Exposing India-Pakistan’s Secret Social Media War
A "Meaning-Making Moment of our Present Shitstorm”
Dear Citizen,
Never doubt MAGA’s interest in helping a shady trade association’s interests over the American people’s. WIRED reported today that Russell Vought, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, quietly cancelled a rule to shield Americans from data brokers. Urged on by the Financial Technology Association (FTA), a “trade organization that represents the interests of fintech companies and their executives,” Vought caved and scrapped a rule that would have stopped shady data brokers from selling or sharing personal information without consent.
This is populism!?
Here’s what else to know about this week.
#IN DEPTH: A different kind of India-Pakistan War Unfolds#
Just out today, our partners The London Story have a stunning quick-turn report out, Escalate: Social Media War During the India–Pakistan Conflict. A chilling look at a digital war in real time, the report looks at how social media fuelled hate, disinformation, and war hysteria during the April–May 2025 India–Pakistan conflict. What did they find?
After the Pahalgam terror attack, social media exploded with war cries, hate speech, and AI-fuelled misinformation … as online platforms drove polarisation, mobilisation, and escalation and turned digital spaces into engines of hate and fuelled real-world consequences.
This includes evidence of viral content undermining diplomacy; the normalisation of nuclear war in public discourse; and the “systematic use” of digital platforms to shape this into a “civilisational conflict”—a narrative that could fuel long-term radicalisation across the region.
Read the report here; more importantly, you can share the launch post on X , LinkedIn and Bluesky to get this critical research seen.
Since Trump got re-elected, there is a chilling effect. It is sweeping right across those of us who stand in opposition to Big Tech’s takeover of politics. It is happening quickly and it is serious. Journalists, academics and civil society are under attack, and philanthropy is in free fall or has retreated entirely.
Sadly, we now have an expiry date: without new funding, we won’t survive. We have exhausted every alternative and we can’t stand against the unholy alliance of "Big Tech and State" without you.
With enough of you becoming paid members, we will have a chance to keep the fight alive. Will you help us? ✊🏻
# ONE WATCH: We Need to Talk About Elon #
In case you missed it, our friends at Free Our Feeds are just finishing up a wild “week-long creative protest designed to examine, critique, and protest Elon Musk,” with amazing guests (Brian Eno! Rosie O’Donnell!) joining portrait artist Ian Bruce as he “paints a candid, revealing, and, at times, merciless portrait of Elon Musk.”
The archived video of the whole event is here … scroll around and have fun:
As the organizers said, watch and “be part of this meaning-making moment of our present shitstorm, which we hope will turn anger into action and collective imagining about alternative digital public infrastructures.”
# ONE ACTION #
Speaking of data privacy… did you know companies like Etsy, Reddit, Tinder & Duolingo are feeding surveillance tech?
Our friends at Mozilla Foundation share
The websites and services we trust for shopping, socializing, and learning shouldn’t be tools for surveillance. Yet, a new investigation by 404 Media has revealed that ShadowDragon, a U.S. government contractor, is exploiting publicly available data from websites and services like Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo — to fuel mass surveillance programs for U.S. government agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Governments don’t often listen, but companies do. Sign Mozilla’s petition to demand websites and services like Etsy, Reddit, Tinder and Duolingo block ShadowDragon’s SocialNet, and protect our data from mass surveillance here.
That’s it for this week.
The Citizens Team
*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already!
*PPS - Stay tuned for a new date/time for our conversation with Shoshana Zuboff, Trump 2.0 and the Age of Surveillance Capitalism, moderated by Carole Cadwalladr.
