This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays. Omar Wasow is steeped in both social media and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And he marvels at how the two have melded in the current demonstrations against racial injustice and police brutality. Wasow, a […]
How Social Media Has Changed Civil Rights Protests Read More »
Masks work by reducing the number of infectious viral particles exhaled into the environment. They are not a substitute for social distancing and hand-washing, but the collective evidence makes a strong case for wearing them during a pandemic. Even homemade masks can have a significant effect. A recent study conducted by researchers at the Argonne
What Minnesota’s Protests Are Revealing About Covid-19 Spread Read More »
The Boogaloo Bois dress in Hawaiian shirts, stitch igloo patches on their clothes and bags, and spend their days slinging pro-gun memes back and forth on Reddit, Discord, and Facebook. They have also been linked to a plot to spark unrest at George Floyd protests in Las Vegas with firebombs, and to the deaths of
The Meme-Fueled Rise of a Dangerous, Far-Right Militia Read More »
“I stood in front of a crowd of a few thousand people the other day and told them to wear as nondescript clothing as possible,” said Lilith Sinclair, 25, an Afro-Indigenous organizer who lives in Portland, Ore. Conversations about privacy and data security have only recently come to the fore. Once, to many Americans, government
Signal Downloads Are Way Up Since the Protests Began Read More »
Welcome to the summer of 2020, where hot dogs, beach balls, and road trips are joined by protests, oximeters, and arguments about section 230(c). And, every week, your Plaintext newsletter. The Plain View I have become a Citizen addict. Citizen is an app, currently active in 18 cities, that’s sort of a supercharged police scanner—its
Citizen Isn’t Here to Be Your Free-Speech Platform Read More »
“Posting regular content right now is irrelevant to me,” she said in an interview. “I’m trying my absolute best to educate myself the best I can.” Social media influencers — who promote products or sell their own online to followers — have never been more visible than they have in the last three months as
Protesters surround Star Wars actor John Boyega at a rally on racial injustice in Hyde Park on June 3. Photograph: Darrel Hunter Can you describe to me the atmosphere that you experienced when you were at the protest in London? First of all, it was overwhelming. It was very emotional but also very powerful. When
3 Black Photographers on Capturing the George Floyd Protests Read More »
Troubled times seem all the more troubling when any discussion of political issues quickly leads to arguments, name calling, shunning or the dreaded exile of cancel culture. Too often controversial events that demand connection and discourse raise passions that make any kind of communication seemingly impossible. A new social media app looks to remove the
Ceasefire App Looks To Bridge Hostile, Polarized Political Divide Read More »
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media captionLebanon protesters: “We can make a change” Protests raged for a second day in Lebanon despite the government backtracking on plans to tax WhatsApp calls. The government had announced a $0.20 (£0.16) daily charge on voice calls made through WhatsApp and other apps. But it scrapped the
from the not-going-away dept We were just discussing how the NBA and Blizzard each responded to the thin-skinned Chinese government’s pressure on each in the wake of statements made supporting the Hong Kong protests that have raged for months now. The Blizzard half of that conversation involved the company yanking prize money and issuing a
More Fallout From The Hong Kong Protests Hitting eSports Read More »
