Tag Archives: iran

Big Tech could help Iranian protesters by using an old tool

Big Tech could help Iranian protesters by using an old tool

But these workarounds aren’t enough. Though the first Starlink satellites have been smuggled into Iran, restoring the internet will likely require several thousand more. Signal tells MIT Technology Review that it has been vexed by “Iranian telecommunications providers preventing some SMS validation codes from being delivered.” And Iran has already detected and shut down Google’s […]

Elon Musk doesn’t know what it takes to make a digital town square

Elon Musk doesn’t know what it takes to make a digital town square

This, though, is just one possibility in the era of Musk, which is just beginning. Now that “the bird is freed,” as he wrote Thursday after officially taking over, many users are concerned that after years of slow improvements to the site’s functionality, policies, and moderation processes, the billionaire’s buyout will broadly result in its […]

The world is moving closer to a new cold war fought with authoritarian tech

The world is moving closer to a new cold war fought with authoritarian tech

Beyond the SCO, Venezuela’s autocratic regime announced in 2017 a smart identification card for its citizens that aggregated employment, voting, and medical information with the help of the Chinese telecom company ZTE. And Huawei, another Chinese telecom corporation, boasts a global network of 700 localities with its smart city technology, according to the company’s 2021 […]