Twitter’s global guidelines lean toward Silicon Valley-style free speech absolutism, in which everybody has the right to speak and be heard (and never shadow-banned). Vulnerable users increasingly felt the effects of Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance, that if we include in a more tolerant discussion those who are less tolerant, they will prevent the discussion from being fully open. (Thus, in Popper's view, some level of "intolerance towards intolerance" must be exercised even by the tolerant.) In a 2021 report, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) bluntly stated that, "Surveying the current landscape of leading social media platforms, the entire sector is effectively unsafe for LGBTQ users." //

If you want to run an instance to bring local friends onto the Fediverse, the first question is which platform to base it on. Lemmer-Webber recommends that those who want a single- or few-user instance try Misskey. Pleorama, with a less discovery-focused project governance group, has its own how-to for installing it onto various flavors of Linux. Mastodon, as the incumbent, has some pre-built packages that offer a relatively turnkey setup, or follow the full step-by-step procedure. //

Kazemi is optimistic about coming full circle and using ActivityPub as the next RSS. "I hope it's even better. I hope it's even more widely adopted than RSS was back in its heyday," he said. While we chatted, he set up @ars_technica@rss.friend.camp, an ActivityPub actor republishing everything on Ars' main RSS feed; search for it from your Mastodon, Pleorama, or Misseky instance, follow it, and you can retire that RSS reader you keep only to check for Ars articles.

SAO PAULO (AP) — Pelé, the Brazilian king of soccer who won a record three World Cups and became one of the most commanding sports figures of the last century, died Thursday. He was 82. //

Throughout the years, the legend of Pelé continued to grow – so much so, that in the late 1960s, the two factions in the Nigerian Civil War reportedly agreed to a 48-hour ceasefire so they could watch Pele play in an exhibition game in Lagos.

Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan summarized Pelé’s stardom when the soccer star visited him at the White House and he said: “My name is Ronald Reagan, I’m the president of the United States of America. But you don’t need to introduce yourself, because everyone knows who Pelé is.” //

EzraTank
7 hours ago
I loved the movie Victory with him, Stallone, and Michael Caine.

Those who favor civil asset forfeiture argue that it helps law enforcement fight crime by depriving criminals of the resources used to perpetrate crimes. But, critics argue, that it is nothing more than a revenue-generating scheme. Many have criticized policing for profit, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

In the case of Leonard v. Texas, he laid out his case when writing his opinion. He noted that “unlike a criminal case in which a prosecutor must prove a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, in a civil forfeiture case, the prosecutor only needs to establish the basis for the forfeiture by a preponderance of the evidence.” //

State governments have raked in tons of cash from civil asset forfeiture. In 2017, Texas’ law enforcement took in about $50 million, which included people who were not charged or convicted of a crime. Since the state’s attorney general does not distinguish between the two when calculating the numbers, it is not known exactly how many were never charged. Since 2000, state and federal governments have taken at least $68.8 billion, according to the Institute for Justice. //

According to the Institute for Justice, the clearance rates for violent crimes tends to drop as the amount of forfeiture revenue increases. This Is largely due to the fact that when police are hunting for cash drug offenders, they are not as focused on addressing violent criminals. Moreover, the practice has not led to a decline in drug use in communities in which it is used. //

C. S. P. Schofield
6 hours ago
“ The rationale behind this practice is the notion that property can be charged with an offense, even if the person who owns it has not been charged or even convicted. Proponents argue that this ability is critical to the efforts of law enforcement to crack down on crime.”

This is the inevitable consequence of the “we gotta get them goddamned drug dealers” mentality that has driven the War On Drugs my whole life. RICO, Asset Forfeiture, no-knock raids, and so on are all justified to ‘get’ drug dealers…and gradually crept into general use on the population.

I like cops, as a rule. I have only had one bad interaction with a policeman (rent-a-cops are another matter), and his own department was trying like hell to get rid of him (thank you, civil service rules). But the War On Drugs has made a LEO culture that has much broken about it.

I don’t think street drugs are a good thing. I’ve known junkies, and they were mostly sad, broken people, and often seriously untrustworthy. But the fallout of the War On Drugs seems to me to be worse than the drugs themselves.