Destroying Autocracy – October 09, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

The Programmer’s Fulcrum is the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy, Developing the OMN.

You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post along with their featured articles. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing.

We are posting on the Fediverse now at @thefulcrum @thefulcrum.dev and original website content will start in 2026.

Featured Item(s)

Open Media Network writes:

A central thesis of Tolkien’s books is that evil provides the means of its own defeat. Sauron forged the One Ring that destroyed him. Shelob impaled herself on Sam’s blade. Smaug exposed his belly to Bilbo and revealed the weak point that brought him down. Tolkien’s world is full of this pattern: the seed of destruction lies buried inside the will to dominate. Power over others always carries its own undoing.

But there’s a second truth, less often spoken. Good must still act. The Ring did not cast itself into the fires of Mount Doom, it had to be carried, inch by inch, through the mud and terror, by two small Hobbits who refused to give up. Shelob could only fall because Sam held his arm firm when it would have been easier to drop the blade. Smaug was slain not by fate, but by the hand that fired the black arrow.

Even when evil weakens itself, the act of courage still has to be taken. The small people still have to step up. And there’s a third lesson here, one that feels painfully relevant to our time: good only loses when it surrenders to hopelessness. Denethor’s despair nearly doomed Minas Tirith.

Frodo would have fallen without Sam’s stubborn love. Bilbo’s small act of faith. In Tolkien’s world, hope is not naïve optimism, it’s an act of defiance.

A Tolkien view of OMN

Join us and become a hobbit in the Open Media Network.

Speaking of OMN, we have an announcement this week:

Announcing The Programmer’s Fulcrum, our retirement project

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

The Kyiv Independent reports:

The military branch behind Ukraine’s battlefield apps turns to weapons bureaucracy

Ukraine’s parliament backs creation of cyber forces in first reading

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

How Ukrainian drones are slowing Russia’s advance in the east

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

What Europe’s New Gig Work Law Means for Unions and Technology

Eiffair shares:

Kagi Love

Its FOSS News reports:

Wikidata Launches Free Vector Database as Open Alternative to Closed AI Systems

NiemanLab reports:

Nonprofit news is growing strong — especially local nonprofit news, a new report shows

And the Columbia Journalism Review reports:

Too Small to Mess With

Heisse reports:

A defeat at the Supreme Court: Google must prepare changes to the Play Store

Nextcloud has:

Nextcloud vs Microsoft interoperability: how open source gets it right

Open letter to EU Member States on the proposed CSA Regulation or “Chat Control” law

Tuta announces:

Europe’s future is at stake: Open letter against Chat Control

Patrick shares the good news that pressure still works:

Citizen Protest Halts Chat Control; Breyer Celebrates Major Victory for Digital Privacy

404 Media reports:

Data Hoarder Uses AI to Create Searchable Database of Epstein Files

Help Us Investigate Book Bans and Educational Censorship Around America

Burning Web shares:

Five Beliefs

Great Stuff.

Neutral

CyberCultural shares:

What the Internet Was Like in 2000

Homestar Runner 🙂

The Brookings Institute says:

We should all be Luddites

The Guardian reports:

Governments are spending billions on their own ‘sovereign’ AI technologies – is it a big waste of money?

Poynter announces:

Poynter launches AI Innovation Lab to house its growing AI portfolio

CommonsDB is:

Exploring CommonsDB’s role in AI training data

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

TechCrunch reports:

ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

Italian businessman’s phone reportedly targeted with Paragon spyware

Pariah States

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Russia’s digital Iron Curtain descends as Kremlin chokes remaining internet freedoms

IFTAS reports:

Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services

Bleeping Computer reports:

Russian Hacktivists target critical infrastructure, hit decoy plant

North Korean hackers stole over $2 billion in crypto this year

The Columbia Journalism Review reports on:

Israel’s Influencer Insiders

DarkReading reports:

Chinese Gov’t Fronts Trick the West to Obtain Cyber Tech

China-Nexus Actors Weaponize ‘Nezha’ Open Source Tool

The Register reports:

OpenAI bans suspected Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to plan surveillance

The Columbia Journalism Review reports:

How Anti-Cybercrime Laws Are Being Weaponized to Repress Journalism

Big Media

FAIR reports:

MAGA’s Little Helpers: Sinclair, Nexstar and the Consolidation of Broadcast TV

Poynter reports:

The leader of a major press association resigned after his board opposed a lawsuit defending journalists’ rights

Big Tech

404 Media reports:

Apple Banned an App That Simply Archived Videos of ICE Abuses

CNET reports:

The Hidden Dangers of the Digital ‘Yes Man’: How to Push Back Against Sycophantic AI

The Guardian has:

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

LitHub has more Cory Doctorow action:

How American Tech Cartels Use Apps to Break the Law

Cybersecurity/Privacy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Tile’s Lack of Encryption Is a Danger for Users Everywhere

Fediverse

Social Experience Design says:

Welcome to Social coding commons

Hamish Campbell has:

Live at c-base a #fluffy Fediverse conference

STAR WARS: The Soft Empire

Riley Testut reports:

Evolving AltStore PAL

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – 137

Fedify announces:

The Sovereign Tech Fund is investing €192,000 in Fedify’s development over 2025–2026 to strengthen the fediverse ecosystem

Fedify 2.0—the CLI now runs natively on Node.js and Bun, not just Deno

Go To Social announces:

We’ve just made the proper release of v0.20.0 of GoToSocial, aka Sinister Sloth

TechCrunch reports:

Alternative app store AltStore raises $6M, connects with the Fediverse

Mastodon is taking cues from Bluesky with plans for its own starter ‘Packs’

Mastodon has:

Community consultation: new Terms of Service (for mastodon.social and mastodon.online)

It’s cool to join Mastodon but not these two instances.

Our ideas about Packs

Trunk & Tidbits, September 2025

Terence Eden explores:

Getting started with Mastodon’s Quote Posts – technical implementation details for servers

NHAM announces:

NHAM Update Opus 10 (Fedi Music Television Edition)

Super awesome.

Castopod announces:

The Official Castopod Plugin Repository

RSS

InEssential explains:

Why NetNewsWire Is Not a Web App

Lighthouse has:

A deep dive into the rss feed reader landscape

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

Azhdarchid has:

Delusions of a protocol

TechCrunch reports:

Waffles eat Bluesky

Niko Mara-McKay goes into the nitty-gritty:

Bluesky’s CEO meltdown: How leadership continues to fail its most marginalized users

I have said from day one that Bluesky will become enshittified. But, ATProto has some potential.

And to be fair, some of the leaders of ActivityPub and its largest platform (who value growth over safety) are egotistical pissy ass fucks when they are even slightly criticized.

But we are all fighting technofascism so let’s try to work together on the protocols front at least. Its okay to have debates and disagreements with allies. But treat them like allies when doing so. If they are your friends you can even call them pissy ass fucks. 😉

Speaking of, A New Social announces:

Bounce from Mastodon to Bluesky

Why would you? Although maybe its works with Blacksky, Northsky, or Eurosky.

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a head start.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #AltStore #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Castopod #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #fluffy #GoToSocial #IFTAS #Mastodon #NHAM #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2587

Destroying Autocracy – October 02, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

The Programmer’s Fulcrum is the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy, Developing the OMN.

You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post along with their featured articles. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing.

Featured Item

Cory Doctorow writes:

(I just gave) my first-ever speech about AI and I wasn’t sure how it would go over, but thankfully, it went great and sparked a lively Q&A. One of those questions came from a young man who said something like “So, you’re saying a third of the stock market is tied up in seven AI companies that have no way to become profitable and that this is a bubble that’s going to burst and take the whole economy with it?”

I said, “Yes, that’s right.”

He said, “OK, but what can we do about that?”

The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh

Just adjusted my investments as these c^nts are going to drag down everyone else with them.

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

The Guardian has a guest editorial:

Why I gave the world wide web away for free

LibreOffice celebrates:

LibreOffice turns 15: a celebration of freedom, collaboration and open technologies and standards

It’s FOSS News has:

Austria’s Armed Forces Gets Rid of Microsoft Office (Mostly) for LibreOffice

Framablog has:

Fin de Windows 10 : faisons le point

TechCrunch reports:

DJI loses lawsuit over classification as Chinese military company

California Governor Newsom signs landmark AI safety bill SB 53

BleepingComputer reports:

EU probes SAP over anti-competitive ERP support practices

NOS reports:

Judge: Instagram and Facebook should be given algorithm-free option

Tangle says:

It’s time to embrace the tech backlash.

TechDirt reports:

Disney’s Stupid, Pointless Ban Of Jimmy Kimmel Lost Them 1.7 Million Streaming Subscribers

NPR reports:

Hundreds of celebrities relaunch a McCarthy-era committee to defend free speech

The Daily Northwestern reports:

Flock contract termination talks persist after cameras reinstalled, city orders cease-and-desist

404 Media reports:

404 Media and Freedom of the Press Foundation Sue DHS

The Register reports:

EU funds are flowing into spyware companies, and politicians are demanding answers

Signal announces:

Signal Protocol and Post-Quantum Ratchets

DIY Conspiracy has:

The Counterforce: Building a DIY Punk Infrastructure Against Corporate Platforms

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

404 Media reports:

ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day

The Register reports:

ICE plans to scour Facebook, TikTok, X, and even defunct Google+ for illegal immigration leads

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

EFF, ACLU to SFPD: Stop Illegally Sharing Data With ICE and Anti-Abortion States

Mexican Allies Raise Alarms About New Mass Surveillance Laws, Call for International Support

TechPolicy reports:

Control for Whom? Keeping an Eye on the Dark Side of America’s New Wearables Campaign.

US State Age Verification Efforts Threaten Online Speech and Privacy – The Supreme Court Seems Ready to Allow Them

This tracks for the Supreme C^nts.

The Guardian reports:

Starmer to unveil digital ID cards in plan set to ignite civil liberties row

TechCrunch reports:

UK government tries again to access encrypted Apple customer data: Report

The United Kuntdum is at it again.

The Association for Progressive Communications shares:

“We’re in survival mode”: Women human rights defenders on digital repression and movement sustainability

Pariah States

The Register reports:

Fake North Korean IT workers sneaking into healthcare, finance, and AI

Most HR types I have run into are stupid, but this is approaching ridiculous.

Hunt for RedNovember: Beijing hacked critical orgs in year-long snooping campaign

DarkReading reports:

New China APT Strikes With Precision and Persistence

BleepingComputer reports:

Dutch teens arrested for trying to spy on Europol for Russia

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Moldova casts blame on Russia for attempts to disrupt pivotal parliamentary elections

Big Media

Columbia Journalism Review reports:

The Pentagon Press Gears Up for a Fight

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Wave of Phony News Quotes Affects Everyone—Including EFF

NiemanLab reports:

Scammers are using video deepfakes of journalists to peddle products online

Kagi announces:

Introducing Kagi News

Big Tech

Open Media Network says:

The #AI bubble might be nastier than the Dot.com crash

The Guardian reports:

Leading UK tech investor warns of ‘disconcerting’ signs of AI stock bubble

Again, see the featured article.

TikTok ‘directs child accounts to pornographic content within a few clicks’

DarkReading reports:

‘Trifecta’ of Google Gemini Flaws Turn AI Into Attack Vehicle

F-Droid needs our help:

F-Droid and Google’s Developer Registration Decree

Fuck Google.

Cybersecurity/Privacy

The Register reports:

Feds cut funding to program that shared cyber threat info with local governments

Tile trackers are a stalker’s dream, say Georgia Tech researchers

BleepingComputer reports:

Sendit sued by the FTC for illegal collection of children data

Ben Werdmuller says:

Your private data isn’t as private as you think

Fediverse

Connected Places has a late:

Fediverse Report – 136

NHAM announces:

How Indie Video Killed The Spotify Star

This looks awesome.

IFTAS announces:

Sunsetting IFTAS Connect

The Social Web Foundation previews:

Cooperative Social Networks Berlin Fediday

The Applied Social Media Lab has:

Introducing the ASML ActivityPub Fuzzer: Improving Testing in the Fediverse

Great, great stuff.

Newsmast announces:

Building apps for social spaces

This is exactly the type of content The Programmer’s Fulcrum will cover. And we need more Fediverse businesses like this.

Mastodon has:

Bringing Quote Posts to Mastodon

Speaking of, Terence Eden has:

Getting started with Mastodon’s Quote Posts – technical implementation details for servers

Activity Pub for WordPress announces:

7.5.0 — Follow the Feed, Quote the Lead

TechCrunch reports:

Threads takes on X with new communities feature

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

TechCrunch reports:

Bluesky rolls out age verification for users in Ohio

The Social Web Foundation says:

The BlueSky Patent Non-Aggression Pledge is Good for The Social Web

Internet Exchange reports:

Bluesky Adopts More Flexible Model for Content Moderation

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a head start.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #IFTAS #Mastodon #Newsmast #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #Threads #WordPress

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2549

Destroying Autocracy – September 25, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

The Programmer’s Fulcrum is the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy, Developing the OMN.

You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post along with their featured articles. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing.

Featured Item

Tuta shares:

Finally some good news: French MPs want to make it illegal to break encryption and limit surveillance.

Is France finally standing up for encryption and privacy?

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

The Guardian reports:

Too tricky to cancel: Amazon faces US trial over alleged Prime subscription deceptions

Amazon to pay $2.5bn to settle FTC lawsuit over Prime ‘subscription traps’

Ars Technica reports:

How to fight censorship, one Disney+ cancellation at a time

I canceled Hulu, ESPN+, and Disney+. And they’re gonna stay canceled. My drinking budget just went up $90 a month. Cheers!

The Verge reports:

Microsoft forced to make Windows 10 extended security updates truly free in Europe

404 Media reports:

We’re Suing ICE for its $2 Million Spyware Contract

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Ukraine hacks Crimea proxy head, uncovers child abduction files, intelligence source says

FSFE reports:

The Digital Markets Act turns 1: one year of pushing for Device Neutrality

Neutral

The Next Web reports:

The EU’s €2T budget overlooks a key tech pillar: Open source

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

Tech Policy reports:

The Internet Coup Is Here. And the World Is Still Asleep

The Guardian reports:

Documents offer rare insight on Ice’s close relationship with Palantir

Reuters reports:

Exclusive: US could hit entire International Criminal Court with sanctions soon

The EFF reports:

That Drone in the Sky Could Be Tracking Your Car

404 Media reports:

How Surveillance Firms Use ‘Democracy’ As a Cover for Serving ICE and Trump

Ars Technica reports:

Senate staff probes DOGE, finds locked doors and windows covered with trash bags

Pariah States

DarkReading reports:

Chinese APT Leans on Researcher PoCs to Spy on Other Countries

Iran-Linked Hackers Target Europe With New Malware

EuroNews reports:

Inside Russia’s AI-driven disinformation machine shaping Moldova’s election

The Register reports:

SIM city: Feds say 100,000-card farms could have killed cell towers in NYC

Google warns China-linked spies lurking in ‘numerous’ enterprises since March

North Korea’s Lazarus Group shares its malware with IT work scammers

The Guardian reports:

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians

A small part of it.

Big Media

Fuck Disney, fuck ABC, fuck Sinclair, fuck the FCC, and fuck the orange hate baboon.

Ben Werdmuller has:

Building distributed media for a democratic breakdown

Big Tech

TechCrunch reports:

Meta launches super PAC to fight AI regulation as state policies mount

The Guardian reports:

Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man

Meta exposé author faces bankruptcy after ban on criticising company

France24 reports:

EU rejects Apple demand to scrap landmark tech rules

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Going Viral vs. Going Dark: Why Extremism Trends and Abortion Content Gets Censored

If we stop using products from the c^nts at Meta, we can solve all these problems.

Computer World reports:

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws

Hidde shares:

The politics of AI: we’ll need more sustainability, community and democracy

404 Media reports:

AI ‘Workslop’ Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable

Cybersecurity/Privacy

Camille Bouvat announces:

Saracroche, le bloqueur d’appels indésirables pour iPhone et Android

I was happy to find this spam blocker and put it to use on my Fairphone.

Between Two Firewalls reports:

Identity Is Still the Perimeter

Wired reports:

How Signal’s Meredith Whittaker Remembers SignalGate: ‘No Fucking Way’

BleepingComputer reports:

Police seizes $439 million stolen by cybercrime rings worldwide

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report 135

Elena Rossini shares:

The Future Is Federated: My Fediverse Starter Guide

Open Journals has some new research:

Pin the tail on the researcher: From distributed to meshy accountability in decentralized social media

Kalvin has:

Mastodon and Algorithms: Transparent, Simple, and User-Controlled

PeerTube announces:

PeerTube mobile app v1.1.0 is out!

PieFed announces:

PieFed 1.2 is released

Hackers Pub shows us:

How to Build a Simple ActivityPub Reminder Bot in Python.

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

TechCrunch reports:

Bluesky says it’s getting more aggressive about moderation and enforcement

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a head start.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2522

Destroying Autocracy – September 18, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

The Programmer’s Fulcrum is the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy, Developing the OMN.

You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post along with their featured articles. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing.

Featured Item

Bogdan (the man) the Geek shares:

Hosting a Website on a Disposable Vape

Well motherfuck. 🤯 That’s anarchic as hell. 😈

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Ukrainian ‘cyber revenge’ hack disrupts Russian election systems, HUR source claims

Ukraine tests new kamikaze drones resistant to Russian jamming

El Pais reports:

Signal president Meredith Whittaker: ‘In technology, it’s way too easy for marketing to replace substance. That’s what’s happened with Telegram’

xWiki reports:

Europe’s digital sovereignty blueprint: from dependency to autonomy

Open_Future reports:

How data center expansion risks derailing climate goals and what to do about it

The Torment Nexus reports:

On Nepal’s Discord election and social-media driven uprisings

Ethan Marcotte shares:

Against the protection of stocking frames.

This regards viewing AI as the failed technology that it is.

Neutral

TechCrunch reports:

California lawmakers pass AI safety bill SB 53 — but Newsom could still veto

MIT Technology Review reports:

The looming crackdown on AI companionship

Gothamist reports:

TikTok, Instagram may request selfie to verify age under proposed NY rules

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

Break Through News reports:

Meet Flock: The Surveillance Company Building America’s ‘Authoritarian Tracking Infrastructure’

TechCrunch reports:

Here’s the tech powering ICE’s deportation crackdown

The Register reports:

Trump backpedals as Hyundai factory ICE raid enrages South Korea

The incompetent left hand doesn’t know what the asshole right hand is doing because the c^nt skull between them is empty.

UK Lords take aim at Ofcom’s ‘child-protection’ upgrades to Online Safety Act

Maybe they can unfuck it.

404 Media reports:

DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing

Sigh.

Forbes reports:

ICE Just Spent Millions On Surveillance Tech Banned By Facebook

Ars Technica reports:

FCC derided as “Federal Censorship Commission” after pushing Jimmy Kimmel off ABC

TechDirt reports:

TikTok To Be Sold To Trump’s Right Wing Billionaire Buddies And Converted Into A Propaganda Mill

Pariah States

The Register reports:

Nork snoops whip up fake South Korean military ID with help from ChatGPT

Russian fake-news network, led by an ex-Florida sheriff’s deputy, storms back into action with 200+ new sites

Ars Technica reports:

Two of the Kremlin’s most active hack groups are collaborating, ESET says

Inter SecLab shares:

The Internet Coup

TechCrunch reports:

Israel announces seizure of $1.5M from crypto wallets tied to Iran

C^nts on c^nts action.

Speaking of, DarkReading reports:

Iranian State APT Blitzes Telcos & Satellite Companies

Big Media

Free Software Foundation Europe reports:

Legal Corner: The War on Ad Blockers – Axel Springer’s Assault on User Freedom

TechPolicy reports:

How Google Paid the Media Millions to Avoid Regulatory Pressure

Deutsche Welle reports:

ChatEurope: What’s the Status of Europe’s AI-driven News Bot?

TechDirt reports:

The Washington Post Fires Its Last Black Opinion Columnist For Directly Quoting A Bigot

90% of newspapers suck now. Isn’t that sad. TV has always sucked but you used to find decent papers everywhere.

Big Tech

TechCrunch reports:

Karen Hao on the Empire of AI, AGI evangelists, and the cost of belief

EuroNews reports:

French streamer Deezer reveals that 28 per cent of music uploaded to platform is AI-generated

WTF. At least they hide it.

The EEF reports:

Our Stop Censoring Abortion Campaign Uncovers a Social Media Censorship Crisis

BleepingComputer reports:

Google nukes 224 Android malware apps behind massive ad fraud campaign

Please use open-source F-droid apps not Android ones.

New FileFix attack uses steganography to drop StealC malware

Don’t use Meta, bitches.

Ars Technica reports:

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal

So corporate America gets to further enshittify the user experience while supposedly maintaining privacy (ha!) and China gets to continue the misinformation and propaganda with the algorithm. Great deal.

Cybersecurity/Privacy

404 Media reports:

Airlines Sell 5 Billion Plane Ticket Records to the Government For Warrantless Searching

There’s nothing we can do about this type of c^ntness.

ChatGPT Will Guess Your Age and Might Require ID for Age Verification

You can control this. Don’t use AI horseshit.

Microsoft and Cloudflare disrupt massive RaccoonO365 phishing service

DarkReading reports:

‘ShadowLeak’ ChatGPT Attack Allows Hackers to Invisibly Steal Emails

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – 134

IFTAS has:

IFTAS Responds to the European Commission’s Review of the Digital Markets Act

ActivityPub for WordPress has:

Help Shape the Future of Moderation in the Fediverse

This poll may be closed now, but please join me and donate to IFTAS.

7.4.0 – More Control, Less Waiting

Mastodon.world has:

September 2025: Updates for the .worlds and call for donations

Donate to your instances. The reason they don’t suck is that they aren’t monetized and thus enshittified.

Mastodon has:

Service offerings from Mastodon

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

Connected Places has:

‘Blueskyism’, Political Violence, and Open Social Networks Under Authoritarianism

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a head start.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #RSS #Signal #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2510

Destroying Autocracy – September 11, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

The Programmer’s Fulcrum is the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy, Developing the OMN.

You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post along with their featured articles. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing.

Featured Item

Dave Rupert writes and asks:

I think my answer to “Why would anybody start a website (in 2025)?” is the same answer for the content creator in the age of AI problem: I don’t know, but you gotta want to.

Money sweetens the deal when making content or websites, but we’ve shaken the money tree pretty hard over the last couple decades and it’s looking bare.

Increasingly, you’ve got to find other sources of inspiration to make a website – which by the way are still the coolest fucking things ever.

Why would anybody start a website?

To join the Open Media Network for one.

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

Speaking of websites, the Columbia Journalism Review has:

Tom Ley Thinks More People Should Experience Worker-Owned Journalism

The Next Web reports:

Reclaiming the stack: Europe’s bid for digital sovereignty

The Register reports:

Big clouds scramble as EU Data Act brings new data transfer rules

Heisse reports:

400 scientists speak out against chat control

Europe is better than anywhere else, but it isn’t perfect.

The Guardian reports:

‘It is a war of drones now’: the ever-evolving tech dominating the frontline in Ukraine

Lawmaker calls for French criminal investigation into TikTok

EU fines Google nearly €3bn for ‘abusing’ dominant position in ad tech

Speaking of, Tech Policy reports:

Empowered Workers Are a Bulwark Against Illegal Monopoly

Ars Technica reports:

Judge: Anthropic’s $1.5B settlement is being shoved “down the throat of authors”

Pay-per-output? AI firms blindsided by beefed up robots.txt instructions.

Ben Werdmuller examines:

WordPress for newsrooms

This is the type of content we will feature in The Programmer’s Fulcrum in 2026.

Make Use of shares:

I stopped using Gmail for this built-in client and now Gmail feels stuck

Here is a TAM lite tool for you.

Mojeek announces:

Mojeek is Not an Answer Engine

Tuta shares:

Chat Control is back & we’ve got one month to stop the EU CSAM scanning plans.

The Counterforce has a guide:

Signal For Punks (it has Stories now!)

I describe myself as 25% intellectual, 25% bohemian, 25% hillbilly, and 25% punk so this appeals to me. 😉

Neutral

The Observer reports:

Nick Clegg and Tim Berners-Lee: the battle for the soul of the internet

Tech Policy reports:

Washington and Brussels Vie for Control Over Big Tech

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

404 Media reports:

ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers

The Kyiv Independent reports:

US steps back from joint efforts to combat misinformation, FT reports

TechDirt reports:

UK Age Verification Data Confirms What Critics Always Predicted: Mass Migration To Sketchier Sites

The Register reports:

Senator demands to know status of ‘duplicate’ Social Security database ‘immediately’

Nextcloud reports:

The proposed EU Chat Control law is a threat to our democracy. What can you do to prevent it?

EuroNews reports:

Pro-Kremlin operation weaponises investigative media to claim Ukraine uses orphans to clear mines

Pariah States

BleepingComputer reports:

Czech cyber agency warns against Chinese tech in critical infrastructure

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Why some Israeli journalists only now are turning a lens on Gaza devastation

Krebs on Security reports:

Bulletproof Host Stark Industries Evades EU Sanctions

The Register reports:

Beijing went to ‘EggStreme’ lengths to attack Philippines military, researchers say

DarkReading reports:

Chinese Hackers Allegedly Pose as US Lawmaker

Big Media

The Guardian reports:

‘Existential crisis’: how Google’s shift to AI has upended the online news model

TechDirt reports:

Wired, Business Insider Editors Duped By Completely Bogus ‘AI’ Using ‘Journalist’ Who Made Up Towns, People That Don’t Exist

Big Tech

Tech Policy reports:

How Big Tech’s ‘Invisible Hand’ Reaches Latin American Regulators

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Age Verification Is A Windfall for Big Tech—And A Death Sentence For Smaller Platforms

Anil Dash opines:

How Tim Cook sold out Steve Jobs

The Register reports:

EU regulators let Microsoft off the hook after Teams unbundling pledge

Again, big tech can’t be reformed. It has to be destroyed.

It’s AI all the way down as Google’s AI cites web pages written by AI

The Markup reports:

Google wasn’t against this privacy bill, officially. Behind the scenes, it orchestrated opposition

The Guardian reports:

How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart

Impact of chatbots on mental health is warning over future of AI, expert says

Meta hid harms to children from VR products, whistleblowers allege

Reuters reports:

Meta put virtual-reality profit over kids’ safety, whistleblowers tell US Congress

The BBC reports:

Meta to stop its AI chatbots from talking to teens about suicide

404 Media reports:

Instagram Account Promotes Holocaust Denial T-Shirts to 400,000 Followers

Ars Technica has:

Former WhatsApp security boss in lawsuit likens Meta’s culture to a “cult”

EchoStar to sell spectrum to SpaceX after FCC threatened to revoke licenses

AI vs. MAGA: Populists alarmed by Trump’s embrace of AI, Big Tech

Even blind fascist squirrels find a nut sometimes.

SAN reports:

Not so secret: X’s new encrypted chat feature puts users at risk, experts say

Cybersecurity/Privacy

Signal announces:

Introducing Signal Secure Backups

La Quadrature reports:

In France, the eternal return of facial recognition

The Register reports:

Drift massive attack traced back to loose Salesloft GitHub account

In crypto bro FAFO news, BleepingComputer reports:

Hackers hijack npm packages with 2 billion weekly downloads in supply chain attack

DDoS defender targeted in 1.5 Bpps denial-of-service attack

DarkReading reports:

Without Federal Help, Cyber Defense Is Up to the Rest of Us

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – 133

Fedihost looks at:

Podcasting With PeerTube

PeerTube announces:

PeerTube v7.3 is out!

The Nexus of Privacy shares:

This is what solidarity looks like

Mastodon has updates:

Introducing quote posts

Trunk & Tidbits, August 2025

NodeBB shares a:

Progress update for Conversational Contexts

A New Social announces:

Bounce Beta Now Live!

Launch: Notifications from Unbridged Users

RSS

Buttondown remembers:

The story of how RSS beat Microsoft

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

Connected Spaces opines:

On discourse and decentralisation

Personally I view Bluesky as only slightly better than Shitter (drastically fewer c^nts) with a 97.4% chance of becoming enshittified. However, Blacksky has given me a little hope for ATProto at least.

I would also like to point out 96.525% of people on the Fediverse don’t give a fuck about Bluesky and 99.912% of people on Bluesky don’t give a fuck about the Fediverse.

TechCrunch reports:

Bluesky adds private bookmarks

Bluesky will comply with age-verification laws in South Dakota and Wyoming after exiting Mississippi

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a headstart.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #NodeBB #Peertube #RSS #Signal #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2493

Destroying Autocracy – September 04, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

The Programmer’s Fulcrum is the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy.

You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post along with their featured articles. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing.

Featured Item

Scripting of WordLand fame writes:

I want you to see WordPress as comparable to Bluesky or Mastodon.

Internally, the software, WordPress, Mastodon, Bluesky, do a lot of the same things. But because WordPress is so long-lived relative to the other two, it’s more complete, scaled, and it federates easily. Lots of people do it.

WordPress also has excellent support for RSS, especially using a little-known feature called rssCloud. It enables real-time notification of new or changed feed items. And has a deep and powerful API. It’s well designed, documented, and they don’t break it.

BTW, Mastodon and Bluesky lack these.

Think Different about WordPress

Hamish Campbell has made a similar point.

This article is the type of coverage we will feature on The Fulcrum in 2026.

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

BleepingComputer reports:

Amazon disrupts Russian APT29 hackers targeting Microsoft 365

EU fines Google $3.5 billion for anti-competitive ad practices

Platypush shares:

Create private self-hosted email aliases on the fly

Les Numeriques reports:

“Notre solution coûte trois fois moins cher qu’Office 365”: comment Lyon a tourné le dos à Microsoft

EDRi shares:

Public consultation on ”retention of data by service providers for criminal proceedings”. Answering guide for civil society organisations and individuals.

EU citizens, please give your input.

Internet Exchange opines:

Democracy Needs Encryption

True.

The Register reports:

SAP splashes €20B on Euro sovereign cloud push

France fines Google, SHEIN for undercooked cookie policies that led to crummy privacy

UK government trial of M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost

Reg readers have spoken: 93% back move away from Microsoft in UK public sector

Now make your politicians do something about it.

String Literal discusses:

Options for Phones at Protests

DarkReading reports:

How Gray-Zone Hosting Companies Protect Data the US Wants Erased

The Atlantic reports:

The Anti-Trump Strategy That’s Actually Working

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Victory! Ninth Circuit Limits Intrusive DMCA Subpoenas

CIO reports:

31% of employees are ‘sabotaging’ your gen AI strategy

This need to be around 81%.

Privacy Guides shares:

“We (Don’t) Care About Your Privacy”

Neutral

Micah Flee opines:

Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater

Hopefully, the app developer will quit ignoring its users and constructive criticism and salvage this project.

TechPolicy promotes:

Advancing Democracy as a Digital Public Service

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

TechCrunch reports:

ICE reactivates contract with spyware maker Paragon

Arrs Technica reports:

FCC chair teams up with Ted Cruz to block Wi-Fi hotspots for schoolkids

404 Media reports:

Congress Pushes DHS for Details on ICE’s New Facial Recognition App

Pariah States

EuroNews reports:

Russian propaganda is ‘overtaking’ legitimate news in the Czech Republic

Online disinformation intensifies ahead of Moldovan parliamentary elections

DarkReading reports:

Russia’s APT28 Targets Microsoft Outlook With ‘NotDoor’ Malware

Czech Warning Highlights China Stealing User Data

The Register reports:

Internet mapping and research outfit Censys reveals state-based abuse, harassment

China-aligned crew poisons Windows servers to manipulate Google results

Big Media

EuroNews reports:

Can the EU implement its new press freedom law?

Ben Werdmuller asks:

Can newsrooms become social platforms?

Great stuff.

Poytner reports:

Inescapable technology changes and a migrating audience have local broadcast news in trouble

NiemanLab reports:

Trusted news sites may benefit in an internet full of AI-generated fakes, a new study finds

Journalism reports:

Substack’s new in-app payments frustrate publishers: “One option is terrible for us, the other is terrible for our readers”

Because Suckstack is enshittified.

Big Tech

Reuters reports:

Meta to launch California super PAC backing pro-AI candidates

EuroNews reports:

Is Meta failing to protect users from the distribution of non-consensual images?

Tech Policy reports:

How AI Upended a Historic Antitrust Case Against Google

Ars Technica reports:

Judge: Google can keep Chrome, must share search data with “qualified competitors”

Sigh. More proof that surveillance tech cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed.

Once again, please explore our Techno Anarchist Manifesto for what you can do.

The Register reports:

AI web crawlers are destroying websites in their never-ending hunger for any and all content

Alan Smith reports on:

Enshittifying Search With AI

Infrequently reports on:

Apple’s Assault on Standards

Cybersecurity/Privacy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

From Libraries to Schools: Why Organizations Should Install Privacy Badger

The Register reports:

In the rush to adopt hot new tech, security is often forgotten. AI is no exception

Who watches the watchmen? Surveillanceware firms make bank, avoid oversight

EU court’s dismissal of US data transfer challenge raises privacy advocates’ ire

Congressional panel throws cyber threat intel-sharing, funding a lifeline

Signal reports:

European Commission internally recommends Signal with disappearing messages

BleepingComputer reports:

Threat actors abuse X’s Grok AI to spread malicious links

Of course.

DarkReading reports:

Phishing Empire Runs Undetected on Google, Cloudflare

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – 132

Social Media Alternative reviews:

HOPE and Alternative Social Media

WriteFreely announces:

Version 0.16

FediHost demonstrates:

Podcasting With PeerTube

The Register reports:

Matrix.org homeserver grinds to a halt after RAID meltdown

The Nexus of Privacy shares:

Improving accessibility in the Fediverse and the ATmosphere

NodeBB shares a:

Progress update for Conversational Contexts

A New Social announces:

Bounce Beta Now Live!

TechCrunch reports:

Threads challenges X by offering free support for up to 10K characters, plus prominent links

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

Connected Places has:

Substack and the risk of disruption

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a headstart.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #Matrix #Peertube #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SubStack #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #Threads #WordPress #WriteFreely

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2477

Destroying Autocracy – August 28, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

As noted before, starting next year I am willing to spend 10 hours weekly on The Programmer’s Fulcrum. It’s the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy.

You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post along with their featured articles. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing. I appreciate all of you.

Featured Item

In a late addition, Connected Places writes:

Building a decentralised network like the fediverse thus means not only building a social network that spreads out over many different nodes, but also building an infrastructure for the network to run on that is itself decentralised. What’s happening to SocialHub is symptomatic of this broader tension, where these decentralised systems promise to distribute power, but they still need coordination mechanisms to function.

SocialHub and the Substrate of Decentralised Networks

Nate Matias has this great story of perseverance:

That’s when I got an email from Enel X Way, an Italian power company, that the software in the boxes that charge our cars would be disconnected in just a few short weeks. I immediately thought of Mark, whose medical care required reliable travel to the nearby city of Syracuse.

Across our entire neighborhood, forty homes had exactly the same box, many supported by a New York State electric charging grant. And now all of us were about to have tens of thousands of dollars in critical infrastructure lose functionality – infrastructure we relied on to get to work, access medical care, and live our daily lives.

Escaping the chains of tethered products: the Juice Rescue project

Great stuff!

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

The Kyiv Independent reports:

‘Cyber partisans’ hack Russian TV, broadcast battlefield casualties and ‘truth’ about war, HUR source claims

Deutsche Welle reports on:

AI’s role in Ukrainian wartime media

ic3 announces:

Countering Chinese State-Sponsored Actors Compromise of Networks Worldwide to Feed Global Espionage System

404 Media reports:

Attorneys General To AI Chatbot Companies: You Will ‘Answer For It’ If You Harm Children

EuroNews reports:

EU defends sovereign right to regulate tech against Trump’s latest tariff threat

EU tech chief to ‘fight back’ against Trump’s allegations, Commission says

Amnesty calls on governments to reign in Big Tech. But as Trump’s tech threat looms, will they?

Bits of Freedom reports:

Press release: Bits of Freedom initiates summary proceedings against Meta in run-up to national elections

Vivaldi announces:

Vivaldi takes a stand: keep browsing human

Literally awesome.

TechPolicy reports:

Perspective Europe Cannot Wait to Fight Trump’s Assault on Democracy

In fuck up Techno Feudalism news, XDA Developers share:

Syncthing ruined cloud storage for me in the best possible way

And OMG Ununtu reviews:

Zen Browser — What Mozilla Firefox Should Be?

I use it and love it.

And Ars Technica reports:

Framework Laptop 16 update brings Nvidia GeForce to the modular gaming laptop

They also have:

Authors celebrate “historic” settlement coming soon in Anthropic class action

APC reports:

Full disclosure: Marking a legal victory for big tech transparency in South Korea

TechCrunch reports:

Microsoft headquarters go into lockdown after activists take over Brad Smith’s office

Boycotting all Microsoft and Israeli products will achieve more than stunts. But publicity from them could result in more boycotts.

US sanctions fraud network used by North Korean ‘remote IT workers’ to seek jobs and steal money

Neutral

TechPolicy has:

Why We Need a Carnegie Moment for the Age of AI

To Create Transparency Regulation for Digital Platforms, Look to Lessons from Other Sectors

The Guardian asks:

Is the AI boom finally starting to slow down?

If only hopes and prayers worked.

TechCrunch reports:

OpenAI co-founder calls for AI labs to safety-test rival models

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Face Scans to Estimate Our Age: Harmful and Creepy AF

Cloud68 reports:

Chat Control: A Threat to Privacy that Does not Solve the Core Issue

The Intercept has:

Accepted at Universities, Unable to Get Visas: Inside Trump’s War on International Students

The Dissenter reports:

ACLU Demands US Court Immediately Order Release Of Journalist In ICE Detention

404 Media reports:

CBP Had Access to More than 80,000 Flock AI Cameras Nationwide

Flock Wants to Partner With Consumer Dashcam Company That Takes ‘Trillions of Images’ a Month

TechCrunch reports:

DOGE uploaded live copy of Social Security database to ‘vulnerable’ cloud server, says whistleblower

The Guardian reports:

Trump threatens tariffs on countries that ‘discriminate’ against US tech

TechPolicy reports:

Washington Could Activate a “Kill Switch” to Terminate European Access to US Tech. Here’s How it Could Work.

Ars Technica reports:

FCC chairman helps AT&T cement dominance with $23 billion spectrum deal

Pariah States

The Register reports:

AWS catches Russia’s Cozy Bear clawing at Microsoft credentials

BleepingComputer reports:

New Android malware poses as antivirus from Russian intelligence agency

Silk Typhoon hackers hijack network captive portals in diplomat attacks

Poynter reports:

Five more journalists were killed covering the war in Gaza

Big Media

NiemanLab reports:

The next internet for news? Publishers gather to discuss protocols over platforms

Staying true to American media technical incompetence traditions, they advocate for ATProto. The Open Media Network advocates for ActivityPub.

Big Tech

OS News reports:

Google to require developer certification to install Android applications, even outside of the Play Store

Have I ever said, fuck Google. Peeps, please get a Linux or de-googled Android device and only use f-droid apps.

TechCrunch reports:

Security researcher maps hundreds of TeslaMate servers spilling Tesla vehicle data

Infrequently reports:

Apple vs. Facebook is Kayfabe

Forbes reports:

Intel Worked With Chinese Firms Sanctioned For Enabling Human Rights Abuses

TheNextWeb has:

Opinion: Trusting an unverified AI agent is like handing your keys to a drunk graduate

404 Media reports:

Imgur’s Community Is In Full Revolt Against Its Owner

Have these folks not heard of Pixelfed? 😉

Futurism reports:

OpenAI Says It’s Scanning Users’ ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content to the Police

Cybersecurity/Privacy

Rebecca Williams shares:

Burner Phone 101

Ars Technica reports:

Senator castigates federal judiciary for ignoring “basic cybersecurity”

EuroNews reports:

AI is increasing cyberattacks worldwide and Europe is one of the hardest hit regions. This is why.

The Register reports:

ZipLine attack uses ‘Contact Us’ forms, White House butler pic to invade sensitive industries

Microsoft can’t guarantee data sovereignty – OVHcloud says ‘We told you so’

Putin on the code: DoD reportedly relies on utility written by Russian dev

Crims laud Claude to plant ransomware and fake IT expertise

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – #131

Some thoughts on Bsky, age verification and Mississippi law

Bounce, bridging and language

We Distribute reports:

Social Web Foundation is Betting Big on Client-to-Server API

Good.

Activity Pub has:

Handing off activitypub.rocks to the ActivityPub community

ActivityPub for WordPress has:

7.3.0 – Ctrl+Fed+Delete

Hamish Campbell has:

The stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust

Path and Patches shares:

Home from Home

TechCrunch reports:

Threads tests a way to share long-form text on the platform

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

NiemanLab reports:

Mississippi’s onerous new social platform law (and the threat of big fines) has led Bluesky to block its users in the state

TechCrunch reports:

Bounce launches a service for moving accounts between Bluesky and Mastodon

The New Public reports:

Social media’s next evolution: decentralized, open-source, and scalable

I don’t usually share items from the Nazi bar but since this is by the founder of Blacksky, I’m making an exception.

Ars Technica reports:

Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

At least it’s not Shitter.

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a headstart.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#131 #ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #WordPress

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2458

Destroying Autocracy – August 21, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

As noted last week, I am willing to spend 10 of my retirement hours weekly on The Programmer’s Fulcrum. It’s the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy.

You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing.

Featured Item

Hamish Campbell writes:

The geek answer (bad faith or blindness): “If only everyone learned to code, then society would be fairer.”

The activist answer: Code is part of the landscape, but culture, governance, and lived practice matter more. We don’t escape domination by teaching more people to type commands, we escape by changing what we do together with the tools.

Why “teach everyone to code” has become a dead-end slogan – it’s been tried, it’s been funded, and yet it hasn’t shifted power one bit. If anything, it’s reinforced the tech priesthood instead of breaking it.

Why “teach everyone to code” has become a dead-end slogan

Remember, as I mentioned in the TechnoAnarchist Manifesto, tech is now the major religion on earth.

As far as what programmers should do, he has:

Activist tech has been stuck in a defensive crouch

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

NextCloud reports:

Schleswig-Holstein’s “Deutschland-Stack” vision for a digitally independent Germany

EuroNews reports:

Cash is king: Why does the eurozone need a digital euro?

The San Francisco Public Press reports:

California Pushes AI Regulation as Experts Reveal Looming Dangers

The Guardian reports:

Microsoft workers occupy HQ in protest against company’s ties to Israeli military

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Victory! Ninth Circuit Limits Intrusive DMCA Subpoenas

Victory! Pen-Link’s Police Tools Are Not Secret

Fourth Amendment Victory: Michigan Supreme Court Reins in Digital Device Fishing Expeditions

Internet Exchange reports:

Shaping a Profession, Building a Community

TechPolicy reports:

The TAKE IT DOWN Act Is US Law. Platforms Must Do More Than The Bare Minimum

BleepingComputer reports:

U.S. seizes $2.8 million in crypto from Zeppelin ransomware operator

The Conversation reports:

Data that taxpayers have paid for and rely on is disappearing – here’s how it’s happening and what you can do about it

Poytner reports:

Poynter’s MediaWise launches new initiative to combat extremism in online gaming spaces

The Register reports:

Someone’s poking the bear with infostealers targeting Russian crypto developers

US cops wrap up RapperBot, one of world’s biggest DDoS-for-hire rackets

TechCrunch reports:

Hackers who exposed North Korean government hacker explain why they did it

Ecosia has offered to take ‘stewardship’ of Chrome. And it’s not a bad idea.

Great idea, hence it will go nowhere.

Fortune reports:

MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

🙂

EuroNews reports:

Austrian newspaper’s pay or consent model violates EU privacy rules: court

The Association of Progressive Communications reports:

Brazil explores ways to hold platforms accountable in court and beyond

Bom!

Neutral

TechPolicy reports:

We Need to Control Personal AI Data So Personal AI Cannot Control Us

The Next Web reports:

Europe can lead the world in legal AI — by out-regulating everyone else

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

TechPolicy reports:

How US Officials Are Pressuring Europe Over Its Platform Regulations

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

President Trump’s War on “Woke AI” Is a Civil Liberties Nightmare

From Book Bans to Internet Bans: Wyoming Lets Parents Control the Whole State’s Access to The Internet

The Intercept reports:

ICE hunts down immigrants by spying on their wire transfers

The Register reports:

End well, this won’t: UK commissioner suggests govt stops kids from using VPNs

United Kuntdumb tech logic: if something is shite, let’s fix it by making it worse.

TechCrunch reports:

Judge says FTC investigation into Media Matters ‘should alarm all Americans’

404 Media reports:

The Government Just Made it Harder for The Public to Comment on Regulations

Global Voices reports:

The politics and people behind Balochistan, Pakistan’s internet shutdowns

Hide Me reports:

“Chat Control”: The EU is about to read every message you send

Pariah States

Politico reports:

Russia is quietly churning out fake content posing as US news

And plenty of American stooges are spreading the shit.

Radio Free Europe reports:

Report: Russian Sabotage Operations In Europe Have Quadrupled Since 2023

DarkReading reports:

Russian Hacktivists Take Aim at Polish Power Plant, AgainRussian Hacktivists Take Aim at Polish Power Plant, Again

Europe’s Ransomware Surge Is a Warning Shot for US Defenders

CrowdStrike reports:

MURKY PANDA: A Trusted-Relationship Threat in the Cloud

BleepingComputer reports:

XenoRAT malware campaign hits multiple embassies in South Korea

Big Media

The Guardian reports:

How German media outlets helped pave the way for Israel’s murder of journalists in Gaza

I think fascism is just in the water in Germany. Like racism in America.

EuroNews reports:

Finland’s war on fake news starts in schools. AI could make that a lot harder.

Big Tech

The Atlantic reports:

AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event

Wok reports:

Google is killing the open web

Not a Tech Bro reports:

Google is watching

The Register reports:

Google yet to take down ‘screenshot-grabbing’ Chrome VPN extension

The Markup reports:

We caught companies making it harder to delete your personal data online

Data brokers face new pressure for hiding opt-out pages from Google

The Guardian reports:

Meta faces backlash over AI policy that lets bots have ‘sensual’ conversations with children

404 Media reports:

Grok Exposes Underlying Prompts for Its AI Personas

TikTok Shop Sells Viral GPS Trackers Marketed to Stalkers

Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the ‘Antithesis of Wikipedia’

Cybersecurity/Privacy

The Register reports:

Every question you ask, every comment you make, I’ll be recording you

Nice song reference. 😉

BleepingComputer reports:

Okta open-sources catalog of Auth0 rules for threat detection

Mozilla announces:

CRLite: Fast, private, and comprehensive certificate revocation checking in Firefox

Factorial reports:

DDoS Attacks on NGOs: When Digital Infrastructure Becomes a Vulnerability

Heisse reports:

Copyright: Springer vs Adblock Plus enters another round

Socket reports:

Researcher Exposes Zero-Day Clickjacking Vulnerabilities in Major Password Managers

Fediverse

Applied Social Media Lab reports:

ActivityPub Fuzzer

We Distribute reports:

CrowdBucks is a new payment system for the Fediverse

It needs some.

DeadSuperHero has:

The Fediverse in Real Life

Hamish Campbell explains:

Why Most Fediverse Codebases Are Languishing

The London School of Economics asks:

Are newsletters the new academic social media?

Niche, but interesting.

David Roetzel is:

Taking a Fresh Look at the Fediverse

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

Connected Places has:

ATmosphere Report – 130

Kuba Suder shares an:

Introduction to AT Protocol

TechCrunch reports:

Bluesky blocks service in Mississippi over age assurance law

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a headstart.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2427

Destroying Autocracy – August 14, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

There is some news about us this week. We are definitely retiring next year and sooner than expected. Once we move to Europe, I don’t want to spend 30 hours a week working on Symfony Station and Battalion. Producing short documentaries will be my main hobby.

But, I am willing to spend 10 hours weekly on The Programmer’s Fulcrum. It’s the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy.

For now its built with Ghost though WordPress is still in the running as a long-term site/newsletter/fediverse account solution. Sorry Drupal CMS you are dead in the water.

In any event, you can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links and featured articles for each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing. I appreciate all of you.

Featured Item

The Sunday Times has an interview with my hero:

Meredith Whittaker, boss of WhatsApp rival Signal, says the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act could create a weakness that threatens users’ private data.

Signal boss: ‘disturbing’ laws show the UK doesn’t understand tech

Fuck Meta, and fuck What’s App.

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

TechCrunch reports:

US government seized $1M from Russian ransomware gang

Reuters reports:

Poland foiled cyberattack on big city’s water supply, deputy PM says

BleepingComputer reports:

US sanctions Grinex crypto-exchange, successor to Garantex

North Korean Kimsuky hackers exposed in alleged data breach

TechCrunch reports:

Australian court finds Apple, Google abused app store market power

The Association for Progressive Communications reports:

Every Door on going from a map user to an open source map creator

Grenoble, France announces:

Access kit Open source software

Commons DB has:

Connecting the Commons: Shared Benefits for Wikimedia Commons and CommonsDB

The Center for Democracy and Technology shares:

2024 Annual Report

Neutral

The Next Web reports:

Opinion: Europe can regulate its way to a better fintech future

Infrequently reports:

How Do Committees Fail To Invent?

Renée DiResta reports:

No Clapping Allowed: A Social Media Free Speech Debate Without the Usual Theater

Stateline reports:

More than half the states have issued AI guidance for schools

Dries Buytaert has:

Funding Open Source like public infrastructure

I disagree with 88.2% of Dries’ AI stance, but he’s 100% correct about this. 😉

Dave Troy asks:

Is democracy dying? Here’s why — and what to do about it.

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Americans, Be Warned: Lessons From Reddit’s Chaotic UK Age Verification Rollout

Unfortunately, our fools will follow in their fools’ footsteps. And btw fuck Reddit.

The Register reports:

Wikimedia Foundation loses first court battle to swerve Online Safety Act regulation

404 Media reports:

Trump Has Dropped a Third of All Government Investigations Into Big Tech

Trump Is Launching an AI Search Engine Powered by Perplexity

If there was any doubt that c^nts attract c^nts, now you know. Especially Clownish ones who want to buy Chrome.

Feds Used Local Cop’s Password to Do Immigration Surveillance With Flock Cameras

LAPD Eyes ‘GeoSpy’, an AI Tool That Can Geolocate Photos in Seconds

Euractiv has:

Palantir is well on its way to conquering Europe

Pariah States

The Register reports:

Russia’s RomCom among those exploiting a WinRAR 0-day in highly-targeted attacks

TechCrunch reports:

Russian government hackers said to be behind US federal court filing system hack: Report

BleepingComputer reports:

Pro-Russian hackers blamed for water dam sabotage in Norway

Curly COMrades cyberspies hit govt orgs with custom malware

Dark Reading reports:

REvil Actor Accuses Russia of Planning 2021 Kaseya Attack

EuroNews reports:

Russia blocks calls via WhatsApp and Telegram as it tightens control over the internet

Signals, peeps.

Israel faces widespread condemnation after Al Jazeera correspondent killed in Gaza

TechPolicy reports:

Artificial Intelligence and the Orchestration of Palestinian Life and Death

Big Media

Poynter says:

Press freedoms can slip away

And have.

The Racket reports:

Substack’s extremist ecosystem is flourishing

They are on Beehiiv, which like Ghost is a moral alternative to SubStack.

NiemanLab reports:

Can nonprofit news mix with local TV? A Pennsylvania partnership aims to find out

Local TV news is shit. But, this is interesting.

Seeking Alpha reports:

Companies find new avenues to drive up sessions as Google’s AI Search tools reduce web traffic

404 Media reports:

Trump Administration Outlines Plan to Throw Out an Agency’s FOIA Requests En Masse

Big Tech

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Data Brokers Are Ignoring Privacy Law. We Deserve Better.

Ben Werdmuller reports on:

Lifelogging under fascism

TechPolicy reports:

In an Age of Information Gatekeeping, Don’t Just Google It

Fuck Google.

TechPolicy reports:

‘Big Cloud’ is Building Power via Pervasive Investments

TechCrunch reports:

Leaked Meta AI rules show chatbots were allowed to have romantic chats with kids

How to Save the World asks:

Has the Internet Succumbed to the Tragedy of the Commons?

Platformer has:

Three big lessons from the GPT-5 backlash

Grok is on the rocks

Ars Technica reports:

LLMs’ “simulated reasoning” abilities are a “brittle mirage,” researchers find

AP reports:

Students have been called to the office — and even arrested — for AI surveillance false alarms

Cybersecurity/Privacy

The Register reports:

The inside story of the Telemessage saga, and how you can view the data

DEF CON hackers plug security holes in US water systems amid tsunami of threats

Deepfake detectors are slowly coming of age, at a time of dire need

LLM chatbots trivial to weaponize for data theft, say boffins

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – 129

Hopefully the link is fixed now.

IFTAS says:

The 2025 Fediverse Needs Assessment is Open: Have Your Say

Salvatore Noschese shares:

Mastodon: parliamone un po’

We Distribute reports:

Big Updates Are Coming to Loops

tchncs has:

Bonfire Social: Shared user

We Distribute asks?

Is Meta Scraping the Fediverse for AI?

Did I say fuck Meta?

TechCrunch reports:

Threads now has more than 400 million monthly active users

Fuck Threads too.

Arxiv is:

Exploring Left-Wing Extremism on the Decentralized Web: An Analysis of Lemmygrad.ml

The proper term is Tankies not left-wing. And it’s why you should use Mbin or Piefed.

Paths & Patches has:

Third Spaces in the Fediverse: FediCon thoughts Part II

Newsmast unplugged: FediCon Part III

The Register reports:

Secure chat darling Matrix admits pair of ‘high severity’ protocol flaws need painful fixes

Slightly Federated Social Media

TechCrunch reports:

Bluesky rolls out massive revamp to policies and Community Guidelines

Cory Doctorow has:

Bluesky creates the world’s weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause

Same here.

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a headstart.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Bonfire #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Lemmy #Loops #Mastodon #Reddit #Signal #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SubStack #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #Telemessage #WhatsApp #Wikimedia

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2395

Destroying Autocracy – August 07, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

Featured Item

TechDirt reports:

Back in April 2023, when Substack CEO Chris Best refused to answer basic questions about whether his platform would allow racist content, I noted that his evasiveness was essentially hanging out a “Nazis Welcome” sign.

By December, when the company doubled down and explicitly said they’d continue hosting and monetizing Nazi newsletters, they’d fully embraced their reputation as the Nazi bar.

Last week, we got a perfect demonstration of what happens when you build your platform’s reputation around welcoming Nazis: your recommendation algorithms start treating Nazi content as more than worth tolerating, to content worth promoting.

Substack’s Algorithm Accidentally Reveals What We Already Knew: It’s The Nazi Bar Now

If you are on SuckStack you are a c^nt in addition to being a willing ally of Nazis.

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

Radio Free Europe reports:

Under The Missiles: The Women Racing To Save Ukraine’s Photographic Treasures

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Ukraine obtains classified data on Russia’s newest nuclear submarine, intelligence claims

The Register reports:

China’s botched Great Firewall upgrade invites attacks on its censorship infrastructure

Cool.

Broadcom’s Jericho4 ASICs just opened the door to multi-datacenter AI training

The MIT Technology Review reports:

OpenAI has finally released open-weight language models

Rare good news on the AI front.

404 Media reports:

Congress Launches Investigation into Flock After 404 Media Reporting

The Verge reports:

Google has just two weeks to begin cracking open Android, it admits in emergency filing

TechCrunch reports:

Jury rules Meta violated California privacy laws by quietly collecting Flo users’ menstrual health data

Citizen Lab director warns cyber industry about US authoritarian descent

The Markup reports:

Should Lyft and Uber charge more if your battery is low? California may soon ban that

Malware Tech reports:

Every Reason Why I Hate AI and You Should Too

The Guardian reviews:

Can’t Look Away review – a harrowing, heartbreaking indictment of social media’s ruthlessness

Ars Technica reports:

Murena’s Pixel Tablet is helping to wean me off Google

Open Web Advocacy reports:

Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

NGI Commons reports on:

Decidim and the Spirit of a Digital Commons Community

Very, very cool. Of course it’s from Barcelona.

The European Commission reports on:

European Media Freedom Act

The Center for Democracy and Technology reports:

CDT Europe Responds to the European Commission Public Consultation on High-Risk AI Systems

Neutral

TechPolicy says:

We Need to Reimagine Digital Maps as Public Infrastructure. Here’s Why.

The Guardian reports:

‘We didn’t vote for ChatGPT’: Swedish PM under fire for using AI in role

Dude!

Nextcloud shares:

Digital Sovereignty Index: How countries compare in digital independence

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

The Register reports:

UK secretly allows facial recognition scans of passport, immigration databases

US charges 2 Chinese nationals with illegally shipping Nvidia AI chips to China

The Guardian reports:

Palestine Action ban coupled with Online Safety Act ‘a threat to public debate’

TechDirt reports:

Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Blocking Access to Harmful Content Will Not Protect Children Online, No Matter How Many Times UK Politicians Say So

You would have thought the United Kuntdumb would have learned something from Brexit. Hopefully the rest of the world can learn something from its stupidity.

Or not, Reclaim the Net reports:

EU Revives Plan to Ban Private Messaging

404 Media reports:

ICE Is Buying Mobile Iris Scanning Tech for Its Deportation Arm

A CBP Agent Wore Meta Smart Glasses to an Immigration Raid in Los Angeles

Pariah States

TechCrunch reports:

North Korean spies posing as remote workers have infiltrated hundreds of companies, says CrowdStrike

EuroNews reports:

Dutch privacy watchdog warns against Israeli terms for aid organisations

The Guardian reports:

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

The Register reports:

Silver Fox APT Blurs the Line Between Espionage & Cybercrime

BleepingComputer reports:

Ex-White House cyber, counter-terrorism guru: Microsoft considers security an annoyance, not a necessity

Big Media

The Columbia Journalism Review has:

When Neutrality Is a Constraint

Is the US Media Captured?

Obviously.

Speaking of, NiemanLab has:

A chicken for The New York Times, a star for Bloomberg: A new “Media Capitulation Index” ranks large media and tech companies

Nonprofit news sites are built to generate impact — but these are also generating audiences

Poynter has:

Did Craigslist decimate newspapers? Legend meets reality.

Trump’s latest moves against free speech are ‘really scary stuff’

404 Media reports:

Wikipedia Editors Adopt ‘Speedy Deletion’ Policy for AI Slop Articles

Big Tech

The Register reports:

When hyperscalers can’t safeguard one nation’s data from another, dark clouds are ahead

DarkReading reports:

Threat Actors Increasingly Leaning on GenAI Tools

TechCrunch reports:

Google removes over 50 DEI groups from a list of groups it helps fund

Perplexity accused of scraping websites that explicitly blocked AI scraping

404 Media reports:

Nearly 100,000 ChatGPT Conversations Were Searchable on Google

AP reports:

New study sheds light on ChatGPT’s alarming interactions with teens

Time reports:

The Issue With AI-Powered Pricing

Amnesty International reports:

UK: X’s design and policy choices created fertile ground for inflammatory, racist narratives targeting Muslims and migrants following Southport attack

Rolling Stone reports:

How the Epstein Files Blew Up a Pro-Trump AI Bot Network on X

Cybersecurity/Privacy

DarkReading reports:

Turning Human Vulnerability Into Organizational Strength

BleepingComputer reports:

Attackers exploit link-wrapping services to steal Microsoft 365 logins

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Zero Knowledge Proofs Alone Are Not a Digital ID Solution to Protecting User Privacy

The Register reports:

Three US agencies get failing grades for not following IT best practices

Black Hat’s network ops center brings rivals together for a common cause

Proton has:

The continent of Europe and the American flag: Europe’s tech sovereignty watch

Politico reports:

Federal court filing system hit in sweeping hack

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – 128

Ghost announces:

Ghost 6.0

John Onolan shares:

Reflections on the social web

Mastodon has:

Trunk & Tidbits, July 2025

IFTAS reports:

IWF Offers Fediverse a Way to Block CSAM

Navigating the UK Online Safety Act

Elena Rossini has:

In this age of technofeudalism every writer who covers technology – especially resistance to Big Tech – should disclose their tech stack. Here’s mine.

We agree and here’s what we use.

Paths and Patches has:

Patches, Paths & The Matrix: FediCon thoughts Part I

CoSocial has:

[CoSocial Reads: Recap of “Governance on Fediverse Microblogging Servers”](https://blog.cosocial.ca/blog/cosocial-reads-governance-on-fediverse-microblogging-servers/)

Slightly Federated Social Media

Bluesky Report – 128

A New Social has:

Bridging vs cross-posting

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SubStack #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2307