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.
Happy May Day! Cast off your chains.
Featured Item(s)
Cory Doctorow writes:
The point of AI isn’t to make workers more productive, it’s to make them weaker when they bargain with their bosses.
Tech workers are workers, and they once held the line against enshittification, refusing to break the things they’d built for their bosses in meaningless all-nighters motivated by vocational awe. Long after tech bosses were able to buy all their competitors, capture their regulators, and expand IP law to neutralize the threat of innovative, interoperable products like alternative app stores, ad-blockers and jailbreaking kits, tech workers held the line.
There’ve been half a million US tech layoff since 2023. Tech workers’ scarcity-derived power has been vaporized. Tech workers can avoid the fate of the factory, warehouse and delivery workers their bosses literally work to death — but only by unionizing.
In other words, the workers in re-shored factories and tech workers need the same thing. They are class allies — and tech bosses are their class enemies. This is class war.
The enshittification of tech jobs
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, TechnoFeudalism, and other douchebaggery
Tech Policy reports:
Labor Unions Can Counterbalance the Big Tech Oligarchy, But Only If They Rediscover Their Power
Expats Czechia reports:
Court rules that Czechia collects phone data illegally in landmark decision
Mashable reports:
Elon Musk’s X lost 11 million users in the EU over the past 5 months
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
Calyx Institute: A Case Study in Grassroots Innovation
EFF Leads Prominent Security Experts in Urging Trump Administration to Leave Chris Krebs Alone
EuroNews reports:
EU governments discuss action on disinformation over climate policy
Bleeping Computer reports:
TikTok fined €530 million for sending European user data to China
Fast Company reports:
How Big Tech’s Faustian bargain with Trump backfired
Framablog has:
The Verge reports:
A judge just blew up Apple’s control of the App Store
The Register reports:
Cook’d: Judge says Apple lied to court in Epic case, asks Feds to mull criminal charges
Double awesome.
TechCrunch reports:
Apple changes US App Store rules to let apps link to external payment systems
Neutral
The Register reports:
DARPA to ‘radically’ rev up mathematics research. And yes, with AI
The Journal of Online Trust and Safety has:
Science and Causality in Technology Litigation
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
TechDirt has:
Congress Moving Forward On Unconstitutional Take It Down Act
Ars Technica reports:
Trump’s hasty Take It Down Act has “gaping flaws” that threaten encryption
Micah Flee looks at:
TM SGNL, the obscure unofficial Signal app Mike Waltz uses to text with Trump officials
The Register reports:
DOGE may help Elon Musk’s biz empire dodge $2.4B in liabilities – Senate probe
Framablog looks at:
L’État artificiel : la vie civique automatisée
Pariah States
BleepingComputer reports:
France ties Russian APT28 hackers to 12 cyberattacks on French orgs
Pro-Russia hacktivists bombard Dutch public orgs with DDoS attacks
DarkReading has:
Putin’s Cyberattacks on Ukraine Rise 70%, With Little Effect
Adversaries Are Toying With US Networks & DC Is Short on Answers
Billbug Expands Cyber-Espionage Campaign in Southeast Asia
The Register reports:
China now America’s number one cyber threat – US must get up to speed
Open source text editor poisoned with malware to target Uyghur users
Big Media
NPR reports:
Corporation for Public Broadcasting sues Trump after he tries to fire board members
Ars Technica reports:
“Blatantly unlawful”: Trump slammed for trying to defund PBS, NPR
The Daily Beast reports:
MAGA Billionaire Leads L.A. Times to Lose $50 Million
Ars Technica reports:
CBS owner Paramount reportedly intends to settle Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit
Big Tech
Semafor reports:
The group chats that changed America
The Guardian reports:
Meta faces Ghana lawsuits over impact of extreme content on moderators
Meta slowest to remove scam content, says City watchdog
TechCrunch reports:
Report finds Meta’s celebrity-voiced chatbots could discuss sex with minors
OpenAI is fixing a ‘bug’ that allowed minors to generate erotic conversations
404 Media has:
Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users
Mbin or PieFed, peeps.
This Is Palantir’s Justification for Building ICE’s Master Database
Instagram’s AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists
The Markup reports:
Kids should avoid AI companion bots—under force of law, assessment says
The Center for Democracy and Technology reports:
Report – In Deep Trouble: Surfacing Tech-Powered Sexual Harassment in K-12 Schools
Cybersecurity/Privacy
Lawfare covers:
Advancing Secure by Design through Security Research
404 Media reports:
The Age of Realtime Deepfake Fraud Is Here
The Markup reports:
How California sent residents’ personal health data to LinkedIn
BleepingComputer reports:
Hackers ramp up scans for leaked Git tokens and secrets
FBI shares massive list of 42,000 LabHost phishing domains
Tech Policy Press reports:
Reverse Keyword Search Warrants and the Threat to Online Privacy
The Jacobin reports:
Big Tech Wants Free Rein to Sell Your Data
Fediverse
The Fediverse Report has:
Fosstodon has more on its drama:
ActivityPub for WordPress announces:
V5.8.0 – If it’s on the Fediverse, you can embed it.
ActivityPods shares:
Key learnings from building social apps with ActivityPods
Forgejo has:
Forgejo monthly update – April 2025
The Social Web Foundation has:
Steps Forward in Long-form Text
Mastodon is:
Matthew Tift has:
Finding an Ethical Path Through Social Media: Why I Choose Mastodon
PieFed has:
PieFed development update Apr 2025 – S3, OAuth, Federation retry queue, Stripe
NodeBB has:
NodeBB v4.3.0 — Remote Categories are a go!
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
WinBuzzer reports:
Bluesky’s Decentralized Network Faces Major Outage Caused by Centralized Servers
The Internet Review asks:
Where Does Bluesky Go from Here? What is the Bluesky of 2036?
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
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Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse
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