How-To-Geek: “If you’ve been looking into the different ways to browse anonymously, two terms will come up regularly: VPNs and Tor. However, when you compare these two, you’ll quickly see that they have very different use cases. To figure out when you should use Tor rather than a VPN, let’s first go over how they… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Free Speech
Twitter’s Rivals Try to Capitalize on Musk-Induced Chaos
The New York Times $: “New start-ups and other social platforms sense opportunity as Twitter grapples with changes from Elon Musk, its new owner…A race is on to dethrone Twitter and capitalize on the chaos of its new ownership under Elon Musk, the tech mogul who bought the social media company for $44 billion in… Continue Reading
The Uncensored Library
The Uncensored Library: “In many countries, websites, social media and blogs are controlled by oppressive leaders. Young people, in particular, are forced to grow up in systems where their opinion is heavily manipulated by governmental disinformation campaigns. But even where almost all media is blocked or controlled, the world’s most successful computer game is still… Continue Reading
How to Leave Dying Social Media Platforms (without ditching your friends)
Cory Doctorow: “Online, a lot of us have been unhappy with our social media platforms for a long time, but we hang in there, year after year, scandal after scandal, because as much as we hate the platform, we love the people who use the platform. We don’t leave because we don’t want to lose… Continue Reading
We’re Publishing the Facebook Papers
Gizmodo – Here’s How Meta Became the Internet’s Biggest Hub of Covid-19 Misinformation: “…From the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, Facebook understood the outsized role its platform would plays in shaping public opinion about the virus and the safeguards that governments would inevitably institute in hopes of containing it. Ten months before the first reported… Continue Reading
Is This the Beginning of the End of the Internet?
The Atlantic: “Occasionally, something happens that is so blatantly and obviously misguided that trying to explain it rationally makes you sound ridiculous. Such is the case with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’s recent ruling in NetChoice v. Paxton. Earlier this month, the court upheld a preposterous Texas law stating that online platforms with more… Continue Reading
Book bans are spiking in the US
Quartz – Here are the most targeted titles: “This week, ALA is holding its annual Banned Books Week, from September 18-24, to advocate for open access to information. While in the past bans usually targeted one book at a time, advocacy groups are now going after multiple titles at once, according to the association. So far… Continue Reading
The Supreme Court’s new term could be even more consequential than its last one
Vox – The Republican justices who overruled Roe v. Wade are only getting started. “The headline of this piece is likely to turn a few heads. The Supreme Court’s last term, after all, was an orgy of conservative excess unlike any since the Court’s Great Depression-era attacks on the New Deal. And it culminated in… Continue Reading
Where Online Hate Speech Can Bring the Police to Your Door
The New York Times: “Battling far-right extremism, Germany goes further than other Western democracies in policing online behavior, testing the limits of free speech on the internet…Hate speech, extremism, misogyny and misinformation are well-known byproducts of the internet. But the people behind the most toxic online behavior typically avoid any personal major real-world consequences. Most… Continue Reading
The history of book bans—and their changing targets—in the U.S.
National Geographic: “From religious texts and anti-slavery novels to modern works removed from school libraries, here’s how the targets of censorship have changed over the years. Mark Twain. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Judy Blume. William Shakespeare. These names share something more than a legacy of classic literature and a place on school curriculums: They’re just some… Continue Reading
How Book Bans Turned a Texas Town Upside Down
The New York Times Magazine: “…Over the last year, campaigns to ban books have erupted throughout school districts and local libraries across the country. The American Library Association, which tracks challenges to library books or resources since 1990, previously documented roughly 300 to 350 complaints annually, with most challenges targeting a single title each. But… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, August 27, 2022
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, August 27, 2022 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly… Continue Reading
