Why We Support ORG
Posted: 22 February 2021
In the last 15 years ORG have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to lobby on domestic and international issues on behalf of people living in the UK. Campaigns undertaken by the Open Rights Group have involved cases which sought to defend the right to parody, prevent the giving of undue power to Internet Service Providers, and fight against unlawful mass surveillance. They feature amongst their founding members technology journalist and civil liberties activist, Danny O’Brien, and science fiction author and activist, Cory Doctorow.
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Popping Filter Bubbles in Safari
Posted: 10 February 2021
In two previous articles, we took a simple a search query and illustrated how even queries that should have a reasonably clear and obvious answer push people into bubbles that affect the information that they have access to. At Mojeek we believe that one of the greatest tools that anyone has when it comes to puncturing filter bubbles is their browser, and that by using multiple search engines you can greatly enhance the ability of this tool to do that job. Here we discuss how to apply the method we’ve outlined for Firefox and Vivaldi to improve Apple’s native browser, Safari.
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Stacking the Odds for Alternatives
Posted: 02 February 2021
The shutdown in January of Parler was a stark example of how emerging companies can be vulnerable to Big Tech. In a reaction, perhaps understandably to events in the US Capitol, Parler was taken down by AWS (part of Amazon), and removed from the app stores of both Apple and Google. AWS’ claim was that this was a response to the lack of content moderation by Parler, after repeated requests and a violation of their Terms of Service. Others have written at length about whether that’s right or wrong, and a legal case ensued.
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Big Data is Watching You
Posted: 21 January 2021
There is no one book more referenced when it comes to our high-technology surveillance reality than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eric Arthur Blair (Orwell being his pen name) died on the 21st of January 1950. And so on January 1st, with more than 70 years since his passing, all of his works lost their copyrighted status in the UK and European Union. His most famous book, along with his many brilliant works, are now in the public domain. To celebrate this fact, and to explore this deep and enduring relationship between writings on both state and private company surveillance, we thought it would be good to pose the question: what did Orwell get right?
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About Mojeek: Search Engines and Our Technology Stack
Posted: 22 December 2020
We frequently get questions, through social networks or our support inbox, about Mojeek's tech stack and the work that goes into providing the world with a true alternative in search. To spread the answers to some of these questions further than the walled garden of our email inbox, or the social graphs of Twitter, Mastodon, and Reddit, we thought it would be a good idea to publish some of them on our blog.
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About Mojeek: Business Model, Surveillance, and Privacy
Posted: 08 December 2020
We frequently get questions, through social networks or our support inbox, about Mojeek's business model and the data involved in providing the world with a true alternative in search. To spread the answers to some of these questions further than the walled garden of our email inbox, or the social graphs of Twitter or Reddit, we thought it would be a good idea to publish some of them here...
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Popping Filter Bubbles in Firefox
Posted: 03 December 2020
In a previous article, we took a simple, non-partisan query, and tried it out on some search and a metasearch engines: "How to Register to Vote in the United States." What we found was that the choice of search provider was going to wildly change the information sources offered to you. It demonstrates that using one or more search engines is a very simple way of increasing your ability to step outside of algorithmic bubbles when looking for information. Let’s check out how we can do this in Firefox.
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Black Box Friday
Posted: 25 November 2020
Since the early 1950s, the first Friday after Thanksgiving has been the designated big shopping day for a lot of individuals across the US (and this has spread to a lot of other countries). With a great deal of physical stores across the world not being able to provide normal service this year, it looks like entities like Amazon will be able to cash in from the pandemic's effects even more than they already have.
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