Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. 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.
DA 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. Fuck ’em.
Featured Item(s)
Cory Doctorow has:
Who Broke the Internet? Part II
It’s not who you think.
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, TechnoFeudalism, and other douchebaggery
The Verge reports:
Pope Leo XIV names AI one of the reasons for his papal name
Tech Policy has:
Europe’s Digital Sovereignty is a Democratic Imperative
Building the Eurostack: Can Open-Source Save Europe’s Tech Future?
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has:
Call on European Parliament to push for data enforcement to defend democracy
EuroNews reports:
Dutch competition agency launches two probes under EU Digital Markets Act
The Register reports:
Europe plots escape hatch from the enshittification of search
The ‘End of 10’ is nigh, but don’t bury your PC just yet
Wired reports:
North Korean IT Workers Are Being Exposed on a Massive Scale
Neutral
The Free Software Foundation Europe shares:
Legal Corner: The threshold of originality for copyrightable source code
Government Techology asks:
Does the Federal Government Have a Right to States’ Data?
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
The FCC Must Reject Efforts to Lock Up Public Airwaves
IRS-ICE Immigrant Data Sharing Agreement Betrays Data Privacy and Taxpayers’ Trust
404 Media reports:
License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool, Leak Shows
TechCrunch reports:
FTC delays enforcement of click-to-cancel rule
White House scraps plan to block data brokers from selling Americans’ sensitive data
The Verge reports:
Elon Musk’s apparent power play at the Copyright Office completely backfired
Propublica reports:
The Trump Administration Leaned on African Countries. The Goal: Get Business for Elon Musk.
It’s not just Africa either.
Pariah States
TechCrunch reports:
Five things we learned from WhatsApp vs. NSO Group spyware lawsuit
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Poland detects foreign-funded election ads amid fears of Russian interference
BleepingComputer reports:
Moldova arrests suspect linked to DoppelPaymer ransomware attacks
DarkReading reports:
North Korea’s TA406 Targets Ukraine for Intel
Turkish APT Exploits Chat App Zero-Day to Spy on Iraqi Kurds
Big Media
So-called newspaper, The New York Times reports:
A Free People Need a Free Press
No shit, fuckers. Why have you been laying down on the job the last few years?
EuroNews reports:
UK to allow foreign states to own 15% stake in British newspapers
Big Tech
Privacy Guides shares:
The Register reports:
Nextcloud cries foul over Google Play Store app rejection
Meta’s still violating GDPR rules with latest plan to train AI on EU user data, says noyb
ArsTechnica reports:
Meta is making users who opted out of AI training opt out again, watchdog says
Report: Terrorists seem to be paying X to generate propaganda with Grok
Jesus.
404 Media has:
Why Did Grok Start Talking About ‘White Genocide’?
Fuck me.
ArsTechnica reports:
Report: Terrorists seem to be paying X to generate propaganda with Grok
Jesus.
404 Media has:
Why Did Grok Start Talking About ‘White Genocide’?
Fuck me.
Tech Policy reports:
Racialized Grooming Gangs: How Musk and X Amplified Islamophobia and Racism in the UK
Cybersecurity/Privacy
MIT Technology Review reports on:
How a new type of AI is helping police skirt facial recognition bans
The Register reports:
Feds disrupt proxy-for-hire botnet, indict four alleged net miscreants
You think ransomware is bad now? Wait until it infects CPUs
As US vuln-tracking falters, EU enters with its own security bug database
Martin Fowler.com has:
Coding Assistants Threaten the Software Supply Chain
AI is still 95% horseshit.
W3C announces:
Privacy Principles is a W3C Statement
Fediverse
The Fediverse Report has:
Hamish Campbell opines:
We do need tools to share to help people on the path back onto the #openweb
The Library of Alexandra says:
Moderating Communities is Not a Burden
It just seems to be for tech bros.
Dead Superheron shares:
We Distribute reports:
Mastodon: Giving Journalists Options Away From Big Tech
ActivityPub for WordPress has:
5.9.0 – Easier Onboarding for Your Fediverse Experience
Ghost has:
Sciety announces:
Sciety secures funding from NLNet Foundation to help build discourse around preprints
Lemmy has:
Lemmy Development Update April 2025
TechCrunch reports:
Threads now lets creators add up to 5 links to profiles, track clicks
More enshittification from the c^nts at Meta.
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
The Fediverse Report has:
Taking Control of Your Timeline – in Different Ways
Free Our Feeds shares:
Free Our Feeds – Update #2, May 2025
Bluesky gives an update on:
The Dabbler has:
I updated my Bluesky PDS and it stopped working. Here’s how I fixed it.
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse
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