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)

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

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

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’

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

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

EuroNews reports:

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

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

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

#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

Destroying Autocracy – July 17, 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.

We are back from holiday and brief respite from Fascism Friendly Florida.

Featured Item

Hamish Campbell writes:

Capitalism’s invisible hand has always relied on hidden data. In the digital age, that data is metadata the overlooked, under-the-hood information that tells us who, where, when, how often, and what next. It doesn’t matter what you say or do if someone else controls the context around it. That’s where the power lies. Let’s be clear: the battle for metadata is the battle for the future.

Capitalism: Metadata is hoarded by the dotcons. This is the tech-feudalism of today—soft fascism in algorithmic form.

Chinese Communism: Here, the state doesn’t outsource metadata – it owns it. Surveillance is centralised. Social credit systems reduce people to patterns and can be used to penalise deviation.

Liberalism: Wants to privatise metadata to the individual, to revive the mythical free market of rational actors with perfect information. But this is a fantasy—metadata’s power comes from aggregation, and no individual can match corporate or state capacity to hoard it. The liberal path leads to a slightly less abusive cage.

Anarchism and the Commons: A Fourth Way

What does anarchism want? It wants the social conditions for free association. It wants autonomy, not just individual, but community autonomy.

In commons vs. the market, capitalism uses metadata to target, extract, and sell. We use metadata to share, trust, and build. The Open Media Network proposes a radical shift to replace the market with metadata commons. In capitalism, knowledge is hoarded for advantage. In the commons, it is shared for coordination. The market’s “invisible hand” becomes the commons’ visible knowledge, messy, partial, human, but rooted in mutual aid, not profit.

Metadata and the OMN Path: Who Controls the Invisible Hand?

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:

Ukrainian hackers claim to have destroyed servers of Russian drone maker

The Kyiv Independent reports:

EU slaps new sanctions on Russia over hybrid threats, disinformation

BleepingComputer reports:

Europol disrupts pro-Russian NoName057(16) DDoS hacktivist group

ETH Zurich announces:

A language model built for the public good

Open Future reports on:

Our Work/ Public AI

It’s FOSS reports:

Europe on a Roll: Plans Open Source Alternative to Confluence and Jira

Bloomberg Law reports:

States Target AI Hiring Tools as Federal Freeze Attempt Fails

404 Media has:

The Open-Source Software Saving the Internet From AI Bot Scrapers

Immigration Raid Tracking App ‘ICE Block’ Keeps Your Data Private, Researcher Finds

Open Ice is a new resource:

OpenIce

TechPolicy reports:

States Are Fighting Back To Defend Medical Privacy and Safeguard Democracy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Despite Supreme Court Setback, EFF Fights On Against Online Age Mandates

Neutral

TechPolicy reports:

How the EU’s Voluntary AI Code is Testing Industry and Regulators Alike

Making Media Pluralism Work in the Age of Algorithms

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

EFF’s Guide to Getting Records About Axon’s Draft One AI-Generated Police Reports

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

Platformer reports:

The campaign to make it illegal for ChatGPT to criticize Trump

Krebs on Security reports:

DOGE Denizen Marko Elez Leaked API Key for xAI

404 Media reports:

ICE Is Searching a Massive Insurance and Medical Bill Database to Find Deportation Target

TechPolicy reports:

The US Just Logged Off from Internet Freedom

ProPublica has:

The IRS Is Building a Vast System to Share Millions of Taxpayers’ Data With ICE

A Little-Known Microsoft Program Could Expose the Defense Department to Chinese Hackers

Ars Technica reports:

Trump sues Corporation for Public Broadcasting directors who refused to be fired

Pariah States

BleepingComputer reports:

North Korean XORIndex malware hidden in 67 malicious npm packages

DarkReading reports:

China-Backed Salt Typhoon Hacks US National Guard for Nearly a Year

Big Media

404 Media reports:

The Media’s Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work

TechPolicy reports:

Old Tricks, New Tech: How Legacy Media Capture Fuels Today’s Digital Authoritarianism

Mediations in an Emergency reports:

Please Shout Fire. This Theater Is Burning

Big Tech

Ars Technica reports:

New Grok AI model surprises experts by checking Elon Musk’s views before answering

TechCrunch reports:

Of course, Grok’s AI companions want to have sex and burn down schools

OpenAI and Anthropic researchers decry ‘reckless’ safety culture at Elon Musk’s xAI

The Verge asks:

Where are the iPhone’s WebKit-less browsers?

Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow has:

Where are the iPhone’s WebKit-less browsers?

404 Media reports:

a16z-Backed AI Site Civitai Is Mostly Porn, Despite Claiming Otherwise

The Markup reports:

AI is helping students be more independent, but the isolation could be career poison

This times 1,000.

Terror

404 Media reports:

3D Printing Patterns Might Make Ghost Guns More Traceable Than We Thought

Cybersecurity/Privacy

Bleeping Computer has:

Google Gemini flaw hijacks email summaries for phishing

Malicious VSCode extension in Cursor IDE led to $500K crypto theft

Sounds like a win-win.

Police disrupt “Diskstation” ransomware gang attacking NAS devices

Ars Technica reports:

Hackers exploit a blind spot by hiding malware inside DNS records

DarkReading reports:

Military Veterans May Be What Cybersecurity Is Looking For

Beats being in the National Guard.

Women Who ‘Hacked the Status Quo’ Aim to Inspire Cybersecurity Careers

The Next Web reports:

Whisper emerges from stealth with ‘God Mode’ to tackle cybercrime

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – #125

Age Verification Laws: Are the New Social Networks Different, Or Not At All?

Steve Bate has:

ActivityPub Client API: A Way Forward

The Social Web Foundation has:

Seeking interop testing for geosocial ActivityPub client

Mastodon has:

Trunk & Tidbits, June 2025

Privacy Guides has:

Privacy and Security on Mastodon

Bandwagon has an update:

July 2025

Elena Rossini has:

My adventures in self-hosting: day 211 (CDN edition)

Slightly Federated Social Media

TBD

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

#125 #ActivityPub #AI #Autocracy #Bandwagon #BigJournalism #BigTech #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2105

Destroying Autocracy – July 3, 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.

Next week I will be on holiday so there won’t be an issue. I will probably boost some things on the Fediverse though.

Featured Item

DevCollaborative writes:

The Trump administration and its supporters are attacking dissenting views on a terrifying scale. With so much of online communications compromised and censored, independent websites are a critical piece of social movement infrastructure that we need to promote and defend.

If your nonprofit has a website, you are part of this essential communications work.

There are looming threats of financially independent nonprofits being censored under the guise of fighting “terrorism” or “sedition.”

Protecting Nonprofit Websites from a Hostile Government

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

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

Time has a profile:

How Signal President Meredith Whittaker Took on Signal-Gate

The Register reports:

Proton bashes Apple and joins antitrust suit that seeks to throw the App Store wide open

The Register reports:

Huawei can’t wriggle out of Iran sanctions trial, judge rules

Tara Tarakiyee explores:

Digital Sovereignty in Practice: Web Browsers as a Reality Check

TechPolicy reports:

EU Disinformation Code Takes Effect Amid Censorship Claims and Trade Tensions

Politico reports:

The first American ‘scientific refugees’ arrive in France

BleepingComputer reports:

Hikvision Canada ordered to cease operations over security risks

Germany asks Google, Apple to remove DeepSeek AI from app stores

Raconteur has:

‘You need to be a little bit crazy’: Nextcloud CEO on confronting the hyperscalers

Nextclound reports on:

Why organizations migrate from Microsoft 365 in 2025

TechCrunch reports:

ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings, goes viral overnight after Bondi criticism

Ars Technica reports:

Meta, TikTok can’t toss wrongful death suit from mom of “subway surfing” teen

Ted Cruz plan to punish states that regulate AI shot down in 99-1 vote

The Markup has more:

State AI regulations safe after Senate strips moratorium from ‘big, beautiful bill’

MIT Technology Review reports:

Cloudflare will now, by default, block AI bots from crawling its clients’ websites

Cloudfare has the details:

Control content use for AI training with Cloudflare’s managed robots.txt and blocking for monetized content

The crawl before the fall… of referrals: understanding AI’s impact on content providers

Neutral

CNBC reports:

The AI-boom’s multi-billion dollar blind spot: Reasoning models hitting a wall

Dries Buyaert (of Drupal fame) writes:

The web’s broken deal with AI companies

Dries, you say you may be naive. You are if you think anything other than politics (regulation or huge boycotts) are going to fix the problem.

The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back

The Guardian opines:

Peter Thiel’s Palantir poses a grave threat to Americans

TechDirt reports:

Supreme Court Cripples FCC Further, Making Robocall Enforcement Likely Impossible

The Supreme C^nts strike again.

The Guardian reports:

Trump officials create searchable national citizenship database

TechPolicy reports:

Countering the Politics of Deservingness in the Fight for Digital Equity

How US Firms Are Weakening the EU AI Code of Practice

Pariah States

TechCrunch reports:

US government takes down major North Korean ‘remote IT workers’ operation

DarkReading reports:

Scope, Scale of Spurious North Korean IT Workers Emerges

Silver Fox Suspected in Taiwanese Campaign Using DeepSeek Lure

Russian APT ‘Gamaredon’ Hits Ukraine With Fierce Phishing

The Kyiv Independent reports:

US sanctions Russian IT company Aeza Group over ransomware operations

Big Media

The PressGazette reports:

How SFGATE is making local news pay and filling California’s news gaps

Ars Technica reports:

NYT to start searching deleted ChatGPT logs after beating OpenAI in court

Big Tech

TechPolicy reports:

Tech Oligarchs and the Rise of Silicon Valley Pronatalism

The Guardian reports:

Fears AI factcheckers on X could increase promotion of conspiracy theories

Ars Technica reports:

Everything that could go wrong with X’s new AI-written community notes

TikTok is being flooded with racist AI videos generated by Google’s Veo 3

Android Authority reports:

You’re not alone: This email from Google’s Gemini team was concerning (Updated: Google statement)

Tuta asks:

“Sovereign cloud” or “sovereign washing”? A Trojan Horse at Europe’s digital gates.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Flock Safety’s Feature Updates Cannot Make Automated License Plate Readers Safe

The Register reports:

AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time, and a lot of them aren’t AI at all

The Verge reports:

Facebook is starting to feed its AI with private, unpublished photos

TechCrunch reports:

Meta users say paying for Verified support has been useless in the face of mass bans

PC Gamer reports:

‘AI is no longer optional’: Microsoft is allegedly pressuring employees to use AI tools through manager evaluations

Cybersecurity/Privacy

The Verge asks:

How vulnerable is critical infrastructure to cyberattack in the US?

Bleeping Computer reports:

FBI: Cybercriminals steal health data posing as fraud investigators

BleepingComputer reports:

Spain arrests hackers who targeted politicians and journalists

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

Fediverse Report – #123

Mastodon has:

Mastodon 4.4 for Developers

Dead Superher looks at:

Mitigating the “7 Deadly Fediverse UX Sins”

Jaz-Michael King shares:

Digital Belonging: Why Language and Locality Matter

Viger has:

Flipboard Surf

TechCrunch reports:

Automattic puts Tumblr migration to WordPress on hold

Ghost has:

The Longformers: Ghost, WordPress, Flipboard, Fediverse

NodeBB asks:

What drew you to ActivityPub?

Longform content has the best chance to grow the Fediverse, IMHO.

IT Notes shares:

FediMeteo: How a Tiny €4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service for Thousands

Forgejo has its:

Forgejo monthly report – June 2025

RSS

Preslav Rachev shares:

From Outbound to Inbound and Back Again: The Hidden Power of RSS Feeds

Great stuff. RSS is still my main curation source. So, get an RSS feed on your blog, handle, etc.

Slightly Federated Social Media

TBD

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

#123 #ActivityPub #AI #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Forgejo #Ghost #Mastodon #NodeBB #RSS #StopChina #StopIran #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #WordPress

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2072

Destroying Autocracy – June 26, 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

Hamish Campbell writes:

It’s good to see events like NGIFORUM2025 as it’s trying to be on the path of the Fediverse and the wider Open Web reboot which are real forces for social good, messy, hopeful, and grounded in decades of grassroots digital culture, which we do need to support. BUT, we also need to speak honestly, as these spaces are not healthy by default.

Too often, they are co-opted by NGO and institutional actors who bring with them a dangerous kind of “common sense”, what I’ve long described as the parasite class. We see this clearly at NGIFORUM and similar NGO events.

NGIFORUM2025 is timidly touching sense

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

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

Numerique reports:

Le Cigref soutient la démarche de résilience numérique portée par la France, l’Allemagne et les Pays-Bas pour construire une Europe numérique durable et de confiance dans le cadre d’Eurostack

C’est un grande headline.

The Conversation reviews:

Is AI a con? A new book punctures the hype and proposes some ways to resist

The U.K. governmnet announce:

CMA takes first steps to improve competition in search services in the UK

Le Monde reports:

Lyon délaisse la suite Office de Microsoft pour l’open source

Nextcloud reports:

A sovereign Microsoft 365 alternative: Nextcloud and IONOS join forces

404 Media reports:

‘FuckLAPD.com’ Lets Anyone Use Facial Recognition to Instantly Identify Cops

Ars Technica reports:

Media Matters sues FTC, says agency is retaliating on behalf of Elon Musk

Neutral

Politico reports:

Trump can pull the plug on the internet, and Europe can’t do anything about it

Ars Technica reports:

Judge denies creating “mass surveillance program” harming all ChatGPT users

TechCrunch reports:

A federal judge sides with Anthropic in lawsuit over training AI on books without authors’ permission

And another just sided with Meta. Fuck!

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

EFF to European Commission: Don’t Resurrect Illegal Data Retention Mandates

Politico reports:

Top Pentagon spy pick rejected by White House

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Trump administration sends layoff notices to 600 Voice of America staff, NYT reports

The Gray Zone reports:

US Army appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI execs as Lt. Colonels

The Center for Democracy and Technology reports:

New Orleans’ Dragnet Facial Recognition Program Threatens Innocent People

404 Media reports:

Flock Removes States From National Lookup Tool After ICE and Abortion Searches Revealed

Pariah States

DarkReading reports:

How Geopolitical Tensions Are Shaping Cyber Warfare

Bleeping Computer reports:

Russian hackers bypass Gmail MFA using stolen app passwords

APT28 hackers use Signal chats to launch new malware attacks on Ukraine

Canada says Salt Typhoon hacked telecom firm via Cisco flaw

The Register reports:

Typhoon-like gang slinging TLS certificate ‘signed’ by the Los Angeles Police Department

Big Media

The Columbia Journalism Review reports:

AI Search Has A Citation Problem

Atoms vs. Bytes has:

Substack’s Secret

Fuck the Nerd Reich’s S.S.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

New Journalism Curriculum Module Teaches Digital Security for Border Journalists

Big Tech

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has:

Protect Yourself From Meta’s Latest Attack on Privacy

The BBC reports:

Musk’s X sues New York state over social media hate speech law

Frontiers reports:

Some of your AI prompts could cause 50 times more CO2 emissions than others

Zero prompts = zero emissions.

Neural Trust reports:

Echo Chamber: A Context-Poisoning Jailbreak That Bypasses LLM Guardrails

Computer Weekly reports:

Beyond the AI hype: How data laws quietly handed power to government and Big Tech

Axios has:

Publishers facing existential threat from AI, Cloudflare CEO says

The Register reports:

The AIpocalypse is here for web sites as search referrals plunge

Hey you AI lovers, these are the sites you build. No traffic equals no money for you. Plus, the AI c^nts stole the info from the people whose traffic they are destroying. And maybe your code. Not to mention devastating the environment. Look in the fucking mirror. And avoid being reincarnated as a cockroach.

The Register reports:

Top AI models – even American ones – parrot Chinese propaganda, report finds

Psylo browser tries to obscure digital fingerprints by giving every tab its own IP address

If you want to do something about the next article.

Texas A&M University reports:

Websites Are Tracking You Via Browser Fingerprinting

Cybersecurity/Privacy

TechCrunch reports:

US House bans WhatsApp from staff devices

You’ve got to be clowns if these mofos ban you.

Dark Reading reports:

How the US Military Is Redefining Zero Trust

Hundreds of MCP Servers Expose AI Models to Abuse, RCE

BleepingComputer reports:

New FileFix attack weaponizes Windows File Explorer for stealthy commands

3 key takeaways from the Scattered Spider attacks on insurance firms

Earth reports:

China breaks RSA encryption with a quantum computer, threatening global data security

Tommy Mysk announces:

Introducing Psylo — A New Kind of Private Web Browser

Fediverse

Connected Places (rebrand) has:

Fediverse Report – #122

Welcome to Connected Places

Hamish Campbell has:

Actors, Power, and Collective Publishing: Rethinking Fediverse Architecture for Grassroots Media

This is a story of power, plain and simple

And he’s correct.

Timothy Chambers has:

The Seven Deadly Fediverse UX Sins Part 2: The Road To Redemption

Bless his soul.

Jaz-Michael King introduces:

StartHereSocial

Ghost hosting platform, MagicPages shares:

ActivityPub Federation Issue (June 21, 2025)

Activity Pub for WordPress reports:

What we shipped so far in 2025

NLnet Foundation announces:

Mastodon for institutions

62 new projects contribute to digital commons

There are other Fediverse grants in this article including WordPress, Activity Pub, Funkwhale, and Node BB.

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

#122 #ActivityPub #AI #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Funkwhale #Ghost #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIran #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #WordPress

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=2027

Destroying Autocracy – June 19, 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

404 Media reports:

AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums

When you use AI, you contribute to this c^ntitry.

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

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

Micah Flee explores:

Using Signal groups for activism

The Guardian reports:

Makers of air fryers and smart speakers told to respect users’ right to privacy

Spy ships, cyber-attacks and shadow fleets: the crack security team braced for trouble at sea

TechCrunch reports:

The ‘OpenAI Files’ push for oversight in the race to AGI

The Register reports:

LibreOffice adds voice to ‘ditch Windows for Linux’ campaign

Microsoft brings 365 suite on-prem as part of sovereign cloud push

France 24 reports:

‘We’re done with Teams’: German state hits uninstall on Microsoft

TechPolicy shares:

What the EU Needs to Do to Challenge Big Tech Cloud Dominance

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Apple to Australians: You’re Too Stupid to Choose Your Own Apps

BleepingComputer reports:

Police seizes Archetyp Market drug marketplace, arrests admin

The Register reviews:

/e/ OS 3.0: Slightly less clunky, slightly more private

Neutral

The Register reports:

The launch of ChatGPT polluted the world forever, like the first atomic weapons tests

Euronews reports:

Dutch online platform watchdog struggling to connect with other EU member states

The Register reports:

MiniMax M1 model claims Chinese LLM crown from DeepSeek – plus it’s true open-source

Dems hyperventilate about Palantir’s work with the IRS in letter to CEO Karp

I would trust Palantir as far as I could kick their CEO.

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

404 Media reports:

Emails Reveal the Casual Surveillance Alliance Between ICE and Local Police

California Cops Investigate ‘Immigration Protest’ With AI-Camera System

The Kyiv Independent reports:

US group designed to pressure Russia into peace in Ukraine disbanded by Trump administration, Reuters reports

Open Rights Group reports:

Police forces to get authoritarian powers to extract data from online accounts

Pariah States

DarkReading reports:

‘HoldingHands’ Acts Like a Pickpocket With Taiwan Orgs

Paragon Commercial Spyware Infects Prominent Journalists

The Register reports:

Amazon CISO: Iranian hacking crews ‘on high alert’ since Israel attack

404 Media reports:

The AI Slop Fight Between Iran and Israel

EuroNews reports:

Israel’s spy agency used AI and smuggled-in drones to prepare attack on Iran, sources say

Bleeping Computer reports:

North Korean hackers deepfake execs in Zoom call to spread Mac malware

Big Media

The Guardian reports:

The mainstream media has enabled Trump’s war on universities

BleepingComputer reports:

[Washington Post’s email system hacked, journalists’ accounts compromised]
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/washington-posts-email-system-hacked-journalists-accounts-compromised/

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting reports:

Working Hard to Justify Israel’s Unprovoked Attack on Iran

Big Media

Ars Technica reports:

OpenAI weighs “nuclear option” of antitrust complaint against Microsoft

How surprising. Two big tech c^nts can’t get along.

The Register reports:

Salesforce study finds LLM agents flunk CRM and confidentiality tests

‘AI is not doing its job and should leave us alone’ says Gartner’s top analyst

Absolutely.

noyb reports:

WhatsApp is getting ads using personal data from Instagram and Facebook

The Guardian reports:

(AI)‘It’s terrifying’: WhatsApp AI helper mistakenly shares user’s number

TechCrunch reports:

xAI is facing a lawsuit for operating over 400 MW of gas turbines without permits

Tumblr’s content-filtering systems have been falsely flagging posts as ‘mature,’ users blame AI

Instagram users complain of mass bans, pointing finger at AI

BleepingComputer reports:

Instagram ‘BMO’ ads use AI deepfakes to scam banking customers

BellingCat reports:

Meta’s Suit Against Hong Kong Firm Was Just the Beginning – More Companies Linked to CrushAI ‘Nudify’ Apps

The BBC reports:

Is Google about to destroy the web?

Antitrust Intelligence reports:

Microsoft Could Repeat its Teams Strategy, this time with Bing and Edge

The Markup reports:

We caught 4 more states sharing personal health data with Big Tech

Big Tech

404 Media reports:

The People Search Sites in the Suspected Minnesota Killer’s Notebook Are a Failure of Congress

Cybersecurity/Privacy

Krebs on Security reports:

Inside a Dark Adtech Empire Fed by Fake CAPTCHAs

Fediverse

The Fediverse Report reports:

Fediverse Report – #121

The W3C Community Group looks at:

Messaging Layer Security over ActivityPub

Timothy Chambers shares:

The Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse Web Experience (To Fix)

Mastodon has:

Mastodon in 2025

Mastodon is a digital public good

Emily McClue has a bone to pick with them:

New Terms of Service IP clause cannot be terminated or revoked, not even by deleting content

PeerTube announces:

App crowdfunding — Let’s go live!

Elena Rossini shares a valuable asset:

Introducing the Fediverse

Ghost is:

Surfacing discussions

Bonfire announces:

Bonfire Custom Feeds: Events

ActivityPub for WordPress announces:

New Look, Faster Blocks in ActivityPub 6.0.0

TechCrunch reports:

Mastodon updates its terms to prohibit AI model training

Threads is testing spoiler text, Zuckerberg says

Threads expands open social web integrations with fediverse feed, user profile search

Remember to block the instance, threads.net.

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

Tedium shares:

The Narrative

Again, none of this would matter if Bluesky were not a company trying to make money and in debt to VCs.

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
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Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#ActivityPub #AI #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Bonfire #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Ghost #Mastodon #Peertube #StopChina #StopIran #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #Threads #WordPress

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