Defending Democracy – 15 August 2024

Welcome to this week’s “Defending Democracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber space 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. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

It comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over.

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

Featured Item

I’m choosing this article because it features my favorite science fiction author and it’s from a city I’m visiting on vacation next month. Plus, we can all relate to this.

The Halifax Examiner says:

“When I read this story (and so many others like it), I immediately thought of the late Philip K. Dick. His short stories and novels, mostly written in the 60s and 70s, are full of situations like this. For Dick, the future wasn’t all shiny. Sure, we might be able to travel to Mars, but we’d be plagued by intrusive technology, dysfunction, and general idiocy.”

We live in Philip K. Dick’s stupidly annoying dystopian world

My man understood the unfortunate reality of human nature.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes and other douchebaggery

Radio Free Europe reports:

Dual Russian-German Citizen Held In U.S. For Operating Alleged ‘Tech-Trafficking Syndicate’

Ars Technica reports:

Google abruptly shuts down AdSense in Russia as tensions with Kremlin escalate

Several years too late.

Artists claim “big” win in copyright suit fighting AI image generators

Signal asks:

Proxy Please: Help People Connect to Signal

EuroNews reports:

Meta urged to answer EU questions on CrowdTangle

Ireland to clamp down on social media companies refusing to remove hate speech

Speaking of hate, City A.M. reports:

More advertisers to flee X after recent Elon Musk lawsuit and riot comments

It kills me how these monopolist oligarch dumb fucks don’t know how capitalism works. And that’s because they don’t believe in it, especially competition.

Speaking of the SpaceCunt, TechCrunch reports:

More advertisers to flee X after recent Elon Musk lawsuit and riot comments

Biden tells creators they have something traditional media does not: ‘You’re trusted’

FTC finalizes rule banning fake reviews, including those made with AI

California AI bill SB 1047 aims to prevent AI disasters, but Silicon Valley warns it will cause one

OpenAI shuts down Iranian election influence operation using ChatGBT

The Verge reports:

Epic judge says he’ll ‘tear the barriers down’ on Google’s app store monopoly

The Elon Musk / Donald Trump interview on X started with an immediate tech disaster

Karma is real, dumbasses.

Unprecedented has more details on the clusterfuck:

Mickey Musk and Donald Duck

Speaking of the polar opposite of this nonsense, Talking Points Memo says:

Harris’ Campaign Is Working—Get Used to It

Jeff Jarvis opines:

What ‘Press’?Kamala Harris does not need the press. The press needs her.

Fuck the pundits and fuck the press, baby.

Hence this, Common Dreams reports:

Dozens of Civil-Rights and Journalism Groups Urge the Media to Report on Rising Authoritarianism and Threats to Democracy

The Guardian reports:

What opposition to delivery drones shows about big tech’s disrespect for democracy

Fabio Mananiello is:

In search of a new search

The Register reports:

FTC urges judge to spank Google over Android App market monopoly

Biden tries to cut through fog of confusion caused by deliberately deceptive customer service tricks

CNBC reports:

FTC bans fake online reviews, inflated social media influence; rule takes effect in October

TechDirt reports:

Court To RFK Jr.: Fact-Checking Doesn’t Violate 1st Amendment Nor Does Section 230 Make Meta A State Actor

Too bad for the worm-brain, roadkill gourmet.

The MIT Technology Review promotes:

A new public database lists all the ways AI could go wrong

Speaking of, The Verge reports:

AI-powered ‘undressing’ websites are getting sued

Civic Texts reports:

A decade later, the U.S. Digital Service is making .gov websites work better for the humans who depend on them

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

Radio Free Europe reports:

Kremlin-Aligned Russian Media Minimize Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion, Attempt To Check Panic

The Register reports:

Russian cyber snoops linked to massive credential-stealing campaign

China-linked cyber-spies infect Russian govt, IT sector

Evil on Evil action. 😈

BleepingComputer reports:

Hackers posing as Ukraine’s Security Service infect 100 govt PCs

South Korea says DPRK hackers stole spy plane technical data

The Record reports:

Media, activists, former US diplomat were on Russia-aligned phishing campaigns’ hit lists

Google reports:

Iranian backed group steps up phishing campaigns against Israel, U.S.

NextGov reports:

United Nations approves controversial cybercrime treaty

RIP Crowdtangle laments:

Losing CrowdTangle is a huge and exhausting setback in our hate speech research

FrameLab reports:

Beware Trump’s secret weapon: Elon Musk’s X-Twitter

The Byline Times reports:

Elon Musk’s War Against Science, Evidence and Objective Truth

The Guardian reports:

Elon’s politics: how Musk became a driver of elections misinformation

So Donald chatted with Elon, and here’s the future as they see it – losers win, incompetence rules

From my favorite Guardian columnist.

‘It’s OK, everyone else is doing it’: how do we deal with role violence on social media played in UK riots?

Russia’s AI tactics for US election interference are failing, Meta says

Meta struggles with moderation in Hebrew, according to ex-employee and internal documents

Common Dreams reports on:

Billionaires for Trump and Vance

This is a great list of mofos to never give a penny to.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation reports:

Digital Apartheid in Gaza: Unjust Content Moderation at the Request of Israel’s Cyber Unit

Digital Apartheid in Gaza: Big Tech Must Reveal Their Roles in Tech Used in Human Rights Abuses

The Left Hook reports:

The U.S. Press is Broken

I don’t usually share things from the Nazi Bar known as Substack. But this is a good take.

The Intercept reports:

The Platform Proletariat: How the artificial intelligence industry profits from an unprotected digital working class in Brazil

CalMatters reports:

Why Silicon Valley is trying so hard to kill this AI bill in California

They did succeed in tweaking it.

Patreon reports:

Apple’s requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon. Here’s what you need to know.

As I have said before, Apple is the best of big tech but they are still c^nts. And as I have also said before, it’s okay to distribute on other platforms, but own your online real estate.

Cory Doctorow lays the wood to them:

Apple vs the “free market”

Again, these fucks don’t believe in capitalism.