A leading U.S. digital rights organisation is joining the battle against top video game companies that might seek to censor gamers for expressing support for Hong Kongers who’ve been protesting Chinese influence over the past 27 weeks. Read More >>
The top court in the European Union has ruled Facebook must delete content globally, not just in Europe, if a European court decides that the content is defamatory. The case was brought by an Austrian politician who said that a Facebook user had defamed and insulted her by writing she was a “corrupt oaf,” among other things. Read More >>
YouTube dug a great big hole for itself earlier this week when its PR bungled its response to the ongoing harassment of a journalist by a far-right pundit. Internally, the backlash from employees at its parent company is growing as LGBTQ and allied workers mobilise to demand a satisfactory response. Read More >>
What do Reddit, free speech, and the Jehovah’s Witness religion have in common? A lawsuit regarding the right to remain anonymous online. Last week, a US federal court ruled that a Redditor does not have to reveal his identity in a copyright case. Read More >>
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had his second court date of the week this morning where he formally declined extradition to the U.S. to face charges brought by the Justice Department. The WikiLeaks founder was sentenced in London to nearly a year in prison yesterday for jumping bail in 2012. Read More >>
A web hosting provider has revealed the US Justice Department’s efforts to obtain records about an activist website established to coordinate “mass protests to shut down the inauguration of Donald Trump.” Read More >>
Last year represented a breaking point of sorts for major online platforms. The swelling tide of abuse, hate-speech, and politicised misinformation finally grew too big to be ignored. But the ensuing crackdown—as painfully slow and largely ineffective as it was—has led to a concurrent rise in largely-unknown sites and services clamouring to be the Most Free for free speech absolutists. Read More >>
The War On Terror™ continues apace, with dedicated agencies hunting all threats both foreign and domestic. The Wall Street Journal has a new look inside one unlikely group: Facebook. Read More >>
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is familiar with people putting made-up bullshit online. As I mentioned, he founded Wikipedia. But this is on another level: Wales’s words got changed on a Chinese conference website to make it sound like he was pro-Chinese government surveillance. Read More >>
Think you can fix Reddit? Have you come up with an amazing way for the giant internet community to stay popular, make money, and yet somehow eject the filth? Read More >>
Russian internet users can no longer time warp through internet history. This week, the Russian government blocked the Internet Archive domain–which makes the nonprofit’s popular and useful time-warping tool, the Wayback Machine, off limits. Read More >>