While Wab Kinew's move to ban algorithmic pricing was a good one, this move is an extremely BAD one.

[aarparca@beige.party]

@leftylabourtech @pluralistic As someone autistic who loves using social media to connect with others like me, this was really concerning. I wrote letters to my MLA and MP.

[leftylabourtech@mstdn.social]

@aarparca @pluralistic While this will impact folks in #Manitoba first, stupid ideas like this tend to be picked up by other Canadian provincies. Also, the federal Liberal Party recently passed age verification at their policy convention.

So yes, writing to your MLA as you have done is a good idea. Thanks on behalf of everyone else.

[microblogc@neopaquita.es]

@leftylabourtech

@danneau @zazzoo @pluralistic

The problem is no just the coding part of it. The problem is hundreds of small admins keeping sensitive data they can't manage and don't want to manage.

[yacc143@mastodon.social]

@microblogc
Exactly. The code part can be done easily enough.

Now designing the data storage part and business processes so that it follows the GDPR principles of data minimisation by design it's a little bit more difficult.

It can be done (with some legal infrastructure), we are doing it for video ID (not age verification) for fraud prevention in our company, but it's nontrivial.
@leftylabourtech @danneau @zazzoo @pluralistic

[zazzoo@mstdn.ca]

@yacc143 @microblogc @leftylabourtech @danneau @pluralistic And that's the issue, isn't it? I can't see these platforms suddenly shifting from "sell all the data and, oops, leave it in an open bucket" to PIPEDA/GDPR compliance. You think Twitter maintains chain of custody records from creation to destruction?

[leftylabourtech@mstdn.social]

@microblogc @danneau @zazzoo @pluralistic Exactly! If I were running a Mastodon server would I be wanting to also collect/save age verification data and making sure that personal data was stored securely on top of everything else for audit purposes?

[hoco@sfba.social]

@leftylabourtech @danneau @zazzoo @pluralistic This has been going on for a long time. I started writing iOS apps for clients with iOS 2. I had many in the app store. At first I would only release new versions when I had new features to release. But, over time it became necessary tor release new versions to keep up with changes in iOS. It got worse and worse. After a while, many features had multiple APIs the app had to embrace for the same feature or service.

Then Apple ramped up their release schedule and they touted how many new APIs each release had. They pushed that as a feature in itself.

But, the reality was that you couldn't actually own an app anymore. You could write it and submit it to the app store, but you were only renting it. Every release, the rent came due again and you had to pay with engineering time, to keep it in the store. Apps didn't stay written. They decayed because the operating system wasn't fertile ground. It meant to destroy them.

Only big companies could survive it.

[leftylabourtech@mstdn.social]

@hoco @danneau @zazzoo @pluralistic It's bad enough when big tech oligopolies enforce their oligopolies through their own shitty practices.

It's another thing when laws end up defacto entrenching big tech oligopolies in the name of going after big tech oligopolies.

It's quite sad because the Manitoba provincial government did a good thing on surveillance pricing, but this is a horrible thing.

[leftylabourtech@mstdn.social]

@hoco @danneau @zazzoo @pluralistic When you're doing something good, I'm going to say so.

But when you're doing something bad, I'm also going to say so.

Much of the goodwill the Manitoba government got from the ban on surveillance pricing, it's throwing out the window on age verification.

[seanjh@mstdn.ca]

@leftylabourtech @pluralistic

This is disappointing. My feeling is that Kinew is jumping on a bandwagon.