Spaceship leaving scene of a battle

Defending Demcracy – 10 October 2024

Welcome to this week’s “Defending Democracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting democracy. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DD comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists.

This week we had to evacuate the shit hole known as Florida due to Hurricane Milton. Consequently, we had limited work time and this will be a truncated version.


Featured Item

Joan Westenberg writes:

What causes this “brainrot” phenomenon among the super-wealthy, leading them to embrace bigoted views and alienate the very societies that helped them amass their fortunes?

Billionaire Brainrot: How the Mega Rich Turn MAGA

Hint: $


The response to Russia’s War Crimes and other douchebaggery

The Guardian reports:

A year of war accelerates ‘silent departure’ of Israel’s elite

Any Israelis with any morality left should leave Israel.

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Russian state media faced ‘unprecedented’ cyberattack on Putin’s birthday

Radio Free Europe reports:

Wider Europe Briefing: The EU’s New Plans To Target Russian Threats

The Verge reports:

Google must crack open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge

Adobe has a new tool to protect artists’ work from AI

404 Media reports:

The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes

TechCrunch reports:

US government considers historic break-up of Google in antitrust case

Bleeping Computer reports:

Dutch police arrest admin of ‘Bohemia/Cannabia’ dark web market

Ars Technica reports:

Elon Musk’s X loses battle over federal request for Trump’s DMs

The c^nt also backed down 100% in his fight with Brazil. As with Durov in France, these fascist bullies are not so tough when you smack them in the fucking mouth.

The Verge reports;

Judge greenlights FTC’s antitrust suit against Amazon


The Evil Empire Strikes Back

James Muldoon examines:

Feeding the Machine: Seven links between AI and inequalities

404 Media reports:

Hurricane Helene and the ‘Fuck It’ Era of AI-Generated Slop

The Verge reports:

FEMA adds misinformation to its list of disasters to clean up

Tech Policy has:

Challenging The Myths of Generative AI

Political Figures Must Be Held to the Same Online Standards as Others. It is Vital for Democracy and Human Rights.

Tracking the Weaponization of America’s Political System in Favor of Disinformation—And Its Export Abroad

Pariah States

Cory Doctorow

Pluralistic: China hacked Verizon, AT&T and Lumen using the FBI’s backdoor (07 Oct 2024)

The Guardian reports:

How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war

The Register reports:

OpenAI says Chinese gang tried to phish its staff

Big Media

Nothing stands out this week.

Big Tech

Tech Policy has:

Challenging The Myths of Generative AI

Terrorists

CBS News reports:

Domestic extremists with “election-related grievances” could turn to violence, intel bulletin warns

ABC reports:

Dozens of San Fernando Valley white supremacist gang members charged in federal indictment, DOJ says

Bellingcat reports:

The Small Bulgarian Streetwear Shop Designing Clothes for the Far-Right ‘Active Club’ Movement


Cybersecurity/Privacy

Surveillance Self Defeat reports:

Seven Steps To Digital Security

The Register reports:

UK’s Sellafield nuke waste processing plant fined £333K for infosec blunders

How should CISOs respond to the rise of GenAI?


Fediverse

The Fediverse Report has:

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 87

Ben Werdmuller looks at:

The two Fediverses

Bix Dot opines:

[You Can’t Own The Social Web](https://bix.blog/posts/2024-10-05-you-cant-own-the-social-web

Activity Pods announces:

ActivityPods 2.0 is out!

ActivityPods and NextGraph are joining forces

Mastodon announces:

Mastodon 4.3

The Verge reports:

Mastodon switches things up to make its app a little easier to use

Threads knows it has an engagement bait problem

TechCrunch reports:

Meta is testing a feature to let you post Instagram Reels directly on Threads

Elena Rossini has:

A great day for writers: introducing Mastodon author tags

Ghost has an update:

Scottish refinements

Other Federated Social Media

The Fediverse report has:

Last Week in the ATmosphere – Oct 24 week 2


CTAs (aka show us some free love)

Reuben Walker headshot

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse