Reclaim The Net

Canada’s Digital Censorship Bill Could Expand to Roblox and Discord Roblox and Discord may be next in line for Canada’s age verification experiment.

Ontario Begins Phased Rollout of Digital Provincial ID A digital identity can be optional on paper and unavoidable in practice.

Texas Sues OpenAI Over Lack of Digital ID Age Checks Texas wants ChatGPT to card its customers, preferably with a government ID in hand.

Apple Supports Digital ID Push With Facial Age Estimation Once age checks live at the system level, every new mandate gets an easier ride.

Poland Approves New Internet Blocking Powers Poland’s president is being handed a same censorship bill to the one he rejected as a Ministry of Truth in January.

France Had a Plan to Shut Down Social Media. You Need a Plan to Stay Online. Setting it up costs you an evening. Waiting could cost you the chance.

Brazil’s Lula Signals More Internet Restrictions After Election Victory Lula wants to speak directly to the people, preferably after regulating everyone else’s speech.

The NYPD’s New Cell Tracker Is Built for Mobility The machine is portable, the data is expansive, and accountability remains mostly theoretical.

Canada’s "Emergency" Debanking Powers Are Headed for Their Biggest Test The convoy may be gone, but the government’s most consequential protest tactic is still in court.

France Prepared to Block Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram During Protests The kill switch never flipped, but the government had already drafted the scene.

Half A Million Daily Shoppers Face Biometric Scanning On London's Oxford Street Oxford Street is becoming a test case for making mass surveillance feel like urban furniture.

Google To Allows Ads Based on Gmail and Photos Data Personal Intelligence reads like a concierge, then behaves like an ad broker.

Bill C-22: Time Is Running Out to Stop Canada’s Surveillance Law Canada’s Bill C-22 would require metadata retention and surveillance capabilities from service providers.

Quad9 to Leave France Over DNS Blocking Order France has handed Quad9 a choice between global censorship, user surveillance, and retreat.

Your Ad Blocker Is Now Security Software. How to make the most of it. If a site matters, paying for it beats trusting an automated marketplace with your safety.

Florida Wants to Put an Age Gate on the Entire Internet Florida banned kids under 14, took Meta to court, and went after ChatGPT. Now it wants the phone itself to check your age.

Australian Meta Lawsuit Puts Adult Online Privacy at Risk Meta’s design choices are on trial, along with the increasingly popular idea that identity checks are the cure.

French Users Flock To Bitchat Amid Social Network Shutdown Fears France’s interior minister floated suspending social networks amid riots. Offline messenger Bitchat surged.

Signal’s Red Line Is Canada’s Bill C-22 The bill’s amendments may soften the language without softening the stakes.

Know Your Customer, Feed Your Fraudster Every law that requires another platform to collect ID is also a law that schedules another breach.

Democrats' Letter Presses Big Tech on 2026 Midterm Election Posts The proposed solution is familiar: more moderation, more monitoring, and fewer places for ambiguity.

Meta Fined $25 Billion Over "Hate Speech" and Privacy Claims The privacy scandal is familiar. The speech counts are where this case gets genuinely unsettling.

UK Speech Regulator Considers Restricting VPNs Over Online "Safety" Ofcom wants emergency blocking powers, proactive scanning, and fewer ways for users to route around them.

The New Geography of Being Watched The most unsettling part is not that the machine can find you, but how little it needs to start.

Australia Wants the World to Follow Its Online Censorship Blueprint The bill says it is not about speech, but its critics are already reading the subtext.

UK Speech Regulator Ofcom Struggles To Enforce Censorship Law Fines Abroad Ofcom can write the fines, but foreign courts get to decide whether anyone pays them.

EU Demands Online Platforms Censor During France Unrest Under the DSA, a riot video can become evidence, a risk, or both, depending on who is doing the labeling.

France’s Riot Response Moves From The Streets To The Platforms The meeting was called in a crisis, but the machinery had been waiting since 2022.

Australia’s Social Media Age Verification Law Demands Aren't Working, So It’s Going to Court The teenagers have outlasted the ban, the fines, and the AI. Every adult in Australia may be the next to show ID if the government gets its way.

Eleventh Circuit Lets Georgia Social Media Age Checks Proceed Georgia’s "child safety" law now comes with an adult-sized identity check.

Gabriel Attal Wants Social Media Blocked During Riots France keeps returning to the same question: is a riot an emergency, or an opportunity to normalize extraordinary powers.

Major Banks Investigated Over Political and Religious Debanking A bank’s idea of public opinion became a surprisingly effective way to decide who gets access to money.

Spyware Doesn’t Need Your Click Anymore. It Needs an Ad Slot. Spyware used to need you to click a link. Now it just needs an ad slot in an app you already use.

Albanese Blames Social Media After MP Attack A familiar political reflex arrives before the investigation has found its footing.

Android’s Default Setting Can Tie Separate Google Accounts Together Google calls it verification; users may experience it as forced social geometry.

GRANITE Act Gains First House Cosponsor Against Censorship Rep. Thomas Massie joins the GRANITE Act as its first House cosponsor.

British Government Employees Were Fact-Checking the News at the BBC. Nobody Told You. UK civil servants worked on BBC News and BBC Verify content while remaining on government payroll.

A Privacy Law Built for Videotapes Enters the Tracking Era A law born from public embarrassment now confronts private data sharing at industrial scale.

Florida Attorney General Sues Discord Over Lack of ID Checks Content Monitoring The state wants age checks, deeper surveillance, and a court ordered rewrite of Discord’s rules.

Germany Approves EU Digital Identity Wallet Law Berlin calls it voluntary, while lawmakers keep expanding the places where it must be accepted.

UK: “YouTube Tax” Would Force You to Fund the BBC’s War on "Misinformation" When the state funds the antidote, it gets a say in what counts as the disease.

UK: Police Watchdog Questions Linehan Heathrow Arrest Over Tweet The watchdog says the apology still leaves the central question unanswered: why was he arrested at all.

Every Bad Idea Australia Ever Had About the Internet, Now in One Bill A law sold as upstream prevention could send age checks, scanning, and speech controls downstream.

Florida’s Digital ID Checkpoint For Social Media Is Back In Force Florida’s age gate now has a judicial green light, at least while the larger speech fight keeps moving.

States' OpenAI Lawsuits Seek Age Verification for All ChatGPT Users Eight attorneys general have found a way to make the chatbot's privacy problem even more complicated.

EU Chat Control Reports Processed With Palantir Software Palantir says little here, while the unanswered questions do plenty of talking.

How Meta Muse Profiles People Who Never Used It You can avoid Meta. It doesn't mean it avoids you.

Australian Government Staffer Cites Execution Video To Defend Censorship Bill Once the state can decide what adults may see, the definition of harmful material rarely stays put.

EU Digital ID Could Become The Default Way To Prove Identity To Banks The paperwork is still being written, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.

Microsoft Closes Another Way to Set Up Windows 11 Without an Account Microsoft disabled the Windows 11 “Learn more” local account setup workaround server-side.