FSNN | Free Speech News Network https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html Why Aave proposes quitting 6 blockchains that earn under $5,000 a quarter Aviva Debuts XRPL Tokenized Fund with Irish Approval Your ‘Sexual Wellness’ Pills Order Info From Hims Got Shared With Meta, Says FTC Todd Blanche’s Nomination Is in Trouble. It Should Have Been Doomed From the Beginning. JPMorgan, Citi, UBS test tokenized cross-border payments in BIS pilot Canadians’ Ownership of Crypto Increases to 25%: OSC Survey Bitcoin Quantum Threat Inches Closer as IBM Claims ‘Trusted Quantum Advantage’ In The Middle Of A War, The Trump Administration Has Cut National Security Staffing In Half Zohran Mamdani hides the truth about democratic socialism CPJ urges Tanzania to commit to press freedom at UN rights review Afghan journalist and director of Rukhshana Media, Zahra Joya. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo Nearly five years after the Taliban took control of her country and she fled Kabul, Afghan journalist Zahra Joya is telling her story. Her book The Vanishing Girl of Kabul, written with British-American journalist Amie Ferris-Rotman, is a mirror not just for Joya’s life, but for millions of other Afghan women and girls, who she describes as currently living in “home prisons”. The book tells the story of the Taliban’s brutal silencing of women and Joya’s own life of resistance. How she pretended to be a boy in the 1990s so she could go to school. How her family quickly packed up her grandfather’s handwritten Persian epic while the Taliban raided local villages for banned books. And how she feared for her life when the Taliban returned five years ago. Being a Hazara woman  – Hazaras are a persecuted minority in Afghanistan – she grew up with extreme violence levelled at her people. “It was important for me to record it, for people to understand, for the next generation and the history of Afghanistan,” Joya told Index. The day before the Taliban returned, she recounts in her book, she had the freedom to go the beauty salon. The next day offered a stark contrast. “Everything collapsed, including my own freedom,” she said. As the Taliban drew further into Kabul, she and her colleagues at the women-led publication which she had founded, Rukhshana Media, continued reporting. As Joya saw it, she was standing up for her rights and for freedom of expression, and was making sure the world knew about what was unfolding. “We never imagined that the Taliban would come to power so quickly, and everything would vanish very soon. We never thought that one day journalism would be a huge risk for the whole team,” she said. Joya had set up Rukhshana Media only a year before, and even then she was doing something courageous. In Afghanistan’s patriarchal society, the media space was dominated by men, who often held leadership positions. Now, Joya continues to run Rukhshana Media from London. Her journalists across Afghanistan work underground, protecting their identities by remaining anonymous and never meeting each other. Joya feels she has a heavy responsibility on her shoulders. Just before she spoke with Index, she received a voice message from one of her journalists describing how she wakes up every morning afraid of what she is going to lose on that particular day. Women and girls are banned from secondary and university education, and most jobs are closed to them. They must cover their bodies completely and even visiting a doctor requires a male chaperone. “The reality of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime is a complete gender apartheid system,” Joya said. Since she’s been in the UK, Joya has received a vast number of direct messages on social media from Taliban supporters, threatening her directly for her work and sending her videos of sexual abuse. But she has received supportive messages too. Now, she hopes readers of her book will reflect on the story, perhaps even take a photo of themselves with it and send her a message. Writing about her own life has been a difficult experience, and she has had to be careful around details of her relatives who are still in Afghanistan. But Joya said that remaining silent is not a solution. “It is part of my struggle against the misogyny, discrimination and injustice that is ongoing in Afghanistan,” she said. “The Vanishing Girl of Kabul. Maybe it’s me because I have had to disappear many times and find myself again, but I feel like she could just as easily be the millions of women of Afghanistan.” The Vanishing Girl of Kabul was published by Robinson on 23 July 2026 READ MORE Ondo Finance explores deal valued at up to $500 million Bitcoin Joins Risk-Asset Relief As PCE Inflation Follows Expectations Elon Musk’s xAI Sues Minnesota to Kill the US’s First AI Nudification Law New FIRE study finds record low number of restrictive campus speech codes Some More Or Less Tentative Thoughts on Substack Is the Clarity Act dead? AI Fund With Bitcoin Miner Bets Seeks Capital After Rout: FT Australia Sues Telegram for $38M Over ‘Pro-Terror’ Videos The front line of combating self-censorship is the classroom Caveman NIMBY Australia ranks highly for LGBTQ rights. Photo: Tristien, CC BY-SA 4.0 A large Australian HIV charity which wanted to promote information about new treatments to its Facebook and YouTube followers has found its posts banned by Meta. The charity in question, the National Association of People with HIV Australia (NAPWHA), believe their posts were targeted by what they describe as a “loosely organised campaign of spurious complaints motivated by stigma” towards HIV and the communities affected by it (which include gay and bisexual men, other queer people, trans folks, sex workers and drug users). It’s a growing trend in Australia for organisations which promote sexual health and reproductive rights, and some rights groups fear that the social media teen ban in the country is just making the problem worse as platforms become more cautious about what they promote. When NAPWHA first launched its campaign in 2023 to inform people with same sex and other partners that new treatments meant they couldn’t pass on HIV, they found their ads were suspended on YouTube and Facebook. Sydney-based NAPWHA said that Facebook told them their promotional posts was rejected because they did not comply with their policies on ads about “social issues, elections or politics”. Eighteen months on, NAPWHA suspects that the campaign was subject to censorship via platform moderation and online hostility. They partnered with Swinburne University in Melbourne to investigate and last week published a report containing a legal and policy guide and a communications pack that provides practical tips and strategies for community-led public health organisations facing the same problem. Daniel Reeders, senior project officer at NAPWHA Learning, told Index at the report’s launch there had been an “absolute outpouring of stress and frustration” from small organisations facing a similar predicament. He said: “Platforms like TikTok, Meta and Google have walked away from their duty to moderate fairly and effectively, and we’re left with the wreckage of civil discourse.” The crackdown is part of a broader censorship of crucial sexual and reproductive health and rights information tracked by global NGO ReproUncensored all around the world. Founder and executive director Martha Dimitratou told Index they have documented nearly 600 cases across big tech platforms in Australia and globally, with more than a dozen new cases reported in just the last few days. Dimitratou said that Australia’s world-first teen social media ban, introduced last year and now set to be followed by about 20 other countries, could be to blame. Adam Finch, marketing, branding and communications coordinator for Brisbane-based nonprofit HIV charity, Queensland Positive People, said that he had recently had one set of the same posts approved one day but then censored the next. “I think we’ve just managed to dodge a bullet (but) in many ways it’s a matter of time,” he told Index, adding that they were starting to self-censor. Dimitratou said that Meta and Google must be held accountable and provide full transparency on why awareness campaigns were being restricted. “They must take immediate steps to ensure their moderation systems do not block lawful, evidence-based public health information,” she said. “Finally, governments must reclaim democratic oversight from the growing sovereignty of US big tech companies, enforce the law, and call these practices what they are: illegal.” Reeders said they were calling on Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the Australian Government’s independent online safety regulator, to “take a moment away from banning things” – referring to the new social media law – to “consider how platforms can be regulated to allow better access for organisations promoting public health”. Meta has been contacted for a comment. 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