Surveillance In Russia, the ‘worst is happening in the present’ Amidst opposition despair, Putin engineers his re-election dispatch Marina Bocharova
Social Media How tech design is always political Social media companies have made many mistakes over the past 15 years. What if they’re repeated in the so-called AI revolution? newsletter Ellery Roberts Biddle
Social Media How Big Tech let down Navalny Silicon Valley was meant to be a boon to the Russian opposition, helping spread democratic ideas. Until the platforms bowed before a Kremlin crackdown Ellery Roberts Biddle
Social Media Silicon Savanna: The workers taking on Africa's digital sweatshops Content moderators for TikTok, Meta and ChatGPT are demanding that tech companies reckon with the human toll of their enterprise. feature Erica Hellerstein
Social Media Taiwan confronts China's disinformation behemoth ahead of vote China is using disinformation and propaganda to try to influence Taiwan’s election. A scrappy coalition of civil society organizations are fighting back feature Brian Hioe
Surveillance A tragedy in Nigeria shows the risks of cheap drone warfare African militaries are turning to affordable Turkish and Chinese drones to fight insurgencies. But without controls, civilian deaths are inevitable feature Olatunji Olaigbe
Legal Tools Year in review: Digitization and the apparatus of control How has technology affected migration, surveillance and labor? A roundup of Coda’s top tech stories from 2023. roundup Ellery Roberts Biddle
Surveillance On British soil, foreign autocrats target their critics with impunity Canada and the US have criticized the Modi government in India for pursuing its critics overseas. But in the UK, where tensions between diaspora communities are rising, the government has been silent feature Peter Guest
Surveillance When deepfakes go nuclear Governments already use fake data to confuse their enemies. What if they start doing this in the nuclear realm? feature Sarah Scoles
Surveillance In India, Big Brother is watching Apple warned Indian journalists and opposition politicians last month that their phones had likely been hacked by a state-sponsored attacker. Is this more evidence of democratic backsliding? feature Alishan Jafri
Surveillance In Africa’s first ‘safe city,’ surveillance reigns Nairobi boasts nearly 2,000 Huawei surveillance cameras citywide. But in the nine years since they were installed, it is hard to see their benefits. feature Njeri Wangari
Surveillance The smart city where everybody knows your name In small-town Kazakhstan, an experiment with the “smart city” model has some residents smiling. But it also signals the start of a new mass surveillance era for the Central Asian nation. feature Bradley Jardine
Surveillance When AI doesn’t speak your language Better tech could do a lot of good for minority language speakers — but it could also make them easier to surveil feature Avi Ackermann
Legal Tools Indian journalists are being treated like terrorists for doing their jobs Accused of receiving Chinese funding, the founder of a digital newsroom critical of the Modi government faces terrorism charges feature Alishan Jafri
Social Media Meta cozies up to Vietnam, censorship demands and all U.S. social media companies have become indispensable partners in Vietnam's information control regime feature Dien Nguyen An Luong
