In general news, Facebook blogged in “Making connections to Facebook more secure” that the social network is now directly available to Tor users. This "provides a way to access Facebook through Tor without losing the cryptographic protections provided by the Tor cloud."
In Mexico, the anti-government hashtag #YaMeCanse has been replaced with #YaMeCanse2 after #YaMeCanse mysteriously disappeared on Twitter. Users blame “peñabots,” fake Twitter and Facebook accounts that aim to "confront criticism" against the very unpopular Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his government.
The USA democracy watchdog organisation Freedom House published its 5th annual Freedom on the Net report. The report looks into internet freedom in 65 countries between May 2013 and May 2014. Overall, 41 countries created legislation to limit freedom of speech online in some way, 38 countries arrested individuals for online communication (the Middle East and North Africa were highlighted as particularly punitive), and it looks like government is making it increasingly difficult to be an independent news site.
In the USA, a New York grand jury decided not to indict the police officer who killed Eric Garner, a 43-year-old black man and father of six in New York City who was doing nothing wrong and was unarmed at the time of his death by strangulation. This kicked off a number of online (and offline) protests under the hashtags #CrimingWhileWhite and #AliveWhileBlack. Meanwhile, the hashtag #HandsUpWalkout remains strong, continuing to spike offline demonstrations in remembrance of the police shooting of an unarmed black youth in Ferguson, Missouri.
The US government has also cautioned soldiers to be careful on social media as ISIS may be tracking US military via their social media accounts.
Canadians are attacking a #Bill10 Amendment in the province of Alberta. The Amendment makes it possible for schools to avoid allowing students to set up gay-straight alliance on campus. Online protesters, including a Canadian sports star, have criticised the government for promoting discrimination through the amendment.
In the UK, Quilliam, a counter-extremism think tank, issued a white paper called The Role of Prevent in Countering Online Extremism. The white paper calls for the UK Government to develop positive long-term measures to counter extremism, including outreach via social media.
The UK Crown Office issued social media prosecution guidelines this past week. Social media prosecution in the UK may be permissible when social media posts:
- "specifically target an individual or group and are considered to be hate crime, domestic abuse, or stalking
- constitute credible threats of violence to the person,damage to property or to incite public disorder
- may amount to a breach of a court order or contravene legislation making it a criminal offence to release or publish information relating to proceedings
- do not fall into the above categories but are nonetheless considered to be grossly offensive, indecent or obscene or involve the communication of false information about an individual or group which results in adverse consequences."
In Ukraine, the creation of a new Ministry of Information Policy has caused widespread ridicule on social media. From fake Twitter accounts to trending Tweets renaming the Ministry the "Ministry of Truth", the online backlash has caused Yuriy Stets, the new Ministry's leader and the former head of the Information Security Department of the National Guard of Ukraine, to try to explain the idea behind the Ministry in a Facebook post.
The Kenyan government announced plans to introduce policies to monitor social media abuse by Kenyans. Controversial and sometimes violent content has made it onto social networks following, for example, a recent Mandera Bus Attack.
South Africa remembered the death of leader Nelson Mandela December 5th. Online, the hashtag #RememberMandela allowed users to share memories and images of Mandela's life and legacy.
Turkish columnist Ali Tezel (@tezelali) revealed in a Tweet Monday that he was fired by his paper Habertürk due to personal Tweets criticising the Turkish government's reaction to a mining accident in Soma in which 301 people were killed.
In Egypt, the court dropped all criminal charges against former President Hosni Mubarack, spurring protests. During the Arab Spring, an uprising arguably organised largely via social media, many of those involved called for the immediate dismissal and jailing of the corrupt leader. His release is seen another step backwards, calling into question the effectiveness of the uprising.
Indian Minister for Communications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad reported to the Indian Lok Sabha that fake or duplicate social media accounts are on the rise in India. "In most of the cases, such fake/duplicate accounts were successfully disabled in association with social networking sites having offices in India," Prasad reported.
A study of Chinese social media attacking the Chinese government for its environmental policies (or lack thereof) found that much of the online conversation was hijacked by corporate or government accounts. “Citizens acting online made some real changes to how the government handled the air pollution problem, but government and corporations used the same online tools to advance their own agendas,” a lead researcher noted. The same researcher observed, "The most influential users in the debate were almost entirely composed of government sources, companies or famous individuals."
The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) announced it will monitor social media for seditious remarks as a part of plans to empower the Sedition Act of 1948 and counter online extremism.
Social media in the Philippines is abuzz with jokes following the ill-conceived public service video "Gaga Girl, Bobo Boy" aimed to educate Philippine youth about teen pregnancy. This is not the first government viral video to achieve unintentional popularity.
Finally, the Australian parliament introduced a bill this past week to create a Children's E-Safety Commissioner office. The Commissioner would work with Australians and social networks to take down posts that constitute cyberbullying. Under the bill social networks could be fined up to 17 000 Australian dollars a day for not taking down identified content.
For more, follow @Linda_Margaret on Twitter.
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