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.
The Programmer’s Fulcrum is the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy, Developing the OMN.
You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post along with their featured articles. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing.
Featured Item
Dave Rupert writes and asks:
I think my answer to “Why would anybody start a website (in 2025)?” is the same answer for the content creator in the age of AI problem: I don’t know, but you gotta want to.
Money sweetens the deal when making content or websites, but we’ve shaken the money tree pretty hard over the last couple decades and it’s looking bare.
Increasingly, you’ve got to find other sources of inspiration to make a website – which by the way are still the coolest fucking things ever.
Why would anybody start a website?
To join the Open Media Network for one.
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery
Speaking of websites, the Columbia Journalism Review has:
Tom Ley Thinks More People Should Experience Worker-Owned Journalism
The Next Web reports:
Reclaiming the stack: Europe’s bid for digital sovereignty
The Register reports:
Big clouds scramble as EU Data Act brings new data transfer rules
Heisse reports:
400 scientists speak out against chat control
Europe is better than anywhere else, but it isn’t perfect.
The Guardian reports:
‘It is a war of drones now’: the ever-evolving tech dominating the frontline in Ukraine
Lawmaker calls for French criminal investigation into TikTok
EU fines Google nearly €3bn for ‘abusing’ dominant position in ad tech
Speaking of, Tech Policy reports:
Empowered Workers Are a Bulwark Against Illegal Monopoly
Ars Technica reports:
Judge: Anthropic’s $1.5B settlement is being shoved “down the throat of authors”
Pay-per-output? AI firms blindsided by beefed up robots.txt instructions.
Ben Werdmuller examines:
This is the type of content we will feature in The Programmer’s Fulcrum in 2026.
Make Use of shares:
I stopped using Gmail for this built-in client and now Gmail feels stuck
Here is a TAM lite tool for you.
Mojeek announces:
Mojeek is Not an Answer Engine
Tuta shares:
Chat Control is back & we’ve got one month to stop the EU CSAM scanning plans.
The Counterforce has a guide:
Signal For Punks (it has Stories now!)
I describe myself as 25% intellectual, 25% bohemian, 25% hillbilly, and 25% punk so this appeals to me. 😉
Neutral
The Observer reports:
Nick Clegg and Tim Berners-Lee: the battle for the soul of the internet
Tech Policy reports:
Washington and Brussels Vie for Control Over Big Tech
The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back
404 Media reports:
ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers
The Kyiv Independent reports:
US steps back from joint efforts to combat misinformation, FT reports
TechDirt reports:
UK Age Verification Data Confirms What Critics Always Predicted: Mass Migration To Sketchier Sites
The Register reports:
Senator demands to know status of ‘duplicate’ Social Security database ‘immediately’
Nextcloud reports:
The proposed EU Chat Control law is a threat to our democracy. What can you do to prevent it?
EuroNews reports:
Pro-Kremlin operation weaponises investigative media to claim Ukraine uses orphans to clear mines
Pariah States
BleepingComputer reports:
Czech cyber agency warns against Chinese tech in critical infrastructure
The Christian Science Monitor reports:
Why some Israeli journalists only now are turning a lens on Gaza devastation
Krebs on Security reports:
Bulletproof Host Stark Industries Evades EU Sanctions
The Register reports:
Beijing went to ‘EggStreme’ lengths to attack Philippines military, researchers say
DarkReading reports:
Chinese Hackers Allegedly Pose as US Lawmaker
Big Media
The Guardian reports:
‘Existential crisis’: how Google’s shift to AI has upended the online news model
TechDirt reports:
Big Tech
Tech Policy reports:
How Big Tech’s ‘Invisible Hand’ Reaches Latin American Regulators
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
Age Verification Is A Windfall for Big Tech—And A Death Sentence For Smaller Platforms
Anil Dash opines:
How Tim Cook sold out Steve Jobs
The Register reports:
EU regulators let Microsoft off the hook after Teams unbundling pledge
Again, big tech can’t be reformed. It has to be destroyed.
It’s AI all the way down as Google’s AI cites web pages written by AI
The Markup reports:
Google wasn’t against this privacy bill, officially. Behind the scenes, it orchestrated opposition
The Guardian reports:
How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart
Impact of chatbots on mental health is warning over future of AI, expert says
Meta hid harms to children from VR products, whistleblowers allege
Reuters reports:
Meta put virtual-reality profit over kids’ safety, whistleblowers tell US Congress
The BBC reports:
Meta to stop its AI chatbots from talking to teens about suicide
404 Media reports:
Instagram Account Promotes Holocaust Denial T-Shirts to 400,000 Followers
Ars Technica has:
Former WhatsApp security boss in lawsuit likens Meta’s culture to a “cult”
EchoStar to sell spectrum to SpaceX after FCC threatened to revoke licenses
AI vs. MAGA: Populists alarmed by Trump’s embrace of AI, Big Tech
Even blind fascist squirrels find a nut sometimes.
SAN reports:
Not so secret: X’s new encrypted chat feature puts users at risk, experts say
Cybersecurity/Privacy
Signal announces:
Introducing Signal Secure Backups
La Quadrature reports:
In France, the eternal return of facial recognition
The Register reports:
Drift massive attack traced back to loose Salesloft GitHub account
In crypto bro FAFO news, BleepingComputer reports:
Hackers hijack npm packages with 2 billion weekly downloads in supply chain attack
DDoS defender targeted in 1.5 Bpps denial-of-service attack
DarkReading reports:
Without Federal Help, Cyber Defense Is Up to the Rest of Us
Fediverse
Connected Places has:
Fedihost looks at:
PeerTube announces:
The Nexus of Privacy shares:
This is what solidarity looks like
Mastodon has updates:
NodeBB shares a:
Progress update for Conversational Contexts
A New Social announces:
Launch: Notifications from Unbridged Users
RSS
Buttondown remembers:
The story of how RSS beat Microsoft
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
Connected Spaces opines:
On discourse and decentralisation
Personally I view Bluesky as only slightly better than Shitter (drastically fewer c^nts) with a 97.4% chance of becoming enshittified. However, Blacksky has given me a little hope for ATProto at least.
I would also like to point out 96.525% of people on the Fediverse don’t give a fuck about Bluesky and 99.912% of people on Bluesky don’t give a fuck about the Fediverse.
TechCrunch reports:
Bluesky adds private bookmarks
Bluesky will comply with age-verification laws in South Dakota and Wyoming after exiting Mississippi
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. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a headstart.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse
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