Favorite Numerous state laws passed this year, and bills proposed in Congress, would set onerous new restrictions on what young people can do online, depriving teenagers of their First Amendment rights to express themselves, access protected speech, engage in anonymous speech, and participate in online communities. They also enforce a presumption that parents of minors…
All posts tagged Social Networks
EFF to Ninth Circuit: Twitter Has First Amendment Right to Ban Users, Including Presidents
Favorite Time and time again, we have said–and courts have ruled–that social media platforms have the First Amendment right to ban users. We have argued that banned users cannot successfully sue platforms for acting as government censors without showing that the platforms willfully and fully ceded their editorial discretion to the government. But nevertheless, the…
The Broad, Vague RESTRICT Act Is a Dangerous Substitute for Comprehensive Data Privacy Legislation
Favorite The recently introduced RESTRICT Act (S. 686, Sen. Warner and Sen. Thune) rightfully is causing a lot of concern. This bill is being called a “TikTok ban,” but it’s more complicated than that. As we wrote in our initial review of the bill, the RESTRICT Act would authorize the executive branch to block “transactions”…
Participation in the Fediverse
Favorite Parts of the fediverse have been in something of an uproar recently over an experimental search service that was under development called (appropriately enough) Searchtodon. The project aimed to enable people to search their own home timeline and worked by being authorized by a user to access that user’s timeline via the ActivityPub API…
The Breadth of the Fediverse
Favorite The Washington Post recently published an op-ed by Megan McArdle titled “Twitter might be replaced, but not by Mastodon or other imitators.” The article argues that Mastodon is falling into a common trap for open source projects: building a look-alike alternative which improves things a typical user doesn’t care about, while missing elements that…
Pivotal Year for the Metaverse and Extended Reality: 2022 in Review
Favorite Neal Stephenson’s classic 1992 dystopian novel Snow Crash inspired today’s tech industry in many ways. Google Earth is said to have been inspired by the novel’s “Earth” software, which lets people interactively visualize the whole world. Snow Crash is also the origin of an immersive virtual world Stephenson called the “Metaverse,” which, of course,…
A Promising New GDPR Ruling Against Targeted Ads
Favorite Targeted advertising’s days may be numbered. The Wall Street Journal and Reuters report that the European Data Protection Board has ruled that Meta cannot continue targeting ads based on user’s online activity without affirmative, opt-in consent. This ruling is based on the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is a big step…
How to Make a Mastodon Account and Join the Fediverse
Favorite This post is part of a series on Mastodon and the fediverse. We also have a post on understanding the fediverse, privacy and security on Mastodon, and why the fediverse will be great—if we don’t screw it up, and more are on the way. You can follow EFF on Mastodon here. The recent chaos at Twitter is…
Leaving Twitter's Walled Garden
Favorite This post is part of a series on Mastodon and the fediverse. We also have a post on privacy and security on Mastodon, and why the fediverse will be great—if we don’t screw it up, and more are on the way. You can follow EFF on Mastodon here. A wave of people have announced that they’re leaving…
Is Mastodon Private and Secure? Let’s Take a Look
Favorite This post is part of a series on Mastodon and the fediverse. We also have a post on why the fediverse will be great—if we don’t screw it up, and more are on the way. With so many users migrating to Mastodon as their micro-blogging service of choice, a lot of questions are being…