The News

UK brings in age-checks, VPNs and loopholes explode

The UK’s age verification regime kicked in over the weekend, with services like Reddit, Bluesky, X and P*rnhub requiring users to prove their age to access parts of their platforms (BBC). Naturally, VPN downloads spiked (FT), ranking even higher than the age check platforms on mobile app stores. Other people found ways to fool age check tech into thinking they were adults using video game characters (The Pink News). Meanwhile, Wikipedia is suing the UK government, arguing it shouldn’t be treated the same as other social media platforms under the law (Courthouse News).

The Sizzle: If anyone has any doubt that Australia’s teen social media ban will come into effect this year, look at the UK. It’s happening. I think it’s worth mentioning that pushing people towards VPNs is not a good outcome. Like this piece Don’t use VPN services argues, you are voluntarily letting a third party look at everything you do online. Even if the best ones do what they say and won’t view or hand over logs — it’s very hard to even know who you can trust.

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People with disabilities are actually, really, finding generative AI products useful

People with disabilities are finding that generative AI services and products can actually be really helpful. Neurodivergent people are using them to help them break down social cues and help them communicate, like reviewing conversations to interpret tone (Reuters). Meanwhile, Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses are popular with the vision impaired community who are able to use them to quickly identify and describe things that they can’t see (The Verge)

The Sizzle: I spend a lot of time being critical of gen AI products and their pushers. I don’t regret it, and I don’t think I’ve been wrong. However, it’s good to acknowledge that there are people out there who are having their lives actually, really improved by this tech. Giving someone sight, or insight, is important and I’d like to see more of these kinds of uses and not just brrrrrr goes the slop machine.

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How a women’s safety app made women very unsafe

A viral women’s safety app has been hacked, with thousands of users’ PII, location data and more exposed (AP). Founded in 2023, Tea is an app combining public database requests with social media for the purpose of letting women “vet” men that they might meet dating. The app let women run background checks or look up the criminal backgrounds of men, while also letting them share their own stories. After topping the app charts for a few weeks, the app was “breached” (404 Media, $) when an open Firebase bucket and 60 gigs of user’s selfies and drivers’ licenses — used to verify their identity before they used the app — and other content was found (Jamieson O’Reilly on LinkedIn).

The Sizzle: I’m not going to weigh into the whole insane “doing public record requests on your Tinder date” thing. Instead, I wanted to point out the link between this story and the first story. If you make people give you personally identifying data like their ID or a selfie, you aren’t necessarily making them safer but you definitely making them more vulnerable.

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Leftovers

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Oh, Also

Google made to pay man for capturing him naked on Street View

A man who says he was ridiculed after a Google Street View car-mounted camera captured him naked in his yard has been awarded about $19,000 in compensation from the tech giant (CBS). A court found that the man had a reasonable expectation of privacy that was violated by being snapped in the nude, despite Google’s claim that the six-and-a-half foot fence was not tall enough. Sounds pretty rude… (but for 19k? hmm!)

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Bargains

Electronics & electrical

Computing

Mobile

The End

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