Does Twitter Have A Selective Censorship Problem?
Buzzfeed today reported Twitter's ex-CEO oversaw moderation of President Obama's and Caitlyn Jenner's Q & As, prompting questions of selective political bias of the site.
Website tracks online censorship reports
Having trouble accessing a website? Suspect it might be more than just a faulty connection or technical malfunction? Visit Herdict.org, a website designed to track reports of censored web sites around the world. There, you can report anonymously that a site is inaccessible and see if other people are having the same problem. There is no way to determine whether [...]
The Tweet Heard Around the World: Thwarting Censorship in Iran, One Proxy-Server at a Time
The Iranian government, never a proponent of free expression, has ramped up its practice of filtering its citizens’ access to social networking websites following Friday’s election and the ensuing protests. For instance, the Iranian government has blocked access to Twitter from servers located in Iran. The Iranian government’s efforts, however, have been thwarted by a complicated network of non-Iranian proxy [...]
Why should U.S. computer manufacturers care about censorship in China?
Beijing recently gave computer manufacturers six weeks’ notice that all new PCs sold in China must have Green Dam software installed on their hard drives. The name for the government-developed filtering program comes from references to a regulated Internet as “green.” Many people inside and outside China are saying that “green” doesn’t translate into pornography-free and safe for children, as [...]
What it means: Nine Inch Nails and the iPhone application*: Annotated edition (*4+)
I should have put money on it – or at least Twittered – my Monday prediction that Apple would re-allow the new Nine Inch Nails application into the iPhone Store. The Apple store pulled the application because the application – which had NIN albums – included the controversial album, The Downward Spiral.* Trent Reznor, who’s very internet savvy, first sent [...]
#amazonfail explained in a flowchart
See it in full effect. Inspired by Anatomy of the #AmazonFAIL protest.
Amazon removes GLBT books from search, some books back in online store
The twittersphere has been, well, a-twitter (sorry!) about a story this weekend of Amazon pulling media with GLBT content from it’s sales ranking. Search #amazonfail to have a look. The excuse? The books were “adult” materials. However, it became quickly clear that it was GLBT content that was defining “adultness,” rather than the potential age-appropriateness of the content. The impact? [...]
On the significance of LOL cats
Ethan Zuckerman, who founded Global Voices Online, has an excellent talk in which he explains how web 2.0 services (that allow people to socially network, share LOL cats, and organize politically) play a critical role in getting around government censorship. You can read it here, with images he used at the talk. One gem, which [...]