Reaction to Obama's Mideast Speech in Arab Capitals Is Muted and Mixed - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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many people said they were too busy with their own popular struggles to pay much attention to words from Washington
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there was no mention of Saudi Arabia, perhaps the most powerful conservative influence on the region and a close American ally. Mr. Obama said that Iran may have sought to capitalize on the unrest in another ally, Bahrain, they noted, but he failed to mention that Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries had intervened there to crush the revolt
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“We’ve had long experience with American policy in the region, and we don’t trust Obama’s call for change in Syria,” said Abdel Majid Manjouni, head of the opposition Socialist Democratic Arab Union Party in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. “Only the Syrian people can impose change, not the powers abroad.”
Arab autocrats use anti-IS Web war to stifle dissent: Report | Middle East Eye - 0 views
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the region’s authoritarian leaders are using the threat of IS propaganda as a pretext to clamp down on online critics
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“A spate of new anti-terrorism laws around the region have overly broad definitions of terrorism that fail to distinguish between speech that incites violence or promotes extremism and the type of free speech posted by online journalists and human rights activists.”
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According to the Brookings Institution, a US-based think tank, IS and its supporters ran some 46,000 Twitter accounts last year
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» PEN America Response to the Canceled Panel at Columbia University - 0 views
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“PEN America learned today that a planned event on the rule of law in Turkey in which one of our staff members was scheduled to participate has been cancelled by Columbia University.
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We understand that in recent weeks event participants and organizers began to have serious reservations about the composition of the panel for the event, believing that it reflected an insufficient breadth of Turkish voices. Efforts to add an adequately diverse set of Turkish perspectives to the line-up were apparently not fully successful, and we understand that there were intensifying concerns that important viewpoints would not be represented. We also understand that late last week Columbia was approached by a representative of the Turkish government who expressed objections to the planned event and the views that would be reflected in the discussion. We received word of the cancellation today.
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we are concerned that the outreach from the Turkish government may have played any role at all in Columbia’s decision to cancel the panel. While there may have been valid grounds to reconsider the make-up of the event and even to postpone it in order to ensure a more representative group of speakers, the direct intervention of the Turkish government in an effort to influence the event creates at the very least a perception that Columbia may have been influenced by Turkey in its decision to call off the event. The government of Turkey is notorious for its relentless crackdown on dissidents, writers, journalists, and scholars, including many who are university-affiliated. Government intrusions in university decision-making of this nature violate academic freedom and freedom of speech. Universities, scholars, and free speech defenders must be vigilant in resisting such interference and avoiding even the perception that decisions may be shaped by government pressure.”
How Turkey silences journalists online, one removal request at a time - Committee to Pr... - 0 views
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over 1.5 million tweets belonging to journalists and media outlets censored there under Twitter's "country withheld content" (CWC) policy
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, 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.
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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
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The Making of a YouTube Radical - The New York Times - 0 views
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Mr. Cain, 26, recently swore off the alt-right nearly five years after discovering it, and has become a vocal critic of the movement. He is scarred by his experience of being radicalized by what he calls a “decentralized cult” of far-right YouTube personalities, who convinced him that Western civilization was under threat from Muslim immigrants and cultural Marxists, that innate I.Q. differences explained racial disparities, and that feminism was a dangerous ideology.
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Over years of reporting on internet culture, I’ve heard countless versions of Mr. Cain’s story: an aimless young man — usually white, frequently interested in video games — visits YouTube looking for direction or distraction and is seduced by a community of far-right creators. Some young men discover far-right videos by accident, while others seek them out. Some travel all the way to neo-Nazism, while others stop at milder forms of bigotry.
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YouTube and its recommendation algorithm, the software that determines which videos appear on users’ home pages and inside the “Up Next” sidebar next to a video that is playing. The algorithm is responsible for more than 70 percent of all time spent on the site
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Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match - The New York Times - 0 views
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they had shared and could recite the viral Facebook memes constructing an alternate reality of nefarious Muslim plots. Mr. Lal called them “the embers beneath the ashes” of Sinhalese anger
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the forces of social disruption that have followed Facebook’s rapid expansion in the developing world, whose markets represent the company’s financial future. For months, we had been tracking riots and lynchings around the world linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, which pushes whatever content keeps users on the site longest — a potentially damaging practice in countries with weak institutions.
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Time and again, communal hatreds overrun the newsfeed — the primary portal for news and information for many users — unchecked as local media are displaced by Facebook and governments find themselves with little leverage over the company. Some users, energized by hate speech and misinformation, plot real-world attacks.
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Egyptian Chronicles: #WeWillSpeak : Egyptian Tweeps speak up about Twitter Middle East ... - 0 views
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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.
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several opposition and political activists' accounts were either permanently or temporarily suspended allegedly for violating Twitter policies
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Twitter MENA is paying attention only to the bad language of the tweeps including activists opposing the government only in that crackdown.
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Jordan: Alarm raised over 'vague and repressive' cybercrime draft law | Middle East Eye - 0 views
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“Internet users will no longer be able to know if their online conduct will be considered a crime or not, resulting in even more online censorship.”
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he law is paving the way to further issues, such as webpage admins being held responsible for comments posted by others. “The scope of the text is so broad it can be applied to admins of WhatsApp groups too, making normal users potential censors of free speech.”
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Around a dozen rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have urged the Jordanian government to withdraw the bill. “The draft legislation will jeopardise digital rights, including freedom of expression and the right to information, and will ultimately fail in achieving the Jordanian government’s stated goals of tackling 'disinformation', 'hate speech' and 'online defamation',” their joint statement said
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IRGC warns Saudi Arabia it must 'control' media 'provoking our youth' | Amwaj.media - 0 views
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The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned the Saudi royal family that it will “pay the price” unless it reins in the media outlets it allegedly funds. The warning comes as Tehran accuses foreign-based Persian-language networks—and especially the TV channel Iran International—of spreading fake news and inciting unrest.
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the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency reported hours after his speech that the main target was Iran International. Tasnim maintained that there is "no doubt" that London-based Iran International "is linked to the crown prince," referring to Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MbS). Tasnim also named Dubai-based Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath as other news networks funded by the Kingdom and targeted by Salami in his speech.
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MP Mohammad Ali Naqdali—the secretary of the parliament’s legal and judicial commission—urged Iranian authorities on Oct. 8 to file a complaint against Iran International with the UK media regulator, Ofcom. The lawmaker called on the foreign ministry and judiciary to complain about Iran International over its alleged role in "encouraging further protests” in Iran. Naqdali also criticized other Persian-language outlets based in the UK, describing them as "lie-producing factories."
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Arab Leaders Keep a Wary Eye on Tunisia - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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In Egypt, where the leadership continues to rely on a decades-old emergency law that allows arrest without charge, there is a lot of room for free and critical speech, offering a safety valve for expression that did not exist in Tunisia, he said.
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