censorship
Image © 2024 Appcensorship. Used with permission. When the US House of Representatives passed the legislation that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok, a popular video app, to an American company or face being banned in the US, citing national security concerns, the Chinese government criticized the move as “an act of bullying.” Yet, ironically, TikTok, along with other globally popular social media platforms, is also unavailable in China. Conversely, ByteDance tailor-made a local version, Douyin, for Chinese users, to comply with the country’s stringent censorship rules. In fact, TikTok is n...
Global Voices
New legislation would repeal parts of the Comstock Act, a Victorian-era law that's being revived to attack abortion pills. Passed in 1873, the Comstock Act was a big deal in earlier eras, sending people to prison for publishing information about birth control, critiques of marriage, and more. The law is vague and broad, banning the mailing of any "article, matter, thing, device, or substance" that the government deems "obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile," along with anything "designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use." Essentiall...
Reason
The government has said that a sculpture formerly on display outside the Hong Kong Cultural Centre was being repaired after it was covered by hoarding boards and later removed, sparking censorship concerns online. The artwork by the late Taiwanese sculptor Ju Ming features 10 figures standing in a line – some in black suits, one in pink and two in yellow raincoats. Local media reported on Wednesday that it had been covered with hoarding, which bore a photo of the sculpture on in. However, the two figures in yellow raincoats in the image were obscured by a notice, informing people that a reinfo...
Hong Kong Free Press
With the stroke of his pen, President Joe Biden could take a stand against authoritarian restrictions on free speech by issuing a posthumous pardon to D.M. Bennett, the freethought publisher convicted of violating the Comstock Act in 1879. Over the past year, judges have revived the long-dead Comstock Act to justify restrictions on speech and abortion drugs. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas even approvingly cited the moribund law in recent arguments. For these reasons, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has submitted a petition to the president se...
Reason
No internet in Gaza. Screenshot from a video “Can Starlink Provide Internet To Gaza?” by Interesting Engineering. Fair use. When the combination of big tech and politics failed the Palestinian people by overlooking the internet disruptions affecting Gaza, grassroots technology known as the “network tree” came to the rescue. Utilizing the humblest of elements such as buckets, smartphones, and e-SIMs, this ingeniously simple technology provided much-needed connectivity to a community fragmented by war, in the face of severely damaged infrastructure. Since the war on Gaza began in the aftermath o...
Global Voices
A Texas public library can't remove books simply because they discuss topics like "butts and farts," a federal court ruled last week. The case is one of the more bizarre instances of library censorship in recent years, but it nonetheless led to a decisive option from the majority, who found that it is unconstitutional to remove library books out of a "desire to limit access to ideas with which they [disagree]." The legal battle began after Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham received complaints in 2021 concerning "pornographic and overtly sexual books in the library's children's section." The co...
Reason
The creators behind BASEDPolitics are suing over a measure meant to either ban TikTok or force its divestiture. President Joe Biden signed the (highly unconstitutional) bill in April, and it already faces several legal challenges, including one filed by TikTok and one filed by eight TikTok content creators. Like those efforts, the BASEDPolitics suit focuses on the law's affront to free speech. "We wanted to file a lawsuit that was specifically focused on free speech and the First Amendment from the creators' perspective, rather than some of the other, business-related concerns in other lawsuit...
Reason
In a welcome development for people who care about liberty, Australia's government suspended its efforts to censor the planet. The country's officials suffered pushback from X (formerly Twitter) and condemnation by free speech advocates after attempting to block anybody, anywhere from seeing video of an attack at a Sydney church. At least for the moment, they've conceded defeat based, in part, on recognition that X is protected by American law, making censorship efforts unenforceable. A Censor Throws In the Towel"I have decided to discontinue the proceedings in the Federal Court against X Corp...
Reason
Photos of 11 journalists from Kyrgyzstan who were arrested in January 2024. Screenshot from the video “Дело против 11 журналистов сфабриковано // Temirov Live” from Temirov Live YouTube channel. Fair use. This article was written by Alva Omarova for Vlast.kz and published on May 22, 2024. An edited version is published on Global Voices under a media partnership agreement. In May, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published their 2024 press freedom index, highlighting the region-wide crackdown on freedom of expression in Central Asia. While Turkmenistan remains at the bottom of the table, the sco...
Global Voices
A communications tower in Indonesia. Source: Flickr photo by Richard Wasserman, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Media groups, academics, and human rights advocates are opposing a bill containing proposed amendments to Indonesia’s Broadcasting Law, which would restrict the broadcast of investigative reports and LGBTQ+ content. Introduced in 2020, the bill was deliberated at the House of Representatives in 2023 and minor revisions were made on May 16, 2024. Proponents said updating the 2002 law is necessary to develop a “sustainable broadcasting industry” and to address the challenges brought about by the rise ...
Global Voices
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