Rightwing pushback
Israeli TV news reported that homophobic hate speech and attacks are up 75% since the last elections, which were a victory for religious rightwing extremists, who want to reinstate “Jewish values”.
Elsewhere: Indonesia is about to make sex outside marriage an offence punishable by jail
Growing disfavor with centralized services / parallel flowering of decentralized services
Telegram: In India, Telegram just lost an important court case:After Delhi High Court Ruling, Telegram Discloses Names, Phone Numbers & IP Addresses Of Users Accused Of Sharing Infringing Material
Because their platform is inherently unsafe, and the information is available on their system, they could be forced to comply.This is why we should not be using services like Telegram for sensitive communications.
Meanwhile, Russians were able to get what they needed without bothering with a court ruling: Russia is spying on Telegram chats in occupied Ukrainian regions. Here’s how
Everyone’s Over Instagram – The Atlantic
F-Droid: Why curation and decentralization is better than millions of apps
Most Chinese people have more than one app store on their phone, so there is no monolith there, whereas “outside of China, Apple and Google control more than 95 percent of the app store market share.
Many people seem to be talking about starting new services that take advantage ActivityPub protocol. Among these is Ben Werdmuller, who says in his blog post The Fediverse and the Indieweb
So I’m newly-invested in implementing ActivityPub and building end-user tools that join the network. I’m excited to build things that people can use to, in turn, build something new. There are a ton of opportunities here: we’re in a particular moment where the fediverse looks like it could be the future, and the more tools and onramps we build, the more likely that becomes. That fits directly into those indieweb principles of owning your own content, and my additive principles of devolving wealth and ownership.
Werdmuller also says that he is turning away from an old concept of the Indieweb, POSSE (“Publish on your ownsite, syndicate everywhere”):
I want my site to connect to the indieweb; to the fediverse; to people who are connecting via RSS; to people who are connecting via email. No more syndication to third parties. My own website sits in the center of my online identity, using open standards to communicate with outside communities.
I reached the same conclusion a long while back, and have been trying to keep my posts out of search engines too.
WikiLeaks’ Website is Slowly Falling Apart
That too sounds like a problem of centralization. Didn’t they release their documents over file-sharing networks?
Push to free Julian Assange; sanctuary for Snowden
I’ve read of three separate efforts. Major world newspapers have published together an appeal for his freedom and against extradition to the US. The Australian government has been appealing to the US government against it too. And his lawyers are making an approach to the European Court of Justice. Let’s hope these efforts succeed.
Meanwhile, Edward Snowden has got his Russian citizenship after swearing an oath of allegiance. It was the US itself that pushed him towards this step by revoking his passport while he was in transit in Moscow. But since it is the only country in which he is safe and can remain united with his family, I can’t say that I blame him.
If Russia seems currently like the epitomy of an evil state, the US has perpetrated, and continues to perpetrate deeds that are no less evil.
World governance somehow needs to develop independent mechanisms that single out crimes against humanity whereever they occur, at all times. Right now, we seem to have the opposite. People like Assange can be prosecuted for revealing crimes, even if they are not citizens of the nation that is guilty of those crimes and live somewhere else in the world. Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court is unable to prosecute war criminals in countries like the US.