Tag: social media

Austria Approves Spyware Law to Infiltrate Encrypted Messaging Platforms

Austria is moving forward with legislation that would authorize law enforcement to infiltrate encrypted communications, marking a pivotal shift in the country’s surveillance powers and stirring a fierce debate over digital privacy.

The federal cabinet’s approval of the plan comes after months of negotiations, with proponents citing national security needs and opponents warning of expansive overreach.

The proposed law targets messaging platforms widely used for private communication, including WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.

It introduces the use of spyware, formally known as source TKÜ, which would allow authorities to bypass encryption and monitor conversations directly on suspects’ devices. The change represents a major escalation in surveillance capabilities for a country that has traditionally lagged behind its European counterparts in digital interception laws.

Backers of the measure, such as Social Democrat Jörg Leichtfried, who oversees the Directorate for State Security and Intelligence (DSN), framed the move as a preventative strategy. “The aim is to make people planning terrorist attacks in Austria feel less secure; and increase everyone else’s sense of security.”

Leichtfried called the cabinet’s approval an “important milestone.”

Austria’s domestic intelligence services have until now been dependent on international partners, including the UK and the US, to provide warnings of potential threats.

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Obama Wants Filters Not Freedom

Barack Obama’s recent appearance at The Connecticut Forum once again revealed a troubling truth: the political establishment is becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of government-managed speech.

In an extended conversation with historian Heather Cox Richardson, the former president signaled that his tolerance for open discourse ends where his ideological preferences begin.

Amid warnings about the spread of “propaganda” and falsehoods online, Obama floated the notion of imposing “government regulatory constraints” on digital platforms.

His rationale? To counter business models that, in his opinion, elevate “the most hateful voices or the most polarizing voices or the most dangerous, in the sense of inciting violence.”

But it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see what’s really being proposed: a top-down mechanism to filter speech based on government-approved standards of truth.

This wasn’t framed as a direct assault on the First Amendment, of course. Obama was careful to qualify that such regulations would remain “consistent with the First Amendment.”

But that’s little comfort when the very premise involves the government determining which voices deserve a platform. Once the state takes a role in deciding what is true or acceptable, the line between moderation and censorship evaporates.

Obama’s remarks included a reference to a saying he alleges is attributed to Russian intelligence and later adopted by Steve Bannon: “You just have to flood the zone with so much poop…that at some point people don’t believe anything.”

This, he argued, is the tactic used by bad actors to disorient the public. What he failed to acknowledge is that the antidote to this isn’t more control, but more speech. Free people, given access to a full spectrum of views, are capable of discerning fact from fiction without government supervision.

The real danger isn’t “too much speech.” It’s the increasing desire to place speech under bureaucratic management.

Obama’s suggestion that some speech is too “hateful” or “dangerous” to be left unchecked invites a future where those in power decide what the public is allowed to hear, a vision completely incompatible with a free society.

And we’ve already seen how that plays out.

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Belgian Nationalist Given 12 Month Suspended Sentence Because Someone Else Shared a ‘Racist’ Meme

Belgian conservative-nationalist Dries Van Langenhove has again been sentenced on appeal to one year in prison as a suspended sentence for what the judge said were violations of the Racism and Negationism Act.

The sentence stems from racist memes that were not even posted by him, but by members of a group chat he administrated seven years ago.

The sentence was delivered today by the Court of Appeal in Ghent, although Van Langenhove does not accept the sentence, and the case now goes into cassation.

On X, Van Langenhove simply wrote, “Guilty. 12 months in jail. Madness.”

He later clarified upon receipt of the written verdict that the custodial sentence “appears to be a suspended sentence,” which he suspects is “most likely because the prisons in Belgium are literally full of illegal migrants.”

“Most people don’t realize that the end result of such a sentence is the same. One politically incorrect tweet can now put me in jail. One meme sent by someone else in a group chat I am in can turn the suspended sentence into an effective one. This suspended sentence is the gravest form of censorship they could pursue and an effective way to kill activism,” he added.

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Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Blasts EU’s Digital Services Act as Gateway to Censorship and Centralized Control

While European regulators polish their halos and crank out legislation faster than Brussels can subsidize cheese, Pavel Durov is out here playing the role of a digital heretic.

In a French interview, the Telegram founder is sounding alarms over what he sees as a not-so-slow crawl toward speech control disguised as safety. The latest darling of the bureaucratic elite? The Digital Services Act is a piece of legislation that reads like it was written by a committee of risk-averse interns with a fetish for vague language and zero accountability.

Durov isn’t whispering his concerns at think tank luncheons or lobbying dinners. He’s calling it what it is: an institutional greenlight for censorship. “Once you legitimize censorship, it’s difficult to go back,” he says, which probably makes him the least popular dinner guest in Brussels since anyone asked about eurozone debt.

What makes this more than another libertarian tech rant is that Durov isn’t hypothesizing. He’s living it. Right now, he’s effectively stuck in France, being slow-roasted by criminal accusations that, according to him, are so flimsy they wouldn’t hold up in a Bluesky comment section.

“Nothing has ever been proven that shows that I am, even for a second, guilty of anything,” he insists.

One story in particular peels back the clean, professional veneer of Europe’s “rules-based” order.

Durov describes a charming little tête-à-tête with the head of France’s foreign intelligence service, the DGSE.

Over croissants and state-sponsored pressure, he was asked to delete Telegram channels tied to Romanian political activists.

He refused. Not with a polite “I’ll look into it” or some carefully lawyered dodge, but with what may be the most defiant line uttered by a CEO since Steve Jobs told IBM to get lost: “I told them I prefer to die than betray my users.”

Nothing screams “democracy in action” quite like a spy agency demanding censorship in a private meeting. At least they skipped the pretense.

Beneath the PR gloss of the Digital Services Act lies the basic truth of modern governance: power is being centralized and speech, sanitized.

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X Sues New York For Demanding Social Media Data To Censor Speech

Social media company X sued New York to challenge a state law that requires social media companies to submit semi-annual reports about how they are suppressing certain kinds of speech to the New York attorney general. According to the lawsuit, provisions in the “Stop Hiding Hate Act” violate social media companies’ First Amendment rights and threaten free speech.

The law, in part, outlines “terms of service reports” in which companies must disclose to the state whether the terms of service for each of their platforms define certain “categories,” including hate speech, racism, extremism, misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference. If their terms of service do include these categories, the companies would also be required to include those definitions in the report. The reports would also require companies to disclose a “detailed description” of their “content moderation practices” regarding these categories. Failing to submit the report could engender $15,000 per day. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the law in December, and it is set to go into effect this year.

X challenged the constitutionality of the “Content Category Report” portions of the law, arguing that they force companies to disclose “highly sensitive and controversial speech” protected under the Constitution. X also noted that content moderation “engenders considerable debate among reasonable people about where to draw the correct proverbial line,” and that “[t]his is not a role the government may play.”

Musk, who has described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” bought Twitter in 2022 to return the platform to “a digital town square” where ideas could be debated freely. He loosened the platform’s content moderation rules and readmitted suspended users, including President Donald Trump.

New York State Sen. Brad Holyman-Sigal and Assemblywoman Grace Lee, both Democrats, sponsored the law. In a letter that X quoted in the lawsuit, the two politicians said that X and Musk have a “disturbing record,” which “threatens the foundations of our democracy.” In a Tuesday statement responding to the lawsuit, the two lawmakers called social media companies, including X, “cesspools of hate speech,” and claimed the “Stop Hiding Hate Act” is necessary for “transparency.”

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IDF Mandates Pre-Approval for Reporting Missile Strikes, Including on Social Media and Online Platforms

A new set of censorship rules issued by the Israel Defense Forces is raising alarms over media freedom and public transparency.

Brigadier-General Kobi Mandelblit, Israel’s chief censor, declared on Wednesday a mandate requiring prior approval for any reporting on where missiles or drones have struck, no matter the platform or location of publication.

According to the statement, “any person who prints or publishes printed matter or a publication regarding the location of a strike or hit by enemy war materiel, including missiles of any kind and UAVs, in the media or online (including social media, blogs and chats, etc.)” must now submit that material to the military censor for approval before it is released.

This directive applies to both domestic and international reporting, online and offline.

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North Jersey police officer pleads guilty to child porn distribution

A suspended Morris County police officer has pleaded guilty to distributing child porn, according to the county prosecutor’s office.

Anthony Kelly, 37, of the Ledgewood section of Roxbury, entered his plea June 16 to one count of second-degree distribution of child sexual abuse material before Morris County Judge Ralph Amirata. The state has agreed to recommend a seven-year prison sentence, the prosecutor said in a press release.

The investigation began in late 2024 after six CyberTips generated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were sent to the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office. The tips detailed the distribution of more than 100 items of child sexual abuse material from an account on Kik, an instant messaging application, between July and October 2024.

Investigators revealed the account belonged to Kelly, who was charged on Nov. 26. He is currently suspended without pay from the Dover Police Department.

Dover Police Chief Jonathan Delaney, in a statement to the Daily Record, said Kelly’s arrest “appears to be an isolated incident and does not reflect the values, professionalism, or character of the hardworking men and women of the Dover Police Department.” He added that he remains committed to upholding the high standards throughout the department.

“We will continue to cooperate fully with the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office as this matter proceeds through the appropriate legal channels,” Delaney said. “In the meantime, I want to reaffirm my confidence in the dedicated officers of this department who serve with honor, courage, and a deep commitment to public safety.”

In addition to the seven-year recommended prison sentence, Kelly will be required to register pursuant to Megan’s Law upon his release, the prosecutor’s office said. He is scheduled to be sentenced by Amirata July 18.

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France Pushes Digital ID Check Laws For Platforms Like Reddit and Bluesky

Efforts by the French government to combat online access to pornography are quickly turning into a broader push to dismantle online anonymity, raising significant alarm among privacy advocates.

Authorities are now considering applying harsh age-verification mandates not just to explicit sites, but also to social networks like Reddit, Mastodon, and Bluesky, platforms where adult content may appear but where identity is not typically tethered to real-world credentials.

The shift doesn’t involve new legislation, but a reinterpretation of existing laws under France’s recently enacted regulations. This would allow the state to brand platforms that “enable the sharing of pornographic content” as porn sites, subjecting them to some of the most invasive digital ID checks yet proposed in the EU.

Digital Minister Clara Chappaz’s office stated, “Our focus is age verification for any platform that distributes or enables the sharing of pornographic content.”

Though framed as a move to protect children, the implications extend well beyond youth safety. Any service caught in this net would be forced to track the age, and by extension, the identity, of its users, undermining pseudonymity and threatening to make anonymous online activity impossible in practice.

The government’s renewed urgency follows the tragic killing of a teaching assistant in a high school, which President Emmanuel Macron used to reemphasize his call to ban social media for users under 15. While unrelated to pornography, the incident is being used to justify sweeping controls over digital spaces.

Platforms that fail to comply with the new age-check rules risk being fined, blacklisted by search engines, or even blocked entirely. Chappaz recently signaled that Elon Musk’s X is close to being designated as a pornographic platform, despite its primary function as a text-based social media site, highlighting how blurry and expansive the government’s definitions have become.

However, the legal path is anything but clear. Under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), decisions over “Very Large Online Platforms” rest with the European Commission, not individual member states.

These platforms are expected to assess and mitigate risks, including those tied to adult content, but retain discretion on how to do so. A legal review in France is reportedly underway, signaling the state’s intent to push this policy despite potential conflicts with EU law.

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Social media now main source of news in US, research suggests

Social media and video networks have become the main source of news in the US, overtaking traditional TV channels and news websites, research suggests.

More than half (54%) of people get news from networks like Facebook, X and YouTube – overtaking TV (50%) and news sites and apps (48%), according to the Reuters Institute.

“The rise of social media and personality-based news is not unique to the United States, but changes seem to be happening faster – and with more impact – than in other countries,” a report found.

Podcaster Joe Rogan was the most widely-seen personality, with almost a quarter (22%) of the population saying they had come across news or commentary from him in the previous week.

The report’s author Nic Newman said the rise of social video and personality-driven news “represents another significant challenge for traditional publishers”.

The institute also highlighted a trend for some politicians to give their time to sympathetic online hosts rather than mainstream interviewers.

It said populist politicians around the world are “increasingly able to bypass traditional journalism in favour of friendly partisan media, ‘personalities’, and ‘influencers’ who often get special access but rarely ask difficult questions, with many implicated in spreading false narratives or worse”.

Despite their popularity, online influencers and personalities were named as a major source of false or misleading information by almost half of people worldwide (47%) – putting them level with politicians.

The report also stated that usage of X for news is “stable or increasing across many markets”, with the biggest uplift in the US.

It added that since Elon Musk took over the network in 2022, “many more right-leaning people, notably young men, have flocked to the network, while some progressive audiences have left or are using it less frequently”.

In the US, the proportion that self-identified as being on the right tripled after Musk’s takeover.

In the UK, right-wing X audiences have almost doubled.

Rival networks like Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon are “making little impact globally, with reach of 2% or less for news”, it stated.

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Minnesota To Mandate Mental Health Warnings on Social Media; First Amendment Questions Loom

Minnesota has positioned itself at the forefront of a deeply contentious regulatory frontier by enacting the nation’s first law requiring social media platforms to display mental health trigger warning labels to all users.

Tied to the 2025 Special Session Health and Human Services bill and awaiting the governor’s signature, the law takes effect July 1, 2026, and imposes unprecedented obligations on digital platforms to act as public health messengers.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

Drafted by State Representative Zack Stephenson (DFL-District 35A), the measure compels platforms to display prominent mental health warnings on login, highlighting alleged risks associated with usage, particularly among youth, and directing users to crisis services like the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

These alerts must be acknowledged before access is granted, cannot be hidden in terms of service, and must not be dismissible without interaction. Content for the mandated warnings will be controlled by the Minnesota Commissioner of Health, alongside the Commissioner of Commerce.

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