If you want a system to be censorship resistant, it means that it needs to be able to route around attempts to silence you.
How can open social protocols fail us in 2025 | shazow.net
Let’s compare the possible failure modes of various open social protocols: ActivityPub/Mastodon ATProto/Bluesky Farcaster/Warpcast Some scenarios I’d like to …
How federated systems dissapear
Long-tail effects mean things become invisible, and it is hard to argue for that which does not seem to exist.
The State Department’s X Directive and the End of Platform Independence
A cable endorsing a social media platform by name as a tool of U.S. diplomacy and military psychological operations would have been unthinkable—until recently.
Opinion | An Online Loophole That Promotes Violence
Section 230 shouldn’t preclude liability for algorithms that push harmful content.
Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech
What is clear is that there is no simple solution to these challenges, and most of the ones that are normally presented tend not to deal with the reality of the problems or to understand the technical and societal challenges that likely make them impossible.
New Paradigms in Trust and Safety: Navigating Defederation on Decentralized Social Media Platforms
Defederation on decentralized social media offers new possibilities for online governance. Experts consider how it can be used responsibly, in a way that balances speech and safety.
An Attack on Tech Freedom, an Assault on Dissent
We live in a world of surveillance states, militarized police, and crackdowns on dissent. Meanwhile, corporate behemoths will often ally with the state to shut down dissident speech or aid and abet surveillance. In this context, it’s important for independent groups to develop and maintain encrypted communications platforms and independent web hosting. But the Trump...
'Composable Moderation' May Protect Bluesky from Political Pressure | TechPolicy.Press
Shifting enforcement away from a single platform and into a distributed ecosystem should blunt interference by authoritarians, writes Audrey Hingle.
Data Feminism for AI
Attacks on women and trans people are not happening in a vacuum. Communications scholars W. Lance Bennett and Marianne Kneuer recently argued that we are witnessing the intensification of "illiberal public spheres" around the world (Bennett and Kneuer, 2023). These are characterized by a set of anti-democratic communications tactics that include the denigration and exclusion of minoritized people, targeted attacks on the press and political institutions, and transgression of norms of civil discourse. Such tactics are enabled and amplified by the social media platforms owned by Big Tech, whose business model elevates attention above all other metrics, such that they profit richly off extremism, threats, spectacle, and lies. The success of this corporate partnership with right-wing extremism is evident in the proliferation of book bans (Magnusson, 2024), the demonization of DEI and critical race theory (Crenshaw, 2022), and mob tactics to doxx, intimidate, misrepresent, and otherwise silence people that study misinformation, speak out against racial and gender violence, or rule against insurrectionists (Edmonds, 2024). At the same time, we have seen the continued work of feminists, including Latin American, Indigenous, and abolitionist feminists in the US and globally, doing the work of imagining alternate worlds (Cullors, 2021; Davis, 2022; Ricaurte, 2019; Simpson, 2017). This paper represents our own first attempt to imagine a more equitable, sustainable, feminist world for AI research.
Auto Moderation in Discord
Automated moderation can play a large role in rule enforcement and keeping your community safe even when there aren’t always eyes to do it for you.
Start your own Internet Resiliency Club – Bow Shock Systems Consulting
Thanks to war, geopolitics, and climate change, Europe will have more frequent and more severe internet disruptions in the very near future. Governments and businesses need to prepare for catastrophic loss of communications. Unfortunately, the necessary changes are risky and expensive, which means they won’t do it until a crisis is already here. However, small groups of volunteers with a little bit of time and money can provide crucial initial leadership to bootstrap recovery.
The Tor Project | Privacy & Freedom Online
Defend yourself against tracking and surveillance. Circumvent censorship.
Protest Against the U.S. Government’s Crackdown on Autistici/Inventati
On Wednesday, August 26, the U.S. government (Department of the Treasury, Department of State) imposed sanctions on “Autistici/Inventati” (hereinafter abbreviated as A/I), a small Internet service provider for a volunteer-run movement in Italy, on suspicion of providing services to terrorist organizations. According to the State Department, it is “an Italy-based extremist group that builds and operates the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and other far-left militants across the world.” The sanctions include the freezing of the organization’s assets under U.S. jurisdiction; prohibiting all U.S. citizens from engaging in transactions with the organization; prohibiting financial institutions and others from conducting transactions with the organization; and prohibiting donations, as well as the provision of funds, goods, or services to the organization.
An internet of many autonomous communities
What if communities were built into the protocol? Delegated moderation, verification badges, and reciprocity systems for autonomous online communities.
