reclaimthenet 42 mins ago

Three of the world's biggest ad agencies just settled with the FTC over colluding to defund publishers they didn't like. Dentsu, GroupM, Publicis. $81 billion in ad-buying power agreeing on which outlets get starved. They called it "brand safety." It was a blacklist.

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FTC Settlement: Ad Agencies Agree to Stop "Brand Safety" Collusion to Defund Media Outlets

The agencies literally quoted Fight Club rules to keep their $81 billion blacklist quiet.

reclaimthenet yesterday

California just advanced a bill letting immigration nonprofit employees demand their faces and info be scrubbed from the internet. $4,000 minimum fine for journalists who don't comply. No exemption for reporters. It's already being called the "Stop Nick Shirley Act." Prior restraint is the exact thing the First Amendment was written to prevent...

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California's "Stop Nick Shirley Act" Would Penalize Journalism

The First Amendment was designed to prevent exactly this; a law that punishes speech before any court decides whether it was harmful.

reclaimthenet yesterday

Turkey is about to tie every social media account to a national ID number. Miss the three-month window and the account gets shut down. Justice Minister Gürlek says social media is "definitely not a space for freedom." The system he's building proves it.

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Turkey To Require National ID for Social Media Accounts

Turkey's government just found a way to put a national ID card on every tweet, post, and comment its citizens make online.

reclaimthenet 2 days ago

A San Francisco judge just locked a man out of ChatGPT without ever hearing from him, and the First Amendment question went unasked.

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A Court Banned a Man from ChatGPT. No One Asked If That's Constitutional.

A California judge just decided who gets to use ChatGPT, and the person banned from it wasn't even in the courtroom.

reclaimthenet 2 days ago

Von der Leyen says the EU's new age verification app will "shield children." What it actually does: routes every adult through a government ID check to use the internet. She compared it to the COVID pass. That's not reassuring.

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EU Launches Age Verification App

The Commission built the app on the same architecture as its planned continental digital identity wallet. That's not a coincidence.

reclaimthenet 2 days ago

Britain has developed a very specific institutional reflex. When its agencies fail catastrophically, the state responds by expanding surveillance of the general population. When the public expresses anger about those failures, the state responds by censoring the expression of that anger. UK Southport Inquiry Pushes Mass Surveillance and VPN Restrictions

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UK Southport Inquiry Pushes Mass Surveillance and VPN Restrictions

Every agency involved had the information to stop the Southport attacker, and the inquiry's answer is to track what the entire country browses...

reclaimthenet 3 days ago

Singapore gamers are being locked out of games they already own unless they hand Microsoft a face scan, a passport, or their national ID. Google went further: its "age estimation" watches your YouTube habits and search history to guess how old you are. They call it child safety. The result is a biometric toll booth between you and your own library.

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Xbox Now Wants Your Face to Let You Play Games You Already Own in Singapore

Microsoft wants your face, your passport, or your national ID, just to keep playing the games sitting on your account.

reclaimthenet 3 days ago

Britain just pulled off a neat trick: make online platforms fund the machinery that polices their speech. Ofcom charges tech firms a slice of global revenue to run the censorship law, the Online Safety Act, then decides what counts as “harm,” ramps up enforcement, and sends the bill as it grows. Pay for the system that watches you, or get pushed out. A tidy little loop.

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Ofcom Demands Tech Platforms Fund the UK's Internet Censorship Regime

Ofcom now sends the bill for policing the internet directly to the companies being policed, and the meter just started running.

reclaimthenet 3 days ago

Massachusetts House Passes Social Media Age Verification Digital ID Bill

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Massachusetts Social Media Age Verification Bill

Every adult in Massachusetts would have to hand their ID to a tech company just to keep scrolling.

reclaimthenet 3 days ago

Reno Police Sued After Wrongful Arrest Based on Facial Recognition Errors

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Reno Police Sued After Wrongful Arrest Based on Facial Recognition Errors

The officer who arrested him later admitted under oath it never should have happened, and that doing it this way was department policy.

reclaimthenet 5 days ago

Secret Grand Jury Convened to Unmask Anonymous Government Critic on Reddit

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Secret Grand Jury Convened to Unmask Anonymous Government Critic on Reddit

The government lost its case in open court, so it moved the whole thing behind closed doors.

reclaimthenet 6 days ago

xAI Sues Colorado to Block AI Speech Regulation on First Amendment Grounds

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xAI Sues Colorado to Block AI Speech Regulation on First Amendment Grounds

AI's lawsuit against Colorado doubles as the first major courtroom test of whether the government can tell an AI what opinions to have.

reclaimthenet 6 days ago

How UK Regulator Ofcom Quietly Bypassed International Law to Police American Speech

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How UK Regulator Ofcom Quietly Bypassed International Law to Police American Speech

A British regulator bypassed every formal legal treaty and just emailed American companies into compliance, and 98% of them apparently obliged.

reclaimthenet 1 week ago

Alberta Bill Would Fine Political Deepfakes $10,000 Without Satire Exemptions

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Alberta Bill Would Fine Political Deepfakes $10,000 Without Satire Exemptions

The bill makes no distinction between a fake video designed to suppress votes and a satirical meme poking fun at the premier.

reclaimthenet 1 week ago

Brazil’s Justice Moraes Ordered Global Takedowns of American Users’ Speech, House Report Reveals

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Brazil's Justice Moraes Ordered Global Takedowns of American Users' Speech, House Report Reveals

A Brazilian judge has been ordering American tech companies to delete American speech for five years, and a new congressional report finally shows ...

reclaimthenet 1 week ago

UK Foreign Affairs Committee Calls for Government Agency to Police Online “Disinformation”

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UK Foreign Affairs Committee Calls for Government Agency to Police Online "Disinformation"

A parliamentary committee just proposed giving a GCHQ-adjacent agency the power to decide which speech counts as a national security threat.

reclaimthenet 1 week ago

OkCupid Gave 3M Users’ Photos to AI Firm, FTC Says

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OkCupid Gave 3M Users' Photos to AI Firm, FTC Says

The regulatory price for handing three million people's dating photos to a facial recognition startup turned out to be a promise to behave.

reclaimthenet 1 week ago

US & EU Negotiate Biometric Data-Sharing Deal

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US & EU Negotiate Biometric Data-Sharing Deal

A European whose fingerprints end up in a US enforcement database by mistake would have to fix it through American courts.

reclaimthenet 1 week ago

Meta To Comply With Florida Age Verification Digital ID Law

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Meta To Comply With Florida Age Verification Digital ID Law

The state that wants to protect children online first needs every adult in Florida to hand over their ID.

reclaimthenet 1 week ago

Apple Removes Bitchat from China App Store at Cyberspace Administration Order

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Apple Removes Bitchat from China App Store at Cyberspace Administration Order

The app that needs no internet, no servers, and no user accounts turned out to be exactly the kind of thing Beijing can't let exist.