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Ed Webb

Syria's Twitter spambots | Jillian C York | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...witter-spambots-pro-revolution

twitter Syria spam spambots

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • In Morocco, Syria, Bahrain and Iran, pro-revolution users of the site have found themselves locked in a battle of the hashtags as Twitter accounts with a pro-government message are quickly created to counter the prevailing narrative
  • Another set of accounts, however, managed to inundate the #Syria tag. Using a Bahraini company, EGHNA, bots are sending messages – sometimes several a minute – using various Syria-related search terms.Under the heading "Success stories", the EGNHA website says:"LovelySyria is using EGHNA Media Server to promote interesting photography about Syria using their Twitter accounts. EGHNA Media Server helped LovelySyria get attention to the beauty of Syria, and build a community of people who love the country and admire its beauty. Some of their network members started translating photo descriptions and rebroadcasting them to give the Syrian beauty more exposure.LovelySyria is using their own installation of EGHNA Ad Center to generate the Twitter messages, their current schedule is two messages every five minutes."Other accounts, such as @SyriaBeauty, @DNNUpdates and @SyLeague, perform similar functions. Their messages are sometimes political, sometimes not, but all were created recently and all serve the purpose of diverting attention from the Syrian protests.
  • although Twitter shies away from moderating content and removing users, the search functionality favours users with a complete username, profile and photograph, and users who automate their tweets can be removed from search.
Ed Webb

How Twitter is gagging Arabic users and acting as morality police | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...ers-and-acting-morality-police

twitter socialmedia ArabWorld MENA Arabic censorship

shared by Ed Webb on 23 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Today, Twitter has a different story, and it is not one of speaking truth to power. Twitter is no longer empowering its users. Its platform cannot be considered neutral. Twitter’s actions suggest it is systematically suppressing voices in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
  • What started out as an investigation into the mass suspension of accounts of Egyptian dissidents, uncovered a mass censorship algorithm that targeted users who use Arabic flagging their text as hateful conduct. This story is still unfolding. As you read this, mass and unjustified systemic locking and suspension of Twitter Arabic accounts continues. Users are angry and bewildered.
  • draconian yet lazy algorithms have systematically shut down voices of dissent – and pulled unsuspecting social media users down with them
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • The effects of these suspensions was not just hiding a set of tweets critical of the government, but completely disabling the influence network of Egypt’s dissidents. This is potentially the first documented politically motivated mass shutdown of twitter accounts at a time when online interaction was high and translated to possible action on the ground
  • accusations are not limited to Egypt but the entire region who have a sense that being critical of their governments was met with punitive measures by Twitter against them
  • many of those suspensions had a common denominator: being critical of the Egyptian government
  • suspensions seemed to have happened around late September and lasted from one day to a few days. In many cases Twitter had responded that they had suspended the accounts by mistake. The accounts affected varied from having a few followers to hundreds of thousands
  • a trending anti-Sisi hashtag disappeared suddenly in July 2018, and then later on in 2019. It didn’t help either to find that an officer in the British Army information warfare unit was head of editorial in Twitter for the MENA region.
  • I interviewed @OfficialAmro1, a user affected by mass suspensions with over 265K followers and 115K tweets. He was suspended without cause and added, “I don’t even curse.”To which I foolishly replied, “Cursing would not suspend your account, particularly if directed against a public figure. Incitement will.”“No, now it does,” he replied. He also added that if you criticize a figure loyal to the Arab regimes, you can get your account locked or suspended.
  • The 'hateful conduct' policy as defined by Twitter states: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.Analyzing the message contents that were flagged for hateful conduct I saw that most did not violate Twitter’s rules. Soon I began to discover that what @OfficialAmro1 had told me was true. The content I was seeing contained profanity. But that wasn’t the whole story.Arabic curse words are used often. I sampled around a little under 50 claims, with over 30 screenshots that contain Twitter’s email identifying the violating tweet. It was clear that profanity alone was not causing the suspensions.
  • Tragically funnier still are those who were joking around with their friends using their usual language that has profanities @ism3lawy_ ended up cursing Egypt’s Zamalek football club and for that his account was suspended permanently along with that of one of his friends. In a separate conversation, his friend @EHAB_M0 was also joking around with his friends and eventually got a permanent suspension.
  • Within seconds of my post, the algorithm identified the curse words and locked my account for 12 hours. It was my first violation ever. The irony of documenting this as a reply to the platform’s account is probably lost on them.
  • the most dangerous and disconcerting of my findings is that the appeal system in Twitter for MENA is broken.
  • Even things like talking about prostitution can get you banned
  • There is an element of guardianship that is present in despotic Arab regimes, and that moral guardianship is reflected in the algorithm by Twitter as was shown through the numerous examples above.
  • With my limited access to Twitter’s data, I have found nearly 20 accounts probably wrongfully and permanently suspended. I imagine hundreds or even thousands more have been kicked off the platform.
  • “Thank you for trying to help make Twitter a free space once again.”
Ed Webb

Egyptian Chronicles: #WeWillSpeak : Egyptian Tweeps speak up about Twitter Middle East ... - 0 views

egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/...-egyptian-tweeps-speak-up.html

censorship Egypt twitter UAE Dubai socialmedia activists

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Oct 19 - Cached
  • Hundreds of Egyptian tweeps began on Monday a new campaign on Twitter against Twitter MENA policies after a wide suspension of opposition and activists’ accounts in the popular social media network. The Egyptian tweeps launched  #WeWillSpeak” and #هنتكلم hashtags to reach out for Twitter in the United States.
  • several opposition and political activists' accounts were either permanently or temporarily suspended allegedly for violating Twitter policies
  • Twitter MENA is paying attention only to the bad language of the tweeps including activists opposing the government only in that crackdown.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • right-wing Arab fascists and ISIS accounts as well as spammers are left untouched
  • There are Pro-regime supporters who got several accounts and are involved in actions like harassment, trolling and spamming as well as spreading hate and racism on the same level of right-wing figures in the West. They are left untouched I reported dozens of accounts spreading lies, hatred and racism against Syrians and Sudanese people but there were not closed down.
  • Needless to say, the fact that Twitter MENA is currently in Dubai made many Tweeps not only in Egypt but in other countries wonder if the Emirati government has got some kind of deal with Twitter to target dissident voice in the Arab world.
  • Already there are calls to force Twitter to transfer its Twitter MENA Headquarter form the United Arab Emirates to Tunisia as the cradle of the Arab Spring enjoys more freedom of speech.
  • Twitter has been the alternative forum for people to let their voices heard especially when mainstream media fails to do its job. Unfortunately, it has been hacked internationally and not only in the Middle East by political and social powers that are actually against freedom of speech in the first place. Yet some people believe it is worth to fight for including those Egyptian tweeps.
Ed Webb

Twitter's role in revolutionary Egypt - isolation or connection? - 25 January: Revoluti... - 1 views

english.ahram.org.eg/...32610.aspx

Egypt socialmedia revolution twitter

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Social media platforms provide a channel for citizens to report events on the ground in a faster way and without the editorial interference of newspapers’ managements and the state. It is the only completely free and independent outlet to spread information.
  • As long as we have a biased, censored media, which is not just in Egypt but any mainstream media, alternative outlets like Twitter and others will be the tools used by the people and activists to expose the truth.
  • The role will be that of support group, the way it always has been. It's where you get hope, where you know you have people...who share similar views, no matter what those views are, all over Egypt. In a society that is bound to be more isolationist due to fear, Twitter provides a safe mechanism to interact and meet like-minded others and find comfort in that. We will need all the comfort we can get.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • it is a consultation and consensus-building platform like no other
  • Twitter is more immune to infiltration and/or electronic committees of security apparatus; when someone from them replies to you he/she can't really reach out to others not following him/her, so it's very hard to create a false consensus or dominant opinion as with Facebook comments and the like.
  • The infrastructure of Twitter is only mildly conducive to exchange of ideas with people outside of our immediate list of friends; accessing strangers' ideas on a given topic is only a hashtag click away but how often do we do that click? It's more comfortable to only follow discussions among people we've pre-approved.
  • Since the first revolution we can say that we're seeing more Twitter-conversation than Twitter-organisation. But I predict we'll see more of a reversion to the organisation use at some point, as the battle with the enemies of democracy intensifies.
  • We need to market the revolution and in that we'll need to teach ourselves how to conduct a constructive Twitter conversation, one that doesn't end in people blocking each other.
  • at the end of the day it's a platform for youth who many times find no other alternative
  • It will continue to play an important role in citizen journalism as it has always done, and delivering independent media to counter the official one.
  • The revolution and its revolutionaries were badly portrayed and have been subjected to intensive campaigns of defamation, despite all the efforts on social media to provide another narrative and defy the propaganda.
  • especially after the start of the revolution, media outlets rely on Twitter to stay on top of events on the ground throughout the major cities in Egypt. In fact, almost all newspapers and TV channels will make daily references to news spread through Twitter one way or the other.
  • If many people join Twitter from different classes and groups to represent the Egyptian street, we can discuss for real what the Egyptian people in the street want.
Ed Webb

Twitter diplomacy new face of foreign relations - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/...eu_twitter_diplomacy

twitter diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 27 May 11 - No Cached
  • was Bildt's mission to find Al Khalifa on Twitter successful? "Yep," Bildt said. Al Khalifa saw his tweet — Bildt's 1,000th — and got in touch with the Swede, who noted that social media isn't the only way he contacts his peers: "I know which ones are on Twitter."
  • diplomats are likely to use social media ever more frequently, even in contacting each other, if only to show that they move with the times
  • When it comes to social networking, Bildt has a strong challenger in Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, who has a more casual tone on his Twitter and Facebook accounts and official home page.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • "Was he 20 minutes before me?" Stubb asked AP. "I'm a faster runner than Carl Bildt, but he's faster tweeter."
  • Like Bildt and Al Khalifa, Hague has also sparred on Twitter with his counterparts — trading jokey messages about cricket with Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd
  • In December, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg used Twitter to exchange views on their hopes for the U.N. climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico.
  • The jury's out on whether Twitter diplomacy will lead to more insight into what governments are up to. Given the embarrassment caused by WikiLeaks' releases of U.S. diplomatic cables, foreign affairs officials are likely to be cautious about discussing matters of state online. Jimmy Leach, head of digital engagement at Britain's foreign ministry, said ministers messaging their counterparts on Twitter can help humanize international relations — but doubts a public forum is the place for sensitive discussions. "What you are not going to get is high level diplomacy via Twitter,"
  • Neither Al Khalifa nor Bildt responded to tweets from AP reporters Thursday
gweyman

The Trouble With Twitter - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...47443

shared by gweyman on 23 Aug 09 - Cached
  • To those who Twitter, the reporter who investigates a story before offering it to the public must also seem tediously ruminant. On Twitter, the notes become the story, devoid of even five minutes of reflection on the writer's way to the computer. I can see that there are times —an airplane landing in the Hudson, a presidential election in Iran—when this type of impromptu journalism becomes a necessity, and an exciting one at that. Luckily, reporters still exist to make sense of information bytes and expand upon them for readers—but for how much longer? I worry that microblogging cheats my students out of their trump card: a mindful attention to the subject in front of them, so that they can capture its sights and sounds, its smells and tactile qualities, to share with readers. How can Twittering stories from laptops and phones possibly replace the attentive journalist who tucks a digital recorder artfully under a notepad, pencil behind one ear, and gives full attention to the subject at hand?
    • gweyman
      gweyman on 24 Aug 09
       
      Bizarre view this - speed has been in inherent in journalism for many a moon. Many have criticized the press for rampaging after a story to get the lastest scoop and then moving on when the headlines shift. And to talk as if we there are still happy boundaries between 'readers' and 'reporters' is outdated. Social media is conversational.
  • I went home after the lecture and—hypocritically, I admit—updated my Facebook status and my blog to declare how much I despise Twitter.
    • gweyman
      gweyman on 24 Aug 09
       
      Twitter envy.
  • Twitter serves as a source of links to longer news stories.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 23 Aug 09
       
      Which is one of its main uses in journalism. As Jay Rosen (@jayrosennyu) and others have put it, through services like Twitter and, indeed, Diigo we edit the web for one another. We can see it as acting as human filters, intelligent gatherers and sifters of information for the various networks in which we are nodes.
    • gweyman
      gweyman on 24 Aug 09
       
      absolutely.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Perhaps a news article really can be crafted, haikulike, in 140 characters.
    • gweyman
      gweyman on 24 Aug 09
       
      Twitter is a stream - like a news wire you add information with time.
  • Melissa Hart is an adjunct instructor of journalism at the University of Oregon
    • gweyman
      gweyman on 24 Aug 09
       
      Not massively impressed with her article.
Ed Webb

Elon Musk: Good for MENA Twitter? - by Marc Lynch - 0 views

abuaardvark.substack.com/...lon-musk-good-for-mena-twitter

authoritarianism media opinion analysis twitter MENA socialmedia censorship

shared by Ed Webb on 05 May 22 - No Cached
  • The MENA online ecosystem is not a good place for freedoms or civil debate right now, to say the least. The Digital Authoritarianism collection I edited last year makes for grim reading. Many MENA states have set in place legal frameworks criminalizing online dissent (and a lot more than just dissent). The pervasive use of Israeli-designed digital surveillance tools has turbocharged the ability of autocratic regimes to spy on their citizens (or on anyone else). Online discourse is plagued by armies of bots and trolls. And the suppression of Palestinian activist content shows how social media platforms have proven an uneven playing field when it comes to content moderation. Apocalyptic takes on what Musk might do really do need to grapple with how terrible things already are.
  • Musk explained his approach to free speech in a recent tweet: “By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.” That may sound good to some people in an American context, I suppose. But in the MENA, it would play directly into the hands of authoritarian regimes which have spent years constructing elaborate legal and normative frameworks to criminalize online dissent. Those laws don’t just ban violent hate speech, but range from political dissent, criticism of royal family members or the military, human rights monitoring, even dancing on TikTok. Following these cybercrime laws as a guide to content moderation would entail censoring a wide range of legitimate political speech - the opposite, presumably, of what an avowed free speech advocate would want to see.
  • If new Twitter policies drawn from the right wing understanding of the American online arena were applied consistently in the MENA context, it could potentially ease the suppression of Palestinian voices. I mean, that wouldn’t be the intention and it probably wouldn’t, but it’s worth thinking about.
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  • if he really means requiring users to authenticate their identity with some form of legal ID, that would mean a world of trouble for users in highly repressive MENA states. Many activists and dissidents face extreme consequences should their identities be discovered. So do many LGBTQ, atheist, or other users from marginalized or even criminalized communities
  • The bot armies really are annoying, and if Musk could figure out a way to remove them then the MENA region would benefit greatly. Disinformation, harrassment and abuse (especially of women), polluting hashtags to make conversation impossible, obnoxious trolling, intimidation… all of these have contributed to making MENA Twitter at worst almost unusable, and at best a highly distorted reflection of reality. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran are among the worst offenders among states, but the problem is endemic
  • Sure, if Musk actually does end up taking over and running Twitter (big ifs, still), he probably wouldn’t actually have those positive effects, at least not intentionally. But it’s still tempting to read some real significance into his intriguing little public spat with Waleed bin Talal, where he asked “What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?”
Ed Webb

'World's First' Street Named After a Twitter Account - 0 views

www.wired.com/...-named-after-a-twitter-account

Twitter geography street_art internet of things

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 28 Sep 09
     
    For once, you can take the @ symbol at the front of a Twitter account name literally. The Twitter name @arjanelfassed is not only the Twitter account
Ed Webb

There's Twitter the company, and twitter the medium | Technology | Los Angeles Times - 0 views

latimesblogs.latimes.com/...theres-twitter.html

twitter antitrust monopoly opensource

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Mar 09 - Cached
  • “It’s a very dangerous network because it’s all centralized,” he said, “not only on a technological level, where it goes through one set of servers — but it also goes through one set of business interests that’s anything but transparent.” Danger may sound a bit overzealous for a Web service that barely existed two years ago, but for a media landscape in the middle of a profound shift, two years can be the span between eras. Twitter is becoming a major source for news, commerce and free expression and, as with a free press itself, defenders don’t want a few profit-motivated individuals making all the decisions about how it should evolve. Like Facebook and YouTube before it, Twitter is now transitioning from a freely available, much-loved Web service to a well-funded business venture looking to cash in on the audience and cachet it built in its freewheeling early days.
  • Both critics have installed their own smaller, open-source micro-messaging systems outside of Twitter’s domain. Laporte calls his the Twit Army. The software they’re using was developed by Evan Prodromou, a developer in Montreal. Prodromou is the force behind Laconica — an open-source, Twitter-like system that anyone can install; hundreds of administrators already have, creating a dispersed, decentralized network of Twitter clones that can all talk to one another. Prodromou compares the state of micro-messaging to the early days of consumer e-mail. In the early 1990s, the e-mail world was dominated by proprietary dial-up entities like CompuServe, MCI and Prodigy. But because those systems were competitive, they didn’t connect to one another, and you could send messages only to people inside your own service. “I couldn’t send you e-mail and you couldn’t send me e-mail,” Prodromou explained. “We were on these separate islands. Making the change to an open standard for Internet e-mail has meant e-mail has become ubiquitous. I think that’s where we’re at now with microblogging.”
  • Ed Webb on 26 Mar 09
     
    Not everyone loves Twitter, even people who use it...
Ed Webb

Gulf states crack down on Twitter users - FT.com - www.ft.com - Readability - 0 views

www.readability.com/...o9rpco9s

ft.com Gulf GCC UAE Kuwait KSA Saudi religion media twitter

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • social websites are expanding Gulf public life in contrasting and sometimes conflicting directions, as nationals traditionally served only by heavily censored media grapple with rapid social change at home and the political turmoil gripping the Middle East
  • While Twitter has carved out a niche in Gulf countries as a tool for organising protest, it has also emerged as a means of religious enforcement; an alternative to physical demonstrations in societies where such confrontations are taboo; and as a debating chamber between loyalists and enemies of the ruling monarchies
  • a migration of Gulf nationals of all political persuasions to Twitter. In a recently released infographic, Amman-based social media consultant Khaled el-Ahmad showed users from the region making up more than two-thirds of the estimated 1.3m Twitter accounts active across the Arab world
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • reach of religious figures is far greater than that of the revolutionaries, media personalities and entertainers comprising the site’s elite in other Arab states
  • It is part of a wider embrace of Twitter in the Gulf that has been as messy – and sometimes ugly – as might be expected in a region suddenly offered a mighty platform for long repressed public discourse. “Twitter has contributed to an expansion of freedom of expression,” says Dima Khatib, a correspondent for Qatar’s Al Jazeera, who has emerged as one of the region’s biggest Twitter stars since the start of the Arab uprisings. “But things have cracked wide open – we still don’t know how to respect other points of view yet.”
Ed Webb

Please Sir, how do you re-tweet? - Twitter to be taught in UK primary schools - 0 views

uk.techcrunch.com/...e-taught-in-uk-primary-schools

twitter technology literacy education UK socialmedia

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK’s education system. And that’s not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
  • Traditional education in areas like phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic remain but modern media and web-based skills and environmental education now feature.
  • The skills that let kids use Internet technologies effectively also work in the real world: being able to evaluate resources critically, communicating well, being careful with strangers and your personal information, conducting yourself in a manner appropriate to your environment. Those things are, and should be, taught in schools. It’s also a good idea to teach kids how to use computers, including web browsers etc, and how those real-world skills translate online.
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  • I think teaching kids HOW TO use Wikipedia is a step forward from ordering them NOT TO use it, as they presently do in many North American classrooms.
  • Open Source software is the future and therefore we need to concentrate on the wheels and not the vehicle!
  • Core skills is very important. Anyone and everyone can learn Photoshop & Word Processing at any stage of their life, but if core skills are missed from an early age, then evidence has shown that there has always been less chance that the missing knowledge could be learnt at a later stage in life.
  • Schools shouldn’t be about teaching content, but about learning to learn, getting the kind of critical skills that can be used in all kinds of contexts, and generating motivation for lifelong learning. Finnish schools are rated the best in the world according to the OECD/PISA ratings, and they have totally de-emphasised the role of content in the curriculum. Twitter could indeed help in the process as it helps children to learn to write in a precise, concise style - absolutely nothing wrong with that from a pedagogical point of view. Encouraging children to write is never a bad thing, no matter what the platform.
  • Front end stuff shouldn’t be taught. If anything it should be the back end gubbins that should be taught, databases and coding.
  • So what’s more important, to me at least, is not to know all kinds of useless facts, but to know the general info and to know how to think and how to search for information. In other words, I think children should get lessons in thinking and in information retrieval. Yes, they should still be taught about history, etc. Yes, it’s important they learn stuff that they could need ‘on the spot’ - like calculating skills. However, we can go a little bit easier on drilling the information in - by the time they’re 25, augmented reality will be a fact and not even a luxury.
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  • Ed Webb on 25 Mar 09
     
    The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK's education system. And that's not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
Ed Webb

How Turkey silences journalists online, one removal request at a time - Committee to Pr... - 0 views

cpj.org/...nalists-online-one-removal.php

Turkey censorship media socialmedia twitter Facebook google journalists journalism analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • over 1.5 million tweets belonging to journalists and media outlets censored there under Twitter's "country withheld content" (CWC) policy
  • , 13 countries have used Twitter's CWC tool to effectively censor content, according to the social media platform's transparency reports. Governments usually cite laws around national security, counter-terrorism, defamation, or hate speech when requesting removals.
  • legal demands to remove content on the platform went from 432 requests in the first part of 2014 to 6,651 requests in the second part of 2017. Turkey and Russia were responsible for 74 percent of all requests during that period
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In the second part of 2017 in Turkey, more Twitter accounts were withheld and Facebook content restricted than in any other country
  • "I challenge both Twitter and the Turkish government to [find in my tweets] anything that can be considered illegal or harmful. My only crime is being a journalist."
  • "Twitter, Facebook, [and] Google...are responsible to their shareholders primarily, I don't consider them as guardians of the free speech. But the imbalance in the tools they offer to users versus governments make them complicit in the authoritarian rulers' crackdown against opposition."
  • Getting a court order to censor journalists is not a hard task in Turkey which, according to CPJ research, is the world's worst jailer of journalists. Human Rights Watch said in 2014 that "Turkish courts have tended to accede to government requests to block websites with apparent minimal, if any, scrutiny."
  • Amendments to law 5651 in 2014 gave authorities power to block sites without a court order. Google transparency reports show that since the amendments came into effect, the majority of removal requests came from judicial rather than executive orders. Law 5651 is "a very fast-track system [to block content] with almost no checks,"
  • In his U.N. report on regulation of user-generated online content published earlier this year, David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, recommended that "companies should recognize that the authoritative global standard for ensuring freedom of expression on their platforms is human rights law, not the varying laws of states or their own private interests."
Ed Webb

US government-funded Twitter account has been attacking Trump's Iran-policy critics | M... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...-attacking-trumps-iran-critics

Iran US USA propaganda socialmedia HRW

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • A Twitter account has been attacking journalists, professors, analysts, activists and human rights advocates who do not share its operators' strong views against the Iranian government. It has a modest reach of about 1,650 followers, but until Friday it was funded by the US State Department.
  • US government suspended funding for the account, IranDisinfo
  • "They're creating their own echo chamber, and it appears that they're funding it," said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). NIAC, which advocates an anti-war position with Iran but also denounces human rights abuses by the Islamic Republic, has received the lion's share of the account's attacks on critics of President Donald Trump's hardline Iran policies.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • IranDisinfo has repeatedly posted and retweeted attacks on Washington Post columnist Jason Rezaian, who had been imprisoned by the Iranian government for more than a year, simply for condemning Trump's "Muslim ban".
Ed Webb

Facebook Officials Keep Quiet on Its Role in Revolts - NYTimes.com - 3 views

www.nytimes.com/...15facebook.html

facebook twitter youtube middleeast privacy activism

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The social media giant finds itself under countervailing pressures after the uprisings in the Middle East. While it has become one of the primary tools for activists to mobilize protests and share information, Facebook does not want to be seen as picking sides for fear that some countries — like Syria, where it just gained a foothold — would impose restrictions on its use or more closely monitor users, according to some company executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal business.
  • Last week, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, urged Facebook to take “immediate and tangible steps” to help protect democracy and human rights activists who use its services, including addressing concerns about not being able to use pseudonyms. In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, Mr. Durbin said the recent events in Egypt and Tunisia had highlighted the costs and benefits of social tools to democracy and human rights advocates. “I am concerned that the company does not have adequate safeguards in place to protect human rights and avoid being exploited by repressive governments,” he wrote.
  • This is an incredible challenge and an incredible opportunity for Facebook, Twitter and Google,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he works on projects about the use of technology and media in the developing world. “It might be tougher for Facebook than anyone else. Facebook has been ambivalent about the use of their platform by activists.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Twitter and YouTube, which is owned by Google, have been more willing to embrace their roles in activism and unrest, Mr. Zuckerman said. After the Internet was shut down in Egypt, Twitter and Google actively helped protesters by producing a new service, speak2tweet, that allowed people to leave voicemail messages that would be filed as updates on Twitter. Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s founders, used it as an opportunity to emphasize the positive global impact that comes with the open exchange of information. When the Internet was back up, YouTube, working with Storyful, a social media news curation service, took the thousands of videos pouring in from the protests in Tahrir Square to help people access and share the information as quickly as possible on CitizenTube, its news and politics channel.
  • the Global Network Initiative, a voluntary code of conduct for technology companies created in 2008 that requires participating businesses to take reasonable steps to protect human rights
Ed Webb

Twitter,twitter - Revolution 2.0 on Diigo Groups - 0 views

groups.diigo.com/...Twitter+twitter

twitter

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 19 Mar 09
     
    Twitter resources courtesy of arabawy et al
Ed Webb

Saudi snitching app appears to have been used against jailed Leeds student | Saudi Arab... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-leeds-student-salma-al-shehab

twitter censorship KSA Saudi rights authoritarianism repression student UK Britain

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Aug 22 - Cached
  • The Saudi woman who was sentenced to 34 years in prison for using Twitter appears to have been denounced to Saudi authorities through a crime-reporting app that users in the kingdom can download to Apple and Android phones.
  • The user told Shehab that he had reported her on the Saudi app, which is called Kollona Amn, or All Are Safe. It is not clear whether the Saudi officials responded directly to the report, but the 34-year-old mother was arrested two months later.
  • Her alleged crimes including using a website to “cause public unrest” and “assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts” and by retweeting their tweets.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • on 8 October 2019, Shehab responded to a tweet by a verified Saudi account that reports on developments in the kingdom’s infrastructure projects. When the account tweeted about the launch of a new network of buses, she tweeted the word “finally!”.
  • Recalling her own experience in Syria, Aljizawi described the phenomenon of citizens being unable to trust their own neighbours.“Sometimes people find themselves in trouble. They need a promotion or need to prove their loyalty to the state, so they do something like this. It’s enough to just take a screenshot and report it,”
  • “new phase of digital authoritarianism”.
  • “It is very concerning because people who post something cannot predict the risk or who is going to report them, and who is going to go back and search their feed for posts that don’t align with government propaganda,”
  • On official Saudi websites, Kollona Amn – which also has a Twitter account – is described as an app that allows citizens and expatriates to submit security and criminal reports related to personal life attacks, threats, impersonation, extortion, penetration of social media accounts, defamation, fraud and other criminal offences and security reports.
  • in the hands of a dictatorship targeting human rights defenders, technology transforms into a terrifying tool which fast tracks repression
  • Shehab would regularly tweet to support the rights of others but believed it went unnoticed because she did not have many Twitter followers.“She [would] always stand with all human rights in Saudi or outside of Saudi
  • Shehab, who has been studying in the UK since 2017, was not especially critical of the government and was a supporter of Vision 2030, Prince Mohammed’s plan to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and towards services such as health and tourism.
Ed Webb

Egyptian Chronicles: The Return of #BassemYoussef on #MBCMasr - 3 views

egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/...-bassemyoussef-on-mbcmasr.html

Egypt satire television TV military politics twitter Facebook socialmedia Saudi KSA

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • you must admit that he got the highest viewership in Egypt tonight. Everybody was waiting for the show. Now there is viral status on the Facebook that the number of Youssef’s viewers tonight was more than the number of those participated in the latest constitutional referendum.
  • you must admit that he got the highest viewership in Egypt tonight. Everybody was waiting for the show. Now there is viral status on the Facebook that the number of Youssef’s viewers tonight was more than the number of those participated in the latest constitutional referendum.
  • Now speaking about the numbers  , you must know that both Bassem Youssef and “ElBernmag” hashtags as well “MBC Masr” have been trending for hours now in Arabic and English in Egypt. Here is map of the trends from Trends Map showing Egypt and its most popular twitter hashtags now.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Now speaking about the numbers  , you must know that both Bassem Youssef and “ElBernmag” hashtags as well “MBC Masr” have been trending for hours now in Arabic and English in Egypt. Here is map of the trends from Trends Map showing Egypt and its most popular twitter hashtags now. Trends Map of Egypt tonight According to Topsy , there were 26, 495 tweets about Bassem Youssef in Arabic alone tonight up till now.
  • Now speaking about the numbers  , you must know that both Bassem Youssef and “ElBernmag” hashtags as well “MBC Masr” have been trending for hours now in Arabic and English in Egypt. Here is map of the trends from Trends Map showing Egypt and its most popular twitter hashtags now. Trends Map of Egypt tonight According to Topsy , there were 26, 495 tweets about Bassem Youssef in Arabic alone tonight up till now.
  • According to Topsy , there were 26, 495 tweets about Bassem Youssef in Arabic alone tonight up till now.
  • According to Topsy , there were 26, 495 tweets about Bassem Youssef in Arabic alone tonight up till now.
  • The Pro-Mubarak/Pro-ElSisi/Pro-Military are mad as usual insisting that Bassem Youssef was irrelevant foreign funded agent who is jealous from El Sisi and so.
  • some news websites claimed that Youssef reached to agreement with Saudi MBC group that he would not speak about the Kingdom in his show or about the Egyptian army. These claims were denied by Youssef on his twitter account.
Ed Webb

MediaShift . Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media | PBS - 0 views

www.pbs.org/...ter-about-social-media035.html

media journalism twitter

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 05 Feb 09
     
    The future of journalism? For the record, I follow two of these folks on Twitter, and am about to start following the other two...
  • Jared Bernhardt on 05 Feb 09
     
    I know you are big on twittering, and I was back in 2006, but I feel it is good in addition to a blog. Almost a glorified Facebook status. Give me a full fledged article and I'll take that over a twitter post any day of the week.
Amira AlTahawi

Twitter insult leads to alleged murder - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...t-leads-to-alleged-murder.html

twitter Internet death&dying

shared by Amira AlTahawi on 12 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Amira AlTahawi on 12 Jan 10
     
    "A man has been charged with shooting and killing a childhood friend after the pair allegedly traded insults on social networking site Twitter. "
Ed Webb

Global Voices Gathers Information From Citizens All Over the Globe - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...14voices.html

socialmedia media journalism bloggers censorship advocacy

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • “Our job is to curate the conversation that is happening all over the Internet with people who really understand what is going on,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, a former Tokyo bureau chief for CNN who founded Global Voices with Ethan Zuckerman, a technologist and Africa expert, while they were fellows at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “We amplify, contextualize and translate what these conversations are and why they are relevant.”
  • “We don’t parachute in. We are there all the time. “
  • Mr. Sigal said that having editors work with volunteer bloggers brought traditional journalistic values to the operation, like checking facts and sources. “But it is less about a finished story and more about a conversation,” he said. “When we build a story, we include links back to the original sources, so you can follow the story as far down as you want to. We want you to leave our site and go find the original, find more.”
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  • “It turns out that it is much more critical than they had imagined because the other international news sources are being dismantled.”
  • 18-hour days for Ms. Hussaini, whose work is now followed closely on the site and on Twitter by journalists from traditional media organizations, including Andy Carvin of NPR, who has been regularly curating and publishing posts on Twitter, creating a news wire about the unrest in the region for weeks.
  • “The citizen media scene is small in Libya,” Ms. Hussaini said. “We find it very difficult to find voices here and in other places where there is a lot of censorship and a lot of fear from the regime. Bloggers being arrested is a fact of life in some countries.”
  • Global Voices Advocacy is run by Sami Ben Gharbia, a highly respected blogger who is a founder of Nawaat, a blog about Tunisia, and an activist who until recently lived in exile from Tunisia for 13 years.
  • “People are not always interested in knowing what is happening in Yemen,” he said. “We have been waiting for people to pay attention to this corner of the world for a long time, and now we are ready to tell their stories.”
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