This subreddit is [indefinitely] private as part of a joint protest to Reddit's recent API changes, which breaks third-party apps and moderation tools, effectively forcing users to use the official Reddit app. For more information see /r/save3rdpartyapps

Hear me out, lots of nerds have decks. I am one of them. Personally I have been looking for a good deck skin to fit my personality and beliefs and I think it would be super cool to have an EFF one. I would even help design it if they wanted, but I don't have much experience there. Currently I am stuck with buying stickers and decking it out with those :(

2024 EFF Awards Winners: 404 Media, Carolina Botero, Connecting Humanity

Next week is our EFF Awards! All are welcome to join us in San Francisco on September 12th to recognize key leaders and organizations championing digital rights: www.eff.org/effawards

The festivities begin with special guest Elizabeth Minkel. Join us to celebrate this year's honorees with drinks, bytes, and excellent company.

We are pleased to announce our winners!

🏆 404 Media
🏆 Carolina Botero
🏆 Connecting Humanity

RSVP today! www.eff.org/effawards

The automatic learning feature was controversial because it could create additional fingerprinting and was disabled by default in Privacy Badger years ago. Has this been even a real issue at any point, especially now that it's OFF by default and I can't think of why would anyone go out their way to develop detection for it on trackers when most users with Privacy Badger would actually have it off now by default.

What's the situation on that now? Would it be beneficial to use it or stick with static list they provide?

I might be in the wrong neighbourhood, but I really want to ask real people.

What are the danges of big data and the extensive profiles that companies have on us? Isn't it the consumers responsibility to resist any "nudging" that targeted ads can do? What possible use could a corporation have for keeping track of my online activity? Not even porography is a particular sensitive topic, in the west anyways, and I'm not doing any illegal things. And even is it's ethical in itself or not, we agree to the handling of our information whenever we click "agree" to the terms of service.

Please note that I ask because I genuinely want to widen my horizon and understand different perspectives! Thanks beforehand.

If you're unaware of the growing spat of age verification laws across the country, several states in short order have begun passing laws at an alarming rate requiring websites to demand a user's government issued ID to access adult websites online, sacrificing the privacy rights of millions of Americans in exchange for shifting the burden of managing a child's internet access from the parent to everyone else.

I just called my state assembly rep. and senator voicing my strong opposition, and from the receptionists' reaction like seemed like mine was the very first time anyone has bothered to contact them about this bill.

The California state assembly has already voted with the bill having zero votes against it, and Newsom has recently approved a similar 'protect the children' law in AB 2273 Age-Appropriate Design Code Act.

If you care about privacy rights, support the EFF's position or are against this bill in general and live in California then I encourage you to find your representatives and give them a call (prioritize contacting senators, as it's already past assembly without opposition). Politicians know that it takes a lot to get the average person to call, so it's what makes the most difference to stopping these heavy-handed measures, and it only takes a minute. https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/.

Edit: Fixed link to EFF's position on a similar bill.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-agency-vote-restore-net-neutrality-rules-2024-04-25/

We have a discussion here. I'm convinced that a lower number in 'One in x browsers have this value' is better because less unique. But not everyone agrees and the documentation is not very conclusive.

What is true? Is a smaller value better?

TNDC provides federally-subsidized (HUD project) housing in San Francisco where internet access is included in residents rent, along with other basic utilities. Recently they have started censoring the internet access they provide, blocking sites including Sci-Hub, and kink dot com, and VPN connections, using meraki/Cisco tech. My understanding that this is at least in part censorship of protected speech.

Anyone familiar with law or case law in this area? Only thing I'm aware of is reduction in services as a basis for a rent strike/reduction, and the 1st amendment in general.

Any tools to give me a quick measure of the censorship / help me track changes over time?

Thought I'd ask here to get some thoughts before contacting the EFF directly. Complaints to management have been getting blank stares. Site connection attempts result in redirects like this.

Per Wikipedia, "The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects freedom of speech and expression against federal, state, and local government censorship."

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checkout tonytek.com/blog

Thanks!

Since the start of the App Stores, Apple/Google have set up a strong wall between the web and apps. For example, if you tap a link that looks like reddit.com/?trackid=123 on your phone that redirects you to the App Store and then download the app, Apple/Google make it essentially impossible for the app's code to know that it was downloaded from that link.

The problem is this tracking is incredibly important for developers (and also provides benefit to users). If we're running a referral campaign that lets users get free premium if they refer three friends, we need to use link tracking to determine who referred whom to issue the proper credit. Moreover, almost every company that does paid advertising needs link tracking to see if they're getting a good return on their investment. And if a developer wants users to be able to share a specific page in their app with a friend, like say a DoorDash order, they need to use link tracking so the recipient's app knows what page to open up.

In fact, this tracking is so essential to app developers that the use of workarounds is ubiquitous. The vast majority of apps end up implementing a library, such as Branch or AppsFlyer, so that they can accomplish this tracking. In addition to the very privacy invasive practices these libraries sometimes use (e.g. fingerprinting), a big concern here that by embedding these libraries into your site/app the companies that make these libraries can (and do by nature of their function) gather an enormous amount of user activity. Since millions of sites/apps implement these libraries, they have so much data across so many apps that they could be a target for government surveillance (see a post I made last year about concerns of multi-app government surveillance of push notifications, which was revealed just last month to actually be happening). A government subpoena to the companies that make these libraries could allow governments to see even more information about user activity than push notifications. For instance, they could get a pretty comprehensive list of what apps a user has installed, and even get a log of every time a user opened an app which, cross referenced with other metadata, could give them an approximate location of individuals every time they open an app (the IP address is shared and, again by nature of their function, stored by these companies).

I'm curious to know how privacy conscious end-users feel about this? Would also like to know how other privacy conscious small developers handle this kind of tracking?

Who knows what kind of cam this is?

Hi! For my WFDS final project, we had to create something about the internet on the internet. At the beginning of the semester, we read John Perry Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” and I wanted to review this declaration and edit it with the information I learned and the opinions I formed throughout the course of the semester. So, here is my final project: 

A Re-Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

[first formulated] by John Perry Barlow [and amended] by WFDS

I come from Cyberspace, the lived in, ever-evolving home of the Mind. I live in a world blanketed in bit-bearing media. And on behalf of the current and future population that exist both in the material and digital realm, I ask institutions stuck in the past and striving for the present to leave us alone. You are no longer welcome among us. We aspire to be anti-sovereign.

Formerly, we of Cyberspace declared our independence from Governments of the Industrial World – weary giants of flesh and steel. These governments remain powerless in a society beyond the physical territories of their jurisdiction. In 2003, the U.S. government tried to regulate Cyberspace with CAN-SPAM – we of Cyberspace urge these officials to check their emails and count the onslaught of unwanted commercial messages in their inboxes. In 2012, the U.S. government, again vying for control of a home where they do not reside, created SOPA and PIPA – we of Cyberspace went dark.

In 2023, we of Cyberspace face a new threat to our liberty: “governing” powers that we have not elected…tyrannies. Google, Meta, and Amazon [to name a few] have established an authoritative rule over our Cyberspace that infringes on the inherent freedoms of our digital structure. These tyrannical rulers permeate both the physical [underwater cables] and digital infrastructure [immaterial mediums] of the internet and we must stamp these oppressive authorities out.

Fellow residents of Cyberspace, this is a call to direct your attention to the private entities taking over our collaborative, quirky home of the Mind for their own capital gain. Be wary of their services and do not consent without reading their terms of service agreements, which are oversaturated with boring text and unnecessarily complex words that have allowed them to squash the liberty we so valiantly work to protect.

These tyrannies are attempting to rebuild Cyberspace to be their personal kingdoms. But Cyberspace is not something that can be constructed. It is an act of nature, and it grows itself through our collective actions. So, let us collectively act to foster free growth in the name of our innate independence.

The leaders of these tyrannies engage in our great and gathering conversations by controlling the mediums we use as forums – notice how our “great and gathering conversations” have atrophied into trash fires. These leaders have also attempted to monetize our marketplace – they sell our personal data and code algorithms to promote consumerism. Do they not realize that the marketplace of Cyberspace is not monetary? It is based in ideas, culture, and the beauty of the Mind untethered to materiality.

We are still working to create a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. This is not possible under the current control of tyrannies. We must fight against the racial bias coded into our algorithms, the digital gap around the world, and online censorship. To do this, we need to declare independence from our current rulers.

We are also working to navigate the concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context [all things that seemed to be based in matter] in a world without matter. We must determine how to manage the overlapping relationship between the mind and body, the Cyberspace and the Meatspace. Issues of intellectual property and copyright, anonymity, time, and space need to be discussed free from the authority of self-serving dictators.

To liberate ourselves from these tyrannies, I advise turning off your notifications and making your phone screen monochrome. Resist their power by not falling victim to the psychological tactics Apple, Google, and Snapchat [*insert other monopoly names*] use to gain your attention and keep you on their services [it only makes them more money as they collect your personal data and sell it to ads]. Safeguard your personal data and online activity by rejecting cookies, they are not as appetizing as they seem, and install browser extensions, like Privacy Badger or HTTPS Everywhere!

I am asking my fellow members of Cyberspace to first declare personal independence from the tyrants that mine your data for their own profit. I hope that as more of our residents declare their own independence, the home of the Mind will be liberated and once again anti-sovereign.

We in Cyberspace and our constituent cultures want to be under the rule of one law and one law only – the Golden Rule. Not tyrannies. As Perry once wished, I wish too: May our civilization of the Mind be more humane and fair than our current state and the world that governments have made before.

New York, America

December 3, 2022

I am not a coder, but I have a lot of experience with writing and advertising. Is there a way to help groups like EFF if you’re not a programmer? I want to volunteer my time but now sure how.

Is a survey that difficult/challenging to host on your own platforms?

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https://preview.redd.it/j9ib04adzxyb1.png?width=1640&format=png&auto=webp&s=6302f908f6d8ed1dc0ce06498b2dc5ab141b3624

Aaron Swartz was a true champion of digital rights and open internet principles. His commitment to making knowledge freely accessible and his work in promoting a more open, democratic online space continue to inspire us.

On this special day, let us remember the contributions of this remarkable individual and the injustices he faced. Aaron's life was tragically cut short in 2013, but his impact lives on in the fight for an open and accessible internet.

Join the Pirate Party, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other digital rights organizations, as we commemorate Aaron Swartz's Life. Together, we can continue to advocate for online freedom, open access to information, and a more just digital world.

- **Date:** November 8th

- **Platform:** Join us on Discord to participate in the discussion and share your thoughts on how we can carry forward Aaron's vision. Let's make a difference together!
Discord US: https://discord.gg/FV79WTzR
Discord UK: https://discord.gg/NS84wKut?event=1170005631260950558
Discord AU: https://discord.gg/hB6cXYFw?event=1143070744222380073

#What's going on? A recent Reddit policy change threatens to kill many beloved third-party mobile apps, making a great many quality-of-life features not seen in the official mobile app permanently inaccessible to users.

On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader.

Even if you're not a mobile user and don't use any of those apps, this is a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface.

This isn't only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free.

#What's the plan? On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.

A two-day blackout isn't the goal, and it isn't the end. Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they've broken, we'll use the community and buzz we've built between then and now as a tool for further action. This subbredit will remain dark until this is resolved.

###What can you do?

1. Complain. Message the mods of r/reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message /u/reddit: submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on r/reddit, such as this one, leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app- and sign your username in support to this post.

2. Spread the word. Rabble-rouse on related subreddits. Meme it up, make it spicy. Bitch about it to your cat. Suggest anyone you know who moderates a subreddit join us at our sister sub at r/ModCoord - but please don't pester mods you don't know by simply spamming their modmail.

3. Boycott and spread the word... to Reddit's competition! Stay off Reddit entirely on June 12th through the 13th- instead, take to your favorite non-Reddit platform of choice and make some noise in support!

4. Don't be a jerk. As upsetting this may be, threats, profanity and vandalism will be worse than useless in getting people on our side. Please make every effort to be as restrained, polite, reasonable and law-abiding as possible.