In North Korea, your phone secretly takes screenshots every 5 minutes for government surveillance
Smartphone looks modern, but its software reveals a dystopian reality
Censorship articles
Reversing blurred pixels to reveal censored content in videos is easier than you think
GIMP, ffmpeg, and other tools can be used to reveal information behind moving pixelated images
Whistleblower tells Congress Facebook worked with China on censorship and data access
"It's been happening for years, covered up by lies, and continues to this day"
Whistleblower reveals Facebook censorship system created to enter China
Zuckerberg champions free speech - except when there's a market opportunity
NordVPN debuts new protocol that could make VPN connections undetectable
Reliability of connection tunneling should improve, performance not so much
Zuckerberg's free speech push for Facebook and Instagram replaces fact checkers with community notes
You'll be able to say pretty much whatever you want on Meta's platforms
A hot potato: It seems that Meta is going to become a lot more like X, at least when it comes to what you can say on the company's platforms. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced the suspension of the fact-checking program, a reduction in the amount of censorship, and the recommendation of more political content across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
Biden Administration to support the UN convention against cybercrime sponsored by autocratic nations
A hot potato: A controversial proposal to strengthen international cooperation against cybercrime has gained US support. The Biden Administration is interested in signing the treaty, while politicians are still warning about its potential for misuse and human rights abuse.
Russia is willing to spend some $660 million to bolster internet censorship
The system mainly targets VPN services that Russians use to access the internet
Mark Zuckerberg says Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor Covid-19 content
The platform also demoted a story about the Hunter Biden laptop controversy
Pakistani government brought local internet down with its new censorship firewall
Trade organization P@SHA is warning authorities over a strangled IT industry
X shuts down Brazil operations amid censorship dispute with top judge
Brazilians can still access X though
Proton now offers a free VPN extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and other browsers
The VPN service has a goal of "defeating censorship"
Apple removes WhatsApp and Threads from the App Store in China following government order
Telegram and Signal have also been removed due to national security concerns
Pornhub no longer accessible in Texas due to age verification laws
YouPorn and Brazzers are also blocked in the state
Counter-Strike: Go is being used to inform Russians about the war in Ukraine
A novel way of evading Russian media censorship
In brief: Trying to report on the war in Ukraine to Russians in their home country is a challenging feat, given the media restrictions Putin has put in place. But Finland's biggest newspaper has found a creative method of delivering information: a Counter-Strike map.
Elon Musk says free speech-hating Apple has stopped advertising on Twitter, threatened to remove app from its store
The world's richest person versus the world's most valuable company
Kanye West to buy "free-speech" platform Parler
West recently had his Instagram and Twitter accounts restricted over antisemitic posts
Google Translate has been shuttered in China over alleged low usage
Are 53.5 million visits per month low?
Indonesian law MR5 bans access to many online services, including Steam, Epic Games, and PayPal
The EFF calls the legislation "draconian" and "invasive"
China develops porn-detection helmet that reads brain waves for censorship purposes
Pornography has been illegal in China for over 70 years
Report says Microsoft is censoring politically sensitive Chinese names in the US, Canada
It blames "human error," again
China grants its first video game license since July
The longest approval freeze in its history
Planned Amazon internal chat app reportedly banned words such as "restrooms," "vaccine," and "slave labor"
Union-related terms were also on the blacklist
China set to hammer its $30 billion livestreaming industry with new restrictions
Content creators could see their incomes drastically reduced