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Community Standards: A Comparison of Facebook vs. Google+

I’ve been playing with Google+ for the past two days, and so far, I’m really enjoying it. I’ll be honest: There are features on Facebook that I currently still prefer, including the way my own Wall is displayed, as well as the way I look at photo albums. That said, I’ve been analyzing Google+’s rules, [...]

30.06.2011

15 Comments

Testing Google+

This morning, not an hour after tweeting my excitement, I received a surprise in my inbox: an invite to Google+. Though the timing was sheer coincidence (no, Google is not reading my tweets, or my mind…yet), the semi-instant gratification was pleasing. After a quick login (including a checkbox giving Google+ permission to access your Picasa [...]

28.06.2011

8 Comments

Facebook: Still No Automated Systems?

Facebook has long claimed that their community policing system cannot be gamed, and that pages are not automatically removed for TOS violations, despite evidence to the contrary. Today, more evidence, as famed critic and blogger Roger Ebert’s Facebook Page is removed, allegedly for being “hateful, threatening, or obscene.” As Ebert writes, he was recently the [...]

21.06.2011

2 Comments

Journalistic Verification, Amina Arraf, and Haystack

How did a Syrian blogger, who told beautiful and heartwrenching stories of life as a lesbian in Damascus, manage to trick so many people? How did an American software engineer, whose passion for the Iranian cause led him to build what he dubbed the safest of circumvention tools, do the same? The stories of Amina [...]

10.06.2011

18 Comments

IFEX 2011 Liveblog: Ramsey George of Tactical Tech Discusses Info-Activism

Ramsey George of the Tactical Technology Collective conducted a session (several times, and in English and Arabic) on new media and advocacy strategies. Basing his talk partly on Tactical Tech’s excellent “10 Tactics for Turning Information into Activism” film (copies of which were offered to participants), he made the point early on that what people [...]

03.06.2011

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Tweeting #Bahrain: A Futile Effort

In early February, Bahrain–like numerous countries in the region–caught revolution fever. Protesters took over the Pearl Roundabout in the capital, Manama, demanding reform, from February 14 to 17 until, on the last day, police stormed the Roundabout, killing seven and clearing the scene. Still, the protesters returned again and again. On March 3, clashes between [...]

01.06.2011

57 Comments