Note: these numbers do not take into account the amount of secret removal requests from governments, which are probably most in the US (also see https://www.linkielist.com/global-domination/us-judge-rules-twitter-cant-be-transparent-about-amount-of-surveillance-requests-processed-per-year-due-to-national-security-of-the-4th-reich/)

In 2009, Google started recording the number of content removal requests it received from courts and government agencies all over the world, disclosing the figures on a six-month basis. Soon after, several other companies followed suit, including Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, and Wikimedia.

This year, we’ve extended our study of the above to include Pinterest, Dropbox, Reddit, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Tumblr. Our study looks at the number of content removal requests by platform, which countries have the highest rates of content removal per 100,000 internet users, and how things have changed on a year-by-year basis.

What did we find?

Some governments avidly try to control online data, whether this is on social media, blogs, or both. And not all of the worst offenders may be who you expect.

Top 10 countries by number of content removal requests

According to our findings, the countries with the highest rate of content removal requests per 100,000 internet users are:

1. Monaco – 341 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users
2. Russia – 146 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users
3. Turkey – 138 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users
4. France – 97 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users
5. Israel – 91 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users
6. Liechtenstein – 68 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users
7. Pakistan – 62 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users
8. South Korea – 49 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users
9. Mexico – 49 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users
10. Japan – 49 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users

With 130 content removal requests to less than 39,000 internet users, Monaco has had the most content removal requests per 100,000 internet users. The majority of these (116) were directed at Facebook with over 98 percent in 2019.

In second and third place are Russia and Turkey with 146 and 138 content removal requests per 100,000 internet users respectively. Russia had 179,013 requests in total with 69 percent of these being directed toward Google. In contrast, Turkey had 90,696 requests in total with the majority of these (55 percent) being directed toward Twitter.

We’ll delve into the whats and whys of these removals below. But which countries submitted the most requests overall?

If we switch the top 10 to be the countries that submitted the highest number of requests overall, things do change slightly:

1. Russia – 179,013 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (69 percent) were directed toward Google
2. India – 97,631 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (76 percent) were directed toward Facebook
3. Turkey – 90,696 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (55 percent) were directed toward Twitter
4. Japan – 56,861 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (98 percent) were directed toward Twitter
5. France – 54,627 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (80 percent) were directed toward Facebook
6. Mexico – 45,671 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (99 percent) were directed toward Facebook
7. Brazil – 36,151 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (72 percent) were directed toward Facebook
8. South Korea – 24,658 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (44 percent) were directed toward Twitter
9. Pakistan – 23,377 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (84 percent) were directed toward Facebook
10. Germany – 19,040 content removal requests submitted in total. The majority of these (68 percent) were directed toward Facebook

Russia outranked all other countries with a 6-digit figure for government content requests, making 179,765 requests across all platforms. It’s also the highest-ranking country for the number of requests submitted to Google, Reddit, TikTok, and Dropbox.

Interesting, too, is how the United Kingdom and the United States rank in eleventh and twelfth place respectively for the number of content requests submitted. The UK had 17,406 content removal requests in total with 64 percent being submitted to Facebook. Meanwhile, the US had 12,474 in total with 80 percent submitted to Google. In relation to the number of internet users, however, the UK submitted 27 per 100,000 and the US just 4 per 100,000. This places them 16th and 50th in the number of requests per 100,000 internet user rankings respectively.

Highest content removal requests by platform

Now we know which countries have submitted the most requests, which country comes out on top for each platform?

• Google: Russia accounts for 60 percent of requests – 123,607 of 207,066
• Facebook: India accounts for 24 percent of requests – 74,674 of 308,434
• Twitter: Japan accounts for 31 percent of requests – 55,590 of 181,689
• Microsoft: China accounts for 52 percent of requests – 8,665 of 16,817
• Pinterest: South Korea accounts for 46 percent of requests – 2,345 of 5,134
• Tumblr: South Korea accounts for 71 percent of requests – 2,260 of 3,193
• Wikimedia: United States accounts for 23 percent of requests – 977 of 4,256
• Dropbox: Russia accounts for 34 percent of requests – 752 of 2,217
• TikTok: Russia accounts for 24 percent of requests – 150 of 620
• Reddit: Russia accounts for 29 percent of requests – 143 of 488
• LinkedIn: China accounts for 71 percent of requests – 72 of 102

What about China’s lower rankings across every category but Microsoft?

China tends not to bother going through content providers and their in-house reporting mechanisms to censor content. It simply blocks entire sites and apps outright, forcing internet service providers to bar access on behalf of the government. China has banned all of the websites we have used in this comparison, except for LinkedIn and some of Microsoft’s services–the two areas where it dominates the content removal requests.

Which tech giant is receiving the highest percentage of removal requests in each country?

If we look at which tech giant is receiving the highest percentage of removal requests in each country, we can see that Google and Facebook tend to receive the vast majority.

Many Central European, South East Asian, and some South American countries submit the majority of their removal requests to Facebook, while many African and Eastern European countries, as well as the US, Canada, and Australia, submit most of theirs to Google. A large number of Middle Eastern countries submit the majority of requests to Twitter.

Biggest years for government content removal requests

Following a slight dip in 2019 (a 2 percent decrease on the number of requests submitted in 2018), removal requests bounced back up by 69 percent from 2019 to 2020. Twitter accounted for the largest percentage of these requests with 80,744 (40 percent) of the 203,698 requests submitted in total. It was closely followed by Facebook (62,314 or 31 percent) and Google (44,065 or 22 percent).

Over the years, these platforms have made the most content removal requests. But, when you take into consideration that all three are the highest used of all the platforms we’ve covered, that’s perhaps no surprise.

However, what the above does show us is how the focus on platforms has changed over the years.

Facebook’s biggest year for content removal requests came in 2015 when 76,395 requests were submitted (25 percent of its overall total). These requests then dropped significantly in 2016 before increasing by 155 and 21 percent from 2016 to 2017 and 2017 to 2018 respectively. Figures then dropped by 34 percent from 2018 to 2019 before almost doubling again from 2019 to 2020.

Google also witnessed a similar drop in 2019 when requests dipped by 30 percent, having been growing by around 10,000 each year from 2016 to 2018. In 2020, the number of requests rose again by 46 percent.

Twitter, however, didn’t follow this trend. In 2019, Twitter saw a 97 percent increase in the number of requests submitted (rising from 23,464 in 2018 to 46,291 in 2019). The number of content removals submitted to Twitter continued to rise significantly in 2020, too, when they nearly doubled to 80,744. In fact, of all the platforms we’ve studied, Twitter is the only platform (bar LinkedIn and Reddit which have only recently begun to submit reports) that has noticed an increase in content removal requests each and every year.

Why does Twitter appear to be dominating content removal requests? After all, it doesn’t have the largest number of users (it has around 396.5m users compared to Facebook’s 2.8bn).

The majority of the increase comes from Japan, India, South Korea, and Indonesia. As we’ll see further on, Japan Twitter has recently been under fire for censoring government critics. Other reasons could be increases in scams, misinformation around elections, and general violations of local laws.

Russia accounts for 60 percent of Google’s content removal requests

As mentioned previously, Russia dominates the number of content request removals made to Google, accounting for 123,607 (60 percent) in total. Despite Russia’s requests dropping from over 30,000 in 2018 to just under 20,000 in 2019, they jumped back up to a record-breaking 31,384 in 2020. This dip in 2019 was a worldwide trend, however, with a 30 percent decrease in removal requests in 2019 followed by a 46 percent increase in 2020.

Nearly 34 percent of Russia’s requests come under the reason of national security, closely followed by copyright (26 percent) and regulated goods and services (18 percent).

Russia’s requests are significantly higher than second-place Turkey, which sent just 14,242 requests–7 percent of all requests received. Turkey was closely followed by India (10,138 with 4.89 percent) and the US (9,933 with 4.79 percent). Defamation is the main reason for all of these countries’ requests, accounting for 39 percent of Turkey’s total, 27 percent of India’s total, and 58 percent of the US’s total.

Which of Google’s products are being targeted by these removal requests?

YouTube and web searches are all prime targets for these removal requests. Of all the requests, 50 percent are directed toward YouTube and 30 percent toward web searches.

Examples of Google content removal requests

Some examples of the requests submitted by Russia, Turkey, and India include:

Russia: “Roskomnadzor requested that we block a Russian-language summary of a Financial Times report claiming that the content was “extremist”. The article stated that the real number of coronavirus deaths in Russia is potentially 70% higher than what official statistics report.” – The content wasn’t removed, which was, in part, due to errors in the way the request had been served. This included procedural defects in the way the request was served (Jan-Jun, 2020).

Turkey: “We received a court order to delist 5 URLs from Google Search and to remove 1 Blogger blog post on the basis of “right-to-be-forgotten” legislation, on behalf of a high-ranking official. The news articles reported accusations of organised crime, which allegedly led to a criminal complaint.” – The URLs were not delisted or removed (Jul-Dec, 2020).

Turkey: “We received a court order to remove 2 Google Groups posts, 2 Blogger posts, 1 Blogger image, and an entire Blogger blog publishing political caricatures of a very senior Government official of Turkey.” – The content was not removed (Jul-Dec, 2016).

India: “We received multiple requests from Indian law enforcement for 173 YouTube URLs depicting content related to COVID-19. The reported content ranged from conspiracy theories and religious hate speech related to COVID-19 to news reports and criticism of the authorities’ handling of the pandemic.” 14 URLs were removed for violating YouTube’s community guidelines, 30 URLs were restricted in India based on cited local laws. Further information was requested for 106 URLs, of which 10 URLs were not removed and 13 URLs were already down.

India accounts for 24 percent of Facebook’s content removal requests

Facebook received the largest number of government content requests overall with 308,434 in total. India made up for the vast majority of these, with its 74,674 requests accounting for nearly 25 percent of the total. Most of India’s requests (40 percent) were made in 2015 when 30,126 requests were submitted. Since then, India’s requests have remained much lower, only reaching two or three thousand per year, except for in 2018 when requests spiked again at just over 19,000.

Interestingly, in 2015, the Supreme Court of India struck down section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which made posting “offensive” comments online a crime that was punishable by jail. Perhaps this led to an influx in offensive comments on mediums like Facebook, or authorities turned to Facebook’s content removal system to try and combat things differently.

In second place for removal requests via Facebook is Mexico with 45,217. Most of these requests (45 percent) were placed in the first half of 2017, shortly after Mexico first started submitting removal requests (its first figures are recorded for the latter part of 2016). Therefore, Mexican officials were perhaps “catching up” on the content that they thought violated local law. Mexico’s removal requests dropped dramatically in 2018 (2,040 submitted in total) before rising in 2019 (by 240 percent to 6,946) and in 2020 (by 93 percent to 13,399).

Mexico was closely followed by France with 43,816 requests. Again, the majority of these requests were submitted years ago (37,695 or 86 percent were submitted in the second half of 2015). But unlike Mexico, France’s requests have continued to decline year on year with just 298 submitted in all of 2020. This dramatic peak in removal requests does coincide with the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris.

Oddly, the US doesn’t feature anywhere near the top for removal requests, ranking 57th for its mere 27 removal requests since reporting began. Facebook’s Transparency Report suggests a country might not make the list either because Facebook’s services aren’t available there or there haven’t been any items of this type to report. The US doesn’t fall into the former, but the latter doesn’t seem likely either, especially when you consider the United States’s removal requests across other platforms. Furthermore, there is a case study (like the ones depicted below) for the US, which suggests:

“We received a request from a county prosecutor’s office to remove a page opposing a county animal control agency, alleging that the page made threatening comments about the director of the agency and violated laws against menacing.” Facebook reviewed the page and found there to be no credible threats so it, therefore, didn’t violate their Community Standards. (Oct 2015)

Examples of Facebook content removal requests

India: “We received a request from law enforcement in India to remove a photo that depicted a sketch of the Prophet Mohammed.” – The content didn’t violate Facebook’s Community Standards but was made unavailable in India where any depiction of Mohammed is forbidden. (Jun 2016)

France: “Following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, we received a request from L’Office Central de Lutte Contre la Criminalité Liée aux Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (OCLCTIC), a division of French law enforcement, to remove a number of instances of a photo taken inside the Bataclan concert venue depicting the remains of several victims. The photo was alleged to violate French laws related to protecting human dignity.” – The content didn’t violate Facebook’s Community Standards but 32,100 instances of the photo were restricted in France. It was still available in other countries. (Nov 2015)

Mexico: “We received a request from the Mexican Federal Electoral Court to remove 239 items in connection with two complaints filed by the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (“PRD”) against Governmental Entities in Mexico. The PRD alleged that the content violated Mexico’s election laws.” – The content didn’t violate Facebook’s Community Standards but access to 63 posts were restricted in Mexico as they were deemed unlawful. 159 items were duplicated or had already been removed. (Jan 2020)

Japan accounts for 31 percent of Twitter’s content removal requests Twitter

Japan had the largest number of government content requests on Twitter with 55,590 requests submitted in total. This made up for 31 percent of all of the requests recorded by Twitter. Most of these requests (36,573 or 66 percent) were submitted in 2020. In fact, Japan’s content removal requests to Twitter have increased dramatically in recent years, jumping by 1,916 percent from 2018 to 2019 (from 875 to 17,640) and by 107 percent from 2019 to 2020 (from 17,640 to 36,573).

While the removal requests across Twitter have increased on a yearly basis (worldwide), Japan’s growth exceeds the worldwide average of 97 percent from 2018 to 2019 and 74 percent from 2019 to 2020. This comes amid recent reports that Twitter Japan seems to be suspending government critics. However, Twitter’s official report suggests the majority of the removal requests relate to laws surrounding narcotics and psychotropics, obscenity, or money lending.

In second place was Turkey with 49,525 requests, followed by Russia with 36,787 requests. Although Russia follows Japan’s trend with yearly increases in removal requests (99 percent from 2018 to 2019 and 54 percent from 2019 to 2020), Turkey’s removal requests are in decline (dropping by 20 percent from 2018 to 2019 and by 28 percent from 2019 to 2020).

Examples of Twitter content removal requests

Turkey: “Twitter received a court order from Turkey regarding two Tweets containing insulting language towards a high-level official of a prominent bank in Turkey for violation of personal rights. Twitter withheld both Tweets in Turkey in response to the court order.” (Jul-Dec, 2020)

Russia: “We received the first Periscope removal request from Roskomnadzor concerning a prisoner’s account. Citing Article 82 of the Russian Criminal Executive Code, the reporter asked us to ‘block the account from which the violating broadcast was made’. However, the reported account had no broadcasts, so we did not take any action.” (Jan-Jun 2017)

France: “We withheld one Tweet in response to a legal demand from the Office Central de Lutte contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (OCLCTIC) for glorification of terrorist attacks.” (Jul-Dec 2017)

China accounts for 52 percent of Microsoft’s content removal requests

As we have already seen, China barely features across all of the aforementioned removal platforms for its content removal requests. This is due to the widespread blocking of these platforms, which removes the need for such requests. However, as some of Microsoft’s products are available in China, it accounts for over half of all the requests submitted to this tech giant.

Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t offer any insight into why the content removal requests are submitted. What it does indicate, however, is how many requests result in any action being taken. From July to December 2020, 96 percent of China’s requests were actioned. Russia (the second-highest submitter of requests) had just 41 percent of its requests actioned, while France had 89 percent.

Since the second half of 2018, China has always submitted over 1,000 removal requests every six months to Microsoft. Russia, however, upped its requests significantly in the second half of 2019, submitting nearly 300 percent more than the first half (2,951 compared to 743). But these started to drop off again in 2020, reducing by 45 percent and 58 percent in the first and second half of 2020, respectively.

Content removal requests across other platforms

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft account for the vast majority of content removal requests, but the following also show interesting insights into where governments are focusing their online censorship efforts.

Dropbox

Russia submitted 34 percent of all the content removal requests to Dropbox, followed by France with 24 percent and the UK with 21 percent. Russia’s requests peaked in 2017 with 243 of its 752 (32 percent) requests submitted during this time. France’s came in 2018 with 63 percent of its total (331 of 524) submitted then. The UK also submitted the majority of its (41 percent) in 2017.

Since 2017/18, Dropbox’s removal requests have decreased quite significantly, falling by 38 percent from 2018 to 2019 and by 52 percent from 2019 to 2020.

Dropbox doesn’t provide insight into the types of content removal requests that are submitted but does appear to action the majority of requests it receives for most countries. For example, the US submitted 33 requests which affected 45 accounts. All but 2 of these accounts had action taken against them. However, of the 48 requests submitted by Russia in 2020, which affected 13 accounts, only 7 accounts had content blocked on them.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn receives very few content removal requests according to its transparency report and the vast majority of these are submitted by China. 42 out of 50 of the requests in 2020 came from China with only 14 countries having ever submitted one of these reports in the last three years (from 2018 to 2020).

Pinterest

The number of requests submitted to Pinterest has grown significantly within the last two reporting periods, increasing by 500 percent from 2019 to 2020 (from 680 to 4,078). South Korea and Russia account for the majority of these requests, submitting 46 and 43 percent of the total requests respectively.

Most of South Korea’s requests (99 percent) came in 2020 while Russia has been upping its requests since 2018. Russia submitted 102 in 2018, increasing by 376 percent to 486 in 2019 before rising by a further 234 percent to 1,622 in 2020.

Most of the content removal requests submitted to Pinterest are due to violations of community guidelines. For example, in 2020, 90 percent of the requests submitted were due to content that violated Pinterest’s community guidelines. No specific examples are available.

Reddit

Even though government content removal requests for Reddit have increased in recent years, the numbers are still within the low hundreds. Furthermore, as Reddit’s report demonstrates, a lot of the content that is restricted due to these requests is done so in the local area (over 71 percent of the pieces of content flagged by government requests in 2020 was only restricted in the local area).

Russia is, again, the main culprit for these requests, submitting over 29 percent of all the requests. Turkey has submitted the second-highest number of requests (100 or 20 percent) but most of these came in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, South Korea upped its requests with 60 in total (it only submitted 1 in 2019 and none before that).

No further information on the type of requests is available.

Tumblr

Data is only available from mid-2019 for Tumblr so it’s hard to conduct real comparisons on how things have changed on a year-by-year basis here. However, from the second half of 2019 to the first half of 2020, requests jumped by 229 percent (from 224 to 738) before rising by another 202 percent in the second half of 2020 (from 738 to 2,231).

South Korea dominates the requests submitted to this platform, accounting for 71 percent of all requests ever submitted. According to Tumblr’s report, 96 percent of the requests submitted by South Korea in 2020 resulted in data being removed–the global average was 95 percent.

No further details on the requests are available.

TikTok

The number of requests submitted to TikTok has been steadily increasing in recent years. Most of these have come from Russia (24 percent), India (15 percent), and Pakistan (16 percent). While India and Pakistan submitted requests in 2019 and 2020, all of Russia’s requests came in 2020 alone.

TikTok doesn’t provide an insight into the reason for the content removal requests but does give figures for how much content is affected by the requests. Pakistan’s 97 removal requests in the second half of 2020 saw the greatest amount of content affected with 14,263 pieces implicated in total. In contrast, Russia’s 135 requests implicated 429 pieces of content.

Wikimedia

From 2018 to 2019, Wikimedia’s content removal requests dropped by 35 percent (from 880 to 573), before rising again by 29 percent (from 573 to 741) from 2019 to 2020.

The United States accounts for the greatest chunk of these requests (across all years), accounting for 23 percent in total. However, the US’s requests have decreased in recent years.

What is particularly interesting about these Wikimedia content removal requests is that they are hardly ever actioned. According to the reports, only 2 of the 380 requests submitted in the second half of 2020 were actioned. Before that, the only content removal request accepted was from Ukraine in 2014. A blogger included a photo of his visa to visit Burma/Myanmar on his website. He had scrubbed his personal details from the image. The same picture later appeared on English Wikipedia in an article about the country’s visa policy. The redactions were removed and his information exposed. Given the nature of the information and the circumstances of how it was exposed, Wikimedia granted the takedown request.

Methodology

Our team extracted the data from the transparency reports for Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Wikimedia, Pinterest, Dropbox, Reddit, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Tumblr. We analyzed the data by country and year, while also noting any other significant details where available.

In Facebook’s latest report for the second half of 2020, every country was listed as having at least 12 removal requests. Due to the volume of countries with a 12, this appeared to be a glitch in the report as the majority of countries normally had 0. Therefore, we omitted the ones with 12 and replaced them with a 0 to avoid over-exaggerating the number of requests received.

When creating a ratio of content removal requests to internet users, we omitted two countries from the top 10–Tokelau and Cook Islands. This is due to them having 1 and 6 content removal requests in total but, because of their low populations, they were classed as having a high rate of requests per 100,000 users, which would be an unfair representation.

Sources

https://transparencyreport.google.com/government-removals/by-country?hl=en

https://transparency.twitter.com/en/removal-requests.html

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/crrr

https://govtrequests.facebook.com/content-restrictions

https://transparency.wikimedia.org/content.html

https://www.dropbox.com/transparency/reports

https://about.linkedin.com/transparency/government-requests-report

https://policy.pinterest.com/en/transparency-report

https://www.redditinc.com/policies/transparency-report-2020

https://www.tumblr.com/transparency

https://www.tiktok.com/safety/resources/transparency-report-2020-2

Source: Which government censors the tech giants the most? – Comparitech

Microsoft plans to update Windows 11 to block a workaround that has allowed users to open Start menu search results in a browser other than Edge. The loophole was popularized by EdgeDeflector, an app that allows you to bypass some of the built-in browser restrictions found in Windows 10 and 11. Before this week, companies like Mozilla and Brave had planned to implement similar workarounds to allow users to open Start menu results in their respective browsers, but now won’t be able to do so.

When the block first appeared in an early preview build of Windows 11 last week, it looked like it was added by mistake. However, on Monday, the company confirmed it intentionally closed the loophole.

“Windows openly enables applications and services on its platform, including various web browsers,” a spokesperson for Microsoft told The Verge. “At the same time, Windows also offers certain end-to-end customer experiences in both Windows 10 and Windows 11, the search experience from the taskbar is one such example of an end-to-end experience that is not designed to be redirected. When we become aware of improper redirection, we issue a fix.”

Daniel Aleksandersen, the developer of EdgeDeflector, was quick to criticize the move. “These aren’t the actions of an attentive company that cares about its product anymore,” he said in a blog post. “Microsoft isn’t a good steward of the Windows operating system. They’re prioritizing ads, bundleware, and service subscriptions over their users’ productivity.”

Mozilla was similarly critical of Microsoft. “People deserve choice. They should have the ability to simply and easily set defaults and their choice of default browser should be respected,” a spokesperson for the company told The Verge. “We have worked on code that launches Firefox when the microsoft-edge protocol is used for those users that have already chosen Firefox as their default browser. Following the recent change to Windows 11, this planned implementation will no longer be possible.”

[…]

Source: Microsoft blocks workaround that let Windows 11 users avoid its Edge browser | Engadget

Whilst the European Parliament has been fighting bravely for the rights of everyone in the EU to exist freely and with dignity in publicly accessible spaces, the government of Portugal is attempting to push their country in the opposite direction: one of digital authoritarianism.

[…]

Eerily reminiscent of the failed attempts by the Serbian government just two months ago to rush in a biometric mass surveillance law, Portugal now asked its Parliament to approve a law in a shocking absence of democratic scrutiny. Just two weeks before the national Assembly will be dissolved, the government wants Parliamentarians to quickly approve a law, without public consultation or evidence. The law would enable and encourage widespread biometric mass surveillance – even though we have repeatedly shown just how harmful these practices are.

[…]

Source: Portugal: Proposed law tries to sneak in biometric mass surveillance. – Reclaim Your Face

Apple’s digital ID card support in iOS 15 may be convenient, but it also comes with tight requirements for the governments that use them. CNBC has learned states using Apple’s system are required to not only run the platforms for issuing and checking credentials, but hire managers to handle Apple’s requests and meet the iPhone maker’s performance reporting expectations. States also have to “prominently” market the feature and encourage other government agencies (both state and federal) to adopt the technology.

Contracts are nearly identical for Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky and Oklahoma, some of the earliest adopters of the program. That suggests other states, including Connecticut, Iowa, Maryland and Utah, may have to honor similar terms.

Apple declined to comment. A representative for Arizona’s Transportation Department told CNBC there were no payments to Apple or other “economic considerations,” though the states would have to cover the costs.

The details raise a number of concerns. While it isn’t surprising that states would have pay for at least some of the expenses, the contracts give a private company a significant amount of control over the use and promotion of government systems while asking governments to foot the bills.

[…]

Source: Apple has tight control over states’ digital ID cards | Engadget

Back in 2017, Daniel Aleksandersen created a free helper application called EdgeDeflector to counter behavioral changes Microsoft made in the way Windows handles mouse clicks on certain web links.

Typically, https:// links get handled by whatever default browser is set for the system in question. But there are ways to register a custom protocol handler, for operating systems and web browsers, that defines the scheme to access a given resource (URI).

Microsoft did just that when it created the microsoft-edge: URI scheme. By prefixing certain links as microsoft-edge:https://example.com instead of https://example.com, the company can tell Windows to use Edge to render example.com instead of the system’s default browser.

Microsoft is not doing this for all web links – it hasn’t completely rejected browser choice. It applies the microsoft-edge:// protocol to Windows 10 services like News and Interest, Widgets in Windows 11, various help links in the Settings app, search links from the Start menu, Cortana links, and links sent from paired Android devices. Clicking on these links will normally open in Edge regardless of the default browser setting.

When the microsoft-edge:// protocol is used, EdgeDeflector intercepts the protocol mapping to force affected links to open in the user’s default browser like regular https:// links. That allows users to override Microsoft and steer links to their chosen browsers.

This approach has proven to be a popular one: Brave and Firefox recently implemented their own microsoft-edge:// URI scheme interception code to counter Microsoft’s efforts to force microsoft-edge:// links into its Edge browser.

But since Windows 11 build 22494, released last week, EdgeDeflector no longer works.

This is on top of Microsoft making it tedious to change the default browser on Windows 11 from Edge: in the system settings, you have to navigate to Apps, then Default apps, find your preferred installed browser, and then assign all the link and file types you need to that browser, clicking through the extra dialog boxes Windows throws at you. Your preferred browser may be able to offer a shortcut through this process when you install it or tell it to make it your default.

[…]

Source: Latest Windows 11 overrides attempts to avoid using Edge • The Register

The secrecy surrounding all things national security-related continues to thwart lawsuits alleging rights violations. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has just dumped a complaint brought by Abdulaziz Ghedi, a naturalized American citizen who takes frequent trips to Somalia, the country he was born in. According to Ghedi’s complaint, rejecting the advances of one federal agency has subjected him to continuous hassling by a number of other federal agencies.

The Appeals Court decision [PDF] opens with a paragraph that telegraphs the futility of Ghedi’s effort, as well as the ongoing string of indignities the government has decided to inflict on people who just want to travel.

Abdulaziz Ghedi is an international businessman who regularly jets across the globe. Frequent travelers, however, are not always trusted travelers. In recent years, Ghedi has had repeated run-ins with one of America’s most beloved institutions: modern airport security.

The general indignities were replaced with seemingly more personal indignities when Ghedi decided he wasn’t interested in working part-time for the feds.

Ghedi complains that ever since he refused to be an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation a decade ago, he has been placed on a watchlist, leading to “extreme burdens and hardship while traveling.”

This isn’t a novel complaint. This has happened to plenty of immigrants and US citizens who visit countries the federal government finds interesting. Many, many Muslims have been approached by the FBI to work as informants. And many have reported their traveling experiences got noticeably worse when they refused to do so.

Without moving past a motion to dismiss, there can be no discovery. And national security concerns means there isn’t going to be much to discover, even if a plaintiff survives a first round of filings.

Unsurprisingly, the Government refuses to confirm or deny anything.

That put Ghedi in the crosshairs of “a byzantine structure featuring an alphabet soup of federal agencies,” as the court puts it. The DHS oversees everything. Day-to-day hassling is handled by the TSA (domestic travelers) and the CBP (international travelers). Ghedi saw more of one (CBP) than the other, but the TSA still handles screening of passengers and luggage, so he saw plenty of both.

The refusal to join the FBI as a paid informant apparently led to all of the following:

• an inability to print a boarding pass at home, requiring him to interact with ticketing agents “for an average of at least one hour, when government officials often appear and question” him;

• an SSSS designation on his boarding passes;

• TSA searches of his belongings, “with the searches usually lasting at least an hour”;

• TSA pat downs when departing the U.S. and CBP pat downs when returning to the U.S.;

• encounters with federal officers when boarding and deboarding planes;

• questioning and searches by CBP officers “for an average of two to three hours” after returning from international travel;

• CBP confiscation of his laptop and cellphone “for up to three weeks”;

• being taken off an airplane two times after boarding; and

• being detained for seven hours by DHS and CBP officials in Buffalo, New York in May 2012 and being detained in Dubai for two hours in March 2019.

Ghedi approached the DHS through its court-mandated redress program to inquire about his status twice — once in 2012 and again in 2019. In both cases, the DHS refused to confirm or deny anything about his travel status or his placement on any watchlists that might result in enhanced screening and extended conversations with federal agents every time he flew.

Ghedi sued the heads of all the agencies involved, alleging rights violations stemming from his refusal to become an informant and his apparent placement on some watchlist operated by these agencies.

Ghedi brings two Fourth Amendment claims. The first alleges that the heads of the DHS, TSA, and CBP violated his Fourth Amendment rights through “prolonged detentions,” and “numerous invasive, warrantless patdown searches” lacking probable cause. The second alleges that the heads of the DHS, TSA, and CBP also violated his Fourth Amendment rights through their agents conducting “warrantless searches of his cell phones without probable cause.” The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons . . . and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The district court said he had no standing to sue. The Fifth Circuit says he does. But standing to sue doesn’t matter if you sue the wrong people. The Appeals Court says there’s a plausible injury alleged here, but it wasn’t perpetrated by the named defendants.

Even though we hold that Ghedi has plausibly alleged an injury in fact, he still must satisfy standing’s second prong—that his injury is fairly traceable to these Defendants. Here Ghedi’s Fourth Amendment claims falter. That is because Ghedi bases his Fourth Amendment claims on TSA and CBP agents’ searching him and seizing his electronics. He argues these searches and seizures are atypical actions, even for people on the Selectee List. Yet instead of suing these agents directly, Ghedi has brought his Fourth Amendment claims against the heads of DHS, TSA, and CBP. Ghedi does not allege that any of these officials personally conducted or directed the searches or seizures he has experienced. And his allegations that his experiences are atypical cut against an inference that these agents are following official policy.

Not only that, but the court says Ghedi has never been prevented from traveling. At worst, traveling has become a constant hassle, marked by hours-long delays, unexplained device seizures, and plenty of unwanted conversations with federal agents. But ultimately Ghedi got where he was going and I guess that’s good enough.

Ghedi never alleges that he was prevented from ultimately getting to his final destination. At most, these allegations lead to a reasonable inference that the Government has inconvenienced Ghedi. But they do not plausibly allege a deprivation of Ghedi’s right to travel.

There are some rights the court will recognize but this isn’t one of them.

In short, Ghedi has no right to hassle-free travel. In the Supreme Court’s view, international travel is a “freedom” subject to “reasonable governmental regulation.” And when it comes to reasonable governmental regulation, our sister circuits have held that Government-caused inconveniences during international travel do not deprive a traveler’s right to travel.

And, putting the final nail in Ghedi’s litigation coffin, the Appeals Court says the government’s secrets may harm individuals but they can’t harm their reputation… because they’re secret.

As we noted at the outset, Ghedi’s status on the Selectee List is a Government secret. Simply put, secrets are not stigmas. The very harm that a stigma inflicts comes from its public nature. Ghedi pleaded no facts to support that the Government has ever published his status—one way or the other—on the Selectee List. His assertions that the Government has attached the “stigmatizing label of ‘suspected terrorist’” and “harm[ed] . . . his reputation” are legal conclusions, not factual allegations.

That’s how it goes for litigants trying to sue over rights violations perpetrated by agencies engaged in the business of national security. Allegations are tough to verify because the government refuses to confirm, deny, or even discuss a great deal of its national security work in court. Ghedi could always try this lawsuit again, perhaps armed with FOIA’ed documents pertaining to his travels and the many agencies that make it difficult for him. But that’s as unlikely to result in clarifying information for the same reason: national security.

[…]

Source: Fifth Circuit Says Man Can’t Sue Federal Agencies For Allegedly Targeting Him After He Refused To Be An FBI Informant | Techdirt

[…]

You will recall that a couple of years back, Nintendo opened up a new front on its constant IP wars by going after ROM and emulation sites. That caused plenty of sites to simply shut themselves down, but Nintendo also made a point of getting some scalps to hang on its belt, most famously in the form of RomUniverse. That site, which very clearly had infringing material not only on the site but promoted by the site’s ownership, got slapped around in the courts to the tune of a huge judgement against, which the site owners simply cannot pay.

But all of those are details and don’t answer the real question: why did Nintendo do this? Well, as many expected from the beginning, it did this because the company was planning to release a series of classic consoles, namely the NES mini and SNES mini. But, of course, what about later consoles? Such as the Nintendo 64?

Well, the answer to that is that Nintendo has offered a Nintendo Switch Online service uplift that includes some N64 games that you can play there instead.

After years of “N64 mini” rumors (which have yet to come to fruition), Nintendo announced plans to honor its first fully 3D gaming system late last month in the form of the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. Pay a bit extra, the company said, and you’d get a select library of N64 classics, emulated by the company that made them, on Switch consoles as part of an active NSO subscription.

One month later, however, Nintendo’s sales proposition grew more sour. That “bit extra” ballooned to $30 more per year, on top of the existing $20/year fee—a 150 percent jump in annual price. Never mind that the price also included an Animal Crossing expansion pack (which retro gaming fans may not want) and Sega Genesis games (which have been mostly released ad nauseam on every gaming system of the past decade). For many interested fans, that price jump was about the N64 collection.

So, a bit of a big price tag and a bunch of extras that are mostly besides the point from the perspective of the buyer. Buy, hey, at least Nintendo fans will finally get some N64 games to play on their Switch consoles, right?

Well, it turns out that Nintendo’s offering cannot come close to matching the quality of the very emulators and ROMs that Nintendo has worked so hard to disappear. The Ars Technica post linked above goes into excruciating details, some of which we’ll discuss for the purpose of giving examples, but here are the categories that Nintendo’s product does worse than an emulator on a PC.

 

• Game options, such as visual settings for resolution to fit modern screens
• Visuals, such as N64’s famous blur settings, and visual changes that expose outdated graphical sprites
• Controller input lag
• Controller configuration options
• Multiplayer lag/stutter

 

If that seems like a lot of problems compared with emulators that have been around for quite a while, well, ding ding ding! We’ll get into some examples briefly below, but I’ll stipulate that none of the issues in the categories above are incredibly bad. But there are so many of them that they all add up to bad!

[….]

Source: Nintendo Killed Emulation Sites Then Released Garbage N64 Games For The Switch | Techdirt

The Facebook Papers are based on leaks from former Facebook staffer Frances Haugen and other inside sources. Haugen has appeared before US Congress, British Parliament, and given prominent television interviews. Among the allegations raised are that Facebook:

• Knows that its algorithms lead users to extreme content and that it employs too few staff or contractors to curb such content, especially in languages other than English. Content glorifying violence and hate therefore spreads on Facebook – which really should know better by now after the The New York Times in 2018 reported that Myanmar’s military used Facebook to spread racist propaganda that led to mass violence against minority groups;
• Enforces its rules selectively, allowing certain celebrities and websites to get away with behavior that would get others kicked off the platform. Inconsistent enforcement means users don’t get the protection from harmful content Facebook has so often promised, implying that it prioritises finding eyeballs for ads ahead of user safety;
• Planned a special version of Instagram targeting teenagers, but cancelled it after Haugen revealed the site’s effects on some users – up to three per cent of teenage girls experience depression or anxiety, or self-harm, as a result of using the service;
• Can’t accurately assess user numbers and may be missing users with multiple accounts. The Social Network™ may therefore have misrepresented its reach to advertisers, or made its advertising look more super-targeted than it really is – or both;
• Just isn’t very good at spotting the kind of content it says has no place on its platform – like human trafficking – yes, that means selling human beings on Facebook. At one point Apple was so upset by the prevalence of Facebook posts of this sort it threatened to banish Zuckerberg’s software from the App Store.

Outlets including AP News and The Wall Street Journal have more original reporting on the leaks.

Source: Facebook labels recent revelations unfair • The Register

More detail has emerged from a 173-page complaint filed last week in the lawsuit brought against Google by a number of US states, including allegations that Google deliberately throttled advertisements not served to its AMP (Accelerated Mobile) pages.

The lawsuit – as we explained at the end of last week – was originally filed in December 2020 and concerns alleged anti-competitive practice in digital advertising. The latest document, filed on Friday, makes fresh claims alleging ad-throttling around AMP.

Google introduced AMP in 2015, with the stated purpose of accelerating mobile web pages. An AMP page is a second version of a web page using AMP components and restricted JavaScript, and is usually served via Google’s content delivery network. Until 2018, the AMP project, although open source, had as part of its governance a BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life), this being Google’s Malte Ubl, the technical lead for AMP.

• Ad tech ruined the web – and PDF files are here to save it, allegedly
• Good news: Google no longer requires publishers to use the AMP format. Bad news: What replaces it might be worse
• Antitrust battle latest: Google, Facebook ‘colluded’ to smash Apple’s privacy protections
• That time a startup tried to hire me just to push clients’ products in job interviews

In 2018, Ubl posted that this changed “from a single Tech lead to a Technical Steering Committee”. The TSC sets its own membership and has a stated goal of “no more than 1/3 of the TSC from one employer”, though currently has nine members, of whom four are from Google, including operating director Joey Rozier.

According to the Friday court filing, representing the second amended complaint [PDF] from the plaintiffs, “Google ad server employees met with AMP employees to strategize about using AMP to impede header bidding.” Header bidding, as described in our earlier coverage, enabled publishers to offer ad space to multiple ad exchanges, rather than exclusively to Google’s ad exchange. The suit alleges that AMP limited the compatibility with header bidding to just “a few exchanges,” and “routed rival exchange bids through Google’s ad server so that Google could continue to peek at their bids and trade on inside information”.

The lawsuit also states that Google’s claims of faster performance for AMP pages “were not true for publishers that designed their web pages for speed”.

A more serious claim is that: “Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a ‘nice comparative boost’. Throttling non-AMP ads slows down header bidding, which Google then uses to denigrate header bidding for being too slow.”

The document goes on to allege that: “Internally, Google employees grappled with ‘how to [publicly] justify [Google] making something slower’.”

Google promoted AMP in part by ranking non-AMP pages below AMP pages in search results, and featuring a “Search AMP Carousel” specifically for AMP content. This presented what the complaint claims was a “Faustian bargain,” where “(1) publishers who used header bidding would see the traffic to their site drop precipitously from Google suppressing their ranking in search and re-directing traffic to AMP-compatible publishers; or (2) publishers could adopt AMP pages to maintain traffic flow but forgo exchange competition in header bidding, which would make them more money on an impression-by-impression basis.”

The complaint further alleges that “According to Google’s internal documents, [publishers made] 40 per cent less revenue on AMP pages.”

A brief history of AMP

AMP was controversial from its first inception. In 2017 developer Jeremy Keith described AMP as deceptive, drawing defensive remarks from Ubl. Keith later joined the AMP advisory committee, but resigned in August saying that “I can’t in good faith continue to advise on the AMP project for the OpenJS Foundation when it has become clear to me that AMP remains a Google product, with only a subset of pieces that could even be considered open source.”

One complaint is that the AMP specification requires a link to Google-hosted JavaScript.

In May 2020 Google stated it would “remove the AMP requirement from Top Stories eligibility”.

This was confirmed in April 2021, when Google posted about an update to its “page experience” whereby “the Top Stories carousel feature on Google Search will be updated to include all news content, as long as it meets the Google News policies. This means that using the AMP format is no longer required.” In addition, “we will no longer show the AMP badge icon to indicate AMP content.” Finally, Google Search signed exchanges, which pre-fetches content to speed page rendering on sites which support the feature, was extended to all web pages where it was previously restricted to AMP pages.

This is evidence that Google is pulling back from its promotion of AMP, though it also said that “Google continues to support AMP”.

As for the complaint, it alleges that Google has an inherent conflict of interest. According to the filing: “Google was able to demand that it represent the buy-side (i.e., advertisers), where it extracted one fee, as well as the sell-side (i.e., publishers), where it extracted a second fee, and it was also able to force transactions to clear in its exchange, where it extracted a third, even larger, fee.”

The company also has more influence than any other on web standards, thanks to the dominant Chrome browser and Chromium browser engine, and on mobile technology, thanks to Android.

That Google would devise a standard from which it benefited is not surprising, but the allegation of deliberately delaying ads on other formats in order to promote it is disturbing and we have asked the company to comment.

Source: Google deliberately throttled ad load times to promote AMP, claims new court document • The Register

Monopolies eh!