blacklivesmatter
Latest
Rockstar temporarily closes online games in support of Black Lives Matter
The publisher is taking the games offline for two hours 'in honor of George Floyd.'
Instagram blames anti-spam tech for stopping some Black Lives Matter posts
According to the company, the issue arose due to the influx of posts using #blacklivesmatter.
Fake Black Lives Matter page on Facebook eclipsed the real thing
Facebook has had some success purging fake and misleading pages, but it's evident there's still work to do. CNN has discovered that the most popular Black Lives Matter page for the past year was a scam -- it was supposedly fundraising for BLM causes in the US, but sent at least some money to Australian bank accounts and frequently linked to the websites from Ian Mackay, a workers' union official in Australia. It had nearly 700,000 followers where the real activist group's page has less than half that amount.
Russia-linked Facebook ads sought to exploit US social divisions
There's been a lot of fuss over a Russian group buying Facebook ads in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, to the point where it's handing the ads to Congress as it investigates the scope of Russia's influence campaign. But what's in those ads, exactly? We might have a better idea. Washington Post sources say that the 3,000 ads headed to Congress were built to exploit American social divisions. Some championed activist groups like Black Lives Matter, while others portrayed them as existential threats. Others aimed to split opinions through hot-button issues like Islam, LGBT rights, gun rights and immigration.
NYPD filmed hundreds of BLM and Occupy protests without approval
Police are frequently fond of monitoring protesters, and that includes cops in New York -- NYPD cameras have been a mainstay at large protests over the past several years. However, it's now clear that the NYPD has been skirting internal rules in the process. The Verge has obtained documents showing that the force's video team not only captured over 400 Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street protests between 2011 and 2016, but doesn't appear to have received authorizations or legal reviews.
Sammus is somewhere between nerdcore and afrofuturism
Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo used to get the same question every time she set down the mic and stepped off the stage. She came to expect it after performing in crowded bars, big music festivals or comic book stores, and the question usually came from a well-meaning stranger or new fan of her music. "Who makes your beats for you?" This would happen right after she'd screamed into the mic that she was Sammus, a producer and rapper, and that everything she just did on stage was her work. The question would come in different forms -- "Where's your boyfriend?" was another staple -- but the sentiment was the same. People assumed Sammus didn't produce her own music.
Black Lives Matter site faced over 100 attacks in half a year
When you launch protests in the modern era, you don't just have to worry about aggressive responses on the streets... you have to worry about your online presence, too. Deflect Labs has determined that Black Lives Matter's official website was subject to over 100 botnet-based denial of service attacks between April 29th and October 15th, a large part of it coming from members of a Ghost Squad hacking collective that had vocally denounced BLM's campaign. And it didn't require many people, either. Just two culprits (who may be the same person) launched nearly a fifth of the attacks, one of which tried to flood the site with traffic using nearly 1 million bots.
Twitter says no to law enforcement protest policing tool
Twitter has cut off access for a tool that law enforcement was using to monitor the social network for protest-specific keywords. Those included "Mikebrown," "Blacklivesmatter" and "imunarmed" according to documents obtained by The Daily Dot. Media Sonar has been selling social media surveillance software to police departments for thousands of dollars. Twitter, for its part, cut off the firm's API keys in October and has vowed to terminate Media Sonar's attempts at making more.
Twitter in 2016 was a pretty depressing place to be
Let's not be mealymouthed: 2016 sucked. As a stark reminder, Twitter has released its "Top 10 Global Conversations" for the year, a change from last year's #YearOnTwitter format. This time, it lumped events into categories like #RIP, #Brexit, #Trump and #Oscars, perhaps as a way to give equal time to the rare good news stories. Otherwise, the list would be pretty much death, politics and Trump.
Activist @Deray Mckesson is running for mayor of Baltimore
In yet another sign of social media's growing impact on the world, one of the most well-known figures of the #BlackLivesMatter movement is running for political office. Deray Mckesson (@Deray) filed just ahead of tonight's deadline to join the Democratic primary for Baltimore's mayoral race. According to the Baltimore Sun, there are 28 people currently registered to run including 13 Democrats, with a deadline of Friday to withdraw from consideration. Former mayor Sheila Dixon is reportedly leading the crowded field, and it remains to be seen how far the combination of activism and significant Twitter/Instagram following can take a political outsider in the race.
