The 115th Block: Censorship
And the control of narrative
This week…
NASA released images from the James Webb Space Telescope, which I’m sure everyone has already seen. What I would like to draw your attention to is the alt text provided in the tweets, with detailed text descriptions for each image.
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
Jailed for jokes
Arbab Ali and Sabah Gurmat for Coda:
Mohammed Zubair, who helped found Alt News, an Indian fact-checking website, was arrested on June 27 for a joke he tweeted based on a screenshot from a 1983 Hindi movie. Alt News has consistently annoyed the right wing Hindu supremacists who dominate Indian politics and the Indian media, even though the site uncovers and debunks all manner of disinformation.
That said, Zubair seemed to particularly relish his online battles with supporters of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its infamous “IT Cell” trolls.
Related: Comedian Rizal van Geyzel arrested over viral videos (Faisal Asyraf for FMT).
The book ban movement has a chilling new tactic: harassing teachers on social media ($)
Tanya Basu for MIT Technology Review:
Nancy Vera was awakened suddenly at midnight on July 12 by the sound of a single gunshot, the bullet ricocheting off her home. She looked at a security camera just in time to see a truck speed away.
Vera was shocked by not surprised. The president of the Corpus Christi, Texas, branch of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), she had recently handed out books with LGBTQ characters at a pride event for local students, alongside a drag queen.
Vera thought the event was a fun opportunity to connect with local parents and distribute books to kids. But conservatives, including her local sheriff, called the event an example of the “grooming and indoctrination of young people in our country.” “Grooming” is a slur commonly used by devotees of the conspiracy theory QAnon, which claims that powerful people and institutions are ensnaring children in sex trafficking rings.
Facial recognition search engine pulls up “potentially explicit” photos of kids
Mara Hvistendahl for The Intercept:
Abusive parents searching for kids who have fled to shelters. Governments targeting the sons and daughters of political dissidents. Pedophiles stalking the victims they encounter in illicit child sexual abuse material.
The online facial recognition search engine PimEyes allows anyone to search for images of children scraped from across the internet, raising a host of alarming possible uses, an Intercept investigation has found.
Often called the Google of facial recognition, PimEyes search results include images that the site labels as “potentially explicit,” which could lead to further exploitation of children at a time when the dark web has sparked an explosion of images of abuse.
“There are privacy issues raised by the use of facial recognition technology writ large,” said Jeramie Scott, director of the Surveillance Oversight Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “But it’s particularly dangerous when we’re talking about children, when someone may use that to identify a child and to track them down.”
What I read, watch, and listen to…
I’m reading “The Model is the Message,” an essay by Benjamin Bratton and Blaise Agüera y Arcas on Noema.
I’m watching the Twitter/Musk saga explained on Legal Eagle.
I’m listening to season six of Land of the Giants, by Recode and The Verge, on how the news feed turned Facebook into a juggernaut.
Reviews, opinion pieces and other stray links:
Fact check: Journalists are not all rich elites, as a Fox News guest claimed by Gabrielle Settles for Poynter.
‘Hey Siri’: Virtual assistants are listening to children and then using the data by Stephen J. Neville and Natalie Coulter for The Conversation.
Chart of the week
Me, tabulating my hours for my invoice:
Mate i didn't even notice the alt text man, that's real cool, makes you think bout how privileged to have sight and takin it for granted for real. Kudos to nasa whoever who did it well done matey