| | | | |  | | By Ben Schreckinger | Presented by CTIA - The Wireless Association | With help from Derek Robertson
|  Protesters shout slogans during a protest against China's strict zero COVID measures. | Kevin Frayer/Getty Images | The unrest spilling over on China's streets is escalating in cyberspace. As the protests that erupted across the country last week against the government's strict Covid lockdowns dragged into the weekend, the conflict has again stoked the ongoing digital arms race between the ruling Communist Party's supporters and its critics. People searching for Chinese cities on Twitter were met with a "Great Wall of porn," as a reported increase in spam tweets advertising escort services flooded those keywords. Meanwhile, photographs and art commemorating the protests went up for sale online in the form of nonfungible tokens, which are meant to be harder to erase from the internet than centrally hosted content. These early moves come at time when the Party has been tightening control of the internet, blockchain evangelists are touting the technology's anti-authoritarian potential and Western social media platforms have been wrestling with their approach to policing content. If the protests continue, they have the makings of a major flashpoint in the struggle between the forces of control and dissent in the digital sphere. It was not immediately clear who minted two protest-friendly NFT collections that went up for sale on the online marketplace OpenSea this weekend, but in recent months Chinese dissidents have been experimenting with NFTs as a means of creating permanent records of expression that cannot be taken down directly by government censors or by Western internet platforms facing pressure from Beijing One of the new NFT collections purports to document the protests in photographs. The other, " Blank Paper Movement ," consists of illustrations featuring sheets of white paper, which have become the symbol of the protests because Chinese citizens, banned from expressing dissent, are waving blank signs instead. It is common for crude (and often very clever) internet memes to pop up online almost instantaneously in response to political events and influence online discussion. But Blank Paper Movement, aside from its use of a blockchain, also stands out for demonstrating the speed with which more refined political art can be created and disseminated. On the anti-protest side, the flooding of keywords with explicit and irrelevant content is a tried-and-true tactic for stymying online conversations about sensitive topics. Its use here signals that Western platforms continue to find themselves in the middle of China's domestic strife, even as the country's online information sphere diverges further from the West's. In the case of Twitter, specifically, it threatens to pit Elon Musk's professed commitment to free speech against his extensive business entanglements in China. (As of early this afternoon, DFD's Twitter searches for Shanghai and Beijing from a computer in Washington yielded plenty of content about the protests and a few stray tweets that looked like ads for Chinese escort services) The online maneuvering around this past week's protests carries echoes of 2019, when pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong pioneered new tactics of digital dissent and Beijing learned to adapt. Three years later, the cat-and-mouse game may be resuming in earnest.
| | | | A message from CTIA - The Wireless Association: 5G is powering America's fastest growing home broadband service, bringing competition to cable and fast, reliable, affordable home and business internet to millions of Americans. The wireless industry needs a pipeline of exclusive-use, licensed spectrum to expand wireless broadband service, bridge the digital divide and bring real competition and choice to more Americans. Learn more at www.ctia.org. | | | | | | |  Text, in yellow, announcing cryptocurrency lender BlockFi's bankruptcy filing appears on the company website on a smart phone on Monday, Nov. 28, 2022, in New York. BlockFi said that it was filing for bankruptcy protection to stabilize its business and give it the chance to perform a restructuring. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan) | AP | Don't hold your breath for the FTX fallout to disperse anytime soon. POLITICO's Sam Sutton reported for Pro subscribers today on the bankruptcy declaration from BlockFi, another major crypto lending platform that had been bailed out by FTX during a crypto downturn earlier this year. BlockFi customers haven't been able to get their money out of the platform since the FTX news broke earlier this month. This is not BlockFi's first major black eye this year. As Sam notes, in February the company settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission and various states to the tune of $100 million over charges that it was running an illegal lending business. In a statement, the firm's financial adviser said that "From inception, BlockFi has worked to positively shape the cryptocurrency industry and advance the sector. BlockFi looks forward to a transparent process that achieves the best outcome for all clients and other stakeholders." Whatever that process ends up as, it's likely to be much more highly scrutinized by regulators than it once might have. — Derek Robertson
| | | | A message from CTIA - The Wireless Association:   | | | | | | |  A circa-2007 screenshot of the virtual world "Second Life." | AP | Earlier this year, you couldn't trip over a virtual-reality "for sale" sign without hearing a pitch for blockchain technology as the foundation of the metaverse — a guarantor of "digital property rights" that would ensure a secure and portable identity across virtual worlds. Amid a brutal year for crypto, that pitch is starting to sound a little less appealing. After all, why do payments, or virtual identity, need to be secured on a blockchain-based ledger specifically? I spoke today with Brad Oberwager, the executive chairman of Tilia — a payment platform that's betting that the good old USD will still reign supreme in the metaverse, and that its payment API can enable the complex series of intra-state, virtual-currency-to-real-currency transactions that will underpin its economy. Oberwager, a veteran of "Second Life" creator Linden Labs, pitches a number of reasons that underpinning metaverse economies with fiat currency is preferable to crypto, from cybersecurity to its inherent scalability. But above all, he made a case that feels especially salient amid the FTX scandal: People want to know they can use their wallet when they need to. "You don't want your money in some person's hands, you want your money at JPMorgan. They follow the rules, and the rules are good," Oberwager said. "People saying 'We need DeFi, we've got to get away from the rules' — the rules are not there to make it hard to do business there. You want your money to be FDIC-insured. You want it to be in a real institution."
| | | | POLITICO APP USERS: UPGRADE YOUR APP BY DECEMBER 19! We recently upgraded the POLITICO app with a fresh look and improved features for easier access to POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Starting December 19, users will no longer have access to the previous version of the app. Update your app today to stay on top of essential political news, insights, and analysis from the best journalists in the business. UPDATE iOS APP – UPDATE ANDROID APP . | | | | | | | | | Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger ( bschreckinger@politico.com ); Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Steve Heuser ( sheuser@politico.com ); and Benton Ives ( bives@politico.com ). Follow us @DigitalFuture on Twitter. Ben Schreckinger covers tech, finance and politics for POLITICO; he is an investor in cryptocurrency. If you've had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up and read our mission statement at the links provided.
| | | | A message from CTIA - The Wireless Association: 5G is shaking up the home broadband market – expanding access to high speed, affordable broadband and powering broadband choice for millions of Americans. Households and businesses outfitted with 5G Home Broadband can do everything they do with cable, with great speed and performance, including streaming, video conferencing, homework, telemedicine, gaming and more. 5G Home Broadband is essential to solving the digital divide and driving new competition. In order to expand this service to more Americans, the wireless industry needs a long-term pipeline of licensed mid-band spectrum. The wireless industry has 5% of lower mid-band spectrum, while the unlicensed community has 7X, and government users 12X that amount. According to Accenture, unlocking more exclusive use mid-band spectrum will help rebalance these spectrum allocations and deliver on 5G's broadband promise. Allocating these bands as exclusive-use, licensed spectrum, operating at full power, is the key to bringing more affordable options like 5G Home Broadband to more Americans. Learn more at www.ctia.org. | | | | | | | GO INSIDE THE MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF HEALTH SUMMIT: POLITICO is featuring a special edition of our "Future Pulse" newsletter at the 2022 Milken Institute Future of Health Summit from Dec. 6 to 8. The newsletter takes readers inside one of the most influential gatherings of health industry leaders and innovators solving the biggest global health issues to ensure a healthier, more resilient future for all. SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO RECEIVE EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE . | | | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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