Richard Stallman’s return to the Free Software Foundation’s board of directors has drawn condemnation from many people in the free software community. An open letter signed by hundreds of people today called for Stallman to be removed again and for the FSF’s entire board to resign. Letter signers include Neil McGovern, GNOME Foundation executive director Read more about Rabble Rousing Mob who can’t Read Seek Removal of Richard Stallman and Entire FSF Board[…]

The rule amendments [PDF], just approved by the American state’s Office of Administrative Law, were proposed last October after a set of initial rules for enforcing the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) were adopted last August, a month after CCPA enforcement began. The CCPA amendments: Clarify that businesses operating offline need to provide a way Read more about California bans website ‘dark patterns’, confusing language when opting out of having your personal info sold[…]

Amazon is well-known for its copycat ways, but it’s not so often that another company calls it out on it, much less in a way that’s funny. But that’s exactly what Peak Design did today when it uploaded a video to YouTube comparing its Everyday Sling to a camera bag from AmazonBasics that shares the Read more about Bag maker Peak Design calls out Amazon for its copycat ways[…]

Peter Sunde was one of the key people behind The Pirate Bay in the early years, a role for which he was eventually convicted in Sweden. While Sunde cut his ties with the notorious torrent site many years ago, he remains an active and vocal personality on the Internet. […] Sunde is also involved with Read more about ICANN Refuses to Accredit Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Due to His ‘Background’[…]

After causing a huge virtual meltdown with the announcement of its new privacy policy, and then postponing the implementation of said policy due to online fury, WhatsApp has spent the last few weeks trying not to stir up trouble. However, it has just revealed what will happen to users who do not accept its new Read more about WhatsApp: Users Who Don’t Accept Privacy Terms Can’t Read or send Texts[…]

Facebook has endangered public safety by blocking news on the platform in Australia during the covid-19 pandemic, according to Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg a high-ranking official in the country’s ruling Liberal Party. Frydenberg appeared on the local TV program “Today,” on Friday morning, Australia time, and insisted the government was not going to tolerate Facebook’s Read more about Aussie shakedown: Facebook ‘Endangered Public Safety’ by Blocking News During Pandemic According to Australia- after forcing FB to pay for news on the site[…]

Facebook is being flayed in Australia after its ban on sharing of links to news publications caught plenty of websites that have nothing to do with news. The Social Network™ announced its ban with a blog post and the sudden erasure of all posts on certain Facebook pages. Links to news outlets big and small Read more about Australia facepalms as Facebook blocks bookstores, sport, health services instead of just news[…]

India’s government has warned Twitter that it must obey its orders to remove “inflammatory content” or employees will face potential jail time, Buzzfeed has reported. The government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, made the edict after Twitter unblocked 257 accounts criticizing Modi’s government around farmer protests, after initially blocking them. The accounts in question come Read more about India’s government threatens to jail Twitter employees unless they block critics[…]

Fedora’s maintainer for the open-source Chromium browser package is recommending users consider switching to Firefox following Google’s decision to remove functionality and make it exclusive to its proprietary Chrome browser.The comments refer to a low-key statement Google made just before the release of Chrome 88, saying that during an audit it had “discovered that some Read more about Fedora’s Chromium maintainer suggests switching to Firefox as Google yanks features in favour of Chrome[…]

On Tuesday, privacy-focused browser Brave released an update that makes it the first to feature peer-to-peer protocol for hosting web content. Known as IPFS, which stands for InterPlanetary File System, the protocol allows users to load content from a decentralized network of distributed nodes rather than a centralized server. It’s new — and much-heralded — technology, Read more about Brave Will Become First Browser To Offer IPFS peer to peer content hosting[…]