Exiled media: Using/managing mirror services to distribute blocked sites? Kaleidoscope is researching creation, monitoring & usage pain points. Leave email in survey for results. Anonymous participation. Not using mirrors but interested? Let me know.
- English: https://forms.gle/12qTtqB3kBLtGNf68
- Russian: https://forms.gle/6c3kg1541YvPs2Cz5
Journalism awards should go to journalists who actually excelled in revealing information that was of service to real people. If awards keep going to people who have perfected the performative donor narratives and not actually been of service, not only the award committees get discredited but the entire profession. There is a long term cost to hypocrisy.
Journalists: Hush Line is a refreshingly straightforward and simple setup for anonymous tips and messages, and it runs on @torproject.
If you want to give it a try, message me here: https://tips.hushline.app/to/gazzetta
感謝《 #田間 》電子報編輯簡恒宇的訪問。我們上週在台北談到新聞界可以如何重新思考業界獎項： https://tianjiancmp.substack.com/p/20241105
新聞獎制度尤其是評判標準和評選過程上需要改革，以確保它們對新聞業和社會所提供的價值。
《田間》為理解全球華文媒體產業變遷與挑戰的重要資源，若您對這個議題有興趣的話請訂閲。
Heading to Taipei and Chiang Mai soon, interested in meeting folks working on internet freedom and media research/strategy. We are working on a few projects that may be of interest. Grateful for introductions and happy to just reconnect over coffee .
The Tor project has a new job opening for a User Support Specialist in Farsi
https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/user-support-farsi-specialist/
Chinese Universities Install Software to Identify and Punish Students Who Circumvent the Great Firewall https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/09/translation-chinese-universities-install-software-to-identify-and-punish-students-who-circumvent-the-great-firewall/
This is super interesting! How does it work, select sources?
I'll be facilitating a conversation "circle" at the Global Gathering in Estoril, Portugal next Friday, Sep 27. This three-day event is all about collaboration building and knowledge sharing among digital rights activists.
The conversation theme is "supporting disrupted media" and brings together journalists, technologists, and digital rights activists to brainstorm how to keep independent media relevant and resilient.
From the gradual fragmentation of the internet to shutdowns to donor fatigue, the current challenges require massive rethinking in how journalism is practiced. I'll share some ideas, and I'm really curious to learn about others.
If you're attending, I'd love to see you there. If you're hosting a related conversation there, count me in.
Totally agree. It’s never perfect, can just push for greater systems transparency
“But we argue that it's time to stop conflating the flailing response of news and information providers to those fundamental market shifts with a loss of faith in the key role of independent journalism to functioning democracy. Indeed, we should stop scolding audiences as uninterested in democracy just because they may no longer choose to pay for news products that they don’t find relevant to their lives or easy to access.
Those market shifts, along with powerful technology, have provided people more power to choose what information they get and how they get it. The choices remain overwhelming, and the news industry’s struggle to invest in user experience and monetize its content has diminished its standing. But that didn’t alter this essential truth: High quality journalism that informs and helps people make choices for better lives is as crucially important today as ever — and is finding business success. So, that side of the story deserves a greater share of the airtime.”
That’s exactly the point. There are tons of free VPNs that operate freely in China but just do data harvesting, the ones supported by this program have no logs policies and are externally audited.
How it started / how it’s going
For less than a dollar a year, we can provide free and secure internet access via VPN to someone living under digital oppression.
Last week, the U.S. National Security Council and the State Department convened a meeting with civil society and representatives from tech giants like Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, and Microsoft to build momentum for greater coordination and investment in countering internet censorship and fragmentation globally.
Laura Cunningham, President of the Open Technology Fund, shared the cost estimate at the gathering. It's approx. 7 cents per user per month. Through OTF, the U.S. currently supports more than 45 million monthly users in Iran, China, Russia, Myanmar and elsewhere, enabling their access to the open internet.
VPNs allow people to communicate securely, inform and express themselves freely, and contribute to global progress.
At the meeting, I shared how VPNs are an essential tool for journalists, both for reporting and for distribution and my worries about about a possible full blocking of YouTube in Russia: https://www.pboehler.net/vpn-russia-white-house/
Funding is just the beginning. There needs to be training people to use VPNs effectively, helping them identify trustworthy services, and building momentum to share and distribute access.
A Reuters report on the initiative and the surge in usage of publicly-funded VPNs: https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-calls-big-tech-help-evade-online-censors-russia-iran-2024-09-05/
How China’s Internet Police Went from Targeting Bloggers to their Followers
In recent months, followers of influential bloggers have been
interviewed by police as China widens its net of online surveillance.
The Data Workers’ Inquiry is a community-based research project in which data workers lead their own inquiry in their respective workplaces. It adapts Marx’s 1880 Workers’ Inquiry to the phenomenon of data workers who are essential for contemporary AI applications yet precariously employed—if at all—and politically dispersed.
re:filtered is my monthly newsletter, this month with some new audience research learnings, hacking news, and upcoming conferences: https://www.pboehler.net/8-information-myths/
September 24 - Books Unbanned: Ensuring Access to Books for Everyone, Everywhere
featuring Cory Doctorow, Leah Johnson, and Kelly Brotzman (Boston, MA and on Zoom)
https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/66cf2d8bf520192f005fcc50