The notes and accounts from the FediForum in late September suggest that some of "the people who move the fediverse forward", as the conference promotes itself as platforming, are also acutely interested in moving forward the agenda of Meta.
The forum's notes tell the tale. Though a number of topics, including many of genuine benefit, were touched upon, digging through the sessions turns up a path of breadcrumbs that leads straight back to Palo Alto.
The centralization scheme is being developed in partnership with an entity called Thorn - a for-profit "AI" surveillance privateer which pretends to be a "for the children" NGO. Thorn is hot news lately due to its blatantly corrupt involvement in the EU Chat Control plot, which would destroy the free internet and online privacy in Europe but create a huge business opportunity for Thorn.
Other aspects of the IFTAS surveillance scheme are outlined in the slide deck. They include centralized realtime image and video scanning utilizing Thorn's "AI". Transgressive accounts would be auto-reported to authorities. It should also be noted that Thorn technology employs Amazon's facial recognition algorithms.
As a further comment to this prospect, consider that we are now observing how the moderates currently in power in the so-called United States seem to be gift-wrapping policies (KOSA, the border wall, the criminalization of protest and homelessness) for the reactionary extremists who may well succeed them.
Technologies such as Thorn's should be evaluated in the same light. They may - or may not - only detect CSAM for now. But how will they be repurposed if there are drastic political changes in the US or other "democracies"? What beliefs, convictions, sexual or gender identities will come to be mandated as equivalently deviant? Europol already has some ideas: https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimited-data-access-in-online-child-sexual-abuse-regulation/
The ‘non-profit start-up’ Thorn, founded by Ashton Kutcher, is a driving force behind the EU’s campaign to scan the net for child abuse material. Newly public documents and financial information obtained by Follow the Money reveal the blurred boundaries between Thorn’s do-good public face and the powerful business behind it. #csam#thorn#chatkontrolle