Author Archive

Vasilis Ververis

Vasilis Ververis is a PhD candidate with the Humboldt University of Berlin. He researches the technical implications of Internet blocking infrastructure and works to reclaim self-hosted technical infrastructures and services, censorship circumvention, anonymity and antisocial media.

Recent years have brought about improvements in corporate transparency regarding content takedown requests by governments. Google and Twitter, for instance, specify details of content takedowns in their transparency reports, allowing to identify which government authority demanded what content to be removed and why. Other takedowns can be demanded by private actors on copyright grounds for instance. The Lumen database gives more insight into takedowns of such nature. However, little to almost no transparency exists when it comes to mobile app stores. Mobile app stores are a sort of marketplace on phones and allow for the download of health, productivity, privacy, and other apps. These marketplaces are very opaque, and it is a challenge to know why an app was removed. …