Digital freedom

Maybe it’s time to dump social media, just for a little bit

The EU wants you to have the ‘right to repair’ your electronic devices

Why isn’t Big Tech embraced in its own backyard?

Silicon Valley and San Francisco’s Bay Area have long been synonymous with Big Tech. It was the center of the dot-com boom of the ’90s, which ushered in the fastest adoption of new technology in m...

8 anti-spam techniques your email uses to prevent spam

It’s difficult to define exactly what constitutes email spam. What might be a useful newsletter to one person could be unwanted advertising to another, and a welcome business opportunity will be ill...

Organizations push Google for tighter control over bloatware

Is your Android device glitchy and unresponsive? Part of the problem could be bloatware: pre-bundled apps and software that can’t be deleted, no matter how hard you try. Despite Android dominating g...

Global Internet and Social Media Censorship Report, 2020

NOTE: This post was originally published on January 24, 2020 Around the world, internet censorship remains a popular tool of authoritarian governments to prevent information from spreading, to stop pe...

Google’s smart city project: A privacy hot button

This post was originally published on December 12, 2019. Check out the previous post in this series: What are smart cities? In 2017, when Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs announced Quayside, a project in pa...

Facebook’s cryptocurrency has governments scrambling

There are over 2,000 cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchain instruments commonly traded on more than 250 platforms around the world. Some of these currencies are created by pseudonymous individuals ...

Why Facebook is the tool of choice for government manipulation

The Global Disinformation Order, a new study by the Oxford Internet Institute, confirms our worst fears about governments’ use of social media to influence their people. “Evidence of organized soc...

Opt out of a face scan at the airport? Easier said than done.

This post was originally published on September 27, 2019. Air travel is stressful—from finding the best flight prices to lining up for what feels like hours to get through airport security before fi...