Featured stories about Technology
Stories about Technology
19 March 2019
Russian journalist forced to resign for Telegram channel critical of St. Petersburg authorities
Journalist Maria Karpenko says her editor confronted her about co-running a Telegram channel critical of St. Petersburg authorities.
Activists speak out against Iraq's cybercrime bill
The bill prescribes lengthy prisons sentences, including life imprisonment, for speech-related offences.
15 March 2019
Censored on WeChat: the disappearance of Ye Jianming, former chairman of CEFC China Energy
With Ye's disappearance, the details of quiet agreements between his multi-billion dollar company and the Chinese government began to unravel.
8 March 2019
Netizen Report: Activists reject EU plans to pre-censor copyright violations, ‘terrorist’ content
A weekly dose of news about challenges, victories, and emerging trends in technology and human rights around the world.
7 March 2019
Censored on WeChat: Chinese megastar Fan Bingbing's tax evasion scandal — and her disappearance
The news of Fan's tax evasion penalty and her apology made the actress a top target for censorship on social media.
6 March 2019
‘We are not bots!’ In Berlin, thousands protest proposed EU regulation on internet upload filters
Protesters rallied against the proposed "upload filters" in EU Copyright Directive, as part of a movement spanning the continent.
3 March 2019
Russian rocket Soyuz launches the first OneWeb satellites, tethered to the ground by restrictive legislation
Russians' hopes for censorship-free online access crashed and burned after the authorities imposed strict regulations and full government control of the pioneering satellite Internet program.
1 March 2019
Netizen Report: Two of Egypt’s leading digital activists await their release from prison, after years behind bars
Alaa and Shawkan are still waiting to get out, Algeria's internet is faltering, and Nepal has a new IT bill.
Censored on WeChat: Huawei, ZTE and ‘Amazing China’
The censorship of ZTE and Huawei has strong association with the censorship of "China-U.S trade war".
As patriotic propaganda video praising Huawei goes viral, netizens mock the company's political connections
"The lyrics is so straightforward with no rhetorical consideration -- Huawei is good, Huawei is beautiful --, this is a kind of aestheticism with Chinese characteristics."
27 February 2019
USCYBERCOM attack gives Russian legislators new justification for tighter internet controls
Both pro-Kremlin experts and their opponents see the USCYBERCOM's attack on the "troll factory" as ammunition for isolationist policies.
25 February 2019
Is your favorite movie promoting toxic masculinity? Mango Meter can tell you
"We have every right to enjoy entertainment that does not demean us, and we certainly have a right to voice our views and opinions."
23 February 2019
‘Space is about dreaming’ — an interview with International Space University president
"We hope that space will not become a space of confrontation (...) Space makes children dream and all of humanity as well."
22 February 2019
As Putin preaches ‘sovereignty’ and tech modernization, experts lament loss of online freedoms
As Vladimir Putin promises Russians a faster, more reliable internet, two reports by independent expert groups paint an unrelentingly bleak picture of more crackdowns on online freedom of speech.
Bangladeshi government targets world's largest Bengali blogging platform in porn censorship spree
The incidents of moral policing and the extension of the ban to a Bangla blogging platform and Google Books suggest that the authority's definition of “objectionable” may go far beyond.
Netizen Report: Both Bangladesh and South Korea are waging a ‘war on porn’ — and paving the way for political censorship
South Korea and Bangladesh are blocking porn and "obscene" content, Venezuela is blocking YouTube, and Uzbekistan has finally stopped blocking Facebook and VK.
18 February 2019
DigiGlot Newsletter: App links refugees with volunteer translators
The DigiGlot Newsletter is a bi-weekly collaborative newsletter that reports on how indigenous, minority, and endangered language communities are adopting and adapting technology to change the internet landscape.
EU proposal pushes tech companies to tackle ‘terrorist content’ with AI, despite implications for war crimes evidence
AI tools can assess whether a video is violent or graphic. But can they determine the video’s intended purpose?
Censored on WeChat: As tensions in China-US trade conflict rose, so did WeChat censorship
The second installment in our series looks at the most censored topic in the 2018 WeChatscope dataset: the China-US trade war.
17 February 2019
Russian public sector workers ordered to ‘like’ social media posts promoting the 2019 Winter Universiade
This is not the first instance of Russian public officials acting as "human bots" to promote the government's agenda online.
