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what i read this week - week 22 2026

Thought that after my post on summary distrust, I could share a list of what I read each week. I technically prefer to process and digest what I read into blog posts, but not everything makes it into one, and this is a way to document and keep them, and maybe give others some food for thought. This is not necessarily stuff I fully agree with, I'm just sharing what ended up in my feed reader or was linked in stuff I read, and doesn't include all the personal blog posts I read. I had a lot to catch up on because I read a lot less the previous 2 weeks. AI detection was built for faces - article about how bad AI detection works for war and climate propaganda videos, as the detection mechanisms often rely on biometric human features, and cannot accurately detect fake fire, smoke effects, etc. US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ - the US gov is aware of the sentiment around AI and is willing to target and suppress it, and they have little paid accomplice firms too who keep surveilling you on social media and in real life meetings if you organize to oppose data centers or voice criticism about them. Iran Israel AI war propaganda - The AI propaganda we see with armed conflicts right now is a dire warning to the future of online video information. Goes more in-depth about detection methods. Can Tracking Private Jets Predict an Imminent Apocalypse? - article about a site that assumes the rich elites will find out about an apocalypse first and try to flee, therefore serving as a warning system to the rest of us. Why GCC Nations Must Move Beyond Content Moderation to Regulate Harm by Design - GCC means Governments in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Article is about how certain countries have already heavily regulated (and, arguably, censored in their favor) social media platform content, so now they should do the same for platform design. Eh... Big Tech Will Not Save Us From the Climate Crisis - Big Tech is moving away from their climate targets and carbon credit bullshit because they wanna do more AI and data centers. The rest they are doing is unproven or not working. Definition of Overburdened Communities in New Jersey - data centers and other similar detrimental undertakings often target overburdened communities, and this is what it means. A Town Hall Too Late - article documenting how citizens near an almost finished data center actually get informed and treated (not well). They only received information well after the thing started to get built. It is being developed by DataOne for the Nebius Group to support AI infrastructure as part of a $17 billion deal with Microsoft. Meta loses High Court challenge - summary of the case and possible fine. Responsible Innovation Harms Modeling on Microsoft's Learning Platform. EU AI Omnibus Deal Changes - more analysis on the proposed AI Act changes, nudifier ban and more, prominent actors, Merz ruining everything for us as usual, etc. The AI Act is not ready for agents - article for a paper that's also listed below; risks of agents, and a need for more guidance from the AI Office. AI’s real threat is worker control and surveillance - about the divide between workers who use AI and those who are managed by it. Higher paid jobs can be supplemented and accelerated by it, while the less fortunate, less earning (warehouse, gig work) are suffering under AI micromanaging them, causing scheduling issues, errors and more, and are more intensely surveilled than ever by AI "bossware". Entzauberung der Digitalen Souveränität - German; deconstructing the term "digital sovereignty" and ideas around it. Mostly about this talk. AI Forensics gegen Big Tech - German; Interview with AI Forensics founder Marc Faddoul about his work and the fear of retribution, especially the fear about getting targeted by Elon Musk. Human Rights Due Diligence - info on what downstream HRDD is. Microsoft took a step towards human rights - very charitable and exaggerated read of Microsoft parting ways with their Israel chief and their ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, plus suspending some of their services. The World Is Already Resisting AI - Article on the AI Resist List , a collaboratively built, publicly accessible database documenting acts of resistance to the AI industry from across the world. AI Data Centers: Big Tech's Impact on Electric Bills, Water, and More - looking at different papers and studies around the water and electricity use of big data centers, where they are located, and what local problems they are worsening. Meta’s Hyperion project in Louisiana will need three times as much electricity as the entire city of New Orleans, and is bigger than its main airport. They also gag local officials with NDA's so they can't properly inform the residents. What you need to know about data centers - information on what Earthjustice attorneys are doing to push for stronger environmental protections targeting data centers. The Web Is Being Made Accessible for AI, Not People - llms.txt convention, MCP etc.; companies are more ready to make their services accessible to AI agents than disabled people. This shouldn't be seen as another curb cut phenomenon. Bitte im Omnibus sitzen bleiben, liebe PIMS - German article about the Art. 88 reworks for Personal Information Management Systems that are supposed to enable an easier handling of cookie consent and tracking. Social Media Verbot weder wissenschaftlich fundiert noch effektiv - German; about how there is no scientific proof that social media bans will help, and some stats about how many people support social media bans, and for what age group. Big Tech und Staat - German article on how the state seems to increasingly serve private interests, especially Big Tech. Bundesregierung will KI Einsatz der Polizei - German article about use of AI software for law enforcement, its risks, and what rights are threatened. Polizeigesetznovelle Schleswig-Holstein - German article discussing Schleswig-Holsteins attempt at changing their police law, including real-time facial recognition, behavioral surveillance, online face search and more, from strangers on the street, and even mere victims or witnesses of crimes. Das Internet verrottet - German; about link rot and archiving things properly. Why “Made in Europe” Won’t Fix AI’s Deeper Problems - fitting to my blog post. Big Tech as Executor of the dead - was also a topic at the conference. Praxisfolgen Russmedia Urteil - consequences for social media platforms following the Russmedia court decision C-492/23; Notice-And-Sweep. AI Act: deal on simplification measures, ban on “nudifier” apps - concluding what deal was reached between co-legislators; names the new deadlines for AI compliance. Ratepayer Protection Pledge by the White House - promises and propaganda Microslop's Community-First AI Infrastructure Pledge - promises and propaganda vol. 2 Anthropic's Promises - promises and propaganda vol. 3 Offener Brief der Industrie - Open letter to German politicians by German industry criticizing parts of the digital omnibus; it was silly to read, and I think it is disrespectful to imply that technologies can be discriminated against; that's a different usage and connotation than just using it as "being discriminated from" (aka being differentiated from others). None of the arguments are convincing. Draft guidelines for the implementation of transparency obligations for certain AI systems under Art. 50 AI Act - this is out for commenting until the 3rd of June, by the way. Consent Fatigue entgegenwirken - German policy brief by the TUM think tank about countering consent fatigue. Data Center Fight Guide Einstellungen zum geplanten Einsatz von Palantir-Software II - German phone survey about Palantir use by Verian & campact from Sep 2025. Grok Unleashed - Analyzing Grok nudify uses and extremist propaganda, by AI Forensics. Distinguishing Authentic from AI-Generated Explosions using Spatiotemporal Dynamics - more about how to authenticate conflict-zone explosion footage. AI footage tends to produce much bigger, rounder mushroom plumes that expand quicker. Don't ask me about the math, I don't understand any of that, but I found the rest I could understand very interesting. Embedding Human Rights in Technical Standards - About WITNESS' experience in the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), which is in favor of open technical standards to embed verifiable provenance metadata into digital media files. Helpful explainer here . Better Images of AI - a guide for creators and users on how to use accurate images when talking about AI and what to avoid, as it shapes the narrative. Specifically, they call to avoid the color blue, descending code, human brains, science fiction elements, white robots, anthromorphism and references to the Creation of Adam. That is because it misrepresents capabilities, risks and fears, and who is or can work in or with AI (often, only white men are shown). The AI Climate Hoax : Behind the Curtain of How Big Tech Greenwashes Impacts - talks about how different kinds of AI and its uses as well as carbon credits and overstating the climate benefits of AI can be used to hide the environmental impact of the big, hyped up GenAI. Big Tech’s ‘False Solutions’ to the Climate Crisis - similar thing here. Debunking nuclear power, carbon capture, and artificial intelligence as helping climate change. There are endnotes at each chapter, so don't miss what's after. Tackling Arbitrary Digital Surveillance in the Americas - uses Cajar vs. Colombia for some examples to showcase what needs to change, and the importance of the three-step-analysis. Basically all of this is standard here in the EU, but still needs to be implemented there. TRIED AI Detection Benchmark - paper from WITNESS about their framework that evaluates AI detection tools through a sociotechnical lens (with a focus on adaptability, transparency, accessibility, contextual relevance, and fairness). Wasn't a complete fan, because a chunk of it (for example about resource investments) is rather vague, theoretical and hardly connected with a direct or objective way to measure in practice. The rest is mostly fair, but also rather obvious, and some of it is basically impossible to combine in practice - like only using datasets that comply with data protection and intellectual property laws and are "ethical" with no sensitive data, while the models are supposed to reliably detect an AI generated video of a minority language or niche culture, or have enough datasets (= lots) to accurately detect cultural and local contexts. I can't quite pinpoint what exactly bothers me about it otherwise. I did like the examples of real use cases where things failed. In total, that is roughly ~ 340 pages, if we count an article as two pages on average. Most of it was read on Sunday and Monday (holiday), as I had a lot of free time then. Reply via email Published 30 May, 2026 AI detection was built for faces - article about how bad AI detection works for war and climate propaganda videos, as the detection mechanisms often rely on biometric human features, and cannot accurately detect fake fire, smoke effects, etc. US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ - the US gov is aware of the sentiment around AI and is willing to target and suppress it, and they have little paid accomplice firms too who keep surveilling you on social media and in real life meetings if you organize to oppose data centers or voice criticism about them. Iran Israel AI war propaganda - The AI propaganda we see with armed conflicts right now is a dire warning to the future of online video information. Goes more in-depth about detection methods. Can Tracking Private Jets Predict an Imminent Apocalypse? - article about a site that assumes the rich elites will find out about an apocalypse first and try to flee, therefore serving as a warning system to the rest of us. Why GCC Nations Must Move Beyond Content Moderation to Regulate Harm by Design - GCC means Governments in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Article is about how certain countries have already heavily regulated (and, arguably, censored in their favor) social media platform content, so now they should do the same for platform design. Eh... Big Tech Will Not Save Us From the Climate Crisis - Big Tech is moving away from their climate targets and carbon credit bullshit because they wanna do more AI and data centers. The rest they are doing is unproven or not working. Definition of Overburdened Communities in New Jersey - data centers and other similar detrimental undertakings often target overburdened communities, and this is what it means. A Town Hall Too Late - article documenting how citizens near an almost finished data center actually get informed and treated (not well). They only received information well after the thing started to get built. It is being developed by DataOne for the Nebius Group to support AI infrastructure as part of a $17 billion deal with Microsoft. Meta loses High Court challenge - summary of the case and possible fine. Responsible Innovation Harms Modeling on Microsoft's Learning Platform. EU AI Omnibus Deal Changes - more analysis on the proposed AI Act changes, nudifier ban and more, prominent actors, Merz ruining everything for us as usual, etc. The AI Act is not ready for agents - article for a paper that's also listed below; risks of agents, and a need for more guidance from the AI Office. AI’s real threat is worker control and surveillance - about the divide between workers who use AI and those who are managed by it. Higher paid jobs can be supplemented and accelerated by it, while the less fortunate, less earning (warehouse, gig work) are suffering under AI micromanaging them, causing scheduling issues, errors and more, and are more intensely surveilled than ever by AI "bossware". Entzauberung der Digitalen Souveränität - German; deconstructing the term "digital sovereignty" and ideas around it. Mostly about this talk. AI Forensics gegen Big Tech - German; Interview with AI Forensics founder Marc Faddoul about his work and the fear of retribution, especially the fear about getting targeted by Elon Musk. Human Rights Due Diligence - info on what downstream HRDD is. Microsoft took a step towards human rights - very charitable and exaggerated read of Microsoft parting ways with their Israel chief and their ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, plus suspending some of their services. The World Is Already Resisting AI - Article on the AI Resist List , a collaboratively built, publicly accessible database documenting acts of resistance to the AI industry from across the world. AI Data Centers: Big Tech's Impact on Electric Bills, Water, and More - looking at different papers and studies around the water and electricity use of big data centers, where they are located, and what local problems they are worsening. Meta’s Hyperion project in Louisiana will need three times as much electricity as the entire city of New Orleans, and is bigger than its main airport. They also gag local officials with NDA's so they can't properly inform the residents. What you need to know about data centers - information on what Earthjustice attorneys are doing to push for stronger environmental protections targeting data centers. The Web Is Being Made Accessible for AI, Not People - llms.txt convention, MCP etc.; companies are more ready to make their services accessible to AI agents than disabled people. This shouldn't be seen as another curb cut phenomenon. Bitte im Omnibus sitzen bleiben, liebe PIMS - German article about the Art. 88 reworks for Personal Information Management Systems that are supposed to enable an easier handling of cookie consent and tracking. Social Media Verbot weder wissenschaftlich fundiert noch effektiv - German; about how there is no scientific proof that social media bans will help, and some stats about how many people support social media bans, and for what age group. Big Tech und Staat - German article on how the state seems to increasingly serve private interests, especially Big Tech. Bundesregierung will KI Einsatz der Polizei - German article about use of AI software for law enforcement, its risks, and what rights are threatened. Polizeigesetznovelle Schleswig-Holstein - German article discussing Schleswig-Holsteins attempt at changing their police law, including real-time facial recognition, behavioral surveillance, online face search and more, from strangers on the street, and even mere victims or witnesses of crimes. Das Internet verrottet - German; about link rot and archiving things properly. Why “Made in Europe” Won’t Fix AI’s Deeper Problems - fitting to my blog post. Big Tech as Executor of the dead - was also a topic at the conference. Praxisfolgen Russmedia Urteil - consequences for social media platforms following the Russmedia court decision C-492/23; Notice-And-Sweep. AI Act: deal on simplification measures, ban on “nudifier” apps - concluding what deal was reached between co-legislators; names the new deadlines for AI compliance. Ratepayer Protection Pledge by the White House - promises and propaganda Microslop's Community-First AI Infrastructure Pledge - promises and propaganda vol. 2 Anthropic's Promises - promises and propaganda vol. 3 Offener Brief der Industrie - Open letter to German politicians by German industry criticizing parts of the digital omnibus; it was silly to read, and I think it is disrespectful to imply that technologies can be discriminated against; that's a different usage and connotation than just using it as "being discriminated from" (aka being differentiated from others). None of the arguments are convincing. Draft guidelines for the implementation of transparency obligations for certain AI systems under Art. 50 AI Act - this is out for commenting until the 3rd of June, by the way. Consent Fatigue entgegenwirken - German policy brief by the TUM think tank about countering consent fatigue. Data Center Fight Guide Einstellungen zum geplanten Einsatz von Palantir-Software II - German phone survey about Palantir use by Verian & campact from Sep 2025. Grok Unleashed - Analyzing Grok nudify uses and extremist propaganda, by AI Forensics. Distinguishing Authentic from AI-Generated Explosions using Spatiotemporal Dynamics - more about how to authenticate conflict-zone explosion footage. AI footage tends to produce much bigger, rounder mushroom plumes that expand quicker. Don't ask me about the math, I don't understand any of that, but I found the rest I could understand very interesting. Embedding Human Rights in Technical Standards - About WITNESS' experience in the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), which is in favor of open technical standards to embed verifiable provenance metadata into digital media files. Helpful explainer here . Better Images of AI - a guide for creators and users on how to use accurate images when talking about AI and what to avoid, as it shapes the narrative. Specifically, they call to avoid the color blue, descending code, human brains, science fiction elements, white robots, anthromorphism and references to the Creation of Adam. That is because it misrepresents capabilities, risks and fears, and who is or can work in or with AI (often, only white men are shown). The AI Climate Hoax : Behind the Curtain of How Big Tech Greenwashes Impacts - talks about how different kinds of AI and its uses as well as carbon credits and overstating the climate benefits of AI can be used to hide the environmental impact of the big, hyped up GenAI. Big Tech’s ‘False Solutions’ to the Climate Crisis - similar thing here. Debunking nuclear power, carbon capture, and artificial intelligence as helping climate change. There are endnotes at each chapter, so don't miss what's after. Tackling Arbitrary Digital Surveillance in the Americas - uses Cajar vs. Colombia for some examples to showcase what needs to change, and the importance of the three-step-analysis. Basically all of this is standard here in the EU, but still needs to be implemented there. TRIED AI Detection Benchmark - paper from WITNESS about their framework that evaluates AI detection tools through a sociotechnical lens (with a focus on adaptability, transparency, accessibility, contextual relevance, and fairness). Wasn't a complete fan, because a chunk of it (for example about resource investments) is rather vague, theoretical and hardly connected with a direct or objective way to measure in practice. The rest is mostly fair, but also rather obvious, and some of it is basically impossible to combine in practice - like only using datasets that comply with data protection and intellectual property laws and are "ethical" with no sensitive data, while the models are supposed to reliably detect an AI generated video of a minority language or niche culture, or have enough datasets (= lots) to accurately detect cultural and local contexts. I can't quite pinpoint what exactly bothers me about it otherwise. I did like the examples of real use cases where things failed. Zugänglichkeit von De-Personalisierungsoptionen und Meldeverfahren auf sehr großen Online-Plattformen Decisions I had to read to translate for noyb: 2025-0.875.804 and W171 2305420-1

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ava's blog 2 days ago

AI blog question challenge

Rishabh made an AI blog question challenge and invited me to fill it out. Let's go! 1. How was your first experience with AI models? I used to have fun playing around with NeuralBlender, and used it to inspire glitch art of mine that I drew. Back when ChatGPT launched, I used it to teach myself HTML and CSS. 2. Do you use AI or are you completely against using it? On average, I use it once a week or less; weeks can go by where I don't use it. Due to my field of interest, I want to keep up to date on some use cases and capabilities, and make my own experiences instead of relying on what the hype online says. I feel like I can't properly write about my criticisms or privacy concerns if I don't use it at all, or don't test the use cases people rave about (which often leave me deeply disappointed). Occasionally, my boss will also ask me to trial out some use cases at work. Situations I use it for in private when I am not testing what others are doing: 3. Do you have any preference among different models, for example Claude vs ChatGPT? If yes, how do you choose? I only use ChatGPT and Lumo, and I'm trying to permanently move to Lumo. I no longer want to use anything made by OpenAI. 4. What aspect of AI models do you like and what do you not like? I hate the sycophancy and wordiness. Even when I adjust settings to be short and precise, they still yap. I don't like all the subheadings and bullet point lists, I prefer a full text. I turned emojis off. I also hate when they constantly repeat my name, so I removed that again. I also hate how mean Lumo can get; I want no sycophancy and the fucker will start bullying me for some reason. I like the aspect of being able to ask something when no one else is available (either due to the sensitive matter, embarrassment, or time issues). 5. How do you feel about AI generated images? Does it annoy you if someone uses them in a blog post? Seeing an AI generated image on a blog post is about as nice as being greeted by a steaming turd. Even worse when I know it isn't a bot blog and the person spent time crafting the text, only to include a graphic that has several errors, spelling mistakes and other unfitting or illogical stuff. Do you have absolutely no shame or quality standards? You wanna tell me you looked at that picture that said "thseism" instead of "theme" somewhere in it and thought " Yup, that's it, best I can do, hope my readers enjoy this total eye candy, can't see anything wrong with that "? What is it supposed to convey to me as a reader - that you didn't even look at it, or that you were too lazy to formulate a second or third prompt? 6. Internet is flooded with AI slop now, full of generated text, images, audio and videos. How do you filter it from authentic human creation? Do you have a strategy? I'm not on any of the big platforms or their replacements, and I consume the internet through my highly curated RSS feed reader where I follow real people who don't use it like that, or the Discover page. It's easier to avoid when your internet use is limited, in a niche, and mostly used for blogging, reading and studying. I have a good grip on detecting generated text and images, but I've noticed that videos and gifs can easily fool me by now. 7. Are you hopeful for a better future with A.I. or a dystopian one? Hard to say; I think AI is absolutely a dystopian nightmare when used in surveillance and war. For the rest, I assume the bubble will pop and few dedicated models for specific niches and use cases will remain that have proven to be useful and worth the cost, and the rest will fade away. I hope it can do some good in healthcare, but that may be wishful thinking. If AI went away completely, I would not miss it. Reply via email Published 28 May, 2026 I can't find something specific (like a specific word, jargon, saying, concept, item name etc.) via normal search engine use or can't find a clear explanation for something I find difficult to understand. Needing an easy language version for a really difficult paragraph, law text passage, case part etc. that I can't seem to crack on my own. Career and job questions I am unable to ask anyone both offline or online, because people I know in real life can't help, and I'd have to reveal too much to others if I asked online. Career trajectory brainstorming, 3-year and 5-year plan stuff.

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ava's blog 2 days ago

i want a nemesis... or do i?

Today I partially joked in a chat I think at this time of my life, I would like to have a nemesis. Everyone has people they don't like and find annoying, I do too. But a nemesis? There's something you can't stand about them, but you recognize they are really good at something, and can admire some things about them too. You might piss each other off, but there is a good kind of competition between you. It has to be mutual, though. One-sided nemesis stuff is just weird. On a more serious note, I guess it is an expression of my search for someone equally passionate to help me grow and challenge me in some topics. We had another Country Reporter meeting organized by noyb yesterday, and this time, the presentation also featured questions we discussed in breakout rooms, something we never did before. Really loved that. Made me realize again how much I am craving and missing actually talking to professionals about data protection and privacy in a way that is more theoretical/academical or covering areas I know less about, instead of being geared towards laypeople's issues in practice. Blogging is fine, emailing some people is fine; but it is rather solitary or with great delay, and little to no pushback with good arguments that make me dig deeper. Writing helps sort things out and is a great opportunity to research or to revisit stuff I read, but it isn't a balanced peer debate and it doesn't make me aware of blind spots. I do have our DPO at work as mentor, but we meet roughly every 2-3 months or less, and I think I can't make it a more regular thing, as he's very busy. I try to make it to conferences 1-2x a year, but that's also mostly listening to presentations or panels without really getting a back and forth going. The social aspect there is more about networking, status signaling, or passive learning than intellectual sparring. I try to read articles, blog posts and papers that challenge me, but it's not enough as I can't discuss them with anybody. My understanding of things is not getting pressure-tested, I want to need to research more and formulate arguments in conversation. I thought about how I could address this need, and brainstormed about a digital roundtable every other week where the group discusses a DPA decision, court case, new guidance, articles, news, question etc. each time for 60-90 minutes. What would be important is that I am not completely sold on the idea because of scheduling friction, recording concerns and people's general aversion to digital meetings especially without camera, but asynchronous means wouldn't scratch the itch either. I need the conversational intensity and immediacy, and I crave people who are opinionated enough to argue, but not status-defensive and comfortable to change their mind. I'll let that one marinate for a bit still. :) Reply via email Published 28 May, 2026 not just one person supplies the discussion material, but everyone takes turns or signs up to do the next meeting when they find something worthwhile. an explicit expectation that it's okay to disagree. Chatham House Rule, no recordings. diversity in backgrounds (and identity) - laypeople, professionals, field, (gender and location) etc., because even just all being focused on the legal perspective or the activist lens can get pretty monotonous, and professionals don't just wanna lecture laypeople; it gets more interesting when you have people from software engineering, platform governance, cybersecurity, social sciences etc. in it too that all bring a different part to the table, especially technical angles. can't actually be that big, because the more people are there, the less people can actually speak, and many will then just silently attend. There needs to be enough room for everyone to speak if they want to, and not just 2-4 people going at it as everyone else listens. people shouldn't just be there because I'm there.

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ava's blog 4 days ago

navigating unknown cities without a smartphone

While I was at the conference, my wife explored Brussels on her own. As you might know, she doesn't have a smartphone, and the only similar thing she has is a tablet with only WiFi capabilities. Public WiFi is more and more common, but you can still walk half the city without a connection. I asked her to document her experience, as I think most people would like to rely on their smartphone a lot during travels in another country in a city they have never been to before, even just to use live map navigation or spontaneously searching for the next café or restaurant that fits their needs. This is not meant to be a " dumbphone superior, touch grass " post; obviously, in today's world, the above circumstance is needlessly cumbersome. But I still wanted to give insight into it, and maybe it inspires less smartphone dependence during travels, relying more on your intuition and environment to navigate, or reassures you when the battery runs out. In the end, you still have signs and strangers to help. Once again the Dumb Phone-Wife rears her pretty Head to bless you with Tales of her pre-smart Life in a post-smart World and her Capitalisation-Idiosyncracy. Hello once more, esteemed Readers! As you've read before my Wife and I just were in Brussels for a few Days. As Ava was busy from Morning till Evening on every Day that left me with a lot of Time to spend on my own. This is not going to be a Travel report of my own though, you will be able to find that on my own Blog later this Week. Instead, Ava asked me to write a Guest Post for her Blog, about how I navigate being on my own in a new City, getting where I want to go and finding out what I need to know — as always without Smartphone nor mobile Data. One of the hardest Aspects of it is indeed literal Navigation. Most People today rely heavily on having an accurate and reliable GPS-Device in the Form of their Smartphone on their Person at all Times to find there Way around while out and about. Which I freely admit is an immensely practical and helpful Tool — but in my Eyes more nice-to-have than essential. I am not so old-fashioned that I would insist on using printed Maps or written Directions, rather I am taking the middle Way there. My Tablet luckily has the Feature to download set Areas of Maps for Offline-Use, which comes in very handy whenever I am alone and need to find my Way to Places. So what I usually do is save the Map of an Area, in this Case the Brussels-Region, and then use it to generate the Routes I need. Without GPS there obviously is no real Live-Tracking of my Position, it tells me roughly where I am though, based on WiFi-Networks in the Vicinity though (I'm not entirely sure why this works and it is a bit bewildering, but can't deny it being useful from Time to Time either). So I mainly use it to unburden myself of having to decide on Routes myself, as I can horribly indecisive about that, and tell me how for it will be. Then when following these Routes I'll have a Step-by-Step Instruction and to compensate the Lack of Livetracking I just pay heightened Attention to Roadsigns, Landmarks/Businesses along the Way and if I am going by Car actually my Mileage-Counter too, to know when a certain Distance until the next Turn/Exit/etc. will be over. To avoid having to give those Instructions any more Attention than absolutely necessary (Eyes on the Road!) I also thoroughly go through these Routes beforehand and try to memorise them as good as possible. Not Error-free and perfect, but also does help a Lot to make it easier and prepares me for what to expect on the Journey. Of course I still get lost...occasionally..., but so far this only every was a minor Annoyance and Delay, not an actual Problem. One Situation that comes to Mind during the recent Trip was when I had to use a specific Motorway Access, but the next Junction came so quickly, that I couldn't react on Time — so I had to drive until the next Exit and then get back on in the opposite Direction, inconvenient, but no big Deal. Generally when I'm driving alone I am very laidback about these Kind of Situations, and Motorways at least are very simple in their Layout and Direction most of the Time. Missing a Turn or taking the wrong one in the City tends to be more of a Hassle, because there is more Traffic and you get to Experience People's Impatience more directly, but even then I consider myself quite good at keeping an Overview what Street I should be on and then just try to get back en Route. Doesn't work flawlessly every Time, especially when I'm not very familiar with the Area. I never get really lost though thanks to the Map, and if it becomes too confusing, I can just use a long red Phase at a Traffic Light or stop on the Side of the Road to re-orient myself. Usually works just fine, and eventually I get where I want too without too much Issue. Another very present Aspect of being in a new City without a Smartphone is finding out about Places you want to go to to begin with. As both Ava and I are vegan and we have to consider some Allergies this is not merely a Matter of Sightseeing or Shopping, but more so relevant for finding Places to eat at that fulfill our Requirements, after all most Places still are not at a Point yet where we could just walk into any Food Establishment and expect to find something for us there. The Website Happy Cow is an absolute Lifesaver there, as it is probably the easiest and most reliable Way to find out about Restaurants with vegan Options in any given Area. On this Trip we used it extensively too, even wrote down a List of interesting sounding Restaurants, Cafés, Pâtisseries, etc. with their respective Adresses ahead of the Trip. In the End we didn't go to all of them (wasn't my Plan anyway, I'm always in Favour of some Redundancy) and also went to some that weren't on the List, but once again just being prepared helps a lot. One Thing I noted in Brussels is that there were relatively few public WiFi-Networks available. This is not necessarily a Problem, but it did stick out to me. Compared with Germany, where every bigger City seems to have their own public Hotspots in the City Center to use (which I am not above at all). Meanwhile the only one I encountered there, that wasn't affiliated with a specific Business was one in the Ravensteingalerij, which is basically a Shopping Centre, so not a really a public Service as the ones here are either. Stores and Restaurants also seemed to have their own public WiFi less often than I am used to here either, but I can't say that as definitely, because that might have just been my subjective Experience there. As I said, this is not a Problem per se, but given how here I reliably have constant Access to WiFi at least in the central Pedestrian Mainstreets and there basically not at all, I did also had to figure that into my Planning, which mostly meant preparing more thoroughly while still at the "Hotel" (for the Quotation Marks see Ava's Post). Which might have been a bit more restrictive if I had intended to be more explorative of the City and had wanted to look around more than I did this Time, thanks to Heat, hurting Feet and other Reasons. So I mostly limited my solo Endeavours to a few specific Target Locations and was satisfied with that. All in all, I would not claim that navigating a new (and big!) City without constant Internet Connection and GPS is not harder than with a Smartphone, but it is definitely very doable with good Preparation, a bit of Creativity and being able to think on your Heels at least occasionally. It is a bit of a Challenge, and I would even assume that it did not get easier in the Years since Smartphones became ubiquitous, most of it is just a Matter of Habit and easily learned Skills though. I would say I am faring pretty well with it and get by just fine. P.S. Not related to the Topic at all, but recently I realised that modern Dumbphones don't seem to have Holes to attach Charms at all, which is a bit sad! That was it! :) Reply via email Published 26 May, 2026

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ava's blog 5 days ago

concerning law enforcement exemptions in the draft AI act transparency guidelines

I've finished reading the Draft Guidelines for transparency requirement under the AI Act that are out for comment until the 3rd of June, and a variety of exemptions for law enforcement and similar actors greatly concern me. I haven't seen media pick this up in any meaningful way, but this should be highlighted and discussed. A short explanation upfront: Transparency requirements under Art. 50 AI Act refer to providers (and some deployers) 1 of AI systems intended to interact directly with natural persons needing to make sure that the users are informed about interacting with an AI system, and outputs being marked in a machine-readable format and detectable as artificially generated or manipulated. That covers, for example, AI-enabled voice assistants, chatbots in various settings (even on social media), (humanoid) robots and AI companions, AI avatars, coding agents and agentic AI systems. Depending on the provision, transparency can be done via direct disclosure to users (such as banners, pop-ups, notices, voice announcements or chatbot messages), or machine-readable marking and detectability mechanisms for AI-generated content, sometimes complemented by visible labels or watermarks. Simply stating it in Terms of Service, documentation or else, or having a non-visible watermark, is not enough to inform users. This needs to happen at the very first interaction as latest point. Obviousness-exceptions apply. Throughout the document, law enforcement and related actors get several exemptions, starting with 3.2.2 Exception for AI systems authorised by law for law enforcement purposes , points 43-46, page 15, emphasis mine: Providers of interactive AI systems are exempted from the transparency obligation under Article 50(1) AI Act, if they are authorised by law to detect, prevent, investigate or prosecute criminal offences, subject to appropriate safeguards for the rights and freedoms of third parties. [...] To fall within this exception, the purpose of the AI system must be to detect, prevent, investigate or prosecute criminal offences (e.g. AI-undercover agent ). The exception is not restricted to the use of such AI systems only by law enforcement authorities as defined in Article 3(48) AI Act, but may also cover interactive (or generative) AI systems used by other EU or national public authorities or even private actors, such as security companies or financial institutions , so long as their use is authorised by law to detect, prevent, investigate or prosecute criminal offences and subject to appropriate safeguards to protect the rights and freedoms of third parties. Or point 87 , 4.3. Exceptions to the obligations under Article 50(2) AI Act, page 23, about labeling and detection: Finally, if a generative AI system is authorised by law to generate or manipulate synthetic content to detect, prevent, investigate or prosecute criminal offences, it will be exempted from the marking and detection requirements under Article 50(2) AI Act. Or point 103 , 5.2. Out of scope, page 26, for emotion recognition and biometric systems: The obligation does not apply to emotion recognition systems and biometric categorisation systems that are permitted by law to detect, prevent or investigate criminal offences subject to appropriate safeguards for the rights and freedoms of third parties and in accordance with Union law. Or point 117 , 6.1.4. Exception for law enforcement, page 31: If the use of a deep fake is authorised by law to detect, prevent, investigate or prosecute criminal offences, deployers are fully exempted from the transparency obligation under Article 50(4) AI Act. The way it looks right now, AI systems used by law enforcement (and related actors, like security companies!) to detect, prevent or investigate crime will be exempt from several core Article 50 transparency obligations, meaning any labeling, marking or disclosure that you are interacting with AI or that you are seeing deepfake content when it is used against you. As it stands, this enables the use AI chatbots posing as real people against investigation targets without having to tell them, and permits the use of synthetic or deepfake-style content towards targets without having to label it as such. The only exception: The bot is available to the general public and offers functionalities for people to report crimes (meaning: a police chatbot recording your complaint, virtual assistants for witness statement collection, or an AI fraud reporting hotline, for example). Obviously, officers posing as ordinary citizens, lying during proceedings and the entire concept of V-men, etc. is nothing new. However, I am deeply uncomfortable with a future in which LE and specific private actors just get a pass to deceive people with extremely convincing automated tech making this process easier and scaleable, and them having a path to create fake audiovisual material under the guise of "preventing crime", which is a rather vague and difficult to limit reason. Too much can be justified as being done for crime prevention, and it mostly hits people who are innocent or not convicted of a crime (yet), and also affects their friends and family members. With the opening clause about law authorizations, member states could create authorizations allowing banks, fraud-monitoring firms, telecom providers, or platform operators to deploy undisclosed AI interactions or unlabeled synthetic content in quasi-law-enforcement settings just under the guise of detecting, preventing or investigating crime. The line between criminal investigation, compliance monitoring and fraud prevention is being blurred in a way that heavily puts us at a disadvantage. While the guidelines say that the authorization law must specify purposes, circumstances, and safeguards and respect the rights of third parties, there is not yet a definition of any minimum substantive safeguards, nor do they require independent judicial authorization every time. Most often, rights of third parties means things like copyright. The mentioned exemptions, in my view, aid the creation of an environment of distrust online that the transparency requirement otherwise seeks to prevent. They circumvent safeguards against deception, impersonation and manipulation for the most powerful coercive actors we have! We require transparency because of risks to democratic processes and societal trust, but the exemptions remove those safeguards exactly where we are least able to contest or verify what is happening. It will become harder for defendants, journalists, oversight bodies, and other investigators to determine whether evidence, communications, or media were AI-generated or manipulated when LE AI meddled in it while unmarked and undisclosed. If a conversational AI used in an investigation hallucinates, misleads, escalates emotional pressure, or incorrectly infers intent, then that will that negatively and unfairly affect the outcome of the investigation. At minimum, people should not unknowingly interact with highly persuasive synthetic systems capable of impersonation and emotional manipulation by (quasi-)policing actors. They deserve not having to constantly ask themselves whether something or someone they are interacting with is real, and possibly has LE manipulation behind it. The scale of deception the tech enables is intense, down to covert persuasion, emotional manipulation, or inducement, and we shouldn't just let cops (and wannabe-cops) have that unchallenged, with barely any oversight or limits. I understand that for certain targets, transparency is ruining an investigation (child exploitation investigations, counterterrorism infiltration, etc.) but I expect this could increase risks of entrapment and manipulative practices, and an increase of chilling effects online as people adjust their behavior accordingly. This should not be adopted like that without a lot of work addressing these issues and limiting the exceptions to specific cases. Reply via email Published 25 May, 2026 Providers are natural or legal persons, public authorities, agencies or other bodies that develop AI systems, or have them developed, and place them on the Union market (ex: OpenAI). Deployers are natural or legal persons, public authorities, agencies or other bodies using AI systems under their authority (ex.: universities that supply AI models to their students). ↩ Providers are natural or legal persons, public authorities, agencies or other bodies that develop AI systems, or have them developed, and place them on the Union market (ex: OpenAI). Deployers are natural or legal persons, public authorities, agencies or other bodies using AI systems under their authority (ex.: universities that supply AI models to their students). ↩

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ava's blog 6 days ago

summary trust issues

I have previously written about what resources I subscribe to (newsletter, RSS, manual checking) to keep on top of data protection law news, cases, new reports, recommendations by authorities, papers of notable personalities in the space, and more. Since then, it grew to even more sources. Many of these notify me of new releases and briefly summarize them before linking to them. While I use the summaries to judge how relevant it is to my specific interests or needs, I can never just let that be it. I can't even just read a longer article by someone else who has read the entire original document and is diving a little deeper into it while still being shorter than the original. I have to read the original myself . I just don't fully trust summaries or coverage by others. I need to confirm myself whether the conclusions are true, it was correctly interpreted, nothing was taken out of context, exaggerated or left out. I don't want to miss out on any additional info or new knowledge the other person did not think was worth sharing or was outside the scope of the summary. It also feels wrong for me to reference anything I haven't read fully myself, when you would clearly expect me to, or are led to believe that I did. Last year at a different conference, I was surprised, because there was a running gag throughout the presentations that everyone is grateful for the same few personalities in the space for quickly giving a summary of a new happening or source material on LinkedIn, because no one else has the time or patience to read it, or it is too difficult to read and they wouldn't be able to make sense of the court case or whatever without someone else interpreting it first and writing it in shorter, easier language. What the hell? These are industry experts. I just cannot relate, at all. I'd rather put in the time and effort. I never want to be caught in a situation that makes it obvious I didn't read something when I should have. I think the only exception I am comfortable to rely on reading deeper summaries by different people about the same thing are some US bills. Anything EU, I wanna see it myself. My web reader, Artemis, has a dedicated folder titled "privacy" where all of the relevant stuff is sorted into for ease of use, and when going through it to see what to check out, I have a dedicated space in my browser where the to-be-read stuff goes. I sit there multiple times a week chipping away at it. I will now do so again. Let's do some inventory; I have: to read. Each day adds more. That seems little so far, but in my experience, it doesn't stop there, as the stuff I am reading is also linking to other articles and papers, which I then also often want to read completely, or at the very least, read the relevant chapter completely. AI summaries obviously have the same issue for me, if not even more so. I trust a human to see the point of the paper better than the machine. Whenever I tried it out, I still felt dissatisfied, uninformed, and like I got the children's version of it, spoonfed in a way that would make me feel competent without actually being so. In my view, you can't just technically know things in some easy terms to be good at something, you also need to be able to read the original papers, know the jargon, and know where to find something, and I don't think summaries serve that goal well. By learning to read the complicated stuff, it sticks more in your mind, and it also serves your academic writing skills (good for my uni stuff). It still frustrates me, because that isn't even half of what I'd actually like to keep on top of; I have to be ruthless in what I pay attention to and read as time and focus is limited, and I still keep adding new resources into the mix to hopefully get even more of what I want and need. Data protection and privacy is such a dynamic and interesting field, with so many people and orgs publishing interesting stuff each day. It's hard to keep up for anyone, and I still have to work full time, study part time, and volunteer on the side, blog, socialize, answer emails, visit conferences, etc. On the latest conference, there was an ad for a service that keeps track of so much. The most important documents in the EU digital rights space, cross-referenced and updated daily. It's expensive, unfortunately, but I might consider it in the future... I'm hoping to tackle all articles today, and then both papers tomorrow, and then see for the rest, and whatever else is coming in the next day. Reply via email Published 24 May, 2026 22 articles 1 court case 1 activity report (70 pages) 2 papers (64 pages and 60 pages)

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ava's blog 6 days ago

beware of EU-washing

Among all this talk of European sovereignty and switching to European alternatives in a move to better privacy and less support of Big Tech, I wish for more emphasis on not just blindly copying US products and slapping an EU label on it. I see news like the Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution backing away from using Palantir and using a software solution from France instead. I’m supposed to feel happy reading this, and admittedly I did not yet dig into ArgonOS deeply - but all I can think of as a first reaction is “I don’t want an EU version of Palantir.” I don’t want ‘GDPR-compliant’ facial recognition and behavioral surveillance in our cities. I don’t want more privacy-friendly warfare (???). I don’t want more tech-enabled discrimination from next door. I don’t want supposedly European alternative that’s still based on AWS and Microslop. We need to be critical and take a stand against EU-washing, in which unethical business concepts or structures get painted in a more ethical light using the (increasingly less warranted) good reputation of the EU about human rights. We aren’t better for being from a different area, or just because it’s a different company name slapped on; it’s because we are supposed to have strong consumer protections and rights, resist the promise of easy money through unlimited data mining, and stand up against fascism. I don’t want us to compete with evil; I don’t want us to stoop to that level at all. Go hard on these copycats. Taking concepts from Fascism Land isn’t worthy of praise and they don’t deserve you as a customer or fan. Make them prove it first and ask them the hard questions. Boycott their shit if it is the same garbage, go to protests, write to representatives, be vocal online, support NGO’s that work against this. No one gets a pass for being European. I won’t lower my standards and values. Reply via email Published 24 May, 2026

Data Security Business

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ava's blog 1 weeks ago

computers, privacy and data protection conference 2026

I attended the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection Conference (CPDP) in Brussels for the first time. The conference has lots of different rooms mostly in the same building where multiple panels, workshops and other things are happening at the same time in specific slots, so you gotta choose what you participate in (was difficult at times!). Next to that, you have some fun rooms, some quiet working spaces and spaces to just hang out and talk. Based on the programme, the focus this year was definitely on age verification/youth 'protection', human AI relationships, consumer rights and marginalized groups. Lots of different groups and people present; people from the EU Commission and Parliament, AlgorithmWatch , Bits of Freedom , noyb and Max Schrems, IGLYO , EDRi , Equilabs , Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice , INTITEC , the EDPS and Wojciech Wiewiórowski, Privacy International , the International Committee of the Red Cross , the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights , the European Consumer Organization (BEUC), Future of Privacy Forum , AIRegulation.com , data protection authorities of different countries (CNIL, BFDI, etc.), ALTI , European Disability Forum , d.pia.lab , AI Now Institute , OECD , the IAPP , and all kinds of universities, plus companies like Mozilla, Mastodon, Signal, Wikimedia, Microslop, Uber, TikTok, Google and more. I was there for the opening remarks, then went on to visit: My takeaways/new things learned: Microsoft co-wrote parts of the EU's Energy Efficiency Directive , which allows data centers to keep their energy use confidential under the guise of business secrecy. The draft literally had paragraph's of Microsoft's proposal copied in unchanged. The Dutch government used racial/ethnic profiling via algorithms in the assessment of childcare benefit applications, which led to false allegations of fraud against thousands of families, particularly affecting those from ethnic minorities. I heard about this before, but learned more about it that day. To contest it all and defend democracy, we all need to train our AI literacy skills , support and have good tech journalism that questions and exposes it all (404media is, imo, a good example of what they meant), crafting and changing the social media narrative around AI and Big Tech, listening to affected people, demanding transparency via standards and audits etc. We cannot forget that officials know ; many of the effects we criticize are not accidents or side effects, they are the entire point. Like when tech predominately negatively targets marginalized communities, this is a bonus to people in power, and nothing to be fixed. Workers can resist by reminding their leaders of the liabilities and legal risks, strategic issues, money issues etc. that AI brings; demand specific definition of the needs that AI will fulfill at the workplace, instead of letting AI become the purpose instead of the tool. Age verification is racist and migrantphobic : Many people have issues with their ID, or have none, or are undocumented, and age verification in their country requires them to have contact with officials, police, etc. Age verification is transphobic : Relying on ID means many trans people are forced to reveal their deadname or are forced to come out, as it reveals they are trans if the ID is not or cannot be updated. The platforms are harmful, but we have so many ways and ideas against that that doesn't take away important spaces and support groups or bar entire groups of people. Age verification makes it possible for platforms to avoid working on their problems and becoming better, enables avoiding legislation and regulation, and enables control and surveillance by them; meanwhile, the truth is that you don't suddenly turn 16-18 and know how to handle porn, gore, harassment and all other negative parts of social media. The negative sides to social media that are named as the reason for age verification and banning of social media for specific age groups also affect adults negatively . We need to put more effort into education on how to handle these things. Yes, we can protect children's privacy by banning them off of platforms, but this also affects their other (digital and offline) rights, and privacy rights don't trump all . Children and teens should learn and be encouraged to control their own spaces and moderation via FOSS : Matrix, Mastodon, etc. where they can also seclude from adults and aren't reliant on Big Tech. Age verification and banning would take this away from them and also make it harder for FOSS projects. If children only ever enter the political discourse as victims, the only response can be rescue; that it why we have to make sure they enter as participants. Protection is not (just) space away from the risk, but confronting the systems that cause harm and eliminating them. 16-18% of US citizens report having engaged romantically with a bot, 45% of them said it made them feel more understood, 36% said it gave them stronger emotional support than their human partner. Problem: Current version of AI Act doesn't cover romantic and sexual use, no guidance for safeguards for emotionally responsive AI systems that protects around the risk of suicide, crimes, distress when service slows down or shuts down or model changes, discrimination as you get more if you pay etc.; drafts mention some of it now in Art. 50. With all the talk around becoming emotionally dependent on AI, nudging into harmful behaviors, etc. we cannot forget that you are also vulnerable on other services and in human romantic relationships, where the same routinely happens (weak argument, but to be fair, I also often forget this). We also cannot forget that it is not always a replacement - it often just supplements social life, and there are also surprisingly many people who just don't want or need romantic or sexual relations with a human ; they want bots specifically , and only bots. Disclosure agreements (meaning: labels everywhere that this is just a bot and not real) are most often useless, because people know and intentionally seek it out (exception for Insta/Snap DMs etc.) The latter about Human-AI intimacy was extra interesting because it had someone on the panel who directly works with people who use bots for romance and sex, and her experience has been mostly positive and that it helps her clients. Afterwards, I sadly was too overwhelmed, exhausted and in pain to continue and went back to the apartment to rest. Unfortunately, all the stress around the apartment and the generally more exhausting day triggered my digestive tract badly (Crohn's disease), but within the first few hours, all toilets in the venue were out of service due to an issue outside the venue or the organizer's control, and the alternative toilets were much further away. I didn't wanna have to deal with that with upset intestines. I missed the ' Designing Fairness ' Workshop, and the ' Consumer Rights at the age of acceleration' panel. Didn't meet anyone that day. Look at this ridiculous Gemini Photobooth they had that I saw no one use in the entire 3 days. This day, I managed to attend everything on my list, thankfully, as I felt a bit better. I attended: My takeaways/new things learned: The digital omnibus is mostly there to enable AI made in Europe to aid sovereignty and be competitive with US and China; AI here needs a framework to access data without much regulatory risk - that is what the EU Commission person said. Enforcing the law and and making it sharper is actually leveling the playing field and furthering innovation, because there is a massive power concentration of a handful companies that can do what they want, barely pay fines, have the fines suspended because of the US government bargaining with the EU, or who see them as a cost of doing business. Competition is impacted this way, as small companies are hit harder than the big ones. If the omnibus goes through with changing definitions of personal data etc., it will take years for case law, literature, standards etc. to catch up, it wastes money in companies who need to re-do everything to comply; so it doesn't simplify anything and makes praxis harder. You may set ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini etc. to not send feedback or training data in your settings, but when you react thumbs down/up to their request of whether the output was good or not, or choose between two different versions, the entire chat log until then gets sent for training and potential human review. So, these popup feedbacks override your settings . I need to read more papers by Theodore Christakis. Here is one of them. US and UK discovery and disclosure laws/principles go directly against EU data minimization principles; as long as data is relevant to a case it should be accessible, which is why in their cases, they can just have access to million's of people's data if necessary, and in a divorce case, they have the right to ask for AI chatlogs. There is no AI protection or privilege: If you use AI for legal stuff, you have no expectation of confidentiality like you would with a lawyer, so it is not safe from discovery. There is tension between tracking for harmful behavior/threats vs. data privacy rights ; what if someone threatens to kill themselves, kill others, etc.? Should company look for it, track it, report it, alert anyone, suspend the account, send help resources? Still unclear. There is also tension between people wanting the bonus features/ease of use coming from pesonalization and free services, while also not wanting to be tracked or charged. Advertisers see themselves as enablers of a good thing, as people want fitting ads, good algorithms, good suggestions, and free access; so if their business model is challenged or fails, people will have worse access and worse user experiences in their view. They also fear that if their business model is hindered, things will move into a more extreme, embedded, hard to avoid direction that you don't control or decide (Black Mirror ad type of stuff). I previously wrote about Consenter on the blog, and one panel had people from it there and showing screenshots; changed my mind on it a lot and made me understand the new features and goal better, I will probably write an update on it some time. We have different other options all covering something different about tracking, cookies, consent, or going about things differently, old and new: ADPC, GPC, ConStand, Global Privacy Control, DoNotTrack etc.; important for new stuff is granular consent, sent to the website, user given explanations etc. Uninformed decisions and bad practices lead to unfair competition ; bad actors erode trust level overall, so users resignate, experience fatigue and say yes in the same rates between "good" and "bad" services. Will read soon: Our data after us by the CNIL , and future release: Model rules on succession and access to digital remains by Eigenmann und Harbinja Digital remains can be split into assets (copyright, crypto, business tools, money), personal (messages, photos, identities, AI replicas), and third party data. GDPR only addresses living people; dead people's digital remains are subject to member state laws. There might be a need for something harmonized and European, though. For good digital hygiene , we should remember death and make it as easy as possible or sensible for the people we leave behind to get the access they need to manage our stuff how we want them to. Leave instructions, set emergency/legacy access when available (Google, Facebook, Instagram and Apple have it), include digital assets in your will, decide how your data is allowed to be used after death, especially around AI replicas. Hospice, nurses, families etc. should learn to ask affected parties about these things. Thanks to the focus on agentic AI, there is massive need for inference compute, which is super expensive. Almost all of it is in the control of, or can only be afforded by, the hyperscalers. At the same time, anything that seeks to enable or disable things for AI agents on the web can also affect accessibility programs like screen readers. It is in the best interest of the Big Tech companies to keep things individual, because it distracts from the collective issues and changes they'd have to do; it is easier to blame the person for agreeing to tracking than make sweeping changes to how much can be tracked. Individual consent doesn't consider the fact that data doesn't just affect you, but reveals things about your family, friends, partners, coworkers and more, as data is deeply interconnected. If your friend agrees to share his data and it also includes you, that is your data, still going to the service you'd have disagreed to. We as users have no collective bargaining tools yet; even big worker unions aren't negotiating with Microsoft about the terms of their employer using Microsoft Teams, when they actually should. We should also build up data unions made from users who bargain with the platforms. Strikes could look like boycotting the service, blocking trackers, scrambling data, massive amounts of access requests etc. Look into something called a Worker Data Trust ; this was used to prove Uber's predatory dynamic pricing (Worker's Info Exchange). Lots of workers made access requests, the data was combined and analyzed by researchers. After a failed attempt to meet up during lunch, I managed to meet up with another Country Reporter from noyb for a little while until the next panel happened, and sadly we didn't go to the same one. At this point, I was miffed about lunch at the conference. They made a big deal at registration about how the event will be mostly vegan and vegetarian to offset the climate impact of everyone traveling there, and they asked you to select your preference. I chose vegan. But for the entire three days, the food wasn't clearly labeled, some food was mislabeled as vegan when it wasn't, and there was way too little of it and wasn't restocked. It was more like "vegetarian snacks for birds". Vegan people had no warm food option at all, just sandwiches or wraps all three days that would have been enough for maybe 10 people. I mostly starved and I accidentally ate real cheese one time too because the food situation was so confusing. Here was one of the buffet menu cards, which were a bit to the side removed from the food, partially hidden by other stuff, and incorrect (anything with lactose is not vegan). I have no idea how, on a sea of silver platters with lots of bread, I am supposed to be able to differentiate the vegan gluten free bread option and the vegetarian gluten free bread that has scarmoza (italian cheese). It was a roundtable buffet, so everyone was waiting on you to hurry and grabbing stuff; I can't just grab bread and lift off the top to see the ingredients and then put it back, man. At least group the vegan stuff together or put labels directly in front of each thing. Also, while I am not reliant on gluten-free food, I think the people sensitive to it or having celiac disease don't appreciate that either. I skipped the Cocktail parties and big CPDP party, because it's not really feeling fun when you don't drink alcohol, have trouble just going up to people with your mask and hoping they hear you, and have no one to meet or go with. Last day was rather empty in the programme, so I arrived later and left earlier. I attended: My takeaways/new things learned: The AI warfare one was a bit of a letdown, because they all just accepted war as a right, an inevitable thing that has to happen. There was not even a nuance of fighting war itself, or banning AI weapons, etc; it focused more on the dual nature of the data , in which through surveillance, tracking, etc. not only can military use it to target people, NGO's and others can use it to warn, evacuate, render humanitarian aid etc. and document realities on the battlefield. There was also no possibility for the idea that we could enter an age where drones fight drones automatically and no one needs to get hurt or be traumatized or get to kill people like a game, and that is only because everyone is so attached to the idea that war has to have human casualties. It's hard to legislate and restrict because the data is taken from a whole ecosystem : Telecommunications, cloud services, civilian infrastructure, social media etc. and most of the data is collected during times of peace. Warfare is often explained with national security as a reason, which then again is a legitimate interest or fulfills other opening clauses in data protection and privacy laws. It is a problem that the richest men in the world, close to the US admin, lead the biggest companies worldwide, almost all in the US, and control almost all of AI and AI warfare. Project Maven from 2017 was continuously developed on and is now the Maven Smart System , which was used in Venezuela and Iran recently. Our Art. 15 GDPR right of access as it is right now is making up for Germany and Austria's lack of discovery and disclosure rights respectively. Controllers can usually drag stuff out, cite trade secrets and rights of others to evade data access, but the data subject barely has any power. Not having to justify the access request and it not having to be limited to data protection rights is good in this regard and needs to be kept up. Otherwise, also too much confusion and court cases whether a request was abusive or not if now, any request for a court case instead of privacy rights is deemed possibly abusive. We don't only need to focus on reidentification in general, but about the ability to single people's data out; you might not be able to identify them, but you can build a profile anyway. Learned about the term digital twin , or in terms of user data, a data twin that can be used for similation and is similar enough. AI-act-standards.com exists. Many don't know that the AI Act isn't a GDPR for AI, but serves more as market classification, as it sorts AI into different boxes who have to fulfill different requirements. The details of these requirements are/will be set with CEN/ISO standards and frameworks . You can see the progress of development on these standards on that website, and what they cover and how they interact. Hovering over the elements gives additional info. This is done by the JTC21 , and you can also get involved by registering with your national standardization body (in Germany, this is DIN) or when they do public consultations. Disabled people experience both extremes of AI - better accessibility options, often more reliant on AI, so also more subject to surveillance and having their privacy rights violated, while bad governments can use the data to harm disabled people, all under the guise of research. Marginalized groups are often the first trial group in anything, while not being stakeholders in the tech, or even invited to the table. See: AI used in immigration etc. and with deregulation and AI everywhere, we see a loss of reasonable suspicion thresholds in law enforcement and other groups. Learned about adversarial auditing . The previous two days, I did the whole fancy dress pants and blazer thing (one black blazer, one dark red/purple blazer), but for the last day and the drive home, I wore my Bearblog shirt and wide orange jeans: Someone from noyb staff thankfully recognized me and approached me, so we talked for a bit until he had to leave for another lunch meeting. That concludes the human contact I had. And then I left to drive home with my wife. She will hopefully soon write a guest post on my blog about how she navigates a new city in another country without mobile data/a smartphone (she has a tablet with WiFi only), because while I was at the conference, she explored the city on her own. It's kind of difficult to show up to these conferences as someone who isn't sent there for work, who doesn't have coworkers or ex-coworkers also attending, and who doesn't have much or any industry contacts yet. Most people there know each other from work or previous/other conferences, and I don't. These events are primarily for networking, keeping in touch, and talking about what you have seen and learned though. I couldn't discuss anything with anybody present, and it made me feel really lonely and silly. Just going up to people and striking up a conversation is not my strong suit, and it's something I am working on and has already gotten better, but the mask I am usually wearing in these big crowds and gatherings because I am on immunosuppressive medication is actively keeping me isolated. I know people have trouble understanding me, can't see me smiling at them, and think I am sick, so that keeps both sides hesitant. Unfortunately, if I attend next year, I will have to leave away the mask and maybe try out these protective sprays for nose and throat that are supposed to reduce viral load. It seems like you can only 'afford' to wear a mask if you are already in a group of people. Weeks before the event, I asked some people if they would attend, they said they will and we had a group chat of 10 to coordinate meetups. But during the entire conference, I was the only one trying to make something happen - saying where I am/where I will be, identifiers you could spot me with (as we never met before and you can't see name tags well on the lanyard), meeting points etc. and the two people mentioned were the only ones who took me up on it. The others just ghosted me/ignored my messages. That saddened me a lot during the conference. And unfortunately, these types of events are always really exhausting to me beyond the normal amount everyone experiences, because of things that trigger my conditions, my lower energy, my needs to lie down sometimes, sensory issues, food restrictions etc. so I really have to weigh if it's worth it to me. I'm not sure it is, without the social aspect. Many of the panels I chose had an issue of being not well organized. Instead of short speaker times, precise audience questions, interactions, dialogue, disagreements, different sides, answering the panel's topic and offering solutions etc., it often resulted in every speaker having a 10 minute monologue saying their peace, the other speakers not reacting or intervening because it's too much, everyone more or less saying the same thing or zoning out, and then having too little time to really give much attention to audience questions. Some gathered audience questions to answer them in batches and predictably, that resulted in nuance being lost and almost nothing being precisely answered. From many panels, I walked away with less learned than I wanted to, and just being reaffirmed in what everyone knew already. There were almost no further or new resources, or real takeaways of what the next steps should be and how we can tackle or solve an issue. They say " there should be more transparency " but not how we ask for it, how we legislate it, how it should happen. It's often just a vague " Someone should do more of something, and fast. " It was easy for people from the EU Commission to dodge mine and others' questions about the omnibus bullshit with no convincing answer. (: It disillusioned me a bit about my own goal to be speaking at a panel one day, because so often it felt like it was just there to platform someone to give them a chance to ramble and that's it, or just so that they can put this on their CV. Looking into the panelists, so many of them are genuinely great, very accomplished and admirable people with a lot of expertise, but the way things were set up, it couldn't shine through. You would have been better off talking to them directly. As a final bonus for reading this far, help me delete this (fortune) cookie. Reply via email Published 23 May, 2026 Contesting AI & Defending Democracy ; Possibilities for European AI Futures ( x ) Youth protection through inclusion and empowerment : a rebuttal of the exclusion-based narrative ( x ) Intimacy by Design: Governing Human AI relationships ( x ) Microsoft co-wrote parts of the EU's Energy Efficiency Directive , which allows data centers to keep their energy use confidential under the guise of business secrecy. The draft literally had paragraph's of Microsoft's proposal copied in unchanged. The Dutch government used racial/ethnic profiling via algorithms in the assessment of childcare benefit applications, which led to false allegations of fraud against thousands of families, particularly affecting those from ethnic minorities. I heard about this before, but learned more about it that day. To contest it all and defend democracy, we all need to train our AI literacy skills , support and have good tech journalism that questions and exposes it all (404media is, imo, a good example of what they meant), crafting and changing the social media narrative around AI and Big Tech, listening to affected people, demanding transparency via standards and audits etc. We cannot forget that officials know ; many of the effects we criticize are not accidents or side effects, they are the entire point. Like when tech predominately negatively targets marginalized communities, this is a bonus to people in power, and nothing to be fixed. Workers can resist by reminding their leaders of the liabilities and legal risks, strategic issues, money issues etc. that AI brings; demand specific definition of the needs that AI will fulfill at the workplace, instead of letting AI become the purpose instead of the tool. Age verification is racist and migrantphobic : Many people have issues with their ID, or have none, or are undocumented, and age verification in their country requires them to have contact with officials, police, etc. Age verification is transphobic : Relying on ID means many trans people are forced to reveal their deadname or are forced to come out, as it reveals they are trans if the ID is not or cannot be updated. The platforms are harmful, but we have so many ways and ideas against that that doesn't take away important spaces and support groups or bar entire groups of people. Age verification makes it possible for platforms to avoid working on their problems and becoming better, enables avoiding legislation and regulation, and enables control and surveillance by them; meanwhile, the truth is that you don't suddenly turn 16-18 and know how to handle porn, gore, harassment and all other negative parts of social media. The negative sides to social media that are named as the reason for age verification and banning of social media for specific age groups also affect adults negatively . We need to put more effort into education on how to handle these things. Yes, we can protect children's privacy by banning them off of platforms, but this also affects their other (digital and offline) rights, and privacy rights don't trump all . Children and teens should learn and be encouraged to control their own spaces and moderation via FOSS : Matrix, Mastodon, etc. where they can also seclude from adults and aren't reliant on Big Tech. Age verification and banning would take this away from them and also make it harder for FOSS projects. If children only ever enter the political discourse as victims, the only response can be rescue; that it why we have to make sure they enter as participants. Protection is not (just) space away from the risk, but confronting the systems that cause harm and eliminating them. 16-18% of US citizens report having engaged romantically with a bot, 45% of them said it made them feel more understood, 36% said it gave them stronger emotional support than their human partner. Problem: Current version of AI Act doesn't cover romantic and sexual use, no guidance for safeguards for emotionally responsive AI systems that protects around the risk of suicide, crimes, distress when service slows down or shuts down or model changes, discrimination as you get more if you pay etc.; drafts mention some of it now in Art. 50. With all the talk around becoming emotionally dependent on AI, nudging into harmful behaviors, etc. we cannot forget that you are also vulnerable on other services and in human romantic relationships, where the same routinely happens (weak argument, but to be fair, I also often forget this). We also cannot forget that it is not always a replacement - it often just supplements social life, and there are also surprisingly many people who just don't want or need romantic or sexual relations with a human ; they want bots specifically , and only bots. Disclosure agreements (meaning: labels everywhere that this is just a bot and not real) are most often useless, because people know and intentionally seek it out (exception for Insta/Snap DMs etc.) Simplification for Whom? Unpacking the Consumer Impact of the Digital Omnibus ( x ) My Chatbot, My Confidant: Protecting User Privacy in Generative AI Conversations ( x ) Informed consent: The breakthrough in Art. 88b GDPR / Digital Omnibus and current initiatives in the field of PIMS and technical standardisation ( x ) Digital Legacy Beyond GDPR: Succession, Data Protection, Access Rights, and Platform Power ( x ) The Agentic Assistant: What does Big Tech’s goal of creating a universal digital intermediary mean for society? ( x ) Designing Collective Technology Governance ( x ) The digital omnibus is mostly there to enable AI made in Europe to aid sovereignty and be competitive with US and China; AI here needs a framework to access data without much regulatory risk - that is what the EU Commission person said. Enforcing the law and and making it sharper is actually leveling the playing field and furthering innovation, because there is a massive power concentration of a handful companies that can do what they want, barely pay fines, have the fines suspended because of the US government bargaining with the EU, or who see them as a cost of doing business. Competition is impacted this way, as small companies are hit harder than the big ones. If the omnibus goes through with changing definitions of personal data etc., it will take years for case law, literature, standards etc. to catch up, it wastes money in companies who need to re-do everything to comply; so it doesn't simplify anything and makes praxis harder. You may set ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini etc. to not send feedback or training data in your settings, but when you react thumbs down/up to their request of whether the output was good or not, or choose between two different versions, the entire chat log until then gets sent for training and potential human review. So, these popup feedbacks override your settings . I need to read more papers by Theodore Christakis. Here is one of them. US and UK discovery and disclosure laws/principles go directly against EU data minimization principles; as long as data is relevant to a case it should be accessible, which is why in their cases, they can just have access to million's of people's data if necessary, and in a divorce case, they have the right to ask for AI chatlogs. There is no AI protection or privilege: If you use AI for legal stuff, you have no expectation of confidentiality like you would with a lawyer, so it is not safe from discovery. There is tension between tracking for harmful behavior/threats vs. data privacy rights ; what if someone threatens to kill themselves, kill others, etc.? Should company look for it, track it, report it, alert anyone, suspend the account, send help resources? Still unclear. There is also tension between people wanting the bonus features/ease of use coming from pesonalization and free services, while also not wanting to be tracked or charged. Advertisers see themselves as enablers of a good thing, as people want fitting ads, good algorithms, good suggestions, and free access; so if their business model is challenged or fails, people will have worse access and worse user experiences in their view. They also fear that if their business model is hindered, things will move into a more extreme, embedded, hard to avoid direction that you don't control or decide (Black Mirror ad type of stuff). I previously wrote about Consenter on the blog, and one panel had people from it there and showing screenshots; changed my mind on it a lot and made me understand the new features and goal better, I will probably write an update on it some time. We have different other options all covering something different about tracking, cookies, consent, or going about things differently, old and new: ADPC, GPC, ConStand, Global Privacy Control, DoNotTrack etc.; important for new stuff is granular consent, sent to the website, user given explanations etc. Uninformed decisions and bad practices lead to unfair competition ; bad actors erode trust level overall, so users resignate, experience fatigue and say yes in the same rates between "good" and "bad" services. Will read soon: Our data after us by the CNIL , and future release: Model rules on succession and access to digital remains by Eigenmann und Harbinja Digital remains can be split into assets (copyright, crypto, business tools, money), personal (messages, photos, identities, AI replicas), and third party data. GDPR only addresses living people; dead people's digital remains are subject to member state laws. There might be a need for something harmonized and European, though. For good digital hygiene , we should remember death and make it as easy as possible or sensible for the people we leave behind to get the access they need to manage our stuff how we want them to. Leave instructions, set emergency/legacy access when available (Google, Facebook, Instagram and Apple have it), include digital assets in your will, decide how your data is allowed to be used after death, especially around AI replicas. Hospice, nurses, families etc. should learn to ask affected parties about these things. Thanks to the focus on agentic AI, there is massive need for inference compute, which is super expensive. Almost all of it is in the control of, or can only be afforded by, the hyperscalers. At the same time, anything that seeks to enable or disable things for AI agents on the web can also affect accessibility programs like screen readers. It is in the best interest of the Big Tech companies to keep things individual, because it distracts from the collective issues and changes they'd have to do; it is easier to blame the person for agreeing to tracking than make sweeping changes to how much can be tracked. Individual consent doesn't consider the fact that data doesn't just affect you, but reveals things about your family, friends, partners, coworkers and more, as data is deeply interconnected. If your friend agrees to share his data and it also includes you, that is your data, still going to the service you'd have disagreed to. We as users have no collective bargaining tools yet; even big worker unions aren't negotiating with Microsoft about the terms of their employer using Microsoft Teams, when they actually should. We should also build up data unions made from users who bargain with the platforms. Strikes could look like boycotting the service, blocking trackers, scrambling data, massive amounts of access requests etc. Look into something called a Worker Data Trust ; this was used to prove Uber's predatory dynamic pricing (Worker's Info Exchange). Lots of workers made access requests, the data was combined and analyzed by researchers. Data-driven warfare : AI, civilian risks, and corporate responsibility ( x ) Digital Omnibus meets the Charter of Fundamental Rights ( x ) Toward a Standard for Fair AI-driven Recruitment ( x ) Data protection law as a shield, not a weapon: empowering historically marginalized communities in the EU in times of de-regulation ( x ) -> this choice was especially rough, because I was also very interested in ' The U.S. Deregulatory Effect ' happening elsewhere at the same time The AI warfare one was a bit of a letdown, because they all just accepted war as a right, an inevitable thing that has to happen. There was not even a nuance of fighting war itself, or banning AI weapons, etc; it focused more on the dual nature of the data , in which through surveillance, tracking, etc. not only can military use it to target people, NGO's and others can use it to warn, evacuate, render humanitarian aid etc. and document realities on the battlefield. There was also no possibility for the idea that we could enter an age where drones fight drones automatically and no one needs to get hurt or be traumatized or get to kill people like a game, and that is only because everyone is so attached to the idea that war has to have human casualties. It's hard to legislate and restrict because the data is taken from a whole ecosystem : Telecommunications, cloud services, civilian infrastructure, social media etc. and most of the data is collected during times of peace. Warfare is often explained with national security as a reason, which then again is a legitimate interest or fulfills other opening clauses in data protection and privacy laws. It is a problem that the richest men in the world, close to the US admin, lead the biggest companies worldwide, almost all in the US, and control almost all of AI and AI warfare. Project Maven from 2017 was continuously developed on and is now the Maven Smart System , which was used in Venezuela and Iran recently. Our Art. 15 GDPR right of access as it is right now is making up for Germany and Austria's lack of discovery and disclosure rights respectively. Controllers can usually drag stuff out, cite trade secrets and rights of others to evade data access, but the data subject barely has any power. Not having to justify the access request and it not having to be limited to data protection rights is good in this regard and needs to be kept up. Otherwise, also too much confusion and court cases whether a request was abusive or not if now, any request for a court case instead of privacy rights is deemed possibly abusive. We don't only need to focus on reidentification in general, but about the ability to single people's data out; you might not be able to identify them, but you can build a profile anyway. Learned about the term digital twin , or in terms of user data, a data twin that can be used for similation and is similar enough. AI-act-standards.com exists. Many don't know that the AI Act isn't a GDPR for AI, but serves more as market classification, as it sorts AI into different boxes who have to fulfill different requirements. The details of these requirements are/will be set with CEN/ISO standards and frameworks . You can see the progress of development on these standards on that website, and what they cover and how they interact. Hovering over the elements gives additional info. This is done by the JTC21 , and you can also get involved by registering with your national standardization body (in Germany, this is DIN) or when they do public consultations. Disabled people experience both extremes of AI - better accessibility options, often more reliant on AI, so also more subject to surveillance and having their privacy rights violated, while bad governments can use the data to harm disabled people, all under the guise of research. Marginalized groups are often the first trial group in anything, while not being stakeholders in the tech, or even invited to the table. See: AI used in immigration etc. and with deregulation and AI everywhere, we see a loss of reasonable suspicion thresholds in law enforcement and other groups. Learned about adversarial auditing .

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ava's blog 1 weeks ago

my experience in brussels

For the CPDP 2026, I was in Brussels this week. The inner city with all its cute little shops, fancy buildings and barely any cars was very charming. Have some pics. We spotted Super Dragon Toys on the way and had to stop there, of course. Surprisingly, they had a lot of Sanrio, and even a blind box I was trying to get months ago that was sold out everywhere on and offline before, so I grabbed one. Got Pochacco; I liked all designs you could get in the box, so that was fine with me. I wish we had a bonsai shop: Also came across a colorful shop full of stuff around penises, vaginas, and breasts? We also went to see Mandalorian and Grogu in the cinema there; very epic layout of the room. I also enjoyed the movie; I don't get the reviews at all. Typical Star Wars fan cynicism and everything-has-to-be-dark-and-gritty-like-Andor. What was surprising is how little English is written anywhere or even reliably spoken. In German tourist-y and big cities, you have an English version of almost anything printed underneath, and often even more languages, especially when close to borders. Brussels doesn't really give the same courtesy as much as I thought it would, which caught me off guard because of all the EU buildings and employees there. Many people seem as if they don't learn English in school at all and struggle with it? I booked something a few minutes from the venue that was affordable, looked good on pictures and had a good rating. I read the top description and bottom checklist and it sounded nice. What I didn't read were the actual reviews (my bad, I know). If I had done that, I wouldn't have booked. I read them 10 minutes before arrival and it turned out that this is an AirBnB type thing posing as a hotel. The reviews called out this lie, but still rated it high (enough). A guy waited for us to get us the keys and explain everything, and we shared an apartment with a stranger that had his separate bedroom. Yup. Stressed me the fuck out. It was clean enough in the bedroom and bathroom (had one to our selves directly attached to it thankfully, because we had the double). The rest was meh. Kitchen utensils were severely lacking and often dirty. It was good enough to sleep and be gone the entire day. The stranger stayed in his room all the time, but smoked in there and it stunk through the entire apartment. We couldn't even get hot water reliably, and the sink spilled everywhere. So if you are ever in the same position... Brussels City Chambers is not a hotel, or even an aparthotel like they say. The info is hidden way below, nested between lots of other info, now saying " Comfortable apartment with shared living room. Choice between private room with private bathroom and rooms with shared bathroom. " You don't even get shown that during the booking process when you choose an accommodation, otherwise I would have noticed it then. Most of the pictures supplied are not of the property at all. So while technically you can find out if you are paying a lot of attention, you are meant to be misled if you just wanna be quick about it (and I hate booking hotels, so unfortunately I rushed through it, my bad). Big city, tourists, of course it's full! To be expected. I've been in big tourist-y cities before. But my god, now I understand why Belgians in Germany drive as if they are trying to kill you. They are also trying to kill each other in their own country. Lines on the ground get completely ignored, and so are any traffic signs or lights. The speed limit doesn't matter. Everything is a mere suggestion and they are driving like it's an off-road jungle adventure. They get mad at you for taking the rules seriously. We Germans are a rule-loving folk and get mad if people cross the street during a red light, so this was a culture clash. We were frequently honked at for following the traffic rules (staying in our lane, driving the speed limit, etc.). People just endanger others by speeding through everything, cutting you, overtaking you and almost crashing into someone else, and they don't blink long enough or at all to even let you know they are gonna swerve into your lane... they all drive like reckless, annoyed Taxi drivers in an indestructible tank. It wasn't an asshole here and there, it was everywhere, all the time, every vehicle. We soon found that we are just the odd ones. You felt it even outside the car, as a pedestrian. It felt like you weren't safe anywhere because everyone is going where ever they want, so bicycle lanes and bus lanes still had speeding cars, people almost ran over pedestrians who had the green light to cross, motorcycles drove on the sidewalk... I thought I would get ran over on this trip for sure. I also do not like how the motorcyclists can just speed past you in the middle in the tunnels without any care in the world. And how Apple Maps handles the tunnels!! They don't make it clear whether you are supposed to descend into one or keep right to avoid it. And finally, the way crossings and roundabouts are designed in Brussels is completely not intuitive and insane. I can't even explain it, but you really have to guess how you're supposed to drive, which adds to the whole messy driving culture. Multiple times, I thought we were going the wrong way for sure, but it ended up being correct. The almost complete app reliance to park is also nuts. We tried the parking machines that are spread around the streets, but they are very slow, and if you set the language to German, the process is broken and doesn't let you book anything. It's also very focused on the Belgian license plate layout despite Brussels being so tourist-y and full of people from outside the country, so entering anything with a different layout is risky and seems to overwhelm the process. It was much easier to handle in an app (Indigo Neo), but they only accept credit card; I am lucky to even have one. I expected more care around the different types of people coming into the city from a city that is the capital of Europe, essentially. If there is a next time, we'll definitely take the train, even if it is more expensive and more annoying with luggage. We went to Pure Veg India, Kitsune Burgers, Verdo, and grabbed some things to go from BS40 and a bakery I forgot the name of. Big fan of all of them, except for the dry pastries from unnamed bakery. Verdo was so amazing and my highlight of it all. I don't know if I will be back next year, also has to do with some conference disappointments... I really wanted to like this city, also because I do sometimes toy with the idea of getting more involved in EU stuff, but I think I would be really unhappy living there :< Reply via email Published 23 May, 2026

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ava's blog 1 weeks ago

many people's business is really not that impressive

I've recently participated in an entrepreneurship workshop hosted by my university, which focused on idea generation for a startup. I have absolutely no plans to do that, and I think I am the wrong person for this, but I wanted a brief glimpse into the mind of people in that space. We tend to be complete opposites, and I wanted to know and understand how they think and what makes them tick. I didn't last longer than 30-40 minutes in it; the language around all of this just sounds very cringeworthy to me. Anything very hypercapitalist, neoliberal, sales-y just gives me the ick. All I saw was very naive people misled by the idealization of "being your own boss" our society has, without a plan or a problem to solve. It was still impossible for me to empathize and see what they see. Once in a while, I think about how many businesses are just a step between you and the source and just take over a single step for you (if at all) and it baffles me. It weirdly seems illegal when it’s not! As if someone’s gonna come along and say: Why would anyone pay if they can just buy directly? But that's not how it works; that's just the child view of it. As a kid, I had a view of all of these jobs like doctor, vet, police man, fireman, builder etc., who are the source and/or who do a lot of the process. The person looking to build a house on their plot of land can usually not just build a house themselves, it makes sense to hire a company to do it to source all the materials, experts and workers. I understand wedding planners for really complex weddings. Then there’s the grocery store, that gives you easy access and presents it all well for you, factories that produce the products from different raw materials, experts that can interpret the numbers/laws/etc. better than you can as a layperson, and so on. Later on, you realize lots of companies just buy the finished product for cheap and slap their logo onto it, or wrap their own packaging around it, or just dropship. They do practically zero work, aside from offering more of the same. Which is fine, I guess, but I can’t really put it into words how different it all used to seem to me. As if everyone produced things themselves and is a great innovator and problem solver. They still try to sell that idea to these wannabe startup people, meanwhile they will probably just slap their own logo onto a pair of pantyhose that is produced in the same factory as all the other ones, or take an app idea from a competitor and change the interface slightly. Now when you read about someone’s business venture, they tend to just get someone else to do everything; some coders brag that they get clients, just to subcontract it out to some poor person on Fiverr or just let AI do it, and get paid for that anyway by unsuspecting customers. So often, it seems to be more about getting inbetween another company/freelancer and their (potential) customers to get a piece of the pie, instead of creating your own solution. Not even necessarily about making things easier, or creating a new product, but being the one that is found quicker (via socials, search engine etc.) and mediating. Sometimes, you can still catch me being disillusioned about this; like when some girl online announced she bought a matcha farm, and my stupid ass imagined her actually on the farm coordinating the growth, harvests and all, taking care of machinery; meanwhile in the end, all she bought was a piece of the harvest to be turned into matcha in her own branded tin. She doesn't run the farm, she at best invested into it as a shareholder. I cannot be the only one that is caught off guard sometimes when you see what someone's "own company" ends up being many times, and how overstated it all is? Just ask women on dating apps; 9 times out of 10, the dude that's telling them about being the boss of their own company is just a crypto bro, reseller/scalper or creating sloppy AI wrappers. They'll go on about having made something of themselves and created something "from scratch" and it ends up providing zero value to the world, piggybacks directly off of someone else's work and is neither new or impressive. What gives? Reply via email Published 18 May, 2026

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ava's blog 1 weeks ago

i suspect there is a new uber data leak

For the last 2 weeks, I have received 2FA codes for my UberEats account that I did not request roughly every couple days. The account was only created a year ago and used twice, then never again. The email address and password were created specifically for it and are not used elsewhere. No other accounts and services I use are affected. A quick search shows others have been dealing with the same very recently (~3 weeks). I logged in and tried to start the account deletion process. It ends in a white screen with no confirmation, and you get no “Sad to see you go” email or anything else. If you’re lucky, you’re forcibly logged out and take it as a sign that it worked. That’s a shitty process. The info says they deactivate for 30 days and then fully delete, and I had hoped that would stop the 2FA requests, but alas, it did not. They still let you attempt log in and send a code, and I have no idea if that stops the deletion process or resets the 30 days. As I did not want a random person thwarting my account deletion, I once again logged in, changed all personal information and the password, and started the account deletion again (same bullshit). I have contacted their privacy team to let them know. We’ll see what they say. I also requested them to delete my account in case the deletion process failed. I haven’t yet seen any notice about this on their website or in the media. 🤷🏻‍♀️ If you have an Uber/UberEats account, consider changing your password. Reply via email Published 17 May, 2026

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ava's blog 2 weeks ago

privacy is becoming even more of a privilege

I've been thinking more about the future we might be heading towards if things continue the way they do, relatively unstopped, especially in regards to data harvesting and leaks, and how digitalized our society continues to become. I wonder if we are simply headed for a society in which there is bleak acceptance and normalization of most pieces of information being out there already. Everything you put out there voluntarily/openly (like a blog, or social media) and the things passively collected about you (via your devices) being trained on, analyzed, in some database that cannot withstand the latest AI release or whatever, together with vibecoded insecure software. Your cloud, your social media posts, your DMs, your purchase history on different platforms, health data in your eFile, the journal entries you did in that aesthetic journaling app, the poop pictures you gave to an AI app to analyze, the recordings of your Alexa and smart TV, etc. that all may or may not be combined. We have lost so many of the previous barriers. Compared to previous times in history, many things aren't automatically private in your own home, or just saved in just people's brains anymore. Less and less things are exclusively physically in some cabinet you have to locate and get several keys for or lie your way in (social engineering) for. Digital things are written down and stored in a more accessible way, and while there is a metaphorical door, it can be broken down from anywhere in the world, and you no longer need to rely on pressuring things out of people or enduring any of the prep and risk of a physical break in. Your home can be broken into from half the planet away. All of this is making secrecy and privacy hard; it is all a technology arms race. Data protection and privacy is only seen as a hindrance, an annoyance in the eyes of many. Unnecessary when things are going fine until they aren't. It's annoying when a website asks you to consent, but it's suddenly important when you need to know what data a company still has from you, or when there's a breach. I see privacy laws overall being weakened, employees in those teams, authorities and organizations terminated, all because data is the new gold, or an even better oil. I see the EU trying to use our rights and data as a bargaining chip for US travel and exports. As usual, human rights stand in the way of big money. Historically, we are used to seeing the privacy of the rich as something rather physical; they move to gated communities, or land in bumfuck nowhere, to have no neighbors and peace from paparazzi and weird stalkers. They get to have certain media pulled from the shelves when it is not favorable to them. Increasingly, we have seen them remove digital content: Blog posts, Reddit threads, specific images and videos, stats tracking their whereabouts, meetings and flights. Unfortunately, the richer you are, the more protection of your data and privacy you can buy. You can see it even now: We need to give up so much information just to travel and pass airport checks, down to social media checks or the EU bartering over sharing biometric data with the US for EU travellers. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift and Elon Musk can restrict the activity of their private jets. They can obscure or limit their real-time location exposure, acquire surrounding properties to create buffer zones, forbid aerial photography and maritime tracking around their properties, tighten security around family information and their children’s identities, can afford security teams and compartmentalized travel arrangements, can subject others to NDA's, and influence powerful government officials - can you do the same? As you are told you need these devices with all these data mining features, all these privacy-disrespecting apps and LLMs, all these social media accounts to be successful, or happy, or organized, or be seen and loved, or get a chance at an additional income stream or fame, they are already rich and known enough. They get to be private, not overshare on socials, and leave posting and taking calls and messages to their assistants. It's okay for them not to be overly online and active. They probably get to be exempt from their own companies' tracking for "security reasons", despite using the same products. They know the data their services mine is harmful if you have a stalker or abuser; they only care if it affects them, though. And think of the legal repertoire they have when they have their likeness stolen, deepfakes of their voice and visual characteristics made in a way that harms them. You don't have the same options. When data leaks that makes you uninteresting to employers, you have to potentially live with that; they are the employers. Continuing on, having any privacy will be even more of a privilege. It is maddening, because very rich and powerful techbros like Musk, Altman, Zuckerberg, etc. get rich off of our data that we can no longer afford to protect against them, eventually always funding their dominance over us, and enabling their own exemption status in this data mining society. They benefit from collecting and analyzing information at industrial scale while attempting to selectively limit information flowing the other direction. In their ideal little world, they don't invest it back into us; they use it to further fund AI replacement workers, weapons, and their doomsday bunkers away from us all. It makes me wonder if we will end up in a society where people will deliver as much information up front as they deem necessary to be in control of the narrative and tell themselves they have not been spied on and instead have shared it voluntarily in an act of bravery. Reply via email Published 16 May, 2026

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ava's blog 2 weeks ago

beginner gym stuff

I've been able to go to the gym more consistently lately, and I've started using the strength machines too, instead of just using the treadmill. Usually my workouts consisted of the treadmill, my indoor cycle, pilates and yoga, but I wanted more, especially after this year has been more difficult with consistency because I felt sick more often. I thought about what an absolutely guaranteed positive force in your life strength training is; stairs are less of a problem, getting up after a fall is easier too, more stamina and strength to fight back or run away, being able to carry more things in a move, better mental health, fighting age-related or medication-related muscle loss, better posture and support for bones and joints, less pain, helping fight insulin resistance, and so on... it feels like a cheat code. Especially for me, as I have lost quite a bit of muscle when I had to take Prednisone for months, and still have phases where I'm lying around a lot and cannot move much due to my chronic illnesses. Handling stress in healthy ways, having positive inflammation that's taking away from the negative one, training for strength and flexibility is really good for my conditions, so I am trying my best :) I also notice that every time I am knocked out for a week or two, I bounce back quicker than the last time in terms of getting my strength and stamina back. Nonetheless, I have to start small because lots of areas, especially my arms, just don't have that much muscle strength yet. Monday is my designated cardio day now, with 60 minutes of treadmill as I am used to. Inclines, running, etc.; I am trying to build up enough stamina to run 5km without a break. Tuesday and Thursday are (active) rest days; I am at the office and usually doing a 3km lunch walk. Wednesday is mostly my leg day; so far I am managing 25kg on the leg press, the adductor and the abductor. I do 20kg seated leg curls on a good day, less on a bad day. For now, I am pushing it on 10kg on leg extension and glute machine. But! I also train a bit of core here, so abdominal (20kg) and lower back extension (15kg). Friday is predominately arm day (and some core and slight cardio too). I am just focusing on getting the correct moves and posture right, as my arms are essentially spaghetti arms with not much strength at all. I manage a (to me) surprising 25kg on the seated lat pulldown now, but I am a little baby at the chest press, managing a mere 5kg. Shoulder press seems to vary between 10-15kg. I unfortunately seem to have an elbow issue with the seated row machine, where my right elbow will weirdly lock up when I extend again. This has happened for years in daily life as well occasionally, and I have to sort of twist and jiggle it around to unlock. I really have to be cautious about how I move the arm and the second it gets too heavy, it happens every rep, so for now just 10kg. Afterwards, abdominal and lower back extension again, and then, depending on energy and mood, 15-40 mins of treadmill. The weekend is just for genuine rest, just sitting at the desk, or at best, some stretching or a walk in the forest now. I don't want to overdo it. Right now, this works for me; my gym is veeery small and doesn't have that many machines, and I don't want a very complex routine. I might switch it up and try different machines here and there after the coming months, but for now, I just wanna lock into this and see how it goes. After 3 weeks of this, I have noticed: I'll make a followup in a couple months to see how things progressed. Reply via email Published 15 May, 2026 I'm falling asleep quicker, and sleep feels very, very restful. I wake up before my alarm, slowly. I need a lot more sleep than I previously did. I really cannot get away with going to bed late now, or having a disrupted night. I think despite waking up naturally, I'd love to get 2-3 hours more. I am constantly tired, but not in the fatigued, totally exhausted way I was used to in bad illness phases. I'm just sleepy, while otherwise feeling normal. I can do my stuff, I can focus, I can walk around, but at the same time I could just lie down for a nap constantly . The skin on my face is really good. Also, I'm less gassy/bloated, better bowel movements. Going up the stairs is so easy now. Everything is sort of a little easier now, in a way that is hard to describe. Better relationship to my body. Generally less joint pain, especially around the hips, and the spine in general.

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ava's blog 2 weeks ago

new challenges at work

In the past, I have complained about some aspects of my work here and there. As I continue to grow, get more qualifications, visit conferences, and apply to interesting positions, I've put more effort into transforming the place where I'm at, to the best of my abilities. I've repeatedly asked for more work, I've asked for different tasks, and I helped create a new role. Not replacing my current role and work, but something on top/on the side next to my core tasks. I needed change and something worth logging in or coming into the office for, and of course I wanted to pivot more into my desired field. That brings some new challenges, which are desired, but can be uncomfortable at first. Years of doing the same tasks with comparatively little cooperation and following repetitive processes never forced me to put a lot of thought into what I put out, so to say. That can be very nice, and in the beginning, it was hard enough learning everything and doing everything correctly. With my core work, no one asks me to create anything from scratch, make any decisions, or organize anything independently; it's all set in stone. If I wanted to, I could just spend years doing the work-equivalent of "minding my own business" and keeping my head down, in which I work off what came in that day based on our rigid standards and use fixed email templates (not even having to formulate my own sentences), nothing more, nothing less, unbothered. That's what I did for years as I got used to everything, and as I was very sick. But now, when I want to do more challenging work, I notice that years of working like this have made me very comfortable. Not lazy, but it feels unusual and slightly scary to suddenly have a more "active" part of work where I actually have to plan meetings, host and lead them, prepare slides, and even approach people first about needing to find time to discuss something together. Completely normal office tasks for others, of course, and it's what I wanted to not stagnate further in something that bores me, but my brain still perceives it as a threat. Due to internal restructuring and moving of employees, we lost our sub-department's IT coordinator 1 (each sub-department has to assign someone). I asked my boss if I could be the new one, and she agreed. Unfortunately, at least in our department, this title is more decorative than anything else, as the IT coordinators don't even have any meetings to discuss anything at all. This has generally worked fine enough, as in " we are surviving ", but now with different AI model rollouts and other software changes, I notice employees becoming more and more confused and helpless, and a more proactive approach would be nicer. When I asked my boss for permission to be one, I said I would like to organize a meeting of all coordinators to discuss some challenges and more, and both her and the department head thought this was a good idea and asked me to schedule one soon. I didn't expect how much this task would make me freeze up; I didn't wanna be the newcomer in a group who piles more work and yet another meeting onto the other people as a first move. So I obsessed over a good way to introduce this, and how to make the first meeting worth it. I didn't want everyone to show up, discover we have nothing to discuss, and leave after 5 minutes. The invitation mail should stress that this is just a first, casual meeting in which we will talk about x, y and z topic, and then determine whether this should happen again and in what frequency. I also kept pondering whether I should also already prepare a topic/mini-presentation to not come with empty hands myself as an organizer, and what that could be, putting a lot of pressure on finding something good enough. The final hurdle was that no one in my department apparently even had a full list of who the other coordinators are; had to research that myself somehow and ask around. All that made me put off scheduling anything for a good 3 weeks. Yesterday, I finally dealt with this mess, as the task became more and more pressing and uncomfortable to think about, threatening to become this huge anxiety beast strangling me. Detangled my feelings, set realistic expectations, and scheduled it to mid June to have a bit of time. At the same time, I am finally officially the data protection coordinator of my department. My work never had any before, no other department has one either. This is just my department wanting to lead by example, and admittedly, also accommodating me and my ambitions, as I have asked for this for months. Leadership up top has repeatedly thwarted my attempts to move into the data protection team, or officially implement coordinators house-wide, and refused to even discuss it or process it in the idea management system, so this is my little rebellion, you could say. Doing things from the bottom up. I have already prepared the slides they will use to announce it in the next department meeting and the meeting of all department heads. I will also have to prepare a short presentation about data protection challenges in our department, scheduled around Q3 or Q4 of 2026 as I need time to get an overview of everything. I'll have to meet up and interview a lot of people about their team's data workflows to see what needs to be adjusted, write some analyses, write deletion concepts, create awareness, ensure compliance, and more. I'll also be the person to go to before the data protection officer is getting involved. It's what I wanted, but internally it also makes me very nervous. I finally get to create things and success will be about the quality, not just that something was done; but it opens the door for thoughts about whether I am good enough or not. Merely following process steps as described makes it easy to just be a bot that gets things done; creating things yourself, sharing your own ideas and opinions exposes you as a person, makes you vulnerable. There are people working there that will finally see that there is a person with a brain underneath the years of automatically generated emails they received in my name. There is no one else to watch and learn from, as I am the only one, and I get to make things up as I go for this new role. I will be the blueprint, for now. There are horror scenarios in my head of not knowing something in a meeting and everyone thinking I am an impostor who doesn't really know anything. That's not how real life goes, of course, and everyone is usually understanding when you say " Sorry, I will have to look that up and get back to you about that. ", but you know how brains are. I'll have to learn from every meeting. I am scared of not doing a good job and doing it all a disservice. The culture is an aspect of it too, because unfortunately, my place has a reputation of not being kind to ambitious people, and many people being rather hostile if anything is asked of them - time, expertise, feedback, a change in routine, a little bit of grace; anything. There are also a few coworkers that have proven again and again that they are unable to view younger people or people lacking this or that university degree as worth taking seriously. That's what I will be up against, and my own harsh standards I have for myself. I'm trying to reassure myself that I have time to figure things out and that I need to make mistakes to improve. Reply via email Published 13 May, 2026 The IT coordinators' role at my workplace is to share IT knowledge around in all kinds of teams so it isn't just concentrated in specific areas, and to ensure everyone is up-to-date on internal policies, new software options and more. They're also a sort of first responder to task-specific tech problems in that specific team before annoying our general helpdesk. The communication of our IT department can be lacking, and not everyone has the time to keep on top of new things (like the sudden rollout of Copilot recently, new options available in Teams, etc.), so having these people "posted" in each sub-department to share news and developments was supposed to help that. ↩ The IT coordinators' role at my workplace is to share IT knowledge around in all kinds of teams so it isn't just concentrated in specific areas, and to ensure everyone is up-to-date on internal policies, new software options and more. They're also a sort of first responder to task-specific tech problems in that specific team before annoying our general helpdesk. The communication of our IT department can be lacking, and not everyone has the time to keep on top of new things (like the sudden rollout of Copilot recently, new options available in Teams, etc.), so having these people "posted" in each sub-department to share news and developments was supposed to help that. ↩

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ava's blog 2 weeks ago

the flaws of digital consent management

Following up to my agentic consent piece , a reader (Shugo Nozaki) shared with me some interesting perspective around human consent (both by email and post ) that I felt like was worth exploring and discussing! He pointed out that while our current model of consent still relies on direct human perception and some understanding of what is being agreed to, it is already quite fragile in most areas. He rightfully points out that human consent that currently rests on real understanding is a polite fiction, as most consent flows are not really designed to be read. They are designed to get users past the gate. So he asks: How much of the current standard are humans actually meeting today? The reality is definitely that companies have squandered our trust and curiosity with the way consent mechanisms and Privacy Policies, Terms of Service etc. have been designed. Cookie banners keep popping up and sometimes don't seem to work correctly, other consent forms make it as annoying as possible to opt out, and any lengthier text is full of dry legalese. It has caused quite the consent fatigue, and for what? Unfortunately, the wrong things seem to be incentivized: Agreement to data processing is strategically beneficial to companies, so optimizing an easy workflow to not consent is not in their best interest. And the following is just a hypothesis of mine, but I firmly believe that companies have used the little leeway they were given to implement privacy law requirements to make things an absolute hassle in the hopes that they'd be seen as a failed experiment and users would complain until things were abolished again. When we actually read the laws, recitals, recommendations by organizations etc., we quickly see that we do not have to live with these unpleasant implementations; yet, companies get to point at laws for a job done badly and go " They made us do it! ". Multi-layered approaches 1 have been acknowledged and recommended for a while now, but implementation of them is still rare. For many companies, these texts seem to be a one-time thing that is once invested into and never again, instead of being the living document they should be. " If it works and we fulfill the requirement, why change it? " At the same time, laypeople unfamiliar with law have to work with heuristics and take characteristics as signs of quality when it comes to legal texts like PP's, ToS and more: If it's very long, it must be complete and enough effort has been invested, and if it has a lot of complicated jargon, it must be professional and correct. So that is what companies want to see, and weirdly, what some very invested users are reassured by. A short, casual version might seem incomplete and as if the company doesn't take privacy seriously. The money side is the same: What do law firms and their clients feel more comfortable charging and paying a lot of money for - the short, casual-toned text that people will understand, or the huge, dry and difficult to read one that comes across better? How do companies might feel if the person they hired to write these produces a more sloppy sounding one than their competitor has? Will it just come off as unprofessional to customers? In case of small businesses needing to save money, they're usually confronted with the question: Why hire anyone to make it more understandable and engaging to read while fulfilling the law, if you can just copy a trusted template online and fill in the blanks? No one wants to risk possible legal problems by a text that does not cover enough, so understandably, they resort to the most intense sounding texts, and they let consent and cookies be implemented and handled by big consent management companies because otherwise, it can be really difficult; but those sell the promise to increase the agreement numbers, so the service is designed around that metric. These wrong incentives and constraints have caused lost trust that is hard or in some cases, impossible to get back. Most people aren't born yesterday, and they have lived through years of shitty implementation. What would convince them that it is worth reading or that the next one will be better? Consent management in general offloads a lot of data management on individuals who are seldom correctly informed. On one hand, choice is what we want, on the other hand, it is also willfully ignorant of the collective issues. For now, the move is: Giving the user the option to read and agree or disagree is enough. We cannot force anyone to do anything, and if they choose to forego information or agree to make the process go faster because they are tired, then we have to accept that. Having a choice is also about the option to make a bad decision or one you regret later or wouldn't have done if you were your best self. Fittingly, Shugo Nozaki also poses the following idea in email: “ If the user policy is explicit enough, an agent may apply it with a kind of rule-following integrity that tired or distracted humans often fail to maintain. [...] How [can] we represent a user’s intent, boundaries, and escalation rules clearly enough for an agent to act on them? ” He brings up the option of a machine-readable user policy that is a set of constraints that defines what an agent may accept, must reject, or should bring back to the user. We'll likely have to move into that direction, but it still brings legal challenges as a broad consent isn't valid and needs to be granular and specific. A user could set an agent to always agree to cookies via personalization/custom instructions set as userpolicy.md, for example, but as they did not get to consent to each specific situation (website, their partners, their terms), its worth is questionable, and also difficult to prove in court for the companies. Ideally, an agent would have to ask the user on first "visit" of a website how to proceed for current and further uses of the website. So the more the agent gets around, the less this needs to happen. From a design perspective, even just asking the user to set up a policy themselves can be time-consuming and I assume not quite feasible for people who are not embedded in the law context or very passionate about privacy. There is too little context and information about why a decision matters, what could happen, what is tracked and what different kinds of situations could come up. I consider it beyond the realistic use case that the average user would introduce different categories of consent based on, for example, whether it is a blog or a shopping website, whether the banner says 4 partners or 1500, and more things that would enable more granular consent. All upfront. An agent could, on first setup, lead a user through it, but it could also be seen as annoying and skipped. Issues around the modalities of being asked and informed still remain: Do we trust the agent to relay information accurately? Will there be hidden instructions to influence the bot in what it tells the user? Would this approach really be less annoying than the existing method, when basically everything needs to get brought back for the user to decide at first? How will we reliably handle agents informing the user of changes in policies and the like? Yes, ideally, agents and other means could handle consent management better than a fatigued and annoyed human, but what counts primarily for the laws around data processing consent is that without a middleman, there is no doubt that a user directly had a choice in taking notice and the chance to inform themselves even if they chose not to; it often matters little whether they actually read and understood, as it cannot be proven or checked (and again, freedom to make bad choices). The waters get muddier when there is a translator in the middle that can sway you or skip it entirely, and no directly presented option. I'm sure on the other side, companies will also be interested in not having their consent workflow and information maligned by a bot either. It will actually also be interesting to see how worthwhile browsing data will still be if the metrics track the behavior of bots, not humans. I'll hopefully have more to say about this soon, as I will be at a conference which has some sessions about consent management in the age of AI that I will attend! :) Reply via email Published 12 May, 2026 In which the first text version a user sees is in easy language, casual and short, and if the they want to see it, they can have a lengthier, more detailed version, down to another layer, where the heavy legalese ones we are used to pops up. ↩ In which the first text version a user sees is in easy language, casual and short, and if the they want to see it, they can have a lengthier, more detailed version, down to another layer, where the heavy legalese ones we are used to pops up. ↩

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ava's blog 2 weeks ago

a little note on the choices we make

When I think something is bad, immoral, unethical, harmful, evil - or whatever may apply - I neither do it in private or in public. I don’t just adhere to this rule of not doing it when I’m by myself, I also don’t do it when I’m with others, regardless of whether they might do that thing and would think it’s more comfortable for them when I partake as well. That’s what’s at the core of living within my own moral boundaries and values. Yes, it might be difficult at times or offend people, but at least I neither feel like a hypocrite nor a coward. I stay true to myself and my behavior aligns with what I expect from myself and how I wish others lived. I cannot force anything they don’t want on them, but I can lead by example and enforce my own boundaries. Do what you want, but I will not do it. You compromising on your understanding of what’s right and wrong simply to appease others and not stand out is sad. You are betraying yourself and what you stand for for very little, temporary gain, and you rob others of being challenged and inspired. It also makes me wonder if you really stand behind what you preach; if you truly think something is cruel and unacceptable, you would not try to find loopholes to still keep doing that thing, and then pointing fingers as to who made you do it or what exception counts. No more excuses pointing at what others are doing, how your behavior has no impact and how hopeless or hard it is. Hard things are worth doing. It’s time that you show some respect to yourself and stop putting off making some decisions and sticking to them. Your trust in yourself erodes when you keep making promises to yourself you don’t keep. Aren’t you fucking sick of seeing other people live the way you want to? You don’t have to feel inadequate, guilty, jealous or like a hypocrite in their presence. You can avoid feeling like you have to justify yourself if you commit even for just a month and go from there. Take inspiration from the people you admire and ask them for help. Find your own path that’s similar to theirs if that’s what works. You made yourself do that. Take someone accountability for your actions. You have a choice every time. Reply via email Published 11 May, 2026

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ava's blog 3 weeks ago

#LiegendDemo - protesting for ME/CFS treatment & visibility

Today, I attended a protest for the visibility of ME/CFS sufferers . ME/CFS is short for Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome ; it is a chronic illness characterized by extreme fatigue that doesn't improve with rest, along with sleep issues, dizziness, muscle and joint pain, cognitive difficulties, extreme sensitivity to stimuli, and more. There is significant overlap with what is often referred to as " Long Covid " or " Post Covid ", leading to speculation that they're one and the same. It is estimated that 1.5 Million people are affected in Germany alone, with around 40 Million estimated worldwide. One day, it could be you. The exact cause is still being investigated, but it is most often associated with a viral infection (Covid, Epstein-Barr, etc.), and while symptoms can sometimes be managed, a full recovery is very rare. There is currently no known treatment or cure, and diagnostic criteria are still being developed after all this time (50 years since the WHO has acknowledged it!), which makes getting a diagnosis hard. There is stigma around the illness, with doctors dismissing symptoms entirely or blaming it on mental illness or laziness, inappropriately trying to force sufferers to overexert themselves, worsening their symptoms. This is aided by the fact that ME/CFS is often not taught in medical degrees. This group of patients is especially vulnerable, because advocating for themselves takes so much energy they don't have. Many of them can not even get out of bed or do any strenuous mental tasks, or they have to spend the little energy they have with the bare minimum to survive and then have none left for their free time. They are frequently very isolated and lacking the support they need. Any exertion can cause weeks of increased symptoms (post-exertional malaise). Years of their life are just gone, spent existing in bed in a dark room, unable to think clearly or to really move, having difficulty speaking, having difficulty processing and enduring sounds, touch, or light. The fatigue can become so bad that they are unable to even talk. Their education, finances and careers suffer, they can no longer take care of themselves and their families or pets, they struggle with doctor's appointments or the paperwork required to receive assistance, disability benefits, etc. and often start to have other chronic illnesses like fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and more. It can affect both children and adults. It's easy to forget they exist because they are not visible out in public and left behind in public discourse. To make them visible, people all across the country meet up to lie on the floor - this happened for the first time in 2023, and is still going strong in 2026. I don't have ME/CFS, but after a Covid infection, I struggled with orthostatic issues, post-viral tachycardia, and my chronic illnesses (Crohn's and Bechterew's disease) sometimes cause me intense fatigue as well; so I can relate a little to some parts of the illness, but I am lucky that my issues have treatments that helped (and some I could recover from). It was important to me to show up when they can't. 1. Dedicated funding for ME/CFS Research funds must be specifically allocated to ME/CFS with PEM, rather than absorbed into broader post-infectious research categories. Otherwise, the disease risks being underfunded while still being treated politically as adequately addressed. 2. Priority for drugs and effective treatments Prioritize the development of medications and clinically effective therapies, not only basic research or administrative structures. 3.Mandatory involvement of patient organizations ME/CFS patient representatives with PEM expertise should be directly involved in planning and implementation. Past programs included people unfamiliar with the disease, resulting in research that overlooked core symptoms and legitimized unsuitable therapies. 4. Immediate funding for biomedical research Concrete biomedical projects should receive funding without delay, not spending years building structures before supporting treatment-oriented research, despite already existing promising drug approaches. 5. Clear disease definitions, rigorous research standards and exclusion of unsuitable research approaches Studies should use strict diagnostic criteria and focus on PEM as the defining symptom. Many previous studies examined general fatigue rather than properly diagnosed ME/CFS, producing weak or misleading results. Research that ignores the biological, multisystem nature of ME/CFS should not be funded. 6. Legal and political safeguards The so-called research decade should be backed by binding commitments rather than remaining a non-binding political initiative. Otherwise, funding and programs could be reduced or canceled after political changes. 7. Healthcare access, diagnostics, social support, and patient care, sustainable research infrastructure Long-term structures such as specialized centers, biobanks, patient registries, and clinical trial networks should be established to support ongoing nationwide ME/CFS research. 8. Use existing research and strengthen international cooperation Future work should build on existing ME/CFS findings and coordinate internationally to avoid redundant studies and accelerate progress. The International ME/CFS Awareness Day is on May 12th. Donate to the ME/CFS Research Foundation Read what people affected by ME/CFS say 18 Minute Short Documentary on YouTube, English Subtitles 🇩🇪 Doku: ME/CFS: Keine Kraft mehr 🇩🇪 ME/CFS sufferer in Austria making use of assisted suicide program 🇩🇪 Liegenddemo Germany 🇩🇪 MECFS.de 🇩🇪 MECFS-Info.de 🇩🇪 ME-Hilfe.de 🇩🇪 Fatigatio.de 🇩🇪 Nicht Genesen Kids Reply via email Published 09 May, 2026

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ava's blog 3 weeks ago

your social media habits sound like an abusive relationship

Most people in my life still use big social media platforms. My wife, for example, is on Tumblr. As someone who has been off of these platforms for quite a while, some of the things people share with me sound extremely odd to me; weird rules and behaviors they feel the need to abide by or else!.... Whatever that may be. Some I even recognize from back when I used them, but now I have a completely different view of them as I am no longer embedded in a culture that normalizes them. For one, apparently some people are scared of unfollowing others. " I can't unfollow them! We already follow each other for years and they'd notice and then it's awkward! " so they'd rather stick it out with someone they no longer like or whose posts they don't wanna see. They'd rather filter out all posts via keywords and other means than just unfollow. Internet strangers! Not even people in real life they'd run into. Why do you feel the need to lie so much just to protect a random person's feelings about having one less follower? The whole concept of being trapped with someone because you're "mutuals" is insane! Why do you care whether only one side follows the other? What does it matter? Why do you fuel the notion that unfollowing means downgrading a friendship or rejecting someone completely? It shouldn't be this way and you voluntarily participate in this. Same with blocking. " I can't block. That is so harsh. I can instead just block them and unblock them again so we are both unfollowed from each other. This is called softblocking. " Okay? And what for? So you can pretend it was totally a website glitch that made you guys unfollow each other? As if they wouldn't notice and know. Everyone knows what softblocking is on those platforms! Don't kid yourself. When they refollow you again, what then? What if they message you and ask why you unfollowed, the dreadful thing you fear? Many then go on to lie, saying it must have totally been an accident, and follow them again?? Guys, it's a website, pixels on a screen - you can be honest. They're not gonna stick a hand through your screen to strangle you? Thanks to digital mediums, it has never been easier to just ride out awkward shit and ignore things. Make use of it. Pressing a button is not being aggressive or dramatic. "*No, I cannot message them directly, that is awkward, we have never interacted before!" ... so? Damn, the website/app offers DMs and now you can't even privately message strangers on the internet anymore? What has this place come to? Now you're just there to scroll and passively consume ads and no longer talk to the people that share the ads around voluntarily? DMing someone is "intimate"? You are "harassing" someone with a simple message they can choose to open or ignore? Do you hear yourself? Then there is the far more subtle or platform-specific stuff... like the fact that people feel like they can't comment in the replies until others have done so, or cannot reblog something because the post is still "too small"; that liking old posts is "creepy"; watching or not watching a story, liking or not liking a post has deep consequences; you have to put things in the tags instead of the post body to be safe of OPs wrath and signal that this is for your followers only (just for OP to screenshot the tags anyway and rake you over the coals). There's also people that are too scared to challenge others directly and openly on the respective post, and instead screenshot it, put a water filter over it to visually signify they disagree with its content, and then post it themselves? The type of stuff they are comfortable to say when they think OP won't notice, while being too scared to do it underneath the post, and just living off of follower validation like " Look how dumb this is! Hype me up, like this post, comment that you agree! " is so embarrassing to see. As people on there are treating public interactions as definitive signs and ownership, when someone bad follows you and likes your posts, while you don't even follow back, you're still treated as attracting and tolerating the bad person, therefore implicitly agreeing to their vile views. I guess that's where the whole culture of " Do Not Interact " disclaimers comes from, because you have to prove from the get-go where your alliances are and as a precaution for when you haven't deeply vetted every follower you have. In the same vein, people seem to proactively confess old opinions, archive tweets, lock accounts, or add disclaimers to avoid or soften hypothetical future attacks. It all adds up to weird stories... I can't even completely recall it, investigative, roundabout stuff with second accounts and softblocking and other checks, weaponizing features of the platform, circumventing things, completely normalized mutual surveillance disguised as casual browsing, where they manually actively check who viewed stories, who liked posts, posting times, and other activity to judge the friendship level? All of this is tip-toeing around, scared to offend someone, worried about nebulous consequences and being subject to toxic rage; never getting out of the awful behaviors you're subjected to by your peers in high school. It's as if you're in an abusive relationship with the platform and its users, and it's uncomfortable to see from the outside how scared it makes you to actually interact with anyone online or use the space for what it is made for. It's like your online home constantly has signs of a punch hole in drywall. I see it with my wife as well, who also has a blog on here and sometimes would like to reply to some other blog posts on Bearblog, but never ends up doing it because " It's weird to barely post and then immediately shit on someone else's post. " and other convoluted reasons that only exist because social media culture is what it is. If you relate to anything in this post, you have been conditioned by people who can only scream and shout and " I am not reading all that " and siccing their followers on you. How sad! You're like a beaten puppy and your behaviors are completely warped. It's actively harmful for you, and I wouldn't be surprised if it significantly fuels the social anxiety you feel even when offline. In the online spaces you're in, you are always asked to put the needs of someone else above yours that you cannot even fully anticipate because they're a nebulous mob entity. Your nervous system constantly deals with the risk of using this app or site blowing up in your face, and you're always scared when you see a bunch of notifications coming up. I don't know how you can feel mentally well when this is always looming over your head. Spending my online time in places where none of this weird stuff exists has really put it into perspective. I can just reply! I can just send emails or reach out otherwise! No stress, no worries! No followers, no blocking! Again, I know why all these exist in theory, and many I've known from my own time on these platforms, but none of it is justified - period. You don't have to tell me why any of these are valid or why they happen; this is like listening to an abuse victim justify the abuse. Sometimes you can only see how badly you've been treated months or years after you leave. Reply via email Published 09 May, 2026

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ava's blog 3 weeks ago

kicking out human slop from my online space

I have made slow adjustments to my feed reader every other day now to exclude some empty negativity from my online space, and also to no longer click on some YouTube frontpage stuff. Don't get me wrong: There is still plenty of negativity in there in some ways, but at least it is productive negativity that lets me know how Big Tech has messed up again, new privacy-invading laws, policy proposals and more that relate to my field of interest. I am just no longer engaging with: How I slid into this happened slowly. Some of the creators making these weren't always this way, I just noticed them pivoting more and more into this and now have lost interest. On the other hand, I often needed 30-60 minute videos for the treadmill, and these were easily available and at least somewhat entertaining. I am also not immune to certain shock topics. But I want something more than just pointing at some rando and laughing, or saying how stupid this or that thing is, when this just increases its visibility and no one would really disagree anyway. No one thinks these people are reasonable or this product is the best thing since sliced bread, which is why there are no compelling arguments ever. It's just the most obvious takeaways, showing the original video in fullsize while they are in the corner. It feels True Crime adjacent, as it is also thrilling, cathartic, validating, " yeah I also think this is bad, we are all in the in-group, we are the reasonable people, I am on the right side ". Shock, upset, rage, disbelief, while being reassured by the creator that you aren't insane for feeling that way. At the same time, this builds a connection with you, because you are seemingly going through this "together". You feel happy when the creator comes to the same conclusions as you, like ahh, they're just like me! Maybe this type of online commentary genre should be called True Asshole , since you're not talking about crime, but assholes out there, and still employ the same tactics for viewers. I'm okay with it if it's about showing up a general overarching trend and really adding some own perspective, analysis, studies, article excerpts, statistics etc. to the topic, with the focus being you, and an example here and there that is not focused on the person you took it from. I also love when there's a company analysis/takedown. But it is so boring and dreadful at this point to watch the same few YouTubers react to the same topic with the same video examples, where most of the video is just you being tricked into feeling like you're spending time with the creator watching stupid shit on their phone. I am also tired of the flattening everywhere, which is at the core of why every video by some creators now is that way. Everyone finds one thing that "works" and then obsessively laser-focuses on that to appease the opaque and mysterious algorithm and the mob. A switch is flipped, and they immediately make that their brand and only produce things in that style. Everyone carefully separates different aspects of themselves into different accounts and platforms, as if it was offensive to be multi-layered online (and I guess it is to the algorithm). Even people who started something as a hobby and didn't plan for monetization are suddenly intrigued by it when one of their things pops off, and then the hunt for money changes everything, because more eyes = more money, and so you have to box yourself in to what the masses want. Others look at that and then think " This is the proper way to vlog/blog/make commentary/..., I should do this too, and not whatever childish amateurish shit I have been doing where I just talk about what I enjoy !" and that's so wrong! They aren't doing it " correctly ", you are just watching someone in a hamster wheel of their own making, pandering to what is most successful at the moment. It's actually sad to see, because you enjoy the creations of great people that then go on to flatten themselves. One piece with more plump, petty, crass language get more engagement because " Finally someone says it how it is! So cathartic to read! " and now every one of their releases is employing this as a strategy, usually getting more extreme with time. There's a great writer I like to read, but reading his pieces, I always have to sort of ignore these petty squabbles because it just makes me sad, as they don't seem authentic and passionate anymore, but like he has locked himself into this Say-The-Line -esque role. There is also a YouTube channel I used to watch who gained popularity on ribbing a little on a specific company in good fun, and being embroiled in a legal battle with them at some point, but nowadays is just acting without any sort of class or professionalism about it as outrage and extremism makes more money. I cannot bear to watch him anymore, as I just see a capitalism muppet do a weird shtick and nothing more. Throwing good and reliable review content away for this is a sign of the times, I guess. Anyway, more time and space for uplifting and genuinely creative things the creator actually wanted to make. :) Reply via email Published 08 May, 2026 LOOK AT THESE DISRESPECTFUL RANDOS (IN-LAWS FROM HELL! UNREASONABLE AIRBNB HOSTS!) overconsumption has gone too far [new trend] Meet Dumbass69, the biggest PREDATOR you have NEVER HEARD OF There are more victims by Dumbass69 than we previously thought... This random person on TikTok with 3k followers did something weird and gross.... The Rise And Fall of this Creator Look at this new stupid and cringe content kids like (and I am an adult) Watch me react to content meant to entertain and be a little silly, while I act like the premise is UNHINGED AND CRAZY and the creators must be ON DRUGS to think of this.... Society is cooked (based on 5 cherry-picked examples) EVERYONE HATES THIS PART OF THIS MOVIE (it was just 5 people in a comment section)

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ava's blog 3 weeks ago

cutting off my mother was so worth it!

An update to this . All this time, I either tried to find a good time to do it and delayed it, or told myself I could make it work for the rest of her life. It could get better, we have good times sometimes, and I could deal with seeing her once or twice a year, right? I thought everyone wins in this scenario: I fulfill my expectation as a daughter, I don’t have to take a drastic step and have difficult conversations, and I don’t lose out on a possible future change in our relationship. I get to be normal and have somewhat of a family left. But I just lost without fully realizing the scope of it all. Now that it’s been a while, I feel silly for not having done this sooner. Having her in my life even peripherally seems to have dragged me down so much in ways I didn't even know. It held me back to an intense degree. I feel so much better now! Looking back at it, it was even worse than I had been aware of. I accepted behavior I would have rejected otherwise, because it was still better than the worst abuse, or sandwiched between the good. I’d just shrug off comments that now, I would look at you in shock and immediately ask you to leave. Things she’d never say in front of others, or to others. I made excuses that she was just clumsy in her words or it’s just her way to show care, but now finally removed from all of this, I see so clearly that I was the target of unrelenting resentment all the time, unashamedly so. All that she ever saw in me were things she disliked about herself and my father, a walking reminder of a depressing phase in her life, and she could never hide it or move on from that. I completely underestimated how much even just experiencing and accepting this every few months altered how I see and treat myself. I thought as long as I limited contact and didn't live with her, it would be fine. But subconsciously, I showed myself that it’s okay to treat me that way. I was complicit; I let myself down, I didn’t stand up for myself, I ignored my needs and wants, and I made myself small, rolling over without any resistance. I had chances to evade it, put an end to it, but I was cowardly and stayed anyway. I prioritized a damaging relationship over my mental health. This eroded trust in myself and just made it okay for me to treat myself badly in some aspects too. An abusive relationship, especially to a parent, affects everything in life: How you carry yourself, how you speak, how much energy you have, what you believe you can do, the types of people you surround yourself with, the treatment and opportunities you accept. It directly negatively affects your success in education, work, hobbies, and other relationships! So many people who grew up in an abusive household end up in abusive workplaces and toxic relationships for this reason! Keeping the contact up didn’t maintain a relationship at all, it just kept a wound open; one that could get triggered by workplace discussions or conflicts. Without contact and this festering wound, I feel so much more confident now to speak up, to ask for what I want, to push back and not prioritize the comfort of others to an unhealthy or excessive degree. I feel more comfortable with the idea of people not liking me or what I do; I owe this directly to no longer having to tiptoe around my mothers’ feelings and not having to be the one to adjust my behavior to avoid outbursts. I am a lot less nervous around social interactions now because I am no longer resetting my progress every few months by meeting someone who always sees the worst in me and others. I am no longer normalizing this sort of stuff to myself. Best thing I ever did! You can’t change or save them. They’re grown adults who choose to be this way - either completely, or knowingly hiding it until you’re in private. Let them be miserable! Let them reap the consequences of their actions. It’s not like your attempts at conversations to change your relationship or their behavior helped long-term. They know what the problem is and had enough chances; at some point, if you don’t put up walls, they know there is no consequence for their disrespect. Why would they treat you better when treating you badly gives them satisfaction and access to you still remains intact? You’re a good punching bag. Don't wait until they're dead. No one gives you all these years back that you have wasted sticking around for their abuse. No one gives you a medal for enduring this bullshit. You could die before them, and then what? All this time you stay, you could feel free instead, love yourself, be cherished and supported by others, and let the decisions in your life reflect that - more peace, better work, better finances, better relationships to others and yourself. 10/10 move, would recommend. Now I have a nicer family - my in-laws and friends. I am thriving. Reply via email Published 07 May, 2026

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