about the memoir and may write a bit more about it once I finally finish. For now, though, since I wrote last week complaining about companies like Apple and ClassDojo restricting hardware and software to support their bottom line at the expense of users, I was struck by a short passage Wheaton included making a case for general purpose computing:

I hadn’t realized so many academics were working with data brokers. It’s kind of scary! The EFF has some good points here about so-called “data for good”—and rightly brings up that ethics review boards should be thinking about this sort of thing.

Who is allowed to watch the watchmen? This is why I’m grumpy about Lexington being hush hush about its new automated license plate readers—it sets a precedent for secretive use of even more invasive surveillance.

Doctorow is spot on here. Apple may be the most benevolent of the big tech companies, but it still has far too much power over its users.

I’ve been plenty spooked by Ring’s video capabilities, but apparently I haven’t been worried enough about its audio surveillance.

Disappointing news, but glad for the fight that the EFF and others are waging.

The only thing worse than the already-bad reality of powerful, private data brokers is public agencies buying what they have to sell.

EFF cares about and actually understands free speech and content moderation, so their voice is especially important today.

Such an important read.

OER forever. This article makes me sad.