Favorite Please join EFF for the next segment of EFFecting Change, our livestream series covering digital privacy and free speech. EFFecting Change Livestream Series:Is There Hope for Social Media?Thursday, March 20th12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Pacific – Check Local TimeThis event is LIVE and FREE! Users are frustrated with legacy social media companies. Is it possible to effectively build…
Favorite For years now, there has been some concern about the coziness between technology companies and the government. Whether a company complies with casual government requests for data, requires a warrant, or even fights overly-broad warrants has been a canary in the digital coal mine during an era where companies may know more about you…
Favorite The European Commission was caught failing to comply with its own data protection regulations and, in a first, ordered to pay damages to a user for the violation. The €400 ($415) award may be tiny compared to fines levied against Big Tech by European authorities, but it’s still a win for users and considerably…
Favorite We are deeply disappointed that the Court failed to require the strict First Amendment scrutiny required in a case like this, which would’ve led to the inescapable conclusion that the government’s desire to prevent potential future harm had to be rejected as infringing millions of Americans’ constitutionally protected free speech. We are disappointed to…
Favorite On December 14, James Harr, the owner of an online store called ComradeWorkwear, announced on social media that he planned to sell a deck of “Most Wanted CEO” playing cards, satirizing the infamous “Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards” introduced by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 2003. Per the ComradeWorkwear website, the Most Wanted CEO…
Favorite The steady rise of decentralized networks this year is transforming social media. Platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads are still in their infancy but have already shown that when users are given options, innovation thrives and it results in better tools and protections for our rights online. By moving towards a digital landscape that…
Favorite We don’t know a lot more about when government jawboning social media companies—that is, attempting to pressure them to censor users’ speech— violates the First Amendment; but we do know that lawsuits based on such actions will be hard to win. In Murthy v. Missouri, the U.S. Supreme Court did not answer the important…
Favorite The Supreme Court today correctly found that social media platforms, like newspapers, bookstores, and art galleries before them, have First Amendment rights to curate and edit the speech of others they deliver to their users, and the government has a very limited role in dictating what social media platforms must and must not publish.…
Favorite The ongoing Twitter exodus sparked life into a new way of doing social media. Instead of a handful of platforms trying to control your life online, people are reclaiming control by building more open and empowering approaches to social media. Some of these you may have heard of: Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads. Each is…
Favorite Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s extraordinarily misguided and speech-chilling call this week to label social media platforms as harmful to adolescents is shameful fear-mongering that lacks scientific evidence and turns the nation’s top physician into a censor. This claim is particularly alarming given the far more complex and nuanced picture that studies have drawn about…
