New York Times: As Iraq Tries to Chill Critics, Its Newest Target Is Social Media

New York Times: As Iraq Tries to Chill Critics, Its Newest Target Is Social Media. “This crackdown on social media is relatively new, but is of a piece with a broader campaign to silence, sideline or co-opt those who publicly question or criticize the government. That wider effort traces its roots to the months of demonstrations in 2019 and 2020, when young Iraqis poured into the streets demanding an end to corruption, a reduction in Iranian influence in Iraq and a new era of openness.”

The Verge: Reddit demands moderators remove NSFW labels, or else

The Verge: Reddit demands moderators remove NSFW labels, or else. “Reddit has sent messages to the mods of those subreddits saying they must ‘immediately correct’ their NSFW labeling, claiming each community ‘has not historically been considered NSFW nor would they under our current policies.’ If the designation isn’t corrected, any moderators involved in that decision will be removed.”

9to5 Mac: Reddit plagued with 1-star App Store reviews over API debacle as users search for 0-star button

9to5 Mac: Reddit plagued with 1-star App Store reviews over API debacle as users search for 0-star button. “Despite site-stopping protests by mods and users, Reddit leadership chose to brute force its way through any reasonable way of continuing third-party app support. Instead, the company hopes its luxury-priced API will be its secret shortcut to an overvalued IPO. As a result, Reddit’s official iOS app is being torpedo’d in the App Store.”

The Verge: Reddit is telling protesting mods their communities ‘will not’ stay private

The Verge: Reddit is telling protesting mods their communities ‘will not’ stay private. “Reddit is pressuring moderators who have set their subreddits to private to reopen their communities this week, according to messages seen by The Verge. The company has given moderators deadlines to lay out their plans for reopening but said that they can’t stay closed.”

WIRED: Meet the AI Protest Group Campaigning Against Human Extinction

WIRED: Meet the AI Protest Group Campaigning Against Human Extinction. “One month before our talk, [Joep] Meindertsma stopped going to work. He had become so consumed by the idea that AI is going to destroy human civilization that he was struggling to think of anything else. He had to do something, he felt, to avert disaster. Soon after, he launched Pause AI, a grassroots protest group that campaigns for, as its name suggests, a halt to the development of AI. And since then, he has amassed a small band of followers who have held protests in Brussels, London, San Francisco and Melbourne.”

Motherboard: Reddit Moderators Are Protesting By Changing Their Communities to NSFW

Motherboard: Reddit Moderators Are Protesting By Changing Their Communities to NSFW. “In protest of Reddit’s new API fees, the moderators of some big subreddits have cast aside the usual rules and changed their communities to NSFW. Reddit doesn’t allow ads to run on subreddits that are marked NSFW; in theory, keeping advertisers off of some of the most popular subreddits on the site would deprive the company of some serious ad revenue.”

May Day demonstrations: Why fewer fake AI-generated images were spread (Le Monde)

Le Monde: May Day demonstrations: Why fewer fake AI-generated images were spread. “On March 19, on the sidelines of the fourth day of demonstrations against the French pension reform, fake photos of Emmanuel Macron in the streets of Paris circulated on the internet. On March 29, the day after another round of protests marked by clashes with the police, a fake image of an old man with a face swollen by a beating went viral. But despite a protest movement on a scale not seen for 20 years and scenes of urban chaos, no AI-generated image has yet appeared on social media from the protests on International Workers’ Day, on May 1.”

Library of Congress: Library Opens New Web Archive Collection, Features Programs for Black History Month

Library of Congress: Library Opens New Web Archive Collection, Features Programs for Black History Month. “A new web archive collection from the Library of Congress documents the civil unrest sparked by the police murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The Protests Against Racism Web Archive contains a selection of websites documenting protests against racism and police brutality against Black people, as well as grass roots movements and activism calling for police reform.”

PA Media: Trump baby blimp inflated again to establish ‘how best to preserve it’

PA Media: Trump baby blimp inflated again to establish ‘how best to preserve it’. “The return of the Donald Trump baby blimp, the huge inflatable depicting the former US president in a nappy and clutching a mobile phone, has begun with a test inflation by the Museum of London. A conservation analysis of the blimp has led staff at the museum, its ‘final resting place’ after it took to the skies above Parliament Square during protests over Mr Trump’s state visit to the UK in June 2019, to blow the balloon up once again.”