Media News

This Day in History: Rowdy concerts get rock and roll banned in Burlington

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:29:30 +0000

Rock and roll banned in Burlington on this day in history.

A series of rowdy concerts at the city’s Memorial Auditorium raised the ire of city officials.

A pair of Styx concerts in February of 1977 and a Supertramp show in June featured smoking, excessive drinking and vandalism. It led city leaders to call for a ban on future shows on June 7th, 1977.

The ban would last for four years, until Bernie Sanders won the mayor’s office and allowed rock concerts to resume at Memorial Auditorium.

The FCC wants warning labels for shows with 'transgender' content

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:50:22 +0000

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering new content ratings for TV shows that depict or discuss gender identity.

Doing so would be well outside the FCC's legal authority, and some free speech organizations warn that such a request could constitute a violation of the First Amendment. At the direction of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, broadcasters developed content ratings for TV shows, patterned after the ones for movies.

The TV ratings span TV-Y (appropriate for all children) to TV-MA (mature audiences only), plus more specific content labels for suggestive dialogue, bad language, sexual content, and violence. They also established the TV Parental Guidelines Oversight Monitoring Board (TVOMB) to administer the new ratings.

The government now suggests those warnings are no longer sufficient. "Recently, parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being included or promoted in children's programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents," per a public notice the FCC filed in April.

"Specifically, the industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families." As a result, it continued, "We seek comment here on any changes that can or should be made to the current ratings system to ensure that it is responsive to the issues that parents confront today."

Good Night, and Good Luck

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2026 12:27:22 +0000

CBS Radio News Goes Silent, and Public-Interest Media Fades With It:

When CBS Radio News goes silent on May 22, 2026, Americans will lose access to news programming they’ve tuned into from their living rooms, kitchens and cars for nearly a century.

The once-bipartisan idea that the nation’s media should exist to serve democracy continues to fade with it, too.

As a media historian, I think the story of CBS Radio News’ rise and fall cannot be told without telling another parallel story: the story of how the U.S. stopped demanding that media serve the public interest.

When CBS was born in 1927, radio was ascendant, and this new form of mass communication was spurring vibrant discussions about how media could better serve democracy.

Americans had already seen how concentrated wealth during the Gilded Age had tilted the news ecosystem by overemphasizing the concerns of the rich while glossing over inequality, graft and corruption. World War I further demonstrated the power of mass media to shape public opinion through propaganda, reinforcing calls for democratic oversight of broadcasting.

Just how to regulate radio was up for debate. But there was broad consensus across party lines that government could play a role in protecting the public from concentrated media power and, with it, foreign misinformation, bad-faith special interest messaging or fraudulent advertising.

After the war, television challenged radio’s dominance. Paley understood that Murrow had built a deep trust among listeners, and he put him in charge of CBS News as the network expanded its programming to TV.

Yet Murrow grew uneasy with shifts in the network’s coverage, which, in his view, increasingly served the economic interests of its owners.

Speaking to the Radio Television News Directors Association in 1958, Murrow lamented how radio and television had forgotten “to operate in the public interest.” He worried that “we have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information” and saw mass media increasingly “being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us.”

Without serious reporting and civic responsibility as their animating principles, radio and television were losing their democratic utility, becoming mere “wires and lights in a box.”

Americans Abroad

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:47:00 +0000

An American family walks into a gelateria in the center of Rome. Reality is about to be called into question. The fabric of the world will soon be unmade by a confusion about flavors. The place is disorienting. It is not gelateria coded; it lacks the pastello vibes, the relaxed interiors, the colorful exhibition of flavors. This place has a ton of reading material on the wall about the ingredients, as if it were trying to educate you. At the counter, there is only a small selection of fancy flavors under the glass; the gelato is hidden by metal lids.

These flavors sound unusual; what are they? The American family had read in a guide somewhere that this was a good place. It is conveniently located, in the Centro Storico, near the Ghetto Ebraico. But they realize it might not end up providing them the gelateria experience they had imagined.

They’re here, in a way, expressly to make sense of all this. To give it value. This amazing gianduia flavor. Oh, yes, we must have tried it in Florence, and we forgot, but this tastes so much yummier than hazelnut-anything. A constant process of evaluation. To them it feels like an existential task. Without their discovering these new flavors, it would be as if they never existed. The colors are unfamiliar; the flavors are not flashy or sculpted into waves like in other shops. The tourists need time to figure out what the experience is exactly.

Their slowness is not the thing that bothers me. I stop there for coffee and a treat before teaching classes; I try to take my time; slowness is good. Still, they make me nervous. Their job of giving value and meaning to our city is so important to them; they don’t seem to realize we are not as excited as they are about their discovery of gianduia.

Put another way, they’re playing a videogame called knowledge, and we’re its nonplayer characters. Reality starts glowing as soon as they learn a new thing. Before the learning, it is dark; we don’t exist. That’s the main aspect of an empire surveying the land. American tourism is a part of America’s intelligence work. Even if, for the individual tourist and their family, it is often just a prize for a year of hard work.

They use their hard-earned money to do this selfless intelligence gathering. They’re parsing the land. They want to know why this gelato is different from the other gelatos in Rome and around the world. They inquire about every flavor, unsure whether to try to replicate what they imagine an “authentic” gelato experience to be or to embrace this random gelateria as a sort of flavor or philosophical or historical side quest.

News Radio’s Most Severe Silencing Hits Rural America

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:07:29 +0000

American radio is dying faster, reaching populations newspapers never did, and getting a fraction of the coverage.

And I think we have about five weeks before the most underreported structural media story of 2026 lands in everyone’s lap all at once.

The collapse is concentrated in places that had no fallback to begin with, and that geography is mostly absent from the national coverage. A metro desk cut in Cleveland or Denver still leaves residents with TV affiliates and a crowded field of digital startups competing for their attention.

On May 22, CBS News Radio will go off the air after 99 years in service, pulling national news off roughly 700 affiliated stations. Radio World’s list of high-profile affiliates going dark includes WINS in New York, KNX in Los Angeles, WBBM in Chicago, KCBS in San Francisco and WTOP in Washington.

But the real exposure sits with the hundreds of smaller stations that licensed CBS hourly newscasts because they could not afford to staff a Washington bureau.

In January, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting dissolved itself after Congress rescinded $1.1 billion that would have funded public media through 2027. CPB averaged 8–10% of public radio budgets across the system, but that national average hides where the cut actually lands.

Rural and tribal stations often ran on 30–99% CPB funding. A Native Public Media survey found that a majority of tribal stations expect to close within six months to a year without new federal funding. Roughly a third of them relied on CPB for 80–100% of their operating budget.

iHeartMedia is $50 million into a second round of cuts on top of $50 million announced last quarter, with the reductions concentrated in its Multiplatform Group, which houses broadcast radio. The cuts started at regional leadership in early April and rolled into programming and on-air staff through mid-April.

There’s an Unhinged New Video Game About Trump and the Iran War

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 May 2026 11:09:48 +0000

A new video game about President Donald Trump’s war in Iran features fights with the pope and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. It’s impossible to win, and that’s the point.

The game, Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell, was developed by Secret Handshake, an anonymous group of artists behind a handful of satirical works mocking the Trump administration. The group previously installed a gold statue of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein on the National Mall; it portrayed Trump holding onto Epstein in a pose reminiscent of Jack and Rose from the movie Titanic.

The game is available to play online, but three fully functional arcade cabinets are currently installed at the Washington, DC, War Memorial and will remain there for the next few days, Secret Handshake said in a press release on Monday.

Near the installation, a plaque reads: “The Trump administration knows that the best way to sell combat is by making it a video game, that’s why they’ve been pumping out the ‘sickest’ Iran War video game hype reels. But why stop at clips when you could go full throttle? Introducing Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell, a high-octane, flag-waving, boots-on-the-ground simulator where freedom isn’t debated, it’s deployed. No briefings, no hesitation; just pure pixelated patriotism. Strap in and play hard, because this game may never end.”

Today in the Panopticon

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 May 2026 10:48:46 +0000

Oxford [UK]: Facial recognition vans to patrol city street:

Live facial recognition vans will patrol a city centre street in Oxford next week, police have said, to 'identify suspects' of crime.

The police vehicles will be on Cornmarket Street on Tuesday, May 19, with Thames Valley Police explaining that it will "deter crime" and "identify known suspects".

A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police said: "Our live facial recognition (LFR) vans will be coming to Cornmarket Street on Tuesday, May 19.

"The specialist LFR team will be working alongside our local officers to identify known suspects, deter crime and help keep our communities safer for everyone.

"We make sure to let you know before our LFR vans are in use, so everyone stays informed about what’s happening.

Why are school boards banning books on ancient Egypt and digestion? - Boing Boing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 May 2026 12:22:08 +0000

PEN America counted 3,743 unique titles pulled from school libraries in the latest academic year — and nonfiction is now a front-line target.

According to PEN's Facts & Fiction report, nonfiction's share of banned titles doubled — from 14% to 29%, which works out to more than 1,100 books. Reference and informational titles — the kind that live on classroom shelves rather than school libraries — more than doubled their share, climbing from 5% to 13%.

Banned titles include Home Life in Ancient Egypt, A Tour of Your Digestive System, Aztec, Inca & Maya, and Challenges for LGBTQ Teens. Four out of five banned titles were aimed at children and young adults.

Fiction bans still skew heavily toward books featuring characters of color (44% of all bans, the highest PEN has ever recorded) and LGBTQ+ characters (39%, up from 25%). Books featuring trans or genderqueer characters tripled — from 7% to 19% — a striking overrepresentation given the Williams Institute's estimate that transgender people make up about 1% of those 13 and older. Sexual content of any kind appears in just one in ten of the banned books.

Judy Blume, who has watched this wave build for decades, said: "censorship grows out of fear, and because fear is contagious, some parents are easily swayed. Book banning satisfies their need to feel in control of their children's lives."

The Trump administration is investigating Smith College for admitting trans women : NPR

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 09 May 2026 11:04:12 +0000

The Trump administration is investigating Smith College for admitting trans women : NPR: One of the nation's largest women's colleges is now under scrutiny by the Trump administration. Smith College in western Massachusetts began admitting transgender women in 2015. This week, the U.S. Education Department announced it would investigate the legality of that practice. From member station WFCR, New England Public Media's Nirvani Williams reports.

The Trump administration is investigating whether Smith's policy of admitting transgender women violates Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination. Kimberly Richey, the Education Department's assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement, quote, "an all-women's college loses all meaning if it's admitting biological males." She said the practice, quote, "raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness and compliance under federal law."

How Americans spend their leisure time, 2003–2024 (per day)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 07 May 2026 13:04:00 +0000

Leisure time, 2003 to 2024

Utah's New Age Verification Law Targeting VPNs Takes Effect This Week

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 May 2026 11:21:17 +0000

Governments around the world, including dozens of U.S. states, have increasingly passed laws requiring some form of age verification to access certain types of online content, usually pornography.

Australia has even gone as far as banning social media for teens under 16, while countries like Spain, Indonesia, and Malaysia are considering similar restrictions.

But as these laws continue to spread, so has a simple workaround: virtual private networks, or VPNs.

Now, Utah is the first state in the U.S. to officially try to close that loophole. On Wednesday, a new law known as the Online Age Verification Amendments will go into effect in the state, and privacy advocates are not happy about it.

“Attacks on VPNs are, at their core, attacks on the tools that enable digital privacy. Utah is setting a precedent that prioritizes government control over the fundamental architecture of a private and secure internet, and it won’t stop at the state’s borders,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote in a post last week about the law.

Disappearing before our eyes: One photographer’s passion project of capturing local newsrooms

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 May 2026 11:05:00 +0000

The Brooklyn-based photographer has. brought her camera into some 50 newsrooms across the United States: , many in smaller towns and cities, to document places and lives endangered by the industry’s collapse over the past few decades. Already one of the newspapers she’s photographed, in Alameda, Calif., has shut down.

The pictures are here.

Hanna Fry: Why AI Agents are either the best or worst thing we’ve ever built

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 03 May 2026 13:14:00 +0000

Why AI Agents are either the best or worst thing we’ve ever built

[OC] Who do Americans spend time with? : r/dataisbeautiful

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:03:25 +0000

[OC] Who do Americans spend time with? : r/dataisbeautiful

Hereditary peers' last hurrah as 700-year-old system abolished

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:25:00 +0000

Hereditary peers in the House of Lords have left their red leather benches for the final time. The majority of such peers, who inherit their titles through their families, lost the right to sit in the Lords in 1999, but 92 remained after a compromise deal with the Conservatives.

Now the bell has tolled for those doomed hereditaries too, with a law to remove their seats taking effect as the current session of Parliament ended earlier.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, the Lord Speaker, thanked them for their service, in a speech marking the end of nearly a thousand years of British parliamentary history.

Speaking at a farewell reception, Lord Forsyth said: "For close to a thousand years, hereditary peers and their families have helped to shape our institutions, defend our country, preserve our culture and strengthen that spirit of public service without which no nation can flourish.

"Hereditary peers have brought distinctive qualities to this House - an ethos of service, a long view and, not least, independence of mind.

How to Get a Passport Without President Trump’s Face on It

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:49:00 +0000

It seems like the best way to avoid getting a passport featuring President Trump is to just stay the hell out of Washington, D.C.

But if you’re looking to renew your passport in the near future, now might be a good time to do it. Why? It seems very likely that Trump might roll out the passport with his face printed on it after this initial run.

The president wants to put his stamp on everything. He’s making new banknotes with his signature on them (a first in history), he’s releasing a $1 coin and a commemorative coin, and he wants to build an arch in Washington that will serve as a monument to himself.

All of that is already in motion, but one imagines Trump has even more ambitious plans after the midterm elections this November. If you thought the president was unhinged in the first half of his second term, just wait until he’s truly unencumbered and doesn’t need to think about how public opinion will restrain him from 2027 onward.

We don’t have any evidence yet that Trump plans to roll out the passports with his face more widely. But it’s one of those things you can imagine happening very easily.

Champlain College to Discipline Students Who Protested Professor | Seven Days

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:40:00 +0000

Four Champlain College students are facing discipline — up to suspension or expulsion — for a demonstration they held earlier this month against a faculty member who has posted online about “the evil of transgender ideology.”

The students are accused of disrupting an April 18 “Admitted Student Day” by handing out flyers about adjunct psychology professor David Tomasi on campus and, in at least one case, entering a classroom during a gathering of prospective students and their families. Some of Tomasi’s LinkedIn and YouTube posts reference “the genocidal and racist nature of ideologies such as transgenderism” and criticize children’s literature featuring transgender characters. The flyers students handed out included screenshots of Tomasi’s posts alongside text that called for his firing and asked, “Is Champlain College Safe for Trans People?”

The students’ actions, a Champlain administrator wrote in two letters reviewed by Seven Days, represented a violation of the college’s code of conduct and “Safe Campus Demonstrations” policy, which was drafted in 2024. That policy, which governs all on-campus protests, demonstrations and vigils, calls for students to obtain approval from the director of campus public safety at least 48 hours before the intended event. It authorizes three outdoor locations where students can hold demonstrations and limits them to “business hours” — between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. The policy also states that “demonstrations cannot disrupt routine, orderly or normal college operations.”

EU tells Google to open up AI on Android; Google says that's "unwarranted intervention" - Ars Technica

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:15:06 +0000

In January, the European Commission began an initial investigation, known as a specification proceeding, into how Google has implemented AI in the Android operating system.

The results are in, and the EU says Android needs to be more open, which is not surprising. Meanwhile, Google says this amounts to “unwarranted intervention,” which is equally unsurprising. Regardless of Google’s characterization of the investigation, the commission may force Google to make Android AI changes this summer.

This action stems from the continent’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a sweeping law that designates seven dominant technology companies as “gatekeepers” that are subject to greater regulation to ensure fair competition. Google has consistently spoken against the regulations imposed under the DMA, but it and the other gatekeepers have been subject to the law for several years now, and there’s little chance the commission backs away from it.

The issue before the commission currently is the built-in advantage for Gemini on Android. When you turn on any Google-powered Android phone, Gemini is already there and gets special treatment at the system level. The European Commission is taking aim at the lack of features available to third-party AI services. The commission believes that there are too many experiences on Android that only work with Google’s Gemini AI, and as a gatekeeper, Google must change that.

FCC orders review of ABC licenses after Kimmel joke offends Trump and first lady - Ars Technica

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:11:11 +0000

The Federal Communications Commission today opened an unusual review of ABC’s broadcast licenses, one day after President Trump and the first lady called on ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel over a recent joke in which he said Melania Trump looked like an “expectant widow.”

There are no TV station licenses for any company up for renewal until 2028, and the legal process for revoking licenses is so difficult that it’s been described as nearly impossible. But the FCC today issued an order instructing ABC owner Disney to file early license renewal applications for all of its licensed TV stations by May 28.

“FCC rules provide that whenever the FCC regards an application for a renewal of a license as essential to the proper conduct of an investigation, the FCC has the authority to call the broadcaster’s licenses in for early renewal,” the agency said. “Doing so both allows the FCC to conduct its ongoing investigation and enables the FCC to ensure that the broadcaster has been meeting its public interest obligations more broadly.”

The demand apparently stems from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s opposition to Disney’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices, which he claims are a form of discrimination. Carr previously opened an investigation into the matter, and today’s order said the FCC “has been investigating Disney’s ABC stations for possible violations of the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC’s rules, including the agency’s prohibition on unlawful discrimination.”

Majority of Australian Teens Say Social Media Ban Not Working

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:32:00 +0000

Majority of Australian Teens Say Social Media Ban Not Working:

According to a survey by the zoomer-focused market research company YouthInsight along with the Molly Rose Foundation, a teen focused tech accountability group, teens are easily bypassing Australia’s ban on social media use for kids under 16.

Put simply, the survey says the ban just isn’t keeping the majority of the relevant cohort of Australian kids off social media.

Some things worth keeping in mind: YouthInsight apparently drew this information from an online survey of 1,050 12–15-year-old Australians—which, needless to say, would be unlikely to include any kids who were driven off the internet entirely by the ban. Also, the survey was conducted last month, starting when the ban was about three months old.

The survey found that more than 60% of kids who were social media users before the ban was enacted claimed to still have access to at least one banned social media platform. The initial ban consists of TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, Kick and Twitch.

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noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 15:28:00 +0000

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Why are top university websites serving porn? It comes down to shoddy housekeeping. - Ars Technica

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 13:02:00 +0000

Websites for some of the world’s most prestigious universities are serving explicit porn and malicious content after scammers exploited the shoddy record-keeping of the site administrators, a researcher found recently.

The sites included berkeley.edu, columbia.edu, and washu.edu, the official domains for the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Subdomains such as hXXps://causal.stat.berkeley.edu/ymy/video/xxx-porn-girl-and-boy-ej5210.html, hXXps://conversion-dev.svc.cul.columbia[.]edu/brazzers-gym-porn, and hXXps://provost.washu.edu/app/uploads/formidable/6/dmkcsex-10.pdf.

All deliver explicit pornography and, in at least one case, a scam site falsely claiming a visitor’s computer is infected and advising the visitor to pay a fee for the non-existent malware to be removed. In all, researcher Alex Shakhov said, hundreds of subdomains for at least 34 universities are being abused. Search results returned by Google list thousands of hijacked pages.

Palantir employees are talking about company's "descent into fascism" - Ars Technica

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 12:57:00 +0000

It took just a few months of President Donald Trump’s second term for Palantir employees to question their company’s commitments to civil liberties. Last fall, Palantir seemed to become the technological backbone of Trump’s immigration enforcement machinery, providing software identifying, tracking, and helping deport immigrants on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, when current and former employees started ringing the alarm.

Around that time, two former employees reconnected by phone. Right as they picked up the call, one of them asked, “Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?” “That was their greeting,” the other former employee says. “There’s this feeling not of ‘Oh, this is unpopular and hard,’ but ‘This feels wrong.’”

Palantir was founded—with initial venture capital investment from the CIA—at a moment of national consensus following the September 11, 2001, attacks, when many saw fighting terrorism abroad as the most critical mission facing the US. The company, which was cofounded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, sells software that acts as a high-powered data aggregation and analysis tool powering everything from private businesses to the US military’s targeting systems.

For the past 20 years, employees could accept the intense external criticism and awkward conversations with family and friends about working for a company named after J. R. R. Tolkien’s corrupting all-seeing orb. But a year into Trump’s second term, as Palantir deepens its relationship with an administration that many workers fear is wreaking havoc at home, employees are finally raising these concerns internally, as the US’s war on immigrants, war in Iran, and even company-released manifestos has forced them to rethink the role they play in it all.

JetBlue Sued for Allegedly Increasing the Price of Tickets Based on Personal Data

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:21:26 +0000

A man in New York has filed a lawsuit alleging that JetBlue uses personal data it collects from customers to set the price of tickets, a practice known as surveillance pricing.

The proposed class action comes after a tweet from the airline went viral, suggesting that customers could get a lower price by clearing their browser cache and cookies, as well as booking flights in an incognito window.

The lawsuit was brought on Wednesday by Andrew Phillips, identified as a New Yorker who bought a JetBlue ticket in December 2025 for a flight from New York to Florida. The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of New York, argues that Phillips provided a lot of personal information to the airline and was “unaware that he was being tracked for the purpose of setting pricing.”

The lawsuit includes a screenshot of a tweet sent by JetBlue on April 18, in which an X user complained that they saw a $230 price increase after just one day. The tweet also said that the customer was trying to attend a funeral.

“Try clearing your cache and cookies or booking with an incognito window,” the JetBlue account responded. “We’re sorry for your loss.” The tweet from JetBlue has since been deleted.

2025 was the worst year on record for internet shutdowns as censors move to more targeted blocks | TechRadar

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:42:00 +0000

Not a single day of 2025 passed without at least one internet shutdown.

That's the striking opening to the latest annual report from digital rights group Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition.

It has been 10 years since the coalition began tracking global communication blackouts, and the toll continues to rise. In 2025, a record 313 internet shutdowns were documented across 52 countries, with seven nations appearing on the list of offenders for the first time.

Felicia Anthonio, #KeepItOn Global Campaign Manager, told TechRadar that while conflict remains the primary trigger for these blackouts — accounting for 125 shutdowns in 14 countries — her team has identified a sophisticated new trend. There is a clear shift from total internet blackouts to more "targeted" restrictions.