Twitter Censorship Outrage
Talk about cat amongst pigeons: Twitter’s announcement that it will enable country-specific censorship has the twittersphere in uproar. From Al Jazeera:
In an announcement on its official blog, the micro-blogging service Twitter has said it will enable country-specific censorship of content on the site.
True to the form of the medium, the service was immediately abuzz with questions, criticisms and conspiracies about Thursday’s announcement.
In a bid to show the service can still be used for dissent, some users have called for a boycott on Saturday, organised around the hashtag #TwitterBlackout.
In a Forbes article highly circulated on the micro-blogging site early Friday, Mark Gibbs wrote that San Francisco, California-based Twitter was committing “social suicide” with the censorship announcement.
Gibbs’ article raised fears of an algorithm incapable of understanding the sarcasm that permeate the 140-character blasts comprising the service’s contents.
That “computer-driven” filtering for the up to 9,000 tweets per second the service produced last year…
Somali Rebels Embrace Twitter Terrorism
El Shabbab, the fundamentalist Islamic insurgency group fighting to control southern Somalia, reject most things Western and/or modern, but ironically have embraced Twitter, garnering thousands of followers. In addition to straightforward updates on battles and territory, the best part is the taunting that goes on between the insurgents and Kenyan military spokesman Major E. Chirchir:
Brits Have Too Many Holidays For A ‘Broke Country’
Happy New Year, y’alls. Looks like at least one of your wishes may have started coming true already. Dylan Welch from the Sydney Morning Herald reports on Rupert Murdoch’s meticulous documentation of his own descent into senility:
“Either @rupertmurdoch is genuinely now on Twitter, or some disgruntled ex-NOTW journo just won the hacking Olympics.”
Less than two days after joining Twitter, media mogul Rupert Murdoch appears to have had his first brush with tweeting-before-thinking, after suggesting that the British have too many holidays for a “broke country”.
Though Mr Murdoch, who joined Twitter less than 48 hours ago and already has almost 40,000 followers, quickly deleted the message, it was preserved by some Twitter users and quickly spread around the website.
“Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!” Mr Murdoch, who is holidaying on the Caribbean island of Saint Barthelemy, wrote about 6am Australian time.
Publish and be damned … the tweet that Murdoch withdrew.
His wife,…
25 Ridiculous Reactions To #GodIsNotGreat
Matt Stopera writes on BuzzFeed:
After Christopher Hitchens passed away, the title of his book, God Is Not Great, started trending on Twitter. Here’s how some people, mostly “Christians,” reacted:
[Click above image for more Tweets]
The Wrong Facebook Friends Can Sink Your Credit Rating
Adrianne Jeffries explains the downside of maintaining a social media presence for Betabeat:
Let’s take a trip with the Ghost of Christmas Future. The year is 2016, and George Bailey, a former banker, now a part-time consultant, is looking for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for a co-op in the super-hot neighborhood of Bedford Falls (BeFa). He has never missed a loan payment and has zero credit card debt. He submits his information to the online-only PotterBank.com, but halfway through the application process, the website asks for his Facebook login. Then his Twitter. Then LinkedIn. The cartoon loan officer avatar begins to frown as the algorithm discovers Mr. Bailey’s taxi-driving buddy Ernie was once turned down by PotterBank for a loan; then it starts browsing his daughter Zuzu’s photo album, “Saturday Nite!” And what was this tweet from a few years back: “FML, about to jump off a goddamn bridge”?
A new wave…
Dead Man’s Twitter Feed Keeps Updating
Last week John Pospisil, the editor of Blorge.com, passed away, but his Twitter feed continued updating, since he’d configured it to re-tweet all the headlines from his group technology blog.
“Eventually I figured it out,” reports one technology blogger, “but it was a big shock to see more messages appearing from John himself on the day after he’d died.” They also dedicated their first ebook to Pospisil, a Thanksgiving children’s story, because “I’d always thought we’d watch the world changing together…”
CIA Tracks Revolt by Tweet and Facebook
Didn’t we know this already? Reports Kimberly Dozier on the AP:
McLEAN, VA — In an anonymous industrial park, CIA analysts who jokingly call themselves the “ninja librarians” are mining the mass of information people publish about themselves overseas, tracking everything from common public opinion to revolutions.
The group’s effort gives the White House a daily snapshot of the world built from tweets, newspaper articles and Facebook updates.
The agency’s Open Source Center sometimes looks at 5 million tweets a day. The analysts are also checking out TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that people can access and contribute to openly.
The Associated Press got an apparently unprecedented view of the center’s operations, including a tour of the main facility. The AP agreed not to reveal its exact location and to withhold the identities of some who work there because much of the center’s work is secret.
From Arabic…
‘It Never Ends’: LAPD Homicide Detective Tweets Photo of Dead Body
Simone Wilson writes on LA Weekly:
Local arts blog LA Taco is fuming over the “callous” Twitter activity of LAPD Homicide Detective Sal LaBarbera. (As of December 2007, according to the Los Angeles Times, La Barbera was “a 20-year homicide veteran who heads the Watts homicide squad in LAPD’s South Bureau.”)
LaBarbera is certainly active on Twitter — throwing out RTs, #FFs and hashtags like he was born to the social-media generation. (The detective is also big on @ing journalists from local news stations and the Times.) His handle on the medium is pretty impressive for a weathered murder cop…
… and right out ahead of other police departments’ slow struggle to incorporate social media into their investigative work.
Phone Snooping ‘Prevented Riots’
Photo: Riemer Palstra (CC)
To tweet or not tweet where you’re rioting next? One option was to shut down social networks so that rioters couldn’t mass communicate. The other option was to allow them to tweet and text, then read their messages to find out what they’re planning next. The latter was able to prevent attacks on the Olympic site and London’s Oxford Street. BBC reports:
Police say they prevented attacks by rioters on the Olympic site and London’s Oxford Street after picking up intelligence on social networks.
Assistant Met Police Commissioner Lynne Owens told a committee of MPs officers learned of possible trouble via Twitter and Blackberry messenger.
But Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin said he had considered asking authorities to switch off social networks.
He said they provided intelligence but could also be misleading.
A number of politicians, media commentators and members of the police force have suggested that Twitter and Blackberry Messenger (BBM) had a…
Iceland Uses Social Media to Write New Constitution
Aaron Saenz writes on Singularity Hub:
The newest government in the world was designed with help from comments on the internet. God help us all.
After Iceland’s economic collapse in 2008, the island nation decided it was time to write a new constitution, this one not based on its parent country of Denmark but rather made from the original ideas of its citizens. Iceland’s small population of 320,000 elected 25 assembly members from 522 ordinary candidates (including lawyers, political science professors, journalists, and many other professions), who in turn opened their process up to the public in an unprecedented fashion.
The Constitutional Council was highly active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, where they solicited comments and suggestions for the new government. On Friday July 29th, 2011, the Iceland parliament officially received the new constitution, comprised of 114 articles divided into 9 chapters. Set to be reviewed, and then put before vote for ratification…
NYPD Forms Social Media Unit To Monitor Facebook and Twitter
Rocco Parascandola reports in the NY Daily News:
The NYPD has formed a new unit to track troublemakers who announce plans or brag about their crimes on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. Newly named Assistant Commissioner Kevin O’Connor, one of the department’s online and gang gurus, has been put in charge of the new juvenile justice unit. He and his staff will mine social media, looking for info about troublesome house parties, gang showdowns and other potential mayhem, sources said.
The power of social media to empower both criminals and cops has been on full display in London this week, where riots and looting have been spreading dramatically. The rioters have been using Twitter and BlackBerry messages to choose targets for looting or burning – and to alert one another about police positions.
The Twitter Stripper Photo From UK Riots
This photo has been making waves since it was uploaded to Twitter, supposedly depicting a man stripping off his clothes under the threat of violence from the man at right during the recent civil disturbances in Britain (this scene reportedly from Birmingham).
Is it what it seems or is it intentionally misleading in a clumsy attempt to spark race-related violence?
Ask Not What Facebook Can Do For You, But What Facebook Can Do For Your Country…
Granted some memes will be more interesting to the Pentagon than others. David Streitfeld reports in the NY Times:
The Pentagon is developing plans to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as both a resource and a weapon in future conflicts. Its research and development agency is offering $42 million in funding to anyone who can help.
Social media will change the nature of warfare just as surely as the telegraph, the radio and the telephone did, and the Pentagon is fearful of being caught short. Some of its goals were laid out in a document being circulated among potential researchers and is to be presented at a briefing on Tuesday in Arlington, Va., at the offices of the military contractor System Planning Corporation.
As social media play increasingly large roles in fomenting unrest in countries like Egypt and Iran, the military wants systems to be able to detect and track the…
Fox News Twitter Account Gets Hacked Announcing President Obama’s Assassination
With instant access to knowledge via technology, it’s easy to get the wrong news. While some hackers may expose a private tweet or e-mail, others create fake news, like the assassination of the American president. Los Angeles Times reports:
Former Rep. Anthony Weiner falsely said his Twitter account was hacked just before Memorial Day weekend. But over the holiday weekend, it looks like real hackers attacked the @foxnewspolitics verified account, one of several Twitter accounts run by FoxNews.com.
A group calling itself “ScriptKiddies” claimed responsibility for the hack and also declared it has ties to the international hacker collective Anonymous.
The Tweets began appearing just after 2 a.m. ET on Monday, July 4, an hour and date likely calculated to maximize the time the Tweets were up before the account owner noticed or could do anything about it. The fake messages announced the assassination of President Obama during a visit to Iowa, but there were no…
Pope Sends His First Tweet Via iPad
Pope Benedict XVI has posted his first tweet! The pope has gone digital, announcing the launch of the new site www.news.va, so the world can keep up with what’s going on at the Vatican.
Good Grief, Charlie Brown! Peanutweeter Brings Peanuts Together with Twitter
From Angela Watercutte on WIRED’s Underwire:
Everyone has at least one funny person they follow on Twitter just for the lulz, but sometimes the things they say would be even more laughable if they weren’t constantly spewing from the same avatar.
Peanutweeter changes that. The @Peanutweeter Tumblr blog and Twitter feed fulfill a very simple idea: Matching somewhat random Twitter posts with less-random Peanuts comics. The results are hilarious.
“The site arose from the concept that the amusing and sometimes outrageous tweets out there would be even funnier or sometimes darker if they came from someone that everyone could identify with,” site creator T. Jason Agnello told Wired.com by e-mail.
Why Are Democrats So Weak? Thoughts on the Weiner ‘Scandal’ (Video)
Rachel Maddow speaks with Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks who has plenty to say:
French Media Ban The Mention Of Specific Social Networks On Air
In an attempt to reduce the amount of ‘free publicity’ given to social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, the French have banned any mention of specific sites in their TV and radio broadcasts. One of the reasons for this ban is to allow a fair platform for smaller networking companies in the future. BBC News reports:
French TV and radio presenters have been banned from mentioning social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter on air.
The country’s broadcasting watchdog has ruled that doing so would break guidelines on advertising.
Stations can still talk about services without naming them, it said.
The French government is seen by many internet watchers as overly keen to regulate in relation to new media and the web.
In a ruling, published online, the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), said: “Referring viewers or listeners to the page of the social network without mentioning it has the character of information.
[Continues at…
Music Video Parodies Weiner Scandal
Rep. Anthony Weiner announced today that he did indeed tweet the lewd picture of himself, as well as engage in various inappropriate conversations with other women. (Read more about his press conference at The Hill) As you sit and contemplate the use of social networks in political scandals, here is a music video about Weiner’s ‘accidental’ Twitter post in the parody form of SNL’s “Dick in a Box”:
