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
404 Media reports:
AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums
When you use AI, you contribute to this c^ntitry.
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery
Micah Flee explores:
Using Signal groups for activism
The Guardian reports:
Makers of air fryers and smart speakers told to respect users’ right to privacy
Spy ships, cyber-attacks and shadow fleets: the crack security team braced for trouble at sea
TechCrunch reports:
The ‘OpenAI Files’ push for oversight in the race to AGI
The Register reports:
LibreOffice adds voice to ‘ditch Windows for Linux’ campaign
Microsoft brings 365 suite on-prem as part of sovereign cloud push
France 24 reports:
‘We’re done with Teams’: German state hits uninstall on Microsoft
TechPolicy shares:
What the EU Needs to Do to Challenge Big Tech Cloud Dominance
The New Surveillance State: Why Data Privacy Is Now Essential to Democracy
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
Apple to Australians: You’re Too Stupid to Choose Your Own Apps
BleepingComputer reports:
Police seizes Archetyp Market drug marketplace, arrests admin
The Register reviews:
/e/ OS 3.0: Slightly less clunky, slightly more private
Vox reports:
He’s the godfather of AI. Now, he has a bold new plan to keep us safe from it.
Zenodo shares:
The Anti-Autocracy Handbook: A Scholars’ Guide to Navigating Democratic Backsliding
Read it, live it.
Neutral
The Register reports:
The launch of ChatGPT polluted the world forever, like the first atomic weapons tests
Euronews reports:
Dutch online platform watchdog struggling to connect with other EU member states
The Register reports:
MiniMax M1 model claims Chinese LLM crown from DeepSeek – plus it’s true open-source
Dems hyperventilate about Palantir’s work with the IRS in letter to CEO Karp
I would trust Palantir as far as I could kick their CEO.
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
404 Media reports:
Emails Reveal the Casual Surveillance Alliance Between ICE and Local Police
California Cops Investigate ‘Immigration Protest’ With AI-Camera System
The Markup reports:
California police are illegally sharing license plate data with ICE and Border Patrol
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Open Rights Group reports:
Police forces to get authoritarian powers to extract data from online accounts
False alarm: fake news and the right fuel attack on NGOs
EuroNews reports:
Ukrainian journalists fear USAID cuts opened up space for Russian disinformation campaigns
Pariah States
DarkReading reports:
‘HoldingHands’ Acts Like a Pickpocket With Taiwan Orgs
Iran-Israel War Triggers a Maelstrom in Cyberspace
Paragon Commercial Spyware Infects Prominent Journalists
The Register reports:
Amazon CISO: Iranian hacking crews ‘on high alert’ since Israel attack
404 Media reports:
The AI Slop Fight Between Iran and Israel
EuroNews reports:
Israel’s spy agency used AI and smuggled-in drones to prepare attack on Iran, sources say
Bleeping Computer reports:
North Korean hackers deepfake execs in Zoom call to spread Mac malware
Telecom giant Viasat breached by China’s Salt Typhoon hackers
Citizen Lab reports:
Same Sea, New Phish: Russian Government-Linked Social Engineering Targets App-Specific Passwords
Big Media
The Guardian reports:
The mainstream media has enabled Trump’s war on universities
BleepingComputer reports:
Washington Post’s email system hacked, journalists’ accounts compromised
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting reports:
Working Hard to Justify Israel’s Unprovoked Attack on Iran
One Man and his Blog reports:
Digital News Report 2025: exponential media change is here
Big Tech
Ars Technica reports:
OpenAI weighs “nuclear option” of antitrust complaint against Microsoft
How surprising. Two big tech c^nts can’t get along.
The Register reports:
Salesforce study finds LLM agents flunk CRM and confidentiality tests
‘AI is not doing its job and should leave us alone’ says Gartner’s top analyst
Absolutely.
noyb reports:
WhatsApp is getting ads using personal data from Instagram and Facebook
The Guardian reports:
(AI)‘It’s terrifying’: WhatsApp AI helper mistakenly shares user’s number
TechCrunch reports:
xAI is facing a lawsuit for operating over 400 MW of gas turbines without permits
Tumblr’s content-filtering systems have been falsely flagging posts as ‘mature,’ users blame AI
Instagram users complain of mass bans, pointing finger at AI
BleepingComputer reports:
Instagram ‘BMO’ ads use AI deepfakes to scam banking customers
BellingCat reports:
Ludic Mataroa schools the AI Bros:
Contra Ptacek’s Terrible Article On AI
Wired reports:
How Much Energy Does AI Use? The People Who Know Aren’t Saying
The BBC reports:
Is Google about to destroy the web?
Antitrust Intelligence reports:
Microsoft Could Repeat its Teams Strategy, this time with Bing and Edge
The Markup reports:
We caught 4 more states sharing personal health data with Big Tech
Terror
404 Media reports:
The People Search Sites in the Suspected Minnesota Killer’s Notebook Are a Failure of Congress
Cybersecurity/Privacy
Krebs on Security reports:
Inside a Dark Adtech Empire Fed by Fake CAPTCHAs
The Register reports:
Sitecore CMS flaw let attackers brute-force ‘b’ for backdoor
Fuck corporate CMSs.
BleepingComputer reports:
DuckDuckGo beefs up scam defense to block fake stores, crypto sites
The Electronic Frontier Foundation shows us how to:
Protect Yourself From Meta’s Latest Attack on Privacy
Better yet, don’t use their shit.
Fediverse
The Fediverse Report reports:
The W3C Community Group looks at:
Messaging Layer Security over ActivityPub
Timothy Chambers shares:
The Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse Web Experience (To Fix)
Mastodon has:
Mastodon is a digital public good
Emily McClue has a bone to pick with them:
New Terms of Service IP clause cannot be terminated or revoked, not even by deleting content
PeerTube announces:
App crowdfunding — Let’s go live!
Elena Rossini shares a valuable asset:
Ghost is:
Bonfire announces:
ActivityPub for WordPress announces:
New Look, Faster Blocks in ActivityPub 6.0.0
TechCrunch reports:
Mastodon updates its terms to prohibit AI model training
Threads is testing spoiler text, Zuckerberg says
Threads expands open social web integrations with fediverse feed, user profile search
Remember to block the instance, threads.net.
Matrix fires a volley:
Dispelling myths and misinformation
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
The Fediverse Report has:
Mathew Ingram says:
Reports of Bluesky’s death have been greatly exaggerated
Tedium shares:
Again, none of this would matter if Bluesky were not a company trying to make money and in debt to VCs.
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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