Almost feels like news worth celebrating until you remember the track record of child protection regulations in the UK, a country where the economy is being propped up by pushing junk food and nicotine onto children.
#EU#DMA#BigTech#Regulation#Antitrust: "The DMA is a first, and a great deal of earnest effort is going into its implementation. But we don’t know what “success” will look like, even on its own terms. Of course, even a limited set of improvements would be better than the status quo. Godspeed, but let’s be realistic also. The more fundamental point is that the real interesting question is not if we can nibble the gatekeepers at the margin: but whether we can disintermediate them at least in part so that we do not need to rely entirely on a proprietary Web 2.0 that they comprehensively control. Antitrust complaints in the US have at least some prospect of involving divestments and break ups as the eventual remedy – though this will also be a long and inevitably hard fought road. This is not on the cards in Europe through digital markets regulation."
here's the ever interesting David Allen Green on why regulating the press/media may be easy to demand but is (now) much more difficult to achieve.
For this of us who see the control of the media & what its owners do with that control as a key problem for the UK's democracy, this is what one can call a 'sobering read'!
How willing are public institutions to respond to Subject Access Requests, allowing you to find out what personal information is held by that organisation.
Incomplete returns & delays in even getting the information requested can have significant impact on those needing such information.
Open Democracy's investigation suggests there is a massive problem of a lack of proper oversight & a weakness of enforcement by the Information Commissioner Office.
Interesting web comic about nuclear technology and regulation. Especially in the context of current events (AFIK only 3 countries that have had nuclear weapons and ICBMs have ever disarmed... One of them is now being invaded).
'#Sharing with minimal #regulation? Evidence from neighborhood book exchange' by Anouk Schippers and Adriaan Soetevent is April's #OpenAccess publication in the spotlight.
Their study shows that peer-to-peer book exchanges, like little free #libraries, experience minimal free riding due to strong #SocialNorms among users, with a return rate of 9 #books for every 10 taken.
@rbreich What they’re basically saying is you can steal and manipulate data from US citizens if the company is US owned.
This bill doesn’t even remotely get to the root of the mega-social-media problem. #regulation#tictocban#x#meta#bluesky
Fun drinking game for the next 9-12 months: take a shot every time a news article uses the phrase "Section 230" or "chilling effect on free speech" -- that way you'll be in the hospital with liver poisoning instead of having to keep up with all the TikTok news and court challenges
#Oil Companies Must Set Aside More Money to Plug Wells, a New Rule Says. But It Won’t Be Enough.
The new Bureau of Land Management #regulation, which applies to nearly 90,000 wells on federal public land, is hampered by math errors and overly optimistic cost projections.
Social regulation may be becoming more acceptable; in support of that let me relate this anecdote.
Watching a documentary some years ago about the illegal rave scene, a while after the ban on smoking in public buildings had come into force, I was amused to see that even at an illegal rave (they were already breaking the law!), smokers for the most part came out of the building to smoke... laws can & do shift social norms (for the better).
"The early results come after the EU's sweeping Digital Markets Act, which aims to remove unfair competition, took effect on March 7, forcing #bigtech companies to offer mobile users the ability to select from a list of available web #browsers from a #choicescreen."
“‘while allowing #theFed the flexibility to unwisely expand its remit into inherently #political areas such as #credit rationing & #banking#regulation.’ Here is #groupthink: ‘Despite the biggest #monetary errors in 4 decades,’ Katz & Miran write, none of the 9 recent appointees to the Board of Governors was on record as having made accurate predictions about #inflation’s path.
Do you know what the acronym AILDI stands for? It's the AI Labor Disclosure Initiative, which asks a simple question: What would happen if tech companies were legally required to report the number of human workers concealed behind their automated solutions? On April 23, 2024, I'll be addressing this topic at the ILO in Geneva.
Thurs, the #Biden admin announced they are closing what is known as the #"GunShowLoophole," by tightening up the definition of what it means to be "engaged in the business" of selling #firearms.
The #ATF has just implemented a change in the federal register language, which was previously more specific to who was selling guns, & the agency did it in accordance w/the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed in 2022.
“It will also close the #GunShowLoophole & it closes the fire sale loophole as well by clarifying how #firearms dealers who go out of business or lose their #license must go about liquidating their inventory,” #MerrickGarland told reporters. “Under this #regulation, it will not matter if #guns are sold on the internet, at a gun show or in a brick & mortar store, if you sell guns [you] must conduct #BackgroundChecks.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is creating the first national regulation of PFAS, sometimes called “forever chemicals,” which are increasingly believed to be toxic. The oil-repelling and heat-resistant substances are widely used in common products like cookware and clothing and can take thousands of years to break down. The first regulation will be focused on limiting the amount of the substances in water, but traces of them can also be found in the air and soil. Read more from CBS News.
The risks around artificial intelligence might be better understood by following the money not the technology....
This suggests we need to be regulating (better) the economic & market uses of AI, rather than focussing on its technical capabilities.
Indeed, states have a long history of regulating markets, and whatever some economists seem to think, regulation is what has most often saved capitalism from eating itself!
This is one of the weirdest and most pathetic music related regulations I've ever heard of. Only music between 80-116 BPM is allowed. Sometimes conservatives really are the saddest bunch of pathetic losers in existence. #music#regulation#musicproducion
The U.S. and U.K. are teaming up to test the safety of AI models.
Engadget reports: "They're planning to share technical knowledge, information and even personnel as part of the partnership, and one of their initial goals seems to be performing a joint testing exercise on a publicly accessible model."
After high levels of lead was found in baby food last fall, sickening dozens of children, officials last month warned they are still finding the heavy metal in some powdered cinnamon products and urged the public to avoid certain brands. Most of the world moved to eradicate lead from nearly all products by the 1990s, so why do we keep finding the toxic element? Vox takes a deep dive into the issue, exploring why it remains a problem and who is most at risk.
Fmr #Trump treas sec #Mnuchin is telling investors he has a plan to buy #TikTok
Mnuchin told potential backers he aims to maneuver around its price of >$100B & #China’s ban of the export of recommendation #algorithms.
He indicated he could overcome those hurdles by offering to buy the #app w/o the export-blocked #code, essentially forcing his consortium to remake a service built on billions of lines of code.