netwars

This week's net.wars, "Disharmony", finds Meta allegedly engaging in piracy and changing its content moderation policies, and network neutrality dying (for now?) in the US: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/01/10/disharmony/ #copyright #eu #OnlineSafety #NetWars

This week's net.wars, "Banning TikTok" watches two US presidents go from "Oh my God! The kids are using *TikTok*!" to "Oh, my God! The kids are *using* TikTok!": https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/01/17/banning-tiktok/ #NetWars #SocialMedia #TikTok #FreeSpeech

This week's net.wars, "Cognitive dissonance", goes to State of the Net 2025 and finds an inability to agree what the subject of conversation is: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/02/21/cognitive-dissonance/ #NetWars #StateOfTheNet2024 #ContentModeration #innovation

This week's net.wars, "The Gulf of Google" sees a new way to splinter the Internet; watches panic over a new Chinese reasoning model; thinks Silicon Valley has its cause and effect backwards; and asks, "Did Trump just screw data flows between the EU and US - again?": https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/01/31/the-gulf-of-google/ #NetWars #AI #Privacy #DataProtection

This week's net.wars, "The risks of recklessness", hears diplomats consider how to cope with emerging technologies: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/03/28/the-risks-of-recklessness/ #NetWars #diplomacy #signal

This week's net.wars, "Catoptromancy", goes to the workshop day of We Robot 2025: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/04/04/catoptromancy/ #NetWars #robots #law #werobot

This week's net.wars, "Dangerous corner", goes to CPDP and finds that privacy issues have expanded to include the electrical grid and farming. "Simplify!" says the EU. For whose benefit? https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/05/23/dangerous-corner/ #NetWars #privacy #HumanRights #CPDP

This week's net.wars, "The Skype of it all", says goodbye to Skype and remembers what came before it - a little slice of Internet history and a reminder of the importance of network neutrality: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/05/09/the-skype-of-it-all/ #NetWars #Skype #VOIP

This week's net.wars, "Hallucinations", tours the increasing unreliability of "AI" and its chatbots: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/05/16/hallucinations/ #NetWars #AI

This week's net.wars, "Sovereign", signs an open letter to Keir Starmer advocating UK technological sovereignty, finds model collapse plaguing AI, and reads an unexpected clause in Starlink's terms of service: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/05/30/sovereign/ #NetWars #AI #UK #Starlink #Mars

This week's net.wars, "Second sight", recounts the results of four months comparing the difference a cataract makes: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/07/04/second-sight/ #NetWars #cataracts

This week's net.wars, "Nephology", attends the US House Judiciary Committee's Thursday hearing on "Foreign Influence on Americans' Data Through the CLOUD Act", at which four experts expertly defended encryption: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/06/06/nephology/ #NetWars #USpol #surveillance #encryption #Apple #UK

This week's net.wars, "Negative externalities", watches Texas police use license plate data to search for a woman they think might have self-managed an abortion; pushes back on a report that suggests a publicly funded NHS period-tracking app is a better idea; and notes the passage of the UK's new data bill weakening citizens' rights over their data: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/06/13/negative-externalities/ #NetWars #UKpolitics #Abortion #DataBill #Privacy

This week's net.wars, "Conundrum", goes to a meeting on copyright's "existential threat" to generative AI: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/07/11/conundrum/ #NetWars #Copyright #AI

This week's net.wars, "A thousand small safety acts", talks to lawyer @neil about the Online Safety Act's impact on the community Internet - the small web boards, forums, chat channels, projects, and volunteer services: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/06/20/a-thousand-small-safety-acts/ #NetWars #FreeSpeech #OnlineSafetyAct #UKPol

This week's net.wars, "Big Bang", finds a folk musician fighting to get back the rights over his long-ago recorded music, and chronicles the first week of age verification in the UK: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/08/01/big-bang/ #NetWars #HumanRights #Copyright #FolkMusic #AgeVerification

In this week's net.wars, "Cautionary tales", I consider becoming a child for the purposes of age verification, and Substack becomes a unicorn. Dare we predict enshittification? https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/07/18/cautionary-tales/ #NetWars #OnlineSafetyAct #AgeVerification #Substack #VentureCapital #HumanRights

This week's net.wars, "Revival", ponders the purported death of Bluesky and the company town potential of large companies exploring stablecoins: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/06/27/revival/ #NetWars #SocialMedia #Crypto

This week's net.wars, "Magic math balls", marvels at the escalation of the US-UK-Apple case of the backdoored encryption and wonders at the surrealism of "woke AI": https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/07/25/magic-math-balls/ #NetWars #encryption #Apple #AI

This week's net.wars, "Machine learning", chats about chatbots in education with a tiny unrepresentative sample of those dealing with them: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/08/08/machine-learning/ #NetWars #education #AI