Jillian C. York (born May 18, 1982)"Goodreads Author Profile"

Goodreads Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and read ...

.. is an American free-expression

activist Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...

and author. She serves as Director of International Freedom of Expression at the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...

(EFF), and a founding member of

Deep Lab Deep Lab is a women's collective group composed of artists, researchers, writers, engineers, and cultural producers. These women are involved in critical assessments of contemporary digital culture and, together, work to exploit the potential for ...

. She is the author of ''Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism'' and ''Morocco - Culture Smart!: the essential guide to customs & culture.''

Career

From 2004 to 2007, York spent considerable time in Morocco. In 2006, York authored ''MoroccoCulture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture'', a travel book on Morocco. In an article written in 2011, York wrote about the function of blogs and social media sites such as Facebook providing Moroccans a forum for discussions and information deprived by the mainstream Moroccan media. In 2008, she joined the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a research center at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

that focuses on the study of

cyberspace Cyberspace is a concept describing a widespread interconnected digital technology. "The expression dates back from the first decade of the diffusion of the internet. It refers to the online world as a world 'apart', as distinct from everyday rea ...

, where she worked on the OpenNet Initiative, a joint project whose goal is to monitor and report on internet filtering and

surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...

practices by nations, and Herdict, and conducted research on

distributed denial-of-service In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connect ...

attacks. In 2011, she moved to the

, where she is the director of international freedom of expression, where she works on onlinecensorship.org and her work focuses on platform censorship and accountability, state censorship, the impact of sanctions, and digital security. She is a founding member of the feminist collective

with

Addie Wagenknecht Addie Wagenknecht (born 1981) is an American artist and researcher living in New York City and Austria. Her work deals primarily with pop culture, feminist theory, new media and open source software and hardware. She frequently works in collectiv ...

. She is the Deputy IFEX Convenor, Sits on the Advisory Council for The Open Technology Fund and the Advisory Board at SMEX. York has been called "one of the leading scholars on Internet control and censorship" and a specialist on free expression and

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

in the

Arab world The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western A ...

. Her research on the role of social media in the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in T ...

has been widely cited. In June 2011, ''

Foreign Policy A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...

'' named her one of the top-100 intellectuals discussing

foreign policy A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Advocacy

York's writing has also been published at

Motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

, ''

Buzzfeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Ken ...

,'' ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', Bloomberg,

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

, and ''

''. She is a regular columnist for

Al Jazeera English Al Jazeera English (AJE; ar, الجزيرة‎, translit=al-jazīrah, , literally "The Peninsula", referring to the Qatar Peninsula) is an international 24-hour English-language news channel owned by the Al Jazeera Media Network, which is own ...

and writes for Global Voices Online, where she is also on its board of directors as of 2011. She also co-founded '' Talk Morocco'', which won the 2010

Deutsche Welle Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service con ...

Best of Blogs Award for Best English-language blog. In May 2014, she gave a talk with

Jacob Appelbaum Jacob Appelbaum (born 1 April 1983) is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker. He studied at the Eindhoven University of Technology and was a core member of the Tor project, a free software network des ...

suggesting the safer sex and harm reduction movements could show advocates of liberty and privacy how their work can better reach mainstream audiences. York's commentary and opinions include statements against censorship by corporations and social media organizations at the request of state governments. York and EFF opposed the Philippines

Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, officially recorded as Republic Act No. 10175, is a law in the Philippines that was approved on September 12, 2012. It aims to address legal issues concerning online interactions and the Internet in the Phi ...

because of provisions limiting online criticism in favor of a crowd sourced alternative, the Magna Carta for Philippine Internet Freedom which supports free expression and has less stringent limits on free expression online.

Women in technology

In 2013, when Wired included few women in its first batch of Wired's 101 Signals, a list of best writers and thinkers on the internet, York was among critics who noted the lack of women on the list. York thinks that women are sometimes given less recognition as technology intellectuals because they focus on topics less covered by popular tech magazines while in popular topics men can crowd out popular discourse with active self-promotion.

Awards

*2010: Deutsche Welle The BOBs (weblog award), Best English Blog, "Talk Morocco" *2014: Knight News Challenge,

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts. The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...

, "OnlineCensorship.org"

Books

* "Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism" (Verso Press, 2021) * "Information Infrastructure and Social Control: Origins of the Tunisian Internet" (chapter, with

Katherine Maher Katherine Roberts Maher (; born April 18, 1983) is a former chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Maher worked for UNICEF, the National Democratic Institu ...

), ''State Power 2.0: Authoritarian Entrenchment and Political Engagement Worldwide'' (Ashgate Publishing, 2013) *"Der abschreckende Effekt von Überwachung" (chapter), ''"Überwachtes Netz"'' (NewThinking, 2014) *"The Internet and Transparency Beyond WikiLeaks" (chapter), ''"Beyond WikiLeaks: Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism and Society"'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) *''"Culture Smart! Morocco: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture"'' (Random House, 2006)

References

External links

jilliancyork.com

talkmorocco.net ''Talk Morocco''
(blog) website
Jillian York
at the Electronic Frontier Foundation {{DEFAULTSORT:York, Jillian Place of birth missing (living people) 1982 births 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American women writers American activist journalists American women bloggers American bloggers American newspaper journalists American online journalists American political journalists American technology journalists American travel writers American women journalists Binghamton University alumni Harvard University staff Internet activists Living people American women travel writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers