Currently browsing posts tagged: Facebook.

Fresh looks at social media as a 2011 gamechanger

Two fresh looks at the effects, in 2011, of social media on the world. The first, a talk from my friend Ethan Zuckerman at the University of British Columbia: I’ve tapped out–imperfectly–a few excerpts for those of you who don’t watch videos: In reference to how the ‘Arab Spring’ began: Thinking about social media by [...]

03.01.2012

1 Comment

The danger in privatizing our publics

Nearly a year ago, I published a paper (and much shorter, accompanying op-ed and later, a talk) on how Facebook and other social media sites are becoming the new public sphere, despite their being privately-owned spaces. Just a few months later, their popularity exploded as the real-life revolts in Tunisia and Egypt were echoed on [...]

19.08.2011

2 Comments

Facebook Appeals: We haz them!

Remember those days when users whose Facebook accounts had been disabled would receive a message stating that the decision could not be appealed? And then the user would have to e-mail Facebook in an attempt to explain their situation and in hopes that they might be the exception? I certainly do. I recall, last spring, [...]

19.07.2011

2 Comments

Rebecca MacKinnon at TED: Let’s Take Back the Internet!

It is not often that I frame a post around a video, but Rebecca MacKinnon’s TED talk is perfect in describing one of the issues most important to me: the censorship of the Internet, both by governments and intermediaries. Not only is Rebecca a great speaker, but the nature of TED–wherein the hyperintelligent audience may [...]

13.07.2011

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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

17 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

Safety and Social Networks in the Middle East

Not to beat a dead horse, but I came across a few tidbits last night that I found fascinating. While these pertain specifically to Facebook, in this case, I actually don’t meant to suggest that Facebook itself is the problem, rather, the larger point is whether activists are moving away from social networking tools because [...]

24.05.2011

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On the Deletion of Marcelo Vieira’s Facebook Page

Marcelo Vieira is a Brazilian footballer who, according to various reports (including this one from YNet, in Hebrew), posted support for Palestinians on the anniversary of the Nakba. According to multiple reports, the page on which Vieira made the statement was taken down shortly after. Now, there are plenty of conspiracies circulating as to why, [...]

23.05.2011

1 Comment

The e-G8: Promises and Problems

The G8, as I’m sure my readers know, is a forum for the governments of eight of the world’s wealthiest economies. While topics on the G8′s agenda are often globally relevant (energy policy, the environment), the G8 has, over the years, been the target of protests and criticism from a variety of parties, including labor [...]

22.05.2011

1 Comment

A few talks from April

So, as you may well know by now that I’ve recently started a new job as Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco (whew, that’s a mouthful!). I certainly will be blogging, but as I’m still settling in, and only recently got the Internet set up in my [...]

18.05.2011

1 Comment

What Syria’s Unblocking of Facebook Was Really About

Back in February, I wrote that the Syrian government’s decision to free up access to Facebook and other sites was a risky move, potentially designed to entrap Syrians. In the nearly three months since, it seems like I was right: First came the reports of activists and non-activists being detained, their Facebook and other passwords [...]

06.05.2011

7 Comments

When Tech Companies Do Right

Yesterday, I mentioned in a post the importance of talking about tech companies not only when they do poorly, but also when they do right. In that post, I mentioned how Twitter has shied from moderating content on their platform even in the most contentious of circumstances, showing their dedication to free expression online. There [...]

20.04.2011

2 Comments

On Facebook’s deletion of a gay kiss (or why community policing doesn’t work)

It used to be that I had to seek out instances of overreaching Facebook censorship. Now, thanks to loads of recent high-profile examples and increased popular interest in the topic, they fall right into my lap. On BoingBoing today, Richard Metzger, a self-described “married, middle-aged man,” writes that he became a spokesman for gay rights [...]

19.04.2011

3 Comments

re:campaign XI: Tools of Change (How Social Media Helped Spark the Arab Spring)

On Saturday, I gave another talk in Berlin, this time at the re:campaign conference, on the role of technology in the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. My take, as I’m sure you know by now, is that tools are just that…tools, and that a revolution comes from human power, but that nevertheless, such technology [...]

18.04.2011

4 Comments

re:publica 11: noha atef on egyptian social media stories

Noha Atef, the Egyptian blogger behind tortureinegypt.net is giving a talk at re:publica 11 on “Egyptian social media stories” to answer questions about how Egyptians have used social media and how, overnight it seems, Egyptians managed to mobilize on social networks to assist in the revolution. “The answer to the question: ‘Were Egyptians using social [...]

14.04.2011

2 Comments

re:publica 2011: this is our public sphere

I’m in Berlin for re:publica 2011, a conference I’ve been wanting to go to for at least two years and which I was invited to speak at this year. When organizer Markus Beckedahl contacted me in January to speak, he was excited about my September 2010 paper, Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere. Just a [...]

14.04.2011

1 Comment

Facebook and the Third Intifada Page: An Update

Further update: This CNN article is essential reading, particularly this quote (emphasis is mine): “The page… began as a call for peaceful protest, even though it used a term that has been associated with violence in the past. In addition, the administrators initially removed comments that promoted violence,” the company statement said. “However, after the [...]

29.03.2011

5 Comments

Israeli Minister Joins Call for Removal of Facebook Page

Last week, I wrote about AllFacebook.com’s Editor, Jackie Cohen, using her platform as a bully pulpit to encourage “friends of Israel” to report a Facebook Page in the hopes of getting it taken down.  Apparently, Cohen has been joined by Israeli Minister of Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Yuli Edelstein in appealing to Mark Zuckerberg to [...]

27.03.2011

16 Comments

Microsoft Fixes Bug; Re-enables HTTPS for All Users

Yesterday, I blogged that users in Iran, all Arab countries, Burma, Nigeria, and the Central Asian nations had been blocked from turning on HTTPS encryption within Hotmail.  This was true. According to Microsoft, this was a bug that affected users not only in those countries, but also in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and Fiji. [...]

26.03.2011

6 Comments

AllFacebook.com Editor Uses Bully Pulpit in Attempt to Remove Facebook Page

Facebook, like all intermediary hosts of social content, struggles with scalability of its community reporting features. On the platform, users may report content they find to be in violation of the site’s Terms of Service (TOS); they are then presented with five options (in image below): On March 15, AllFacebook.com Editor Jackie Cohen called for, [...]

21.03.2011

1 Comment

Building Human Rights Into Your Social Site

…goes the name of the panel I spoke on yesterday at SXSW Interactive, alongside Danny O’Brien of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Rebecca MacKinnon, and Ebele Okobi-Harris, director of the Business & Human Rights program at Yahoo. Rebecca, Danny and I frequently deal with complaints from activists in respect to account deactivations and other human [...]

15.03.2011

3 Comments

Politician Sues Facebook After Account Deactivation

I’m hardly one to feel sympathy for politicians, but this is a good one.  Majed Moughni, a Republican candidate for Congress last year in Michigan’s 15th district, is suing Facebook for damages after he lost the election, which he claims happened because his Facebook account was deactivated. Moughni stated: This lawsuit was filed to address [...]

07.03.2011

6 Comments

Would Anonymity Help Activists on Facebook? A Response to Luke Allnutt

Luke Allnutt has a thoughtful piece on RFE/RL asking the above question: Would anonymity help activists on Facebook? His response, “maybe not,” relies on the idea that anonymity would be extended only to those with special “activist status,” something I haven’t heard concretely argued as a potential model but which is nonetheless troubling. Allnutt writes: [...]

24.02.2011

10 Comments

The Media and the Algerian Internet Rumors

Well, here we go again…the mainstream media tonight jumped on rumors that Algeria had shut down the Internet, without bothering to check their facts with people on the ground. They didn’t check Twitter either; Algerians were tweeting throughout. So far, neither the Telegraph nor Mashable–the two outlets primarily responsible for the rumor–have bothered to issue [...]

12.02.2011

6 Comments

Social Media and Human Rights in the Media

I’m extremely pleased–yes, without snark–to see the media picking up on the very auspicious topic of incorporating human rights into social media platforms, a topic I’ve been tracking since March of 2010, and which I covered in my paper, Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere. Others, like Rebecca MacKinnon and Danny O’Brien of CPJ, have [...]

11.02.2011

2 Comments

Facebook for Activists

Two articles today focus on the promise and the troubles of Facebook for activists. I’ve written extensively on the subject, and though I recognize that Facebook is a private company with the right to make its own decisions, I continue to be troubled by what I view as negligence toward the international activist community. First, [...]

03.02.2011

14 Comments

Blood, Sweat, and Tear Gas

An article I wrote for The European, published only in German on their site.  Below is the original text, in English.  Title is theirs. All too often, Western pundits talk about digital activism in developing countries as if it were some phenomenon bestowed upon poor young foreigners by the moguls of Silicon Valley or worse, [...]

31.01.2011

1 Comment

How are protestors in Egypt using social media?

Shortly after writing this, reports came in that the Internet in Egypt had become a black hole, entirely–or almost entirely–inaccessible.  Updates soon. This question has been posed to me constantly over the past two days from journalists doing their best to understand the relationship between online and offline forms of protest.  I feel their pain [...]

27.01.2011

6 Comments

Facebook Enables HTTPS

I’ve done a lot of thinking, writing, and well, complaining about Facebook during the past year, mostly on behalf of the many activists I’ve met who’ve had troubles with the site. I’ve also seen, for the past year, small steps in the right direction from the social media giant.  And yesterday, Facebook made an announcement that [...]

27.01.2011

2 Comments

Facebook’s New Increased Security Measures: Not Very Secure

Logging into Facebook today, I was greeted with a little box in the upper right-hand corner of my screen, telling me that my security level was “low.”  Intrigued (last week it was marked “medium), I decided to click. Facebook has been trying to increase their security measures for awhile, a commendable effort.  Unfortunately, once again, [...]

02.01.2011

4 Comments

Facebook Use: Access, Filtering, and Languages

Facebook has just produced a map visualizing pairs of friends across the globe; the map is visually stunning, and as the Guardian points out, it also shows huge gaps where Facebook isn’t being used. For some countries, the reasons are fairly obvious: Orkut is hugely popular in Brazil, and so it seeks to reason that [...]

15.12.2010

10 Comments

Scribblings on Wikileaks: Some Thoughts on Digital Nativism and Transparency

I’ve been thinking and drafting about this for a few days, asking question of friends in person and on Facebook and Twitter, and I’m thus far no closer to a conclusion of this idea and so…I’ve decided instead to turn this blog post into what I hope might be a productive conversation (hey, it worked [...]

02.12.2010

30 Comments

Facebook and Identification: Caught in a Lie?

In the Wall Street Journal, Geoffrey Fowler has a piece on Facebook asking for real-life identification. Due to a recent bout of spamming, Facebook asked a number of users to verify their identity by submitting–on the site–a copy of their real-life identification. I’ve been aware of this for some time, but here’s what I found [...]

19.11.2010

5 Comments

Facebook and Saudi Arabia

I went offline for this weekend (complete radio silence) for the first time in years.  Of course, during that time, Saudi Arabia had to go and block Facebook the media went crazy reporting that Saudi Arabia blocked Facebook, but Saudi netizens are saying there was no actual block.  And then unblock Facebook.  It’s almost as [...]

14.11.2010

4 Comments

A Few Positive Baby Steps for Facebook

Since releasing my paper, Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere, a few weeks ago, I’ve begun noticing small changes to the Facebook platform.  No, I’m not talking about the new Groups (which I’ve duly ignored).  I’m talking about small but pointed changes pertaining directly to items I’ve complained about in the past.  I wish I [...]

18.10.2010

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Syrian Digital Activism in the NYTimes

This morning, in the New York Times of all places, is a good article highlighting Syria’s pervasive Internet censorship.  The premise is this: a disturbing (though not particularly graphic, as the Times suggests) video of teachers beating their young students is put up on Facebook (which Facebook, shockingly but to their credit, doesn’t remove for [...]

30.09.2010

5 Comments

The “cat and mouse” game between bloggers and government

This is a liveblog of a breakout panel at the Google Liberty at 2010 conference in Budapest, September 22, 2010. Cynthia Wong of the Center for Democracy and Technology introduces the next breakout panel, entitled “Online free expression and the cat and mouse game between bloggers and governments.” She introduces the session by mentioning the [...]

22.09.2010

2 Comments

More on Content Regulation: Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, India

Rob Faris concluded his speech by introducing three panelists: Tattu Mambetalieva of the Civil Initiative on Internet Policy (Kyrgyzstan) and the OpenNet Initiative; Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society (India); and Shahzad Ahmad of Bytes for All (Pakistan). Tattu (I’ll be referring to her by first name for the sheer fact that [...]

21.09.2010

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Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere

At long last, the paper I’ve been working on since (gulp) April is now live on the OpenNet Initiative website: “Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere” tackles the issues of content regulation and account deactivations across five popular social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Blogger).  The paper is also available for PDF download [...]

21.09.2010

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If Facebook is a Mall, Web Hosts are Mall Developers

This morning, when I learned that web host Rackspace had shut down the site of the Dove World Outreach Center, I did something rather unbecoming of an anti-censorship advocate:  I cheered a little. The thing is, I’ve been pretty sick over this issue.  I’ve always abided by the adage, “I may not agree with what [...]

09.09.2010

6 Comments

Facebook Responds

I’ve been writing about Facebook woes for nearly four months, so imagine my surprise yesterday when I received an e-mail from a Facebook staffer in response to my blog posts. Since I don’t have said staffer’s express permission to use his name or post his e-mail in its entirety, I will instead post the most [...]

27.07.2010

11 Comments

Facebook: “No Palestinian Pages”

As of July 26 at 8:17 DST, I can now create pages with the word “Palestinian” in them. Congrats–all of your contact messages to Facebook clearly worked. Note: I had no idea this post was going to get as much attention as it did.  Regardless, readers, I am not implying some vast Facebook conspiracy against [...]

25.07.2010

39 Comments

Is Vaseline’s Skin-Lightening App Racist?

When I read danah boyd’s post on Vaseline’s skin lightening Facebook app, I was a bit disappointed; her post touched on all of the important issues surrounding the concept of skin lightening, but then landed on the premise that the debate around them, and more specifically the Vaseline app, are taking place primarily in (presumably [...]

23.07.2010

3 Comments

Facebook will reinstate your content, but only if you’re Sarah Palin

At an event a few weeks ago I had the chance to publicly ask Adam Conner of Facebook why, if their service is offered in 70+ languages, their terms of service are only available in 7 and, with that in mind, how they feel they can accurately apply their TOS to people who use the [...]

22.07.2010

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The “Draw Mohammad Day” Brouhaha

When I first saw the poster for “Draw Mohammad Day,” I admit, I was amused. In reaction to Comedy Central’s decision to censor South Park, Seattle-based cartoonist Molly Norris had drawn up a poster asking people to draw the Prophet; the poster, below, was humorous and whimsical, with the Prophet depicted as a toaster or [...]

19.05.2010

8 Comments

Facebook Deactivations: No Appeals

I was CC’d on an e-mail this morning regarding a deleted account on Facebook. In fact, over the past 24 hours, I’ve been sent a lot of e-mails about deleted accounts. Whether it’s a glitch this time or not I can’t say, but here’s something alarming: Two of the people who contacted me CC’d me [...]

19.05.2010

6 Comments

Change Facebook or Change Ourselves?

As a result of Facebook’s ongoing privacy debacle, a number of conversations have emerged as to whether or not privacy matters in this so-called “new world.”  As the story goes, we (particularly those of us who are members of Gen. Y) have become used to putting our lives online: We tweet about what we ate [...]

16.05.2010

5 Comments

Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere

As I’ve written before, Facebook has, in numerous cases in various countries, deleted accounts, groups, or content put on their site by activists. From Hong Kong, where activists have written an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg complaining of Facebook’s harassment and deactivation of activists, to Morocco, where some activists have been deleted from the site, asked for identification in order to reinstate their accounts, then received no assistance upon sending said identification, Facebook users are fed up.

15.05.2010

7 Comments

You Can’t Take It With You

I woke up this morning to a jarring phone call from my roommate; one of us had accidentally left the front door unlocked and my cat had escaped (to the fourth floor, where she was coddled until we popped up there and retrieved her).  So you can imagine the mood I was in when I [...]

28.04.2010

2 Comments

On Facebook Deactivations

Update/note: Since writing this a few hours ago, I’ve been flooded by e-mails from Facebook users who have also experienced this. Those users include gay rights activists, Jewish activists, activists for a free Palestine, and activists against the Venezuelan regime (among others). Clearly this is happening to many users across the board. I will follow [...]

08.04.2010

35 Comments

The Risk of Facebook Activism in the New Arab Public Sphere

Over at The Arabist, Issandr El Amrani ruminates on Facebook’s role in Middle Eastern politics, a subject I’ve had my eye on for quite some time.  Drawing on the recent example of Egyptian reformer El Baradei and his enormous Facebook following, El Amrani marvels at the level of Facebook use for activism in the region. [...]

13.03.2010

7 Comments

Strange Choices

I logged into MySpace tonight for the first time in, apparently, about a year and a half.  My last hesitant update read “Jill doesn’t check MySpace.  E-mail her.”  I haven’t used my nickname publicly in a long time, and most of the people I know have left MySpace.  I wasn’t going to delete it, but [...]

24.10.2009

2 Comments

On Fighting with Words

Apologies for the lack of updates lately.  There’s work, then I served on a jury for the better part of a week (yay civic duties!), and now it’s work again. That said, I have had this article open in a tab on my work computer for over two weeks because I couldn’t figure out what [...]

23.10.2009

2 Comments

Two Wars

The terror and destruction does not look as if it will come to an end anytime soon. Friends are growing weary. Today, I got a call from my friend Mohammed Omer, who is from Rafah. While he is fortunate enough to be in the Netherlands right now (Fortunate? He’s there because he was beaten brutally [...]

05.01.2009

1 Comment