Destroying Autocracy – August 07, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

Featured Item

TechDirt reports:

Back in April 2023, when Substack CEO Chris Best refused to answer basic questions about whether his platform would allow racist content, I noted that his evasiveness was essentially hanging out a “Nazis Welcome” sign.

By December, when the company doubled down and explicitly said they’d continue hosting and monetizing Nazi newsletters, they’d fully embraced their reputation as the Nazi bar.

Last week, we got a perfect demonstration of what happens when you build your platform’s reputation around welcoming Nazis: your recommendation algorithms start treating Nazi content as more than worth tolerating, to content worth promoting.

Substack’s Algorithm Accidentally Reveals What We Already Knew: It’s The Nazi Bar Now

If you are on SuckStack you are a c^nt in addition to being a willing ally of Nazis.

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

Radio Free Europe reports:

Under The Missiles: The Women Racing To Save Ukraine’s Photographic Treasures

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Ukraine obtains classified data on Russia’s newest nuclear submarine, intelligence claims

The Register reports:

China’s botched Great Firewall upgrade invites attacks on its censorship infrastructure

Cool.

Broadcom’s Jericho4 ASICs just opened the door to multi-datacenter AI training

The MIT Technology Review reports:

OpenAI has finally released open-weight language models

Rare good news on the AI front.

404 Media reports:

Congress Launches Investigation into Flock After 404 Media Reporting

The Verge reports:

Google has just two weeks to begin cracking open Android, it admits in emergency filing

TechCrunch reports:

Jury rules Meta violated California privacy laws by quietly collecting Flo users’ menstrual health data

Citizen Lab director warns cyber industry about US authoritarian descent

The Markup reports:

Should Lyft and Uber charge more if your battery is low? California may soon ban that

Malware Tech reports:

Every Reason Why I Hate AI and You Should Too

The Guardian reviews:

Can’t Look Away review – a harrowing, heartbreaking indictment of social media’s ruthlessness

Ars Technica reports:

Murena’s Pixel Tablet is helping to wean me off Google

Open Web Advocacy reports:

Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

NGI Commons reports on:

Decidim and the Spirit of a Digital Commons Community

Very, very cool. Of course it’s from Barcelona.

The European Commission reports on:

European Media Freedom Act

The Center for Democracy and Technology reports:

CDT Europe Responds to the European Commission Public Consultation on High-Risk AI Systems

Neutral

TechPolicy says:

We Need to Reimagine Digital Maps as Public Infrastructure. Here’s Why.

The Guardian reports:

‘We didn’t vote for ChatGPT’: Swedish PM under fire for using AI in role

Dude!

Nextcloud shares:

Digital Sovereignty Index: How countries compare in digital independence

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

The Register reports:

UK secretly allows facial recognition scans of passport, immigration databases

US charges 2 Chinese nationals with illegally shipping Nvidia AI chips to China

The Guardian reports:

Palestine Action ban coupled with Online Safety Act ‘a threat to public debate’

TechDirt reports:

Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Blocking Access to Harmful Content Will Not Protect Children Online, No Matter How Many Times UK Politicians Say So

You would have thought the United Kuntdumb would have learned something from Brexit. Hopefully the rest of the world can learn something from its stupidity.

Or not, Reclaim the Net reports:

EU Revives Plan to Ban Private Messaging

404 Media reports:

ICE Is Buying Mobile Iris Scanning Tech for Its Deportation Arm

A CBP Agent Wore Meta Smart Glasses to an Immigration Raid in Los Angeles

Pariah States

TechCrunch reports:

North Korean spies posing as remote workers have infiltrated hundreds of companies, says CrowdStrike

EuroNews reports:

Dutch privacy watchdog warns against Israeli terms for aid organisations

The Guardian reports:

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

The Register reports:

Silver Fox APT Blurs the Line Between Espionage & Cybercrime

BleepingComputer reports:

Ex-White House cyber, counter-terrorism guru: Microsoft considers security an annoyance, not a necessity

Big Media

The Columbia Journalism Review has:

When Neutrality Is a Constraint

Is the US Media Captured?

Obviously.

Speaking of, NiemanLab has:

A chicken for The New York Times, a star for Bloomberg: A new “Media Capitulation Index” ranks large media and tech companies

Nonprofit news sites are built to generate impact — but these are also generating audiences

Poynter has:

Did Craigslist decimate newspapers? Legend meets reality.

Trump’s latest moves against free speech are ‘really scary stuff’

404 Media reports:

Wikipedia Editors Adopt ‘Speedy Deletion’ Policy for AI Slop Articles

Big Tech

The Register reports:

When hyperscalers can’t safeguard one nation’s data from another, dark clouds are ahead

DarkReading reports:

Threat Actors Increasingly Leaning on GenAI Tools

TechCrunch reports:

Google removes over 50 DEI groups from a list of groups it helps fund

Perplexity accused of scraping websites that explicitly blocked AI scraping

404 Media reports:

Nearly 100,000 ChatGPT Conversations Were Searchable on Google

AP reports:

New study sheds light on ChatGPT’s alarming interactions with teens

Time reports:

The Issue With AI-Powered Pricing

Amnesty International reports:

UK: X’s design and policy choices created fertile ground for inflammatory, racist narratives targeting Muslims and migrants following Southport attack

Rolling Stone reports:

How the Epstein Files Blew Up a Pro-Trump AI Bot Network on X

Cybersecurity/Privacy

DarkReading reports:

Turning Human Vulnerability Into Organizational Strength

BleepingComputer reports:

Attackers exploit link-wrapping services to steal Microsoft 365 logins

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Zero Knowledge Proofs Alone Are Not a Digital ID Solution to Protecting User Privacy

The Register reports:

Three US agencies get failing grades for not following IT best practices

Black Hat’s network ops center brings rivals together for a common cause

Proton has:

The continent of Europe and the American flag: Europe’s tech sovereignty watch

Politico reports:

Federal court filing system hit in sweeping hack

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – 128

Ghost announces:

Ghost 6.0

John Onolan shares:

Reflections on the social web

Mastodon has:

Trunk & Tidbits, July 2025

IFTAS reports:

IWF Offers Fediverse a Way to Block CSAM

Navigating the UK Online Safety Act

Elena Rossini has:

In this age of technofeudalism every writer who covers technology – especially resistance to Big Tech – should disclose their tech stack. Here’s mine.

We agree and here’s what we use.

Paths and Patches has:

Patches, Paths & The Matrix: FediCon thoughts Part I

CoSocial has:

[CoSocial Reads: Recap of “Governance on Fediverse Microblogging Servers”](https://blog.cosocial.ca/blog/cosocial-reads-governance-on-fediverse-microblogging-servers/)

Slightly Federated Social Media

Bluesky Report – 128

A New Social has:

Bridging vs cross-posting

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SubStack #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2307

Destroying Autocracy – July 31, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

Featured Item

Drew Lyton

The Future is NOT Self-Hosted

Great stuff that ties in nicely with what we are advocating here on Battalion.

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

TechCrunch reports:

Proton releases a new app for two-factor authentication

Flights grounded as Russia’s largest airline Aeroflot hacked and systems ‘destroyed’

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Non-EU countries, including Ukraine, can join Europe’s new satellite network rivaling Starlink, commissioner says

The Register reports:

Europe’s AI crackdown starts this week and Big Tech isn’t happy

Italy says Meta may be violating law with AI in WhatsApp

Edge case: Opera claims Microsoft still playing dirty with defaults

US Navy won’t torpedo hurricane forecast satellite feed after all

Open Future opines:

A Step Forward, But Not Far Enough: the EU’s AI Transparency Template

The European Commission reports:

Commission preliminarily finds Temu in breach of the Digital Services Act in relation to illegal products on its platform

The Cradle reports:

Netherlands labels Israel ‘threat to national security’ for first time

They are a threat to every nation on Earth’s national security, as are all pariah surveillance states.

The European Commission announces:

Commission proposes partial suspension of Israel’s association to Horizon Europe

Unfortunately, the German and Italian pseudo-fascists blocked it.

EuroNews reports:

EU fails to agree Israeli suspension from research fund over Gaza

Ars Technica reports:

Google confirms it will sign the EU AI Code of Practice

Bleeping Computer reports:

Internet Archive is now a US federal depository library

CISA open-sources Thorium platform for malware, forensic analysis

W3C announces:

Vision for W3C is a W3C Statement

Media Revolution announces:

The Media Revolution countdown campaign is LIVE!

IMHO, this ties in with the Open Media Network idea featured in our Techno Anarchist Manifesto.

Murena shares:

What is a VPN (virtual private network)?

Nextcloud reports:

The Nextcloud Include initiative: How Nextcloud supports diversity in open source

Cory Doctorow has:

You can’t fight enshittification (But we can.)

In addition to the tactics in the Techno Anarchist Manifesto, we have to fight in the political realm as well.

Neutral

Bert Hubert looks at:

Europe’s Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis

The Guardian reports:

Why did thousands of adult titles just disappear from the biggest PC gaming marketplaces?

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

Breach Media reports:

Mark Carney’s AI agenda is a gift to Big Tech

Canada is 1,010 times better than the U.S. but it ain’t perfect.

404 Media reports:

UK Users Need to Post Selfie or Photo ID to View Reddit’s r/IsraelCrimes, r/UkraineWarFootage

The United Kuntsdumb is now only 1.46 times better than the United States of Assholes and getting worse by the minute.

The MIT Technology Review reports:

What you may have missed about Trump’s AI Action Plan

TechDirt reports:

Trump Threatens To Withold Billions From States That Try To Make Broadband Affordable To Poor People

Pariah States

So-called newspaper, The Washington Times reports:

Hackers breach intelligence website used by CIA

BleepingComputer reports:

French telecom giant Orange discloses cyberattack

Microsoft: Russian hackers use ISP access to hack embassies in AiTM attacks

DarkReading reports:

Russia’s Secret Blizzard APT Gains Embassy Access via ISPs

The Register reports:

Silk Typhoon spun a web of patents for offensive cyber tools, report says

Big Media

404 Media reports:

Journalist Discovers Google Vulnerability That Allowed People to Disappear Specific Pages From Search

Patreon reports:

Substack sent a push alert promoting a Nazi blog

I am sorry, but if you are on SubStack at this point you are either an uninformed amoral moron or a c^nt. Thankfully, you can still avoid being reincarnated as a cockroach by moving to Ghost or Buttondown.

ArsTechnica reports:

Substack’s “Nazi problem” won’t go away after push notification apology

The Columbia Journalism Review reports:

Traffic Apocalypse: Google’s AI Overviews are killing click-throughs to news sites.

Big Tech

The Register reports:

‘Impossible hill to climb’: US clouds crush European competition on their home turf

Publishers cry foul over W3C crusade to rid web of third-party cookies

Ars Technica reports:

Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says

TechCrunch reports:

Zuckerberg signals Meta won’t open source all of its ‘superintelligence’ AI models

BTW, their current ones are in no way opensource.

Bikepacking shares:

When We Get Komooted

Terror

The Guardian reports:

Far-right extremists using games platforms to radicalise teenagers, report warns

Cybersecurity/Privacy

TechPolicy asks:

Is There Any Way Forward for Privacy Legislation in the United States?

BleepingComputer reports:

Post SMTP plugin flaw exposes 200K WordPress sites to hijacking attacks

DarkReading shows us:

How to Spot Malicious AI Agents Before They Strike

ChatGPT, GenAI Tools Open to ‘Man in the Prompt’ Browser Attack

Tuta reports:

Switzerland plans surveillance worse than U.S.

BitDefender reports:

French submarine secrets surface after cyber attack

Platformer reports:

Trust and safety workers on why they’re not speaking out

And here’s the previous post he referenced.

404 Media reports:

Tea App Turns Off DMs After Exposing Messages About Abortions, Cheating

FYI, Platformer and 404 Media are on Ghost and thus part of the Open Media Network.

RSS

The wonderful Citation Needed reports:

Curate your own newspaper with RSS

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – 127

For Better has:

Mastodon Defence Command: The Scam Wave

Fedify announces:

Implementing custom collection dispatchers

QCB asks:

So Your Black Ass Still Wants to Get on Mastodon

ActivityPub for WordPress announces:

7.2.0 – Follow ups

Slightly Federated Social Media

Connected Places has:

Bluesky Report – 127

Blacksky has:

Infrastructure for Interdependence: Building technology in service of collective power

Blacksky is what Bluesky would be if it wasn’t created and run by tech bros.

404 Media reports:

This Company Wants to Bring End-to-End Encrypted Messages to Bluesky’s AT Protocol

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #Nextcloud #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #WordPress

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2230

Destroying Autocracy – July 24, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

Featured Item

TechDirt writes:

Over the last year or so I’ve seen a disturbing tendency in tech/startup/VC worlds to buy into the neoreactionary view that for startups to be successful they need to get on board the Trump train.

Yes, there are the big name folks who everyone knows about and who didn’t really surprise anyone—Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Elon Musk (pre-fallout)—but the more troubling trend has been watching younger entrepreneurs and VCs listen to their podcasts, read their posts and books, and slowly nod along to the idea that democracy is holding back innovation.

Fascism For First Time Founders

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

BleepingComputer reports:

Ukraine arrests suspected admin of XSS Russian hacking forum

Radio Free Europe reports:

Drone Attacks Even The Odds For Ukrainian Frontline Units

BitDefender reports:

Europol targets Kremlin-backed cybercrime gang NoName057(16)

Bruce Lawson reports:

CMA designates Google and Apple, proposes measures

TechCentral reports:

Italy takes Meta, X and LinkedIn to court over unpaid tax

404 Media reports:

Hacker Plants Computer ‘Wiping’ Commands in Amazon’s AI Coding Agent

Archivists Recreate Pre-Trump CDC Website, Are Hosting It in Europe

The Register reports:

Radio geeks reveal how to access crucial hurricane data after US Department of Defense cut it off

The Register reports:

AI data-suckers would have to ask permission first under new bill

Laptop farmer behind $17M North Korean IT worker scam locked up for 8.5 years

TechPolicy reports:

The Case for Europe’s Backing of Digital Civil Society Groups

Open_Future shares:

Licensing, Levies, and the Limits of Copyright

Open Forum Europe announces:

OFE Publishes Landmark Study Calling on Funding Europe’s Open Digital Infrastructure through an EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF)

DarkReading reports:

Stop AI Bot Traffic: Protecting Your Organization’s Website

Speaking of your websites, LocalGhost has:

This page is under construction: a love letter to the personal website

Hamish Campbell has:

The Open Media Network: More Than Just a Tech Project

This is what your site could be a part of.

Neutral

TechPolicy reports:

Brazil Has a Bridge to Defending the Internet

The Financial Times:

UK government seeks way out of clash with US over Apple encryption

When you have three sets of c^nts involved, it’s hard to know who to route for.

TechPolicy opines:

Enforcement of EU’s Tech Laws Should Not Be Traded Away

And they are right.

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

So-called newspaper, The Wall Street Journal reports:

White House Prepares Executive Order Targeting ‘Woke AI’

MIT Technology Review reports:

America’s AI watchdog is losing its bite

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Axon’s Draft One is Designed to Defy Transparency

EuroNews reports:

UK online legislation could threaten Wikipedia volunteer safety, group to argue in court

Pariah States

The Register reports:

UK uncovers novel Microsoft snooping malware, blames and sanctions GRU cyberspies

Silicon Valley engineer admits theft of US missile tech secrets

Four new Android spyware samples linked to Iran’s intel agency

TechCrunch reports:

A surveillance vendor was caught exploiting a new SS7 attack to track people’s phone locations

Hackers exploiting SharePoint zero-day seen targeting government agencies

BleepingComputer reports:

Microsoft links Sharepoint ToolShell attacks to Chinese hackers

Big Media

Today in Tabs reports:

Billionaires Destroyed American News Media On Purpose

Mother Jones reports:

Colbert’s Cancellation Is a Dark Warning

Akademie shares:

Investigating AI datasets: A journalist’s guide

Big Tech

Where’s Your ‘Ed shares:

The Hater’s Guide To The AI Bubble

The Next Web reports:

ChatGPT advises women to ask for lower salaries, study finds

404 Media reports:

A Startup is Selling Data Hacked from Peoples’ Computers to Debt Collectors

Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission

Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain

Grindr Won’t Let Users Say ‘No Zionists’

EuroNews reports:

Meta ran ads that fundraised for Israeli Defence Forces, analysis shows

Meta won’t sign EU’s AI Code, but who will?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance

Ars Technica reports:

Researcher threatens X with lawsuit after falsely linking him to French probe

xAI workers balked over training request to help “give Grok a face,” docs show

TechCrunch reports:

Microsoft says it will no longer use engineers in China for Department of Defense work

For privacy and security, think twice before granting AI access to your personal data

Terror

The Register reports:

IRL Com recruits teens for real-life stabbings, shootings, FBI warns

Cybersecurity/Privacy

TechCrunch reports:

Serial spyware founder Scott Zuckerman wants the FTC to unban him from the surveillance industry

BleepingComputer reports:

CISA and FBI warn of escalating Interlock ransomware attacks

DarkReading reports:

Translating Cyber-Risk for the Boardroom

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – #126 July 22, 2025

Bonfire is:

Exploring a Bonfire Geosocial Extension

MarkWrites reflects on:

Being a Mastodon Moderator

Mastodon announces:

A nudge to fund our future

If you are on the Fediverse please donate to your instance’s maintainers. Especially if they ask nicely.

Aphyr opines:

The Future of Forums is Lies, I Guess

Fediverse favorite, Elena Rossini shares:

The Future is Federated: Year 2

ActivityPub for WordPress has an update:

7.1.0 — Polishing Tables

We Distribute has details:

WordPress-ActivityPub v 7.1.0 Introduces Following Capabilities

Randall Black show us:

How to Install and Set Up Castopod for Your Podcast

TechCrunch reports:

Threads adds improved content performance metrics for creators

Slightly Federated Social Media

The Register reports:

Selling your digital soul to use Bluesky’s DMs isn’t just a bad idea, it’s the law

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#126 #ActivityPub #AI #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Castopod #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #Threads #WordPress

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2151