censorship
A Myanmar smartphone user checks Facebook in 2021. Photo from The Irrawaddy, used with permission. This article by Mi Ei Thinzar Myint was originally published in The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar. This edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. Myanmar’s military regime blocked Facebook and other messaging apps following the 2021 coup in a bid to restrict freedom of expression and communication that it believes threatens its rule. The people of Myanmar were using virtual private networks (VPNs), either paid or free versions, to b...
Global Voices
The Supreme Court will allow federal agencies to resume widespread communication with social media companies for the purposes of suppressing controversial speech. For everyone who was perturbed by the Twitter Files and Facebook Files—which revealed a vast web of government pressure on private actors, called jawboning—this is a regrettable outcome. The case was Murthy v. Missouri—also known as Missouri v. Biden—and involved a group of individuals who were kicked off Facebook and Twitter. They contended that the platforms took such actions at the behest of the federal government. The Court held ...
Reason
A billboard criticizing former President Donald Trump by comparing him to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has been taken down, apparently because a congresswoman asked the advertiser to remove it. While the founder of the political group behind the billboard says a different message critical of Trump will be coming soon, the fact that a politician openly intervened to quash controversial political speech is cause for concern. The billboard showed pictures of Trump and Castro with the Spanish message, "No a los dictadores no a Trump," which translates to "No to dictators no to Trump." The message q...
Reason
Julian Assange was released from prison this week after agreeing to plead guilty to conspiring to disclose classified documents related to national security. After five years behind bars, it's hard to exactly call this a win for the WikiLeaks founder. But on the surface, it is a loss for the U.S. government, which wanted to put Assange away for a much, much longer period of time. And yet, on some level, authorities got exactly what it seems they wanted: a warning to anyone who would dare to publish information that makes the government look bad. It provides a clear view of what happens when yo...
Reason
Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy and economics at Stanford University and a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which rejected COVID-19 lockdowns in favor of focused protection of older Americans and other high-risk groups. Bhattacharya is now involved in a high-profile lawsuit before the Supreme Court, alleging that the government improperly pressured social media platforms to censor scientific opinions that deviated from official narratives. Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with him in May at Reason Weekend in Boston. Q: You're originally from India, but you grew u...
Reason
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
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