Electronic Frontier Foundation Defends Companies That Attack Free Speech Online (Follow the Money)
12 months ago: Electronic Frontier Foundation Incorporated is Run by/for Corporations Now (Members' Money is Less Than a Quarter of the Money EFF Receives) | The EFF Should Know Better, But It Is Promoting Mass Surveillance by Facebook (an Endorsement of Lies)
WHEN Romanian authorities and courts (then the EU too) put the elections on hold and put Fentanylware (TikTok) under investigation we felt vindicated. Everything we had said for years about TikTok was being legitimised very fast. Domino bricks were falling. It's not just about privacy, harm to kids' mental health etc. It's also about censorship and propaganda. Social control media is very toxic. It should be treated, handled and classified accordingly. Put in the hands of oligarchs and/or dictatorial regimes, it's an instrument no different/better than a digital weapon. "Fentanylware" is partly a reference to the Opium Wars. Sedate the enemy...
Surely the Electronic Frontier Foundation is aware of this problem, right?
No.
Worse yet, the Electronic Frontier Foundation plays a role in worsening this problem. In recent days we saw 3-4 examples of this in the official blog of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The staff endorsed/promoted social control media, opposed Australian efforts to protect young people from its harms, and then celebrated (twice even) for TikTok.
Is this the same Electronic Frontier Foundation we used to express support for?
For those who don't watch the news very closely, the US Supreme Court has enabled TikTok to delay a ban (in the US). TikTok is meanwhile running many propaganda pieces (AstroTurfing), including in dodgy sites that run trash as "news". As an associate said, "why is this shit showing up on that particular site?" Because moderndiplomacy.eu occasionally runs pure spam for money. We pointed this out before. And it's not just moderndiplomacy.eu. A lot of "media" or "press" stories about TikTok are just paid spam of TikTok. We must recognise this. Does that influence the stance of NGOs? Or politicians? Probably.
Then again, NGOs and politicians should quit getting their "information" from social control media or sites that plant fake news for income. We saw that happening time after time... and it's the "same", an associate said, at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He said "this successful delay has now allowed them to drag any potential action until after the government (in effect) shuts down in late January thus rendering the original court decision unenforceable and thus moot..." (National Security seems not to matter all that much)
Just before the weekend the EFF said "We're Creating a Better Future for the Internet". No, for TikTok (CPC). Around the same time the EFF said "Australia Banning Kids from Social Media Does More Harm Than Good". The associate said this was wrong. To quote: "EFF should read the studies or at least articles about the studies rather than spending their time counting receipts from companies vested in social control media and its manipulation..."
So what we now have is the EFF lobbying for Musk, Xi, and Zuckerberg (yes, follow the EFF's money... or its sponsors).
It has also just hinted that EFF folks should become users of social control media. Free software? Federated? No. Bluesky is proprietary crapware; why does EFF promote more of the same rubbish (same as Twitter)? No lessons learned?
As we put it in IRC, "EFF used to advocate pioneering Web stuff, not JavaScript crapware that spies on people and messes up free communications. EFF is like the new Mozilla in this regard. Mozilla hired Twitter and Facebook executives to lead the company."
Fentanylware (TikTok) should be classified based on its actions and effect. However, right now it plays with the system, name-dropping "First Amendment" (which it opposes) and delaying procedurally (after repeated failures [1, 2]) while lobbying Donald Trump at his own mansion. They're stalling [1, 2].
One might joke that today's EFF has basically adopted the same stance as Donald Trump and has a "warm spot" for BRICS propaganda that resorts to glorification of manslaughter (conditioning people to think murderers are heroes) and is causing uproar over nonsense. █