How We Do Techrights (and What's Changing Next Week)
After a 3-day "afk" (away from keyboard) streak - or working only with pen and paper (notebook) - I realised that not much critical news had been missed. This wasn't because of a US holiday (Independence Day) - that was one week earlier. It was due to the poor shape of the publishing industry or utterly sad state of journalism. By 2026 we've reached the point where many remaining sites are slopfarms (LLMs) that nobody cares about or pays much attention to. A lot of the rest are mere "parrots", i.e. sites that parrot what other sites say or what companies say (and some extremely rich people "tweet" or say). There's very little signal, very little new information coming out, and more often than not incomplete or false information. A week ago, as an example: Obscene Contradiction in Microsoft's Layoffs Tally ("Official" Numbers Do Not Add Up)
The reason we attract many readers - and have attracted many readers since 2006 - is that we still go and always went against false narratives. We identified and refuted misinformation, even when it was inconvenient to do so (it leads to ridicule and insulting terms flung around, stereotypes and name-calling). Getting the data by which to debunk lies is the hardest part - it typically necessitates whistleblowers or dissenting insiders with access to contradictory data. One must be careful not to divulge where the data came from (or who leaked it).
Over time it gets feasible to reach more whistleblowers - as long as we maintain a perfect source protection record for whistleblowers - and it's coming to the point where recognition grows. Then, Daily Links duties become increasingly secondary, as the principal goal becomes to give whistleblowers a voice. We still have 4 more parts in the series that began on June 1 and was last active on July 7, a few hours before we travelled to the High Court. We are travelling there again tonight and after we return we will do our best to increase the volume of output, with Daily Links delegated to a more dedicated team. I will spend more time working with whistleblowers to bring out stories in a timely fashion, knowing some of them assert it takes too long for stories to come out (typically in the interest of protecting their identities and averting reprisal).
As always, or as noted several times recently, our utmost priority is source protection (protecting the whistleblowers), the second priority is protecting their suppressed stories (which historically attracted threats), and our personal priorities come much later. We cannot tolerate the idea of persecution for the mere act of protecting women, protecting spouses, defending Computer Science, and exposing actual corruption. If nobody is left for fight for these things, what will society look like?
Today at the market I spoke to the elderly wife of a friend, whose name is Linda. She is a cancer survivor. She told me that she is very supportive of what I do because, according to her, if nobody stood up and fought back, the world would be a vastly worse place. Many people take for granted, sometimes selfishly, what other people do pro bono for public good. She and her husband Carl have already spent years pursuing justice against Scottish Water - to the point of discarding their own pensions and possibly living in poverty just to pay lawyers.
Long story short, Techrights will strive to publish more articles, even if that means narrower analysis and curation of Daily Links. Many former news sites no longer yield much non-meaningless news (not anymore); there's a gap to be filled.
There are sayings along the lines of, if you want some change to happen, then try to become part of that change. Moaning about the need for change is insufficient. Become active. Be proactive. Take risks. █
Image source: Desk with book, map, magnifying glass and binoculars