censorship
Collage by Arzu Geybullayeva. Images free to use courtesy of Global Voices’ content partners. June 21, marked a year since the Azerbaijani village of Söyüdlü was rocked by environmental protests organized by local residents objecting to the construction plans for a second artificial lake, also known as the tailing dam. Footage of riot police using disproportionate physical force, rubber bullets, and tear gas against village residents was widely reported by the local media at the time. At least five village residents received administrative detentions and one resident received an administrative...
Global Voices
Masameer County was supposed to be Saudi Arabia's big break in the comedy world. The online cartoon, similar in tone to South Park and Family Guy, had been growing in popularity as the kingdom was undergoing social reforms. When Netflix picked up Masameer County in 2021, it quickly topped the viewership charts in Saudi Arabia. And you didn't have to be Saudi to enjoy it. The citizens of Masameer, a fictional Saudi metropolis, suffer from the same everyday problems as the rest of us: annoying viral trends, spoiled nepo babies, obsessive online nerds, pandemic-induced social isolation, and badly...
Reason
Two laws requiring age verification online have been paused by federal courts. The laws in Indiana and Mississippi are now on hold as legal challenges to them play out. The Indiana law (Senate Bill 17) says visitors to websites that display pornography or other "adult oriented" content that is "harmful to minors" must submit a copy of their driver's license or otherwise verify that they're at least 18 years old. The Mississippi law (House Bill 1126, also known as the Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act) says social media platforms must verify people's ages before letting them crea...
Reason
"The First Amendment is spinning out of control," Columbia law professor Tim Wu warns in a New York Times essay. While Wu ostensibly objects to Supreme Court decisions that he thinks have interpreted freedom of speech too broadly, his complaint amounts to a rejection of the premise that the principle should be applied consistently, especially when it benefits speakers and messages he does not like. The immediate provocation for Wu's diatribe is yesterday's Supreme Court decisions in two cases challenging Florida and Texas laws that aimed to restrict content moderation on social media. Although...
Reason
The Supreme Court ruled today in two cases that could have a major impact on how social media platforms operate and how the government can interfere on behalf of political speech on these platforms. The cases (NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice) were brought by two tech industry trade groups—NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association—that opposed social media moderation laws in Florida and Texas. The Court unanimously agreed to vacate decisions by the 11th Circuit and the 5th Circuit—which upheld a preliminary injunction on the Florida law (finding it likely did v...
Reason
Alondra Santiago. Screenshot from video “Canción de la semana | ¡Salve, oh patria!” (Song of the week | Hail, O Fatherland!) from her YouTube channel IngoEc. Fair use. “Hail, O Fatherland” is Ecuador's national anthem. In the early hours of June 25, 2024, Cuban journalist Alondra Santiago took to X (formerly Twitter), to share the the notification she received from the Ministry of External Affairs and Human Mobility. The Ministry revoked her visa which had allowed her to live in Ecuadorian territory for 19 years. The notification was signed by Vice Minister Alejandro Dávalos. The Foreign Minis...
Global Voices
TikTok is in trouble: In April, President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation that forces ByteDance, the popular social media app's Chinese parent company, to sell its majority stake to a U.S.-based firm. If it fails to do this, the app will be banned in the United States. Various dubious arguments have been deployed against TikTok, but Congress' stated prime motive to force its divestiture is that the app's Chinese owners are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and thus having their tech on so many Americans' phones is a dire national security risk. The CCP is an authoritarian ...
Reason
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
閲覧を続けるには、ノアドット株式会社が「プライバシーポリシー」に定める「アクセスデータ」を取得することを含む「nor.利用規約」に同意する必要があります。
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