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The internet has become a tool for authoritarian repression
While the internet revolution may have empowered activists, it has also handed new tools to despots for stamping out dissent through digital surveillance, disinformation and internet access to their people.
US lawmakers criticize Apple over Chinese app censorship
In a new letter co-penned by a bipartisan group of members of Congress, federal lawmakers say they have "strong concern" related to Apple's recent actions in China. The letter, which is addressed to CEO Tim Cook, zeroes in on Apple's decision earlier this month to remove HKMap, an app pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong used to track the location of local law enforcement.
Apple removes Hong Kong protest app following Chinese pressure
Apple's complex relationship with China has made the headlines again. Just a day after Chinese state media criticized the company for allowing HKmap in its App Store -- and a week after Apple flip flopped on its initial decision to delist the app -- the crowdsourced map app has been removed, again sparking concerns that Apple is pandering to China's political regime.
Social media bots are damaging our democracy
Social media has become our town crier. When major news breaks, roughly two-thirds of American adults now find out about it online in real-time. But the aftermath of the week's third mass shooting, environmental catastrophe or political meltdown is often rife with false claims, misinformation, and outright conspiracy theories. Some of this comes simply from the confusion surrounding the unfolding situation but to an increasing degree, the discussions around these events are being deliberately -- and effectively -- influenced by an army of autonomous digital actors.
Zuckerberg's latest snub could land him in contempt of Canadian parliament
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg have snubbed an official summons and risk being held in contempt of the Canadian Parliament. The pair were called to a hearing in Ottawa, due to be held later this week, but have confirmed that Facebooka's head of public policy Kevin Chan and director of public policy Neil Potts will instead go in their place.
How Brian Kemp hacked Georgia’s election
"[Brian] Kemp on Thursday said he had resigned as Georgia's secretary of state," reported Reuters yesterday. No one watching Kemp's malfeasant, multi-year election security trash fire could understand why that sentence didn't stop at "resigned."
Facebook’s cluelessness helped amplify Myanmar tensions
As the United States goes to the polls for the 2018 midterms, Facebook's influence is once again under scrutiny. The social network has published a report it commissioned in August from Business for Social Responsibility (BSR). The San Francisco–based nonprofit was tasked with investigating Facebook's role in enabling political violence in Myanmar. Essentially, the report says that while it wasn't the root cause, Facebook amplified calls to violence.
Watch PBS’ documentary on Facebook’s woes tonight
PBS is airing a two-part Frontline documentary on Facebook Monday and Tuesday, centered around the company's undeniably enormous impact on democracy and privacy around the world. The trailer for The Facebook Dilemma suggests it addresses issues such as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's near-total control of the company, data collection practices, ad targeting, the Arab Spring, the political weaponization of the platform and how Facebook embedded its staff with political campaign teams.
Facebook explores whether social media is good for democracy
As part of its Hard Questions series, Facebook has decided to explore the question of whether social media is good for democracy. The last US presidential election brought that question to the fore of many people's minds, directly or indirectly, as it became clear that fake news and meddling by foreign actors played not insignificant roles. For this topic, Facebook is doing something a little different, inviting three outside experts to share their thoughts on this question and those individuals include Harvard professor Cass Sunstein, social media scholar and former president of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves and University of Sydney professor Ariadne Vromen.
Digital democracy's steep decline
We thought the internet was going to be great for equality, freedom, and maybe even human rights, but now we're not so sure. Turns out, the internet is great for propaganda. And totally unraveling democracy. If only the people who invented and run everything we use online had thought of this! If only they had imagined someone using their social sites, apps, advertising networks, and comment systems to attack and oppress people of color, women, anyone who wants healthcare, and enemies of the state (the same thing, usually). They didn't think of these things because they were coding, developing, and seeking venture capital in order to make the world a better place. Also licking advertiser bootheels. And lobbying.
Obama: We have to get serious about facts
After a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Obama tackled the topic of fake news following a number of reports detailing Facebook activity during the 2016 election. He explained at a time when so many people are getting their news via sound bites on social media, we have to get serious about facts.
China's new cybersecurity laws are a nightmare
Privacy fans will be delighted to hear that China has passed new cybersecurity regulations that mandate the use of real names. In addition, companies who operate in the country will be forced to store their data locally, making it fair game for surveillance. Finally, businesses will be pressured into censoring content that is "prohibited," like posts promoting democracy. If that wasn't bad enough, China also requires the right to shut down products and services -- at will -- to respond to security incidents.
Emailing your members of Congress just got much easier
It's supposed to be easier to email Congresspeople than it is to pick up the phone, but that's not always how it works in practice. Just ask anyone who has navigated convoluted web forms just to voice opposition to a bill, for starters. You won't have to put up with those technical hurdles after today, though. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's new Democracy.io site helps you email House and Senate representatives without having to dig around their sites. You can even email all of your politicians at once, if there's a concern that stretches across both legislative branches. There's no guarantees that officials will listen when you fire off your messages, but you'll at least get to say that you exercised your civic responsibility. [Image credit: TTarasiuk, Flickr]
Hackers used Google Drive to attack Tibetans
Tibetans and pro-democracy activists in China are often the victims of cyberattacks, but a public campaign to educate people against blindly opening email attachments has been a big success. Unfortunately, as Motherboard reports, this has had the knock-on effect of forcing hackers into being a lot smarter with their subterfuge. Since would-be victims are now wary of opening attachments, nefarious types are now using Google Drive as a trojan horse with which to breach targeted systems.
China blocks Instagram in the wake of Hong Kong democracy protests
China has a history of tightening its censorship of internet services during times of political upheaval, and that's unfortunately happening again with massive pro-democracy protests underway in Hong Kong. Both monitoring sites and on-the-ground observers report that the country has blocked access to Instagram on the mainland, most likely to prevent images of the demonstrations from spreading beyond Hong Kong (where Instagram is still working). It's potentially a big blow to free speech, as the photo sharing service was one of the few foreign social networks that operated unfettered in the area. We've reached out to Instagram for more details, but it's safe to presume that China won't lift its restrictions so long as the protests continue -- and it won't be surprising if this ultimately proves to be a permanent ban. [Image credit: Alex Ogle/AFP/Getty Images]
Twitch Plays Pokemon: Its history, highlights and Bird Jesus
The Internet is a bizarre, confusing and sometimes wonderful place. Nowhere and no-when has that been more evident than now, as the world watches Twitch Plays Pokemon. For those not yet swept up in the madness, Twitch Plays Pokemon is the 1998 GameBoy game Pokemon Red being emulated on a computer, streamed to the masses. Those who tune in can enter the game's commands – up, down, left, right, A, B, start – in the Twitch channel chat, and said commands will be translated into in-game results. You type "up," the main character moves up. Simple, right? Not quite when you have 70,000 people typing out often-contradictory commands. The infinite monkey theorem – a mathematical principle that has existed in some form or interpretation since Aristotle – has often been taken to mean, "If an infinite number of monkeys were to use an infinite number of typewriters, sooner or later you get Shakespeare." Well brother, this ain't that. This is 70,000 monkeys wrestling for control of one typewriter, while another group of monkeys interprets the words printed as holy gospel. And no, the religious imagery is not an exaggeration, as you'll soon see. Like a Rattata in Team Rocket Headquarters, we've dug our way through Twitch Plays Pokemon to bring you some of the best, the funniest, the weirdest memes and moments created by this intriguing display of unbridled creativity.
Twitch Plays Pokemon levels up to 75k concurrent viewers, learns democracy
Last week, the chat-controlled Twitch Plays Pokemon grabbed our attention, as ten thousand people were able to simultaneously control the lead character in Pokemon Red/Blue. In the near five and a half days of the stream's existence, it's crossed 75,000 concurrent viewers, though Twitch says that the number of unique visitors to the chaotic game tallies over 300,000. Given the madness of Twitch Plays Pokemon, the stream's creator implemented a new system for the crowd-controlled game: a democratic voting system. Now, those that type commands are essentially casting their vote for the next action in the game, which goes into effect after a couple seconds. It also allows voters to add a number after their desired command to indicate how many times the action should be performed, such as "right3" being used to tell our hero to go right three times. As expected, not everyone is on board with the new voting system, so the command "start9" is gaining traction to stall the game's progress. That's why the creator also added another voting system, allowing viewers to push a meter to either "anarchy" or "democracy," presumably to decide the future format of the game. Twitch Plays Pokemon has also amassed plenty of extra attention in the form of its own observational Twitter account, Subreddit and even public Google Doc status tracker. Among the noteworthy activities on the stream since last week, the community opted to throw away two Moon Stones and its starter Pokemon Charmeleon, relied heavily on its "Bird Jesus" Pidgeot and has earned four badges in the game. [Image: Twitch Plays Pokemon]
Turkish PM blames riots on 'scourge' of social media, prefers the calm of state TV
The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, has condemned social media as a "the worst menace to society" following a weekend of anti-government demonstrations across his country. He singled out the "scourge" of Twitter in particular, since protestors have been using that platform to share information and vent anger at the government. Small-scale riots started over plans to build a shopping mall or mosque (depending on who you believe) on the grounds of a popular park in central Istanbul, but they quickly spread to other areas and to a broader set of grievances about Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian stance. None of these disturbances were especially visible on national TV stations, however, as there have recently been heavy crackdowns on press freedom within Turkey. From the sound of it, Erdogan would prefer a more tightly controlled internet too -- or perhaps none at all. [Image courtesy of Adem Altan/Getty Images]
Why World of Warcraft isn't a democracy
There's a difference between a consumer and a producer. To use the dreaded and overused food analogy, liking to eat doesn't translate into being a good cook. For that matter, liking to eat doesn't even translate into liking to cook, much less displaying any skill at cooking. I neither like to cook nor have even the slightest talent for it, but if you look at me you can tell I'm not shy about eating. Why am I belaboring this point into the ground? Because World of Warcraft isn't a democracy in part because the millions of us who like to eat it don't necessarily possess either the talent or aptitude to cook it up. Partially this is due to the fact that almost any creative task requires a certain degree of focus, and the more people you attempt to include in the design process the more effort needs to expended keeping the project on track. There's a reason projects of this magnitude often have people who specifically work on doing exactly that. They don't do the individual art, they don't code the abilities or design the environments or that next cool armor, they instead work on keeping all of these variables on track. They're jugglers, and the balls in this case are the varied and disparate elements of the game's overall design.
Officers' Quarters: DPS the vote
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. As some of the insane political tactics in recent weeks remind us, we're less than a month away from election day in America. On. Nov. 6, nearly all Americans will have the opportunity to vote. Guilds don't often work that way, but should they? This week, one officer wonders whether his new guild leader is giving too much voting power to the masses. Dear Scott, I recently stepped down from being the leader of my guild due to obligations outside of World of Warcraft. Before I stepped down, I placed a new system in effect that is very similar to a city council at the request of the existing members. I selected our five current officers and myself as councilmen. I appointed a trusted friend of mine as the new guild leader/council chairman, and he has some pretty colorful ideas as to how our guild's structure should work. My friend feels that our guild should allow members who have been active to become councilmen, like us, giving them an equal vote on all issues. Quite frankly this scares the heck out of me.
