New Atlas: Social media surveillance drives 2019 drop in global internet freedom. “An annual report tracking internet freedom across the world has found global declines for the ninth consecutive year. Underpinned by domestic election interference and social media surveillance, the report identified internet freedom deterioration in more than half of the 65 countries assessed.”
The Verge: Internet freedom continues to decline around the world, a new report says. “Digital authoritarianism is on the rise, according to a new report from a group that monitors internet freedoms. Freedom House, a pro-democracy think tank, said today that governments are seeking more control over users’ data while also using laws nominally intended to address ‘fake news’ to suppress dissent. It marked the eighth consecutive year that Freedom House found a decline in online freedoms around the world.”
In development: a database of biographical information for fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. “William Still, Philadelphia’s famed Underground Railroad conductor, maintained a detailed journal that listed biographical data for some 400 fugitive slaves he assisted in the 1850s. At the time, discovery of the journal could have endangered hundreds of freed slaves and their families. But more than 150 years later, researchers at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania hope the document can better reveal the networks that comprised the Underground Railroad.”
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