GDPR Compliance, Public Officials and Social Media Blocking, and PhotoScissors

You're tuned in to Steve Megatron on Altered

Geek. Hello and welcome to Altered Geek. I'm

your host, Steve Megatron Phillips. This episode

we'll be talking about two internet topics. Because

I don't know if they're gonna take up an entire

20 minutes or not. That's why we're gonna cover

two of them and some of the ramifications. And

it may come a point in time where we may have

to talk about What ones will be exploring further

in another episode? I think one of them may deem

some exploration with co -hosts in the future,

but I'm just gonna give my kind of reader digest

version of the thoughts of it. So, without further

ado, I'm going to get into the GDPR, the European

Union General Data Protection Regulation. I took

a class on this because I wasn't very well reversed

in this. Reversed. So, I wanted to kind of acknowledge

what this is, and I understand it now. I took

a class on, I forget what the website's called,

but it's Udemy. Udemy. U -D -E -M -Y dot com.

Which is actually a great place to take online

courses for cheap if you're not doing like the

EDX method. And honestly I probably would have

done the EDX if it weren't for the fact that

it costs so much. And as you know in the past

from me doing the superhero class, I'm a big

fan of EDX dot org. But Udemy seems to be another

one where you can get a pretty reasonable and

legit certification from because again, it's

a lot of college professors doing this, but they

give you like kind of this massive discount on

certain things. And so I did this intentionally

so that I would be GDPR certified so that I knew

what was going on, what goes into it. The class

was a little difficult to follow. I added it

to my my LinkedIn just as another qualification

that I know how to do something, but I think

that it's very important to understand the very

strict data protection rules and the job of having

this policy and compliance checklist, having

a data compliance officer for whatever organization

you have. And it's kind of any time you take...

Well, and also you gotta have a data breach notification

letter letting people know, so like sample text

for, you know, consequent forms, and how to avoid

costly penalties for noncompliance. So, and essentially,

from this information, you get a comprehensive

set of rules designed to keep, you know, personal

data of all European Union citizens collected

by any organization, enterprise, or business

safe from unauthorized access or use. which went

into effect on May 25th, 2018. Basically, the

law greatly affects the manner in which every

business transaction involving those citizens

is conducted from that point forward. Essentially,

what it means is a small company, say located

in Texas or somewhere else or Michigan, collects

personal data from a customer residing in Paris

in order to sell and ship a cowboy hat or a collectible

action figure. or DVD or something, to the security

provisions of the GDPR. And so importantly, they'll

be liable for any penalties imposed by not following

the provisions. There are no exemptions for size,

scope, location, or first offenses. You fail

to meet those provisions, you will incur penalties.

They kind of have that three strikes rule, three

strikes and you're out, where one of them leads

to a 20 million dollar European Euro fine, or

4 % of your business profit, whichever is greater.

So essentially, like us, we would get screwed.

Organizations that ignore it are opening themselves

up to uncertain liability, substantial risk,

and potential financial hardship. It suggests

that a course of action is required, including

establishing procedures, protocols, and policies

that address and meet the requirements of the

law. So essentially, if we do like a survey or

a form or a questionnaire, we have to give people

notice that it's being recorded, so like a little

checkbox. If you're signing up for a newsletter,

you have to say that's okay. You have to tell

everyone what you're using their data for, however

much it may be, and there's different levels

of the GDPR notification depending on how much

information you have to take. You have to also

tell them how long you plan to use that information,

how you plan to use it, who you plan to share

it with, and if they accept all that, you still

have to have a way for them to require a download.

of all of their data so like and they also can

request that you have to delete everything associated

with them which is perfectly legal if they're

from the the UK or the European Union so what

it essentially is going to break down to as well

is Now, if you're commenting on a message board

or a forum, or not a message board or forum,

but you're using comments on a blog post, they

don't necessarily have to go through all that

and remove it all. That can stay, but any identifiable

information they have about you, whether it's

name, email, birthday, last name, phone number,

depending on how in -depth they go. Us, we only

ask for the first name, email. You're good. Like

it's not I don't need to know your you know your

date of birth I don't need to know where you

live You know, what's your social security number

as or anything else like that, so it's I Totally

understand it. I totally get where they're coming

from like there does need to be like some kind

of a security crackdown the only thing I kind

of wish is that Yes, it affects anyone that deals

with somebody from the European Union is I almost

wish the United States had this and I say that

In terms of that. I really don't like them policing

anybody for the most part. We should be able

to do it ourselves, but Humanity as a whole is

stupid We can't please ourselves. That's why

there's so much chaos in the world But anyways,

it doesn't mean that one person is better than

another to police them but So anyways, it would

be nice because it would be great to be able

to go to say, Insurance Company A, you are not

allowed to submit my information to Company B,

C, or D. You cannot send my information and sell

it to the highest bidder. You cannot sell my

phone number. I don't want you selling my phone

number. I want it deleted from all of your records.

It would essentially do away with a lot of the

spam and a lot of the garbage that we get, the

solicitations, a lot of that. Because all that,

it falls under the totally 100 % illegal, almost,

if you're dealing with some of that. Especially

if you made a purchase, it doesn't mean that...

I wonder how they would deal with software, where

they bundle that garbage adware. Say you download

something from CNET. And then they make you download

a special installer that, in the installer, it

bundles another piece of garbage software that's

like a paid ad. And then it installs it. I know

they ask you if you want to download it, but

then they kind of trick you and they hide it

a little bit. I wonder if that would do away

with that as well, because I find that particularly

distasteful, which is why I have... I used to

go to download .com, which is owned by CNET,

a long time ago and downloads things. I quit

doing that years ago. I got sick of it. It just

got to be annoying. So I started finding other

places, like major geeks or somewhere like that.

I don't want to play that game anymore. I totally

get that. Moving into my other subtopic, which

I'm sure is going to be very interesting. We

have a rule. on social media. So it is unconstitutional

for public officials, including the president,

to block Twitter followers who criticize them,

a court ruled in a legal dispute over President

Trump's account. I don't normally talk politics,

but I think this is kind of an interesting dilemma

here. It's... So anyways, the lawsuit was brought

by Columbia University's Knight First Amendment

Institute argued that Twitter users blocked by

real President, real Donald Trump, had their

First Amendment rights violated in any decision.

You know, a federal judge here in the case ruled

that Twitter's interactive space, where users

can interact with Trump's tweets, qualifies as

a public forum, and that blocking users unconstitutionally

restricts their speech. The decision rejected

arguments from the President's team that President

Trump's own First Amendment rights would be violated

if he could not block users. This case requires

us to consider whether a public official may,

consistent with the First Amendment, block a

person from his Twitter account in response to

the political views that person has expressed

and whether the analysis differs because the

public official is the President of the United

States. The answer to both questions is no. I

kind of... I actually do sign with the court

in this instance for a public official because

I think that they should not be able to silence

you. You should be heard, but you shouldn't be

an animal about it either. And a perfect example

of that is, again, going back to the Thundercats'

roar. Do I like this series? No. Will I voice

my distaste with it? Yes. Am I going to be violent

and like, this series needs to burn for this,

you know, and you know, just start going crazy?

No. That's uncalled for. That's over -exaggerating

being a jerk. Somebody may like it, whatever,

that's on them, but I don't personally like it.

Again, it comes down to you should be heard.

You shouldn't be an animal about it either, but

that should be grounds on reporting harassment.

That should be a different entirely issue there.

But if he's going to use Twitter as his public

soapbox instead of using the radio or television

or news programs such as that, or press conference,

if he's going to use Twitter as that, that is

his public forum. Like that is his place to play

and inform people of what's going on. And so

basically, you know, they're viewing it as discrimination.

you know, because no governmental official, including

the president, is above the law, which is right,

and all government officials are presumed to

follow the laws that have been declared. That

is right too, although none of the politicians

do follow the law. But anyways, they disagreed

with the court's decision in considering more

steps, which I don't really see how you can consider

that being that it's kind of in our, you know,

bylaws, our constitution, like it's, you know,

you start blocking free speech. no matter what

side of the spectrum you fall on, you become

as bad as when the revolutionists and the British

were fighting. I mean, you're almost at that

same stage. And it's really sad, to be honest.

So anyways, this lawsuit first filed last year

was closely watched by First Amendment rights

in the digital age. for relevance because it's

the President's preferred speakerphone. So I'm

kind of on board with that. I kind of understand

it in that, you know, if you're a public official,

you're elected to do a job and you want to shoot

your mouth off. That's kind of the road that

you're going to have to do. You're just going

to have to deal with it, suck it up. Big big

boy just deal with people that are pissing and

moaning about you that there's really nothing

you can do about it Legally or you know or you

could just not manage it and just not be on social

media during the years that you're in in office

and Kind of just you know kindly shut your mouth

because mouth overloads, but multiple times So,

yeah, I'm not really sure what's going to go

down with this. It's definitely a thing that's

going to have to be watched as time goes on,

so to say. So anyways, what do you guys think

about some of those different topics there? We'll

have to turn back to some of these as time goes

on. So I wanted to end this episode on a lighter

for sales and I subscribe to different things

for different things, I found a website called

Mighty Deals, which is almost in a sense like

Groupon, but for digital stuff. I'm not in any

way sponsoring them or sponsored by them. I'm

just mentioning this because I thought it was

kind of something cool to go to if you're a creator

of any kind, whether it's graphical websites,

just designer in general. So they have courses,

they have free things, they have $10 and under

things, they have, you know, font bundles, they

have graphics and logo bundles, they have software.

I've used them for a couple of things. One, they

had a coupon for the GDPR aspect, so I was able

to use that. I should probably put that on the

old site, but the new site is going to be launching

soon, I think. I think I've got enough done on

it to bring it out soon. design your own WordPress

theme. You can do an Adobe Illustrator CC Master

Class. So like for instance that's $17 and you

get a class. And then I downloaded a software

as well called Photo Scissors. And I really wasn't

sure what to think of it at first and it's...

I tried out the demo, you can't save anything,

but I tried out the demo and I used a variety

of images. I used one where it's like me and

TFJU and Mike from our first official picture

not during the wedding. I used a picture of the

stuff on the site. I used family photos. I used

superhero characters from images on websites.

And essentially what you do is you in green you

highlight and you scribble all over the The image

that you want to save Whether it's a character

or something else. I will say animated in a really

dark theme. It works really hard, but it does

work I find this infinitely easier than Trying

to manually create or pull backgrounds because

it uses like a sense of AI to kind of do this

a little bit It kind of helps you figure this

out. You can remove background around hair. You

can remove backgrounds around people, objects.

If you want to move people and images or ...

animals, or whatever. It creates a PNG transparency

of it anyways. So I used this photo scissors

from TRX, T -E -O -R -E -X, and it works because

I'm not particularly good at Photoshop. I use

Adobe Fireworks, which is old. It's still the

CS6, but I use this because I enjoy doing I actually

make every one of the graphics on GeekCastRadio

that I do or really anything in Adobe Fireworks.

I have not been a Photoshop person. I don't like

Photoshop. I think I'd be more of an Illustrator

person if I could figure it out, but there's

way too many commands and I've been using Adobe

Fireworks since the year 2002. Back when it was

Macromedia, so I just I don't really want to

switch unless there's a reason. So anyways, I

bought this software because it was like nine

dollars. And after trying it out, you can select

the marker size that you want. You highlight

what it is you want to cut out. Like they use,

for example, a parrot. And then they have him

standing on a branch, and then they have him

with, you know, there's bushes behind him. You

scribble all over the image you want to save

with green, this little green plus marker, as

it were. So it looks like a bunch of scribbling

marks. And then you use... red and do squiggly

marks around the outside of the bird. And it

smart cuts out the background, just completely

removes it. And then so you can drag the image

however you want, you can resize it and then

you could physically put it back. And it works

on just about every complex background. You can

remove, like I said, around hair, you can remove

backgrounds from transparent objects in the real

world. You know, some objects are transparent

and removing backgrounds from photos kind of

damages it. It's kind of interactive, so every

time you make one of these changes, it'll redo

and you can change the feathering radius, the

aspect ratios. It's super simple to do. Like,

you can do this for eBay items, they even say.

Like, they show like a handbag sitting on a couch.

They cut out the couch and just, you had the

handbag playing background. They show a, you

know, they're making a, you know, this girl on

the beach move from one spot to another. Like,

they physically move her and drag her over. They

do this with this bird, too. Like, it's insane.

Like, I was like, ah, this is gonna be garbage.

And so I downloaded it. I mean, it's like a $20

software, but I was like, this is gonna be crap.

And then I downloaded it, tried it out. I was

like, oh, that's surprisingly good. So I plan

on doing that for more significant arts when

I want to use specific superheroes and there

isn't an image that exists of them all collectively.

So now I can actually do this because Blanchard's

required me to do this at points. And I'm like,

I don't know how to do that. So now I really

don't have an excuse and I can resize. I also

did it with comic covers. I didn't want the background,

but I wanted the specific image of a character

off the comic, and I tried it out on that just

to see how it worked, and it worked spectacularly.

I don't usually do product reviews or software

reviews, but this is pretty simplistic. You don't

have to know anything graphically to be able

to do this software. It's pretty simple. You

seriously just scribble on it, and then scribble

on it with the other, and then... save it, and

it's good. It works great. I thought I'd mention

that Mighty Deal site just because I find it

to be very interesting to try out. They've got

other ones where you can add and change photo

colors. You could take a black and white photo

and put it in color. You could enhance photos

with other softwares. They have UX apps. They

have various... softwares that'll clean up. And

then they've got, you know, build your own website

type software, they've got plugins for things

for Photoshop and other things. I don't know,

it's really an interesting site and I kind of

stumbled across it by accident searching for

something else and I was able to actually use

it. A while back, I wanted ideas for specific

art. opted not to do it, and then I just stayed

subscribed to the newsletter, and then lo and

behold, the GDPR thing came along, and then I

did that, and then I saw this, and I was like,

oh, let's do it. So anyways, just throwing that

plug out there. So I hope you guys have had a

somewhat educational and entertaining episode

of this. So until next time, get altered, get

geeky with the Altered Geeks.