aasatru

BEUC [the European Consumer Organisation] and 22 of its member organisations from 17 countries have filed a complaint on 12 September 2024 to the European Commission and the network of consumer protection Authorities (CPC-Network) to denounce several deceptive practices by leading video game companies (Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Mojang Studios, Roblox Corporation, Supercell and Ubisoft) marketing popular games (such as Fortnite, EA Sports FC 24, Minecraft, Clash of Clans and others) and affecting millions of European consumers.

The Norwegian Consumer Council's @finnmyrstad posted a thread about it on Mastodon:

2/ 🕹 According to our analysis, these companies are using misleading tactics that do not comply with the EU rules on unfair commercial practices. In particular we identified that:

🎰 Gamers cannot see the real cost of digital items, leading to overspending.

💵 Companies’ claims that gamers prefer in-game premium currencies are wrong.

⚖ Consumers are often denied their rights when using premium in-game currencies.

🚸 Children are vulnerable to these manipulative tactics.

Dear houseplant community,

Like the beginning of any good letter, I should probably have written you sooner.

Anyway, a friend of mine had this beautiful plant that she neglected for months, completely drying it out. At the end there were just a few leaves hanging half a meter from the plant itself, completely dried out.

I cut off a piece, gave it roots, potted it, and it went wild! Explosive growth, every new leaf bigger than the last. It was unlike anything I've ever seen.

A few months later, it had had enough. Leaves started curling up and withering. Growth halted. I thought maybe I had forgotten to give it water, but that wasn't it. Moving it to a sunnier spot didn't help either. Now it's almost completely dead, and I miss what we once had.

So, a couple of questions:

1. Does anyone have any idea what went wrong? Did I water it too much? Too little?
2. What can I do? Can it be saved? Does it need plant nutrition? A bigger pot? I'm afraid of doing anything, as it seems so fragile one bad move would surely be the end of it.

Thank you so much in advance!

Yours truly, Aa

@plants@a.gup.pe

If a social media account is spreading Russian disinformation - does sharing content from the account give it legitimacy?

No, says Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Minister for Civil Defence. But at the authority the minister is responsible for, the answer sounds different.

— In any case, you spread something that a foreign power might intend to spread to make us worried, says Mikael Östlund, press officer at the authority.

It was a year ago that Carl-Oskar Bohlin shared a tweet from the American influencer Lauren Southern, known for her far-right advocacy. The original video warned of how AI is used in influence operations, something the minister forwarded to his around 45,000 followers. "The ability and height of the impact operations risk increasing avalanche-like with disruptive technology shifts," wrote Carl-Oskar Bohlin on X.

Now, an American indictment against two Russian government employees shows that the production company Tenet media, where Lauren Southern is employed, must have been secretly financed by the Russian news agency RT. A total of just over SEK 100 million is said to have been transferred from the Russian state employees to the American company. In turn, influencers would push specific issues—such as questioning support for Ukraine—to their millions of followers. On YouTube alone, the videos have received more than 16 million views.

In light of the American indictment, Carl-Oskar Bohlin has been criticized for not checking his sources better. But the Minister of Civil Defense lets the tweet stay on X.

"For the simple reason that it is difficult to misunderstand." writes Bohlin to DN.

"One should of course refrain from spreading harmful narratives from foreign powers. However, it is a somewhat strange indictment that my warning about deepfakes and doctored videos would in itself constitute Russian disinformation. With such a threshold, it will be difficult to talk about or warn about the phenomenon at all," continues the minister.

Carl-Oskar Bohlin is responsible for the agency for psychological defence, MPF. Countering misdirection and misinformation, including rumor spreading and propaganda, is one of the agency's main missions.

In case you wonder, mr. Bohlin is from the conservative party (Moderaterna).

Makes me feel a bit better about my general political anxiousness.