Category: issues

The project, called “Europe Beyond Access” and involving partners from the UK, Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Serbia, aims to “break the glass ceiling” and bring disabled artists into the mainstream of theater and dance.

The Fiscal Year 2019 Interior Appropriations Bill was approved by the the Senate with a 92-6 vote, after previously being passed by the House of Representatives. The new budget increases funding to the two agencies by $2.2 million compared to the 2018 budget. (That budget was only passed in March, despite the fact that the fiscal year begins in October.) The 2017 budget also included a $2 million increase for the agencies.

The battle over InfoWars illustrates how what was once these tech giants’ greatest strength has become their greatest weakness. For years, Facebook and YouTube spent so much time defending anyone’s right to say almost anything on their platforms, they forgot to remind users that it wasn’t really a question of rights at all. Only the government can violate a person’s First Amendment rights, however wrong or hateful that person may be.

“In their mandate to be awake to life, and to awaken others, the sympathies of artists and activists seemingly align. But in the activist context, awake becomes ‘woke’ — not a personal practice of observation and a transmutation within form, but a communal decision in service of a desired change. This ‘in service of’ is the sticking point for artists.” (At the end of that road lies Socialist Realism.) Arielle Angel looks back at her many attempts to unite art and activism on equal terms — and her questions about whether, in the current moment, the former is a luxury she should give up in favor of the latter.

We discuss counter-messaging, treating this as a problem of false stories rather than as an attack on our information ecosystem. We find ourselves in the midst of an arms race, in which responsibility for the integrity of public discourse is largely the hands of private social platforms, and determined adversaries continually find new ways to manipulate features and circumvent security measures. Addressing computational propaganda and disinformation is not about arbitrating truth. It’s about responding to information warfare.

For the most part, this push and pull between internet and legal norms is a good thing—as long as it continues to evolve. “We adjusted the law to deal with the mass market media era of television and newspapers. It’s clear that First Amendment doctrine needs to evolve, not to undo freedom of speech, but to ensure the values of public debate and of democratic self-government continue in a digital environment. That might mean adjusting what it means to be a public figure, so victims of tragedy don’t feel unable to express their feelings on social media.

According to figures released by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, authorities across England have allocated a total of £392 million on culture and heritage for 2018/19, compared to £400 million for the previous year. The statistics claim that revenue expenditure by local authorities has tumbled more than £100 million since 2011/12, when it was £501 million. Local authorities include county and district councils, as well as metropolitan authorities such as city councils and London boroughs.

And Apple isn’t alone: “Apple has removed a number of podcasts created by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his InfoWars site from the Podcasts app and iTunes store. The decision to remove the content comes as Facebook also censures Jones, un-publishing four of the radio host’s pages this morning for violating the social network’s rules against hate speech.”