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.
WhatsApp finally fixes group privacy settings problem which exposed user phone numbers to strangers
WhatsApp appears to have made the changes now as part of its wider campaign to combat what it deems to be “fake news.”
Help Scout suddenly cuts off service for free speech social media platform Gab, leaving Gab users with error pages
The ban caused Gab’s help and FAQ pages to be taken down and left Gab’s 800,000+ users unable to access any support pages.
New Russian law will require all domestic traffic to be encrypted with government-controlled tools
The law would make it easier for Russian authorities to control and censor the internet and the domestic encryption tools may also have undiscovered security vulnerabilities.
Microsoft has stopped selling ebooks and will start scrubbing purchased ebooks from customer libraries
Ebooks can no longer be purchased or rented from the Microsoft Store and purchased ebooks will be removed from customers libraries from early July 2019.
British activist Tommy Robinson shadowbanned on YouTube after UK MPs lobbied for his removal
Robinson’s channel and videos have been scrubbed from YouTube search and recommendations. They can only be accessed via a direct link and are hidden behind an interstitial.
Cloudflare announces Warp: a free VPN that it claims will actually respect your privacy
Cloudflare claims that its Warp VPN will not write any user-identifiable log data to disk, will purge all debug logs within 24 hours, and will not require any personally identifiable information to start using the service.
r/Games goes full SJW and closes down the entire subreddit as part of a humorless April Fools’ statement
r/Games is one of the biggest video game related subreddits and the decision to use April Fools’ to push SJW politics in this subreddit is not being well received.
Epic Games accused of removing copies of Detroit: Become Human from user accounts
After a bug caused Detroit: Become Human to be made free in the Russian Epic Games Store, the company has removed free versions of the game from user accounts.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg hints that more censorship is coming to the platform
In an open letter, Sandberg promised the company would be restricting who can use Facebook Live, using better technology to take down more content, and taking a more aggressive stance against what it deems to be “hate” in the wake of the New Zealand mass shootings.
Poland issues its first ever GDPR fine
The fine was levied against an unnamed company which processed the personally identifiable information of over six million Polish citizens without their consent.
Google is reportedly still working on its censored Chinese search engine Project Dragonfly
Internal Google sources have said that the company is performing closed performance reviews of Project Dragonfly and that management has committed to keeping the project secret.
Russia orders 10 leading VPNs to comply with its list of banned sites
Russia has threatened to restrict access to 10 leading non-Russian VPNs if they don’t block certain sites.