In the US, the Democrats continue with their sustained efforts to pressure major social media platforms, now about a month ahead of the presidential election.
The Twitter Files give some idea about what may be happening behind closed doors (if previous campaigns/elections are any indication), but this is about public pressure. This time, Congressman Adam Schiff's turn is to "demand action" from companies behind social media.
Meta (Instagram separately), X, Google (and YouTube separately), TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and Microsoft are the recipients of a letter Schiff signed along with seven fellow members of the House of Representatives (four of them, like Schiff, California Democrats). |  | We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
The demand is this: disclose what plans these companies with the most influence and reach in the online space have to counter what the congressman and his colleagues consider to be the spread of mis- and dis- information - but also, "potential incitement of violence on their platforms in the lead-up to the 2024 elections."
Schiff's letter doesn't clarify if (repeated) attempts to assassinate a candidate count as "incitement of violence," or really, what kind of violence he has in mind - but he does mention "attacks on our democracy."
Yet, the companies are supposed to let him know what they are doing to stop it. Along the way, the assertion is made that they have all "rolled back" their previous election policies.
"This almost universal reversion on the issue of combating election mis- and disinformation is incredibly troubling," the letter reads.
Meta, Google, X, etc. are also asked, among other things, "Will your company commit to sharing data and metrics on the effectiveness of your enforcement systems in relation to US elections and political speech?"
On the other side of this political maelstrom, Republicans - notably the House Judiciary Committee - continue trying to shed light on how the White House and government agencies pressured and then colluded with major social platforms during previous campaigns and elections, all in the name of supposedly combating "misinformation."
This has produced some visible, public results - like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg writing to the committee to apologize for succumbing to that pressure on issues like Covid and the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression.
The revelations that the government and Big Tech colluded to usher in unprecedented levels of censorship in the past continues to be tested in the courts as well. |
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|  | New legislative proposals in Australia, that those behind them say are aimed at curbing "disinformation," are rejected by opponents as the biggest yet assault on free opinion and speech in the country.
The biggest such attack, at least "in peacetime" - this is how Institute of Public Affairs Director of Law and Policy John Storey qualified what he sees in this unprecedented effort - but the Australian authorities have been engaged in their "war on disinformation" for a while now.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
The bill containing the new laws was introduced in parliament earlier in September by Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, who continued to brand what the government decided to consider as misinformation and disinformation "a serious threat" that affects Australia's safety and well-being.
Peacetime? Judging by this rhetoric, it doesn't sound like the country's ruling class is living in any kind of political peacetime. In order to establish their version of the ideal, threat-free society, the laws would fine companies deemed to be enabling disinformation, etc., on their platforms by taking up to five percent of their global revenue.
In order to prevent the proliferation of "disinformation," companies are expected to introduce (yet more) rules ("codes of contact") that deal with it via "an approved regulator." More transparency and accountability is how Rowland chose to interpret the situation, should the proposals become law (the goal is to get this done by the end of 2024).
The opposition is warning that several other provisions (up to seven years of prison time in cases of doxxing, and giving parents the right to sue, if they feel their children are subjected to "serious privacy invasions") - will in reality produce a chilling effect on political speech as well.
The reason for this angle in criticizing the proposals championed by Rowland is the (usual for this type of effort) wide-ranging nature of the draft legislation. Wide enough, in fact, to apply to election candidates and referendum proposals, a spokesman for the Australian opposition Coalition was warned.
Hand in hand with the hunger for sweeping powers, with disinformation scaremongering at the center, come vague definitions. The spokesman, David Coleman, says that the legal proposal seeks to treat something as misinformation if it can be "reasonably verifiable" (by whom, based on what exact criteria?) as false, misleading, or deceptive information - but also "reasonably likely " to cause serious harm or contribute to it.
Applied to the election process, this means whatever's decided to be misinformation about candidates and referendum proposals.
"By stating in black and white that 'information about electoral candidates or referendum proposals' can be captured as misinformation, the government is making clear that this legislation will go to the core of our democracy," Coleman commented.
The spokesman also noted that the bill wants to put tech companies in a position where they decide - while facing massive monetary fines or even prison - what kind of information relating to elections and referendums should be available to Australians.
Of interest, as an insight into the way the Australian government thinks about and treats these issues, is that the current proposal it seeks to fast-track in parliament is actually the "second draft" to change the existing anti-disinformation laws.
The government had to abandon the first over much the same type of criticism. X owner Elon Musk decided to rattle yet another government's cage for its anti-free speech policies - and pressure put on social platforms - referring to those behind Australia's proposals as "fascists."
This hasn't failed to elicit a response, where Labor Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones dismissed Musk's opinion as "crackpot" and decided to play the sovereignty card.
It's up to the Australian government what it does to Australians, is the gist of the "argument." And Jones added combating scammers and criminals to Rowland's list of "serious threats to safety and well-being."
Institute of Public Affairs' John Storey, however, sees this dramatic talk about big problems and consequences to be allegedly solved by the bill as "disingenuous."
The real goal, according to him - (and no doubt bearing in mind the broadness and vagueness of it all, from the scope to the "definitions") - is no more than an attempt to let government bureaucrats position themselves as arbiters of "official" truth.
Political censorship will be the result, Storey believes, and the government is pushing the bill while (ab)using legitimate worries about Australia's societal issues, as well as those parents have about their children's safety on the internet. |  | In a development that may concern Firefox users, the developer behind uBlock Origin Lite, Raymond Hill, has decided to withdraw the ad-blocking and privacy extension from the Firefox Add-ons Store. This decision follows a series of disagreements with Mozilla's store review team, which Hill described as enforcing a "nonsensical and hostile" review process.
The conflict began earlier in September when Mozilla cited each version of uBlock Origin Lite for policy violations, such as data collection and incorporating hard-to-review code. The accusations, Hill argued, were baseless and easy to discredit by anyone with rudimentary JavaScript knowledge. Though Mozilla later acknowledged the oversight and apologized, Hill chose to transition uBlock Origin Lite to a self-hosted format, accessible via GitHub.
Hill's move to self-hosting also allows the extension to auto-update, ensuring users can maintain the latest version without traditional store oversight. The transition does not affect the original uBlock Origin, which remains available and supported on Firefox. It is important to note that the lite version is crafted on the newer Manifest V3 framework, designed to be more resource-efficient, a timely shift given Chrome's recent challenges with the extension under its older framework. |  | Anybody who knows anything about Italian football is unlikely to disagree that it is a unique "world treasure" - but also one facing major problems, and for a while.
On the financial side, it's the inability of the top league, Serie A, to keep up with other European giants in terms of investment, sponsorships, and above all, TV rights money.
How curious then - or let's say, strange - that the legislative efforts aren't focusing on fixing these fundamental issues, but are now pressing even harder to supposedly protect Serie A by further clamping down on - piracy?
Looks like it's simply an attempt to protect copyright holders through radical measures - football be damned. Instead of addressing the real issues, and the dismal (technical) quality of the official broadcasts provided by the TV rights holder for the Italian market over the past couple of years, we are now looking at an attempt to "make better" the already abysmal 2023 law supposed to solve the IPTV problem.
Since that has not happened, changes have been made to this existing piece of legislation, known as "Piracy Shield," implemented by the country's communications regulator Agcom. Now the thinking is to expand the existing site blocking to DNS, VPNs, search engines, reverse proxy servers, etc., even when those providers are located outside of Italy.
Now these amendments have been accepted, the service providers will be under obligation to flag and report these providers for blocking, while failure, or delayed reaction, could result in jail time for those responsible.
The previous legislation is supposed to affect illegal streaming of live events, and involves an automated system - how else is Agcom supposed to react within 30 minutes of receiving a report about TV shows, sports, and music events?
The automation of such requests, as well as "overreporting," has been plaguing AGCOM's ability to live up to the task it has been entrusted with and has by and large failed thus far.
Pity the Italian authorities don't care about football itself as much as they do about broadcasts of football, and rightsholders: with truly unusual expediency, they are now trying to make "Piracy Shield" perform better.
The Italian press says this is to "extend to VPNs the obligation to disable access to illegal games by blocking the use of VPNs to generate different IP addresses capable of circumventing the law." | | | Thanks for reading,
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