October 15, 2021 Free expression advocates win Nobel Peace Prize The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia. Announcing the award, The Nobel Committee clarified that the two working reporters were chosen for the award because they represent “a...
Last week Wall Street Journal reporters, relying on an internal whistleblower, released information showing that Facebook has created some exemptions from its own content moderation processes. “Millions of VIP users,” the article claims, are “shielded from the platform’s normal enforcement process.” According to the article. “the company’s automated systems [often]...
Crisis at AFRINIC The African Network Information Centre (Afrinic), the African regional Internet registry (RIR) for IP addresses, has had its bank accounts frozen by court order, crippling its operations. The Supreme Court of Mauritius ordered the RIR’s $50 million account frozen as a result of its contractual dispute with...
IGP’s conference on “Comparative Analysis of Platform Governance in the U.S. and China” brought together 21 papers and 30 scholars and policy influencers for three days of intensive (bilingual) discussion. Digital platforms and the data they generate are now the focus of business, government and civil society all over the...
This is the edited text of a keynote speech given at the 2nd #ICANN-APAC-TWNIC Engagement Forum, a conference held in Tapei and virtually April 15, 2021. A video of the keynote can be viewed here. Social media Social media and the internet expand our capacity for communication and social interaction....
The European Parliament is about to vote on an online Terrorist Regulation. We are concerned that the proposed regulation jeopardizes freedom of expression, access to information, and privacy, not just in Europe but also in the rest of the world. Today, IGP joins 60 other civil society organizations to oppose...
In November 2020, amidst increased conflict, violence and human rights abuses, Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology issued the Ministerial Regulation #5 (MR5). With the MR5 the Ministry has granted itself the authority to compel any individual, business entity or community that operates “electronic systems” (ESOs) to restrict or...
Strange encounters with algorithmic content moderation; the “sovereign” Russian Internet shoots itself in the foot; Biden can’t escape Trump’s China decoupling; what the Microsoft Exchange hack tells us about cybersecurity information sharing (and Microsoft) A Taste of the Future Algorithmic content regulation is beginning to reveal its peculiarities. @Swiftonsecurity noticed...
India and other Asian countries are asserting control over content on platforms. The European Commission tries to explain to the ICANN community how and why it is asserting jurisdiction over domain names. The Biden administration makes a clean break with the Trump Administration’s State Department on handling cyber issues. India’s...
The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression is suddenly interested in disinformation. It is presented as a major threat to world society, and the Special Rap would like to know how to save us from it. A report to...
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”
