There is tremendous global momentum behind today's efforts to age-gate the internet. The momentum is so strong and rights of young people so underappreciated that the conversation readily shifts to "how can we do this and protect privacy?" instead of "why do this?" I will keep trying to stop it. 7/7
A tribe’s collective stupidity is proportional to its demand for purity. The more closely a group must agree, the more must be trimmed from each brain to make it fit.
"Doch sollte unser Problembewusstsein nicht davon abhängig sein, wen es gerade zufällig „trifft“. Der „Kampf“ für die Demokratie verkommt schnell zu einem Kampf gegen die Demokratie, und dies unabhängig davon, gegen wen er sich richtet"
I'm delighted to join the academic constituency of @thegni.bsky.social as an individual expert. GNI’s multistakeholder forum serves as an important bulwark for freedom of expression and privacy in the tech sector. It is a great honour to contribute to this mission.
The internet radically expanded freedom of speech— but since then all we've been talking about is the risks.
At our #FreeSpeechSummit2025, @celeup.bsky.social Director Agustina Del Campo explains why we need to redirect the conversation.
6246 criminal charges under Germany’s highly controversial offence of insulting politicians were filed in 2025 alone, an all-time high and a troubling signal for freedom of expression. www.stern.de/politik/poli...
"Social media democratised public opinion, shifting influence away from elites and experts to ordinary people. LLMs will partly reverse this trend. They are a powerful, new technocratising force" @danwphilosophy.bsky.social
www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/how-ai-wil...
[jetzt auch hier]
Ich hatte jetzt mal Zeit, in die Inszenierung von Milo Rau am Thalia Theater in Hamburg reinzuschauen. Beim zufälligen Reinzappen fiel mir folgende 👇 Szene aus der „Vernehmung“ des „Zeugen“ Feroz Khan auf, einem jungen deutsch-pakistanischen Influencer, der für die AfD wirbt. /2
"The measures were also intended to make the accused, some of whom had already appeared several times with such content, aware that criminal offences on the internet also have real consequences."
New Year, same story: "The accused were summoned or visited by the local police stations, and evidence was secured from their smartphones. In some cases, searches were also carried out." (25.02.2026)
www.bka.de/DE/Presse/Li...
Ein Rentner aus Heilbronn hat Friedrich Merz auf Facebook scherzhaft als „Pinocchio“ bezeichnet – mit langer-Nase-Emoji.
Und jetzt ermittelt laut „Heilbronner Stimme“ offenbar die Kriminalpolizei wegen #Beleidigung (§ 188 StGB).
#schwachkopf
Two years after the Digital Services Act came into full effect, what does civil society look like? Mateus Correia de Carvalho & Rachel Griffin explore how different civil society actors are engaging with the DSA, and the opportunities and barriers shaping their impact.
“I want to see real names on the internet. I want to know who is speaking up,” the German Federal Chancellor said yesterday. It is hardly surprising that calls for age verification and social media bans for minors are now being followed by demands for an end to online anonymity.
Important reminder! It is a mistake to equate every intervention against Big Tech with a defence of democracy, especially given the role these platforms play in empowering marginalised voices. Some proposed cures may produce consequences worse than the disease
Meta and Google pulling out of political ads in the EU has made it harder for the Hungarian opposition to be heard. The platforms are a long way from perfect, but they're not Orban government owned or controlled in the way much of the rest of Hungarian media is.
YouTube seems to be at least trialing out blocking VPNs and proxies
I really fear what sort of internet the future has in store for us. Probably where you have to identity yourself to every service and where anonymity and VPN use are increasingly illegal.
www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/s/3...
The situation in Iran stands as a clear example of how digital sovereignty empowers repression rather than protects rights, says Azadeh Akbari. It should be a warning against abandoning the idea of a free and global internet, she writes. buff.ly/9e3UUoO
Stop whatever you're doing and read @farzdusa.bsky.social rejoinder to "digital sovereignty" at @futurefreespeech.org's Bedrock Principle:
What if expressing an unpopular opinion could get your assets frozen—or stop you from entering or transiting a country?
Europe has recently added to its fast-growing list of individuals sanctioned for speech deemed a threat to national security.
Some people in western democracies are so used to their basic freedom that they don't even notice when nation states take them away. Or support it even!
On Dec. 1, 2025, we partnered with Örebro University to convene leading academics, regulators, companies, and civil society experts to confront this challenge in an in-depth roundtable examining AI’s impact on freedom of expression.
My mom says Generative AI chatbots made a big difference in her life this year. In your fight with big tech, don't forget that these AI online services, can be essential for some of the most vulnerable people.
👍 Fully agree on its limitations. However, traditional fact-checking faces even more severe constraints also in terms of scale. Every fact-checking model involves trade-offs, including whether over- or underreach carries the more serious implications.
I wrote in the past on why I believe crowdsourced approaches are the best way out of the partisan polarisation trap here: alhohlfeld.substack.com/p/reclaiming... [2/2]
Another example of why the concept of top-down fact checking is inherently dangerous. The question "what if the other side were to use the same concept?" is no longer merely hypothetical [1/2]
The same instruments imposed by executive decisions are framed as a “defence of liberal democracy” when applied to political opponents, or as an “attack on liberal democracy” when applied to political allies (www.linkedin.com/posts/alexan...)
"This gap between user desires and current offerings indicates an opportunity: meaningful, accessible controls that provide substantive choices could meet this latent demand and increase adoption among users wanting greater agency over their digital environment"
Yes; I´m using similar tools; unfortunately since it's hidden in a drop down it didn't fully work for the Google reports
Thanks, it's implemented :)
Quote from TikToks latest Risk Assessment report: TikTok also works with industry groups and civil society to detect undisclosed AIGC. TikTok participates in the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (‘C2PA”), an open technical standard and content provenance solution that can provide information in a piece of content's metadata about its origins and whether AIGC models were used to create or edit it. This technology helps TikTok to detect AIGC at scale when content with C2PA metadata is uploaded to the Platform. TikTok was the first video-sharing platform to launch the ability to read Content Credentials from C2PA. From Q3 2024 to Q1 2025, 4,781,019 videos on TikTok were auto-labelled with the AIGC tag of “Al-generated” inthe EU.
In their latest risk assessment report (www.tiktok.com/transparency/en/dsa-tran... #TikTok claims that AI content with the #C2PA label that is uploaded is automatically labeled. I tested this yesterday with one video and it seems this is not true […]
[Original post on chaos.social]
