Spaceship leaving scene of a battle

Defending Democracy – 16 January 2025

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.


Featured Item

The best news in a long time came out with two announcements this week.

First in, The people should own the town square, Mastodon announced:

We are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new non-profit organization, affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.

Meanwhile, Free our Feeds announced:

It will take independent funding and governance to turn Bluesky’s underlying tech—the AT Protocol—into something more powerful than a single app. We want to create an entire ecosystem of interconnected apps and different companies that have people’s interests at heart.
Free Our Feeds will build a new, independent foundation to help make that happen.

Meanwhile the Social Web Foundation said:

The Social Web Foundation focuses on the network of platforms connected via ActivityPub. We also support efforts to make other distributed social networking protocols more open and equitable. For this reason, we are excited to support the FreeOurFeeds campaign launching today. This campaign is an opportunity to develop the capacity needed for the open social web protocols – ActivityPub along with Bluesky’s AT Protocol – to better interoperate, leveraging the entire open social ecosystem to create a working demonstration of algorithmic pluralism at scale.

Open Future summarized:

Both initiatives aim at the same problem: Ensuring that the underlying infrastructures powering social media services are run as public services that are resistant to capture from companies or individuals. They represent attempts to safeguard nascent public digital infrastructures for a new generation of social media services.

So while the Free our Feeds includes some suspect AI cheerleaders and the SWF is too Meta tolerant for my tastes, I hope some fantastic things can come from these developments.


We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes and other douchebaggery

Bleeping Computer reports:

FBI deletes Chinese PlugX malware from thousands of US computers

US cracks down on North Korean IT worker army with more sanctions

The Verge reports:

US finalizes rule to effectively ban Chinese vehicles, which could include Polestar

Biden warns nation about the rise of American tech oligarchs

CNN reports:

Biden unveils last round of AI chip curbs aimed at China, Russia

The Guardian has:

Will the EU fight for the truth on Facebook and Instagram?

Google investigated by UK watchdog over search dominance

Biden strengthens US cyber defenses against Russia and China threats

Deutche Welle reports:

German institutions depart X, a day after Musk’s Weidel talk

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

EFF Goes to Court to Uncover Police Surveillance Tech in California

The Center for Democracy and Technology reports:

Letter from Meta Civil Rights Advisory Group Members on Grave Concerns with Content Policy Changes

Le Monde has:

Europe : la régulation du numérique à l’épreuve de l’offensive de Trump, Musk et Zuckerberg

The Register reports:

SEC sues Elon Musk for allegedly screwing investors out of $150M before Twitter takeover

US adds Chinese RISC-V player that TSMC suspected of helping build Huawei GPUs to risky company register

404 Media reports:

FTC Sues John Deere Over Its Repair Monopoly

The Markup reports:

Fearing AI Will Take Their Jobs, Workers Plan a Long Battle Against Tech

Noyb announces:

TikTok, AliExpress, SHEIN & Co surrender Europeans’ data to authoritarian China

Ars Technica reports:

TikTok loses Supreme Court fight, prepares to shut down Sunday

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties reports:

Google and CEO Sundar Pichai under fire for sending Americans’ data to China in new national security complaint


The Evil Empire Strikes Back

Wired reports:

A Spymaster Sheikh Controls a $1.5 Trillion Fortune. He Wants to Use It to Dominate AI

The Markup reports:

Online Censorship In Schools Is ‘More Pervasive’ Than Expected, New Data Shows

Tech Policy reports:

Analysis of Spanish-Language Disinformation in the 2024 US Election Suggests Dismissing Fact-Checkers Threatens Democracy

Peter Thiel Dreams of Empire

Pariah States

The Record reports:

Russian espionage and financial theft campaigns have ramped up, Ukraine cyber agency says

The Register reports:

Russia’s Star Blizzard phishing crew caught targeting WhatsApp accounts

Bleeping Computer reports:

CISA orders agencies to patch BeyondTrust bug exploited in attacks

The U.S. State department announces:

Joint Statement on Cryptocurrency Thefts by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Public-Private Collaboration

Big Media

The Guardian asks:

As tech barons dial up the spreading of lies, why is the BBC dialling down the reporting of truth?

CNN reports:

Jen Rubin exits Washington Post, joins Norm Eisen to launch new outlet countering ‘authoritarian threat’

But for some reason they are on fascism-friendly Substack with it.

Mother Jones reports:

How Trump’s Return Is Pushing the Media to Self-Censor

Big Tech

AKA this week in c^ntness.

The Guardian has:

How Elon Musk has meddled in European affairs

‘Just the start’: X’s new AI software driving online racist abuse, experts warn

How to politicize the truth on Facebook, Instagram, and Wikipedia

Truthout reports:

Meta’s Allowance of Hate Speech Is Another Side Effect of Big Tech Monopoly

404 Media reports:

Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed

Instagram Ads Send This Nudify Site 90 Percent of Its Traffic

Meta Is Laying the Narrative Groundwork for Trump’s Mass Deportations

TechCrunch reports:

OpenAI quietly revises policy doc to remove reference to ‘politically unbiased’ AI

Damien Desfontaines shares:

Five things privacy experts know about AI

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Platforms Systematically Removed a User Because He Made “Most Wanted CEO” Playing Cards


Cybersecurity/Privacy

Tech Policy reports:

What Trump’s Return Means For Encryption

A Call for Modular Multistakeholder AI Governance: Practical Recommendations for the Upcoming AI Action Summit

The Guardian reports:

Ministers consider ban on all UK public bodies making ransomware payments

DarkReading reports:

Apple Bug Allows Root Protections Bypass Without Physical Access

TechCrunch reports:

UnitedHealth hid its Change Healthcare data breach notice for months

The Register reports:

GoDaddy slapped with wet lettuce for years of lax security and ‘several major breaches’


Fediverse

The Fediverse Report has:

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 99

Again Mastodon announced:

The people should own the town square

Trunk & Tidbits, December 2024

The Verge reports:

Instagram alternative Pixelfed now has apps

The Internet Review shares:

Enjoying Pixelfed? Don’t Miss Out On One Of Its Cooler Features: Portfolio

Ghost has:

The story so far

The Social Web Foundation looks at:

Content Policy on the Social Web

Solarbird says:

Let’s all go to the EXIT

TechCrunch reports:

Instagram Threads won’t share a timeline for account portability

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

The Fediverse Reports has:

Last Week in Bluesky and the ATmosphere -2025jan.b

DailyKos previews:

The Coming Enshittification of Bluesky

Ben Werder shares:

Free Our Feeds

I have no doubt Bluesky will eventually become enshittified. Let’s hope the ATProtocol won’t be.

The Social Web Foundation looks at:

Free Our Feeds and Algorithmic Pluralism

Shellsharks weighs in with:

This

TechCrunch reports:

Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky’s AT Protocol

Bluesky saw 17x increase in moderation reports in 2024 after rapid growth


CTAs (aka show us some free love)

Reuben Walker headshot

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
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