Good question I don’t have the answer to. I could speculate that this is all likely being sourced from some sort of marketing material that ShadowDragon put out where they just flatly say they’re gathering this information from Tesseract, and in reality they’re actually gathering any information they can on users who search for this software and download this software, but like I said I’m speculating.

If you’re really interested, I would say you should email the author of this article, reach out to Tesseract’s development team, or find a way to get a subpoena against ShadowDragon and/or ICE

Sorry to hear that, try this one

https://web.archive.org/web/20250312132300/https://www.404media.co/the-200-sites-an-ice-surveillance-contractor-is-monitoring/

They already routinely pretend that anyone who crosses a border is a criminal in their rhetoric and will find a random bullshit misdemeanor something in 99/100 cases where they want to, but, yeah, this would give them another way to do that. I struggled a bit with laughing at this one because there is a real sinister intent here (thank you for highlighting it btw), but it is also just such smooth brained fascist behavior that I couldn’t help myself.

This is what Kristi Noem, a racist sociopathic puppy murderer who lies easy as breathing, says is the advantage. Beyond the fact that she made mouth noises that sounded like those words there is no informational value to be found in any of her statements.

the Fediverse really seems like it could be our response to these fuckers controlling the narrative on social media. It could be more than just an interesting decentralized social media platform. I really think this could be a key step in reclaiming our democracy.

Agreed, and I would add that finding ways to get nonprofit news organizations (e.g. ProPublica) and public media (e.g. NPR, PBS, etc.) to host and administer their own instances and to start directing their readers/listeners to those services would be a great way to advance this goal

“If we do absolutely nothing ever to hold Republican lawbreakers accountable the voters will respect us for it.” - the Democratic party actually

Probably bad phrasing on my part, I don’t agree with what I’m seeing as the underlying message of this meme but the way it’s structured makes Robyn the intended butt of the punchline imo

Yeah, also Robyn with a “y” playing the part of an SJW getting smacked down really feels like angry grandpa fantasy to me

It gets even worse, the federal government now only accepts applications for asylum through a mobile app

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/05/cbp-one-mobile-application-violates-the-rights-of-people-seeking-asylum-in-the-united-states/

Do you think the department of education writes the textbooks, standardized tests (SAT, ACT, etc.), grading and student management software, learning management systems (Google Classroom, Canvas), or manufactures its own classroom tech (Chromebooks, tablets)?

Each one of those has a bunch of particular nuances, but in general - yeah, I think they could and should in a lot of those cases

The education system is full of for-profit businesses that can jack up the prices, and they do.

Yeah, it’s a big problem with a lot of little parts to be tackled

The DOE simply doesn’t have the resources to create these things themselves

Then government should give them the resources (actually, I think a whole separate agency that develops open source software for any government agency or anyone else who wants to use them should be established, but that’s kind of besides the point).

and would cost them far more if they tried

I don’t think that’s true, and even if it were I think we should be willing to pay premium to make sure essential systems that support the public good are being administered in democratic ways (e.g. by public agencies that are required to give public reports to elected lawmakers and be subject to citizens’ FOIA requests).

the business model has existed forever

A lot of stupid ideas hang on for a really long time. Like, we still have monarchies in the 21st century world.

Personally, I’m more concerned with the use of Google products in schools. A company that’s sole business is harvesting user data and selling it to advertisers should have no place in schools or children’s products. But they’ve embedded themselves into everything so people just accept it at the cost of privacy

I 100% agree this is a significant problem too, I just haven’t come across any good articles about it recently

They tried to do a themed Among Us game, but when they removed the ability of crewmates to criticize each others’ votes it just made the imposters win every round

e; That was a joke (probably should be obvious, but I’m not trying to spread disinformation out here)

Exactly, they’re a captive audience, and moreover they are legally incompetent to consent to a contracted business relationship like this

If this was a department of education AI or even some kind of transparently administered non-profit organization I’d be fine with this, but the fact that this is being developed for some for profit company that can just jack their rates and cut off public schools whenever they want to is bullshit. Like, I’m not opposed to the technology of LLMs at all, I think they’re actually pretty neat, but our social and economic systems have a lot of exploitative trash in them that cool technologies can inadvertently exacerbate.

An American security contractor and a Chinese embassy employee are at a bar. The American says, “I gotta say, your propaganda is impressive. You sure know how to keep your people in line.”

“Oh, you’re too gracious,” the embassy worker says. “And besides, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda.”

The contractor chokes on his drink and gives his friend a bewildered look.

“What are you talking about? There’s no propaganda in America.”

I didn’t realize the anti-immigrant sentiment had gotten to this level in so much of the population

I think the causation is backwards here, a lot of low engagement voters just assume that the best policies are somewhere to the left of whatever the GOP wants and to right of whatever the Dems are pushing for, but they keep thinking that even as the Dems move to the right.

Dems were thinking if independents saw that they’d respect the Dems willingness to compromise or whatever, but Indies saw that and just decided “Oh, I guess immigration really is a problem like the Republicans were saying all along, even the Democratic party thinks we need a border wall now.”

e; an attempt at better phrasing

Survey methodology is described in detail here - https://www.prri.org/research/challenges-to-democracy-the-2024-election-in-focus-findings-from-the-2024-american-values-survey/#page-section-12 (archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/FtPGJ)

Unfortunately the US Department of Justice says they agree because they are (yet again) bending over backwards to protect right wingers from being held accountable for their actions to harm our country

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Yeah, I’m not a Texan but I also disagree about this. Also, Austin has produced some amazing music over the years (for example, random Austin band I’ve been in love with recently is Being Dead).

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Cgv522f5wfU

“I don’t think it matters”