Our stories cross borders. Our challenges do, too. Help Global Voices remain a lifeline for independent media worldwide. Support our #GVSpotlight thematic coverage with a donation! globalvoices.org/2026/06/17/s...

i feel like an adult whenever i actually finish a stick of lip balm.

rest in peace, mister lam. grateful i was able to buy a few books from you the last time i visited your bookstore. we talked and you asked what my plans were. i mentioned maybe coming to taiwan and you gave me good and careful advice that i still keep in mind. www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

WhatsApp catches NSO Group targeting its platform in violation of court orders. Files injunction. Also announces it's donating to the Spyware Accountability Initiative. about.fb.com/news/2026/06...

In liberal democracies, “AI safety” usually means protecting people from powerful systems. In China, it increasingly means protecting the Party from people. My 12-minute Oslo Freedom Forum keynote on why Beijing’s approach to AI should worry us:

because the legal system wasn’t rigged enough already hongkongfp.com/2026/06/08/b...

it is starting to become a yearly tradition that i do a run of 6.4km on this day in which nothing happened. this is the first time im doing it in taipei. thinking it might be appropriate to do this run around what used to be known as the CKS memorial square, now known as liberty square 自由廣場.

New survey data from Hong Kong Watch helps quantify the scale of the problem – including among Hong Kongers not engaged in public activism.

The former 🇵🇱 Polish justice minister, wanted for misuse of public funds & abusing Pegasus spyware (as we @citizenlab.ca discovered, against the device of now PM Tusk's lawyer and others), has fled Hungary after the election to the 🇺🇸 US, at the invitation of Trump www.politico.eu/article/ex-p...

“This is not a conclusion. It is a record. Records are where accountability begins.” lezismore.org/rightscon202...

As many are aware by now, @accessnow.org 's annual @rightscon.org was cancelled because of pressure on the host govt Zambia 🇿🇲 by China 🇨🇳 www.rightscon.org/rc26-stateme... In their statement, @accessnow.org rightly flags this is as an example of transnational repression

Texas tech now bans students from writing about LGBTQ issues in any form. Mentions of gender identity, orientation etc in textbooks must be skipped. Deafening silence so far from all the brave heterodox free speech absolutists www.erininthemorning.com/p/texas-tech...

I wrote about China’s expanding social media monitoring and manipulation industry: the firms building and deploying bot networks for party-state actors and expanding into Western platforms. You can read the piece here: www.gmfus.org/news/outsour... A few points about the industry🧵

New from me: a Chinese student at University of Sydney went missing and allegedly has been sentenced to six years in China, for participating in protests in Australia, including solidarity protests for China’s ethnic minority groups: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

The recent decision by a major UK museum, the Victoria & Albert, to comply with Chinese censors is emblematic of broader trends in information manipulation & interference targeting European cultural institutions that must be challenged, @article19.bsky.social www.article19.org/resources/eu...

A court filing by the Hong Kong Government has revealed that the amount in assets they intend to confiscate which are purportedly linked to Jimmy Lai’s national security crimes is worth over HK$127 million apnews.com/article/hong...

You know what would be amazing, if Vance can negotiate an agreement where Iran doesn't enrich above 3.67% (far below weapons grade); gets rid of 98% of its stockpile of uranium; has weekly inspections by the IAEA; and commits to all of this for at 10 years. Oh, yeah, that was the Obama Iran deal.

Which industry is not covered yet? hongkongfp.com/2026/04/09/a...

This is catastrophic.

PLA declares live-fire exercises in Yellow Sea today, interpreted here as a slap in the face for Cheng Li-wun’s claim to be able to reduce tensions with her trip to China. I suspected this would be the case, the PLA doesn’t really seem to know to hold off news.ltn.com.tw/news/politic...

honest and vulnerable. powerful words by masha. in solidarity.

Rep. Ted Lieu isn't backing down.

Iran won’t close the Strait Iran better open the Strait Iran has 2 days to open the Strait Iran has a week to open the Strait NATO, open the Strait I’ll bomb your critical infrastructure if Strait isn’t opened I don’t care about the Strait No ceasefire till Strait is open

fantastic overview by the reuters team on the damage beijing’s insecurity has done to hong kong and its people in the last few years. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

my level of stress has crossed a threshold where i think it would be funny if trump attended the birthright citizenship oral argument and scotus incoherently ruled in his favor 6-3. cortisol levels so high that i can't stop lolling about all my family members in danger. wouldn't it be funny tho

A Dutch court has ruled Grok must stop generating non-consensual undressing images of Dutch residents worldwide and child sexual abuse material in the Netherlands, with €100,000-a-day fines for non-compliance, reports Ramsha Jahangir.

The KMT party chair will meet with Xi. This could be huge not just for the upcoming local elections, but also KMT internal politics for their 2028 presidential nominee. All eyes and ears on how Taiwanese voters receive this meeting and its outcome. news.ltn.com.tw/news/politic...

Yael's post demonstrates something about digital privacy/security that I think a lot of people miss: there is no right answer, just a series of trade-offs. And every person has to make their own decisions avout which trade-offs are worthwhile. blog.yaelwrites.com/options-for-...

It’s always interesting to see which subjects Meta will refuse to do content moderation on because “free speech,” and which content moderation the CEO will volunteer to do in advance to curry favor. In this case it was “naming a DOGE employee”

China used fake LinkedIn profiles to spy on NATO, EU: security source 🔗 buff.ly/ybUWVpS

just updated my iphone to the latest ios version 26.4. it feels much snappier.

fantastic article by @brianhioe.bsky.social on how the western left, and specifically jacobin, needs to be more reflective and critical, and reminding us what actual solidarity might look like. newbloommag.net/2026/03/20/j...

Historian of French Revolution here to say that in periods like this, squeamish compromisers do as much to drive radicalization as do ideologues. If you keep making excuses for the unfit king, eventually folks come for you and him.

⚠️ Update: It's Sunday morning in #Iran where the internet blackout continues into its second week, with the incident entering its ninth day at hour 192. Though technical infrastructure remains operational, only a heavily controlled domestic intranet is available to residents.

if you're in taipei, come join @thinkpanzer.bsky.social and me for a chat on how to improve journalist safety. it's the first event im organising as a newly minted prof at the graduate institute of journalism at national taiwan university. register here docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

"He says the federation will work with the Chinese Society for Science and Technology Journalism to obtain assurances for the independence of conference planners and participants." These societies and organisations are GONGOs, funded and run through a system of state-led patronage.

“You are going to ‘promote’ journalism in a place that works actively against it” why i think it doesn’t make sense for the world federation of science journalists to hold their conference in china. www.science.org/content/arti...

A court on Thursday used Hong Kong's national security law to jail Kwok Yin-sang for eight months, in the first case against a family member of an activist living abroad, and wanted by authorities. n.pr/4qVSANO

so i have news. i am starting a position as an assistant professor at the graduate institute of journalism at the national taiwan university, 台大新聞所。

Tear gas is banned in international warfare, yet classified as a “riot control agent” that law enforcement can use for crowd control. “It just doesn’t work well, and it hits the weakest people the most, and causes the most complications in them,” an anesthesiology professor at Duke University said.

CNN, please don't be so dismissive of Cantonese. It is a proper language spoken by a lot of people (estimate around 80 million). This from the same CNN reporter who wrote an article blaming bamboo for the Tai Po fire. cc: @klustout.bsky.social

手空空，無一物，路遙遙，無止境。 亂離中，流浪裏，餓我體膚勞我精。 艱險我奮進，困乏我多情。 千斤擔子兩肩挑， 趁青春，結隊向前行。 珍重珍重，這是我新亞精神。 珍重珍重，這是我新亞精神。 Amidst chaos, flux, starve my body, grind my spirit. I persevere in hardship, am steadfast in adversity ... while youth lasts, we march forward together. Cherish, cherish, this is the spirit of New Asia!

@indexoncensorship.org reports: "In Hong Kong, force majeure means political pressure" tinyurl.com/5xn4c9be #HongKong #NSL #CCP #Censorship

Exiled journalism’s biggest threat is something more mundane than censorship www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/exil...

When the Hong Kong fire occurred, initial international media coverage focused on bamboo scaffolding. This Orientalised and exoticised the tragedy, obscuring the fact that it was not just an accident, but an outcome shaped by long-term neglect and inequality, writes @tingguowrites.bsky.social.

Context: the #HongKong Government budgeted 77% more on promotion this year than in 2021 Legco Election.

Here's a graph for the nerds

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

A 71-year old man was arrested by national security police for posting comments suggesting the central government and Hong Kong government were the ones causing chaos, and that Beijing’s disaster assistance was merely “performative” news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/comp...

As of 1:30pm: Turnout percentage: 15.18% (2025*) vs 14.39% (2021) Votes: 627,139 (2025*) vs 643,603 (2021) * 2025 election started 1 hour earlier and ends 1 hour later