Chinese internet censors suspend thousands of WeChat accounts and remove posts after a rare protest in central Beijing against “dictator and traitor Xi Jinping” (Financial Times)

TechCrunch:
Two weeks ahead of China’s 20th communist party congress, censors seem to be blocking TLS-based circumvention tools that locals use to bypass the Great Firewall  —  Tools helping China’s netizens to bypass the Great Firewall appear to be facing a fresh round of crackdowns in the run …

Wall Street Journal:
Chinese protestors are holding up blank pieces of paper as a protest against censorship, leading platforms and censors to quickly remove the images  —  Protesters are using few or no words in public and online demonstrations to speak out against Beijing’s zero-Covid policies

Jennifer Conrad / Wired:
WeChat, used by millions of Chinese Americans, is one of the main venues for Chinese-language misinformation in the US and may influence the 2022 US midterms  —  Ahead of US midterms, activists are fighting falsehoods circulating in Chinese-language communities that they fear will distort the vote or suppress turnout.

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Brave says it will hide and block cookie consent notifications with an approach “more privacy-preserving” than similar systems used in other browsers  —  The Brave browser will soon allows users to block annoying and potentially privacy-harming cookie consent banners on all websites they visit.

Henry Ren / Bloomberg:
As President Xi Jinping consolidates his grip on China’s ruling party, Alibaba, JD.com, Naspers, and other tech stocks drop by 10%+  —  US-listed Chinese stocks tumbled in premarket trading, with investors spooked by President Xi Jinping’s tightening grip on China’s ruling party …

Dakota Cary / CyberScoop:
Overview of Xi Jinping’s efforts to bolster China’s hacking teams, already skilled in espionage, by focusing on cultivating talent and funding security research  —  From the early 2000s to 2015, China’s hacking teams caused havoc for private companies and U.S. and allied governments.