Mastodawn

Maryland will soon be the first U.S. state to ban "surveillance pricing," the practice of using ad tracking technologies to raise prices for individuals: https://www.scrippsnews.com/life/money/maryland-becomes-first-state-to-pass-bill-banning-surveillance-pricing

Maryland becomes first state to pass bill banning ‘surveillance pricing’

Maryland is poised to become the first state in the country to ban "surveillance pricing." Here's what to know about the practice.

Scripps News

Matthew Sheffield 5h ago

Fan of Shared Truth & Empathy 5h ago

This is not difficult to understand.

American consumers are our society’s suckers and losers feeding the profits of Citizens United corporations with immortal rights granted to them above human people.

The only winners of Capitalism are the shareholders raping the citizens of the United States who voted for their own bankruptcy to fund the wealthiest owners of this nation.

Matthew Sheffield 6h ago

Flux 6h ago

New from @mattsheffield: Barack Obama reading books to preschoolers with Zohran Mamdani is a much bigger deal than you might think.

By doing a joint event with the New York mayor, Obama has tacitly declared that Democratic elites must accept him as a valued coalition member: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2026/04/barack-obama-reading-books-to-preschoolers-with-zohran-mamdani-is-a-very-big-deal/

Barack Obama reading books to preschoolers with Zohran Mamdani is a very big deal

Flux

Matthew Sheffield 7h ago

#Mozilla has essentially endorsed Anthropic's claims about #Mythos after the model found 271 vulnerabilities in the Firefox codebase.

But instead of seeing Mythos as a zero-day doomsday, CTO Bobby Holley hails it as a bounty for security auditing: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-security-zero-day-vulnerabilities/

The zero-days are numbered | The Mozilla Blog

Since February, the Firefox team has been working around the clock using frontier AI models to find and fix latent security vulnerabilities in the browser.

Show thread

Matthew Sheffield 12h ago

Flashback to a real-life version of this grift, a now-defunct beer company called "Ultra Right Beer" which hired a bunch of actual Republican e-girls to do some 80s-style photos: https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-12835267/ultra-right-beer-calendar-riley-gaines.html

They later put Trump's face on a beer can, because of course.

The company does not seem to exist anymore, perhaps due to customer complains. https://ocgnews.com/better-business-bureau-issues-consumer-alert-regarding-ultra-right-beer-llc-receives-f-rating/

Matthew Sheffield 16h ago

The MAGA e-girl industry has been easy money for years for real women, it's now a career path for men as well.

No wonder far right men are always asking "what is a woman?" It's something they're constantly grappling with. Wired talked to a man running one of these accounts https://www.wired.com/story/ai-generated-maga-girls/

Matthew Sheffield 1d ago

Nazi streamer Nick Fuentes is grossing nearly a million dollars a year just from superchats. And he's got several other revenue streams as well.

Do not underestimate his global popularity https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/04/20/nick-fuentes-stream-donors-funding/

He spreads hate online — and fans pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars

The far-right influencer Nick Fuentes has pocketed roughly $900,000 from “fanatical” donors since the start of 2025. Some superfans see him as part of their families.

The Washington Post

Matthew Sheffield 1d ago

44% of music uploads are completely AI generated. Deezer is a rare service that forces disclosure and labeling of AI content.

And oftentimes it's bots downloading bots: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/deezer-says-44-of-new-music-uploads-are-ai-generated-most-streams-are-fraudulent/

ETA: Qobuz also bans AI generated music from algorithmic promotion

Deezer says 44% of new music uploads are AI-generated, most streams are fraudulent

AI tracks account for a small fraction of Deezer streams, and most are demonetized for fraud.

Ars Technica

Matthew Sheffield 1d ago

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/116438678678973016

"For my friends everything, for my enemies the law."

Matthew Sheffield 1d ago

Sean Heber 1d ago

More like Tim Cooked, I guess.

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