Signal, Instagram, and X feel the heat of censorship by authoritarian governments
This is a dizzying time for anyone who follows the subject of online censorship by authoritarian regimes.
The latest story on that front is Turkey’s decision over the weekend to stop blocking Instagram, which it did for nine days. The reasons for the short-lived ban were never entirely clear.
Judging from officials’ comments, it was either because Instagram wasn’t censoring enough content (it apparently didn’t take down posts insulting Turkish founding father Kemal Ataturk or referencing “gambling, drugs and abuse of children”) or because it was censoring too much (President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s communications director complained that Instagram was “preventing people from publishing messages of condolence” for slain Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh.)
Either way, the Turkish government claims the Meta-owned photo site has now “promised to work jointly on posts related to catalog crimes and censorship.” I’ve asked Meta to explain how it’s now going to meet the government’s demands; no answer yet. By the way, the video game platform Roblox remains blocked in Turkey, which nixed it last week in the name of child protection.
Meanwhile, as we mentioned in Friday’s newsletter, Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro has suspended access to X, following his likely-bogus claim of victory in the country’s recent election. (No word yet on whether Maduro and X proprietor Elon Musk will engage in a cage fight that Maduro proposed, with Musk accepting.)
But Caracas has also blocked Signal, the encrypted messaging app. And so too has Moscow, which is scrambling to ramp up censorship following Ukraine’s military incursion into the Russian province of Kursk. The Russian online censor Roskomnadzor said the Signal blockage, which followed reported restrictions on YouTube access, was necessary “to prevent terrorism and extremism.”
Signal said Saturday that it was aware of blockages in several countries, and offered instructions for those who want to set up proxy servers so people there can bypass the censorship. The endless cat-and-mouse game continues.
Stepping away from the subject of censorship now: The tech world was shaken Friday by the death at 56 of Susan Wojcicki, who had been living with lung cancer for the last two years. Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google in Wojcicki’s garage in 1998, and she fulfilled key roles for the company from 1999 to early last year, when she stepped down after nearly a decade of helming YouTube. Apart from her sterling achievements as a tech leader—which Allie Garfinkle celebrates in today’s Term Sheet—I also strongly recommend reading Diane Brady’s piece on Wojcicki’s legacy as a working mother.
Also, rest in peace, Mike Magee, cofounder of The Register and other scrappy tech news publications, who passed away yesterday at the age of 74. Magee (who was also a notable occultist) melded deep tech reporting with tabloid-style irreverence, and tech journalism is all the better for his legacy.
More news below.
David Meyer
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NEWSWORTHY
Trump campaign hack. Former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign claims that some of its internal communications were hacked, with Iran being the likely culprit. Microsoft said Friday that it had found evidence of Iranian hackers sending a phishing email to “a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign,” though the link to the Trump campaign remains unconfirmed. As Politico notes, someone has recently been sending reporters a seemingly legit preliminary version of the vetting file for Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.
Meta beats RFK Jr. Sticking with the tech-election nexus, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine group has lost an appeal against Meta’s censorship of its misinformation-ridden Facebook posts. The suit dates back to 2020, when Children’s Health Defense claimed Meta had violated its constitutional rights. A California appeals court confirmed Friday that there was no evidence of Meta working with federal officials to suppress anti-vax views, Reuters reports.
Intel no show. Intel has postponed the Innovation showcase that it was due to hold next month. The beleaguered chipmaker, whose crucial contract manufacturing business is struggling to get traction, announced 15,000 job cuts at the start of this month. It told PCMag that weak finances were to blame for the suspension of Innovation, which has for the last three years been a major developer and product-announcement event: “We are having to make some tough decisions as we continue to align our cost structure and look to assess how we rebuild a sustainable engine of process technology leadership.”
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES
24.5%
—The stake in BT that Indian telecommunications giant Bharti has acquired, by buying shares from Patrick Drahi’s debt-stricken Altice. Founder Sunil Bharti Mittal said it was a long-term investment, rather than an attempt to buy out the carrier once known as British Telecom.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Elon Musk’s X sued by former Twitter chairman for $20 million in shares, by Bloomberg
Elon Musk’s X hit with EU privacy complaints in 8 countries over illegal data use, by AFP
Sen. Elizabeth Warren asks Tesla’s board to probe Elon Musk’s potential conflicts of interest, by Bloomberg
U.S. government plans to make it easier to unsubscribe from unwanted memberships and recurring payment services, by the Associated Press
Customer service chatbots are buggy and disliked by consumers. Can AI make them better?, by Nicholas Gordon
Big Tech’s abuse of the patent system must end—take it from me, I’ve fought Google over IP for years, by Chuck Hong (Commentary)
BEFORE YOU GO
GPS spoofing time. There has recently been an increase in GPS “spoofing,” where illegal GPS systems send out incorrect positions to stymie drones or missiles that use the location technology. This affects commercial airlines that fly near conflict zones and, as Reuters reports, it’s now messing with their sense of time as well as place. “We’re starting to see reports of the clocks on board airplanes during spoofing events start to do weird things,” cybersecurity expert Ken Munro told the news agency, explaining that one such incident caused a major Western airline’s craft to lose access to its encrypted communications system.
