Bonum Certa Men Certa

Electronic Frontier Foundation Defends Companies That Attack Free Speech Online (Follow the Money)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 21, 2024,
updated Dec 21, 2024

I want ma tiktok

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.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete