Tom Parker
Tom Parker is a founder and lead editor for Reclaim The Net and provides news and analysis on how we can promote free speech, stop censorship, and protect our personal data online.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki suggests that trade offs which impact innocent creators are necessary
She says that YouTube’s past decisions to mass disable comments and block content that didn’t actually violate the community guidelines were necessary trade offs.
New report shows that Facebook feared Apple and Google’s mobile internet dominance
The report covers Project Oxygen – a plan Facebook started working on in 2013 to protect itself from Google’s virtual chokehold over Facebook’s mobile internet distribution through the Google Play Store.
Comedian Steven Crowder says his YouTube channel with 3.7 million subscribers could be removed due to fake copyright claims
Three bogus copyright strikes were filed against an original “Dr. Trump” parody music video in the span of a week and Crowder says that these strikes may lead to his YouTube channel being terminated.
Twitter suspends the campaign accounts of two British MEP election candidates
Benjamin’s team and UKIP (the political party Benjamin represents) say the Twitter account suspension is an act of political censorship and election interference.
Facebook’s new methods for policing EU election misinformation often spread misleading information and suppress truthful information
Facebook’s changes promote mainstream media sites, suppress alternative media, and allow biased and misleading political information to spread on the platform.
Podcast app Luminary is using bad practices with the way it handles free and open podcast feeds
Taking the original MP3 from the show creator’s hosting company and rehosting it on their own network can be seen as a copyright infringement.
Website builder Wix is asking users to upload a passport or driver’s license in order to delete their account
This new verification process forces users to compromise their privacy and give sensitive personal information to Wix.
Zuckerberg-backed education program faces backlash for its dystopian learning environment and creepy data collection practices
The education program cuts in-person student-teacher interactions down to just 10 minutes per week and has been criticized by parents for its negative effect on children’s interpersonal skills.
Google’s “smart city” idea in Canada is such a threat to privacy, civil liberties groups are having to sue the government to stop it
The suit claims that two of the legal agreements with the Google-owned Sidewalk Labs conflict with administrative and constitutional law and need to be reset.
Facebook left millions of Instagram passwords unenecrypted on a server, buries the announcement in an old blog post
Facebook also published the update just before the release of the long-awaited Mueller report – a move that’s likely to reduce the public’s awareness of Facebook’s mistake.
Google starts promoting alternatives to Google Search and Google Chrome to Android users in Europe following record fine from the EU
This follows Google being fined a record €4.3 billion ($4.8 billion) by the European Commission and being ordered to change its anti-competitive business practices in relation to the Android operating system.
UK political candidate Carl Benjamin’s r/SargonofAkkad subreddit quarantined just days after media smear
The quarantine also follows a number of media hit pieces which have attempted to misrepresent Benjamin and his online community.