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Archive | April, 2017

EU censorship of social media launched

By on April 6, 2017 in Censorship, Democracy, EU, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Rule of law, social media

A database set up jointly by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube aims to identify “terrorist and radicalising” content automatically and to remove it from these platforms. (…)

It appears that no research whatsoever has been done on the likely impact of this initiative, including no review mechanisms on its impact and no way of establishing whether the initiative has counter-productive effects. (…)

The role of judicial and law enforcement authorities in this process has, unsurprisingly, not been mentioned.

EDRi: Social media companies launch upload filter to combat “terrorism and extremism” »

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»Liking« on Facebook ends up in court

By on April 4, 2017 in Facebook, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, social media

In Switzerland, the first trial based on likes on Facebook is currently underway. According to The Local, a 45-year-old from Zurich has been charged with defamation for liking Facebook posts that accused the plaintiff of being anti-Semitic. So basically, a man is being prosecuted for liking something somebody else posted.

The absurdity.

The Next Web: Swiss man sued for ‘liking’ Facebook posts that called a convicted racist a racist »

The Local.ch: Man faces court for ‘liking’ Facebook posts »

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Tim Berners-Lee on the future of the web

By on April 4, 2017 in Data Protection, decentralization, Free Information, Internet, WWW

On the better web Berners-Lee envisions, users control where their data is stored and how it’s accessed. For example, social networks would still run in the cloud. But you could store your data locally. Alternately, you could choose a different cloud server run by a company or community you trust. You might have different servers for different types of information—for health and fitness data, says—that is completely separate from the one you use for financial records.

Wired: Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the Web, Plots a Radical Overhaul of His Creation »

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Online porn and your privacy

By on April 3, 2017 in Big Data, Cryptography, Data Protection, Privacy

The Pornhub announcement comes at an auspicious time. Congress this week affirmed the power of cable providers to sell user data, while as of a few weeks ago more than half the web had officially embraced HTTPS. Encryption doesn’t solve your ISP woes altogether—they’ll still know that you were on Pornhub—but it does make it much harder to know what exactly you’re looking at while you’re there.

Wired: The World’s Biggest Porn Site Goes All-In on Encryption »

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