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Get the LineageOS post here. | HE KNOWS THERE WOULD BE BACKLASH |  | Following the stalling of the vaccine program, President Joe Biden supported incentives such as million-dollar lotteries. However, according to the Associated Press, due to the surge in cases the president is exploring stricter vaccine passport approaches, but cautiously to avoid backlash.
In the past two weeks, millions of federal workers have been forced to prove their vaccination status. Those who cannot attest to their vaccination status will face potential restrictions, and are required to maintain social distance, and submit weekly tests.
Healthcare workers at the Departments of Health and Human Sciences and Veteran Affairs will soon be required to be vaccinated. Additionally, the Pentagon announced that it will mandate vaccination for the military in the next one month.
Related: How vaccine passports are crushing freedom, privacy, and civil liberties
However, according to AP, even as Biden implements tougher measures, he has resisted the use of all his self-believed powers to force Americans to get inoculated. For instance, he has not proposed vaccine passports for interstate and domestic air travel.
Biden refraining from using all his self-believed powers to make life uncomfortable for the unvaccinated is most probably an effort to avoid provoking backlash in an already highly polarized nation.
The relatively tougher measures have been carefully drafted in an effort to encourage state governments and businesses to follow suit. As reported by AP, White House officials have met with trade groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce, before most of the announcements on vaccine measures are announced.
The administration has been encouraging businesses to implement their own vaccine mandates and giving them tips on how to protect their employees.
"Through vaccination requirements, employers have the power to help end the pandemic," White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Thursday. Zients proceeded to name the local governments, universities, and businesses that have implemented vaccine mandates.
Zients noted that the White House still had no plans for developing the framework for vaccine passports. Some companies have criticized the government for the move, noting they are left with no clear way to enforce vaccination mandates. | LITTLE PUSHBACK IN CANADA |  | Canada's Minister for Transport Omar Alghabra announced the introduction of vaccine passports for transport across provincial borders via plane, trains, and large water vessels.
The move underscores the growing adaptation of digital vaccine passports across the globe, particularly in developed countries.
Related: How vaccine passports are crushing freedom, privacy, and civil liberties
"Vaccine requirements in the transportation sector will help protect the safety of employees, their families, passengers, their communities and all Canadians. And more broadly, it will hasten Canada's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic," Alghabra said during a press conference on Thursday.For those who cannot get the jabs, the minister said they will still be able to travel by showing proof of recent negative tests.Alghabra said that the government was looking into practical ways to implement the vaccine passes "as quickly as possible."
Alghabra's announcement coincided with an announcement from the Privy Council that the government would be mandating vaccination for federal employees. The employees will be required to show proof of having received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccines. | NEVER LETTING A GOOD CRISIS GO TO WASTE |  | UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has revealed that the UK government is working on online "incitement and extremism" legislation that will be coming this fall.
Patel made the announcement after a Sky News journalist pressed her on the mass shooting in Plymouth where a gunman, who was identified by police as 22-year old Jake Davison, killed five people, including a child, before turning the gun on himself.
The reporter claimed that "it seems to be clear that this man had links to the online subculture 'incel' [involuntary celibates]" and questioned whether Patel and the police forces she is in charge of are "doing enough to combat online extremism."
"The whole issue of online activity and incitement and extremism is an enormous issue and it's actually something that the government is working on already through legislation that is forthcoming this autumn," Patel said in response.
She added that the government needs to "find out the facts" and will "make sure that if there are issues in the online space post this incident, that we will look to follow that up."The pending legislation follows the media heavily focusing on the narrative that the Plymouth shooter is affiliated with incels, rather than focusing on the actions of the police after Davison's family and neighbors reported him multiple times.
Davison's mother, who was one of the victims of the shooting, reportedly flagged his mental health issues to the National Health Service (NHS) and the police and begged them for help but failed to get the help she requested. Davison's father had also reportedly told the police that his son's guns should be taken away. A friend of the family added that the family had requested the police come and conduct a welfare check on Davison but they didn't do it.
Not only did the family flag Davison to the police multiple times but he is also said to have been reported to the police after having an altercation with two youths. A family friend added that Davison had also previously assaulted his father.
And police had already confiscated Davison's gun last December after an accusation of assault but then returned it to him in July after he attended an anger management course and police classed him as being fit again to possess the gun.
Instead of focusing on these aspects of the story and scrutinizing how the police acted after receiving multiple reports about Davison, the Sky News journalist who was interviewing Patel raised the topic of incels to question whether the UK government is "doing enough to combat online extremism," at a time when the UK is already pursuing some of the harshest censorship laws in the Western world with it's "Online Safety Bill."
Journalists from other major media outlets in the UK have also placed little scrutiny on the police and instead focused on the role of the internet.
"In an agitated YouTube video posted 2 weeks ago the Plymouth gunman, named locally as Jake Davison, refers to himself as "the terminator," Paul Brand, the UK editor of ITV tweeted. "He appears to affiliate with Incel (involuntary celibate) - a misogynistic group - expressing sympathy for "Incel virgins."
BBC reporter Marianna Spring tweeted: "On his YouTube account, Davison launched into tirades using terms coined by "Incels." This internet sub-culture encourages men to blame dissatisfaction with their looks and romantic relationships on women, and men who succeed in having relationships with them."
And the Daily Mail has branded the incident "Britain's first 'incel' mass shooting."
Another BBC journalist, Drew Miller Hyndman, even linked the shooting to Gamergate - a 2014 movement where gamers called out corruption in the video games industry and that has since been cited by journalists as the supposed cause of a wide range of events that have nothing to do with video games or the original Gamergate movement. |  | | Hyndman also used the fact that the shooter had a YouTube channel to take aim at the platform as a whole and brand it "a breeding ground for this kind of ideology." The shooter had fewer than 100 subscribers at the time of the murders.
|  | And after Hyndman made the Gamergate connection, The Mirror posted an article comparing the Plymouth shooting to a "horrifying video game."
While Patel did insist that the UK government will "find out the facts" as it works on this new legislation, Jonathan Hall QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, said the government is likely to consider treating incels as terrorists if there are more attacks.
This push to blame incels and the internet for the Plymouth mass shooting and potentially legislate based on this narrative is reflective of a larger recent push from groups who are using the "domestic terrorism" narrative to implement stricter controls on the internet, either through new laws or increased surveillance powers.
Last month, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), a big tech censorship alliance, revealed that it would be expanding the scope of its database to target the "far-right." And in May, the United States (US) Department of Homeland Security (DOH) announced that it would start scanning social media posts to find "domestic terrorists." | | When Salman Rushdie had a "fatwa," a type of religious death sentence, issued against him decades ago because the Iranian regime didn't like one of his books, one thing he didn't do was - rewrite it.
It's not far-fetched to say he probably never even considered such a possibility, because the idea of authors going back and rewriting their works of art under political, ideological or religious pressure was not really an option.
But times have changed and now reports say that Kate Clanchy, who in 2019 penned her Orwell-prize winning memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, will now need to "do better" by "remembering better."
|  | Clanchy this week confirmed that she would be rewriting parts of her book, which recently became the target of outrage mobs on Twitter and on Goodreads for the way she addressed race and "ableism."
On Monday, Clanchy took to Twitter to offer her apologies for initially trying to defend herself and her work in comments she posted in response to angry reviews on Goodreads. But getting canceled is no joke and the author eventually announced that she was indeed going to rewrite parts of the book that deals with her experience teaching in British state schools.Clanchy also asserted that she was welcoming "the chance to write better, more lovingly."
The criticism of her book is said to have to do with "the tone" in which she described facial features and skin color, while the "ableist" accusations is about her describing a pair of children suffering from autism as "unselfconsciously odd" and "jarring company."
"I am not a good person. I do try to say that in my book. Not a pure person, not a patient person, no one's savior. You are right to blame me, and I blame myself," she wrote on Twitter.
Clanchy had this change of heart after some of her colleagues, like Philip Pullman appearing to stand up for her, tweeting that those who criticize books without reading them first would be at home "in ISIS" or among the Taliban. He later apologized for this, claiming he was responding to the wrong tweet.
Clanchy's publisher Picador also apologized "for the emotional anguish" the book has allegedly caused - but some critics think publishers should be protecting free speech rather than joining in the efforts to censoring it. |  |  | YouTube competitor Rumble has announced that a new group of prominent figures from across the US political spectrum is joining the platform.
In a blog post, Rumble, that has been popular with users whose speech is being curtailed on Big Tech platforms, said that the latest additions represent nationally recognized thought leaders.
Among the new group of eight high profile voices are former Democrat congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Snowden revelations story.
Others include podcasters, authors, reporters and creators: Bridget Phetasy, Matt Orfalea, Siraj Hashmi, Mujahed Kobbe, Shant Mesrobian and Zaid Jilani, the video sharing platform said, noting that their presence will add to the quality and diversity of content.
Other than Gabbard and Greenwald, who are thought of as left-leaning, writers Mesrobian and Jilani are also described in reports as having in the past worked for progressive media, underlining that this means Rumble, which is already popular with conservatives concerned about their free speech rights online, is attracting others as well.
And that is not merely on the talent side of things, since Canada-based Rumble says its burgeoning platform has seen a 25-fold increase in viewership over the past year, and that this trend of accelerated growth continues.
Regardless of political and ideological affiliation, however, what many Rumble creators have in common is either directly experiencing or standing up to censorship imposed on users and creators by Big Tech. Rumble said that despite their diverse backgrounds, the group of creators that has just been welcomed on the platform shares a "commitment to challenge the status quo, seek the truth, and share it."
Commenting on his decision to join Rumble, Greenwald said that it provides a place where creators don't have to worry about what he described as baseless attacks "by the government or other self-appointed gatekeepers."
And considering the current near monopolistic hold that Big Tech-run networks have over the web, strong and viable alternatives and competitors are seen by many as the only way forward in ensuring that people have a voice online, regardless of whether or not their opinions align with Big Tech politics.
In the words of Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski, the video site is "in a battle against trillion-dollar monopolies that use advanced algorithms and AI to amplify content and drive profits." He also promised Rumble would "never censor civil discourse, opinion, or act like the arbiters of truth." |  | Ever since the scope and scale of invasive and widespread user-privacy endangering business models practiced by Big Tech started to become public knowledge, one of Big Tech's biggest members, Apple, started to aggressively promote itself as a privacy-friendly alternative to products and services offered by Google and others.
But this carefully forged image was dealt a major blow recently when the giant announced it would start scanning iPhone devices of US users in search of images of child abuse. But it appears that not only Apple customers but also many of its employees had bought into the privacy shtick, and may now be experiencing something of a cognitive dissonance.
That could explain reports that are now saying there has been something of an "uprising" on Apple's internal communication channels. For several days now, Reuters writes citing anonymous sources, Apple's Slack channel has been getting inundated with messages - over 800 at the time - expressing one or another form of concern over the new feature.
That the news even made it out of the company is considered remarkable, given how closely, and until now successfully, Apple likes to control its employees and internal goings-on, suggesting that the debate that has been unfolding for days might be a notable event - although the report says those directly working on the feature didn't appear to be taking part and voicing their opinion one way or the other.
According to the unnamed sources who spoke for Reuters, employee concerns range from worrying that the said privacy-protecting image will be undermined, to the photo scanning getting abused by other actors for purposes different than stopping dissemination of content depicting child abuse.
But there are also those who are defending the feature and the company's decision to implement it.
Meanwhile, privacy rights groups like the EFF and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) are continuing to criticize Apple's move, as a broad group of like-minded organizations is said to be preparing a protest letter that will ask the giant to give up on the idea.
According to the CDT, Apple has admitted that there are "technical weaknesses that they are willing to build in."
"It seems so out of step from everything that they had previously been saying and doing," said CDT project director Emma Llanso. | | Politicians often argue that social media isn't the public square when it comes to defending censorship online. Yet, they often use it as one.
Australia's New South Wales' leadership is facing backlash for announcing a statewide lockdown via Twitter. Critics of the move note that news of such impact deserved mentioning in a press conference as some people do not use social media (or are actually banned from social media for criticizing the very proposals the government are introducing) and might not get the news in time.
The first official announcement was made through Deputy Premier John Barilaro's Twitter account, though several Nationals MPs had already shared the news through Facebook.
|  | Side note: John Barilaro is currently suing Google.
The decision to make the announcement via social media caused outrage, critics noting that the lack of a press conference was "insulting" and "disgusting."
"As someone with many family members in regional NSW, I find it appalling a statewide lockdown is announced on Twitter. Yes, let's protect them but also show some respect - I'm sure there was time in today's 45 min presser for a mention!" Sarah Stewart, a journalist, wrote on Twitter. | | Another journalist, Antoinette Lattouf wrote: "Interesting use of Twitter for this announcement. Regional Aussies are on average a lot older than Sydney folks. And we all know 60s+ year olds are [not] getting their news via social media."
|  | | Some blasted Premier Gladys Berejiklian for her silence as the news began circulating. The premier made her first tweet about the news at 3.45pm.
"NSW is in absolute chaos, not sure if Gladys is still in charge, national MPs announcing lockdown on Facebook and twitter before any official announcement," noted one Twitter user.
In a press conference earlier in the day, at 11am, the premier said that the state was struggling to contain the Delta variant. She warned that lockdown could be extended to some other areas in the state.
When she finally tweeted about the lockdown, she said that she received the health advice after the press conference.
"Following the press conference today, I received health advice concerning multiple regional NSW areas," she wrote. "As such, from 5pm tonight, all of regional NSW will go into a seven-day lockdown. This means the whole state is in strict lockdown."
Aside from announcing the lockdown via social media, NSW leadership gave residents only two hours notice before it began. The lockdown started at 5pm local time and will last until August 22.
|  | Following legal threats from Facebook, German-based AlgorithmWatch was forced to abandon its research project that was monitoring Instagram's algorithm. This was not the first time the social media company has shut down similar projects.
AlgorithmWatch was launched in March 2020. The research project was done through a browser extension that users could install and collect data from their Instagram feeds. The data collected by the plugin allowed the researchers to see how Instagram prioritizes content and better learn what's going on with the algorithm.
AlgorithmWatch publishes its findings regularly. The researcher had found out that Instagram ranked photos with faces higher than text screenshots and that the platform promoted content revealing bare skin more highly.
Although Facebook disputed the project's methodology, it allowed the project to run for more than a year.
In a post published this week, the researchers said that Facebook requested a meeting with the leaders of the project in May. In the meeting, Facebook accused the researchers of violating Instagram's terms of service. The company also claimed that the project violated GDPR because it collected users' data without their consent.
"We only collected data related to content that Facebook displayed to the volunteers who installed the add-on," the researchers argued. "In other words, users of the plug-in were only accessing their own feed, and sharing it with us for research purposes."
Fearing legal action from the tech giant, the researchers chose to shut down the project.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the meeting but refused the claim that they threatened legal action.
The spokesperson said the company was ready to find ways for the research to continue without compromising users' privacy.
Facebook has a troubling pattern of shutting down research into its algorithms. In their post, AlgorithmWatch researchers cited the NYU Ad Observatory, which was tracking political advertising on the platform before it was banned a few weeks ago.
"There are probably more cases of bullying that we do not know about," the post reads. "We hope that by coming forward, more organizations will speak up about their experiences."
Facebook does provide ways for researchers to collect data, like the Social Science One partnerships and the Ad Library. But, considering its pattern of shutting down independent research, AlgorithmWatch argues Facebook's data cannot be trusted.
"Researchers cannot rely on data provided by Facebook because the company cannot be trusted," the researchers said. "There is no reason to believe that Facebook would provide usable data, were researchers to replace their independently collected data with the company's." |  | Jordan Shanks, the owner and host of comedy YouTube channel friendlyjordies, has been denied his attempt to run a truth defense and have part of a defamation case brought by New South Wales (NSW) Deputy Premier John Barilaro struck out after the judge found that the truth defense cannot be relied on because it would breach parliamentary privilege - a privilege that prevents legal action being taken against anyone involved in the proceedings of parliament.
Shanks, who regularly criticizes the Australian government through his friendlyjordies YouTube channel, was sued by Barilaro for defamation earlier this year. Barilaro alleged that two friendlyjordies videos, one titled "bruz" and the other titled "Secret Dictatorship," are defamatory because they incorrectly portray him as a "corrupt conman" who "committed perjury nine times" and "should be jailed."
Shanks' lawyers had attempted to mount a truth defense and had requested that parliamentary privilege be waived so that they could use some of Barilaro's comments in parliament as part of their defense. They also argued that it was an abuse of process for Barilaro to bring the "perjury" part of the case because Shanks would not be able to mount a defense without breaking parliamentary privilege and sought to have this part of the case struck out or stayed (suspended).
But today, justice Steven Rares refused to stay the case, denied the truth defense, and gave Shanks 14 days to file a new defense that does not infringe parliamentary privilege.
Justice Rares said the law has developed processes that ensure people outside of parliament can criticize statements that are made under parliamentary privilege without being liable for defamation "if they act without malice or are not unreasonable in publishing."
However, justice Rares noted that Shanks "chose the way in which he published the bruz video," pointed to the video being scripted rather than spontaneous, and said "Shanks was not responding to an attack made by Mr. Barilaro on him under parliamentary privilege."
Justice Rares also argued that the situation had arisen because of the way Shanks chose to publish the bruz video and added: "In my opinion, it is difficult to see how it is unfair that parliamentary privilege will prevent Mr. Shanks from relying on those defenses. Instead, I have found that it would be unfair to deprive Mr. Barilaro of the right to vindicate his reputation that Mr. Shanks attacked."
Justice Rares added that it would be "an affront to justice if a publisher could choose to question or impeach proceedings in parliament and, by doing so, create for themselves an effective immunity from suit by the member or person attacked" and argued:
"Such a result would convert parliamentary privilege into an instrument of oppression. It would allow the publisher to be free to defame the member or other person with impunity on the basis that any defense of the publisher's attack would infringe in parliamentary privilege."
"Quite strange," Shanks tweeted in response to the denial of his truth defense. "It appears if you criticiZe what a politician says in parliament they can sue you for defamation and you will be denied a chance to defend it as defending it would breach parliamentary privilege. This could make politicians a lot of money."
Justin Field, a member of the NSW Legislative Council, added: "We have a problem if a member of the public calls out a mistruth by an MP in Parliament and they can be sued for defamation by that MP but can't use what that MP said in Parliament as part of their defenSe." | We appreciate your support. | | Thanks for reading,
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