Category: Technology

Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock Many of the biggest online platforms have long argued they aren’t publishers of the content their users upload, merely hosts. The likes of Google, YouTube, Meta and TikTok claim they simply store and display information created by others, so should not be seen as legally responsible for it. But a recent ruling by […]

In my first weeks as Executive Director of EFF, I’ve been reminded every day how consequential this moment is in determining what kind of future we will have. We are on the edge. What each one of us steps up to do – with our expertise, energy, and resources – will determine whether our future […]

This post is part 2 in a series about automated content moderation. Read the first post here. When whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked a set of documents from Meta in 2020, among the revelations was a jarring statistic: The company’s algorithms designed to detect terrorist content incorrectly deleted nonviolent Arabic-language content 77 percent of the time, […]

Bumblebees die in extreme heat, but there are other reasons too. Jay-Dee/Shutterstock You may be spotting bodies of dead bumblebees lying across pavements near you in the summer months. There are several reasons for this, some to do with the weather and some very much due to humans. Bumblebees are social, living in colonies that […]

Last May, EFF reported that a sheriff’s office in Texas searched data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to track down a woman suspected of self-managing an abortion. ALPRs are promoted as tools for keeping communities safe by finding missing persons and locating stolen vehicles, but this case showed how ALPRS […]

Users are always seeking more control over their social networking experience to make it better, whether to improve privacy or enhance flexibility. Interoperability between social networking platforms like Facebook and TikTok has so many benefits that solve those issues.   Say you’re on multiple platforms because you have friends you follow on different networks, but you’ve […]

kirkchai benjarusameeros/Shutterstock High above the rainforest floor, tiny ponds form in the leaves of plants perched on tree branches. Frogs breed in these ponds, alongside insects, microbes and even tiny crustaceans, creating miniature ecosystems suspended high in the canopy. These are the bromeliads – the remarkable plant family that also gave us air plants, the […]

Young shoots of corn. malshkoff/Shutterstock To people, salt is a kitchen staple. But to crops, too much of it can be devastating. Across coastal regions and irrigated agricultural land, salt is accumulating in soils, making it harder for plants to absorb water and reducing harvests. Scientists estimate that around half of the world’s irrigated farmland […]

British trees are struggling to survive in heatwaves. Forests like these are likely to be affected. Billy Stock/Shutterstock If you visit the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, on the edge of London, you will see a brightly painted skeleton of a dead oak tree. The tree, known as the climate changed oak, succumbed in the […]

Google owes its existence to the open web, but today, its technological “innovations” have much to do with locking users into a “walled garden.” The latest of these is “reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification,” an experimental initiative that will let companies block users if they are running independent, “de-googled” versions of Android. These “indie Android” versions are […]