Tunisian police summoned fashion designer Myriam Bribri on October 8 following her involvement in protests against poverty, inequality and police brutality. Since this was not the first time she has been targeted for her activism, Bribri was less than surprised. Yet, now she was being summoned in for posting[...]
There is no doubt that the power Big Techs possess over society is “big.” It is ironic how a deregulated sector is regulating societies, a job that is mandated to the law. The power that Big Techs accumulate, enables them to impose their own standards and policies on the whole[...]
We are organisations working globally to strengthen democracy and human rights. Today we are demanding that Facebook, Google, and Twitter urgently demonstrate the concern they have claimed toward democratic processes in the United States to the remaining 96% of humanity. Immediate action is needed to avoid further aiding and abetting[...]
The last weeks have witnessed an increase in reported cases of people losing access to their WhatsApp accounts. At first users suspected their accounts got banned or blocked as a result of not agreeing to WhatsApp’s latest privacy policy. The new update had threatened to delete the account of those[...]
Tech and media companies are exploiting free, popular apps to increase their access to personal data; and WhatsApp has just followed suit. The app has been sending notifications about an odd update to its privacy policy. The latest policy grants Whatsapp permission to share users’ data with its parent company,[...]
One Year Since the October 17 Uprising in Lebanon: Summons and Arrests for Online Speech It’s been one year since the October 17 uprising in Lebanon, which was ignited over the imposition of a “WhatsApp tax.” During this time, Lebanon witnessed an increase in summons and arrests resulting from online[...]
Palestinian journalist Hani Al-Shaer was not surprised when his Facebook account was deleted for the tenth time during the past three years. However, he was surprised to receive a letter in June from the social media company stating that he has not adhered to the Facebook Community Standards. This came[...]
On September 23, Zoom cancelled a virtual event featuring the Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (PFLP) veteran Leila Khaled. The virtual event was organized by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicity and Diasporas Studies (AMED Studies) at San Francisco State University (SFSU). After the event was announced on[...]
On October 4, SMEX and many other civil society organizations shared an open letter to Facebook and other tech companies to continue increasing end-to-end security across its messaging tools and resist law enforcement calls to create backdoors or exceptional access to the content of users’ messages. 4 October 2019 Dear[...]
Feature image via facebook May 15, 2018: A bar graph shows newest Transparency report displaying the number of content restrictions in Lebanon. In Facebook’s newly published Transparency report, the company revealed it restricted or removed content in Lebanon for the first time since it began issuing the reports in 2013.[...]
