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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · 5d

A gentle reminder that Wikipedia is a global treasure and that if you dislike what you see on there the door is open to you to contribute to the community.
Radical transparency and cooperation is how Wikipedia works:
medium.com/freely-shari...

Keeping information reliable in the digital age: Lessons from Wikipedia

A new series explores how Wikipedia can inspire new standards of knowledge integrity for our times

medium.com

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · 5d

#TechPromCDT is back this October! It’s a night of connection, conversation, and celebration of 30+ years of tech policy. Can’t wait to see this incredible community come together again.
Oct 23 | 📍 The LINE DC
@CDT.org
cdt.org/event/2025-t...

2025 Tech Prom

Join us on October 23, 2025, at The LINE DC for this year’s Tech Prom! 🎟️ [ Reserve Your Seat ] | 🏛️ [ Sponsor the Event ] At the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), we fight to advance civil...

cdt.org

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 6d

A series of short posts from leading scholars about the constraints the First Amendment imposes on the government's authority to impose conditions on federal funding. Seems relevant! This is a @knightcolumbia.org series from earlier this year. knightcolumbia.org/research/fed...

Federal Funding and the First Amendment

knightcolumbia.org

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Katie Fallow @katiefallow.bsky.social · 17d

It says something about Trump’s all-out war on free speech that the New York Times couldn’t find a more credible person than “presidential historian” Craig Shirley to defend it. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/u...

Craig Shirley, a presidential historian and biographer of President Ronald Reagan, said Mr. Trump's experience was so searing that he did not believe the president would improperly restrain others' free speech, whatever his public exhortations.
"We all especially know Biden used government to censor Trump, kicking him off many media platforms, a clear violation of the law," Mr. Shirley said. "As his own First Amendment rights were abridged, my guess is he's especially sensitive to anyone else seeing their First Amendment rights taken away."

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Sep 5

Go Birds.

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Aliya Bhatia @aliyabhatia.bsky.social · Aug 22

Our own study of multilingual AI finds that these systems are trained on mostly English-lang data, machine translated speech, or data scraped from the web which doesn't represent how people speak. Translation is an art form. AI is creating six-fingered mimicry of language: cdt.org/insights/los...

Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · Aug 21

Since 2023, translators and interpreters have seen work dry up, rates plummet and their jobs reduced to editing AI-generated output. Some are leaving the field, others are considering bankruptcy. All despite any major upgrade in translation quality.

This is how AI is killing translation work:

AI Killed My Job: Translators

Few industries have been hit by AI as hard as translation. Rates are plummeting. Work is drying up. Translators are considering abandoning the field, or bankruptcy. These are their stories.

www.bloodinthemachine.com

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · Aug 15

I have lost all patience with the apparently unshakeable conviction that striking a reasonable, moderate pose means assuming the sincerity of transparently pretextual horseshit. Donald Trump does not care about reducing crime in DC. He is testing and normalizing paramilitary deployments in cities.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Aug 15

Is that what he is doing? Fighting crime? Phew. I thought he was using federal power to assert power over the country’s capital

Fighting crime in D.C. cannot end with Trump's show of force

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Jun 30

This.

Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · Jun 30

The SCOTUS decision on age verification is bad. Really bad.

But it does not mean that most age-gating or "online ID check" laws are constitutional.

The Texas law was narrowly focused on "adult content." This decision won't apply to, say, a law like KOSA that covers all kinds of protected speech

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Jun 12

I was honored to join this conversation with @knightcolumbia.org about federal funding the the First Amendment and to write this piece, in which I ask, what if Congress decided to exercise its power in this moment to protect our First Amendment rights?

Knight First Amendment Institute @knightcolumbia.org · Jun 12

@kateruane.bsky.social outlines multiple avenues for Congress to exert its authority over the funding process to prevent executive abuse in a new blog post for our federal funding & 1A series. Read it here: knightcolumbia.org/blog/congres...

Congress Could Do Something About the Weaponization of Federal Funding to Silence Speech. For Now, It Probably Won’t.

knightcolumbia.org

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · May 17

I want #40MoreYearsofEvanGreer giving us essential security lesson via pop song covers! We sing this one in my house constantly. @evangreer.bsky.social

youtu.be/EJW7v_Emw8k?...

Pink Pony Club but it's about ... encryption?

YouTube video by Evan Greer

youtu.be

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Center for Democracy & Technology @cdt.org · May 1

CDT’s @beccabranum.bsky.social in the @nytimes.com on the unconstitutionality of the TAKE IT DOWN Act that recently passed in the House this Monday. www.nytimes.com/2025...

House Passes Bill to Ban Sharing of Revenge Porn, Sending It to Trump

The Take It Down Act, which united a coalition of conservative and liberal lawmakers, criminalizes the nonconsensual sharing of sexually explicit images of others and requires companies to remove them.

www.nytimes.com

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Apr 28

Much more than six times

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Apr 26

Imagine seeing the Venus de Milo for the first time and thinking “filth.” How broken and sad.

Mike Stabile @mikestabile.bsky.social · Apr 25

The Federalist is coming for your artistic nudes. By which I mean the ones in museums.

"A number of Christian men I’ve known have expressed discomfort at viewing nudity in high art... these are honest men who care about honoring God and womanhood.

Headline in the arts section of the Federalist:

"Art Shouldn't Get A Free Nudity Pass Just Because It's Art"

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Apr 25

Wikipedia is the ground truth of the internet. It has over 260000 dedicated people engaged in radically transparent content moderation and that’s why it’s the last best thing on the Internet. Targeting it says more about the one doing the targeting. www.theverge.com/news/656720/...

Trump DOJ goon threatens Wikipedia

Wikipedia is facing another threat.

www.theverge.com

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Center for Democracy & Technology @cdt.org · Apr 24

Leading us off, CDT CEO @alexreevegivens.bsky.social: “We’re convening this event because the U.S. is facing a crisis moment for the future of free speech."

Center for Democracy & Technology @cdt.org · Apr 24

"Who Will Fight for the First Amendment?" is happening now. Tune in LIVE! www.youtube.com/live/Zdczxmq...

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Apr 23

Join CDT for this important discussion tomorrow!

Center for Democracy & Technology @cdt.org · Apr 22

Who Will Fight for the First Amendment? Join CDT and a panel of experts to discuss ways to defend free expression at this critical moment.
🗓️ April 24 | 2-3pm ET | Online
cdt.org/event/who-wi...

Who Will Fight for the First Amendment? Protecting Free Expression at a Critical Time

Time: 2:00 – 3:00 pm ET Date: Thursday, April 24, 2025 Format: Online Webinar On the day of his second Inauguration, President Trump issued an Executive Order, entitled Restoring Free Speech and Ending Federal Censorship. Since that moment, he and members of his Administration have commenced an all-out assault on the First Amendment and the […]

cdt.org

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Apr 14

A bop.

Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · Apr 14

As promised here’s Pink Pony Club but it’s about encryption

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · Apr 10

I think Mel Brooks once said something like: Tragedy is when I stub my toe, comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die. By extension, "censorship" is when I can't use racial slurs on a private social media platform; "free speech" is when you get abducted off the street for political opinions.

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Center for Democracy & Technology @cdt.org · Apr 10

From CDT’s @kateruane.bsky.social: “Automated tools are error-prone & guaranteed to improperly categorize an unknown number of applicants’ viewpoints as violent, terroristic, or antisemitic, even by the Administration’s broad definitions of those terms.” www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

Inside the DHS task force scouring foreign students' social media

A critic called the review a return to “McCarthyism,” a reference to tactics used to identify alleged communists during the Cold War.

www.nbcnews.com

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Apr 10

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Center for Democracy & Technology @cdt.org · Apr 9

From CDT’s @kateruane.bsky.social: “DHS is targeting people based on nothing more than their First Amendment-protected expression, which is wrong in the first place. To make matters worse, it will almost certainly use error-prone automated tools to detect disfavored speech.” bsky.app/profile/npr....

NPR @npr.org · Apr 9

Effective immediately, the government says it will begin screening immigrant social media for activity that officials think indicates support for antisemitism.

U.S. says it is now monitoring immigrants' social media for antisemitism

Effective immediately, the government says it will begin screening immigrant social media for activity that officials think indicates support for antisemitism.

www.npr.org

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Amanda Weaver @amandaweavernovels.com · Apr 8

Just me banging on again that BROADWAY employs more people than coal.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Apr 8

Trump is doing a White House event right now to hype coal

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Apr 5

It’s also lazy. It doesn’t actually take that long to understand how social media can benefit kids and everyone. Or how censorship is bad and anti-democratic!! ::Gestures wildly at everything::

Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · Apr 5

oh man @democracynow.org breaking my heart with a terrible episode on social media, Section 230, and KOSA that included zero voices of human rights / LGBTQ / repro activists that oppose these dangerous censorship bills. just awful.

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Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · Apr 4

I mean… who among us

Becky Hammer @beckyhammer.bsky.social · Apr 3

The man sitting next to me on the Metro is reading a printout of the "Tariff" Wikipedia page

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Reposted by Kate Ruane

Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · Apr 3

Gutting Section 230 won't punish Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. It will just kill Bluesky and Wikipedia

230 Protects Users, Not Big Tech

Once again, several Senators appear poised to gut one of the most important laws protecting internet users – Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230). Don’t be fooled – many of Section …

www.techdirt.com

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