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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

battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=21

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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

battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=21

Continued thread

The first campaign of the German Battalion of the #NAFO #69thSniffingBrigade is active! 🇺🇦 🇩🇪

For donations of € 100 or more, there is a beautiful, limited edition patch as a small thank you.

Click here to go to the campaign page:
help99.co/patches/german-batta

If Ukraine falls, Europe falls!

#69th_sniffing_brigade #Ukraine #supportUkraine #HelpUkraine #fella #fellas #fellas4europe #GermanFellas
#GermanBattalion

www.help99.coGerman BattalionJoin us in raising funds with the German Battalion for NAFO Truck 2.0 evacuation vehicles for Ukraine.

Eine herzliche Einladung!

Die erste Kampagne des deutschen Battalion der #NAFO #69thSniffingBrigade ist aktiv! 🇺🇦 🇩🇪

Für Spenden ab € 100 gibt es ein wunderschönes, limitiertes Patch als kleines Dankeschön.

Hier geht es zur Kampagnenseite:
help99.co/patches/german-batta

Fällt die Ukraine, dann fällt Europa!

#69th_sniffing_brigade #Ukraine #supportUkraine #HelpUkraine #fella #fellas #fellas4europe #GermanFellas
#GermanBattalion

www.help99.coGerman BattalionJoin us in raising funds with the German Battalion for NAFO Truck 2.0 evacuation vehicles for Ukraine.

#Stadt #WeideninderOberpfalz: Solidarität mit den #Juden und ihren #Staat #Israel

Die Gesellschaft für #ChristlichjüdischeZusammenarbeitWeiden lädt zu einem "Tag der Solidarität mit Juden und Israel" ein.

Als Auftakt zeigt die Gesellschaft am 9. Juli den Film “Shalom 75 – Gottes einzigartige Treue” im Pfarrheim Herz Jesu, Lerchenfeldstraße 7, Beginn 19 Uhr. Der Eintritt ist frei

gruppe8maiweiden.blogspot.com/
#jewslivesmatter #Antideutsche #Antifa #SupportIsrael #SupportUkraine #mensch #againsthamas